A Kestrel for a Knave Read online

  At Mac’s he used tiny pebbles, pinking them individually off the glass. Pink. Pink. Pink. He had used half a fistful before the curtains were lifted and Mrs MacDowall looked down, clutching her nightdress to her throat. She waved Billy away, but he looked up at her and mouthed,

  ‘Is he up?’

  She pushed the window open and leaned out.

  ‘Whadyou want at this time?’

  ‘Is your Mac up?’

  ‘’Course he’s not up. Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Isn’t he getting up?’

  ‘Not that I know of. He’s fast asleep.’

  ‘He’s a right ’un. It wa’ him that planned it, an’ all.’

  ‘Stop shouting, then. Do you want all t’neighbourhood up?’

  ‘He’s not coming, then?’

  ‘No, he’s not. You’d better come back after breakfast if you want to see him.’

  She closed the windows and the curtains fell back into place. Billy scrunched the pebbles round in his fist and looked up at the pane. He threw them, and was running before the first one struck the glass.

  He ran back across the estate and straight down the avenue, slowing to a walk as he reached the cul-de-sac, round like the bulb of a thermometer. He cut down a snicket between two houses, out into the fields, leaving the estate behind him.

  The sun was up and the cloud band in the East had thinned to a line on the horizon, leaving the dome of the sky clear. The air was still and clean, and the trilling of larks carried far over the fields of hay, which stretched away on both sides of the path. Great rashes of buttercups spread across the fields, and amongst the mingling shades of yellow and green, dog daisies showed their white faces, contrasting with the rust of sorrel. All underscored by clovers, white and pink and purple, which came into their own on the path sides where the grass was shorter, along with daisies and the ubiquitous plantains.

  A cushion of mist lay over the fields. Dew drenched the grass, and the occasional sparkling of individual drops made Billy glance down as he passed. One tuft was a silver fire. He knelt down to trace the source of light. The drop had almost forced the blade of grass to the earth, and it lay in the curve of the blade like the tiny egg of a mythical bird. Billy moved his head from side to side to make it sparkle, and when it caught the sun it exploded, throwing out silver needles and crystal splinters. He lowered his head and slowly, very carefully, touched it with the tip of his tongue. The drop quivered like mercury, but held. He bent, and touched it again. It disintegrated and streamed down the channel of the blade to the earth. Slowly the blade began to straighten, climbing steadily like the finger of a clock.

  Billy stood up and walked on. He climbed over a stile and followed the path through a herd of cows. The ones grazing lifted their heads slowly, chewing their cud. The ones lying in the grass remained motionless, as solid as toy cows set out on a toy farm. A covey of partridges got up under his feet, making him jump and cry out. They whirred away over the field, their blunt forms travelling as direct as a barrage of shells. Billy snatched a stone up and threw it after them, but they were already out of sight over the hedges. The stone flushed a blackbird, and it chattered away along the hedge bottom, disappearing back into the foliage further along.

  He reached the stile which led into the woods, climbed on to it and looked back. Fields and fences and hedgerows. The sun was in the sky, and the only sound was the continuous relay of bird song.

  As soon as he entered the wood, Billy left the path and mounted a bank into the undergrowth. He pushed the branches back, away from his eyes, keeping hold until the last moment; then releasing them to thrash back into the foliage behind. He cut a branch off an elm sapling, trimmed it to walking stick length, then used it to fence his way through, slashing and fracturing any limbs in his path.

  The undergrowth thinned out, giving way to grassy clearings between the trees. Overhead their branches webbed into a green canopy, and in places shafts of sunlight angled through, dappling the grey-green trunks, and bringing up the colour of the grass and the foliage. Light and shade, a continuous play of light and shade with every rustle of the leaves. Here the bird songs were less frequent, yet more distinct. Hidden somewhere amongst the branches a chaffinch gave out its long undulating notes, concluding each sequence with a flourish. A wood pigeon managed a few series of throaty coo-ings, ending each series with an abrupt ‘cu’, as though its chest was too sore to carry on. The silence between these calls emphasized the noise of Billy’s progress, and birds retreated prematurely before the swishing and snapping: a robin, tic-tic-tic, a pair of wrens, their loud churrs out of all proportion to their mouse-like size, and a jay, its white rump flashing across the bars of the trees.

