The Wolf of Allendale Page 7

  The gate was smashed. Broken down by the sheer force of a hundred terrified animals. Shep slunk toward it, sniffed, then crept back.

  Bert stared. Why had he shut them in? Dear God, he should have left them free. Free to escape.

  He ran and fetched a lantern. Lit the wick with shaking hands and went to the fold.

  What would he find? Blood, torn skin, entrails, ripped-out throats, clumps of wool. He could picture the scene only too well. Slowly, he forced himself to lift the lamp.

  Nothing.

  He allowed himself to close his eyes for a brief moment, then walked around the fold. He searched carefully with the lantern light. No blood, no torn wool. Nothing but the ruined gate suggested anything had happened.

  So where were they?

  He looked across the fell, his lantern throwing out a feeble orange circle that illuminated only flying snowflakes. Beyond was interminably stretching shadow. He closed his eyes and concentrated. He heard the soft whisper of the snow, the rasp of his own breathing, the pad of Shep’s feet. Far away, toward Wooley, a dog barked. One of Scruffy Joe’s, most likely. Three, four barks, then silence.

  The quiet did nothing to calm his mind. The frantic blarting of sheep under attack would carry for miles, but they could be miles away by now.

  He opened his eyes. Shep was looking dolefully up at him, his tail curled protectively beneath him.

  “Where are they, boy? Find them!”

  The dog whimpered and refused to move. Bert fought an urge to kick him. If his dog refused to find them, they were as good as lost.

  But of course this beast was something entirely incomprehensible. He turned away and crouched down. There was no sign of fresh tracks, but then the ground was cold and hard, there was never likely to be. Where would they have gone? Where were they chased to?

  He started forward on their usual trail toward the burn, and after fifty yards he crouched down again. Fresh dung. Shep sniffed along the track as well.

  Bert straightened up. “Find them, boy!” he said again, hardly daring to hope.

  The dog went off at a trot, heading toward the burn. Bert followed as best he could, lantern held high and using his crook for balance. It would be hard going to cross the slippery stones in the dark. He briefly saw himself falling, injuring an ankle maybe. But Shep went straight past the crossing point and up toward the fell gate. He darted left, heading toward the most desolate part of the fell. They began to climb.

  Why had they come this way? They grazed here only rarely, mainly in spring when the heather was shooting. Surely they’d have gone somewhere more familiar?

  Bert hesitated. Was the dog wrong?

  “Where are they, Shep?”

  The dog whined and looked back at him. He went a few steps farther, then looked back again. His message was clear. All Bert could do was trust him.

  Eventually he had to pause to catch his breath. Shep stopped as well. The air was cooling fast and the snow was intensifying. He pulled the hem of his jacket over his mouth to try and ease the daggers in his throat. The wind was rising now that they were on higher ground. It was ripping through the heather and driving snowflakes into his face and eyes. He took a deep breath.

  “Ho! Ho!” he cried as loud as he could.

  The sound carried across the moor and echoed back. Ho! Ho!

  He stood motionless and listened. No answer except the wind. The pair struggled on across the spongy peat. Bert stumbled as his foot sunk deep into a boggy hole. He dragged himself free, his boot now soaking wet. There were no real treacherous bogs on this part of the fell, at least.

  “Ho! Ho!” he shouted again.

  They reached level ground, but the respite was tempered by the savage gale, which, now unchecked, tore at his jacket and numbed his fingers. The snow was already settling up here. Soon the tracks would be obscured.

  He blew out the lantern and stuffed it into his pocket. It was all but useless anyway. Better he let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. He could use his free hand now to hold his jacket shut. He tried to turn his collar up against the burrowing snow but the wind just whipped it open again.

  “Ho! Ho!” he shouted again, the sound splintering in his frozen throat.

  Shep stiffened midstride, his ears pricked. Then Bert heard it, too. Very faintly, carried by the wind.

  “Ho!” he bellowed, relief strengthening his voice.

  One, two, three, voices answered him. Bless you, Shep! He should have known he’d be right.

