Common Ground (18 page)

I stay listening, unmoving, until I become aware that man and dog are no longer there. I twist my ears and peer through the brush and high grasses, but they have vanished. Not a stem shudders in the broken light; the birds murmur on in circles of notes. A horse whinnies in the distance. It is as if they were never in the meadow. There is no more or no less scent than before. I breathe in that essence of a true huntsman: nothingness.

Perhaps this man will be the one to bestow my death wound. Not carelessly with the rage and lust of his pomp-fuelled masters, but with the mercy of one who knows my body better than his own. One who loves my form and will have tenderness in his veins when he kills me. I will kneel moaning, exhausted and gasping and he will approach and push the blade fast and painlessly into my throat, nicking the artery that sends me running forever into the blackness. Then, when my pink tongue lolls through my teeth and my breath ceases to cloud the air, he will let his dogs fly at my neck, briefly restoring in each its former wildness before recalling them for the curée. Another man, a nobler man, a stranger to these woods, will sever my head with a sword and hold it up, pouring my blood over the bread they feed the hounds, then throwing it to the lymer as a trophy. They'll crack my bones under their knees. My entrails will spill over the flowers. They will blow their cow horns in the long notes of death as they tie my hooves around a spear and carry me to their lodge for quartering. The huntsman will take my shoulder for his family and the feast table shall have the rest. Grease will run down chins, like shining steams in the firelight. Yes, perhaps this man will be the one to bestow my death wound.

All this in an eye.
Quiet now. Between the warm, soft soil and the closing canopies, the blur of bluebells dazzles the morning. The death choirs of crows sound far away, upriver. Wrens trill in uninterrupted babbles. I remain sharp and aware, but motionless. To move is to be seen, to alert your enemies and become prey. A depth of earth sounds and smells; each I know, each safe. So I lie here and ruminate, chewing over regurgitated leaves and bilberry shoots as puddles of light form through the cover to heat my sleek, chestnut coat. Buff-tailed bumblebees haul themselves over the lips of white dead-nettle flowers and everywhere peacock butterflies fall on ramson spears. I smell boar.
Yes, safe now.
A hot, south-west wind rises.
Quiet
. I feel my eyes willing to close and let them.

The bark is faint, but enough, and I instantly grow onto my legs, pulling in lungfuls of air through my nose. But the wind has shifted while I slept and I see them before I smell them. On the far side of the river, the thick coat of larch thins into single trunks as they run along a high ridge of ground, the way fur parts when pushed by a shoulder blade beneath. Moving fast between them are men and dogs, grey shapes bounding and running, then at three short blasts of a horn, they hold their ground. The men squat down among the hounds, stroking their heads, trying to calm them. A pheasant shrieks behind me deep in the wood. I turn as birds burst upwards through the dense cover. Their whistling calls come nearer, passing overhead quickly. Now I hear dogs barking from that direction too, this time more of them, the eager barks and squeaky yawns and yips of pent-up aggression. More horns are blown. I lift a foreleg and twist my ears, but still don't move.
Twitch. Steady.
These dogs won't come, for they are only the relays. The men know I'll bolt with every bit of my strength; they know too that for all their speed, the greyhounds may tire. They're positioning the teams that will take over the chase.
Steady now.
I feel the fear in my limbs, but welcome it and hold it there.
Don't fly, not yet.
Running without sight of them might be to run straight into the pack. First I must know from where they approach.

It is the lymer, the black and tan, that comes galloping through the meadow. I sense the thirst for blood maddening its mind. From where it was seated silently by its master before, it now tears through the scrub, scattering grass as it uncoils its lyam three fathoms and more. It arrows along the same path I trod up here from feeding. Following on a white horse, the huntsman breaks from the trees, his eyes fixed on my holly as he slows to a trot. Taking the twisted horn from around his neck, he puts it to his lips and blows a series of notes. The horse stays; the lymer, reaching the end of its tether, pulls back and snarls, rearing up onto its hind legs. There is barely a moment before other horns sound a response and the trees change into the colourful din of death. In a white seething froth, a plume of greyhounds streams between trunks and bush the way a river rounds rocks; men in red and blue tunics are close behind, lashing forward their horses, baying, shouting. The huntsman loosens the lymer from his saddle and throws the leash to a varlet running beside him. With a kick in his mare's flanks, he joins the greyhounds, slapping a yardstick against his boot to keep them true. Sighthounds must lay eyes on their quarry. I know he will be their guide; he will bring them to me.

