Thunder oak, p.9
Thunder Oak, page 9
Miniver slipped into the first hovel she came to.
There was a jill weasel in the corner, cowering away from the light. She stared at Miniver with round eyes. On the earthen floor were strewn various cooking utensils, all thick with black grease. A weasel kitten was playing in the ashes of the cold fireplace with a piece of filthy string. She looked open-mouthed at the intruder. The jill herself, a fairly elderly weasel, was smudged with black – dirty and unkempt.
‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘You’ll be for it when my jack comes home.’
‘I don’t mean any harm,’ whispered Miniver. ‘I just came to see if you could help me. You see, my friends are trapped in the monastery—’
‘The one with the old pig in it?’ interrupted the peasant jill.
‘Yes,’ said Miniver, ‘and I wondered—’
‘You don’t want to go near there,’ said the jill, interrupting again. ‘You got to be careful with that old pig. He’ll skin you alive.’
‘I’m aware of that, but I was wondering if the villagers would help me get my friends away. I can’t do it on my own. This must have happened before. What did you do last time an innocent traveller stopped at the monastery?’
‘You mean,’ said the jill, getting the gist more quickly than Miniver had expected, ‘you want crowds of villagers to go out there with flaming torches and force the pig to release his prisoners?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You must be mad as a loon. Who would want to do a thing like that? We’ve got enough to put up with here, without having to rescue weasels from the clutches of Karnac.’
‘Well, that’s a bit mean-spirited,’ said Miniver. ‘After all, Sylver is trying to get everything put to rights here, so that we can all return to our rightful places in the woods and fields.’
‘Sylver, eh?’ said the jill, snatching the grimy string from the infant, which immediately let out a howl of dismay. ‘Nothing to do with me. I don’t want to go back to living in holes in the ground. I like my house, I do.’
Miniver took a look around her, at the damp dull interior of the hovel, with its one poky little window. ‘After this place,’ she said, ‘I would think a hole in a dung pile would be a palace.’
The jill’s eyes opened wide. She clutched at a broomstick with her paws. ‘You get out of here,’ she cried, ‘before I call the stoats! Insulting my little home. Well I never did. I expect you’ve got no home to go to, that’s why you’re jealous of the likes of me. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, coming in here, taking advantage . . .’
The youngster was letting out a shrill whine now and grabbing feebly at the piece of string which dangled from its mother’s paw. Miniver backed out of the dwelling and went on to the next one, then the next, then the next, each time trying to rouse the occupants of the village to some kind of action.
Finally, she came to the smith, whose furnace was glowing red-hot in his forge. He was wearing a leather apron to protect his fur against sparks. In his right paw he held a pair of pincers which gripped a glowing piece of metal. In his left paw was a hammer with which he struck the white-hot ingot, flattening it against a huge iron anvil. Showers of sparks like feckless stars danced from the blows in a fascinating display.
When the smith paused in his work to hear what Miniver had to say, he shook his head sadly. ‘You’ll not find anyone here to help you, jill. This village is full of fear. The stoats would burn our houses to the ground if they knew we’d helped Sylver and his band. Don’t you know we’re under constant watch?’
‘Everyone is,’ said Miniver sadly. ‘That’s the trouble.’
‘Well, there’s leather-workers here, who sew vole skins into furry bedsheets for Prince Poynt, and weapon-makers, and a paper mill where parchments are made for the monks who record the victories and triumphs of Prince Poynt. You see, there’s a whole industry in this village. We send all our goods by mouse wagon to Castle Rayn – six mice to a wagon team – and if we don’t live very well by it, we survive. No-one will want to put our village at risk, just to save some swashbuckling weasels.’
Miniver saw what the smith meant and sadly left his forge to slip down between two dwellings. There were some ferrets entering the village who had been on a long march, a vicious-looking mink at their head. Though there were fewer minks than ferrets in the auxiliary forces of Prince Poynt, their rise through the ranks tended to be rapid.
Miniver crept away into the fields beyond the village to find a stream from which to drink. She had been parched when she began her search, but the heat in the smith’s forge had made her thirstier still. She found a small brook and began lapping up the water, when she sensed a presence behind her. ‘Who’s that?’ she cried, whirling on the intruder. ‘What’s your name?’
