Lord Morgan's Cannon

by MJ Walker

  The thin suited man nodded and the fat zookeeper tossed a chain into the cage. With a stick the other managed to pull it up and over the cat’s neck. The old leopard made it easy for them, playing along. They had him lassoed and with one man holding each end of the chain, they unlocked the padlock and lifted the cage door. The leopard carefully walked on to the concrete floor.

  Each man tightened his grip. The man in the suit stepped back, impressed. He thought about raising the price. The Ring Master waited for the right moment. So did the leopard.

  The Ring Master took off his hat. Just as he did in the ring, he began to bellow and twirl, creating the most annoying distraction to the men from the zoo. He started telling his story, how he had travelled across the channel from Paris, France. How he had the biggest and best circus in all west Europe. How he knew a certain Lord Morgan, a man of University College, Bristol, a man of great character, repute, and should anyone need reminding, great influence. And how the cat was the star of his show. He used his whip to land his final point, flicking it out across the room so the end snapped and cracked against the wall.

  The keepers dropped the chain in shock. The leopard felt it go slack. He growled at the man in the suit, waving a clawless paw in the air. The Ring Master commanded him to sit, to be silent. But the leopard had outwitted the Ring Master. Thinking a move ahead, he turned on the man that had for years kept him in a rusting collar.

  He jumped at the Big Top owner, his two feet hitting the lapels of the man’s jacket. He opened his jaws and attacked the Ring Master’s neck, which he’d spent years sizing. The leopard planned to crush his jugular and hold him down till he was sure the life had left him, before bolting from the room and to freedom. But in his age, the cat miscalculated. He forgot to factor in the weight of the chains. He fell short, his salivating mouth and wet nose greasing the Ring Master’s neck, but failing to mark it. As the cat fell upon the human’s body, Jim the Strongman grabbed at one of the flailing chains. He yanked it hard, pulling the cat off. Yet in all the time he had worked with the animals, he had never fought one. And immediately he lost the fight with the leopard, which tore into him with such viciousness that all the strongman could do was bring up his muscled arms and pray to his mother.

  The leopard ran from the room, out into the sunshine. The zookeepers swore while all professional pride left the thin man in the suit; an unconfined animal anathema to him. There was no column in his books to account for an escapee.

  On the leopard ran, back up the path he’d been wheeled down, the long chain unravelling and slipping from his neck. He dashed past the stork, which now appeared to have a huge grin. He roared at the gorillas and saluted the hippo, taunting it, trapped as it was in a pool of water and its own muck. As he ran his memories flashed past him. He remembered the savannah, the thrill of the buffalo hunt, the sunsets and the rain, the lions and hyenas. He felt his ligaments and tendons pulling, his heart straining. He thought of the wall left to leap. And he thought of the jaguar again. How she had treated him well. How she had no one but the birds. How she had nothing.

  And the leopard came to the most remarkable decision. He decided he was running for the last time. That he was all played out. He had shown the Ring Master he was a leopard and how leopards did not change their spots. Not for humans. But in a single day, he realised the jaguar had treated him with more respect and grace than anyone before. And she didn’t deserve to live her life alone. The little he had left to give, he decided to give to her. He sucked in the air and lengthened his stride. He pulled down his tail and balanced himself. And with a roar that frightened the tigers, he leaped at the fence that kept the jaguar captive. He caught it mid height and he leaped again, cutting his pads as he dug into the wire. He drove on, kicking out with his hind feet, finding any purchase. Desperately he scrambled until his paws caught the top of the fence. He summoned all his anger, all his rage and he pulled himself up. For a fleeting moment he stood upon that fence, perfectly poised, nose in the air, until he let his body fall to the other side, landing in a crumpled heap upon the grass. Watching from the tree, the jaguar saw it all. She understood and she cried a tear.

  At this moment, sitting tired and uncertain upon the tall meshed cage in Lord Morgan’s laboratory, staring at his captor, Edward had his first epiphany. He had long been aware that his hearing was not so good for a monkey, and that his left ear lied to him more than his right. And he’d known the problem particularly affected him when listening to a language that was not his own. Though he thought himself a connoisseur of human words and accents, he knew that at times he could not keep up. He struggled when humans kept changing their words, bending and inflecting them. How they liked to use two words for the same thing, such as dinner and supper, and how they used the same word for different things.

