The Hound Of The D’urbervilles

by Kim Newman

  Having just taken over a whole country, the new king had a lot on his plate. For a start, he was on a tear to get everyone who’d scorned him as William the Bastard to hail him as William the Conqueror. Bill the Conk couldn’t be bothered to sort through the claims, so seventy-six lying bowmen got knighted in a job-lot. After that, they felt literally entitled to claim their own fiefdoms. Sir Pagan d’Urberville’s land-grab netted him a third of Wessex. He built himself a castle at Trantridge.

  Titled and landed, Sir Pagan toadied less to the Conqueror, but knocked along with the Bastard’s son, William Rufus. William I was an empire builder, a man with a mission; William II was an empire enjoyer, a pursuer of virile pastimes. Junior succeeded to the English throne in 1087 and grumbled that he would have preferred Normandy, which went to his older brother. With his pal crowned, Sir Pagan became eminent. After William Rufus remarked offhand that d’Urberville’s forest offered the finest ‘chase’ in his kingdom, it became known as The Chase.

  The new king was a fiend for hunting. His primary interest was any game animal which might provide horns, hide or tusks to decorate his castles. William II was killed by a close friend while they were out after deer. Something similar happened to a tiger-stalking crony of mine in India. It was said Walter Tyrell, William Rufus’ slayer, was too good a bowman to make such a mistake. A like criticism was laid against me. I refer the interested reader to my earlier remark about how difficult it can be to just miss a shot.

  With English game ripe to be brought down by Norman sports, Sir Pagan threw himself into the pursuit. Every huntsman has to have his dogs. The Trantridge kennels became famous. Though he cleans it up somewhat, Baring-Gould recounts a rumour that Sir Pagan d’Urberville himself sired the litter which became his hunting pack, getting puppies on a she-wolf imported from the Harz Mountains. The dogs came out big, hungry and red.

  Even taking the she-wolf story with a pinch of the proverbial, Sir Pagan remained essentially French in his habit of tumbling anything which strayed past. You’re aware of the custom of droit de seigneur, that the feudal lord is entitled – nay, obliged – to take first jump at any local bride on her wedding night? Pagan imported the custom to England. When grooms complained, he ruled that, to be impartial about it, he’d take his pleasure with them too. Extensive romping and riding to hounds made Sir Pagan a fine, rollicking fellow to lordly Norman chums and a bitterly hated tyrant to smelly Saxon underlings.

  After a few years’ happy hunting, Sir Pagan’s dickybird got him into trouble. Comes to us all, I’m afraid. Sir Pagan, like several of his lineal and nominal descendents, came a cropper because he stuck it in the wrong hole – or at least the wrong hole-bearer.

  Word got out that d’Urberville was regularly rogering peasant bridegrooms. Venic of Melchester, a Saxon monk, left his monastery to raise a fuss about such shocking behaviour. He turned up at Trantridge in the middle of a feast and had the poor judgement to deliver a fiery sermon against sodomy, fornication and the wicked habit of calling English meats by French names. Sir Pagan was a firm adherent of the philosophy that you could hunt or prod anything and often do both. He had Venic whipped and set off after the monk with his dogs. Baring-Gould doesn’t go into what happened after Pagan ran down his prey in The Chase – but it’s a fair bet Venic got served in the Bulgarian fashion and staggered away bow-legged. Don’t see the attraction myself, but Mrs Halifax says it takes all sorts to butter a biscuit.

  Aggrieved, Venic took a petition of complaint to the court, calling for the King’s Justice upon Sir Pagan. When William Rufus laughed off his pal’s high-spirited prankery, the monk went to the church and called for Heaven’s Justice. The Bishops knew the king and his axeman lived closer to their palaces than the Pope in Rome, let alone God Almighty, and dismissed Venic as a crank. At this, he despaired. He swore aloud at a crossroads that he would deal with the Devil, if Hell’s Justice were levelled against Sir Pagan d’Urberville...

  Now pledged a monk for Satan, Venic returned to The Chase, where he lived wild, more beast than man. He harried Sir Pagan’s men-at-arms, killed the livestock and raided foodstores. Sir Pagan made his own vow to kill Venic and – for months – set out regularly with his dogs. Even before Venic moved in, The Chase was reputedly haunted. Paths were ill mapped and changed from day to day. If you walked around the wood, it was no larger than a small-holding; if you walked through, it seemed the breadth of a kingdom. Still, Sir Pagan knew his woods and should have been able to catch Venic again.