Confronting her was a weasel bigger than herself – which was no strange thing since she was one of the smallest weasels around – but this was a very filthy animal. There were patches of fur missing from his coat. His face was smeared with dung, around which hovered a constant cluster of flies. His limbs were scabby and his tail mangy. In truth, he looked a very poor specimen of a creature. He grinned at her with yellowed teeth and then flicked his own nose with a lean red tongue.
‘Scirf,’ said the intruder.
‘What?’ asked Miniver. ‘What was that?’
‘Me name. It’s Scirf. And I’ve come to give you assistance, like, to get your comrades out of jail. You can rely on me, jill. I can get the business done. It all depends on what it’s worth, don’t it? Eh? What say?’
Chapter Eleven
‘I don’t see how one weasel can help us,’ Miniver said. ‘We need a thousand weasels, armed to the teeth with terrible weapons, to make that boar see sense.’
Scirf touched his nose with his tongue. ‘Ah, yes, but you doesn’t know the ways of pigs, does you? I knows ’em, see. I’m wise to the ways of pigs. I can sort out that old swine quicker’n hog can bite its own tail.’
Wondering why a hog would want to bite its own tail, but not wishing to open another line of conversation which would only waste time, Miniver said, ‘You mentioned some sort of fee – for helping us. We’re not very well off. We don’t have much use for money in Halfmoon Wood, though I dare say we could scrape together a few groats.’ She was certain the weasel Scirf could not give them assistance, but since he was all they had, she was duty bound to listen to any ideas he might propose.
‘My reward would be to join the outlaw band, see. Always fancied meself as an outlaw. Sounds sort of exciting. Better’n looking after the rhubarb dung.’
‘The what?’ asked Miniver.
‘Dung what goes on the rhubarb patches. That’s me job in the village at the moment. Dung-watcher and part-time flycatcher. You might have noticed a bit of the stuff about me person. ’S’difficult to guard manure without getting a little dab of it on your pelt.’ In fact he was covered in dung, but particularly around his facial whiskers.
‘You – you seem to have a certain amount of – of organic fertilizer on your nostrils,’ she admitted.
Scirf grinned and licked his nose quickly with that long slim tongue. ‘No need to get fussy, is there?’ he said. ‘It’s only straw and whatnot.’
It was the whatnot that worried her. ‘But how do you manage to get it on your face?’
‘Why, I got to eat, haven’t I? It’s the beetles what live in the nice soft warm dung. They’re the main dish of an evenin’, so to speak. Nice crunchy black beetles with oily shells.’ He began to look wistful. ‘They gets a sort of sweet taste when they lives in the manure. Your non-dung beetle is tangy, but your dung beetle is sort of sugary . . .’
‘Listen,’ said Miniver, wanting to change the subject quickly, ‘I’m afraid I can’t speak for the rest of the band in allowing you to join us, but I’m sure they’d all be very grateful for your help. Please, what ideas do you have?’
Scirf shook his head in a determined fashion. ‘No, no – you got to promise to let me join the band. I want to see a bit of the world. I want to see Welkin. I’m fed up with looking after a pile of steaming—’
‘Yes, so you said, but the authority does not rest with me,’ explained Miniver carefully. ‘Sylver is the leader of our band – he’s the one who makes the ultimate decision.’
‘Jills got no say, eh?’ said Scirf, a little contemptuously. ‘Jacks run the place, do they?’
‘Certainly not,’ replied Miniver, her feminist instincts rushing to the fore. ‘Bryony has a lot of influence in the band – so does Alysoun – and myself. But we elected a leader and that leader is Sylver. He listens to advice, much of it from us jills, but he makes the final decision.’
‘Well, that’s it then, isn’t it? Can’t talk to this Sylver bod, so I can’t help you, can I? Stands to reason. You can’t give me a promise, I can’t get ’em out.’
