The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe Page A

I realized that the air could not move freely here, and any reading of the circumstances, as Old Lavender liked to call it, was necessarily hampered.
    This hidden harmonic turned out to be just as frightening as the predators of Hougoumont . . . or even the threat of Napoleonic plunderers. This was my new Untried, you might say. But even if my cage door was left open during the day and I was free to wander wherever I liked, the risk of stepping off the patio into that inchoate space always seemed too great. For you see, whenever I stood there alone, contemplating my very own Untried, all I could think of was what had happened to poor Caillou.
    His shriek resides in me still.
    But at last I did it: in a triumph of will I banished Caillou from my mind and stepped off the patio!
    At once my haunches turned to water.
    Caillou reappeared immediately. I looked up, as indeed he seemed to be urging, and imagined a hawk with the wingspan of a vulture. In vain I searched for a sign from Old Lavender. How could she have summoned the courage to enter the Hougoumont meadow, alone, and at night —twice ? I even cast about for a signal from Moon himself, assuring me that I had nothing to fear; that I would certainly return to my hutch from this excursion in one piece. (“One piece” meaning, of course, without bloodied, shredded flesh. Why is reality always reduced to insipid niceties?)
    The Untried lay before me, ripe as a cabbage. For the first time in my life I was poised to take a bite.
    The light had begun to fail. When the sun touches the tops of the trees it’s time to go home, William . The voice jangled a distant nerve, then vanished.
    Heedless, I crept to the center of the grassy patch, where something familiar suddenly gripped my body. That old impulsiveness surged. Exhilerated, I felt pulled towards the tree at the back corner as if by a knowing hand. (The hand also, thank heavens, bestowed a last-minute dollop of self-confidence.) Behind the tree yawned the sort of long, dark, narrow space of earth to which every rabbit feels an atavistic pull, but which I’d never seen myself until that moment.
    No, William.
    The warning seemed closer now.
    I rose up on my hind legs and peered behind me. Old Lavender must have been present in some incarnation or another, for she then raised her voice with typical surliness and snapped: Go back! It’s late. Remember Caillou . . .
    It’s interesting to recall the first time one breaks step with a mentor. We all have to grow up, after all. It was in that garden, at dusk, when I felt it for the first time: the voice of the old sage being drowned out by another, more resonant one. Instinct? Destiny? No matter. Far more compelling was the sensation of finally acting on that wild streak in my blood. The impulse was so strong that I found myself wondering if my white Hougoumont ancestors had ever spent any time outside the hutch.
    Whatever it was that spurred me ahead, I’d completely forgotten the mindless choreography of the herd. For once I was acting entirely, gloriously, alone.
    It was late October. The light was already slinking away over the walls, leaving just a few stray shafts in the greenery. A cozy, yellowish glow arced out from the house, but I’d ventured far beyond it, and anyway, the house lights only served to darken the rest of the garden.
    I was craning my neck to sniff behind the ivy when I heard it: that soft, terrifying thurrup of wings.
    Instinct took the upper hand. I flattened myself against the earth, rigid as wood. My heart beat at a speed unknown to humans. The tips of my ears turned cold. Was this what Caillou had felt, I wondered, at the moment the hawk floated in? But why bother to ask? I’d soon find out for myself.
    The wings descended somewhere near the peony. I glanced sideways in the general direction of the disturbance. One thing struck me: the relative ease with which my mind was functioning at that