  He began to trot after the dog, as fast as he dared, his footsteps loud on the deepening snow.

  They rounded an incline and there was the valley by Hunter’s Ford, a deep gouge in the hillside, dangerously sheltered from the prevailing winds. Once, when he was newly married, his sheep had come here to shelter from a sudden snow storm. It had drifted across the mouth and three had perished before he could dig them out.

  He shouted again as he reached the lee of the hill, and there they were, his dear, faithful Molly at the front. She looked toward him and chortled deep in her throat. I knew you’d come.

  “Ho! Come on, girls!”

  They moved slowly, worried and nervous. What had happened, he had no idea. But somehow—perhaps when the snow began to fall—Molly had eventually led them here to safety. It could be a year since she last came here, but the memory of sheep was long.

  He scanned over them. At least the rapidly whitening landscape made it easier to see. A few of them looked back into the valley and flicked their ears. They were upset, and not just by the snow. But they were all sound. All alert. There was none of the labored breathing or heaving flanks that would signify injury or distress. Whatever had scared them, thank the Lord it hadn’t managed to harm them.

  When he turned back, the snow had already drifted across the mouth, obscuring the heather plants. They had to hurry. Whistling to Shep, he turned and strode back toward home, knowing they would follow.

  Shep knew exactly what to do. He ran behind the group and harried them on, keeping them tightly together as they reluctantly picked their way across the now invisible trail.

  They passed one of the ancient boundary stones that ran across the fell, and Bert felt a flood of relief. Nearly there. Nearly home. They reached the lower ground where the snow was barely yet settling, and then they were off the fell.

  The sheep balked for a moment when they reached the fold, but the snow had smoothed away any lingering traces of what had been there, and a few yips from Shep persuaded them to enter.

  Bert dragged some hurdles across the gateway and tied them in place. Icy fingers of snow crept down his neck and melted as he watched them settle, then he retreated inside, uneasily satisfied that there was nothing more he could do. Whatever had been there, all he could do was hope it was far away by now.

  17

  It was gone. Bert was confident of that.

  The sheep had been quiet in the night—he’d barely dared sleep, and Shep had lain on his rug with his ears cocked—so he knew he’d find all well. He pushed at the door but couldn’t shift it.

  “Well, Shep, I reckon it’s come down a bit thick.”

  The dog’s tail swept a semicircle on the floor.

  Bert put his shoulder to the door and budged it a few inches, and then a few more, until there was just enough room to squeeze out. True to promise, it was over eight inches deep.

  Sinking up to his shins, he went out into the sparkling, deafeningly silent world and smiled. It was the most beautiful sight. The rowan tree guarding the southern wall of his home looked stunning, each red berry topped with a tiny cap of creamy snow. Janet had planted it just after they were wed. Rowan was her favorite tree.

  “You’d love this, Jan,” he murmured, lightly touching the tiny ice crystals.

  He pictured her, tugging his arm to come and marvel at it. He would chuckle indulgently and run his arm around her waist, pulling her close for a kiss. She’d twist away, teasing, and point out yet another wonder.

 
A tiny flurry of snow speckled his hand, and forty years came between himself and his memories.

  “Imagine we’d grown old together,” he said to himself, watching the snowflakes melt and vanish into the cracks of his fingers.

  It was growing too big now, the roots would undermine the walls. He should have cut it down years ago, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  He took a shovel and began to clear a path to the fold. Dig, pitch, dig, pitch. It was nothing compared to the summers he spent loading hay wagons down the valley. He was barely sweating when he reached the fold.

  The dark green ovals among the white indicated where each sheep had lain for the night. He watched as one, and then another and another braced themselves and shook violently, the balled snow flying from their fleeces. In the silence it sounded like a continuous rumble of thunder.

  He opened the makeshift gate and the more adventurous were quickly outside, Molly in the lead. They began to expertly burrow through the snow to reach the grass. The younger ones, unfamiliar with snow, remained in a bemused huddle.

