Each day was taken as it came, and visits by man were rare. When humans were abroad, the geese set up such a clamour that it was known for miles around, and the foxes were warned well in advance. O-ha would sit for hours on the deck of the hulk, watching the geese feed in the mud: bulky birds that shouldered each other out of the way for a scrap of food and chased away gulls or oystercatchers that tried to enter the mass of immigrants who had come from the north like nordic raiders, to plunder their homelands. These rough, coarse birds who had travelled the airways above the waves were formidable creatures even to a fox and no thought entered her head ever to attempt to make a meal of one of them. Every word they spoke sounded like a harsh obscenity to her and though they gave her a wide berth, they swore and glared at her when she crossed the mud, as if she were invading their private grounds and had no business to be there. They slopped around on large flat feet, occasionally unwinding their necks to have a look around as if contemplating some idea of breaking out of a boring feeding routine and going on an adventure. Then suddenly, one would take to the air, followed by others, until the sky was full of them. As if by magic they became regimented creatures, each knowing his or her place in the squadron, and they flew low V-formation flypasts, rippling over stumps or other objects in their path as smoothly as a snake sliding over a log. This was in complete contrast to the knots, who travelled in clouds, wing-tip to wing-tip, turning sharply every few seconds to some unheard command.
O-ha and Camio learned to avoid the crazed creeks, with their sludge which could suck a fox down to an ugly death. They hunted on the network of raised areas which were sometimes islands at high tide. Come spring there would be eggs and elvers, spawn and spanworms, aplenty. But until that time, the pair had to make do with what they could find under the mud, or flying above it.
Chapter Seventeen
Although O-ha and Camio were not as well fed, or warm and dry, as they would have been out of the marshes, there was a certain feeling of security which came with being surrounded by mud or water, especially in the winter. No doubt during the summer months there were hunters with guns in the creeks, or fishermen at high tide, but there was something about the bleak, windswept saltings during the winter which filled human hearts with dread. There was a flat, grey emptiness to the crazed landscape which seemed to speak of eternal vacancy: the sort of place that hell might really turn out to be. Mists slid like cold wraiths over the surface of the sludge and the cries of the birds were the plaintive calls of lost souls, doomed to a forever of lonely wanderings over wastelands drear. At least the exposed creeks, with their merciless winds and unerring drabness, ensured that humans kept their distance.
The two foxes lived on a day-to-day basis: just surviving the hours was ambition enough. The slime-slicked hulk, covered in algae and slipping gradually into the ooze, provided the barest of shelters. The creeks that surrounded them were sufficiently stocked with food of a kind which the foxes were unused to but quickly developed a taste for. They occasionally caught an unlucky bird, but lived mostly on shellfish, crabs, shrimps, worms and roots. Most of all, O-ha missed the succulent chanterelle fungus and wood blewitt which she loved, and the nests of tree insects found in the rotten logs of Trinity Wood.
Once, out on the mud, she had an encounter with a creature she had never seen before, who left her pride damaged and her nose sore. She was picking her way carefully through poa grass, sniffing at holes which might have contained eels abandoned by the tide, when something gripped her sensitive snout. She pulled back from the mud, to find a creature like an elongated crab dangling from her face. After a few moments of painful struggle she managed to loosen the shellfish’s grip and let it fall on to the mud.
It was a greyish-coloured, plated thing with a long tail and two huge pairs of pincers out at the front. Thereafter she left these creatures alone and made sure the mudholes were clear of them before investigating further.
One evening, after she had been out hunting, she returned to find the smell of dog clinging to the wind. The odour came from the direction of the dyke, and for a while she crouched in the bladderwrack and waited for more scents and sounds to reach her.
The odour was persistent and there were no sights or sounds of movement from the tall grasses on the river wall, so she went back to the boat. She leapt up on to the sloping deck and then down through the hole into the dank interior of the hulk. Camio was there, asleep, and she woke him and asked him if he could smell the enemy. He licked his nose, sniffed the air for a few moments, sorting through the many odours, then confirmed her suspicions.
