The Door In the Tree

by William Corlett

  ‘Bother,’ William said. ‘We’ve got to find Blackscar Quarry.’

  ‘What on earth makes you say that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now, just help me find it.’

  ‘I know Blackscar,’ Dan said. ‘I used to play there as a kid. It’s a fair distance. On the other side of Goldenwater . . .’

  Meg took a long time milking the cows and feeding the animals, though Mary helped as best she could. She’d have liked a milking lesson, but decided that that’d have to wait until another day. Then, when all the dogs were wolfing down bowls of food and the cats were picking at scraps, Meg collected a torch and walking stick and, almost as an afterthought, her pocket camera with the flash. ‘If we do happen on any lampers,’ she explained, ‘it frightens them a lot if they think I’ve got their picture – and the flash can blind them for a few seconds. You never know, it could be useful.’ Then they set off at a fast pace, heading for the sett.

  She didn’t lead them via the bridleway that the family had taken earlier that day, but cut off through the woods, meeting the shore of the lake half way along its length. The water glimmered like steel, reflecting the moonlight through the racing clouds. The wind whipped up rows of waves that splashed against the rocks, with a sound like the sea.

  ‘Goldenwater, it’s called locally,’ Meg told Mary. ‘There are tales of a vast treasure hidden at its centre. I don’t know so much about that – the stories of riches and treasures and great hoards of gold are longer than history in these parts – but I do know it’s deep. Some even say it’s bottomless. But every lake must have a bottom, mustn’t it? Like every road has an end and every mountain a top. At the far end,’ she pointed back along the way they were walking, and Mary saw the vague outline of a distant landscape with high cliffs and rolling mountains beyond, ‘there’s a waterfall. That’s called Goldenspring. If you come in the summer, you’ll be able to swim here – though the water is cold as ice.’

  ‘We will be coming in the summer,’ Mary told her and she looked over her shoulder again, searching for the waterfall in the dark recesses of the night.

  As they reached the yew tree an owl hooted from its upper branches.

  ‘Your friend again?’ Meg asked, giving Mary a searching look. But she didn’t wait for a reply. Her mind was on her badgers and she wouldn’t pause until she had hurried down over the side of the valley to where the line of the beech trees started, sheltering the sett.

  ‘Come on,’ she called, in a high light voice. ‘Come on, my babies. Come on, my dears. Betty, come on, Betty . . .’ Meg knelt on the ground calling and lightly clapping her hands together, a sound so gentle it was no louder than the beat of a bird’s wings.

  Mary crept stealthily down the hill, not wanting to make a sound for fear of frightening the badgers away. When she was standing immediately behind Meg, the old woman looked up at her. In the half light, Mary could see a troubled expression on her face.

  ‘Where are they?’ Meg whispered. ‘Where are my little ones?’ And she turned once more, calling and clapping: ‘Come on! Come on, my dears! Come on, my babies!’

  No badgers emerged from the trampled earth. The breeze clattered through the trees and the moonlight came and went as the clouds raced across the sky.

  Jasper swayed in the branches of the yew. From his vantage-point he could see the girl and the old woman kneeling on the ground in front of her. He had been told to find them – Sirius, the dog, (or Spot, as the child called him) was inclined to be bossy. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘I’ve found them. I shall now wait. The girl hasn’t once tried to contact me. She seemed, actually, to expect me to come to her! She will have to be taught. I – who am as old as the night – do not . . . contact.’ And he trilled his distaste so vehemently, that the sound echoed through the valley.

  Cinnabar was racing up the steep side of the valley when he heard Jasper call. He stopped long enough to bark sharply in answer.

  Jasper heard the call and, spreading his wings, he launched himself out of the yew and sailed over the rim of the valley, searching, with his hawk-eyes, for the telltale flash of Cinnabar’s brush in the undergrowth below.

  ‘I’m here,’ he called.

  ‘The boy and the man are making for Blackscar. Tell the girl. Then meet me there,’ Cinnabar barked.

  ‘Fox,’ hooted the owl. ‘Where are the young badgers?’

  ‘The old sow has taken them,’ Cinnabar replied, as he sprinted past.

  ‘But taken them where?’ the owl shrieked after him.

  ‘To Blackscar,’ the fox barked.

  ‘To Blackscar?’ the owl hooted mournfully. Then the girl’s voice attracted his attention.