  He sat there, tail entwined in the wire upon which he rested, and thought about Lord Morgan’s words. How the professor spoke of a cannon that was broken. But Lord Morgan did not speak of cannonballs and gunpowder, of flashes and bangs. He talked of a cannon that judged things. A cannon that was the same as a law, as a principle. A cannon that could be applied to a monkey.

  And Edward realised that his ears had been failing him. How the stories he’d heard of a giant cannon were not true. How could they be? Lord Morgan was a professor, a scientist. He wasn’t a blacksmith, a forger, an engineer. He had clean hands, palms tough enough to throttle a monkey but not to work metal. Lord Morgan was working on a canon, Edward realised. But the canon he was making existed somehow in his book. Within this Introduction to comparative psychology, second edition.

  Lord Morgan’s canon was a law, a law that could be applied to a monkey. It was a law that described how Edward thought, how he reasoned. A law that set down how clever animals could be.

  Edward chuckled. He watched the professor laughing and laughed with him. He opened his little mouth and bared his short, sharp canines. He leaned forward and rested on his elbows, chirping as Lord Morgan wrote. Edward examined the movement of the professor’s pencil. He wondered how it worked. He thought again, and decided to commit this law to memory.

  Lord Morgan’s Canon.

  A general law, rule or principle, or criterion by which something is judged. To be a canon, it must hold across all examples. And it did not apply to Edward. The monkey was too clever. He had a higher psychical faculty. He was capable of reasoned thought. And in the words of Lord Morgan, he might end up changing everything.

  These thoughts so intrigued Edward, he forgot about the animals he had left behind. For a moment he put aside his ambition of escape and decided to study the man who was studying him. He watched as Lord Morgan poured himself a cup of tea from a lukewarm pot. He listened intensely to the words that Lord Morgan spoke, trying to ensure the accuracy of his ears, deriving meaning where he could as the human mumbled to himself, sometimes exclaiming things, occasionally muttering under his breath as he walked the room, fiddling with the braces holding up his trousers.

  The monkey then thought to test the man who had been testing him. Edward skipped over to the jar next to the rabbit’s cage and took out a piece of carrot. He chewed it, relishing the taste. Then, for the sake of it, he pushed at the lever atop the rabbit’s cage and pulled the door open. The rabbit woke with a start. Edward smiled at the rabbit and gave it a pat on its bottom. The rabbit hopped gratefully on to the bench and stretched its hind legs out, long and true, one after the other.

  Lord Morgan didn’t notice until the rabbit jumped upon his dissecting kit, almost cutting his feet on a scalpel. The professor dashed across the room, biscuit crumbs falling from his shirt, and scooped the white rabbit off the instruments. He held it to his face and rubbed noses as the rabbit’s pink eyes opened wide, feet kicking in the air. Lord Morgan went to put the rabbit back in its cage. But then he paused. He examined the door. He set the rabbit down on the floor and sent it on its way, telling Charles to go explore, to have some fun.

  “You did that, didn’t you?�
�� he said to Edward.

  The professor smiled. He paused, as if waiting for Edward to reply.

  “I like your waistcoat,” he then said. “Maybe I should get one. Black does get a bit dull.”

  He offered up his last biscuit to the monkey, but Edward refused it, shaking his head and running across the laboratory. The monkey climbed the curtains and sat upon the curtain pole, peering down at the professor. Edward realised he could detect the aroma of chickens in the room. He noticed a wooden pen tucked under the foot of the drape. In it was a yellow chick, lying motionless on its side, its tongue out of its beak. Edward reasoned that the chick had been left in the pen to find its way out, and it could not.

  As the evening drew on, and the light faded, Lord Morgan lit an electric lamp.

  “This lamp,” he said to Edward. “This is progress. We must keep moving forward, we must press on. Oh I have ambitions for our understanding of your kind,” he told the monkey. “I have ambitions for this place,” he said, surveying his room. “For this college.”

