The Painted Tent (17 page)

‘I know. I don't seem to get on with it very well.'

‘Well, you'd better get on with it if you want a week's holiday. But no matter what – Laura stays here.'

‘That's super, ma'am. You're very good to me, ma'am.'

The Duchess grinned. ‘Now you're buttering me up. But don't think because I've got a soft spot for you that I'll give you a week's holiday just at a flicker of those blue eyes of yours. Latin will get you that.'

Smiler went out to work whistling. From the kitchen where she was washing up the Duchess heard him. With a shake of her head at Scampi, sunning himself on the windowsill, and a grin, she said, ‘Men.'

She reached out and turned on the radio for the regional news. The first item she heard was an account of the escape of a Princetown prisoner, Maxie Martin. Her face showed no surprise. The weather report the previous night had mentioned the mist over Dartmoor. The two went together and, for weeks now, she had known that one day they would. Her mind went back, as it had often done, to the morning she had taken Smiler into the painted tent and the crystal ball had shown her the figure of a blood-spattered running man and would have shown her more had she not closed her eyes against it. She switched off the radio.

As she did so, some twenty miles to the south of Bullay-brook Farm Maxie had gone to ground for the day. Following the river in daylight was a risk he would not take, a risk he did not have to take because the one commodity he possessed in abundance was time. He had climbed the slope of a rough pasture on the river-bank into a broad stand of dark firs. Some way in the wood was a small clearing where trees had been felled. One quick look around showed him that nobody had been working in the clearing for days. At the side of the clearing was a large pile of green-needled branches and slim fir tops that had been trimmed off the felled trees. Maxie burrowed into the pile, made himself a rough but not uncomfortable couch and then pulled loose branches over the opening, forming a screen thick enough to hide him but through which he could watch the clearing. He opened a tin of sardines and ate them with some biscuits from his store. Then he lay watching the clearing as the daylight strengthened. Around him the birds' dawn chorus gathered strength. For the first time that year he heard the chiff-chaff, the tolling of a cuckoo, and the lyrical, rippling notes of a willow warbler with its dying fall down the scale. A dog fox came to the edge of the clearing, sunlight gleaming briefly on its chestnut flanks, scented him and turned back into the firs. Maxie lay there content with his freedom, confident in his own skills and the loyalty of friends to preserve it for him.

The tiercel was in no hurry. He soared above the lightening land at three thousand feet and then, finding an air current, went lazily up on it into the fire-streaked glory of a cloudless, dawn sky. He went so high that no human eye from below could have followed him and then he side-slipped free of the rising column of air and winged northwards slowly.

The whole horizon was his except for the narrow wedge of view that flared away behind him in a broadening segment from his tail. He rocked now and then and below him the land tipped and swung like a coloured compass-card on its gimbals. He saw the white foam of water over the weirs of the Taw miles away, the smoke and dawn haze over distant Barnstaple and Bideford, and the pewter spread of the estuary and sea slowly being burnished by the rising sun. He loitered, idle and wandering, sometimes swinging out to the west and then curving in a great circle following the invisible coil of an air current that up-cushioned his almost fixed wings. The sun rose clear of the eastern reaches of the land and burned in an orange-red ball through the faint morning haze. The sky brightened, waking the pink and cream colours of farmhouse and cottage walls, silvering the slates of narrow church steeples and burdening the movement of bullock, cows and sheep at graze with long black shadows.

A thousand feet below, a flock of sandpipers flew northwards, making the quick passage from the South Devon coast to the Bristol Channel and beyond in their migratory flight back from Africa. Their sharp, musical trilling voices came up to him clearly as they chattered on the wing. He watched the quick flick of their white-barred wings, the play of light over their bronze backs and, on a sudden impulse, he tipped over and went down after them. He gave eight quick wing strokes in two seconds to speed his stoop, closed his wings, the long primaries folding slightly over his tail, and dropped like a dark spearhead. Within seconds he was stooping at well over eighty miles an hour and the ravished air hissed away from his body with a thin, tearing sound. But there was no hunger in him.