  ‘Jasper,’ Mary called. ‘Oh, Jasper . . .’

  ‘What?’ the owl asked, hovering above her.

  ‘Do you know where the badger baiting will take place?’ Mary called in her mind, then, almost at once she turned and said aloud to Meg:

  ‘Blackscar Quarry.’

  ‘What dear?’ Meg asked, looking up at her.

  ‘That’s where they’ve taken the badgers.’

  ‘Then we must go at once,’ Meg said, climbing up on to her feet and never once asking Mary how she knew. ‘If only Mr Green has contacted Bob Parker. The police would be such a help.’

  ‘You can’t go alone,’ Spot whispered.

  ‘I can, Spot. I’ll be all right. But what about you?’ Alice said, trying to sound brave. But then she couldn’t stop the tears from bubbling up again. ‘I don’t want you to die all alone here on the Dark and Dreadful Path.’

  ‘I won’t. For you I won’t,’ the dog gasped. ‘Only . . . hurry. I’ll be all right. I promise. But I shouldn’t like all this to have been for nothing. Call Merula. Call him. He’ll help you.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Alice sobbed. She knew she must be brave, but she couldn’t bear to see her beloved Spot so weak and ill.

  ‘Call Merula. The Magician’s blackbird . . .’

  ‘But – it’s night-time and blackbirds won’t be out and besides, the Magician has given us up.’

  ‘He’ll never give you up. You’re part of him,’ Spot whispered. Then, filling his lungs, he howled once, a long anguished cry. ‘M . . . E . . . R . . . U . . . L . . . A.’

  The name echoed backwards and forwards in the close confines of the path.

  ‘It’s no use, Spot,’ Alice said, sadly. ‘There won’t be any magic. The Magician is angry with me. I made him angry. It’s my fault. So now we’ve got to do things on our own. Only please don’t die, please, Spot. I’ll do anything to stop that. I’ll even go alone to the quarry. I’ll tell the men the police are coming, like Meg did. Maybe that’ll frighten them away – d’you think that would work?’ she asked him, doubting her own words. Then, seeing the dog lying on the ground, she sobbed, ‘Oh, Spot, I love you so much . . .’ and turning, determinedly, she started to walk away from him up the dark pathway.

  But, after she’d taken a few steps, Alice heard above the sound of the wind and louder than the rattle of the branches, another sound. It was the eager beat of a thousand wings, accompanied by the sweet song of five hundred birds.

  Alice paused and looked up. Above the tops of the trees, the clouds had cleared, revealing a nearly-full moon riding in the high sky. At once the broad path was filled with its dazzling silver light and the trees, that had seemed grim and forbidding, were transformed into enchanted boughs, tipped with sparkling light, like an avenue of Christmas trees.

  ‘Oh, Spot, look!’ Alice cried, turning round in a full circle. ‘Look at the trees! It isn’t such a bad place. Not when the moon is on it.’ And, as she spoke, swallows darted into the clearing and swifts danced round her head. Blue tits and wagtails; thrushes and the tiny wren skimmed and chattered about her, playing and singing. Finally, dark as night herself, the blackbird, Merula, came and alighted on Alice’s outstretched hand and turned his gleaming eyes and crocus yellow beak towards her.

  ‘Come,’ he whistled, with a sound so p
ure and notes so rich, that Alice couldn’t remember ever having heard anything so beautiful before. ‘Come,’ he whistled again. ‘You have taken the dark away. You have given us back the silver path.’

  ‘I have?’ Alice asked, confused. ‘Me? You mean me? No, I didn’t do anything.’

  But further protestation was useless for at that moment she was rising on the black wings of night. Up and up she flew, spiralling into the silver light, until the path below was no more than a streak on the map and the dark countryside was only relieved by the distant flashing blue light of a police car and the dull glow of lamps that illuminated the savage rent in the rock-earth that denoted Blackscar Quarry.

  25

  Bawson

  BLACKSCAR QUARRY HADN’T been worked for many years. Around its rough rock floor, bushes and thin sapling trees crowded against the sheer cliffs that enclosed it on three sides. On its fourth side two paths converged at right angles to each other. The first was an overgrown bridleway that passed between a narrow opening in the rocks and then disappeared into the murky interior of the pine forest. The other was a narrow cart track that wound steeply away from the quarry towards a distant forest road.