  Failing to bring back his monk’s head, he grew moody. He let serfs go inviolate to their marriage beds. He failed to attend court and slid from Royal favour – making room for the rise of Walter Tyrell... and we all know how well that turned out.

  He laid off hunting anything but the mad monk.

  Cheated of regular prey, the pack became unruly, vicious, and fought among themselves. Soon, they were killing and eating each other. That’s when Sir Pagan first noticed Red Shuck. Originally the runt of the she-wolf’s litter, he grew stronger, surviving many battles. He grew wilder, redder even, as if taking on substance from dogs he killed, ’til he stood tall as a pony, long as a boat – with bloody froth about his mouth and fangs like daggers. Sir Pagan’s remaining cronies cautioned him against the dog, but the Master was pleased with Red Shuck. He thought that only when it had consumed the hearts of the rest of the pack would it be able to root out Venic. At last, Red Shuck had the kennel to himself, as Sir Pagan was left alone with his servants by the desertion of his household. His wife and children removed themselves across Wessex and established the d’Urberville seat of Kingsbere.

  Still, Venic was not found, no matter how knight and dog sought him. He would appear in the village, speaking against Normans in general and Sir Pagan in particular – but when d’Urberville and Red Shuck came, he was back in The Chase. This went on until Sir Pagan took it into his head to flush out his quarry by burning the forest to ash. In India, this is known as hunquah. It’s a tricky practice, as likely to raze the village as flush out the tiger.

  Hayricks were carted to a clearing and a fire started. It wouldn’t spread, as if the breath of Hell kept it back. At sunset, Sir Pagan sensed his enemy nearby and sicced his dog. Red Shuck bounded from the clearing, intent on rending Venic apart. Fearful cries, human and animal, were heard. Sir Pagan’s last servants abandoned him – except one page, necessary to recount the end of the story. Sir Pagan ranted at the trees, his failing fire and the skies. Then, who should step into the clearing but Venic of Melchester, wearing the bloody skin of Red Shuck.

  Most versions of the tale throw in ‘hold, varlet’/‘Norman dog’/’Saxon swine’/‘have at thee, sirrah’ chatter out of Ivanhoe. I imagine the actual talk between mortal enemies ran to free exchange of Old English and French words not in Sir Walter Scott’s vocabulary.

  Sir Pagan reached for his sword. Venic wrapped the dog-hide around his shoulders, until it was tighter than his own skin. Then his eyes got big. He had more and longer teeth. He was covered in red fur. He was, in fact, Red Shuck, walking on his hind legs like a man. Baring-Gould’s version is that the dog was the monk all along, but Orderic Vitalis has it that Venic commingled with Red Shuck just as the top dog had taken on the strength of the pack – by consuming his flesh and spirit. At any rate, this thing which was both Red Shuck and Venic fell upon wicked Sir Pagan and tore out the knight’s gullet. To finish off his meal, the big dog ate d’Urberville’s still-beating heart.

  Since that day, the legend goes, Red Shuck has lived in The Chase, snacking off lost children, feasting on d’Urberville meat whenever the family produces a tyrant or villain. Which, as you might expect, has happened often.

  Over the centuries, dozens of dastardly d’Urbervilles have been killed in circumstances ambiguous enough to allow the legend of the avenging demon dog to enjoy periodic revivals. Few of the family died in bed – unless you count those stabbed by their popsies like Alec Stoke-d’Urberville or poisoned by impatient heirs like Pur
itan General Godwot d’Urberville. No wonder the true line was extinct when Shylock Si was rooting for a new name. It’s a mystery the d’Urbervilles lasted as long as they did, considering an apparently hereditary predisposition to suspicious accident, outright homicide, unusual suicide (Sir Tancred d’Urberville arranged to be eaten by rooks), inexplicable mutilation and unsolved disappearance.

  The phantom coach is a sixteenth-century addition to the family’s spectral register, summoned by Lizzie d’Urberville to fetch her naughty children off to Hades. When you say ‘naughty children’, you mean broken crockery and pulled pigtails... when my sanctimonious pater said ‘naughty children’, he meant gambling debts and housemaids in the pudding club... when a sixteenth-century d’Urberville said ‘naughty children’, she meant violated churchyards, drowned schoolfellows and a castle burned to the ground.

