Chapter 4
Then, in a trice the evening shattered, like pressed-glass. No sooner had the last note of waltz faded off than a chill hit the air as a french door flung open and in rushed a beast of enormous size.
“Roar!” yelled the beast, charging blindly onto the dance floor—for blind he was—while his rustic keeper yanked back and forth on the rope tethered around the creature’s waist. The thing stood nearly eight feet tall to the tips of his horns and half as broad again as a man. With staring, grey-blue sightless eyes, curled horns as long and sharp as Highland cattle, it presented an awesome sight. Covering the creature from head to floor was a long, shaggy fleece, knotted in places, mangy and bald in others. The whole apparition reeked of naphtha, the smell of mothballs—and the Pit.
Screams from the women, shouts and uneasy laughter from the men, the swish-swish of silk as humans made way overcome by roars from the beast as it caromed around the floor, yanked this way and that by its keeper to shouts of “This way!” or “Look sharp, you girt lummox!” followed by a crash as the animal knocked over a stand of fire irons, took fright, and nearly set its ancient coat aflame. A footman rescued a side-table in its path from certain destruction.
Within moments the thing commanded centre stage, roaring and ranting, flailing one arm (for the other, concealed inside the fleece, supported the head), and carrying on like a bear on a chain.
“Elephant gun, that’s what this needs!”
“Steady on, Major,” said the chatelaine, her hand on her companion’s arm lest he act upon instinct and fetch one from the gun-room. “It’s just a harmless little joke that Bullsey likes to play.” The lady of the hall stepped forward. “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.” The hostess surveyed the room, gratified at her guests’ expressions of shock; equally relieved that none of the ladies had fainted and dropped to the floor. “I’d like you all to meet Child Okeford’s famous Bull, known abroad as the Dorset Ooser.”
“Roar!” said that worthy.
“Mr. Bull, if you please, take a bow.”
The Bull obliged, stiffly, bending from the waist, its head at first dropping forward out of control and then shaking from side to side to take in the room. Nervous laughter from the guests.
As much from relief as anything, the whole company started to clap, servants and all.
“Roar!” The Bull jumped up and down to acknowledge the greeting. “Roar!”
“Hush up, Ted, and let the lady speak,” said its keeper, a local man of about thirty done up in his Sunday best, which consisted of a copious coat with many deep inside pockets, a corduroy waistcoat and well-waxed hobnailed boots that threatened the fine wooden floor.
“Thank you, Mr. Garland,” the lady addressed the brute’s keeper. “Hush there, good Bull.” The Bull collapsed its head, tortoise-fashion, till its scalp lay seemingly crushed into its shoulders. Was it sulking, or did it pretend to cower?
The lady addressed her guests. “Not long ago the Bull was a local tradition in Child Okeford at Christmas feasts. We used to call him the Ooser. One didn’t invite the Ooser: he just appeared.”
Some of the older people nodded and smiled at childhood memories years ago of being scared stiff at the unbidden sight of this same roaring fleece. The rest of England used the image of Napoleon to scare its children: Child Okeford had its Bull.
“It seems he had free run of any house where Christmas festivities were in full swing. Didn’t you, Mr. Bull?”
The Bull roared assent.
“Wherever there was a Christmas party at Child Okeford, the guests would half expect him to appear. If he showed up, anything might happen. And if he didn’t, well, the guests were disappointed, weren’t they, Mr. Garland?”
“Reckon that’s so, ma’am,” said the creature’s keeper.
“So I thought our Christmas ball would present the perfect opportunity to bring him back to life again. Since tradition demands that Mr. Bull has free run of the house…”
“Roar!”
“…we shall just have to put up with his antics a while. Let’s see if a jug of ale or two won’t wet his whistle and warm him up.”
As if he were a genie to command, a footman appeared with two pottles of mulled ale on a silver salver and stood uncertainly in front of the blind, furry thing that seemed to be warring with its head. The eyes flashed back and forth, taking in the crowd.
“You’m best take ’en in under the head, ’an, Ted,” said the Minotaur’s keeper.
The gathering was treated to the incongruous spectacle of the head rising up off the shoulders while a hand reached out of the neck and fumbled for the proffered ale. “Much obliged,” said the hand and retreated inside, the mulled ale with it.
“His appearance is lucky, you see,” said the hostess, “which is why I asked him all the way from Knossos to join us tonight.” She laughed at her own little joke. “Bull makes good things come true!”
With audible sighs of relief, the company raised their glasses and gave Mr. Bull and his keeper another round of applause, more hearty this time. The keeper took off his hat, studied his polished boot caps and blushed. Safe inside the mangy fleece, Mr. Bull quaffed off his mulled ale and belched.
“And now, Mr. Conductor,” the hostess demanded amiably, “music if you please!”
