Lord Morgan's Cannon

by J. M. Walker

  She swayed her hips in time with another crack of thunder. The noise finally woke Bessie who barely controlled her sodden descent from the tree. She took the opportunity to bathe in the muddy water, spraying Edward.

  “Who is coming to visit us? Is Lord Morgan coming to visit us?” she inquired.

  “Be quiet,” Bear commanded the huge elephant and tiny bird. “Edward, tell us more about this King of England.”

  The monkey recalled all he could. Lord Morgan had looked Edward in the eye, he said, and told him that the King of England was visiting the city of Bristol. As he drank his port, the scientist spoke of how the King would also be having an audience with some professors of University College. Lord Morgan had hoped to show the King his cannon. He wanted to impress him so much with his work that the King would grant the college a special status. He would bestow a charter, ordering that it become a true university and take its place among the great seats of learning.

  “But the cannon doesn’t exist,” said Doris, bewildered.

  Edward realised that he had forgotten to explain to the others what Lord Morgan’s cannon truly was. And that was quite important. So he beckoned Bessie to jump upon his head. He called Bear close. He waved at Doris until she offered her trunk and up it he ran until he and Bessie were upon her shoulders, where they could talk into her ear.

  Lord Morgan, said Edward, was building a canon, a word the humans used to describe some rule or law that governed everything. His canon described how animals such as they thought. And it suggested they were stupid, incapable of planning, reason, kindness or hope.

  Bessie didn’t like that. She cut in, repeating over and over that she was a talented bird and she could do many things. Doris demurred. Gently and quietly she revealed to the others that she was capable of hope. Though she acted like she belonged in the circus, she did so because she had no choice. But she always hoped that one day she would somehow venture home, to see the younger members of her family one last time.

  Bear grunted now, the only expression left to him as he digested all he heard, and made sense of it.

  “But Lord Morgan said his canon was broken,” said Edward softly.

  He’d registered the change in their mood. They all stood unflinching in the rain, heads bowed. The night was so black only the animals could see through it.

  “And I had broken it. That’s why he said I was a clever monkey. Because he tested me with the puzzle box and the wire cage. He even timed me and compared how I did to a rabbit. I found it so easy to get out he declared I had broken his canon. That animals can’t be stupid after all.”

  Doris lifted her head. Edward patted her gently on her bony skull.

  “We aren’t stupid,” declared Edward.

  He stood upon Doris and took off his waistcoat. He threw it down into the mud, the first time he’d been free of it since the Ring Master had placed it upon his back.

  “We aren’t stupid!” he shouted into the night, disturbing a pair of little owls in a hollow.

  “No we’re not stupid,” said Bear, with such force that anyone listening might have expected his long jaws to be packed with teeth. “And I think I know what we should do. We should reject the circus. Reject everything about it. Reject the humans and their arrogant selfish ways. They only want to use us, exploit us.”

  “But where would we go?” said Doris.

  “Why don’t we animals live right here, in these woods?” said Bear. “We would be free. We could be happy.”

  Edward liked what he heard. Rather than run his own circus, he thought, maybe he could organise the animals in the woods. Get together the foxes and badgers, the voles and shrews and all the birds and help them put on a show. Perhaps for any passing deer to watch. Bear’s words wouldn’t leave him, however. The circus. The animals. The humans. Being free.

  “The old leopard,” Edward said. “They’ve caught the old leopard. Taken him to a zoo. That’s what Lord Morgan also said. I remember now.”

  “We have to save him,” replied Bear. “Whatever we think of him, he’s an animal. He’s one of us. We can’t leave him to the humans.”

  Bessie, Doris and Edward immediately knew the giant anteater was right.

  The bull appeared through a morning mist. He walked off the top of the hill that once held a human fort. Steam lifted off his huge muscular shoulders, blending with the grey vapour swirling up from the daises and dandelions. He held his head high upon a thick neck, rippling with veins and sinew. With purpose, he directly approached the animals sleeping at the foot of the embankment. He woke them with a huge snort of his large black nose, eyes wide open, the whites showing.

  “You’re right,” he announced in a deep voice that made him sound older than his three years. “The humans do think we are stupid. And they are fools for it.”

  Doris rolled on to her front legs and tried to stand, to confront the bull. But she was too old and slow. By the time her trunk was dangling free, she had heard him, realising he meant no harm. So she stayed on the ground, getting used to this new day, letting her legs warm up.

  The two red cows walked out of the haze behind the bull. Bear lifted his head from under his tail. He blinked at the cattle. But rather than answer the bull, he decided to let him speak.

  “I stood there listening to you last night,” said the bull. “I don’t know what some of you are. Not exactly. But I heard you speak, and I agree with you.”

  The resplendent red bull explained that he used to be an ox. He’d been reared and fed to do but one job, pull a heavy unbalanced old plough through hard soil, just so his owner could turn a meadow into a place to grow endless rows of potatoes. His owner had taken his liberty, buying him cheaply at an auction before he’d turned one year old. The human took parts of his body, making it impossible for him to sire offspring. Then the farmer drove a metal ring through the softest, most delicate parts of his nose, damaging forever his ability to smell the grass.