‘Dog – most definitely. But what would an unaccompanied dog be doing out here in the marshes? Lost?’
‘I suppose so,’ she replied. ‘There’s no human scent, so it must be. Perhaps it’s hurt – lying there injured? Do you think we need to worry?’
Camio shook his head and suggested they stay where they were for the rest of the night, just to be sure. She lay her head across his shoulders and tried to sleep, though it had a difficult time coming. During the night both animals were awoken by a whining from the dyke: a pitiful sound which filled them with a feeling of despondency. Neither wished to investigate the source of this misery, however, since it might be a trap, and anyway, it was foolish to become involved in anything that smelled strongly of their worst enemy.
When morning came they saw a movement on the dyke. It was indeed a dog and O-ha recognised him immediately: Breaker, the ex-hunting hound and now farm dog. He sounded in a sorry state. He looked half-starved and misery seemed to have hammered his features flat. There was a mournful note to his wailing which would have had humans running to him with armfuls of sympathy, but the foxes were less inclined to sentiment of this sort. In fact Camio expressed to certain amount of contempt.
‘What’s he yelling like that for? If he’s unhappy, why doesn’t he do something?’
‘He is, in his opinion,’ replied O-ha. ‘He’s calling for help. That’s doing something, as far as a hound is concerned.’
Suddenly, Breaker seemed to see the boat for the first time, half-hidden by reeds and partly submerged in the mud. He began to make his way towards it, sinking in the sludge up to his belly. Near the stream in the centre of the creek, he almost disappeared completely, but managed with great effort to struggle on to a sunken piece of driftwood – the branch of an oak – and used this as a walkway beneath the slit. As he began to approach the boat, O-ha started to get alarmed.
‘He’s coming here,’ she whispered. ‘What are we going to do?
Camio obviously did not know, but decided to find out before the dog actually reached them and got his paws on to a firm footing.
‘Hey,’ he called. ‘You, dog. What do you want?’
Breaker paused in the act of climbing an overhanging bank, and looked at the boat. He would know it was a fox talking to him, by the dialect, but the only change in his scent was an odour of relief – as if he had found what he was looking for.
‘Fox?’ I smelled you around here, a day ago. There’s two of you – a vixen and a dog fox. I still have a good nose – still a good nose, even though they’ve thrown me away like a piece of trash. Look, I’m nearly done in. I’m hungry and tired. Need a place to rest. I’m coming into the boat.’
‘You are?’ said O-ha, her instincts telling her to bolt.
‘I’m coming into the boat, but I promise I won’t attack you. You understand?’ His loose-lipped mouth blubbed out the words, rather than spoke them, but that was a hunting hound’s way, to burble and bluster through the words, rather than speak them clearly. They used it as a kind of social badge: the sporting dog’s dialect.
Camio snorted. ‘You promise you won’t attack us? I think you’ve got it the wrong way round my friend. You’re in a very vulnerable position out there, on the soft mud, where we lighter foxes could dance rings round you. There are two of us, as you so rightly assess, and we’re fit and strong. There’s only one of you …’
Breaker had anot
her go at the bank, slipping back down again, but at the same time saying, ‘You think you could take a hunting hound? No way. I’ve broken more foxes in half than you have hairs on your brush.’
‘Tail!’ shouted O-ha.
‘What? Oh, very well, tail then. Anyway, you get the point?’ he flapped with his mouth. ‘I’m a killer, a spine-snapper with a vicious streak. My jaws are deadly weapons. My teeth crunch bones to powder. I am savage, cruel, without mercy. I do not know what the word compassion means. I was two seasons old before I knew kill-the-fox was three words, and not one. I am the destroyer … the …’ He slipped down the bank for the third time, clearly out of breath, all his strength gone. At that moment one of the foxes could have gone out and ripped his throat open, and he would have been able to do nothing about it. He was helplessly in the grip of the mud, and clearly almost starved.
‘I – promise – won’t – harm – you …’ he gasped. ‘Honour. Promise. Not hurt … you.’
