The Fox Cub Bold (12 page)

The dog began: ‘Can’t I just come and converse with you? It would mean – ’

It broke off as Robber came sailing valiantly in and raised one massive paw to dispose of the interfering nonentity. Bold was too late to stop it. The dog gave Robber what was intended to be a warning cuff, but the blow of such a powerful beast fell like a sledge-hammer on the poor crow who immediately crumpled into a heap on the ground.

‘Robber! Robber!’ cried Bold agonizingly. ‘Look what you’ve done, you brute!’ he snarled at the unwitting dog. ‘You’ve killed him!’

Whisper now came running up. The dog looked at the foxes aghast. ‘I can’t have done,’ he moaned. ‘It was only meant as a tap.’

‘You don’t know your own strength!’ snapped Bold. ‘And he was only trying to help me!’

The dog looked stupidly from one animal to the other, and then at the little black body, insensible on the hard ground. Bold thought he had the measure of this great beast who seemed to be a bit dull-witted.

‘Do something useful, at any rate,’ he barked. ‘Get me out of this!’

While Whisper bent over the fallen bird, sniffing gently at the coal-black feathers, the dog began to batter its huge feet against the stones of the wall. In a trice the hole was large enough for Bold to free himself. He made straight for Robber. After some tense moments he looked up at Whisper gladly. ‘Why, he’s only stunned!’ he cried. ‘He’s beginning to stir.’

The dog lolloped over but Bold said: ‘You’d better keep back. We don’t want any more accidents.’

Whisper was amused at the meek way the animal at once sat down, looking towards Bold as if waiting for the next directions from a creature only a quarter of its size. But, above all, she was proud of Bold who seemed to be entering a new phase of living up to his name.

‘Is . . . is it – er –
he
all right?’ the dog asked tremulously. ‘I really didn’t mean to do it, you know.’

‘I think he will be, but he’s suffered a nasty shock,’ replied Bold. ‘Whisper, can we do anything for him?’

‘Nothing at all,’ she said. ‘It’s just a question of time. But we might be able to aid his revival.’

‘How?’

‘Like this . . .’ Whisper demonstrated, breathing her warm breath over the bird.

‘I see – warmth,’ said Bold, and added his services. Then he turned and looked for a moment at the dog. ‘You can help here, my friend, I think,’ he said.

The dog was delighted and came forward eagerly, breathing out clouds of steam in the crisp air with his stentorian gasps.

Robber opened his jet-black eyes and saw the three mammals puffing and blowing together quite amicably. He tried to stand.

‘Take it carefully,’ Bold said. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Rather at a loss,’ answered the bird. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’ve been mistaken,’ said Bold. ‘This great fellow wants to be our friend.’

‘No friend of mine,’ muttered Robber, ruffling his feathers. ‘And I hope he has no enemies!’

‘He’s very contrite about it,’ Bold whispered to him. ‘Try to be forgiving.’

Robber struggled to his feet and tested his wings to see if their delicate bones were intact. ‘I found your message and came straight away,’ he explained.

Bold had to stop and think a minute. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I see. Actually, I just wanted to see how you were making out.’

‘Perfectly,’ said Robber. ‘At least I
was
. . .’ He directed a piercing glance at the newcomer.

‘I’m Rollo,’ said the dog naively. ‘Rollo the mastiff.’

‘Are you indeed?’ Robber said grudgingly. ‘Well, your master should take better care of you.’

‘Yes, he should,’ Rollo said warmly. ‘He leaves me out in the yard in all weathers and nothing to amuse myself with. He doesn’t know I get out, though. I can jump the fence!’ He seemed quite proud of this announcement.

Whisper and Bold exchanged wry glances. The mastiff was obviously quite an artless sort of beast.

‘Perhaps you’d better be getting back?’ Bold suggested. ‘Or he
will
discover you can escape?’

A look of consternation passed over the dog’s great wrinkled face. ‘Oh – yes,’ he said blankly. But he made no attempt to move off.

‘We’ll still be around,’ Bold said reassuringly. ‘We live here, Whisper and I. There’s always another day.’

‘Yes, thank you, yes,’ Rollo said, greatly pleased. ‘I’ll certainly come again.’ He started to walk away, but kept looking back at his new friends.

