The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe

Author:Leona Francombe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2015-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

7

Was I afraid of my new, alien patch of turf? Oh, terrified! The walls soared high . . . so high that they seemed to lean ominously inward. Light was a scant commodity. The lawn itself was just a scrappy rectangle, bald as a newborn rabbit in places. Though not the windy plain of Waterloo, the garden did contain a harmonic of sorts that I couldn’t interpret. At first I rued this lapse in my gift. But soon I realized that the air could not move freely here, and any reading of the circumstances, as Old Lavender liked to call it, was necessarily hampered.

This hidden harmonic turned out to be just as frightening as the predators of Hougoumont . . . or even the threat of Napoleonic plunderers. This was my new Untried, you might say. But even if my cage door was left open during the day and I was free to wander wherever I liked, the risk of stepping off the patio into that inchoate space always seemed too great. For you see, whenever I stood there alone, contemplating my very own Untried, all I could think of was what had happened to poor Caillou.

His shriek resides in me still.

But at last I did it: in a triumph of will I banished Caillou from my mind and stepped off the patio!

At once my haunches turned to water.

Caillou reappeared immediately. I looked up, as indeed he seemed to be urging, and imagined a hawk with the wingspan of a vulture. In vain I searched for a sign from Old Lavender. How could she have summoned the courage to enter the Hougoumont meadow, alone, and at night—twice? I even cast about for a signal from Moon himself, assuring me that I had nothing to fear; that I would certainly return to my hutch from this excursion in one piece. (“One piece” meaning, of course, without bloodied, shredded flesh. Why is reality always reduced to insipid niceties?)

The Untried lay before me, ripe as a cabbage. For the first time in my life I was poised to take a bite.

The light had begun to fail. When the sun touches the tops of the trees it’s time to go home, William. The voice jangled a distant nerve, then vanished.

Heedless, I crept to the center of the grassy patch, where something familiar suddenly gripped my body. That old impulsiveness surged. Exhilerated, I felt pulled towards the tree at the back corner as if by a knowing hand. (The hand also, thank heavens, bestowed a last-minute dollop of self-confidence.) Behind the tree yawned the sort of long, dark, narrow space of earth to which every rabbit feels an atavistic pull, but which I’d never seen myself until that moment.

No, William.

The warning seemed closer now.

I rose up on my hind legs and peered behind me. Old Lavender must have been present in some incarnation or another, for she then raised her voice with typical surliness and snapped: Go back! It’s late. Remember Caillou . . .

It’s interesting to recall the first time one breaks step with a mentor.

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