Lord Morgan's Cannon (18 page)

“I like your waistcoat,” he then said. “Maybe I should get one. Black does get a bit dull.”

He offered up his last biscuit to the monkey, but Edward refused it, shaking his head and running across the laboratory. The monkey climbed the curtains and sat upon the curtain pole, peering down at the professor. Edward realised he could detect the aroma of chickens in the room. He noticed a wooden pen tucked under the foot of the drape. In it was a yellow chick, lying motionless on its side, its tongue out of its beak. Edward reasoned that the chick had been left in the pen to find its way out, and it could not.

As the evening drew on, and the light faded, Lord Morgan lit an electric lamp.

“This lamp,” he said to Edward. “This is progress. We must keep moving forward, we must press on. Oh I have ambitions for our understanding of your kind,” he told the monkey. “I have ambitions for this place,” he said, surveying his room. “For this college.”

The professor went to a drawer in his desk and took out a small bottle of port. He uncorked the top. Edward smelled the grapes and alcohol and watched as Lord Morgan pursed his lips, taking a nip. Lord Morgan drank some more. Edward wondered why men with beards liked to drink this way, and promised himself to try it one day. He then listened hard as Lord Morgan became melancholy and ranging with his words.

“We must develop a university culture. Indeed, we must become a proper university! And to become that, we need to be touched by a royal hand.”

Edward watched the human become drunk, just as he’d regularly watched the Ring Master imbibe in his circus wagon. The Ring Master always started by talking at Edward. As his words became slower, he’d progress to talking down to the monkey. When he found it difficult to complete his sentences he evolved into delivering tales of grandeur.

And now Lord Morgan walked the same path, fuelled by the port and a matching bottle he opened the moment he finished the first.

As the night closed in and the electric lamp appeared to burn brighter, the white rabbit scampered in circles around the laboratory floor, revelling in his freedom. Edward clung to the curtain pole as Lord Morgan talked up to him, telling him what a wonderful creature he was. He spoke of hierarchies, suggesting that some were to be challenged. But then he reversed, saying that hierarchy must be respected. Edward couldn’t follow his language and logic until, in a pique, Lord Morgan announced that Edward was a more convincing primate than he. The professor suggested that Edward had the true verve and talent. And that in a couple of day’s time, it should be Edward the monkey, rather than the human scientist, who presented to the King of England during his royal visit to University College, Bristol.

Doris, Bear and Bessie argued who should tap on the window. Doris offered to slap the pane with her trunk, but Bear suggested she might put it through. He wanted to scratch down the glass with his talon, but Bessie said she hated the noise it would make. Both Doris and Bear refused to believe that a budgerigar could hit upon the window with the requisite power, but she proved them wrong by tapping forcefully upon the glass with her beak. Edward didn’t hear it, the noise too high pitched for his bad ear not buried in the folds of the curtain upon the pole.

Bessie danced left and right along the ledge to align her head with the gap in the curtain. She peeked inside. A light was on, but all she could see was a white rabbit wandering the floor. Tony the terrier jumped up. As his legs left the ground, he recognised the puzzle box that had carried Edward away. He landed, declaring he was certain the animals were standing outside of the office window to Lord Morgan’s laboratory in the Department of Psychology and Education at University College, Bristol.

“This isn’t working. We should have knocked at the front door,” said Doris.

“Hang on,” said Bear. “Try again Bessie.”

She tapped again, this time using her skills to create a long regular, repetitive sequence. She heard a noise inside and cocked her head. She repeated herself. Suddenly her message was replayed back to her, from inside the room. Something was tapping on metal inside the laboratory, answering her call. Bessie tapped out her sounds on the glass, and again they were repeated back at her, like two birds singing a duet.

Bessie chirped with excitement. Bear the anteater heard it too. He stood up on his hind legs, setting his long flowing black tail on to the ground. He placed his huge talons on to the window ledge, and as Bessie hopped between them, he turned his long snout and rested his small ear against the glass. Doris leaned down and opened out one of her ears, straining to register the high frequency of the message. For a few minutes, the animals stood in the dark, the wind passing over their noses as they listened to Bessie’s tapping being answered in kind.