This put Miniver in an agony of concern. Scirf, for all his scruffy appearance, did seem quite confident of being able to free the band. But Miniver wondered just how long the band would put up with this filthy creature covered in rhubarb manure. It did seem, however, that she had taken over temporary leadership of the outlaws in the absence of Sylver. She was the whole band at the moment, since the others were in jail and unable to take part in any decision-making. ‘All right,’ she said at last, ‘I promise you a place in the band – now, what have you got for me?’
Scirf shook his head. ‘Nah, nah – you got to take me to where they are, and I’ll get ’em out.’
‘I’ve told you – they’re trapped in Milkstone Monastery.’
‘Where’s that?’
Miniver was aghast. ‘You mean you’ve never been there – met the boar monk?’
‘Well I’ve heard of him, of course, and this monastery, but I’ve never been out of the village before. Just know pigs, that’s all. Our family has had dealings with pigs all our lives. We know how they think’ – he moved closer to Miniver’s ear and whispered like a conspirator – ‘we knows the ways of ’em, see.’
‘He’s more than just a pig. He’s a wild boar, with great sweeping tusks that fly out of the corners of his mouth, the points of which almost touch the tips of his bristly ears. He’s big-boned and nasty – huge – with a girth like an old oak. He’s rough and ill-mannered, thick-headed and ugly.’
‘A pig’s a pig,’ stated Scirf, picking a dried crusty bit of dung from his coat and studying it closely, ‘no matter how he’s painted. He don’t scare me none. I knows the ways of him, see.’
‘Yes, yes, so you said,’ Miniver replied, moving hastily away from the source of the smell. ‘All right, I’ll take you to the monastery. Er, wouldn’t you like to wash in the stream before we go? It won’t take but a moment to get clean.’
Scirf looked offended. ‘Certainly not. I wouldn’t know myself, if I was clean. I’d feel sort of, well, a sissy. Nothing wrong with a good bit of honest earth. Weasel of the land, that’s me. Son of the soil.’
‘Is it?’ she murmured. ‘Well, far be it from me to rob you of your identity. Come on, then.’
She led the way back to the monastery. Scirf followed jauntily behind, taking note of the countryside as he went. He was accompanied by horse flies and other airborne insects which hovered around his caked nose. This did not seem to bother him at all. Even a couple of speckled wood butterflies seemed interested in the load he carried in his matted fur.
Miniver kept upwind of the rustic weasel, whose job it had been to watch over the village dung pile, the smell of him offending her delicate sense of nature. She enjoyed the fragrance of wild flowers – forget-me-nots, campion, herb robert, wood anemones – not the odour of manure fresh from the yard.
On their way they met a weasel pedlar laden about his person with pots and pans. He clanked and clattered as he walked, whistling a merry tune. Pedlars seem to have the secret of life, at least when the sun is shining. Who knows where pedlars go when it’s raining? This one, who had often visited Scirf’s village in the past, stopped Scirf with a curt nod. ‘Someone lookin’ for you,’ he said.
‘Who?’ asked Scirf.
‘Statue – woodcutter – used to stand in your village square.’
‘What’s it want?’
‘Don’t know. Been asking for you all over.’
Scirf narrowed his eyes and scoured the countryside. On seeing it bare of statues he said, ‘You haven’t seen me, right?’
‘If you say so,’ said the pedlar, ‘but it might want to give you a thousand gold pieces.’
‘Doubtful,’ replied Scirf. ‘More like a bash about the head. I ain’t done nuffink to no statue, but you know how thick they are – it might think I have.’
‘Mum’s the word then,’ said the jaunty pedlar, going on his way.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Miniver afterwards.
‘Blamed if I know,’ replied Scirf. ‘Some rotten statue wantin’ to ’ave a word with me. I ain’t interested. They get flies in their heads, these statues. Best to avoid ’em.’
When they reached Milkstone Monastery it was evening. The cross which had guided the weasels to the place was not visible – no light shone behind it to attract wayward wanderers to the monastery doors. It was also very silent. Miniver wondered whether she was in time to save the weasel band from the boar’s knife. ‘Well, what do we do now?’ she whispered to Scirf.
‘Do?’ cried the scruffy weasel loudly. ‘Why we goes up and rings the bell, that’s what we does!’
