The larch trees burned with their lime green as early as any, and the various fruit trees came into leaf and blossom. The bullace which stood outside the bedroom window resumed its leaves, like putting stored furniture back into the old places of an empty house: resumed them exactly, remembering to keep the old arrangement. I had watched them go every morning, wondering whether I should ever be able to live to see them come again, and now they were as if they had never been away, and all that miserable time was a forgotten dream with them. But the trees which stirred me especially were the wild cherries. They had escaped, lived in a feral state. In the orchards the tame cherries stood meekly between hedges, but the geans grew vast and unhelpful to man: free natures, ferocious wood.
It was spring. Coming out blindly like a mole, I found myself in the garden with a spade. The strange, seasonal urge had brought me out into the tangled roots of docks, thistles and nettles, far too late to do any good, but irresistibly and unconsciously. Everywhere the village people were crawling about their allotments, a crowd of hunched Adams in mouldy cloth, slug-hunters who were themselves like slugs, but burning with who knew what vernal fires and ambitions of greenery. I put up rose trellises and plunged in ramblers which were not to survive such treatment until the autumn, erected a dove-cote crooked, made a flower bed and a visit to Woolworth’s for seeds, bought a scythe (and luckily dug up half a stone to sharpen it with, while making the flower bed), twined a wisp of wistaria to die round a drainpipe, and bought a dozen geraniums in a moment of nostalgia for the colour of bloom. At the same time I found myself surrounded by a crowd of wild animals, so that all the sheds and outhouses were occupied by something which required to be fed: a pair of young badgers who greedily fought for warm milk and sugar out of a champagne bottle, and nipped my ankles yickering when they were not nipping the rubber teat on the bottle; a colony of wild rabbits and pigeons in the bakehouse; a brown owl whose head moved on ball bearings, utterly wise and exquisitely courteous; young pigeons nuzzling into the fist with their obscene beaks, which they are accustomed to plunge right into their parents’ crops, and among them one stock dove’s squab, more independent and able to fly more soon.
They were distracted efforts to serve the risen Prosperpine, for I had been to Croydon to fetch my second hawk.
It would be tedious to explain all over again how Cully was trained, although with a wild-caught passager each problem was a new one; and it would be premature to write about the other kinds of hawk or falcon which taught me after that. But there are two small matters to finish off the story. I ought to clear up the mystery of these supposed sparrow-hawks, for which I had for so long constructed so many delightful contraptions, and perhaps I ought to end with a kill.
The real raptorial population when Gos escaped — and no subsequent hawk can touch one’s heart so deeply as the first one does — nor be remembered so vividly — began to sink into consciousness a year later, when I discovered for certain that my small shoot really did support a family of hobbies. There were several little owls, one kestrel on the west boundary, one kestrel on the east, a sparrow-hawk occasionally visiting from the north (the one which had been seen making a kill), and this family of hobbies in Hoptoft Spinney. It was the hobbies that I had first met, without daring to recognize such a rarity and, soon after Gos escaped, these migrated in the natural course of affairs. Gos himself probably got caught in a tree by his jesses — a poacher whose word was not dependable swore to having seen him hung, but would not take me to the place — and died there. While the amateur was making traps and places to hide in, everything was dying or flying away. Now, nearly two years later, I am sure that the only sane way to catch a haggard, whether sparrow-hawk or hobby, is to walk about with your eyes open until you see one of them making a kill, then to drive him off it, peg it firmly down (with gardener’s bast, which looks like dead grass) in the middle of a bow-net or feather trap — one good idea is to tie nooses made out of gut-casts at convenient places on the kill, so that the hawk’s feet become entangled — and finally to retreat to a good distance with binoculars. This is probably illegal. Shrikes, and turf huts and pigeons on poles, may have been workable for greater geniuses than ever I can be, in the more propitious atmosphere of Valkenswaard.
Cully was a beautiful beast — though not so lovely as the little dark-checked merlin, Balan, who came after her, and she consented to be trained in two months, in spite of being a passager.
