Free The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe Page A

been close to full the night before. “Peculiarly awful” was how Grandmother had described the storm on the eve of Waterloo, and as I understand it, the weather hadn’t improved much by the next morning. So here I was, I thought, at the dawn of my own Waterloo, if not as petrified as the men who had waited all night for battle, at least as wet.
    I paid a final visit to the hollow: Grandmother wasn’t there. Anyway, our spot—the cherished site of my awakenings—had been transformed into a small lake. I poked my head into the hutch: perhaps I shouldn’t have, because doing so only confirmed without a doubt that Old Lavender was gone, and destroyed my last remaining hope of nourishing myself for the rest of my life on thoughts of her, resplendent at the center of the colony, the planet around which we all revolved.
    Spode materialized from the mist. “Old Lavender disappeared last night, William,” he said, deeply shaken.
    I could barely breathe. His comment cemented all my fears. A frenzied spinning gripped my mind: images of foxes and owls tumbled together with Napoleonic plunderers and even with Emmanuel, poor fellow, who in my panic had morphed into a villain and opportunist (unfair, I suppose, but I knew so few people).
    â€œBut how?” I gasped.
    Spode said nothing. He nudged me into the hutch out of the rain.
    Something in my devastation must have brought a whole new facet to light in Spode, for his normally chilly demeanor warmed up. In the next few minutes, he would say more to me than he had in the three years I’d lived in the colony.
    â€œI promised your grandmother I wouldn’t breathe a word of what happened last night, William. So you must respect that.”
    â€œSo you know!”
    He ignored me and said: “As you will be leaving soon, perhaps you should know about the other time that she . . . well . . . slipped out .”
    â€œThe other time?” I echoed.
    Spode nodded. “The last time was many years ago, long before you were born. The moon was just a few days shy of full—like last night. But the evening long ago was clear, fresh. Your grandmother was lingering outside alone, as she liked to do on such evenings.” He noted my surprise. “Oh, I used to watch her from the hutch, William—even before I’d been engaged as a lookout. I was so afraid what might happen to her. The mesh over the pen could never hold off a determined predator.”
    I experienced a ridiculous twinge of guilt at the thought that he might have seen me creep outside and observe Old Lavender myself on one such occasion. But the twinge passed at once. I was an adult now, and Spode was clearly treating me as an equal.
    â€œThe hollow where you spent so much time with her used to be quite a bit deeper, you know,” he continued. “The wire was bent up in that corner, and even for a . . . ” Spode faltered. “For a goodly-proportioned rabbit like your grandmother, escape was possible, though only if you squeezed very hard.”
    I recalled Spode’s own successful escape to the cabbages. “Is that how you got out?” I asked.
    â€œYes. At around the same time she did—before they put the bricks under that part of the fence.” He thought for a moment. “It was nearly twenty years ago now.”
    â€œShe must have been really determined to squeeze that hard.”
    â€œOh, she was! Suddenly, she was out. It was terrifying to witness. I watched the trees every second, of course. They were crisp against the moonlit sky. I would have been able to see the silhouette of wings, swooping down upon her and . . . ”—he faltered again—“taking her away. She took just a few moments to get her bearings. Then she leapt briskly across the meadow, heading past the French memorial and onwards to the east wall. She didn’t once look back. It’s as if she knew exactly where she was