  The professor went to a drawer in his desk and took out a small bottle of port. He uncorked the top. Edward smelled the grapes and alcohol and watched as Lord Morgan pursed his lips, taking a nip. Lord Morgan drank some more. Edward wondered why men with beards liked to drink this way, and promised himself to try it one day. He then listened hard as Lord Morgan became melancholy and ranging with his words.

  “We must develop a university culture. Indeed, we must become a proper university! And to become that, we need to be touched by a royal hand.”

  Edward watched the human become drunk, just as he’d regularly watched the Ring Master imbibe in his circus wagon. The Ring Master always started by talking at Edward. As his words became slower, he’d progress to talking down to the monkey. When he found it difficult to complete his sentences he evolved into delivering tales of grandeur.

  And now Lord Morgan walked the same path, fuelled by the port and a matching bottle he opened the moment he finished the first.

  As the night closed in and the electric lamp appeared to burn brighter, the white rabbit scampered in circles around the laboratory floor, revelling in his freedom. Edward clung to the curtain pole as Lord Morgan talked up to him, telling him what a wonderful creature he was. He spoke of hierarchies, suggesting that some were to be challenged. But then he reversed, saying that hierarchy must be respected. Edward couldn’t follow his language and logic until, in a pique, Lord Morgan announced that Edward was a more convincing primate than he. The professor suggested that Edward had the true verve and talent. And that in a couple of day’s time, it should be Edward the monkey, rather than the human scientist, who presented to the King of England during his royal visit to University College, Bristol.

  Doris, Bear and Bessie argued who should tap on the window. Doris offered to slap the pane with her trunk, but Bear suggested she might put it through. He wanted to scratch down the glass with his talon, but Bessie said she hated the noise it would make. Both Doris and Bear refused to believe that a budgerigar could hit upon the window with the requisite power, but she proved them wrong by tapping forcefully upon the glass with her beak. Edward didn’t hear it, the noise too high pitched for his bad ear not buried in the folds of the curtain upon the pole.

  Bessie danced left and right along the ledge to align her head with the gap in the curtain. She peeked inside. A light was on, but all she could see was a white rabbit wandering the floor. Tony the terrier jumped up. As his legs left the ground, he recognised the puzzle box that had carried Edward away. He landed, declaring he was certain the animals were standing outside of the office window to Lord Morgan’s laboratory in the Department of Psychology and Education at University College, Bristol.

  “This isn’t working. We should have knocked at the front door,” said Doris.

  “Hang on,” said Bear. “Try again Bessie.”

  She tapped again, this time using her skills to create a long regular, repetitive sequence. She heard a noise inside and cocked her head. She repeated herself. Suddenly her message was replayed back to her, from inside the room. Something was tapping on metal inside the laboratory, answering her call. Bessie tapped out her sounds on the glass, and again they were repeated back at her, like two birds singing a duet.

  Bessie chirped with excitement. Bear the anteater heard it too. He stood up on his hind legs, setting his long flowing black tail on to the ground. He placed his huge talons on to the window ledge, and as Bessie hopped between them, he turned his long snout and rested his small ear against the glass. Doris leaned down and opened out one of her ears, straining to register the high frequency of the message. For a few minutes, the animals stood in the dark, the wind passing over their noses as they listened to Bessie’s tapping being answered in kind.

  Suddenly the curtains inside the window were thrown open. The electric light of the room flooded outside, capturing a budgerigar, anteater and elephant staring in. Staring back was Lord Morgan, tired, dishevelled and as shocked as the animals. He’d expected to see a starling, or squirrel, drawn to the light and smell of food. He’d been using his teaspoon upon the wire of a cage, tapping back, testing the language of this creature, trying to ascertain the randomness or otherwise of its communications. He was unprepared for the bizarre animals he saw on the other side of the glass. Grabbing his chest, he gulped for air and fell back on to the hard stone floor.

  Lord Morgan’s appearance sent Bessie into a flap and her flailing wings caught Bear’s spectacles, knocking them off his face. The anteater too staggered back, his hind legs failing. He collapsed on to Doris’s knee who narrowly avoided stamping down upon his sore shoulder. The commotion sent Tony into a spin, barking.

  For a fleeting moment the human had registered the presence of a troupe of circus animals staring in through the window of his laboratory. For their part, the animals instantly realised that, for the second time since their escape from the Big Top, they had been spotted together.

