The Painted Tent (7 page)

Freddie, stirred now by his unusual liberty, chattered with excitement and sidled quickly along the top of the cages, moving in a sideways, hump-backed posture. He did a little jumping dance on top of the griffon's cage. Then he dropped to the floor, ran along the barn, climbed the loft steps on the rear side, swung from a rung with one foot and dropped to the floor. He landed outside Fria's cage.

Fria, wide awake now and disturbed by all the unusual movement, looked down at him and gaped silently through her strong hooked beak. Freddie rattled his stick against the open door. Fria, alarmed, edged along her perch to the side of the cage. Freddie, grunting, hauled himself up into the open doorway of the cage and walked in, keeping well away from Fria. He leaned over her shallow tin bath and took a drink of the water. Then, with a sudden movement, he seized the side of the bath and up-ended it. Water streamed all over the floor and the bath went half-rolling, half-sliding towards Fria. Freddie gave a sudden scream of excitement and leapt after it.

Fria moved with her characteristic swift peregrine shuffle across her perch. As Freddie came after her, waving his stick, she launched herself towards the open door. She flew awkwardly and weakly, losing height and landed clumsily in a heap in the dust and straw alongside the ram's pen.

Freddie sat in the doorway of her cage and watched her. Fria straightened herself up, shook her wings into place, and stared at him.

Highly excited now, Freddie did a chattering dance in the doorway, dropped to the ground, and went after Fria. Alarmed, Fria ran along the ground, wings half open for flight. As Freddie came swiftly for her, she launched herself again. This time her wings beat more strongly as she strove to lift herself above the pursuing chimpanzee.

She made the top rung of the barn ladder, hitting it clumsily, and just managing to hold on with her talons. Freddie eyed her from the bottom of the ladder, grunting with pleasure at this new-found game. Then he went up after her.

Fria spread her dark slate-grey wings and flew awkwardly half the length of the barn, aiming for the top of the griffon's cage. She missed it, tried out of some dim instinct for the mechanics of flight to check herself with a braking of her wings, hit the side of the cage and fell to the floor. The mynah birds, now thoroughly astir, shrieked and whistled and Freddie came chattering after her.

Frightened, her heart beating with near-panic strength, Fria jumped into the air as Freddie neared her. Fear gave her enough strength to take her up and into a clumsy half-turn. She came out of it awkwardly and flew in slow wing-beats down the barn to the loft steps again. After her, delighted with the game, came Freddie.

It was Freddie's delight in his antics that benefited Fria. In her own cage she had never done more than exercise her wings now and then by flapping them as she sat on her perch, and using them to half-jump, half-fly to and from the cage floor. She had never known the pure wonder of a peregrine's real flight, knew nothing of the mastery of the air which is the supreme gift of the falcons, had never as an eyas stood ready for the first essay in flight on some eyrie lip with a deep drop below and the freedom of the skies above, nerving herself for the first launching into space to take her place alongside tiercel and falcon winging and wailing encouragement as they quartered the air a few feet out from the eyrie. Her wing muscles were stiff, unused, and untrained in co-ordination. When it came to flying she had almost everything to learn. With Freddie pursuing her now, she was forced into a series of panic lessons. For the next half-hour Freddie kept up his assaults and each time Fria was forced to make her escape, and each time she did some little of the stiffness and awkwardness of her wings dropped from her.

In the end whether from design, from the forced exercise of her natural wit, or from pure luck she escaped him by finding the ledge of an old bricked-up window high above the door which led into the barn, where Freddie, grumbling and chattering with frustration, could not reach her.

She sat there trembling with nervous and physical exhaustion while Freddie danced below her for a while. Then, as though tired of the taste of freedom, Freddie shambled off down the barn, jumped into his cage and bundled himself up in his straw bed and slept.

The mynahs which had escaped swooped down and into their cage. Fria sat on her ledge and slowly the fear she had known began to leave her. But as it died away, so did some part of the old Fria. For the first time in months she had known a kind of freedom and its unusual touch had stirred something in her spirit.

Smiler was the first into the barn the next morning. One glance told him that things were not right. The light was still on and, more obviously, Freddie was sitting on the lowest rung of the loft ladder placidly chewing at an onion – his favourite food – which he had taken from a string of these vegetables which was hung up over the grain-store bin beneath the far window.