  Usually the place was empty, visited only by the rabbits who had made it their home. In summer, the occasional walker happened on it by chance or the local youths came by once in a while to smoke cigarettes and shoot beer cans with their air pistols. It was an eerie, abandoned place, filled with shadows and the moaning wind. A ghost place, lost and forgotten.

  But on this night, if any stranger had happened to pass by they would have found the customary silence disturbed by the agitated yelping of dogs and the muted voices of some twenty men, who had driven there in an assortment of cars and vans. There was an air of intense activity and an atmosphere of excited anticipation about the place. Boxes and sacks were being unloaded from the backs of motors and the dogs strained at the thick chains and ropes by which they were tethered, smelling the strong scent of frightened badger.

  At the centre of the quarry a low barricade had been constructed out of dead trunks and branches, held down with lumps of rock. It formed a rough ring which the men referred to as ‘the pit’. Some of them could be seen in the light created by the headlights of their motors, positioned in a circle around the perimeter. They were all different ages from young lads to one or two grandfathers. Their eyes shone and their faces were greasy with excitement, as they trampled the ground to make it level.

  Kev had tied Fang to a tree and was unloading the caged badgers collected from the Golden Valley sett, with Ted and his friend Pete. It was Pete’s first bait and he was excited and scared at the same time.

  ‘When do we begin?’ he asked Kev, as between them they lifted a cage out of the back of Ted’s van.

  ‘Soon enough,’ Kev answered. ‘I hope you’ve brought plenty of money. Fang and I feel lucky tonight.’

  ‘That’s a big ’un,’ Ted said, nodding towards the cage they were carrying, ‘even for your Fang. I wouldn’t like to set my terrier against that one.’

  ‘You may as well give me your money now, then,’ Kev joked. ‘You should get yourself a proper dog, our Ted, if you mean business. This brute’ll be no match for my Fang. He could bring him down with his front paws tied together.’ And he poked with a stick at the great grey badger that lay silent and panting in the cage at his feet.

  ‘Look at the beast,’ Ted said, ignoring Kev’s gibes, ‘you reckon we should lame it first?’

  ‘No!’ Kev exclaimed. ‘Lame it? No sport in laming it. Give the dogs a bit of a run for our money. I hate an uneven battle.’

  ‘You only say that because you’ve got Fang,’ Ted complained, and he put his finger into the ring top of a can of lager, squirting spray as he released it.

  Kev grinned and crossed over to his dog.

  ‘I don’t know why they’re all afraid of you,’ he said, giving Fang a flick with the end of the rope that secured him. The dog yelped with pain then growled, a deep sound.

  ‘Oh! Temper!’ Kev said, and he flicked the dog again, harder this time. ‘We can’t have that, can we?’ and he flicked the dog once more, making it whimper, but instantly stopping the growl. ‘That’s better,’ Kev said, ‘Away you two, let’s see what’s to do,’ and he swaggered off towards the centre of the quarry.

  Left alone, Bawson, the badger, and Fang, the dog, stared at each other across the dark. The dog growled and barked, rearing up on his hind legs and straining to be free. The badger lay, snout to the ground, watching and still.

  At the centre of the ring, an argument broke out between two of the men over the running order. The dogs became excited, barking and whining. Then a roar of excitement went up from the crowd. The badger looked over his shoulder. The cage he was in was only just big enough to contain him. It smelt of rabbit and had been used as a hutch. The smell filled his nostrils with fear and prison and cruelty. He could see the men gathering their dogs. The first badger was released into the pit. The dogs’ barking rose to fever pitch as some of them were put into the ring.

  ‘It’s beginning,’ Bawson thought and he looked back at Fang, who was straining at his leash, indignant that he hadn’t yet been called.

  Jack saw the blue light of the police car flickering through the dark of the forest and accelerated.

  ‘Blackscar Quarry,’ he called out of the window, as he drew level.

  ‘Right,’ said Bob Parker and he got on to the radio, calling up reinforcements. ‘You follow me,’ he called to Jack and, doing a sharp turn in the road, he sped away, in the lead.

  When Cinnabar reached the quarry he could hear, above the din of the dogs, the sighing of the badgers. He could smell their fear. He could taste their anguish.

  He skirted round, behind the line of motors, searching until he found Bawson’s cage.