  Before and after the story of the coach was put about, the primary d’Urberville ghost was Red Shuck. However, upon examination of first-hand accounts, the spook tales mostly amount to a d’Urberville dying and within three months someone seeing a dog in the dark which might have been red but might equally not, or could also have been a large goat or a stile with a blanket thrown over it.

  It’s on record that, at various times, rashes of savage attacks on animals and people have taken place in or near The Chase. In the 1820s, the naturalist Dunstan d’Urberville advanced a theory that the legend of ‘Red Shuck’ related to some as-yet uncatalogued animal found only in the thick of the ancient woodland.

  In clubrooms, I’ve run across the odd sportsman – Long John Roxton comes to mind – obsessed with hunting specimens which aren’t in the books. Undeterred by the obituaries of predecessors who actually have pre-deceased them on the trail of monsters, they set out to bag Scotch lake serpents or the Beast of Gévaudan. Few of these Nimrods bring back trophies which don’t look like they’ve been sewn together for a funfair. However, every year, in unexplored corners of the globe, new creatures are catalogued by intrepid men of science – shortly followed by intrepid men of sport, like yours truly. Sticking a Latin name on a lemur or warthog or dragonfly is all very well, but it can’t compete with the honour of being the first to pot the marvel and mount it over the mantelpiece. As a veteran of a couple of go-rounds with the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, I know whereof I speak.

  Duffer Dunstan posited the existence in The Chase of a large, unusually hardy wolf species which had survived the extinction of wolfkind in the rest of the British Isles. While tracking his ‘Wessex Wolf’, Dunstan tripped over a tree stump and broke his fool leg. He expired, without heir, of odoriferous gangrene and that was the last of the d’Urbervilles.

  ...Until Simon Stoke saved up his pennies.

  IV

  Having outlined the Red Shuck legend, as told by Parson Tringham in the Red Dog, Jasper Stoke continued his own story.

  ‘Two nights later, there was a howling in The Chase. I’ve heard coyotes and I’ve heard Injuns pretending to be coyotes. This was different. You know that animal screech you hear after someone’s been tortured a spell?... After the tough leather has gone out of a hard customer, but before the body’s completely done for?... The deep-lungs scream that comes when the mind cracks like a walnut?’

  Professor Moriarty nodded, with a tiny smile.

  ‘Well, the howling was worse than that. The whole house stirred from their beds, or whoever’s beds they were in, and clattered about in nightshirts and boots. We found guns and gathered in the great hall.’

  ‘I fetched Gertie,’ Dan’l said.

  ‘Howling seemed to come from all around, as if it had got into the house like a draught. Nakszynski, the coolest of hands, let shot fly and pimpled a suit of armour. The maids quacked like geese. Saul, who isn’t all there, sat by a window, gazing out at the bright moon. He looked like a ghost himself. He uttered “Red Shuck”, which was the first I heard the name. I asked what he meant, but he was dreaming out loud. Mod stopped me from shaking an answer out of her brother, saying Saul always comes over queer on full-moon nights. Just one more piece of f---ing information calculated not to set the mind at ease.

  ‘The howls were going on full-throat and the Albino firing a shotgun indoors hadn’t soothed the ears any. Lazy-Eye Jack heard “Red Shuck” and dug up what he recollects of Tringham’s yarn. The phrase “ghost dog” gave me a sudden insight. I was being fooled with by someone who wished ruin to my prospectus for Trantridge. I don’t credit tales of infernal animals or a d’Urberville curse. I’m more inclined to lay my troubles on the corporeal, contemporary Diggory Venn. I suspected red-stained fingers in the puddle. I told the boys to track down the howling c--t and put it out of its misery.’

  Dan’l looked sheepish at this.

  ‘I expect a deal of smart snapping-to when I give out an order,’ continued Stoke. ‘On this occasion, there was general hesitation. Though Lazy-Eye hadn’t seen fit to pass the parson’s ghost story to me, he’d spread it round the bunkhouse, with embellishments to frighten superstitious, ignorant morons...’

  He looked at Dan’l.