All this in an eye.
A bright eye suddenly more alive than ever. There is nowhere left to hide so I am already running, but after crashing through my holly I have slowed into a noiseless gait, ears forward, clearing the fallen trunks and undergrowth, keeping my stamina. I hear the dogs and horses gaining ground but cannot risk tiring my muscles yet; instead, I bounce forwards in long-bodied leaps, retracting my legs, weaving down a slope to force the hounds through the thicker part of the wood. The dogs must have sighted me, for the huntsman's horse has fallen back and the greyhounds have increased their speed. Paws close in around me, falling like rain on the forest floor.

I let the fear slip into my legs and open my gait to race through the trees, drifting over the banks and bogs as my pursuers dart headlong through the cover, becoming slowed in the mud, brambles and bushes. But they are relentless animals and each time one falls back another shape steals some yards and pushes forward to bite at my heels. We run together like this for long enough that the first wave of dogs slows and stops and a series of horns brings about others. More shouts and the horses are whipped into catching up. My breath escapes in rhythmical snorts; I can feel my heart tiring and my lungs growing heavy, but still a force keeps my legs crossing and uncrossing. My vision narrows into a tunnel, a hazy white circle through which I can better read the landscape and find escape through the thickening trees. My will to live is strong.

Still they come. More dogs.
The relays.
They have crossed the river further up over the wooden bridge. These fresh hounds kindle a deeper fright in me, one I've never known, one I can no longer contain in weakening limbs. I feel terror swell and burst through my flanks, clawing at my chest and squeezing the breath from me. The dogs are close enough that they can sense my fatigue, as though they can see my strength dragging behind me like entrails. One, a black-eyed brute the colour of an old wolf, matches my stride then sprints for my shoulder, flicking its head to snap at my neck, but it misses and falls away. Another is almost among my hind hooves. I cannot suppress the panic that sends me into a final, burning gallop. A small gap opens between my heels and the dogs, but knowing it won't last I bank, changing direction, and plunge through a curtain of thick hazel towards the river.

Led by the foresight of the huntsman, the men have turned their horses to gallop across a clearing and into the same stretch of dark wood. I hear them smashing back through the brush to my side, their steeds' chests breaking saplings and boughs in a storm of muscles and hooves. And always that sound of horns at my back. The hated scent of man. Another of my kind, a doe, springs from its lay and bounds off at a right angle, confusing three of the dogs, but the men scream at them and they swing straight back onto my heels. In a patch of boggy ground between two belts of trees, one of the riders is jostled to the front and he draws his sword and spurs his horse to match my leaping jumps. Twice he hacks down, but I shift sideways so that only the flat of his blade smacks against my backbone.

All this in an eye.
An eye bulging with fear, an eye so near to the wide, fast river. But I can run no further. My forelegs are numb and I can't stop them shaking, slowing, giving out. I stumble to my knees, then chest, then fall entirely into the riverine grass and water mint. Ahead the huntsman walks his white horse between the torrent of black water and me. I see the spear resting loosely in his hand and the glint of the gold-edged horn at his neck.
Quiet now.
In my terror, I want to close my eyes and let the flood of fang and spear point wash over me, but my body is already mustering resistance.
Arise.
I leap back up, turn and face the coming horde of horses and dogs, dipping my head, baring my points. My breath heaves in and out in a high whistle. My mouth foams. But I have the will to fight, just as I fought off rivals in all those ruts past, straining and weaving before I ducked and plunged my small, sharp, four-point antlers into their sides, leaving them moaning and kicking out their last alone in the forest. The huntsman shouts at a group of younger men who dismount and tether the greyhounds snarling and barking around me, hauling them beyond the closing circle of horses. The dogs stare with unknown hatred, their long tongues lolling, steam rising from their backs. I read their mindlessness; they are confused.

A dipping sun gleams on the sweaty faces of the riders. They cheer, nod and slap the necks of their mounts. I expect the huntsman to approach with his spear, but it is his master, the one who cut at me, who urges his horse closest and leans over. He wears a fine, sweat-darkened quilt jacket. His face is scratched with thorns, his cheeks smeared with fresh blood. He swings a leg from his steed, steps down, sword in hand, and stands close enough that I notice his fair hair and blue eyes. A beard shaped to his jaw. The men fall silent and raise their horns ready to blow as he steadies the blade at my head; I duck and weave to keep it away, but he keeps its tip hovering below my eye, like a fly. The smells of dung, fear, sweat and exhaustion. Drops of perspiration run down the man's nose. Beside my hoof a wasp sinks its sting into a dying bee. A ladybird stretches its wings on the fronds of a sweet cicely and floats away. I turn my head towards the purer scent of pines and the roar of the fast water. Finally his tongue flashes through his teeth and he lifts back the blade. It is a quick movement, but I move quicker. With a snort, I push at the ground and kick out, summoning the last of my inner fire to bound towards the water, fleeing the roars of surprise and outrage.

