The Painted Tent (14 page)

During that week the education of Fria progressed. She caught her first field-mouse from a hovering pitch like a kestrel, her talons clamping on it through the grasses and killing it immediately. She took a starling which was running up and down the roof parapet of the old house prospecting for a nesting-site by launching herself downwards from the tower top. The starling saw her coming, panicked and, instead of diving for cover, flew upwards. Fria flicked her wings rapidly three or four times, increasing the power of her shallow stoop and then, with her momentum, threw up easily, rising almost vertically under the bird, and half-rolled and grabbed it from underneath with one foot. As she flew back to the tower she took its neck between her mandibles and broke it, the tooth in her upper mandible which fitted into a notch in the lower, biting through to the vertebrae and snapping the bird's spinal cord. She was learning fast and every day discovering her latent powers. But she was still far from the perfection and smooth co-ordination of muscles, strength and deliberate intent which could take an adult peregrine at fifty or sixty miles an hour in level pursuit and at over a hundred miles an hour coming down in a vertical stoop from a height.

Fria was still hungry. Exercise and her freedom had given her an appetite bigger than she had known in captivity. Apart from the small prey, insects, mice, and the occasional small bird she might get, she needed at least the equivalent of one wood pigeon a day and, as she came back into condition, sometimes two a day. At the moment she was getting nothing like that. She was always famished and always looking for the chance to satisfy her hunger.

At first light now she was astir and spent a long time hovering over the jungled purlieus of gardens and wild shrubberies taking what she could find either from the air or by stalking on foot. As the light strengthened she would rise and fly to the woods that crested the hill and hang above them at fifty or a hundred feet watching the ground below. The birds knew her now and when she appeared over the trees they went silent and into cover.

That week she caught two more wood pigeons. The first she bungled but luck stayed with her. As she hung over the wood long after the alarm calls had died away a pigeon came flying back from the water-trough for cattle at the far end of the pasture. As it began to rise towards the first trees at the wood's edge Fria went down to cut it off. She tipped over into a slightly steeper dive, gave a flick or two of her sharp-pointed wings and angled swiftly towards the pigeon, the white flash of its wing bars showing every single covert feather in her vision, the wet gleam of its beak where it had been drinking a collection of silver reflections. Because she was above it the pigeon only saw her when she was fifty yards from it. The bird swung sideways and dipped for the cover of the shrubs at the foot of the wood's edge. Fria swung with it, curving and steepening her dive. The pigeon, knowing it would never reach cover, dropped to the ground and crashed into the base of a small gorse bush, smashing against the prickly barrier and scattering a thin shower of yellow blooms. Fria over-shot the bush. Hungry and angry, she threw up and rolled over. Seeing the dazed bird at the foot of the bush, she came down with wings raised high over her back and grabbed it with her outstretched talons. She killed it and ate it beneath the bush. It was a small bird, still with a winter thinness about it.

On the Friday she made her first clean kill. She knew now that the pigeons often used the water-trough for drinking. For two successive days she had tried for them and failed. They had seen her almost as soon as she had begun her dive and had wheeled away and found the sanctuary of the wood in good time.

Whether Fria reasoned out the cause of her failure or whether chance showed her the solution could be long debated without resolution for only she could know. But on the Friday a warm air current rose strongly from the wood below, smooth and without turbulence. She found herself circling easily at a much higher pitch, well over two hundred feet. When she saw a pigeon coming back from the trough she angled over and went into her dive with fast wing strokes. Her height and the position of the pigeon made her attack take a much steeper line. She found herself going down in a half-vertical stoop, faster than ever she had gone, except for a few times when the gale had whipped her away from the barn. And as she went she automatically instinctively now, put her legs forward and close up to her breast, talons tightly clenched, to keep the air stream slipping smoothly past her body. With her wings almost closed she streaked downwards and the pigeon left this life without seeing her. As she hurled past it she dropped her legs to make a grabbing movement at the bird, but her speed was so fast that she hit it with clenched talons on the side of the neck. A puff of feathers exploded from the blow, and the pigeon, dead with a broken neck and shock, rolled over and tumbled to the ground in an untidy swirl of limp wings and legs and a following gentle parachuting of small feathers.

