The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations (3 page)

Now, the Serpent was sly, brutish and powerful and thick through the bowels of the earth. But by his first assault against the Keepers of Evil he had learned that the greater his force the more tightly woven became the Meek of the earth. In the end their silken webbing had refused him his desires. Brute power had left him eyeless and blind. The light had been extinguished.

Nevertheless, the Serpent was more subtle than any Beast on earth. He probed his loss. He studied his defeat. He schooled himself in patience, and contrived another stratagem. Blindness had made his own
body
the prison that now enclosed him, a tighter jail than had been the caverns underground. Oh, his hatred of the Creator was a furnace now. Wyrm contemplated annihilation. Freedom! Freedom—and he would swallow every luminary in the universe. He would blind the cosmos entirely and imprison creation, the handwork of heaven, in a perpetual, illimitable dark.

Hatred engenders guile. Wyrm plotted vengeance, dividing it into several parts. First, he must test the disposition of the Rooster, the ruler and the union of his Keepers. If at any point Lord Chauntecleer was vulnerable, if there were in him the seed of some mortal sin, some bit of Wyrm’s own character, then Evil might enlist him as a confederate for his purposes.

Pass my test, Galle superbe, and I will commit myself to a stratagem from which I can never retreat. It shall be my peril—but it shall be your annihilation.

So rash, so cunning, so courageous, and so heroic was this new thing that—except that it meant the triumph of wickedness—all the generations to come would worship him.

Sum Wyrm, sub terra—
such Evil is almost a God.

Upon the Rooster’s unconscious signal, Wyrm would initiate his own self-sacrifice.

Chauntecleer crowed Compline:

By day, O God, you grant your steadfast love,
And at night your song is with us, a prayer to the God of our lives.

To Pertelote beside him he said, “Is Russel sleeping?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Will he heal?”

“I pray it. I pray it all the time. But he can’t eat asleep. And he can’t heal without nourishment.”

But Chauntecleer was restless for other reasons that Russel alone. The maple was not a home. It stood solitary in a ravished land, where Animals were aliens.

It’s done, John Wesley,
Chauntecleer had said to the Weasel before nightfall.
The time is ours again, if we
make it so. It’s done, and now we must look to the day.

Good words. Good crows to back them up. But he who shaped the day could not himself partake in such consolation.

It can be recorded with no surprise that the war had bereft the Animals of innocence. They had become realists. But—now that life seemed so precarious, so rare and precious—their love for one another grew intense. How solicitous they were for the sick one’s health, and how glad they were in the morning to find the Fox asleep.

With an earnest, soldierly decorum, the seven Brothers Mice petted Russel and combed his fur. They made sympathetic noises in their throats, like: “Ah,” and “Too bad,” and “Oh, dear Uncle.”

The longer he slept the better he healed.

Pertelote lanced the swellings, then dabbed its discharge. She probed and pressed the riven flesh, rinsed, washed, and dressed it several times a day. Little Mice gagged pippingly at the stench their uncle made, but manfully stayed, and dutifully brought the Lady Hen mosses for sponging, thorns as surgical instruments. Pertelote pierced the carapace at his lip, inserted her beak, and squirted water into the Fox.

Wodenstag Mouse scratched at the rough scabs. He said, “Lady, do you think he feels this?”

“If he didn’t flinch from my thorn, he won’t feel your nail.”

“No,” said Wodenstag. “Not my nail. Do you think he feels
this?”
He ran tiny hands over Russel’s face. “This hardness?”

“Not yet,” said Pertelote. But he will when he wakes up.”

“Will it hurt him?”

“I expect so. He won’t have joy in a wooden mouth.”

“Poor Uncle Russel.”

“But this is the way he is growing new skin. It will itch. But he’ll live if he doesn’t split the scab too soon.”

One evening, Freitag, the second youngest Mouse, was watching the Fox’s face when suddenly the right eye flew open. Freitag gave a
yip
and jumped backward. The eye rolled here and there, though the Fox moved not a hair.

“Hello?” Freitag whispered. “Uncle, are you in there?”

The eye flashed a moment of recognition, then softened, then the lid came down and closed.

“Whoop!” squealed Freitag. He darted this way and that. “Uncle Russel’s better! I saw it! He looked at me!”

But no one else saw what the Mouse had seen. Russel was sleeping. So they too went to roost, listened to another Compline, and slept the night through.