  Billy zig-zagged slowly between the trees, searching any growth round the base of their trunks, then stepping back and looking up into their branches. He high-stepped his way through a bramble patch, trampling the tentacles underfoot as though tramping through deep snow. Below him four beaks opened at the noise, and he crouched down over a thrush’s nest. The four young were almost fully fledged, and they fitted the nest as snugly as a completed jig-saw. Billy stroked their backs gently with one finger, then stood up and re-arranged the brambles over the nest before passing on.

  He reached a riding and stopped for a minute, resting his back against the trunk of a beech tree. A breeze murmured continually in the tree tops, and it was cool under the foliage of the beech, where the sun didn’t penetrate. A broad green stripe scored the grey bark of the tree and when Billy scraped his thumb up it, a skimming of moss came away, as cool and moist as yeast. He crossed the riding and slowly approached a scots pine, looking up all the time at the dark bunch of a nest built high amongst its top whiskers. He stopped beneath it and put his hands in his pockets while he studied the trunk. It was as straight and thick as a telegraph pole. The first fifteen feet were bare, then began a rotten stepladder of stubs and dead branches, leading up to the sparse greenery at the top. He felt round the bark, probing it with his fingers. It was crusty and rough with splits in the stippling. Billy peeled a strip off and squinted up the trunk as though taking aim. He shook his head and walked away, stopped, and started to take his jacket off as he walked back. He spat on his palms, rubbed them together, then, hugging the trunk, began to shin up it. He climbed in segments like a caterpillar, his arms hugging and pulling, his legs gripping and pushing. Up, slowly upwards, fingers scrabbling, pumps rasping. He reached the first dead branch and rested with one foot pressed into the junction of the branch and the trunk. Sweat was dripping from his chin. He looked down, looked up and began to climb again, testing each projection with his hand, and only using it to obtain the slightest leverage. Up, slowly upwards. The trunk began to sway a little and the branches at the top were swaying as though a stiff wind was blowing. He paused directly under the nest and looked round. He was now above many of the trees and the rooves of their foliage stretched round him in green hillocks.

  A crow flew in from over the fields, flapping low over the tree tops. Billy froze to the trunk, waiting for it. Then he whistled. The crow planed off and dived into the hillocks like a rabbit diving into its burrow. Billy grinned and felt carefully over the stick wall of the nest. The bowl was stuffed with old leaves and twigs.

  ‘Shit.’

  He pulled a handful out and they crackled like crisps as he crushed them and tossed them away.

  Ten feet from the ground he pushed himself clear of the trunk and dropped, landing and rolling parachute style. He stood up and looked up at the nest. He was breathing hard and his face was flushed, and when he inspected his palms, the rawness showed through the dirt like the dull red of a cooling poker glowing through the soot.

  The wood ended at a hawthorn hedge lining one side of a cart track. Across the track and beyond an orchard stood the Monastery Farm, and at the side of it, the ruins and one remaining wall of the monastery. Billy walked along the hedge bottom, searching for a way through. He found a hole, and as he crawled thr
ough a kestrel flew out of the monastery wall and veered away across the fields behind the farm. Billy knelt and watched it. In two blinks it was a speck in the distance; then it wheeled and began to return. Billy hadn’t moved a muscle before it was slipping back across the face of the wall towards the cart track.

