The Moor - Laurie R. King [69]
"And a dog's footprints. Plenty of those, oh my, yes. Now, would you like to have another cup of tea before you hear about my little hedgehog?" the old woman asked brightly.
"Just a moment," I said, thinking furiously and trying hard to assimilate this abrupt development, the fleshing out of a hound of ghostly rumours into a thing of flesh and bone, interested in the consumption of sweet scones. "This was towards the end of August, around the full moon, and on a Saturday night?"
"That's right, dear."
Which put it the twenty-fifth of August, the day before the full moon and the day after the courting couple had seen the dog with the carriage.
"And neither of them said anything about it?"
"Daniel loves his son. The boy shakes whenever anyone brings it up, so Daniel thought it best not to tell anyone. I only found out because I asked him what was wrong with the boy."
"How old is Samuel?"
"Twelve, dear. A good, responsible age. Now I'll tell you about my Tiggy, shall I?"
I rubbed my brow, feeling a bit stunned, but said weakly, "Do, please."
"I was crossing the moor one day, back in the middle of summer," she began.
"Do you know the date?" I interrupted, although by that time I knew enough to expect the answer I received.
"No my love, I'm sorry, but I haven't much need any longer for numbers on a page. I can tell you," she continued, forestalling the second part of the question, "that it was in July, and near enough the full moon as makes no difference, and it was a Saturday too, because I went to church services with my friend in Widdecombe the next day." Even if she had been a schoolteacher, her answer was typical of those I had become accustomed to receiving, and in the end more precise than the answer of a calendar-user to whom days were easily forgotten dates instead of skies and seasons. She was describing the twenty-eighth of July, three days after Johnny Trelawny, and one day after the ramblers from London, had each seen Lady Howard's coach. I set my cup down on the bench and prepared to listen closely.
"I often go across the moor, you know. I have friends in Moretonhampstead and Widdecombe, and there's roots and things growing on that side and not this. So on a nice day when I don't have too many animals needing my eye—my 'patients,' as Daniel calls them—I'll take a sandwich and a bottle of tea and pay a call on my friends."
Both of the places she had named were a good fifteen or twenty miles across some fairly rough countryside. "Do you do the trip in a day?" I asked in surprise. Having seen her totter about, I doubted that she could cover more than two miles in an hour, and that on even ground.
"Oh, I stop the night there, dear," she reassured me. "Sometimes two nights, and come back the third day. One of Daniel's children feeds the beasties." As if that was all that might concern me. "But as I was saying, I was on the moor one day last summer when I heard the saddest little cry, it'd make your heart break to hear it. It was such a tiny noise, I had a time finding what was making it, until finally I found the poor wee thing in the shade of a standing stone. It'd been trying to dig a hole in the ground to hide itself in, but it hadn't a chance, even if it had been whole and strong." She seemed not far from tears at the pathos of the thing.
"A hedgehog," I said.
"That it was, a young Tiggy, would fit into your hand. I thought for sure it would die, it was that sorely treated, I decided all I could do was make it comfortable and sing to it until it passed on. So I popped it into my coat pocket and sang while I walked, and I took it out when Igot to Widdecombe, fully expecting to have to borrow a spade and bury it.
"Only, don't you know, the little face looked up at me, so trusting, I just knew it would pull through. We gave it some milk with a drop of brandy in it, set its little leg—the back one, on the left—and wrapped it with a splint made from a nice smooth corset stay cut down to size, and I pulled together the great tear in its back with