He marked the leading bird and shot past it a couple of inches from its tail. As the flock scattered in confusion, their panic cries filling the air, the tiercel threw up fifty feet below them and soared upwards, bursting through their ragged ranks. Then he rolled over, rocked on his wings, and watched them streaming earthwards, seeking the cover of the woods and river-bank below. He called
krek-krek-krek
after them and then drifted away to the north, watching the line of the river below and the worming movement of a train coming along the tracks between main road and river.

A little later he was over the church at Eggesford above the left bank of the Taw. Then, directly below him were the ruined house and tower of Highford. Over a thousand feet below he saw the figure of Fria sitting on the tower-top. He recognized at once the larger shape and size of a falcon. He flew on, and had the sharp-curving wriggle of the Bullay brook below him. He marked Smiler driving a tractor loaded with hurdles across one of the brook fields, saw Bob leading one of the horses across the yard, and the Duchess's white line of washing fluttering in the strengthening morning breeze.

Suddenly he turned, edged round in a half-circle and with quick wing-beats flew back along his course until he was over Highford House again. He circled at a thousand feet, watching Fria below, and wailed gently.

Fria made no movement. But she had seen the tiercel. She had seen him the first time he had flown over, and she watched him now. He swung round in a great circle and then came back, sliding lower down the sky and calling again. Watching him, Fria shuffled her feet a little and bobbed her head out of the excitement suddenly in her of seeing one of her own kind. The tiercel dropped lower in a short stoop, rolled twice in display and, flattening out, swung round the large chestnut in the old parkland. He came back to the ruined house and passed a hundred feet over Fria with a slow rocking movement of his wings.

The tiercel flew over her three times, wailing gently now and again. Fria followed his movements bobbing her head and shuffling her feet.

The tiercel came back and settled on the roof parapet of the old house. He sat there, shook his feathers into place, and stared fiercely across at Fria. Both birds sat for five minutes without stirring and then, suddenly, the tiercel flew across to the tower and settled on the far side of the leads from Fria. She turned and faced him across the tower top.

The tiercel, like all males, was only about a third of the size of the falcon. His back was a darker slate-colour than Fria's, and his breast, grey-barred, was creamier. But though smaller there was a strength and compactness about his bearing which Fria still lacked. His feet were as golden as Devon butter from good living and there were bright amber glints in his brown eyes. They sat facing one another for a while and suddenly Fria bobbed her head quickly three or four times. The tiercel shuffled his feet, flicked his wings and lowering his head, neck outstretched, wailed softly.

For half an hour they sat watching one another and Fria made no sound. Then the tiercel abruptly launched himself from the tower and flew out across the parkland towards the edge of the woods. He climbed quickly into the sky and disappeared over the crest of the trees out of Fria's sight. With his going she wailed loudly and shifted around on her station restlessly, but she did not move from the tower. With a slightly raised head she watched the sky.

Ten minutes later the tiercel came back. Fria saw him at once. He hung a thousand feet above her and held something in his talons. He called to her, not wailing, but in a commanding
krak-krak-krak.
He flew directly over Fria holding a magpie he had taken from the far side of the wood. As he passed he dropped the bird.

Fria watched it fall in an untidy tumble of sprawling black and white plumage. It dropped into the rhododendron shrubberies a hundred yards from her. Fria made no movement and her immobility seemed to enrage the tiercel. He dropped from his pitch and dived at her, wailing and chattering to himself. He passed three feet above her, the wind of his passage ruffling her feathers, and then swung up, climbed high, and disappeared over the woods again.

Some minutes later the tiercel came back to his high station, holding a turtle dove. He dropped it for Fria and she ignored it as it fell through the gaping roof of the ruined house into the rubble below.

The tiercel dived, wailing plaintively at her again, and then disappeared down the long wooded slopes to the river.

He was gone for half an hour. Fria sat in the strengthening morning brightness. Flies buzzed in the ivy foliage below her and an early bumblebee climbed awkwardly over the patches of stonecrop on the tower-roof. After a time Fria began to bob her head, shuffle her feet and wail softly to herself. She shook and aired her wings like a cormorant and then stabbed at a fly which settled on one of the bricks at her feet. For ten minutes she sat still and carven but her head was cocked slightly and her eyes watched the great segment of her vision for any sign of the tiercel.