Here, then, for an end of this ancient picture, is the day of our first kill.
Tuesday
I suspected that in very long cross-country races the harrier often felt that he would never reach the end, never have enough in him for the last bit, and that then, when he did reach the end, he found it was quite easy. He could have run on much further, was surprised at his doubts, wished that there were another few miles to go. It was like this with Cully. The excitement, the terror, had come in the times when I was flying her loose — after she had learned to come quickly on the creance — but with a silly ten yards of string attached to one jess. I flew her to the lure more or less loose like this, with the string trailing behind her as an insurance, thinking that if she did ascend to a tree top it would hang down, giving me a chance of recapture. The next frightening step had been to fly her to the lure with no string at all. There had even been a throb of agony when I first flew her absolutely loose at wild game, with no attachment — a throb which was shared by both of us, since Cully, making hardly any effort at the rabbit, immediately sat down on a fence two yards away and looked at her master in amazement.
It was because of her plumage. When they caught her they had broken off half of her tail feathers and nearly all the pinions of her left wing. I had been forced to learn my imping on her, on too much of a major scale, and it had been a bungled job. Now, when she was on the point of beginning her moult, nearly all the bad feathers had gone once more — for there had been no alternative but to use some unsatisfactory buzzard feathers because, being a passager none of her feathers moulted in the previous season could be sent to me by Waller — and she was for that year a truly bedraggled raptor, with no tail to steer by and only one and a half wings for flight. But we were certainly going to make a kill, we were going to kill a wild rabbit, with the hawk flown loose under fair conditions, however many times we had to try. Fly powerlessly as she might, poor Cully was going to show me that one triumph, before I set her in the mews to moult.
A blazing day. All the misery of the last summer had made up for itself in this, and the hay was still uncut. For a week now, the austringer had been reduced to carrying Cully in the cool of the evening, walking incessantly from five until ten o’clock, searching for the really easy rabbit which would give the cripple a sporting chance of considering herself ‘made’. I had flown her nine times at difficult rabbits already, though unsuccessfully because of her plumage. She was in splendid yarak, which is the proper term for being in flying order, and she sat on the fist with her whole attention fixed on the sport. Her condition was balanced to half an ounce of meat, and I could feel no fear of losing her.
But there were other annoyances — those of cooperation. Cully had learned the preliminary lesson, that she was there to be flown at game, but she had not yet learned to take her cue from me. Since she always saw anything that stirred, two or three seconds before I did, we were generally at cross-purposes. It was bad enough when she flew at something invisible, so that I dared not loose her, but it was worse when an unknown object took her attention just before my own slow eye happened on an eligible quarry. Then I would stand still, seething with indignant impatience, unable to see what she did or to make her see what I did, and the priceless opportunity would slip by. It was like being handcuffed to a moron, I would think bitterly, in a chain gang.
The sun shone, and the evening was before us. We were both, inside ourselves, exhausted and high-strung without knowing it — myself because I had been trying for this culminating rabbit for a week, and feared that I s
hould never get it before the approaching moult, Cully because she felt herself crippled, had missed nine rabbits, and was beginning to be discouraged. We had to get a rabbit today, or the discouragement might break her for ever.
After half an hour of carriage on the fist, Cully roused her feathers for the second time. This was the awaited sign that she was in yarak, that she was in a keen mood and would attend to her business and not give trouble. It was not safe to fly her before she had roused twice — that fluffing rattle of the feathers which showed that she was in a good humour. I pulled out the leash with trembling fingers, slipped off the swivel, and held her now by the jesses only — in fighting dress. We were in the field by what we called the Tree Hovel, making for Tofield’s Riding. Cully roused her poor, broken feathers for the third time, at finding herself in trim.
Almost at once, there was the perfect opportunity.
He was a baby rabbit, far too young to be tricky, and we were between him and the hedge. Cully saw him first as usual, and dived like a thunderbolt. I, equally as usual, did not see him at all. So she was checked by the jesses.