  Bert looked across the valley at the higher fells around Acton Moor. Uniform blankness except for the piebald columns of the old smelting chimneys, which had snow blown against one side. It had fallen much deeper up there.

  He’d have to wait a while before he could go back into town. The snow would have drifted high on the road, between its narrow walls. Around a week to melt, he estimated. The sun still lent some warmth. Snow in November, clear in hours; snow at Christmas, clear at Candlemas, so the saying went.

  He leaned on his shovel. His wood store was full. Plenty of hay in the barn. He had a side of bacon hanging by his fireplace; several boilings of potatoes from his plot; plenty of apples; a sack of oats; a pork pie from Ellen. He was always well stocked. It was a good time to start the winter tasks. He had to make new hurdles, and he had some carving projects in mind as well. He was going to make Thomas a crook as a Christmas gift. With a grouse’s head, he thought. The boy had been fascinated by their gurgling cry when he was younger, forever pestering Bert to take him up the fell to see them.

  He’d be twelve soon, leaving school. Coming to live with him, following the tradition of generations. Bert was looking forward to it. He saw himself pointing out the deep sheltered gorges on Eshells Moor, where a ewe always seemed to hide her lambs. The two springs that could always be relied on in the driest summers. The spots where tormentil grew, the roots of which would cure diarrhea in the lambs.

  There’d be room for a bed near the stove. A bit cramped, but warm. His boyish dreams of steam trains—Bert couldn’t help but grimace—would fade, of course. His future was written in his blood. And when he was older and wanted to marry, perhaps they could build a new place for him nearby.

  A twinge in his hip reminded him, he wasn’t as young as he was. Perhaps there’d be no need for that.

  His smile died away. He became aware, with an aching sense of loss, of the inexorable marching of time and change, sweeping him and all he knew aside, tossed about like fallen leaves on a mountain stream.

  He remembered the words etched on the sundial on the church. “Hora fugit,” Thomas had carefully read once. “What does that mean?”

  He’d no idea, but Thomas had bounced out of Sunday school several weeks later and told him: “It means, ‘the hour marches on,’ Grandpa!”

  How true that was.

  He looked across at the Fist, almost entirely obscured. At the clump of rowans, at the tiny gray houses down in the valley, bowed under their blanket of snow. At the faint speck of a kite interrupting the perfect blue sky.

  How long would it last? Would he ever see such a dazzling vision again?

  The sense of mortality grew more palpable. Would Thomas really continue after him? However much he hoped so, he couldn’t help but doubt. The wind crept under his collar and he realized his foot was growing damp. The snow had soaked through his split boot.

  He was spending far too much time thinking, he chastised himself. There was work to be done.

  He started to wade through the snow, looking for any sign of the beast. He didn’t really hope to find anything, but he needed to be doing something.

  Shep bounded alongside him, powdered in snow, tail high, propelling himself into the air to clear the never-ending obstacle. Bert couldn’t help but laugh.

  After twenty minutes of careful and fruitless search, his mood had dissipated. The snow would have obscured all signs of the attack. If there had ever been any. It would be impossible to track. When one met it, it was only ever on its own terms. His grandfather had emphasized that time and again.

  Hopefully it would back off now. It couldn’t travel through the snow without leaving tracks, after all. Perhaps they’d be safe for most of the winter. He could leave dealing with it until the spring.

  He nodded to himself. He was sure he was right.

  18

  Gleaming, sunny days followed silent, starry nights. The snow lessened. Bert and his sheep were left in uneasy peace. The only sounds were the dripping from the eaves, the occasional rumble of a tiny avalanche, and the persistent snuffling of burrowing sheep. The eerie light in the sky dimmed, visible now only on the western horizon after sunset.

  His first task each morning was to spread the hay on the trampled snow, watch the sheep eagerly devour it, then fill two buckets with snow to melt. Normally he fetched water from the spring two hundred yards away, but now it was on his doorstep. Every cloud . . . , as they said.

  He saw a robin hopping mournfully across the snow. It spotted a black speck and darted for it.

  “You’re getting hungry,” he said.