Suddenly the curtains inside the window were thrown open. The electric light of the room flooded outside, capturing a budgerigar, anteater and elephant staring in. Staring back was Lord Morgan, tired, dishevelled and as shocked as the animals. He’d expected to see a starling, or squirrel, drawn to the light and smell of food. He’d been using his teaspoon upon the wire of a cage, tapping back, testing the language of this creature, trying to ascertain the randomness or otherwise of its communications. He was unprepared for the bizarre animals he saw on the other side of the glass. Grabbing his chest, he gulped for air and fell back on to the hard stone floor.

Lord Morgan’s appearance sent Bessie into a flap and her flailing wings caught Bear’s spectacles, knocking them off his face. The anteater too staggered back, his hind legs failing. He collapsed on to Doris’s knee who narrowly avoided stamping down upon his sore shoulder. The commotion sent Tony into a spin, barking.

For a fleeting moment the human had registered the presence of a troupe of circus animals staring in through the window of his laboratory. For their part, the animals instantly realised that, for the second time since their escape from the Big Top, they had been spotted together.

“Run!” cried Doris, with a loud bellow that carried out across the gorge.

She put her head down and thundered across the grass, heading back towards the front door of the college. Bear followed in her giant footprints. Tony ran with them, but then realised he was heading away from his master, whose silhouette he was sure he’d just seen at the window. Thinking for himself, he slowed. He didn’t want to follow the pack, not this time. He spun on his legs to see Bessie flying repeatedly into the illuminated window pane, like a moth bent on its own destruction.

The noise sent Charles the rabbit into a panic, fearing a flock of hooded crows was out there in the dark, each bird working together in an attempt to break their way in and pull him apart for their midnight dinner. He dived into the pile of boxes on the floor, scattering them.

The pulling of the curtains had woken Edward and the ensuing commotion brought Lord Morgan to his senses. Both shook their heads in disbelief. As Lord Morgan fumbled on the floor, struggling to right his aging back, the monkey was immediately alert to the danger. Edward jumped from the curtain pole to the curtain and slid down it. He ran across the room, deliberately bouncing off Lord Morgan’s belly as the human grasped at the air.

Their tentative bond was broken once more. In the excitement, it was each to their own. Edward took refuge with the rabbit. Monkeys rarely prefer to hide but, still confined to the room, Edward could see no other option. He didn’t know what was outside the window, but he knew it was enough to scare the human and rabbit.

The professor dusted himself down. He realised what he’d seen. But when he staggered to the window he could only see a small bird flapping outside. He didn’t recognise Bessie’s plumage. He threw up the sash to get a better look. As he did so, he drew a cold current of air into the room, pulling Bessie with it. He waved at her, trying to push her away from his face and Bessie flew into his laboratory. She struggled to adjust her eyes to the light and flew into the wall opposite, before falling on to the long bench. Before he could gather himself, Lord Morgan heard the unmistakable sound of his dog barking outside.

“Tony?” he shouted. “Tony!”

He rushed to the window, confused and nervous, wondering how his dog could be here, whether it was safe from the huge wild beasts he’d just seen. He threw his head and chest out and Tony leaped up into his arms, gravity and the dog almost pulling the human out and over the sill. As Lord Morgan recovered, Tony kicked out his legs, wriggling his body, kissing and licking his master’s lips and beard.

Edward saw his chance. He begged the rabbit to follow but Charles just sat in the dark under the boxes, quivering. So Edward left him. On hands and feet, tail held high, he dashed for the window. Using all his agility, he ran faster than a capuchin escaping a snapping caiman. He reached the window and hopped straight through it into the night air, trusting himself to land in a better place.

Bessie saw him go. She panicked, a bird trapped indoors. Stumbling about the surface of the bench, she saw the black rectangle on the other side of the room. She noticed a twinkle of stars. She too realised she had but one way out of her predicament. She had to take it. So she shook all her feathers and with an almighty beat of her wings, she launched herself airborne. She corrected her course and powered her way across the room. She skimmed Lord Morgan’s head and heard Tony yap a goodbye, as she crossed the threshold to the great outdoors, regaining control once more over her destiny.