She saw him when he was a mile away, flying high and coming down the river line from the opposite direction to the one which he had taken in leaving.

Fria wailed, bobbed her head and then flew off the tower. She beat up swiftly on a line to meet the tiercel. He saw her coming, swung away and began to ring up higher and higher above her. Fria followed him to a thousand feet and hung there. The tiercel was over another thousand feet above her. He circled easily, sitting over her, wailing and croaking to himself. Then the tiercel made a short stoop half-way down to Fria. As he flattened out at the bottom instead of throwing up, he dropped something from his right foot.

It was a sandpiper – one of the flock which the tiercel had disturbed earlier on and which he had taken two miles up the river. The dead sandpiper dropped lightly, the breeze against its loose wings and tail swinging and eddying it.

Fria watched it fall towards her. It passed twenty yards from her. As it dropped away below her she turned over and went down after it in a dive more than a sharp stoop. She turned under it, half rolled on her back and grabbed clumsily at it with both feet. She took it in her right foot, swung slowly on to an even keel and then began to fly down to the parapet of the ruined house. As she did so the tiercel walled and called above her.

Fria settled on a stone slab and began to feed on the sandpiper, taking no notice of the tiercel above. After a few moments the tiercel came down and settled on a parapet block ten yards from her. He sat silently watching her as she fed. The courtship had begun.

When Smiler went up to Highford House that Saturday afternoon there was no sign of Fria. On the roof he found the remains of the sandpiper and knew it had been a fresh kill. He waited for an hour, hoping that Fria would return, and then went down the hill to the river and worked his way through the leafy tunnel in search of her, thinking she might be perched somewhere after taking a bath.

Two hours later he went back to Bullaybrook Farm by way of Highford House and was delighted to see Fria sitting on the tower-top. He went happily back to the farm.

Fria was alone and the tiercel had gone. An hour before Smiler had first arrived the tiercel had taken wing, circled over the ruins, and called to Fria. She had gone up to him, and the tiercel had led the way, climbing high and heading for the coast, the call of his birth eyrie working in him. But as they had passed high over the coastline at Morte Point, unused to the wide vista of sea that opened under her. Fria had turned back. The tiercel had followed her and, after circling her for a while, had led the way northwards again. Fria had followed and then half-a-mile out at sea had baulked and returned south. The manoeuvre was repeated three times, and on the last occasion Fria had resolutely headed south for Highford House. The tiercel had watched her go and then turned northwards by himself, flying high between white banks of cumulus clouds.

Fria now sat alone on her tower while Smiler made his way back to the farm. He was half-way down the hill when he saw the small white police mini-van pull away from the front gate. It came up the hill and stopped alongside him.

Grimble, the cheerful-faced policeman, leaned out and gave him a nod and a smile, saying, ‘Hullo, Samuel – been setting some rabbit snares?'

Smiler grinned back and said, ‘They're not worth poaching with all the mixy about.'

‘You'd rather have a nice bit of red hake, eh?'

Smiler knew by now that ‘red hake' was the country term for salmon that had been illegally netted or gaffed from the river. He said, ‘I wouldn't know how to go about it.'

‘Pull the other one. Jimmy Jago wouldn't be backward in teaching his own kin how to poach a salmon.'

‘Well, he never has.'

Something about the man's manner put Smiler on the alert.

The policeman said, ‘Where is Jimmy these days, then?'

‘I don't know. Somewhere up north with a fair, I think.'

‘So you haven't seen him for some time, then?' The man's voice was casual, but Smiler sensed that there was some real intent behind it.

Keeping to the strict truth – though if pushed his loyalty to Jimmy would have made him forsake that – Smiler said, ‘He hasn't been around the farm for weeks. Why do you ask?'

The policeman chuckled and said, ‘ Because the parson isn't the only one who takes an interest in his parishioners. Very fond of Jimmy, I am. Always like to know how he's getting on and where he's to be found – if I should fancy a piece of nice red hake.'