  ‘Good, my fox,’ Bawson whispered, greeting him.

  Without hesitation, Cinnabar started to gnaw at the rope that secured the cage door. Fang barked excitedly, trying to attract Kev’s attention. The fox ignored him, working frantically, but the rope was thick and Cinnabar’s sharp teeth could only break through it a strand at a time.

  Mary and Meg reached the rim of the quarry. Below them they could see the ring of lights and the dark shapes of the men, as they cheered and hooted their approval.

  ‘It’s begun,’ Meg said, grimly.

  ‘Come on then,’ Mary said, desperately looking for a way down. But Meg put a hand on her arm.

  ‘We can’t go down, child. We’d be no match for them.’

  ‘Then why are we here?’ Mary cried.

  ‘To be with the badgers,’ Meg said, sadly. ‘To watch them die.’

  ‘No!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘Come on, Meg. Oh, please. We must be able to do something to stop them,’ she begged.

  ‘Well, at least we can try,’ Meg said, catching Mary’s urgency. ‘If I could just get some photographs of the men’s faces,’ she continued producing a camera from her pocket and snapping up the flash, ‘it would give the police something to work on. Come along, dear. There’s a path down over there . . .’

  Merula, the blackbird, perched in the branch of a sapling.

  ‘We must wait now,’ he whispered.

  ‘I can’t watch,’ Alice said.

  ‘It will be all right,’ a familiar voice hooted, and Jasper fluttered into the tree beside them.

  ‘How do you know?’ Alice cried.

  ‘I don’t,’ Jasper replied. ‘I’m just . . . hoping.’

  ‘Bloody fox! Did you see that?’ Kev exclaimed, kicking out at Cinnabar, who bolted into the dark as soon as the men appeared. ‘He was only trying to get in the cage, wasn’t he? Diabolical liberty! I hate foxes. They do a lot of damage, you know. Vermin!’ he shouted, as he and Ted lifted the cage and carried Bawson to the Pit. They opened the cage door and prodded the badger out into the circle of lights. Around him a row of angry, snarling dogs gnashed and spat, straining at their collars as their masters held them back
, waiting for the ‘off’.

  ‘Listen,’ Bawson whispered to the dogs in each of their minds. ‘Listen to me. We are all animals together. You are not my foes. We should live side by side in harmony. We are not rivals, we are not enemies. It is the men who have made you like this. Because of them, you are not . . . free. You are doing only what men have taught you. You have lost your animal-ness, you have lost your nature.’

  As he spoke a little terrier snapped forward going for his front paws. Bawson backed away, batting the dog off.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he insisted. ‘Why do you want to hurt me?’

  ‘Because I hate you,’ the terrier snapped.

  ‘You don’t. You don’t even know me. You are only thinking thoughts you have been given. Not your own thoughts . . . the men’s thoughts.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ a pit bull growled. ‘It’s fun, killing,’ and, as he barked the words, he charged forward, teeth snapping and caught Bawson a glancing blow on his cheek.

  The other dogs all crowded in, snapping and barking, tearing and clawing. Bawson batted them off, using all four claws and his own teeth, but trying not to harm any of them.

  ‘We don’t have to be like this,’ he pleaded with them. ‘We don’t have to play the human game. Your masters were once animals too. But now . . . they are beasts. We don’t have to be beasts . . .’

  Then, in front of Bawson the snapping, squealing crowd divided and Fang appeared. The great dog and the great badger sized each other up. A strange silence settled over the quarry.

  ‘He’s a match for him,’ a man’s voice rang out.

  ‘Kill, Fang! Kill!’ Kev yelled and, as he did so, he gave the dog a stinging blow with the rope across his rump, making him gasp with pain.

  ‘D’you want to serve that man for the rest of your life, Fang?’ Bawson whispered, as he braced himself for Fang’s attack.

  ‘I serve no one,’ Fang growled.

  ‘Kill, Fang! Kill!’ Kev yelled again.

  The dog leapt forward, sinking his teeth deep into the badger’s left shoulder. The two bodies turned over, locked in a deathly embrace, their teeth snapping, their claws ripping at each other. Bawson landed on his back with Fang on top of him. With a huge surge of energy, and using all his four legs, he heaved the dog off, sending him flying through the air. Fang landed heavily on his rump but immediately got up, turning, preparing to spring again.