Unlike that first night, when Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top set on fire, the animals all escaped by heading in the same direction. Whether it was fate or luck, or something about the geology of the ridge, or the magnetic properties of the rock that had been cleaved into a gorge, the anteater ran after the elephant, the monkey after the anteater with the budgie flying smartly behind the monkey. In a panicked column they rushed, one by one, back towards the tower holding up one end of the suspension bridge. Without breaking stride, they thundered and trotted and skipped and flew over the wooden boards, making the bridge shake as if ten horses were racing across. The gas lamps vibrated in their mounts, the pools of light danced. The animals passed the station set into the bridge jolting the old guard from his dreams. His feet bounced off his desk and his cap fell off his greyed hair. He opened his eyes to see four shadows, descending in size by an almost perfect order of magnitude, moving away from his bridge like harpies of the night. He was so taken aback he collapsed on to his desk, his arm pressing down on a big red button that sounded a horn across the bridge and over the city. From the docks of Hotwells to the mansions of Clifton, men, women and children awoke in their beds thinking their city may be in the grip of a huge fire.

Without the dog to guide them, Doris ran loose and free. Bear struggled to keep up with her, so Bessie took the initiative. So bold under canvass, in front of a captive audience, yet now so nervous in the open, Bessie mustered the wit and the will to fly on and over the animals. She caught a thermal rising up the side of the gorge. Bouncing off the light air, she swooped up, surveying the landscape. When she spotted the outline of the exotic trees she looped back over herself, making her stomach spin. She came down and across Doris’s eyes, diverting the elephant into Leigh Woods. She banked to see Bear following Doris, and Edward riding on Bear’s back, holding a scruff of black fur in his hand, legs splayed wide.

On the animals charged, staying high in the forest, knowing each tree they passed created another barrier between them and the city. Bessie flitted from beech to oak, hazelnut and conifer, chattering encouragement. Doris slobbered great dollops of spit from her mouth, while Bear’s head swung from side to side. But weary and walking now, they continued until the earth rose under their feet and the air smelled of methane. The ancient fort in Leigh Woods already felt like a sanctuary. Doris reached it first. Without speaking she collapsed her front legs until her chest hit the embankment. She rolled on to her shoulder then side. And with a great sigh of relief and satisfaction, she flopped over, ears and legs trembling. Bear went to her belly and curled up against it. He’d walked further in a day, but never run this far. Edward jumped off his steed and onto Doris. He was so excited, he danced a jig upon the elephant’s ribs.

“We helped Edward escape. We helped you escape,” trilled Bessie as Edward skipped and bounced, his waistcoat flapping.

“I have to sleep,” moaned Bear, who had also broken his record, set as a very young and energetic anteater, for being continuously awake.

“But I have to tell you everything,” said Edward, as Bessie joined him on Doris’s side. “I have all the answers.”

As Edward spoke a shadow loomed out of the trees, a large black silhouette, puffing steam like a dragon. A hoop of metal glinted in the moonlight. The huge red bull was back, woken by a horn, wanting to know why these strange animals were now resting in his fort.

Doris didn’t notice the bull. She let out a long, deliberately loud grumble.

“Tell me when the sun comes up,” she ordered the monkey.

The sound of Doris was enough for the bull to retire a few paces. He couldn’t see far and couldn’t tell how threatening the great grey beast had become. He decided to wait for first light.

Edward chose the highest point in an alder tree to rest. He enjoyed the climb, sat back against a trunk of lichen and looked out over the wood and the gap in the rock separating the animals from the college and city. He surveyed the stars, wondering why they didn’t move. He had so much to think about, to say to the others. He thought he saw fireflies dance about his head and imagined what a rainforest smelled like. But then he reasoned he might be dreaming already. So he let his eyes roll into the back of his head and he began to sleep soundly, with Bessie tucked into her wing on a branch below.

Leigh Woods

The animals were woken not by sunlight, but by lightning and thunder. First an electric flash that Edward saw through his eyelids. Then an almighty crack and rumble in the clouds that shocked even his bad ear. As Edward searched about him for a leaf large enough to become an umbrella, Bessie tucked her beak in tighter. The rain came before the thunder ended, sheets of it falling straight and true, trying to part the trees. The water drove Edward down on to the forest floor as Bessie gave up all hope of drying her flying feathers. She perched alone, unmoving, water running off her blue and white plumage on to a writhing bed of caterpillars beneath the four toes on each of her feet. The larvae would have made for a feast.