It was noon the following day. Though the rest of the Animals hadn’t believed Freitag’s happy cries, his brothers did. They were all seven patting Russel when he woke. He shivered. The Mice began to clap their hands. “Lookee! Lookee!” they shouted. Russel heard them. This is how they knew that he heard them: he swung his head in their direction. There was a rictus of grinning on his face. He stood up, then collapsed. He scratched at the ground in order to stand again.

He said,
“Huk.”
That was all he said. He eyes swelled with the effort. Then again, “
Huk.”

The Mice cried: “Hooray!”

The Fox started to claw at his scabs.

“Wait!” cried Wodenstag. “Uncle, wait! Lady Pertelote says to keep the scab. The scab is good for you.”

Russel stared at Wodenstag, grinning, grinning, striving to open his mouth. He gained his feet. Fleas rushed the flesh beneath his coat. He suppressed the irritations. He nodded his head:
Nephews,
nephews, isn’t it a pretty day?

The Mice said to one another, “Uncle wants something.”

Russel’s eyes seemed to smile.
Yes! Aren’t we happy to be together
again?

The Fox went a few steps away, then turned and came back and repeated the steps again.
“Huk, huk.”
Oh, how dearly he wanted to talk.
Come! It such a beautiful—not to say,
beautiful—day, and I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting to show you a new trick.

Russel walked east. He slewed his steps, but went purposefully east.

The Mice looked at one another.

Also, they looked around and saw no one to whom to tell the wonderful news of the Fox’s health and happiness.

So they followed.

Extraordinarily, Russel began to trot. The Mice ran. His bushy tail led them. His crusted nose hung low.

They came to the Liver-brook, the south-running river.

Straightway Russel crouched and plunged his face into the water. Standing on the level bank, he thrashed his whole head left and right, blowing spouts and fountains.

“What a good idea!” Wodenstag cried. “Uncle is washing his face!”

“Ohhh,” said his brothers, enlightened.

Then the Fox exploded from the water, shouting, “Nephews! I am so glad, not to mention pleased, that you are here, which is to say, where I am!”

The Brothers Mice jumped up and down. “You’re talking,” they cried.

“I am! I am indeed!” the Fox laughed. “And soon I will have something to say.” The carapace had softened and was pulling apart. Patches like rags were sloughing off.

Russel raised an instructive paw. “The Trick of the Stick!”

In his jaws he picked up a slender branch, then walked backwards he entered the Liver-brook butt-and-tail first, his head held high. Blood pimpled his raw flesh.

“Uncle, please,” Wodenstag said, “I don’t want to see tricks. I don’t want to hear tricks. I don’t want my uncle hurt again. Let’s go back.”

But Russel was consumed with his trick.

Unaware, he rubbed his nose with a paw. Unaware, he smeared blood through his whiskers, making them spike. Unaware, because his attention was behind himself, where he was sinking into the water up to his neck.

“Yes,” he said. Said, “Slowly, now. Foxes have wit,” he said. “Wit is tricks. Tricks, good nephews, is the notability of Foxes. Watch!”

“Uncle, please!”

Sonntag, Monstag, Deinstag all took off top speed back to the maple.

“Watch the fleas!”

“Dear Uncle Russel,” said Wodenstag”. Could we please stop now?”

“The word to love,” said Russel, panting, a hectic spin in his eyes.

Indeed, fleas were popping and running ahead of the water, up his back, up his shoulders. “The word to love is
washing!”

Russel sank completely under the water. Only the stick could be seen. And the stick was covered with a thousand fleas. And then the stick floated away. But Russel himself, he did not surface.

Wodenstag cried, “Uncle! Where are you?”

Immediately Wodenstag and his brothers Donnerstag and Samstag ran to the edge of the river. They stared through the clear water. There was their Uncle Russel, his eyes wide open, a red cloud of blood issuing from his face

Chauntecleer stood on the shore of Wyrmesmere, that boundless southern sea. Behind him the earth-scar stretched from horizon to horizon, east and west and, as it seemed, circling half of the globe. Even in the night the earth-scar made itself known, for Chauntecleer had crossed it afoot, walking a dead land, flat and salted and silent.

As if in a dream the Rooster heard the cries and the dyings of his Animals. The battles returned to his memory. John Wesley was carrying the Wee Widow Mouse who was dead in his arms. The Stag Nimbus was sinking to his knees, his face lifted to the heavens, his grey tongue thrust out. And the reptilian Cockatrice was soaring over all..

Wyrmesmere.
It was so called because Wyrm himself had formed its vastitude.

In front of the Rooster the moon laid low upon the waters, a pewter disk. From the moon to the Rooster’s feet it sent a rippling path, an invitation to walk forward and to drown.