With these words he stepped up and pulled the rope on the end of which was the bell. It clanged loudly somewhere within the stonework. Miniver was terrified. She might have run, except that it was too late. The boar would surely catch her easily.
The great door swung open and the boar in his monk’s habit stood there. ‘Yes?’ he said silkily. Then he noticed Miniver. ‘Ahhh!’ he roared. ‘The one that got away. Come home again, have you? Inside with you!’
Miniver skipped over the threshold, followed by Scirf.
‘Where d’you think you’re going?’ asked the boar from within the folds of his robe. ‘Who asked you inside?’
‘The coat may look a bit tatty,’ said Scirf, ‘but it’s got a good solid rind underneath. Me old mum used to say to me, “You’d make a good drum, you would, Scirfy-me-little-kitty. You’ve got a leathery look about you, you have. Your father was the same, Gawd bless his hide. Even when he was hanging on a gibbet out in Long Meadow, he was prime pelt, he was.’”
The boar stood for a moment, still holding open the door, then he shut it with a bang. Immediately the tower began to revolve slowly, changing the position of the outside world to the outer door. ‘On your own head be it,’ he growled. ‘I might need something for a corner bit if I run out. Otherwise you’ll do for patching, I suppose, though I can’t imagine why you want to lose your skin and be made into a drum.’
Scirf rounded on Karnac. ‘Why, what more glorious use could we be put to after we have to leave this world? A drum. Why, there’s majesty in that word. There’s a regal sound to it. Drums goes with everything, don’t they? Bugles and drums, fife and drum, hautboys and drums. I shan’t be sorry to be a drum, oh no, don’t you worry about that, monkie-my-lad.’
‘Monk,’ murmured Karnac. ‘Monk, not monkey.’
‘Sorry,’ replied Scirf. ‘Just a sort of affectionate saying, like. Monk it is then, pigface.’
The boar took off his hood and blinked rapidly. ‘Although I belong to the hog family, I do not like to be referred to as “pigface”.’
‘Oh?’ said Scirf, looking surprised. ‘Why’s that, then? You’ve got the face of a pig, haven’t you?’
Miniver was looking from one to the other of the two animals, wondering why Scirf was playing these games of words, annoying the boar intensely.
‘Yes,’ replied Karnac through gritted tusks, ‘I do have the face of a pig, because I am a pig. But the term “pigface” is used as one of abuse. It’s offensive. How would you like it if I called you “weaselface”? I don’t suppose you’d like it.’
‘But then I’m not a pig, I’m a weasel, an’ I don’t mind if you call me weaselface,’ said Scirf, looking round as if searching for a door. ‘Now then, where’s the dining room?’
‘What?’ asked Karnac.
Scirf turned to face him again. ‘The dining room, where we eats. You surely got to give us food before you cut our throats. A bad diet ruins the skin, don’tcha know. Lack of good nourishment can shrink a weasel quicker than a hog can bite its own tail. Why would you want to starve your weasels when, if you feed them up fat, you’ll get twice as much material for your drumskins, won’tcha?’
Karnac suddenly saw the logic in this. Of course, he thought to himself, if I let them grow skinny there’ll be a smaller hide on their backs. Whereas, if I feed them up like this weasel with the big mouth suggests, their hides will stretch even further across the drum tops!
‘I was going to feed them all,’ said Karnac, ‘just before you came. You, little weasel – go and fetch your comrades. I guarantee your safety during the meal. Lord knows I don’t want you all to starve to death.’ He shuddered dramatically before adding, ‘I’m not a monster.’
Miniver went off to the cells, where she found Sylver and the band had barricaded themselves in behind the doors. They were surprised to see her and had many questions to ask her.
‘Are you here to set us free?’ asked Bryony eagerly. ‘Oh, I knew you’d do it, Miniver. Did you bring all the weasels from the village with their pitchforks and sickles? Has the countryside risen against the false monk? How many are out there – a thousand, a hundred, two dozen?’
Miniver coughed. ‘One – and he’s inside.’
‘One?’ said Sylver. ‘You mean, one village?’
‘One weasel.’
‘A single weasel?’ cried Icham. ‘And you let him get himself caught?’