Doris liked the rain. But electric storms made her head throb, so she rose to her feet, kicking up wet mud and Bear with it. The elephant, anteater and monkey found themselves awake in the rain in a dark forest. So they did what all animals do at night when they can’t sleep and the humans can’t see them. They talked.

Edward couldn’t resist leading the discussion. He circled the forest floor, treading on wet leaves and mulch as he spoke of how Lord Morgan had spirited him away from the house. Doris didn’t care to know about the darkened prison that Edward described. She liked humans and wanted to hear personal details about the bearded professor; the great scientist. Edward told of the human’s musty soft hands and stale breath. His braces and trousers and his black jacket. How he held and used a pencil to capture his thoughts.

But as the rain ran down the elephant’s forehead and from her eyes, he began to dampen her hopes about the human’s character. Lord Morgan, said Edward, was a selfish man, who thought only of experimenting on animals. He did so not to improve their lives, but to enrich his own; to satisfy his curiosity and intellect, and to elevate his standing among his peers. Lord Morgan experimented on animals much for the same reason the old leopard said chimpanzees caught and played with baby monkeys.

Doris persisted, demanding to know whether Lord Morgan had given Edward any treats, what tricks he’d asked the monkey to perform? None, said Edward. There were no treats, just bits of vegetable diced up for a broken pet rabbit. He had been asked to perform no tricks. A trick was something playful, a charade designed to elicit a smile. In his time as a performing monkey, he’d been asked to learn many tricks, he said. Instead, he’d been locked away, posed puzzles and challenged to win his freedom and perhaps save his own life.

Despite Doris’s protests, Edward explained how the puzzle box worked and its purpose. How a hidden lever made the walls move, opening the door. He then told of being placed in a tall wire cage and building a tower of boxes to escape, and that Lord Morgan spoke to him directly. At one point in the evening, after offering a biscuit, Lord Morgan left the laboratory and returned later breathless, carrying a large typewriter, an Underwood No 5 model, black with brass keys. The professor set the typewriter down on the bench and gestured to it. Edward was convinced the human was encouraging him to tread on the keys, to see what words he might write.

And then he shocked his two friends, by sharing news of Lord Morgan’s cannon. He slowed his words and set out carefully the facts, ensuring he did not confuse Doris and Bear. After all this time, it was now clear that the giant cannon did not exist. Not as they all had expected. There was no big black gun to be fired across a circus, wowing audiences like never before.

As the rain fell and the sky crackled, the monkey told them their quest had been futile. There was no way to secure the cannon, nor could they use it to save Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top. They were four animals alone, that did not belong in an English wood. They were surely being hunted, Edward said. By the Ring Master and his strongman and circus boys, by the professor of science who had seen them at his window and by all the humans living in Bristol that had heard the horn on the bridge. Even Lord Morgan’s maid was likely to be donning her cape and umbrella, said Edward, and setting forth on their trail.

A tear fell from Doris’s eye and was swept away by the rain. Despite being more free than at any time since her capture, she felt claustrophobic, hemmed in by the trees and nettles. She wondered out loud what to do. She had lost the ability to take charge, to lead from the front. Besides, where would they go? She wanted to protect them all, but she began to realise that even an elephant couldn’t shield the smaller animals from a human horde.

Bear listened patiently to Edward and Doris.

“Is that all that Lord Morgan said?” the anteater asked.

“Yes, why?” replied Edward, splashing his toes into a puddle.

“Because you were in that place for a long time. Almost a day. And every human I have ever met says more things. More than Lord Morgan said. They all use more words. They can’t help themselves. Did he say anything else?”

“Well yes,” said Edward. “Of course he did. He said I was a clever monkey. That I might change everything.”

Bear grumbled, which he did rarely. He had become frustrated by Edward and couldn’t help himself.

“Anything useful?” Bear demanded, trying to rationalise their predicament.

“He talked about a big thing happening,” said Edward. “Of an important visitor coming. The King of England.”

