Tivington Nott (18 page)

If I survive this I’ll get the sack for it.

Within minutes we charge up on Tolland’s followers, scattering them and ploughing through. A few angry shouts come our way, but there’s no chance for apologies now. Just ahead of us the wayward hounds are crossing the stag’s line. Bolt upright on his hunter, spurring the chestnut gelding close in behind them, with the delighted yells of an escaped maniac, Tolland is urging the dogs to hunt. That’s all they want to do. Yelping and howling they settle quickly to a snaking single file.

The whipper-in glances round when he hears me crashing along behind him. He looks startled to see me. As if he had thought himself alone at last and now expects me to try forcing a way past him. But I’ve no intention of doing that if I can help it. I’m struggling to keep this hotblood in check. But it’s a battle. Kabara’s fighting the curb and is not in the mood for accepting second place. For a moment it looks as though we’re going to blast the whipper-in to one side and overrun his hounds!

But the going at this point settles the question for us. The aspect of the hill changes under us and we begin picking up the eerie hollow vibrations of unsound ground. Wary of this stuff, Kabara steadies at once. We wouldn’t get safely through it without Tolland to pick the line for us anyway. Forced to match the pace of the dogs, he can’t ease up either. Gloomy-looking stands of dark green rushes, which no doubt conceal treacherous spring-heads and bottomless black bogs, whip past us at high speed. There’s a distinct tinkling, a trickling and increasingly a rushing sound of subterranean streams filling the air! Cascades beneath the surface! Unnerving at this pace. As we penetrate deeper into this quaking country we find ourselves sprinting over rotten honeycombed areas, criss-crossed with blind gutters brimming from last night’s downpour. A welling-up of water on all sides. Like a monstrous rotten bag full of holes and breached seams, this great sodden spongy mountain is sucking and gurgling, noisily draining itself all around us.

I realise we must be traversing the origins of a river. Hurtling across its unsteady face I feel as though we could all be snatched into the depths of this jelly any second. A plume of black mud sprayed into the air like an exploding shell on a battlefield, then never seen again! There one minute, gone the next. Something for the guidebooks. Another unsolved Exmoor mystery for Roly-Poly and her mates to shake their heads over.

Then, as suddenly as we went into it, we’re out of it. Dirty grey blobs of sheep wool hooked up here and there on briars and blackthorns that are safely rooted in rocks, there, as we come careering over the steep flank and slam straight down towards a tight sheep track, that the last hound is just disappearing into, curving its precipitous way among the stunted timber below.

There’s no other way. If we want to keep those dogs in sight we’ve got to follow them. We dive full-throttle into this steep, shaded tunnel; the slope drops away abruptly on my left as we go in, a practically vertical wall falling hundreds of feet through the scrub and loose rocks to the white water of the torrent far below us in the bed of the dark combe. Tolland doesn’t hesitate. He gallops blindly down this suicidal track, even snatching a glance back at me as he ducks in under the low branches.

Kabara’s forefeet prop sharply, making him grunt with pain and sending stone-chips purring out ahead of us into the leaves of the low trees, as he plunges and skates down the scree, fighting to keep on his feet. It’s a wonder his bones don’t snap with the pounding. It’s just a matter of clenching my teeth and hanging on to everything, hoping for the best and trying to avoid getting speared in the neck by a withered branch.

We crash out at the bottom, still on all fours and more or less in one piece. Apart from rattling stones, the track behind us is empty. We’re the only ones to have followed the whip. I can’t imagine the Tiger making that descent. Though I suppose he might
pick
his way down.

Turning upstream and lashing his gasping hunter along beside the foaming water without a pause, Tolland looks round at me and shouts, ‘The Devil’s Track!’ laughing, his face flushed.

But not a second to be wasted, I’d say, or we’ll be left standing here alone in the wilderness wondering where the hunt has gone. For the hounds are running mute now and we must keep them in view if we’re not to lose them.

Five minutes later—we’ve been ducking and weaving through a plantation of larches for a good fifty yards—and I realise with a sudden shock of recognition that we’re heading straight for the soiling pit of the Tivington nott. We’ve crossed the main stream twice and are galloping up a side-branch. There’s not much time for examining the lay of the land in detail, but this is the place. I know it. I can
smell
it!