Chauntecleer said, “Lazara, come.”

A small dark shadow came tweedling across the scar. Lazara the Black Beetle fetched up beside the Rooster and waited.

They knew each other, the Rooster and the Beetle, from disasters past, for it was Lazara that had buried the bodies of his three sons.

Chauntecleer said, “Follow me.”

He strode to a particular place where once his battlement had been thrown up against the enemy. Lazara joined him there. He said, “Here, on this spot, dig the Fox’s grave.”

Lazara moved on her tweezer feet, assessing the soil. “We’re near the sea,” she said.

“This is where he fought. This is where he tore the Basilisks asunder. This is where I want him buried.”

“Aye, sir. But the water makes a dreary grave. It’ll scour the hole from below and could cause a fearful stink o’ the bones and maybe send them topside again.”

“Then dig to stone and keep the water out.”

The Beetle, her whole head hidden in a black hood, sat still, considering. “Well,” she said, “Could be a crypt could trick it.”

“Dig one.”

“Aye. ‘Tis my profession and my skill, digging in any sorter substance as presents itself. I think I can piece it for you. Only—”

Chauntecleer jerked his head. “This is a dead land,” he snapped. “Damnably crabbed and cold and dead. Find your stone, Black Lazara, and dig Lord Russel his crypt, and keep your ‘onlys’ for those who lack decision.”

Then, without a glance at the Beetle, Chauntecleer took his solitary way back across the ruins of the earthwork. He passed the place where the Coop once stood.. A frigid wind blew off the sea, slipping through the Rooster’s feathers, for there was no windbreak behind him nor a rustling of leaves in the forest ahead of him.

He paused and looked around. Under the dull moon Chauntecleer saw that all the leaves had been stripped away. The forest was naked. The weather had skipped a season. Too soon winter was upon them.

In her husband’s absence Lady Pertelote sang a most merciful Compline.

“Lullay-lulee, lulee-lulay,
A sorrow hath borne our Lord away.

It bore him up, it bore him down
On wings as soft as eiderdown.

It set him on an iron earth
To fashion a deep sepulcher.”

After midnight Chauntecleer returned. He stood a silent vigil beside the Fox’s body.

Neither hearing him nor seeing him, Pertelote felt his presence below the boughs of the maple. She spread her wings and sailed the distance down, then settled close to her Rooster.

“The preparations are complete?” she said.

“They will be.”

“Tomorrow,” she said, “we will finish the business, my sisters and I. We will wash him and dress him for his eternity.”

As if to himself alone, Chauntecleer murmured: “Wyrm for a day. Wyrm for a season. But who can endure him forever?”

The Hen and the Rooster then sat in a perfect silence.

Against the starry sky the farther trees were silhouettes, their arms and fingers skeletal.

A little sound stirred in the night: “Hooo, hooo.”

Pertelote whispered, “The Mice are crying.”

Chauntecleer said, “Comort them.”

She did. She walked to a hole in the ground.

“Samstag,” she said, “is that you?” “Well, it’s me.”

“Are you awake, then?”

“Hooo, hooo.”

“Is it a dream that saddens you?”

“Yes,” said the Mouse. “No.”

“Do you mind if I sit here a while?”

“It is a kindness, Lady.”

A second voice spoke: “But we are all awake.”

“Ah, Wodenstag.”

“Maybe,” said Wodenstag. “Could you maybe hold us?”

“I could,” said Pertelote.

All the Brothers Mice crept out of their hole and tucked themselves under the Hen’s breast.

Not far away an itchy voice said, “There has been none of us asleep this night.” Tick-Tock the Black Ant.

Chauntecleer stood up. He took to the air and circled to the crown of the maple. and crowed a Matins of nearly unbearable tenderness. He was rigid, to be sure—but as a tuning fork is rigid. He shed a music so penetrating that the very core of the Animals’ uncertainty was stung to sweetness.

Ah, the skill of Chauntecleer! He sang the Fox’s name. He included the dead in this common litany. But Russel’s death-night had
become
the night, and death too was rendered common, ah. He enfolded even the dead into the hearts of the Hens, and they mourned their brother freely. Mourning was given a voice, easy words, old familiar words. Matins was that voice, and the impacted pressure of the Animals’ souls found release. They wept.

Pertelote’s eyes too went warm and damp. But her tears were for the thing that she was hearing: the extraordinary priesthood of Lord Chauntecleer. And for this too: that in her husband there was not a scrap of relief.