Doris gasped.

“The King of England?” she said, excitedly.

“Who is he?” asked Bear.

“The King of England is the most important human in all of India. The most important of all. He is more important than the Raja and Maharajah even.”

“But he is called the King of England?” said Bear.

“He must be the most important person here too,” said Doris smugly. “Is he coming to visit us?”

She swayed her hips in time with another crack of thunder. The noise finally woke Bessie who barely controlled her sodden descent from the tree. She took the opportunity to bathe in the muddy water, spraying Edward.

“Who is coming to visit us? Is Lord Morgan coming to visit us?” she inquired.

“Be quiet,” Bear commanded the huge elephant and tiny bird. “Edward, tell us more about this King of England.”

The monkey recalled all he could. Lord Morgan had looked Edward in the eye, he said, and told him that the King of England was visiting the city of Bristol. As he drank his port, the scientist spoke of how the King would also be having an audience with some professors of University College. Lord Morgan had hoped to show the King his cannon. He wanted to impress him so much with his work that the King would grant the college a special status. He would bestow a charter, ordering that it become a true university and take its place among the great seats of learning.

“But the cannon doesn’t exist,” said Doris, bewildered.

Edward realised that he had forgotten to explain to the others what Lord Morgan’s cannon truly was. And that was quite important. So he beckoned Bessie to jump upon his head. He called Bear close. He waved at Doris until she offered her trunk and up it he ran until he and Bessie were upon her shoulders, where they could talk into her ear.

Lord Morgan, said Edward, was building a canon, a word the humans used to describe some rule or law that governed everything. His canon described how animals such as they thought. And it suggested they were stupid, incapable of planning, reason, kindness or hope.

Bessie didn’t like that. She cut in, repeating over and over that she was a talented bird and she could do many things. Doris demurred. Gently and quietly she revealed to the others that she was capable of hope. Though she acted like she belonged in the circus, she did so because she had no choice. But she always hoped that one day she would somehow venture home, to see the younger members of her family one last time.

Bear grunted now, the only expression left to him as he digested all he heard, and made sense of it.

“But Lord Morgan said his canon was broken,” said Edward softly.

He’d registered the change in their mood. They all stood unflinching in the rain, heads bowed. The night was so black only the animals could see through it.

“And I had broken it. That’s why he said I was a clever monkey. Because he tested me with the puzzle box and the wire cage. He even timed me and compared how I did to a rabbit. I found it so easy to get out he declared I had broken his canon. That animals can’t be stupid after all.”

Doris lifted her head. Edward patted her gently on her bony skull.

“We aren’t stupid,” declared Edward.

He stood upon Doris and took off his waistcoat. He threw it down into the mud, the first time he’d been free of it since the Ring Master had placed it upon his back.

“We aren’t stupid!” he shouted into the night, disturbing a pair of little owls in a hollow.

“No we’re not stupid,” said Bear, with such force that anyone listening might have expected his long jaws to be packed with teeth. “And I think I know what we should do. We should reject the circus. Reject everything about it. Reject the humans and their arrogant selfish ways. They only want to use us, exploit us.”

“But where would we go?” said Doris.

“Why don’t we animals live right here, in these woods?” said Bear. “We would be free. We could be happy.”

Edward liked what he heard. Rather than run his own circus, he thought, maybe he could organise the animals in the woods. Get together the foxes and badgers, the voles and shrews and all the birds and help them put on a show. Perhaps for any passing deer to watch. Bear’s words wouldn’t leave him, however. The circus. The animals. The humans. Being free.

“The old leopard,” Edward said. “They’ve caught the old leopard. Taken him to a zoo. That’s what Lord Morgan also said. I remember now.”

“We have to save him,” replied Bear. “Whatever we think of him, he’s an animal. He’s one of us. We can’t leave him to the humans.”

Bessie, Doris and Edward immediately knew the giant anteater was right.

The bull appeared through a morning mist. He walked off the top of the hill that once held a human fort. Steam lifted off his huge muscular shoulders, blending with the grey vapour swirling up from the daises and dandelions. He held his head high upon a thick neck, rippling with veins and sinew. With purpose, he directly approached the animals sleeping at the foot of the embankment. He woke them with a huge snort of his large black nose, eyes wide open, the whites showing.