  The bull then let each cow tell her story. The oldest spoke first. She was nearly fifteen years old and had once known the bull’s grandmother. She had been kept for no other purpose than to be mated and have more cows. After giving birth ten times, her body could no longer bear the strain and her owner left her out in a field one night during a snowstorm. The second cow thought she was older than the bull but younger than her friend. But she couldn’t remember as the farmer who kept her repeatedly hit her over the head with a metal bar, saying she couldn’t walk in a straight line. The more she wandered, the more she was hit. The more she was hit the more she wandered, finding it harder to walk in a straight line.

  Bessie had woken now and was sunning herself on the bull’s back, not that he noticed. She surprised him with her question:

  “So how did you get here? If you used to live with farmers, how did you end up here?”

  “We escaped,” said the bull, throwing back his head to shake the voice in his ear.

  Bessie hopped along his back until she sat square between his horns.

  “How did you escape? How did you escape?”

  As the cattle wandered in closer, Edward was up on his elbows, listening.

  “He got away first,” said the older cow about the bull.

  “One day I’d had enough. I was tired from dragging the plough all day. But I could see my owner was tired too. I looked at him, sitting cross legged in the field, wiping away his sweat, eating a sandwich. And I realised how much stronger I was. I was bigger, fitter and I had more stamina than he did. Once I realised that, I knew he couldn’t stop me leaving. I was only there because the humans had made me think I had to be. So I waited until dusk, when he took my harness off my shoulders. I barged him and stood over his body on the ground. I stamped my hooves about his face, not touching him, but enough to make him leave me be. I walked out of the field and trotted down the lane. And I
just kept on going.”

  “The bull found me the next day,” said the younger cow. “I’ll never forget it. He jumped the fence to my paddock, walked right up to me and told me it was time to leave. I followed him out of the field and never looked back.”

  “That winter I joined them too,” said the older cow. “He just appeared out of a blizzard. He didn’t speak. He trampled the wire and turned away and I walked after him, brushing up against his warm body. He brought us here, to the woods. We’ve lived here since.”

  “Didn’t the humans come for you?” said Edward.

  “They walk through from time to time. But they are the stupid ones. They always think we belong to someone else,” said the cow.

  “The only trouble we get is from the hunting dogs,” said the bull. “But I take care of them,” he said proudly.

  The bull paused and chewed on some grass. He thought a little, then asked some questions of his own.

  “Tell me what you are,” he said.

  “Well I’m an elephant. An Indian elephant,” said Doris.

  “I’m a tufted capuchin,” said Edward. “We’re the cleverest of all the monkeys.”

  “I’m an English budgerigar,” chirped Bessie, flitting on to the back of the younger cow. “I’m like a small parrot.”

  “And I’m a giant anteater,” said Bear.

  He stood, shook the mist from his fur and realised what they had told the bull might not be enough. So the anteater encouraged each of his friends to describe themselves in more detail. Where they had once come from, what they liked to eat and which animals they preferred over others. He told how each had reached the circus and how they too had escaped from the humans.

  “And what do you want?” said the bull.

  “We think we’d like to live here,” said Bear.

  Around him, Doris, Bessie and Edward nodded.

  “We’d like to live with you,” he added. “We’d like to live like you. Would you allow that?”

  The bull looked at the cows who were enthusiastically chewing long blades of rich green grass.

  “Yes,” he said. “I would.”

  “Thank you,” said the elephant, anteater, monkey and budgie, at the same time.

  “But we’re not so sure about that leopard you talked about.”

  Bear patiently explained to the cattle that the leopard was an old cat, long past his prime. He’d had his claws taken from him by the humans and his teeth weren’t now up to much. The anteater doubted they could puncture the hide of a cow, however much the leopard growled and hissed that they could. But he understood the cows might be wary of such a cat coming to live in their home.

  Bear accepted there was a natural order. The songbirds ate the insects and the hawks ate the songbirds. Some animals were born to be predators and they couldn’t survive without taking others. But he hoped their experiences of the past few days had taught them something. They had shown all the animals he knew, those from the circus and those from the countryside, even the odd animal that had made its home in the town, with the humans, that where possible, it was better for animals to stick together and help one another than to be at each other’s throats.

  Should they find the leopard and save him from the zoo, said Bear, then he promised that they would find a way. So that the cows felt safe and each animal could live in happiness and without fear. So that each of them, even the leopard, still had hope. Perhaps, said Bear thinking out loud, the old cat might prove himself useful. He could scare away those hunting dogs that still bothered the animals living wild in the wood.

  “I haven’t known you long,” said the red bull to the circus animals. “But the cows trusted me when I found them, and we are happy because of it. So I will trust you. To find the leopard, you’d best ask the foxes. They have cousins that live in the city. They’d be able to take you to this zoo you said he was in. I will lead you to them.”