All this in an eye.
Trembling in my running vision, the huntsman turns his reins and trots to intercept my escape. He becomes even more animal-like as he raises his spear and tilts his head to better plot my weaving, sprinting run. There's fire in him now too. Not malice, but the same intent I've sensed in wolves, an imperative to kill as fast as possible. It's in his tensed limbs, the fluidity of his movement and the guttural sounds he unconsciously gives his steed. He's ranging and reading, closing in on the large heart beating hard behind my foreleg. With a shout he spurs the horse into a run, but I bank and turn to meet them, bucking and kicking so that we come together in a collision of moving limbs at the water's edge. I am suddenly under his steed's hooves, jabbing my points upwards at the white flailing monster above. It rears and unsteadies the huntsman; he slips so that the puncture-punch of his spear misses my heart and sinks deep into the muscle of my hind leg. An explosion of agony as I leap for the river. Then all pain vanishes as the freezing blackness swallows me. I'm half-aware of another shape crashing into the writhing river beside me, grabbing at my neck and legs. Then it too falls away, like the sky, like the sun, like the land.

No smells now; no birdsong. No noise of men. There is nothing but the thunder of the swollen water as I bob and spin in the power of the current. I feel the long shaft of the spear wobble, tug and tear away downstream and then the warmth of my blood clouding in the cold river. I'm blinded; my lungs crushed as though bitten. Then instinct sparks my legs into a paddle and I break the surface and breathe. Something is almost upon me. Something green. Hands touch my neck. My nostrils flare and I gasp in more air, but then I'm sinking again. When I brush the stones of the bottom with my hooves, I force myself upward, lunging for the far bank.

All this in an eye.
The huntsman's eyes rushing up to mine in the violent water, wide and white as full winter moons. He grabs for me again, this time finding my antlers and gripping, dragging us both underwater, down into the churning guts of the river. Swallowed, we corkscrew with the stones and the torn branches, coiled and locked together. I feel the great weight of the man, the heaviness of his jacket and boots holding me down. I kick and buck, twisting my head and, as I do, I glimpse terror. His eyes are like a fawn's when the wolves howl down from the hills. There is no urge to kill me now, only to escape. His will to live is strong. He claws at his clothes and tries to haul his face up to air, but we spin ever deeper. Then he screams; a stream of bubbles before he breathes the river back in, his face screwing up against the pain. Every sinew in his neck strains until, left with an infant's strength, his grip loosens. We separate and as I kick desperately for the surface, he turns with the murky torrent below, vanishing, his mind filling with the faces of his children.

I see all of this in the deep, black, liquid eye of a wild deer. It's suspended over me for less than a second; it will be with me for the rest of my life. I am lying alone in a little hollow under a birch tree twenty metres up the bank from the river when I hear the gunfire. It's mid-afternoon, 3 May, one of those miraculously hot, bright days you get after hard rain. Leaves glow overhead like green clouds, diffusing the sun into friendly warmth. Then from east of the edge-land comes the sharp
crack-crack
of shotguns. I prop myself up on elbows and scan the wood. Maybe it's farmers hunting rabbits or woodpigeons; it doesn't matter, it is too far away to cast a shadow over this little idyll. I slump back into the flowers and foliage, adjusting the rolled-up jumper under my head. Other sounds come and go: the inescapable traffic, a plane passing, a squawking jay from across the river, chaffinches. Then the echoes of four more pairs of shots rumble up the river like rolling thunder. In the lull that follows, there are two new noises, as if someone is crumpling crisp packets in quick succession. The first is distant enough for my senses to not react but the next – only two seconds later – is just to my right. Something alarmingly near, moving alarmingly quickly over the leaves.
Animal.
I open my eyes and the roebuck is right there above me, hanging in mid-air as it leaps the hollow. And in the same moment I see it, it sees me, for I watch the reaction twitch along its long flank in a shiver, like a flicked whip. Time pauses. Before my brain can kick in and muster my body into a defensive curl, it records details, bits: the lithe, muscular form as it banks; the black nose and a white chin; the grunt in its breath; the two small, sharp, twisted, waffle-cone-coloured antlers and a coat the same hue as oak leaves in winter. All four hooves are off the ground and its muscle and sinew are contracting and bulging, rippling and flexing its chest like sail and rigging at full lick. And then there's that eye, the surprised, scared, revelatory eye just three or four feet from mine, looking down at me. I can't remember ever being so close to a wild animal of this size or feeling the intensity it brings, as though I've been plucked from an armchair by a tornado of fur and mass and pungent form. As though the wood itself is suddenly up and running. It is something so immediate and exquisite that it's hard to believe it's happening. And maybe because of this, I fix on that eye. I see the eye itself, the round orb and glistening dark surface fringed with lashes, but I see through it too, past the lens and retina, along the optic nerve and beyond to somewhere that exceeds understanding; somewhere you could disappear into and never return.