“You’re right,” he announced in a deep voice that made him sound older than his three years. “The humans do think we are stupid. And they are fools for it.”

Doris rolled on to her front legs and tried to stand, to confront the bull. But she was too old and slow. By the time her trunk was dangling free, she had heard him, realising he meant no harm. So she stayed on the ground, getting used to this new day, letting her legs warm up.

The two red cows walked out of the haze behind the bull. Bear lifted his head from under his tail. He blinked at the cattle. But rather than answer the bull, he decided to let him speak.

“I stood there listening to you last night,” said the bull. “I don’t know what some of you are. Not exactly. But I heard you speak, and I agree with you.”

The resplendent red bull explained that he used to be an ox. He’d been reared and fed to do but one job, pull a heavy unbalanced old plough through hard soil, just so his owner could turn a meadow into a place to grow endless rows of potatoes. His owner had taken his liberty, buying him cheaply at an auction before he’d turned one year old. The human took parts of his body, making it impossible for him to sire offspring. Then the farmer drove a metal ring through the softest, most delicate parts of his nose, damaging forever his ability to smell the grass.

The bull then let each cow tell her story. The oldest spoke first. She was nearly fifteen years old and had once known the bull’s grandmother. She had been kept for no other purpose than to be mated and have more cows. After giving birth ten times, her body could no longer bear the strain and her owner left her out in a field one night during a snowstorm. The second cow thought she was older than the bull but younger than her friend. But she couldn’t remember as the farmer who kept her repeatedly hit her over the head with a metal bar, saying she couldn’t walk in a straight line. The more she wandered, the more she was hit. The more she was hit the more she wandered, finding it harder to walk in a straight line.

Bessie had woken now and was sunning herself on the bull’s back, not that he noticed. She surprised him with her question:

“So how did you get here? If you used to live with farmers, how did you end up here?”

“We escaped,” said the bull, throwing back his head to shake the voice in his ear.

Bessie hopped along his back until she sat square between his horns.

“How did you escape? How did you escape?”

As the cattle wandered in closer, Edward was up on his elbows, listening.

“He got away first,” said the older cow about the bull.

“One day I’d had enough. I was tired from dragging the plough all day. But I could see my owner was tired too. I looked at him, sitting cross legged in the field, wiping away his sweat, eating a sandwich. And I realised how much stronger I was. I was bigger, fitter and I had more stamina than he did. Once I realised that, I knew he couldn’t stop me leaving. I was only there because the humans had made me think I had to be. So I waited until dusk, when he took my harness off my shoulders. I barged him and stood over his body on the ground. I stamped my hooves about his face, not touching him, but enough to make him leave me be. I walked out of the field and trotted down the lane. And I just kept on going.”

“The bull found me the next day,” said the younger cow. “I’ll never forget it. He jumped the fence to my paddock, walked right up to me and told me it was time to leave. I followed him out of the field and never looked back.”

“That winter I joined them too,” said the older cow. “He just appeared out of a blizzard. He didn’t speak. He trampled the wire and turned away and I walked after him, brushing up against his warm body. He brought us here, to the woods. We’ve lived here since.”

“Didn’t the humans come for you?” said Edward.

“They walk through from time to time. But they are the stupid ones. They always think we belong to someone else,” said the cow.

“The only trouble we get is from the hunting dogs,” said the bull. “But I take care of them,” he said proudly.

The bull paused and chewed on some grass. He thought a little, then asked some questions of his own.

“Tell me what you are,” he said.

“Well I’m an elephant. An Indian elephant,” said Doris.

“I’m a tufted capuchin,” said Edward. “We’re the cleverest of all the monkeys.”

“I’m an English budgerigar,” chirped Bessie, flitting on to the back of the younger cow. “I’m like a small parrot.”

“And I’m a giant anteater,” said Bear.

He stood, shook the mist from his fur and realised what they had told the bull might not be enough. So the anteater encouraged each of his friends to describe themselves in more detail. Where they had once come from, what they liked to eat and which animals they preferred over others. He told how each had reached the circus and how they too had escaped from the humans.