Freddie looked up, gave Smiler a welcoming grunt, and then shambled across to him, holding the half-eaten onion in his mouth. Before Smiler could do anything Freddie shinned up him, clamped one long arm around his shoulders and nuzzled his face into Smiler's neck affectionately, almost choking him with the strong odour of onion.

Smiler took one look down the row of cages and saw the mischief that had been done. With Freddie in his arms he went down the barnside, shutting pen doors and cages. He prised Freddie from him and put him in his cage, where he retired happily to his straw bed to finish the onion.

Smiler crossed the barn and closed up the griffon's and the mynah birds' cages and then stood in front of Fria's cage. It was empty and the upturned bath lay across the damp boards at the back of the cage. Smiler, feeling angry at whoever had come into the barn to cause trouble, turned slowly round with a grim face. In the dim, early morning light from the far window he saw Fria sitting on her ledge about sixteen feet from the ground. Her eyes were open, watching him but her head was sunk into her shoulders and her feathers had been shaken out so that she looked like some disreputable old owl.

Smiler stood there, not knowing what to do. He had left the barn door open and he knew that he would have to go back along the length of the barn to close it before he could attempt to catch Fria. Once the barn door was shut he could unhook the loft ladder and set it against the wall, take a sack and go up to Fria. With luck, he could throw it over her before she moved. Watching her out of the corner of his eye, he began to move slowly up the barn. Fria watched him unmoving.

With a feeling of relief Smiler reached the door and shut it. Trying to keep his movements easy and unalarming, he found a sack and then unhooked the loft ladder. Very slowly he raised it against the wall. As the top of the ladder came to rest a foot below her Fria suddenly half-flapped her wings and, lowering her head, bated at the ladder top below her. Smiler kept still and waited until she had calmed down. Then very slowly he began to climb the ladder. As far as Fria was concerned he would have gladly let her go to her freedom had she been able to fly properly and look after herself by killing, but he knew that once she was loose outside she would have only the slimmest chance of survival.

Smiler crept up the ladder, making a soft clicking sound at the back of his throat – something which for weeks now he had taken to doing when he fed Fria. It was a sound she understood. It meant food. Smiler prayed that she was hungry enough now to stay where she was in the hope of being fed.

When he was four rungs from the top of the ladder Smiler halted. Taking his weight on his feet, his knees pressed against a ladder-rung to give him a firm balance, he slowly got both hands to the sack and with an unhurried movement spread it wide so that he could swamp the falcon with it.

Slowly he began to raise the sack and Fria watched as it came level with her feet. Then, just as Smiler was poised to make his bid to capture her, from far down the barn Freddie, his onion finished, and greedy for another, suddenly began to chatter loudly and shake at the bars of his cage. The sound disturbed Fria. All her fears during the night chase had been associated with it. As Smiler made a lunge to cover her, she ran sideways along the ledge and launched herself downwards. Smiler, just saving himself from falling from the ladder, turned and saw her wing clumsily down the barn towards the far window. She rose awkwardly to the light coming through. Then, realizing it offered no escape, she made a scrabbling turn, so close to the glass that her left wing flight feathers swept away an accumulation of old spiders' webs. She lost a couple of feet on the turn and, the panic she had known during the night returning to her, she swept back up the barn. She was faced with an awkward turning manoeuvre to avoid the end wall of the barn. She made a mess of the turn, hit the wall lightly, and tried to cling to it. For a moment or two she hung, wings beating, her talons scrabbling against the surface for a hold, spread-eagled like some awkward bat. Then she fell away sideways, and flew straight for the barn door, half-dazed with fear and shock.

At that moment the door opened inwards. Bob Old stood on the threshold. Fria dived towards him, swerved slowly to one side, and flew out into the open as Smiler gave a far-too-late, warning shout.

Outside a strong west wind, damp with the promise of rain to come, swept across the brook valley. For the first time Fria felt the living, pulsing power of moving air cushioned under her wings and was tossed up out of control like a vagrant sheet of newspaper. She met the force with panic and wild wing-beats, and her beating wings took her up almost vertically across the face of the barn wall.