  “Run!” cried Doris, with a loud bellow that carried out across the gorge.

  She put her head down and thundered across the grass, heading back towards the front door of the college. Bear followed in her giant footprints. Tony ran with them, but then realised he was heading away from his master, whose silhouette he was sure he’d just seen at the window. Thinking for himself, he slowed. He didn’t want to follow the pack, not this time. He spun on his legs to see Bessie flying repeatedly into the illuminated window pane, like a moth bent on its own destruction.

  The noise sent Charles the rabbit into a panic, fearing a flock of hooded crows was out there in the dark, each bird working together in an attempt to break their way in and pull him apart for their midnight dinner. He dived into the pile of boxes on the floor, scattering them.

  The pulling of the curtains had woken Edward and the ensuing commotion brought Lord Morgan to his senses. Both shook their heads in disbelief. As Lord Morgan fumbled on the floor, struggling to right his aging back, the monkey was immediately alert to the danger. Edward jumped from the curtain pole to the curtain and slid down it. He ran across the room, deliberately bouncing off Lord Morgan’s belly as the human grasped at the air.

  Their tentative bond was broken once more. In the excitement, it was each to their own. Edward took refuge with the rabbit. Monkeys rarely prefer to hide but, still confined to the room, Edward could see no other option. He didn’t know what was outside the window, but he knew it was enough to scare the human and rabbit.

  The professor dusted himself down. He realised what he’d seen. But when he staggered to the window he could only see a small bird flapping outside. He didn’t recognise Bessie’s plumage. He threw up the sash to get a better look. As he did so, he drew a cold current of air into the room, pulling Bessie with it. He waved at her, trying to push her away from his face and Bessie flew into his laboratory. She struggled to adjust her eyes to the light and flew into the wall opposite, before falling on to the long bench. Before he could gather himself,
Lord Morgan heard the unmistakable sound of his dog barking outside.

  “Tony?” he shouted. “Tony!”

  He rushed to the window, confused and nervous, wondering how his dog could be here, whether it was safe from the huge wild beasts he’d just seen. He threw his head and chest out and Tony leaped up into his arms, gravity and the dog almost pulling the human out and over the sill. As Lord Morgan recovered, Tony kicked out his legs, wriggling his body, kissing and licking his master’s lips and beard.

  Edward saw his chance. He begged the rabbit to follow but Charles just sat in the dark under the boxes, quivering. So Edward left him. On hands and feet, tail held high, he dashed for the window. Using all his agility, he ran faster than a capuchin escaping a snapping caiman. He reached the window and hopped straight through it into the night air, trusting himself to land in a better place.

  Bessie saw him go. She panicked, a bird trapped indoors. Stumbling about the surface of the bench, she saw the black rectangle on the other side of the room. She noticed a twinkle of stars. She too realised she had but one way out of her predicament. She had to take it. So she shook all her feathers and with an almighty beat of her wings, she launched herself airborne. She corrected her course and powered her way across the room. She skimmed Lord Morgan’s head and heard Tony yap a goodbye, as she crossed the threshold to the great outdoors, regaining control once more over her destiny.

  Unlike that first night, when Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top set on fire, the animals all escaped by heading in the same direction. Whether it was fate or luck, or something about the geology of the ridge, or the magnetic properties of the rock that had been cleaved into a gorge, the anteater ran after the elephant, the monkey after the anteater with the budgie flying smartly behind the monkey. In a panicked column they rushed, one by one, back towards the tower holding up one end of the suspension bridge. Without breaking stride, they thundered and trotted and skipped and flew over the wooden boards, making the bridge shake as if ten horses were racing across. The gas lamps vibrated in their mounts, the pools of light danced. The animals passed the station set into the bridge jolting the old guard from his dreams. His feet bounced off his desk and his cap fell off his greyed hair. He opened his eyes to see four shadows, descending in size by an almost perfect order of magnitude, moving away from his bridge like harpies of the night. He was so taken aback he collapsed on to his desk, his arm pressing down on a big red button that sounded a horn across the bridge and over the city. From the docks of Hotwells to the mansions of Clifton, men, women and children awoke in their beds thinking their city may be in the grip of a huge fire.