  ‘Mod and her brothers knew the tale from childhood. So did the servants. I was the only prick to whom Red Shuck was fresh news. As master, it fell to me to venture out with my Winchester and see off the howling nuisance. Braham advised against it, and he’s supposed to be the sensible, educated one in his family. Nakszynski was fired up to shoot something which would bleed. We stepped out the big front door. As soon as we were outside, the howling shuts off... and the rest of the yellow-livered curs joined us in the drive...’

  ‘Was anyone absent?’ asked the Professor.

  ‘No,’ responded Stoke. ‘I counted heads and checked off names. I thought, like you, that it was an inside job. But we were all present. At sun-up, two maids and a stablehand gave notice and hared off as if there was an Earp price on their heads. One dolly didn’t even stay to pick up her wages. The other said she’ll be safer on the game in Casterbridge. Which gives you an idea of what I’m facing.’

  ‘All this from a noise in the night?’ I snorted.

  ‘Something got into the chicken coops and tore apart the poultry...’

  ‘Feathers and guts and beaks and eyes everywhere,’ elaborated Dan’l. ‘Like to put me off mah feed!’

  ‘In daylight, Braham grew back his balls and concluded a fox or a weasel was the guilty party. Maybe a fox and a weasel, working together. Nasty critters, foxes and weasels. I ordered new wire fences around the coops, stouter timbers... and restocked the place. No fox-weasel is going to fright me off my land. I got more of the Red Shuck story from Lazy-Eye Jack and Mod. It isn’t happenstance Trantridge Hall got raided and howled at. This was direct challenge to me and my position.

  ‘Next night, there was howling again... further off from the house. I’d set night-guards, but they didn’t see anything. I was all for charging into The Chase and killing whatever and whoever was behind the racket. Again, I was cautioned against this. After a moment, I saw Braham’s right and I’m wrong. Not because a demon dog is waiting in the clearing where wicked Sir Pagan was devoured... but because I knew this was a trick to draw me into the wild woods where I could be done away with in such manner a ghost can take the blame. No law’s ever hanged a ghost. So, I insisted we all go back to bed and ignore the rumuckus. I personally had a fine night’s sleep.

  ‘Next morning, one of the tenants, Git Priddle, was missing some sheep who’d bled a deal before being fetched off, but that’s his problem. Payment was still due and, after the Albino knocked Priddle about a bit, was forthcoming. I know there is subterfuge round Trantridge and still suspect a red hand in it, though Venn hasn’t been sighted since he took his back-stripes. I took advantage of the rent-collection round to have the estate entirely searched, prying into every barn and pen to conduct a census of livestock necessary for the accounts, and to see if anyone, or any creature, is concealed. We turned up beasts scurvy tenants were keeping off the rolls and clipped ears with wirecutter
s to discourage the practice. I’m in two minds about Git Priddle’s famous black ram, which strikes me as more likely in hiding than done for, but it didn’t show up. No trace of the reddleman either. And no Red Shuck.

  ‘By day, I had The Chase searched, though that’s the definition of futile endeavour. Next night, last of the full moon, I thought to get ahead of Red Shuck and frame my own trap. Leaving the Hall and grounds unguarded would be too obvious, so I had the boys sit up after dark, complaining loudly at the inconvenience, then slope off in the small hours as if shirking duty. Trick of it was that, well before sundown, without letting anyone else in on it, Lazy-Eye secreted himself by the coops under a blanket of twigs and leaves which makes him look, even smell, like a garbage heap. The old Injun fighter can lay still for days if need be. Among the aliases on his ”Wanted – Dead or Alive“ poster is “Ambush Jack”. He had orders to shoot any c---sucker who showed face on the grounds. That night, there was no howling. I figured Ambush Jack trumps Red Shuck...

  ‘Lazy-Eye wasn’t at his post the next morning. His blanket was flung aside and tracks led into The Chase. Dan’l and I set out after him. Trail was plain even in the early morning mist. When we found Jack, in a clearing, he wasn’t yet dead. Blood bubbled out of his throat. Air whistled through a hole. He died without saying anything. His holster was empty. We found the gun yards away, still in his hand – Jack’s hand wasn’t on the end of his arm any more. I’m no tracker, but I could tell something’s been about from the broken bushes and trampled grass. In soft earth, we found this...’