Just under the roof of the barn, and protected by a little gable roof of its own, was the loft doorway. Projecting from the top of the doorway was a stout wooden rafter with a pulley wheel attached to its end. Unused now, this projecting pulley beam had formerly served for hauling sacks of corn from carts below for storage in the loft.

As she beat frantically upwards Fria saw the overhang of the small gable roof and the long length of the pulley beam. From instinct rather than design she flew into the shelter of the little roof, raised her wings and settled with a desperate, scrambling movement of legs and talons on the beam. Once there she squared around slowly to face the force of the blustery wind.

Down below Smiler and Bob stared up at her.

Bob said, ‘How did she get free?'

Angrily Smiler said, ‘Some stupid devil got in the barn last night and opened some of the cages.'

Bob considered this, and then said, ‘That don't surprise me. There's one or two around here don't altogether take to us. Circus folk, gypsies, didikys they know we are – and because they don't understand our ways they take a delight in being awkward.'

‘But what are we going to do about Fria, Mr Bob?'

‘Go up and open that loft door and just leave her. Come food time, put some out for her in the loft. When she's hungry enough she'll go in and then we can put the ladder up from here and close the doors on her. No trouble then.'

‘But say she flies off or gets blown off? She doesn't know how to look after herself. She'll just die.'

‘Ay, she might, Sammy. But then again, she might not. Animals may not think like humans, but they've got their own kind of common-sense. She'll settle for herself what she wants to do – and my guess is that she'll come into the loft for food when she's hungry.'

But Fria did not come into the loft, though Smiler did everything he could to get her back. That first day he opened the loft doors and put food and water on the broad sill of the hatch opening. When Fria saw him at the opening she shuffled along the pulley beam well out of reach, took a firm grip on the weather-worn wood and sleeked down her feathers to ease the wind resistance against her. Time and again, as Smiler worked, he came back to see her, but she scarcely moved her position on the beam all day.

That night the food and drink were left on the ledge and the loft doors open. A new and more secure hiding-place was found for the barn key. When Smiler made his night visit the food was untouched and the dark shape of Fria on her beam was silhouetted against the night sky.

For two days Fria did not move from her beam except to shuffle back under the protection of the small pent roof when it rained hard. She sat and watched the strangeness of the new world before her, like a medieval carving. There was nothing wrong with her physically except that her body, her flight muscles and her talents were unused and untrained. Her eyes, which could take in the whole horizon without moving, except the little segment of the loft in her rear, were the wonder eyes of a falcon, nature's great gift to her kind. Her wide-ranging eyes had eight times the power of man's and a depth of focus that could show her the quick beat of a rook's wing miles away, the fall of a late leaf half-a-mile up the far valley side, and the movement of a foraging, long-tailed field-mouse through the winter grasses down by the brook.

Fria sat on her beam and watched this new world. She watched the movement of the cattle in the pasture, the quick flight of pigeons coming high over the valley woods, the movement of people and traffic now and then at the brook bridge, the rolling, changing shapes of the rain-clouds sweeping in from the distant sea, and the coming and going of Smiler and Bob and Bill and the Duchess about the farm. But there were two things she watched in those first days with special interest. At noon one day, when a scattering of sparrows were squabbling on the yard cobbles over a few handfuls of grain that had been spilled, a sparrow hawk came round the corner of the barn in a swift, low-flying, piratical swoop. As the sparrows rose in alarm, the hawk burst into their midst, did a half wing-roll and took one of the sparrows in its talons and flew on with it. Something about the hawk and the manoeuvre wakened some ancestral memory in Fria. Three times a day for the first two days Fria saw this manoeuvre and each time a sparrow was taken. And another bird wakened a response in her. Now and again a kestrel came quartering up the valley and hung over the pasture by the brook. Fria eyed it the first time, watched the wing-tip tremor of its poised hover and saw, as plainly as the kestrel could see, the movement of a winter foraging vole in the brook-side grasses. When the kestrel plummeted with upraised wings and made its kill, Fria shuffled restlessly on her beam. She lowered her head, trod impatiently with her feet and uttered a faint call, a thin wail –
wickoo, wickoo
– that was barely audible. Again and again Fria watched sparrow hawk and kestrel in their hunting and always an excitement stirred in her which sent a swift, tremble through her wings or made her lower her head and wail gently.