  Half-way across the orchard it started to glide upwards in a shallow curve and alighted neatly on a telegraph pole at the side of the cart track. It looked round, roused its feathers, then crossed its wings over its back and settled. Billy waited for it to turn away, then, watching it all the time, he carefully stretched full length in the hedge bottom. The hawk tensed and stood up straight, and stared past the monastery into the distance. Billy looked in the same direction. The sky was clear. A pair of magpies flew up from the orchard and crossed to the wood, their quick wing beats seeming to just keep them airborne. They took stance in a tree close by and started to chatter, each sequence of chatterings sounding like one turn of a football rattle. The hawk ignored them and continued to stare into the distance. The sky was still clear. Then a speck appeared on the horizon. It held like a star, then fell and faded. Died. To re-appear a moment later further along the skyline. Fading and re-forming, sometimes no more than a point in the texture of the sky. Billy squeezed his eyes and rubbed them. On the telegraph pole the hawk was sleek and still. The dot magnified slowly into its mate, circling and scanning the fields round the farm.

  It braked and lay on the air looking down, primaries quivering to catch the currents, tail fanned, tilted towards the earth. Then, angling its wings, it slipped sideways a few yards, fluttered, and started to hover again. Persistently this time, hovering then dropping vertically in short bursts, until it closed its wings and stooped, a breath-taking stoop, down behind a wall. To rise again with its prey secure in its talons and head swiftly back across the fields. The falcon, alert on the pole, screamed and took off to meet it. They both screamed continuously as the distance closed between them, reaching a climax as they met and transferred the prey. The male disappeared over the wood. The falcon swooped high into a hole in the monastery wall. Billy noted the place carefully. A few seconds later the falcon reappeared and planed away over the fields, returning in a wide circle back to the telegraph pole.

  Billy settled. Before him the monastery ruins were thronged with sparrows and starlings. Swallows swooped witta-witta-wit around the ruins and the farm, and a pair of them chased amongst the trees of the orchard, the leader flying and dodging so rapidly that it seemed impossible for the pursuer to keep in such close contact.

  The wall cast its shadow back over the farmhouse, and from the yard behind the house, a dog barked, two men called to each other and a child laughed out.

  Billy selected a stem of grass and carefully drew it up from between the leaves. The green faded to white near the bottom of the stem and Billy placed this pale end between his teeth and began to nibble and suck at it. The hawk turned its head and stared up the cart track, then silently lobbed off the telegraph pole and flew away in the opposite direction.

  A man appeared round the curve of the cart track. Billy lay still. As he approached, the man took a run at a pebble and sidefooted it stylishly along the track. The pebble bounced across the crusty ridges and disappeared into the hedge bottom. The man smiled, began to whistle and passed by.

  Billy rested his head in the crook of his arm and closed his eyes. When he awoke the hawk was back on the pole and the sun was directly above the farm. He yawned and stretched hard, pointing his toes and bracing his hands against the base of a tree. The hawk glanced round and was away as soon as he popped his head through the hole in the hedge. He watched it go, then crossed the track and climbed over the wall into the orchard. He had almost reached the ruins when a little girl playing at the front of the farm-house saw him. She ran round into the yard and returned with her father.

  ‘Hey! What you doing?’

  Billy stopped and glanced back towards the wood.

  ‘Nowt.’

  ‘Well bugger off then! Don’t you know this is private property?’

  ‘Can I get up to that kestrel’s nest?’

  ‘What kestrel’s nest?’

  Billy pointed at the monastery wall.

  ‘Up that wall.’

  ‘There’s no nest up there, so off you go.’

  ‘There is. I’ve seen it fly in.’

  The farmer started to walk across to the ruins. The little girl ran to keep up with him, and Billy backed off, keeping the same distance between them all the time.

  ‘An’ what you goin’ to do when you get up to it, take all t’eggs?’

  ‘There’s no eggs in, they’re young ’uns.’

  ‘Well there’s nowt to get up for then, is there?’

  ‘I just wanted to look, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, an’ you’d be looking from six feet under if you tried to climb up there.’

  ‘Can I have a look from t’bottom, then?’

  The farmer stood under the wall and looked across at him.

