Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales (20 page)

He followed the boar’s trail until he reached a clearing in the forest.

As he approached the clearing, he remembered his earlier foolishness. To be afraid of shadows! How ridiculous! Yet the memory of that terrible moment came back again and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to step out of the forest and into the full light of day. A dramatic change had come over him and over the woodland. The hunter was the same man, the trees the same trees—yet everything was, somehow, different.

The broad oaks and beeches, the great hornbeams, the tall stately ash trees were now seen by the hunter in great detail. He was aware, without close study, of every knot and whorl in their trunks, every twist of their boughs, and the very course of their sap was interesting. He found himself admiring their shapes and lines. The firs and pines, laden with heavy snow, had all looked the same before. Now they were like individual people to him, all quite different.

Yet there was something frightening about these sudden changes and new ways of looking at things. This fear made the hands holding his rifle tremble, just as the icicles on the wych elms were trembling. He had a new insight into nature’s secrets, yet with this power had come a strange dread. He wondered if it had anything to do with shooting the badger, earlier in the day, but he had always taken such opportunities when they presented themselves. He killed such creatures by instinct. The badger had died because it was a wild animal and the hunter was an excellent shot. It was as simple as that and nothing more.

When he stepped into the clearing and felt the breeze on his face, the hunter felt himself relax. Switching on the safety catch of his rifle, he swung the weapon onto his shoulder, using the strap to carry it by. Then he surveyed his surroundings and was pleasantly surprised, if not amazed.

Before him stretched a broad lake, frozen silver in the weak evening sun, with patches of reed tucked away in shallow corners. Around the lake was grassland, sparkling with frost where it poked through the thin layer of snow. Enclosing the meadows and the lake was the woodland in which he had been hunting that day, with its oaks and elms, its pines and firs.

It was the sight on the far side of the lake that astonished him, however, for on that shore stood a magnificent building. A low, rambling, timber lodge covering some four or five acres rose out of the snow-covered grassland. It appeared so natural it might have grown from the landscape.

The hunter took his binoculars out of their fur pouch, wiped the misted lenses. Then he studied this strange dwelling.

From various points on the thatched roof of the lodge sprang tall, twisted, redbrick
chimney stacks
, smoking lazily into the evening sky. The hunter could see narrow windows of leaded glass, dozens of them, scattered along the walls of the lodge. Two thirds from the east end, though it was difficult to make out where the corners were, stood two great arched double-doors with decorative hinges of solid brass. Snow-decked ivy curled about the wavering
eves, that
dipped and ran with wooden gutters, and dropped down to rain barrels at various unlikely intervals.

The hunter, who was fond of wooden buildings, thought the lodge magnificent. Its presence in this setting took his breath away and he found himself hoping it was some kind of hotel or inn, at which he could spend the night.

‘Better than bivouacking in the woods,’ he muttered to himself, for that was what he would have had to do. ‘Too cold for that kind of thing at this time of year.’

The hunter made his way around the west shore of the lake, not daring to trust the ice to hold his weight. He passed some holes in the ice on the side near to the dwelling, as if someone had been fishing. Finally, he came upon the massive double-doors, the entrance to the great lodge. Above the doorway was a simple sign in German, burned into a slice of oak, which said:
Jaegerhalle
.

‘Hunter’s Hall,’ he said to himself. ‘Perhaps it is a place to spend the night?’

He opened one of the doors and entered.

If the magnificent outside of the lodge had not astounded him, certainly the scene within would have done. The whole lodge seemed to consist of a single enormous room, the roof held up by magnificent pillars of oak. There were stone hearths scattered over the wooden floors. The light from the narrow windows did not go far into the vast room, making shafts of dying sunlight around the edge. Even though the log fires and lamps lit the centre, it was difficult for the hunter to see the far side. The atmosphere was thick with the scent of pine planks and woodsmoke, human sweat and animal skins, mead, ale and cooking meat.

‘Wonderful,’ whispered the hunter.

Around the blazing hearths sat men, mostly men, and a sprinkling of women, dressed in various modes of hunting gear, some quite modern, but others clearly historical. There were plain green breechclouts, cracked leather jackets shiny with use and fur mittens and gloves. There were deerstalker hats, rough tweed coats, high calfskin boots. There were waxed-skin waterproofs with many pockets, and thick winter shirts, and
camouflaged overalls such as the hunter himself was
wearing.

Those sitting or sprawled around the fires were either talking in low voices, or cleaning and polishing their weapons, or both. And such weapons!
Guns, bows, spears and all manner of hunting tools.
And the guns were not simply modern high-powered rifles or shotguns, but barrel-loading flintlocks, single shot breechloaders and various other old-fashioned firearms.

At the feet of many of the room’s occupants sat gun and hunting dogs of all descriptions, from retrievers to springer spaniels to pointers to Irish setters. Like most hunting hounds, they were as quiet and docile in the indoors as they were active and sharp in the outdoors.

In the centre of the great lodge was the largest of the fires and hanging from a chain, over its flames, was the biggest cauldron the hunter had ever seen. It was from this huge black iron pot that the wonderful odour of cooking meat and potatoes was issuing forth and filling the room.