  When the buckets were warming he scraped up the crumbs from his rather stale loaf and scattered them on the snow. The robin was soon greedily pecking them up. When the snow was clean except for a scattering of tiny footprints, the bird looked at him, cocked its tail as if in thanks, and flitted away. Bert raised his hand in farewell.

  He kept glancing down the obscured track, expectant of Thomas’s approach and hoping he wouldn’t be so foolhardy. It was a treacherous route in deep snow, and he didn’t know the ground well enough. He’d have to show him how to make snow skates. They used to race on the hills with them when he was a boy. Just thin lengths of wood strapped to the feet, the difference they made was incredible.

  It was time to start the boy’s crook, he decided with a thrill. He took the horn he’d chosen, a beautiful piece from a five-year Swaledale ram. He’d traded one of his finest crooks for it at Hexham mart and used it for his most important projects.

  He held it this way and that, studying its natural grain and contours until he could visualize the grouse’s head locked within it. He hefted his knife in his hand and curled the first strip away.

  His hand soon began to tremble. He hadn’t carved anything like this for a few years, and it shocked him to realize how much his dexterity had declined. He put his knife down when the rough outline was formed and flexed his aching fingers. He winced as a sharp pain shot through his hand.

  He stared at the shelf on the wall, barely able to focus on the array of bottles and earthen jars. A jar of tea leaves, one of raspberry jam. Cough cure. A cloth-wrapped piece of hard cheese. With an effort he got them into focus. Good thing he didn’t do this too often any more. Last thing he wanted was his eyesight failing. A shepherd who couldn’t spot the lone lamb a half mile away in the heather, who couldn’t see the dart of a dropping raven, he’d be in the poorhouse in no time.

  His gaze drifted to the flames for a while, then he picked up his knife again. It was probably straining his eyes, trying to distinguish the contours from the dancing shadows in this dim light. But carving had to be a nighttime task. He had too many other things for the daylight hours.

  He persevered for three evenings. The bird was emerging from its confinement. The head and nape flowed out of the horn. Then it emerged up to its breast. He could see the eyes blink as the shadows drifted across it.

&
nbsp; He’d been working for three hours this evening, he estimated, although he’d have to go and check the position of the Plough to be sure. Shep was snoring at his feet, his paws twitching as if chasing an imaginary hare.

  He tried to lay the knife down but his fingers wouldn’t unlock. Perhaps he should finish it. He couldn’t wait for that feeling of intense satisfaction at a hard job well done. There were just the final touches to the face and beak. He focused again and began to make the final strokes.

  Shep jerked awake and sat bolt upright. Bert jumped, and his hand slipped. A tiny chunk of horn fell to his lap. He gasped in horror. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was spoiled, ruined.

  Shep, you damned stupid dog! he wanted to shout.

  Shep was already creeping into the corner, his ears down. He knew he’d done something wrong. He whined, peeping at him with his head hung low.

  “Not your fault,” he said. The dog wagged feebly.

  He looked at his masterpiece again. The beak hung low and lopsided, the beautiful symmetry shattered. He hurled it at the wall. Shep cringed lower.

  He’d have to start again. It had to be perfect. It had to last Thomas his lifetime. When the boy was struggling to lever his aching legs over the rocks and streams as he taught his own grandsons the ways of the hills, he would be using it to steady his steps. His grandsons would ask him about the grouse head, and he could recount with misty fondness his early years on the fell.

  Bert picked up his last remaining piece of horn, but he couldn’t face starting again. Not now.

  But he had to do something. He picked up a few odds of ash wood and began to whittle a galloping horse. Ellen’s half-sisters always enjoyed his animals, as did Thomas’s younger sisters.

  He rasped at his creation with a piece of sandstone to polish it. It looked good; the girls would love it.

  He stretched out toward the fire. He had plenty of time to redo the grouse. He’d done it once—almost—and he could do it again. After he’d carved a dog, staring acutely into the distance as Shep was wont to do, a couple of sheep, and a porker pig for Christmas gifts, he began the grouse again.