They watched him while he rested. Camio asked O-ha if she wanted to leave, while the beast was recovering, but she said there was no wreck as good as the one they were sheltering in and it did not look as if Breaker could damage a soft-shelled crab in his condition, let alone a fox. So she remained, though not without all her nerve ends tingling and she kept a wary eye on the dog throughout. Her whole nature was against such close proximity with a dog, especially a hunting hound, and though Camio was used to other animals from his zoo days, she could see he was uneasy too.
Finally, Breaker struggled to his feet and this time managed to crawl up the bank and into the bottom of the wreck. There he found some scraps of food which the foxes had cached, and chewed the salty pieces, swallowing them with obvious distaste.
‘Muck,’ he kept muttering to himself. ‘Not a decent piece of meat amongst it.’
‘Listen to him,’ said Camio. ‘He scorns the fare of outlaws, but he doesn’t ask whether it can be spared before he gobbles it down, does he? Maybe you can hunt for your own the next time?’
Breaker growled.
‘You be careful what you say to me, or I’ll have your skin, reynard.’
‘We don’t like that name,’ snarled O-ha.
‘That so, you red-skinned savage? I’ll have to remember not to say it then, won’t I? – reynard.’
Camio responded by nipping the dog’s nose with his sharp teeth.
‘Hey!’ said the hound, his eyes watering, ‘there’s no need for that. If you’re not careful I’ll have to break your back for you. I’ll overlook it this time.’
The exhausted dog licked the place where he had been bitten with such a feeble effort, that the other two could see he was almost finished. His eyes told them it was possible he would not live through the day and despite all his brashness and bravado, he was as weak as a kitten with no promise of its mother’s milk. Although Camio should have felt shame at taking such an advantage, albeit unknowingly, foxes have been hunted by dogs for so long, have been torn to pieces in an orgy of bloodlust, a frenzy of artificial hate, that it was difficult for Camio to see anything but a killer before his eyes, no matter in what condition.
O-ha said, ‘Let him alone, Camio. He can’t do anything to us. We might as well go out and hunt, while the tide’s still on the ebb. Come on.’
While they were out hunting, it rained heavily, and they knew they would have drinking water which was not brackish waiting for them back at the boat. It so happened that on that day they found three geese which had been shot by hunters – probably in mistake for foxes, dogs or badgers, which told them the Unremembered Fear was still abroad – and left on the mud. They dragged one into the sea poa grass, caching it amongst the reeds, and then took one each back to the wreck. They did not sling the body of the goose over their back and carry it with ease, as some humans believed they did, but pulled it by the neck across the mud.
When they got back to the boat, they found Breaker still alive drinking rainwater, though the lustre had gone from his eyes. He looked starved, his ribcage showing through his skin like a row of iron hoops. He viewed the geese hungrily, as the two foxes tore away at them, eating their fill. When O-ha and Camio had swallowed all they needed, and had left the carcasses in the bottom of the boat, the dog approached the meat and began chewing. O-ha thought about protesting, but she was full and had little interest in the meat now, so she said nothing, lying back and resting her head on Camio’s rump. The dog fox uttered no protests either, and the hound ate his fill. Afterwards the light behind his eyes seemed a little more alive. He found himself a beam on which to lie while the tide swirled into the hull, causing a small whirlpool to swill the feathers of the swallowed geese around in circles. What was left of the birds’ corpses floated around in the brackish water.
O-ha’s feelings over sharing her hideout with a fox hound confused her. Each time she woke and smelled the dog’s presence, a panic began in her breast which was difficult to suppress. She found the odour unpleasant and offensive, especially when it mingled with the scent of her Camio. When the dog moved, to make some noise associated with the bodily functions, like belching or breaking wind, she almost flew at him in rage. His very presence was an obscenity.
Yet, when she was able to put these thoughts aside, when Ransheen blew through the holes in the hull and took the dog’s scent away from her, she was able to view him with a more dispassionate eye. What she saw was a hound, whose spirit was broken, whose body had betrayed him, too stubborn to admit that he was finished as a hunter. When he mumbled about past glories, which inevitably involved the killing of a fox, she found it invited her pity rather than her scorn. The dog’s whole history involved someone who had, at the end, subjected him to a treacherous act. Breaker had placed his faith in a faithless master, had carried out that master’s bidding, and when his body began to fail had been tossed aside like a used object. It made his whole existence a lie: a lie that he attempted to relive, painting false pictures for his listeners.
