Coromandel! by John Masters Read Free Book Online Page B

afraid.’
    In the shadow of the wood behind them Old Voy was gathering up his belongings. Jason looked at the girl with surprise. She was really interested. She could read, and had rich clothes and a great manor house and a big garden of flowers, but she liked to set snares for rabbits, and obviously she wished she knew more about the wild animals of wood and field. He showed her how to kill a rabbit, and she said, ‘Hugo hits them on the back of the head with his hand, but I never seem to be able to hit hard enough. Take me home now, please--and don’t you ever dare to poach on the Pennel land again, or I’ll have to tell my father.’ She stood away from him, clasping her stomacher. Jason thought: She’s remembered again, and just when she was having a good time.
    He said curtly, ‘ ‘Tis only your father, of all the squires, who calls it poaching.’
    They walked down the Windline, one behind another. Jane went slowly down ahead of the two men, holding up her wide skirt to keep the hem off the ground. They passed by fields lying still under the bell of the sky, and cottages asleep under their thatches, and heard no sound except their own.
    When they came near Pennel Manor and could see its twisted chimneys ahead, Voy took the girl’s arm and pointed. There was a small rabbit warren here, and Jason saw that the rabbits were out at play in the moonlight. For a moment the three stood close together, watching the rabbits hop and skip and the young ones roll together in their games. Fifty yards away, across a narrow pasture, a thick hedge bordered the stables and chicken runs at the back of the manor house.
    Suddenly, thump-thump , a rabbit struck the ground with its hind legs. Everywhere the white tails scuttered up and darted down the holes. In five seconds the field was empty. Jane Pennel drew in her breath to speak, but Jason put his hand across her mouth, and Old Voy leaned tensely forward. A tender breeze blew, from the manor house towards them.
    A red dog fox came to the edge of the cover twenty paces to their right and stood a moment, silent there, in the spotted moonshade. Jane Pennel had not seen it and still peered straight ahead. Gently Jason took her neck--it was soft and downy and thin in his hands--and gently turned it so that she saw the fox. Now from the fowl house just inside the Pennels’ hedge they heard the subdued clucks and indignant murmurs of the hens stirring in their places.
    Jason pulled the sling from his belt and felt in his scrip for his biggest stone. A bow and arrow would have been better for this; but the fox might come a little closer as it crossed the corner of the pasture. He could see no gap in the hedge opposite, but there must be one, and the fox would head for it.
    Carelessly the fox trotted out into the moonlight, neither hurrying nor dawdling. Jason leaned back and turned his shoulders. He wouldn’t miss, not with Jane Pennel watching breathlessly beside him. He had never missed a step in the dance with her as his partner.
    The fox crossed from right to left, directly in front of them and thirty feet away. Jason swung the sling twice; he had to be quick or the fox would see the movement of it. Then he threw with all his force. The stone hissed through the air and struck the fox on the point of the shoulder. It stumbled forward with a low, quick snarl, whipped round, and bit angrily at the place, and Jason ran out with the girl’s big stick in his hands. As he reached the fox it sat back on its haunches, its white teeth bared and fierce. Jason swung the jagged stick and hit it once on the head.
    He picked it up by the tail and brought it back to the others. Jane ran out to meet him, clapping her hands and crying, ‘Jason! That’s the fox who’s taken ten of my hens!’ He gave her the warm body, and she held it for a moment in both hands, her eyes sparkling at him.
    He smiled slowly and said, ‘We’d better take and bury him, Mistress Jane. You can’t say you caught him