Free The Painted Tent by Victor Canning

shapes of the rain-clouds sweeping in from the distant sea, and the coming and going of Smiler and Bob and Bill and the Duchess about the farm. But there were two things she watched in those first days with special interest. At noon one day, when a scattering of sparrows were squabbling on the yard cobbles over a few handfuls of grain that had been spilled, a sparrow hawk came round the corner of the barn in a swift, low-flying, piratical swoop. As the sparrows rose in alarm, the hawk burst into their midst, did a half wing-roll and took one of the sparrows in its talons and flew on with it. Something about the hawk and the manoeuvre wakened some ancestral memory in Fria. Three times a day for the first two days Fria saw this manoeuvre and each time a sparrow was taken. And another bird wakened a response in her. Now and again a kestrel came quartering up the valley and hung over the pasture by the brook. Fria eyed it the first time, watched the wing-tip tremor of its poised hover and saw, as plainly as the kestrel could see, the movement of a winter foraging vole in the brook-side grasses. When the kestrel plummeted with upraised wings and made its kill, Fria shuffled restlessly on her beam. She lowered her head, trod impatiently with her feet and uttered a faint call, a thin wail – wickoo, wickoo – that was barely audible. Again and again Fria watched sparrow hawk and kestrel in their hunting and always an excitement stirred in her which sent a swift, tremble through her wings or made her lower her head and wail gently.
    And during those days Smiler watched and worried about Fria. But on the morning of the fourth day he felt happier. Sometime, either during the night or at first light, Fria had moved down from her beam to the loft edge. One of the mice Smiler had taken in a barn trap was gone. Late that afternoon when he checked he saw that she had been down again and had taken a piece of meat from the food laid out for her. He saw, too, that the small bowl of drinking water he had set out was tipped over and he guessed that Fria had tried to take a bath in it.
    From then on Fria began to eat regularly and Smiler would find her castings lying on the ground below the beam. When she was used to feeding, Smiler began to move the food farther and farther back from the loft opening because he wanted to train Fria to go well back into the loft to eat, so that one day he and Bob would have a chance to set up the ladder and shut the doors on her before she could get back to her beam. But Fria was not to be tempted. When the food was set farther back into the loft she refused to eat for two days and Smiler put it back on the ledge of the loft opening.
    He did this with a definite plan in mind. He explained it to the Duchess. ‘ You see, I don’t really want to catch her just to shut her up in her cage again. What good’s that going to do her?’
    â€˜Well, she can’t sit up on that pole for ever, Sammy.’
    â€˜But that’s it, ma’am. She won’t. If I feed her regular –’
    â€˜Regularly.’
    â€˜â€¦ regularly, and she begins to get strong and … well, sort of more contented … Well, then maybe she’ll fly. You know, take off on a little flight. But she’ll always come back for her food, because she can’t hunt for herself. Not, anyway, until she’s a real good flyer. When she’s like that – well, isn’t there a chance she might start to hunt?’
    â€˜Well, I suppose there is. But not a strong one, surely?’
    â€˜Maybe not, but there is a chance and it’s worth trying, ma’am. Gosh, I know if it was me and I could have the chance I’d take it. What kind of life is it just sitting in a cage?’
    The Duchess eyed him silently for a moment, pursing her plump lips, and then she said quietly, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Sammy. Even though I’m an old circus hand and I’m used to animals in cages