Seconds later we plunge through the great nott’s pungent glade and dash in among his trees on the far side, scattering leaves and mud and twigs around us as if all this is nothing sacred! I look in to the dark shadows of the trees as we go by. Is he in there watching us? Or has he gone? Has the Haddon stag led the hunt through here today in an attempt to save himself? To rouse the nott and put the hounds on to
his
scent? To work the change and slip away, sinking his own scent down the water unseen? And has he succeeded? These people would give almost anything to catch the elusive creature that’s been making a mockery of their best efforts for almost twenty years; perhaps Mrs Allen would forgive Jack Perry for accepting such a tempting change as
that
! But, a fresh deer at this advanced stage of the run would surely prove too strong for the hounds.

This Haddon stag must be almost out of straight running.

We leave the nott’s secret lair behind, and the head of the combe opens out in front of us. And there they are! Less than half a mile ahead, racing up an open zigzag path on to the grassy slope of the hill. In the clear. Making for the upland. Beyond them I see Cheyne’s big grey horse bounding along in the sunlight. It’s the main bunch!

Wouldn’t the Tiger like to be here in my place now!

‘See that!’ Tolland shouts triumphantly, as if a proof of something wonderful has just been revealed, shaking his crop at them and driving his faltering horse up the slope; ‘The same line he led us last autumn! He’s gone out over Tarr Ball Hill!’

Tolland’s delighted. Maybe he can smell success?

And as if the huntsman knew all along that we would pass this way today, as if it has not been a chase determined by the whim of the stag, the two second-horsemen he sent out earlier from the pub yard at Winsford are waiting at the top of this hill. Tolland shows no surprise to see them, but rides over to them. Perry has taken his fresh mount. His exhausted first horse, standing with head down, black with sweat, is beyond showing interest in anything. I keep going while Tolland mounts his second horse.

Kabara’s blowing hard but he’s got the leaders in his sights and he shakes his head and sets out after them. I’m not wearing spurs and I haven’t a whip. This horse doesn’t need them. I hear the horn faintly in the distance. Perry must be close to the stag. But which one? Has he viewed him? Does he know for sure what he’s hunting? Or have his hounds taken the change; proved themselves false to the line and settled to the foil of the Tivington nott without him suspecting it?

Tolland sprints past us, his fresh hunter bounding and eager, as we’re drawing up with the tail-end of the leaders. He gives me a wave as he dashes by. ‘The Devil’s Track!’ he yells again, grinning like mad, and I wave back to him.

It’s clear going ahead for miles. The visibility is perfect, the ground rising and falling, undulating gently to the far horizon. We’re on the point of passing a rider, skirting the edge of a stand of bracken, him brushing the periphery of it, when he goes down in a spray of shredded fronds, his horse giving a hopeless grunt in mid-stride and smashing in to the earth, as if a hand had reached up and torn it off its feet. Kabara skips niftily aside, and as I look down I see his forefeet miss, by no more than an inch, a flailing sickle-end of rusty barbed wire!

But there’s no stopping him! He must be picking up the wind of Harbringdon’s red stud, and he’s going after him, getting stronger at each stride, drawing on his deeper, more steady, reserves of strength. We’re soon making our way through the field. Judging the situation. Working at it. Not charging at it blindly. Pacing it. This is the work that suits him. This is where his great spirit, his heart, his wonderful condition, and his blood will all tell. This is where—barring accidents—he will surely wear down these others, in this long open running.

Cheyne’s not so far ahead of us, two hundred yards at the most. He must be cursing his error in sending his second-horseman to Winsford Hill. Even that magnificent big grey that he’s riding would have to be tiring under the load, starting to struggle after being lashed and spurred and pushed to its limit all the way. I can sense Kabara’s calm, his increasing confidence, feel him extending himself a little, not labouring, but pushing it that bit harder, his wind deep and sound. Settled.

A minute later we come up alongside Mrs Grant. She’s going well, but I can see that her mount is tired, is staying with it,
sticking
at it despite fatigue, reaching and rolling in its stride and incapable of a better pace. She is standing up in her stirrups, leaning forward and coaxing the horse along. She’ll be hoping for a check at the end of this run, hoping the stag starts going in for a few cunning ruses soon and doesn’t run on without a break all the way to the Atlantic coast. Which is the way he’s heading at the moment.