‘Until the next time,’ Whisper called.

Rollo barked joyfully and bounded away, leaping the wall elaborately as if giving them a demonstration of how he managed to jump his own fence.

‘Stupid creature,’ muttered Robber. ‘He could have killed me.’

‘But he didn’t, mercifully,’ said Bold. ‘And we must cultivate his friendship. An animal that size could prove to be a very useful ally, one day.’

Whisper and Bold were visited frequently by the mastiff in the ensuing weeks. Since he was only about during the day, it meant that the pair of foxes were usually roused from their sleep by one or two of his great barks, summoning them to join him. They tried to be friendly, but Rollo’s visits were not always welcome, particularly if they had exhausted themselves hunting for food the previous night.

The turn of the year came and went. The winter weather had not been too cruel. Food was available – not plentiful – but, working in concert, Bold and Whisper usually found enough to eat. Towards the end of January the mating season for foxes arrived. The pair had already established a firm bond in the period they had been together and so this extension to their relationship was quite natural. Bold still wondered from time to time about Whisper’s choice of mate, but dismissed his thoughts almost as soon as they took shape.

When Whisper knew she was carrying Bold’s cubs she decided it was time to put the next part of her plan into operation. The winter was entering its final phase and there was no time to be lost. She and Bold were lying comfortably in their earth. Whisper said: ‘Very soon we must leave here.’

Bold raised his head and looked at her quizzically in the gloom. ‘Soon?’ he asked. ‘Before the end of winter?’ He thought she was referring to their eventual return to the country.

‘Certainly before the end of the winter,’ Whisper answered. ‘We have a long journey to make before spring arrives.’

‘Journey?’ Bold sounded puzzled. ‘A journey to where?’

‘To a safe place for our cubs to be born,’ said Whisper.

‘Isn’t it safe here?’ he asked. ‘We haven’t been troubled –’

‘Not safe enough,’ she interrupted. ‘I want the cubs to be born in the Nature Reserve like you were.’

Bold caught his breath. ‘White Deer Park?’ he whispered.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You have to take us there.’

Bold saw the sense in his mate’s words but was sick at heart. For long moments he said nothing. Then he murmured, almost as if to himself: ‘I never thought of returning there.’

‘Not on your own – I know you didn’t,’ said Whisper. ‘But we have to think of our offspring.’

‘Yes, yes, I see the sense in it,’ said Bold lamely. A thought struck him like a flash of light. Was this the reason for her selecting him? ‘Tell me, Whisper,’ he said quietly, ‘is this why you chose me?’

‘For your knowledge of the Nature Reserve? Yes, in part,’ she admitted. ‘But it was your ancestry that impressed me mostly.’

Bold let his head drop on to his paws. He felt as if a heavy weight bore down on him – the weight of his father’s name. ‘Then it was not for myself you wished to mate with me?’ he said agonizingly.

Whisper tried to reassure him. ‘Of course it was for yourself,’ she said. ‘You have the blood of the Farthing Wood Fox in your veins. I’m proud of you. Now my cubs will make me proud too.’

She couldn’t have said a more distressing thing. Bold was crushed. His mission had failed. ‘Well,’ he said softly, ‘it seems my struggles are over.’

‘Your struggles?’ she echoed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Dear Whisper, had you not realized that I’ve been trying to forge my own destiny? All my short life I have tried to escape that long shadow cast by my father’s fame. I left the Park to live life my own way – to create my own identity. Now I see I shall always live within that shadow – I can’t shrug off my origins. It is my fate.’

Whisper was stunned. She couldn’t speak.

‘I know now,’ Bold went on sardonically, ‘why you preferred a crippled, haggard specimen, old before his time, to any one of a dozen, healthy young dogs. Hah!
My
only claim to fame is my genealogy!’

‘Stop! Stop!’ she cried. ‘I can’t bear any more! Why are you so bitter? You
have
created your own destiny. You’ve lived a braver, more resourceful life in your one year than is even contemplated by most creatures. What you did took a great deal of courage!’

‘And now I go creeping back from the world I chose, with my tail between my legs!’