‘My master regarded me, admired me, above all the hounds he had ever known. I was given the choicest cuts of meat, the best accommodation. I deserved it, of course – I was the best. My master cried the day I left the pack for the farm. But he knew I was a working dog and would not have been happy trailing around after the rest of the pack. And although guarding the farm was not anywhere near as exciting as hunting foxes, it was a very important job. Security you know. Humans need to feel secure … they value me tremendously at the farm …’
Had Breaker stuck with this story, all the time, they might eventually have believed him, but he did not. Sometimes he cursed his old master with savage oaths. Occasionally he spoke of his detestation for the farm and its occupants. Just once in a while, he even swore at himself and mouthed contempt for his condition, his present place in dog society.
O-ha should have felt contempt for Breaker, but instead there were times when he made her feel sad. Feeling this, in turn, made her angry with herself. Thus a confusing cycle of paradoxical emotions swirled round in her breast.
When darkness came one evening, Camio said to the dog, ‘What made you come out here? Did you get lost?’ and they got something close to the truth from him.
‘Hounds like me don’t get lost, reynard,’ said the dog, but without malice in his voice this time. ‘I know this countryside backwards. I could find my way home if the world were flooded with farmhouse soup. No, I escaped.’
O-ha said, ‘Escaped? From what?’
‘Oh, I got tired of that chain. You remember the chain, vixen? You’re the fox that came to the farm one night – I never forget a scent. That damn chain. I’m a hunting hound, not a mongrel. I’m used to running free, with the wind in my coat and the scent of the earth in my nostrils … you foxes can understand that. I nearly went crazy at that farm, stuck on the end of a chain, with seven paces of ground.’
‘I know,’ said Camio, sleepily. ‘I’ve been there – those seven paces – I know them well. We have walked the same short piece of the wor
ld, dog. We have endured the same long, bleak nightmare …’
Camio was becoming too erudite, and O-ha, who knew this side of him well, shushed him.
‘So what happened?’ she asked Breaker.
‘So one night I slipped the collar – and I was free. I ran through the fields and woods, chased anything that moved, foxes included. Would have broken them if I could have caught them. That’s me, Breaker, the lead hound of the hunt. Then in the morning, I went home. I never intended to stay away. I’m a dog – a loyal hound. To have remained away would have been a betrayal of all that I stand for. My masters are my masters. No question. I just wanted a little freedom.’
‘And?’
‘And they were waiting for me with guns. They were going to shoot me. Shoot me, Breaker, the fox hound – blast me like a common wild animal.’
‘I see,’ said Camio. ‘They thought you might have come into contact with the White Mask? That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘White Mask? – why mince words – rabies. They were scared I’d caught rabies and they weren’t taking any chances. After all I’d done for them. Protected their property, played with their children, hunted foxes for them.’
‘They didn’t trust you any more,’ said Camio. ‘The faithful old Breaker had to die. He might have had a devil in him that would emerge while he played with the children, and that was unthinkable.’
‘Anyway, I could smell the fear in them. Their mouths were barking softly – “Come on, Breaker. Good boy, Breaker. Here, dog, here. Come and get the nice juicy bone we’ve got for you” – but the muscles in their faces were rigid, their eyes wild with terror. Oh, I was used to seeing guns, and they held them casually enough, under one arm, but the tenseness was there, ready to jump the weapon level and blow me to pieces once I got within range. I pretended to approach them in joy – you know, tongue lolling out, lazy, rolling gait – but the closer I got the more agitated they became and finally one of the guns came up and I ran. I was well out of range. I felt the pellets lift the earth behind me, and then the shot sounded in my ears. Maybe they fired more than once, I don’t know. I was gone by that time – over the fields and far away. Since then I’ve been wandering, avoiding them whenever they appeared.’
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