When she hears us coming up on her she glances round. Seeing me, she raises her eyebrows, but she doesn’t say anything. We draw level and go past, spraying a few black clods her way; not that more mud is likely to worry her; her once white buckskins are filthy.

Once past Mrs Grant, apart from Perry and Tolland, there are only four riders still in front of us. A good quarter-mile in the lead, despite Cheyne’s earlier hair-raising efforts, is the tall figure of Lord Harbringdon on his red stallion, bounding gracefully across the purple moor. Then comes Cheyne himself, and behind him two other riders who are unknown to me. There’s no sign of Perry or his hounds, and our wayward bunch must have got up and joined them because there’s no sign of them either.

Harbringdon’s leading confidently almost due west along the spine of the moor. But it’s not long before Tolland takes over from him—that bright pink coat again. A lure for us to chase for a while, diminishing in to the distance, then disappearing altogether into a fold in the landscape. How
he
can know the line is beyond me. He was with me until a short while ago and I saw nothing.

There must be vital clues to all this that escape me.

Before long we’re looking at Cheyne’s wide back. Surging up on the pounding heels of his great muscular hunter, with a hint of the Shire in its massive haunches and thighs, a war horse. And we are now close enough to see the mess of blood and rimed sweat that’s flowed back and coagulated in dirty streaks, staining its grey coat from its barrel to its flanks; and to see the quivering of its belly each time Cheyne’s short hunting spurs dig at the wounds. Cheyne is hard down in the saddle, an unforgiving dead weight. The grey’s wind is almost spent and it’s sobbing for air. We keep out a little way to the left to avoid the flying earth and twigs and the odd stone that its hooves are throwing up as it blunders across the heather.

Cheyne’s so deeply intent on demanding the last ounce out of this horse that we’re at his shoulder before he becomes aware of us. When he does finally see me, he glares across, looking so overheated that I half expect him to take a wild swipe at me with his crop out of sheer frustration at being overtaken. But if he has the impulse he resists it and we pass, going on and away from him. And after a few strides he shouts an afterthought at my back, ridiculing his friend the Tiger, mocking the accent; ‘Hunt with him, boy!’ And I hear him laughing. Or is he swearing at his horse?

I wonder if he’ll be a hostile eye-witness against me for the Tiger’s enquiries later?

It’s hard to tell. There’s no stopping now!

We’re locked into this endurance run.

Kabara’s stretching out his long legs and I can feel his mind set on that blood-bay stallion out there in front of us. I’m not asking anything of him, he’s just doing it. I am sitting as high and as light as I can on his back, trying to float along above him, to ride so well with the rhythm of his stride that he will not have to bear my weight.

How much longer can he run like this?

I’m feeling it myself. The soft pads of skin on the insides of my knees are rubbed raw by the saddle flaps. It’s these labourers’ breeches! They’ve got sharp seams at the bend of my knees. They were not designed for hard riding. We rip across a patch of short burnt gorse, the prickles and the black points of the charred branches scratching and stabbing at Kabara’s shanks. He draws breath sharply. With the pain, I sense fierceness come alight in him. Something of that insanity that I felt in him the first time I stood alongside him in Tiger’s yard that day!

The saliva flicks back off his lips and the lather creams on his black neck and I begin to realise now what it is with this horse, see that I am at fault with him. While Cheyne and the Tiger and the rest of them are spurring and whipping and prodding and goading their mounts to keep them going forward, this horse will run until his heart bursts; if his rider should let him do it. The more pain he encounters the harder he goes into it. There’s no
giving up
in him! A better horseman than I am would have realised this sooner! I begin talking to him, working the curb and trying to ease him down, making an effort to get through the fire that’s burning in his brain. To assert a firmer authority with him. If I don’t, he’ll give his life to this business.

But maybe my insight has come too late.

He’s off the bit. He has taken charge.

We rocket over a rise, veering sharply to our right in pursuit of the amazing and elusive Harbringdon (I’ll bet
he’s
in control) splashing across a wet patch; then suddenly there is the whole pack of hounds strung out in front of us. Their tongues flagging out the side of their mouths and their lips drawn back, they are wearied and muddied dogs and there are not nearly as many of them as there were when we set off. They are running for blood, silent except for the occasional whimper, pressing hard on the tail of their beaten quarry.