‘You talk as if your life is over!’ Whisper exclaimed hotly. ‘You are to be a father in a couple of months. Your destiny now is to pass on to your cubs the knowledge and the craft gleaned from your experiences. To teach them, with me, just as your parents instructed you!’

‘Yes, yes, I know the role expected of me,’ Bold said wearily. ‘I’ll lead you to your haven of peace and tranquillity; you need have no fears.’

‘We have a bright future ahead of us, Bold,’ Whisper encouraged him.

Bold could not share her enthusiasm. It seemed to him as if his life consisted only of a past. Eventually he said: ‘When do you want to begin?’

‘As soon as you –
we
,’ she hastily corrected herself, ‘feel fit enough.’

The error was not lost on her mate. ‘We must try and fatten ourselves up a little for the journey,’ he said. ‘I think I know how we might be able to do that.’

‘How then?’

‘Oh – don’t worry. You can leave it all to me,’ Bold said enigmatically. He spoke no more. Whisper assumed he wanted to sleep and settled herself down. But Bold had never felt farther from rest. So, when the sounds of Rollo’s tremendous greetings echoed in the earth, he was glad of an excuse to depart.

‘You needn’t stir,’ he told Whisper who, of course, had also been wakened. ‘I’ll go and see him.’

Rollo’s great tail threshed the air as he saw his small friend emerge from his hole. ‘It’s a glorious day for scents and explorations,’ he told the fox. ‘I wish you’d come with me.’ This was his invariable invitation.

‘All right,’ said Bold.

Rollo was overjoyed and spun round in a frenzy, bellowing excitedly. He was unable to believe his luck. ‘Will you – will you really?’ he cried.

‘Yes, but I don’t want to follow scents,’ Bold informed him. ‘Show me your den.’

‘Gladly!’ The dog set off at a spanking pace among the tombstones and paused by the churchyard wall. Bold went through his usual gap and Rollo landed on the other side with a thud.

‘You’ll have to go more slowly,’ Bold remarked. ‘My leg, you know.’

‘I know, I know – doesn’t matter,’ said the delighted Rollo. ‘Any pace you like.’ They proceeded on their way.

‘I saw your friend the crow,’ said the mastiff. ‘He seemed all right, for he croaked at me loudly enough.’

‘Are you sure it was Robber?’ Bold asked.

‘Oh, yes. It was obvious he recognized me.’

‘Yes. I imagine he would,’ Bold said with a touch of irony, but it was lost on this simple-hearted monster.

‘I want you to help me, if you will,’ he said next.

‘Help you? Of course I will,’ Rollo boomed. ‘You’re my friend. What am I to do?’

‘Not much really,’ said Bold. ‘Just feed me – and my mate.’

‘Feed you? What with?’

‘What do you eat?’

‘Meat, biscuits – er – well, lots of meat . . .’

‘That will do,’ Bold said humorously.

‘You want my food?’

‘No, no. Only what you don’t want. Our appetites are small by comparison. But we need to build ourselves up. We’re going on a journey.’

Rollo looked blank. ‘Are you planning to leave here, then?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Whisper wants to find a safer home for the birth of our cubs,’ said Bold.

‘But you don’t have to leave,’ protested Rollo who didn’t want to lose his friends as soon as he had gained them. ‘Your cubs would be quite safe as long as I’m around. I’d make sure of that.’

‘I’m very grateful for your interest,’ Bold said carefully, ‘but I hope I’d prove sufficient to the task of defending my own young ones. However, you won’t be required to help, as Whisper’s mind is made up.’

‘I see. But how long will it take you to find the right sort of place?’

‘Oh, as long as it takes us to get there. You see, she’s already decided on our destination.’

‘She seems to be very determined.’

‘She is, I assure you.’

‘I suppose, then, I won’t be seeing much more of you?’

‘I’m sorry to say that it does appear that way.’

Rollo’s great wrinkled face wore a look of gloom. ‘Could I – perhaps – come part of the way with you?’ he asked with a sort of shyness that could have been absurd in such a large beast if it had not been so genuine.

‘I really can’t see that it would be possible, Rollo,’ Bold replied gently. ‘We shall be moving by night and – well, stealth will be all-important.’