  ‘Go on, mister, I’ve never found a hawk’s nest before.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  Billy grinned and sprinted up the edge of the orchard. As soon as he reached the farmer he pointed up at the wall, his finger steady on one spot.

  ‘That’s where it is, look, in that hole at t’side o’ that window.’

  The farmer glanced down on him and smiled.

  ‘I know it is. It’s nested here for donkey’s years now.’

  ‘Just think, an’ I never knew.’

  ‘There’s not many does.’

  ‘Have you ever been up to it?’

  ‘No, I’ve never fancied goin’ that high on an extender.’

  ‘I’ve been watching ’em from across in t’wood. You ought to have seen ’em. One of ’em was sat on that telegraph pole for ages.’

  He spun round and pointed to it.

  ‘I was right underneath it, then I saw its mate, it came from miles away and started to hover, just over there.’

  Billy started to hover, arms out, fluttering his hands.

  ‘Then it dived down behind that wall and came up wi’ summat in its claws. You ought to have seen it, mister, it wa’ smashin’.’

  The farmer laughed and ruffled the hair of the little girl who was standing just behind him, holding on to his trouser leg.

  ‘We see it every day, don’t we, love?’

  ‘It allus sits on that pole, don’t it, dad?’

  ‘I wish I could see it every day.’

  Billy studied the face of the wall, and his prolonged silence made the farmer and the little girl look up with him. The surface rose in a variegated complex of pitted granite and scooped sandstone. Whole sections had tumbled and the gaps had been patched with bricks, which in turn had eroded and tumbled. In the holes and in the chinks between the stones where the plaster had crumbled, moss and grass grew and birds had stuffed their nests.

  ‘They’ve been goin’ to pull it down for years.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s dangerous. I won’t let her play anywhere near it’

  He felt behind his leg. Feeling nothing, he looked round. The little girl was jumping from stone to stone in the ruins.

  ‘Has anybody ever been up?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘I bet I could get up.’

  ‘You’re not goin’ to have chance though.’

  ‘If I lived here, I’d get a young ’un and train it.’

  ‘Would you?’

  His tone of enquiry made Billy look up at him.

  ‘You can train ’em.’

  ‘An’ how would you go about it?’

  Billy held the farmer’s gaze, then looked away, nibbling his bottom lip. He concentrated on his pumps for a minute, then looked up quickly.

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No, an’ there’s not many that does.’

  ‘Where could you find out about ’em?’

  ‘That’s why I won’t
let anybody near, ’cos if they can’t be kept properly it’s criminal.’

  ‘Do you know anybody who’s kept one?’

  ‘One or two, but they’ve allus let ’em go ’cos they couldn’t do owt wi’ ’em. They never seemed to get tame like other birds.’

  ‘Where could you find out then?’

  ‘I don’t know. In books, I suppose. I should think there’s some books on falconry.’

  ‘Think there’ll be any in t’library?’

  ‘There might be in t’City Library. They’ve books on everything in there.’

  ‘I’m off then now. So long, mister.’

  Billy ran across the field, back the way he had come.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go through t’gate! You’ll be having that wall down, climbing over it!’

  Billy changed direction and ran along the side of the wall, at right angles to his previous course.

  ‘Got any books on hawks, missis?’

  The girl behind the counter looked up from sorting coloured tickets in a tray.

  ‘Hawks?’

  ‘I want a book on falconry.’

  ‘I’m not sure, you’d better try ornithology.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Under zoology.’

  She leaned over the desk and pointed down a corridor of shelves, then stopped and looked Billy over.

  ‘Are you a member?’

  ‘What do you mean, a member?’

  ‘A member of the library.’

  Billy pressed a finger into the ink pad on the desk and inspected the purple graining on the tip.

  ‘I don’t know owt about that. I just want to lend a book on falconry, that’s all.’

  ‘You can’t borrow books unless you’re a member.’

  ‘I only want one.’

  ‘Have you filled one of these forms in?’

  She licked a forefinger and flicked a blue form up on to her thumb. Billy shook his head.