A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [21]
“I see them, just over the first ridge,” Lizzie said. “And another, you can just see the antlers of the fourth.”
Her face was flushed with excitement, making her even prettier. This was exactly the kind of thing she would like, of course: being out of doors, with horses and dogs and guns, doing something violently energetic and a little unsafe. He could not help smiling as he looked at her. He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. The sight of her was enough to heat a man’s blood.
He glanced at his brother. Robert looked ill at ease, out in the cold weather on a pony. He would rather be in a counting-house, Jay thought, calculating the quarterly interest on eighty-nine guineas at three and a half percent per annum. What a waste it would be for such a woman as Lizzie to marry Robert.
He turned away from them and tried to concentrate on the deer. He studied the mountainside with his spyglass, searching for a route by which the stags could be approached. The stalkers had to be downwind so that the beasts could not pick up the scent of humans. For preference they would come at the deer from higher up the hillside. As their target practice had confirmed, it was nearly impossible to shoot a deer from farther away than about a hundred yards, and fifty yards was ideal; so the whole skill of deer stalking lay in creeping up on them and getting close enough for a good shot.
Lizzie had already devised an approach. “There’s a corrie a quarter of a mile back up the glen,” she said animatedly. A corrie was the depression in the ground formed by a stream running down the mountainside, and it would hide the hunters as they climbed. “We can follow that to the high ridge then work our way along.”
Sir George agreed. He did not often let anyone tell him what to do, but when he did it was usually a pretty girl.
They returned to the corrie then left the ponies and went up the mountainside on foot. The slope was steep and the ground both rocky and boggy, so that their feet either sank into mud or stumbled over stones. Before long Henry and Robert were puffing and blowing, although the keepers and Lizzie, who were used to such terrain, showed no signs of strain. Sir George was red in the face and panting, but he was surprisingly resilient and did not slow his pace. Jay was quite fît, because of his daily life in the Guards, but all the same he found himself breathing hard.
They crossed the ridge. In its lee, hidden from the deer, they worked their way across the mountainside. The wind was bitterly cold and there were flurries of sleet and swirls of freezing fog. Without the warmth of a horse beneath him Jay began to feel the cold. His fine kid gloves were soaked through, and the wet penetrated his riding boots and his costly Shetland wool stockings.
The keepers took the lead, knowing the ground. When they thought they were coming close to the stags they edged downhill. Suddenly they dropped to their knees, and the others followed suit. Jay forgot how cold and wet he was and began to feel exhilaration: it was the thrill of the hunt and the prospect of a kill.
He decided to risk a look. Still crawling, he veered uphill and peered over an outcrop of rock. As his eyes adjusted to the distance he saw the stags, four brown smears on the green slopes, ranged across the mountainside in a straggling line. It was unusual to see four together: they must have found a lush piece of grass. He looked through his glass. The farthest had the best head: he could not see the antlers clearly but it was big enough to have twelve points. He heard the caw of a raven and, glancing up, saw a pair of them circling over the hunters. They seemed to know that there might soon be offal for them to feed on.
Up ahead someone yelped and cursed: it was Robert, slipping into a muddy puddle. “Damn fool,” Jay said under his breath. One of the dogs let out a low growl. A keeper held up a warning hand and they all froze, listening for the sound of fleeing hooves. But the deer did not run, and after a few moments the party crawled on.
Soon they had to sink to their bellies