The hunter stood for a long while, taking in this scene, which affected him to his very soul. It was the kind of place a weekend hunter dreams of, while he works at his job in the city, or travels on a jet to a business meeting with people he has no time for outside making money. This was clearly a gathering of huntsmen, like himself, in a perfect setting.

Feeling a little humble, the hunter walked across to the nearest fire and spoke to a man sitting there, cleaning a long old-fashioned rifle.

‘Excuse me, sir. May I sit by you?’

The man answered him, but in French, which he did not understand at all. The hunter walked away from him, feeling bewildered. However, a second man, on the other side of the hearth, called to him.

‘Sit by me. I speak your language. We can talk together about tomorrow’s tracking or today’s success. We can discuss the Christmas day feast and the New Year hunt. We can speak about the lore of the forest, the run of the game.’

Now this was the kind of conversation in which the hunter loved to participate. Gratefully he crossed the hearth and took the place indicated by the speaker, sitting on a deerskin close to the burning logs.

The
man was large, with a moon-shaped pleasant face, and skin
the colour of weathered mahogany. His black hair was long, hanging over the collar of his leather jacket, and his eyes were deep brown and clear. At the man’s feet lay a black Labrador retriever, staring into the flames.

In his hands the man held a breechloading rifle, the barrel of which he was subjecting to a vigorous pulling-through with a cleaning cloth. He offered the hunter a look down the barrel, at the shining spirals of rifling, as the hunter sat down beside him.

‘Good,’ said the hunter. ‘Not a spot of rust.’

‘As it should be,’ said the man, in a satisfied tone.

The hunter pointed to the retriever, who was now watching him with a movement of the eyes only.

‘Fine water dogs, those,’ he said.

The man patted the dog on the head and received a lick on the hand as acknowledgement.

‘Yes, wonderful beasts.
This one has been with me for
a long time now, haven’t
you old girl? She doesn’t like the winter months though. Not enough for her to do.’

The dog nuzzled his hand.

The hunter said, ‘What is this place?’ He gestured with a sweep of his hand, taking in the lodge. ‘Who are these people? Is this some sort of Christmas Eve gathering?’

The man raised his eyebrows and looked a little sad.

‘Ah, you are new? Then you may be in for a little shock, I think, unless you’ve guessed already.’

‘Guessed what?’ asked the hunter, who hated puzzles.

‘These people, as you call them, were all great huntsmen or huntresses when they were alive. As you must have been yourself, for here you are, in
Jaegerhalle
. The place we are in is of course the lodge where we now reside, sleeping around our fires, preparing for the next day’s hunt...’

The hunter smiled.

‘You’re making fun of me,’ he said.

The man stared at him with serious eyes.

‘No, I do not joke. You are dead, my friend, and in the hall of the great hunters. No one here can remember what
they
were called in life. Do you have a name?’

The man then concentrated on cleaning his gun, seemingly allowing the hunter time to think about what he had said.

The hunter tried desperately to recall his own name. How could he forget such a thing? Yet there was nothing there, not even a hint of who he was, or what he was called. His mind remained a complete blank on that aspect. He knew
what
he was, but not
who
he was, nor who his parents were. All he got from a searching of his memory was a feeling of frustration.

Wait a
minute,
he thought triumphantly, I can feel my own heart beating in my chest! Or was that illusion? Was he breathing, or simply going through the motions of breathing? Surely he was being made fun of, the object of hunters’ humour, an initiation ceremony on first entering the lodge? Yet there were no others within earshot, to enjoy the joke.
Only his darkhaired companion, intent on servicing his rifle.

The man was looking at him again, with quizzical eyes.

‘What,’ said the dark-haired man, ‘is the last thing you remember, before the sky darkened and the stillness came?’

This question shocked the hunter dreadfully.

It meant the man knew about the incident in the forest. How could that be, when the man had not been there? Perhaps the man had been hiding behind a tree? Surely he would have come to the hunter’s assistance if he had? And in any case, something had happened
inside
the hunter, as well as outside.

‘What do I remember?’ he repeated, and received a nod from his companion.

What did he remember? Why, he and his friends had been tracking a stag, an animal with magnificent antlers. His first shot had struck the beast in the flank, wounding but not crippling. The stag had run, of course, a ragged route through the trees, and the hunters had followed the trail of blood, and then the tracks in the snow when the blood had dried on the wound.

Then what? There was a sort of dark area in his memory after that, between tracking the stag and the moment when the sky closed and the silence fell. It was as if his mind was a shade in which a memory was hidden. The memory wouldn’t come out. So he had to concentrate, to try to understand its shape, though it attempted to remain vague. As he focused intensely on that dark area, the memory began to emerge, gradually. The reason it had remained hidden was because the nature of it was harrowing and the hunter had subconsciously thrust it away, not wanting to remember something so appalling.

Yet, here it came, out of the murk.

Why, yes, he had been standing between two pines, when the stag appeared again, to his left. He recalled trying to swing the rifle round, but the strap had caught on something, a branch,
a
bush, hampering his aim. Then... the stag had come on, at speed, its antlers lowered in a charge. Someone else, one of the others, had then aimed and fired.