Tivington Nott Read Online Free Page B

belly, he’ll sneak into someone’s turnip field. And then some half-witted labourer, arriving to shift the hurdles, will see his great slot there, superimposed on the sheep tracks of the day before and frozen into the mud in the morning. The footprint of the devil staring him in the face!
    The yokel will drop everything and run to tell his master. Crazy to see those big hounds having a go. Howling and wailing and crying on the trail! Lighting everybody up with his news that there’s a warrantable stag harbouring in the area.
    Except you don’t need a warrant to hunt a nott. It’s open season on them all year round.
    Solitary. Always on guard. Never at ease with the herd.
    It was late one October afternoon a year ago that I found him. I’m following this stream to its source. Just for the pleasures of exploration and of being on my own. It’s Bampton Fair day and the Tiger’s been forced by one of his own traditions to give us most of the day off. He’d squirm out of it if he could, but Morris doesn’t ask on these occasions. The local custom is good enough for him. He makes sure the Tiger knows what his plans are in good time, and he and his wife go visiting her parents, over to Monksilver for the day.
    Too bad for the Tiger!
    I get out as fast as I can too. As soon as the milking’s done I’m gone. It’s either that or get trapped by Tiger into doing some five-minute job that ends up taking all day.
    I get away!
    Right out of the place. Gone. Saying nothing. On my own. Heading off by a roundabout route till I’m way out on the moor. Keeping always to cover. Making the most of my opportunity for penetrating the wilderness.
    Soon I’ve got my head down and I’m moving along quietly. Up the twisting track of the steep combe. Going deeper into the woods. Following the stream-bed and checking the small things. On the lookout for the unusual. Letting nothing pass. Turning the stones in the water. Sniffing at the weeds and herbs and seeking among the dense variety to get to a knowledge of it. It absorbs me. I never know what I am going to come across next. Human beings have been moving through this land for thousands of years. Leaving this and that behind. Not much, but something, every now and then, a thing out of place among the leaves and water-worn pebbles because of shape or texture. No more than a stone itself maybe. Odd man out. Giving you the sense it has been brought. And the flow of the stream is always uncovering new layers.
    Crawling, when I have to, through the tough undergrowth, and wading when there’s no other way. Squirming and pushing and scrabbling my way right into the silent coverts that no one visits. To see what’s there. And I sit without moving under the ripe canopy of thorn and bramble. Staring. Hardly breathing. Feeling it all close and intense around me. Waiting for me to move on so that it can return to action. And rising in me the feeling that I want to break my alien fears against its wary inhabitants. Surprise them. Hunt them.
    And that feeling keeps me there for a while.
    Then I go on. Moving away from it. Returning to the enjoyment of the day. And I don’t notice that I’m entering the mouth of a hidden glade under the dark canopy of the larches, and the stream-bank on either side a bed of needles. Soft and deep. Undisturbed.
    Until the nott barks a sudden warning. I stop dead in my tracks. My heart thumping. I don’t know what it is and can see nothing at first.
    Then, stationary in the dark jumble of shadows, I see him. The wide-set, slanting eyes of a satyr. Wild and aggressive. Staring directly into mine. Neither of us moving. His thick neck-hair shaggy and standing out, knotted and sopping, with black mud cascading from his flanks. Something mad and savage rising from the wallow to confront me!
    Staring at him it takes me seconds to work out that I am looking at a red stag and not at something from rumour and fear.
    Alone in the woods with an escaped maniac!
    Running