Fria opened her wings, braked against the speed of her dive and, without gaining height, slewed round in a fast circle, low over the pasture, and came back to the pigeon. She settled on it, grasped it with her talons and flew low and clumsily with it in the direction of her tower. But the bird was heavy and as she reached Highford House she dropped down with it and settled on one of the broad parapet ledges where she ate it.

Late that afternoon she took a lapwing which was grub-hunting in the parkland grass. She did it from the same high pitch which gave her the element of surprise, but the kill was not made with the ripping blow of her rear toes as an experienced falcon would have made it. She hit it with clenched talons dropped. The blow killed the rising bird with its stunning force and she went down after it. This time she carried the lapwing easily to her tower and ate it on the roof above her recess.

On Sunday morning as soon as he had finished breakfast Smiler hurried off to Highford House. Since it was only a couple of miles from the farm, he went on foot and across country to it.

He reached the house just after nine o'clock and climbed to his favourite parapet lookout. He was determined to sit there all day and, if Fria was around, to find her. In the pocket of his storm-coat were a packet of sandwiches and a can of cider which the Duchess had given him.

It was a warm morning without wind, balmy, with a strong touch of Spring mildness. The sky was cloudless. Blue and long-tailed tits belled in the shrubberies and worked the slowly budding branches of trees and bushes for food. The wood was full of birdsong and far below him the river meadows were free of flood water. The river itself was beginning to clear in colour and the salmon and sea-trout were running. Through his glasses as he swept them round searching for Fria, Smiler saw two fish jump in the pool below Eggesford bridge. But he saw no sign of Fria. Half an hour before he had arrived Fria had killed one of a flock of black-headed gulls that had come inland, following the river. They had been foraging in the pasture of the old parkland. She had flown at them from her tower, dropping low and going very fast, not more than two feet above the ground, towards the flock. They had gone up as she was almost on them in a cloud of white and grey wings. She had swung upwards under one of them, rolled on to her back and grabbed at the bird's breast and made the easiest kill she had ever known. She had carried the bird to the edge of the wood ana eaten it, and then, full and contented, had flown up to the lower limb of an ancient oak, made her toilet, and now sat there in the sun. She was hidden from Smiler by a yew tree standing next to the oak, its glossy evergreen foliage screening the lower part of the oak tree.

After an hour's watching Smiler got restless and walked and scrambled around the parapet of the house. He found the carcase of the pigeon which Fria had eaten there and this gave him fresh hope. He found another viewpoint from a different part of the roof and sat down with his back against a stone slab, enjoying the sunshine. He had been working hard all week and was now doing an extra night's session with Mr Samkin, and he had worked all day Saturday. Within half an hour he was asleep.

Ten minutes later Fria came flying back to her tower recess. She saw Smiler sleeping on the roof, swerved a little from her line, and landed on the tower. She dropped down to the recess, shuffled in, gave a little shake to settle her breast feathers and folded her long wings over her tail. She was well fed for the moment and she dozed.

Half an hour later Smiler woke up. He rolled over on the long parapet ledge and, resting his chin on his hands, stared idly through the small gap in the roof ledge which had been cut for the rain water to run off into a now non-existent gutter. He had a funnelled view of the woods and shrubberies that crowded close to the old garden.

A movement in the rhododendron bushes caught his eye, a quick, pinky-white flicker. He reached for his glasses and focused on the spot. Clear in the lens was the face of Jimmy Jago. He was standing in the cover of the shrubs watching the tower and house.

Smiler was puzzled. For a moment his delight in seeing Jimmy almost made him move to stand up and wave to him. Then he remembered the other times when he had seen Jimmy here at night. He stayed still, watching. Something was wrong between Jimmy and the Duchess. He was sure, if their quarrel had been patched up, she would have told him and certainly have said if Jimmy were coming back to the farm. Smiler decided that it was wiser to stay hidden where he was. ‘ Whatever's going on between those two, Samuel M.,' he told himself, ‘it's private to them or they would have told you.'