She scrambled back to the fist, thwarted and bewildered, and the young bunny, started by her flutter, began to scoot for the hedge. Now I, too, saw him for the first time, cursed myself for stopping her, asked myself whether it was still worth flying her, decided that it was, decided that it was not, noticed that Cully was beginning to make a second onslaught, decided to let her, although I had decided not to, swung my arm — and the giant wings had unleashed themselves. She was off. The rabbit was five yards ahead of her. He was ten yards from the hedge. He was in the ditch. So was Cully. She was panting in a muddle of twigs, gripping furiously at the place where he had been. Her eyes were blazing. She had failed again.
You must read it at the top of your voice, in three seconds, and you will see what it was.
I went up to the hawk humbly, knowing that I had ruined a good chance. I stood over her, while she glared and cursed, held out my glove, said feverishly: ‘Come, Cully.’ The bird let go of the tuft of grass which she was strangling in her rage, moved a couple of paces, jumped back to the glove with one flap of her wings. Tenth failure.
But I was readier for emergencies now, just as Cully was less ready because she had been checked. Two hundred yards further on, in the same field, a pair of partridges got up at our feet. They were strong, old birds and out of season, but I was too shaken to have any judgment left. I swept the arm on which the hawk sat, upwards, and Cully, taken completely off her guard was in the air. The partridges went like bullets, the maimed wings rowed for six strokes, and then Cully was on the ground. She looked at me confusedly, saying quite plainly, ‘What the hell are you at?’ and I had to stoop down to take her up by the jesses. That made eleven.
In the dairy ground a full-grown rabbit got up by the brook, with quite a hundred yards to run before he could reach the sanctuary of a hedge. Both man and hawk were wide awake, and the former even had time to cry ‘Sha-hou!’ a harmless antiquarian habit, which Cully fortunately did not resent. Surely we must have him, cried the very blood in one’s veins, surely in a hundred yards! But the old buck jinked in a grass furrow, ran at right angles, and the broken tail could not turn her quick enough. Cully over-shot him, and sat down again with an almost human look of misery.
Poor Cully, I picked her up with hatred in my heart and we continued on our way. Twelve failures in all these miles of stalking, day after day, from five o’clock till ten. One’s back ached from stumping so as not to slip with a jar from heel to nape, on furlong after furlong of dry, slippery grass and baked earth. Even Brownie, the red setter of quite charming imbecility, had contrived to catch the second rabbit of her life (and been sick afterwards from remorse) but kill we could not. My head and eyes ached, from trying to see as piercingly as my mate. Even my brain ached, because I had sunk so low in the quest for an easy quarry as to go poaching on a neighbour’s land, and you could not ever feel really comfortable when you were poaching.
Cully! Did she see what I saw?
She did not.
We were in Tofield’s Riding, the best place of all, and we were against the hedge. Ten yards out from us, directly cut off from the hedge by our position, there was a young rabbit who could not have had a chance. He lay flat in the grass, just a wild eye fixed on mine.
But Cully did not see him. Her attention was on something half a field away to the left, and we were going to lose the ultimate opportunity.
I was too wise to make a sudden movement. I slowed up gently, began raising the hawk-arm gingerly. It rose and rose. She was above my head. The rabbit’s eye lay perdue. She would not see.
And then, suddenly, Cully had seen. I felt her murderous feet tighten on the glove. We stood together, staring at the eye motionless. Our veins coalesced, and the blood ran in a circuit through both of us. I could feel Cully’s blood wondering whether she was to be checked and whether she could kill despite her feathers: she could feel mine in terror.
‘Go then, Cully,’ I said. I had not got the heart to cry Sha-hou.
And by God’s grace, Cully went.
The moment that the wings flicked out, the rabbit went too. We were between him and his home, so he had to run toward Three Parks Wood, which was fifty yards away on the other side. He had a start of ten yards and his pursuer was a cripple. As soon as one had flown the hawk one felt as if virtue had gone out of one, as if life was being lived elsewhere. One became a spectator suddenly. It looked as if the rabbit would make the wood.