Members of the company took a minute or two to compose themselves after the Bull’s first appearance. Not Raymond Parsons, Alicia’s father. He had spent more than a little energy in the past few months contemplating the union of his daughter with the tongue-tied young Map. The Maps’ leasehold was nothing to sneeze at in this day and age; it had better than two generations still to run.
So, while the company had been distracted by Child Okeford’s bucolic Minotaur and his friend, Raymond Parsons had kept a keen eye on his daughter, Alicia, and Gregory Map. He had noticed in amazement that the moment the Bull made its entry the reluctant Gregory turned hero, seizing Alicia by the shoulders, pressing her against a wall and standing protectively in front of her. She was only now emerging from his custody. Damn, but the boy had a fire in him somewhere! The germ of a bold idea formed in Raymond Parsons’ head.
Guests were relaxing again, touching the shaggy hide or taking their places and partners for a dance, when Parsons turned to his wife and said, “Would you mind awfully, Cecilia? I have to have a word with that fellow, Garland.”
“What on earth…?”
“About laying hedges, my dear.”
Abandoning his wife, Raymond Parsons threaded his way through the throng on the dance floor. As he approached, the Bull’s keeper was wiping the last of the ale from his lips on his sleeve. Parsons had no idea who the “Ted” in the bull-suit was, but he knew Garland by sight. A man of many talents was Reg Garland, many of them low.
“A word, Mr. Garland, if you please.”
“O yes? Mr. Parsons, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Do you see that young lady standing beside the great fireplace talking to that young man?”
“The one with chestnut hair what’s wearing yellow silk and white lace trim?”
“Exactly.”
“Very nice!” Before Garland could configure his lips in a whistle, he fetched back his brains: “She’s your daughter, bin’ ’er?”
“She is. Her name is Alicia. Alicia Parsons.”
“What of it?”
“At the end of the evening, the very last thing you do, I want you and your friend in the bull-suit to carry her off.”
“Lor’ what?” Garland’s mouth hung open like a rabbit hole.
“A wager, Mr. Garland. A sporting wager with a friend. I need not trouble you with details.”
“But…”
“Two sovereigns to each of you if you get her past the great cedar tree on the lawn.”
“What, two quid each?”
“Sovereigns, man. Sovereigns. But only if you get her past the cedar tree.”
“Wha’, the big old cedar by the chapel?”
?
??Precisely. You may meet stiff resistance from her friend.”
“Young Map? The bloke with the weedy moustache?”
“Yes.”
“No fear. Then what?”
“Then you put her down gently past the tree and go your ways as fast as you can run. Let’s see that nobody gets hurt!”
“Just past the tree? That all?”
“That’s all.”
“Anything to help a sporting gentleman. What about the money?”
“Not now, obviously. If you succeed, come to the house and ask to speak to me about laying hedges. Is that clear?”
“As windows, guv’nor. You can rely on Ted and me.”
“I repeat, nobody gets hurt!”
“I heard you first time, guv.”
By the time this conversation ended, a lump on the Bull’s chest appeared to be listening in.
Raymond Parsons was all too well aware of the absurd. With the finest of North Dorset’s County society whirling gaily around him, he was planning the abduction of his daughter with a chap who was well-known to the Sturminster magistrates’ bench. And whoever was wearing the bull-suit was, whatever else, a man of enormous size.
Disengaging, Parsons noticed how dancers were knocking and tugging playfully at the Bull, who entered into the fun by jostling back.
His wife watched him anxiously. “Is everything all right, dear?”
“Most satisfactory, Cecilia.”
“You do pick the strangest places to talk about laying a hedge.”
“Well, I thought I’d mention it while he put me in mind.”
Minutes later, his keeper drew the Bull aside and spoke into its chest, “Ted?”
“What?”
“See Alicia Parsons in yellow sitting it out with young Map?”
The Bull surveyed the world through a small flap on its chest, replying, “Ah.”
“There’s a pound in it for each of us if you carry her off past the cedar tree out on the lawn.”
“What?”
“A gentlemen’s wager.”
“I humped deer carcasses weighed more than her, but I only got one arm.”
“Soon fix that, ’an.”
Reg Garland pulled a pocket-knife he used for skinning rabbits. “Cut yourself an armhole on this side wi’ thik,” he said, slipping the knife into the bull-suit at the neck. “Then, when you gets the girl, run like a hare and I’ll make like I’m pulling you back. All right?”
“Barmy, the gentry. Bleedin’ barmy!”
“Just past the cedar tree, mind.”
The Bull handed out the empty pottle of ale and took in the knife through his throat.
Time passed, while dancers danced, the champagne lost its fizz, the Bull behaved as he had always done (in humbler homes), cutting in to prance with women, now and then with men, roaring and drinking, stealing footmen’s wigs, nuzzling ladies’ necks and pinching parlour maids—in fact playing the part of rebel that his betters dared not play.