Jimmy kept his station at the fringe of the shrubbery for five minutes and then moved, taking advantage of every piece of cover, crouching now and then to keep his figure clear of any skyline. He passed between the tower and the back of the house, and Smiler held him in his glasses. He seemed so near that Smiler felt he could put out a hand and touch him. He wore a battered felt hat, a shabby, green windbreaker and crumpled, brown corduroy trousers. But the thing that interested Smiler most was that in one hand he carried a small white envelope. Smiler could see it plainly.

As Jimmy passed out of his line of sight around the far corner of the house Smiler wondered what on earth he could be doing up here with a letter and – without doubt – not at all anxious to be seen by anyone.

Smiler stayed where he was, unmoving, but keeping his glasses trained on the place where Jimmy had gone out of his sight. After a few minutes Jimmy reappeared and went quickly and unobtrusively back to the woods beyond the tower. Smiler saw at once that he no longer carried the white envelope with him.

Puzzled and intrigued, Smiler watched Jimmy disappear. He sat there for fifteen minutes to make sure that Jimmy had really gone. His curiosity growing stronger each moment, he decided that it could not do any harm to go down and see if he could find out where Jimmy had put the letter. The whole thing was a mystery and – although it was none of his business – his curiosity was too strong to be denied. He was not going to take the letter if he found it. He just wanted to know what was going on – and then, since it involved Jimmy, keep his mouth shut.

Sure that Jimmy had now gone, he was on the point of rising when the whole affair was driven completely from his mind. Fria launched herself from her recess, dropped low over the garden for a moment, then rose and half-keeled over so that she swept the length of the house parapet, passing within two feet of Smiler. He watched transfixed. She was so close that he could see the nostril holes of her strong hooked beak and the brightness of her dark eyes framed in her brown-black mask lines. Her wings and back seemed a darker slate colour than he remembered. She held her legs up loosely towards her breast and the brightening yellow of their skin gleamed in the sun as from her half-canted position she suddenly rolled right over in flight and moved away.

‘
Blimey Old Riley
,' Smiler breathed to himself, ‘
she's super!
' His excitement was suddenly so strong that it sent a shiver through him and made the skin of his cheek-bones tingle and would have brought tears to his eyes if he had not sniffed hard. He raised his glasses and found her in them, watching every movement. There was no other thought in his head but of Fria.

Fria, having eaten well and had her doze, had moved from her recess in order to satisfy another want. Since she had left the barn beam the only bath she had taken was in a largish puddle that had formed on the tower leads after the heavy rain. But the feel of the lead beneath her feet was like the slippery tin of the old bath she had used in captivity and the puddle was only half an inch deep. Knowing what she wanted, knowing where she could find it, Fria was in no hurry.

Now that Smiler had found her – though he had not seen her come out of the recess on the tower – it was almost as though she wanted to go through her paces for him, to show him that she was well on the way to being able to look after herself and that her dawning new powers were giving her a confidence in herself which was half the battle of survival.

In actual fact Fria had no thought for Smiler at all. She had seen and marked him as she went by the roof, but as she beat up and over the far pasture woods she was obsessed with a spirit of playfulness which she had never known before.

Watched by Smiler, she ringed up leisurely over the woods, circling on an air current, and only now and then giving a quick flick of her wings to speed her climb. She went up five hundred feet and then hung at her station in a slow level swing that was a couple of hundred yards in diameter. She went idly round and round and every bird in the wood and beyond it was aware of her. But by some magic of communication they knew that she was no threat, or maybe it was that there was a subtle difference in the style of her flight that told them she hung high, not in menace, but in the enjoyment of the slow ecstasy of her own powers.

From her curving pitch Fria marked a solitary crow perched at the top of the chestnut tree in the old parkland. She rolled over, half closed her wings, and went down in a fast dive which was the extent of her stooping powers so far. Five seconds later she whipped over the top of the crow, two feet above him, and threw up. For the first time ever she went up vertically and let herself go until all the momentum had gone from her body. She levelled out and hovered, looking down at the crow who, in the moment of her pass at him, had thrown himself backwards, raising black beak to ward off danger and had then fallen clumsily into a tangle of twigs and branches where he was now croaking curses at her.