But he lived on this side. He did not know what sanctuary he would find away from us, and he was determined on breaking back. The ragged wings were after him, were within a yard, and my heart was praying encouragement and advice, begging her to strike now. It was like being an onlooker at an athletic meeting who kicks to help the high-jumper. The talons were within a foot; and the rabbit squatted.
Cully shot over him, tried vainly to stop herself with the half a dozen shattered feathers of her tail, and landed on the empty ground. Her quarry was on his feet at once, streaking straight back to me. Cully ran after him, bounding like a kangaroo. It was horrible to see the creature which ought to be able to fly, running pathetically after him with a leaping gait. But she gained flying-speed, managed to get into the air. I ran, waving at the rabbit, to head him off; could see the bird’s yellow eye boiling with fire. The rabbit turned sideways to run round me. She grazed his back. Landed. He turned again, but she turned with him. It was hop, skip, jump. She was there!
I took out my hunting knife and was with them in half a dozen paces. It was a long-bladed sheath-knife, and very sharp. She held him down, quite powerless, with one great talon on his loins and the other on his shoulders, I put the point of my knife between his ears, and pressed downward, pinning the split skull to the ground.
Blood-lust is a word which has got shop-soiled. They have rubbed the nap off it. But split it into its parts, and think of Lust. Real blood-lust is like that.
Well, Cully is safe to moult in her mews. I am in my badger’s room, with a big goblet of Venetian glass which was given to me by one of the finest women in the world, for just such an emergency. It is full of champagne, a silly sort of drink, but symbolical and medicinally quite sound. It is a beautiful, beautiful evening, and I go out with the goblet to Cully in her mews. She looks at me with her head on one side, over a crop which is so stuffed with rabbit that she really has to look over the top of it, like a pouter pigeon. The red setter has come too, looking bluish in the moonlight, and stands hopefully, with her head cocked also, between the two maniacs. ‘Well Brownie,’ I say, raising the goblet politely to the setter, ‘we may be mad north-north-west, but when the wind is southerly, at least we can tell a hawk from a hernshaw.’
POSTSCRIPT
PROVIDED that one was living in 1619 and training a goshawk according to the principles of the austringer Bert, the whole of Part One is true to life. Falconers do lose their hawks, all too often, and always with s
uch a downward somersault of the heart that it almost suffocates them.
But one was not living in 1619, and it was not until a couple of summers after my first engagement with Gos that I met a living hawk-master among his feather-perfect raptors, watched him at work, and discovered that falconry was a living art. It was not a dead one, something that ended in 1619, but a growing and progressing skill which had developed into something quite different by 1950, and which will continue to develop.
Imagine the Tudor staircase in a country house, with all its coats-of-arms and carved balusters and heraldic griffins: compare it mentally with the chromium staircase in a modern hotel: and you will have imagined the difference between what I had been doing to Gos and what a reasonable austringer would do today.
It is quite unnecessary to ‘watch’ a hawk in order to man her.
A proper austringer would have set about the training as follows, whether it was for an eyas or a passager.
First he would have provided himself with a ‘block’, though a bow-perch is practically as good.
Having dressed the hawk in her jesses and leash, he would have taken this block to the very most secluded part of his garden, thrust the spike into the ground, and tied the hawk’s leash to the loop in the ring with a falconer’s knot.
While we are about it, and since it has been mentioned in the body of the text, and since it is a beautiful creature, we may as well have a picture of this knot. It possesses the necessary merit that it can be tied with one hand in ten seconds — falconers only have one hand, because the hawk is always sitting on the other — and it is impregnable.
Well, having tied his goshawk to the block, he would leave her in her privacy, only visiting her once or twice a day to feed her. He would throw down the food beside the block, the exact quantity necessary to keep her in health, and he would go away at once.