  Edward offered to travel with the bull. Doris needed a rest and Bear was so behind on his sleep that he gratefully accepted. The anteater curled up beside the elephant and dreamed of the biggest termite mound in the woods.

  “Do you know the foxes?” the bull asked Edward.

  “They used to come around the circus. Looking for old scraps,” said the monkey. “Some were friendly, others not so much. The cubs were always playful. We met two foxes in the trees near here. One had mange. They wanted us to kill a dog chasing them.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said the bull. “The humans make the dogs run after the foxes. I don’t know why. Do you know why?”

  “They call it sport.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” the bull said to Edward. “Anyway, it’s best you ride on my back, high off the ground. In case they don’t take to you. You’re a good size for a hungry fox.”

  Edward chuckled. He used to play tag with the tails of the foxes visiting the circus. He knew they were wily, but he was wilier and more agile. He’d long ago decided a fox could never catch a pin monkey. But he thought it would be fun to ride on the back of a cow, especially a big bull such as this. So he climbed up the bull’s long red hair and found a soft spot to sit in behind his shoulders.

  The bull and monkey set off away from the fort, in a direction that Edward hadn’t been. The bull first entered a clearing which was alive with bluebells and large frogs leaping from under his hooves. Half way across he raised his tail and opened his bowels on to the grass as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Edward held his nose, but he couldn’t help but examine how the pat differed from a dung pile left by Doris.

  “That stinks. It’s smelly, smelly, smelly,” a bird called.

  Bessie landed next to Edward.

  “You left without me. I want to come with you. I want to come. It will be exciting,” she said.

  The bull didn’t even feel her land on his hard muscles. On he wandered, sometimes with purpose but often pausing to chew a succulent clump of grass that had freshly grown.

  “So what do monkeys do?” asked the bull after a while. “If you don’t mind me saying, you look like a very small human. But more hairy. And you smell better.”

  Edward started to tell the bull about how he could play an organ and even juggle. He explained with great pride how looking like a human helped him rob their pockets and he told the bull about taking snuff and dipping his tongue into their wine, though that made him dizzy.

  But then he paused. He realised he was still talking as if he lived with the humans. All his hobbies and memories related to things humans did. As he rocked on the shoulders of the bull, he held his hand to his mouth and thought a while. Then he came to the conclusion that he didn’t know what monkeys do, not really, because he’d never been given the chance to live like a monkey.

  “You can live like a monkey in the woods,” said Bessie happily. “You can climb trees and pick your own berries. You’ll have fun. It will be so much fun,” she said.

  “What about you?” said Edward.

  “Oh I’ve always lived like cattle live,” said the bull. “But we do get to play here. We never got to play in those human pens.”

  He didn’t feel Edward pat him on the back.

  “Sorry, I was asking Bessie,” said Edward, turning to the bird beside him. “In all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve never asked you what budgerigars do?”

  “We put on a show! That’s what budgies do,” she said.

  “Who is that speaking?” said the bull.

  Bessie launched herself into the air and spun about the bull’s nose, pulling every jink she could muster, flashing her colour and twirling in the sun.

  “We put on a show!”

  “I’ve never seen a bird like you before,” the bull said, seeing her up close for the first time. “Are you a magpie? Or a jay? You’re a bit small f
or a jay.”

  His words took the wind from under her wings and she spiralled down to the grass. She stomped her black toes, feeling for worms. Then she looked up at the bull and monkey.

  “I’m not a wild bird at all,” she said quietly. “I don’t really belong out here. I was made to be kept.”

  She had no back-story to tell, no tales of family, no wild times before she was caught. All she remembered was being hatched from a bright blue egg on to a bed of cotton wool in a shoebox, on the shelf of a circus wagon.

  “By the humans?” asked the bull.

  “Yes, that is what I am for,” said Bessie.

  “Well that shan’t do,” said the bull.

  “Come on. Fly back up here,” said Edward. “We’ll be alright. If we stick together.”

  Sitting atop the bull, the monkey and bird expected to enter the trees once more in search of the foxes. But the bull walked through a series of grassy glades colonised by wood anemones, knapweed, dandelions and rockrose. Eventually the bull paused at a wild hedge growing at the edge of the last clearing.

  “The foxes are down there,” said the bull, staring at a hole in the ground near the hedge’s roots. “They’ll be resting now. They like to be out at night.”

  “How do we get them out?” asked Bessie. “Will they come out for us?”

  “I don’t know,” said the bull, who began eating some clover.

  Edward sat upon the ox’s back and thought about things. He remembered how Tony the terrier had first flushed out the vixen and dog from the badger hole in the woods. He considered climbing down from his steed, picking up a stick and taking it to the hole, barking like Tony and thumping his stick into the earth. He felt sure that would bring them out. Then he recalled how the foxes had turned on Tony. In their fear and desperation they wanted to kill the terrier and would have without Bear’s intervention. And Edward didn’t want to scare the foxes. He wanted their help. So he conjured up a new plan, one he was immediately proud of.