Lord Morgan's Cannon Read online

  About the author

  MJ Walker writes about natural history,

  science and technology.

  A senior editor at New Scientist magazine

  and the British Broadcasting Corporation,

  he now works as the editor of BBC Earth.

  Born in 1973, he studied

  Zoology at the University of Leeds and

  Science Communication at Imperial College, London.

  He lives in Bristol, UK, with his wife, son and dog.

  Novels

  A Blue Monkey

  The Cloud Seekers

  Lord Morgan’s Cannon

  Copyright © 2016 by MJ Walker

  First published 2016 by Nobella

  2 Queens Parade, Bristol BS1 5XJ

  www.nobella.co.uk

  A Nobella Kindle edition

  ISBN: 978-1-910041-06-2

  The right of MJ Walker to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication bar three are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  King Edward VII reigned as King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 1901 to 1910.

  Professor Conwy Lloyd Morgan lived from 1852 to 1936. He owned a dog called Tony.

  He authored the Introduction to Comparative Psychology, first published in 1894 and revised nine years later.

  The work is now known almost exclusively for thirty-six famous words.

  Discussing problems in the interpretation of animal behaviour, Morgan wrote that:

  “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.”

  This principle became widely known as Morgan’s Canon.

  Inspired by this principle, Lord Morgan’s Cannon is however a work of fiction. All representations of Professor Conwy Lloyd Morgan, his terrier and King Edward VII are fictitious.

  Lord Morgan’s Cannon

  a novel

  by MJ Walker

  For Catherine and Otto

  The Morning Rehearsal

  The old leopard knew what to do. He tightened his cheeks, revealed his teeth and made his whiskers bristle. He did it again, this time forcing a guttural roar up and out from his flaccid belly, flaring his nostrils. Then, to unsettle those watching, he raised an arthritic blotched paw, and pulled at the shiny new metal collar around his neck. It snagged on his ear, as it should. So he pushed up from his haunches and made the effort to leap down from the red and white stool.

  The chain linking his collar to the stool tugged at his neck, swinging his body in an arc. A whip cracked across his black nose, forcing a sharp wind up his nostrils and across his tongue. He tasted hot leather and wretched. He pawed at the collar again, dislodged the false bolt, and off it came.

  He was free.

  The old leopard roared with purpose this time, baring a cracked pair of canines that still impressed the good seats in row E. He moved quickly across the sawdust, reaching the ring’s edge, and began to pace, occasionally lifting his head to glimpse seat 28.

  Canvass bellowed high above his head. Adrenaline began to course through his veins, a drop of saliva falling from his black gums. He lashed a dark tongue across his lips and imagined Lord Morgan’s thighs. They would be juicy thighs, he knew. Everyone who sat in seat 28 had rich, fat thighs, swollen within thin trousers. He was not too old to remember the taste of living flesh, twitching and bloody. He wanted one final warm meal.

  He quickened his pace, practising for the evening. It would be his most difficult challenge: how to stalk a prey that had paid to see his every move. How to move faster than the whip, and how to leap the children that would inevitably sit in his way, waving pink candyflosses, obscuring his view of his target.

  If he rehearsed properly, and planned it right, he would make it, and later tonight, Lord Morgan would be his. He would leap from the posters advertising this tawdry circus and on to Lord Morgan’s thighs, landing in people’s dreams, their nightmares. He would make the London papers, and everyone would know his name. It would be his last show, his greatest show, one for the ages. Even the elephant would respect him, once he was done.

  The whip cracked again, flicking across his tail. His hips immediately collapsed, an involuntary hiss escaping his jaws. He coiled his creaking back, his tongue licking blood off his rear. The lashing angered him more than the thousand before. This was his final rehearsal, and they weren’t giving him the stage. He hadn’t finished his planning. He wasn’t ready to be put back in his cage.

  Suddenly he felt a new pain, as a long wooden fork pinned his neck to the floor. The more he hissed the harder the Ring Master pushed, a strut grating against each jugular. He hated the fork more than the whip. He snarled, breathing dirt as a rusting collar was thrown over his head, and tightened. He tried to kick it off again, but he knew instantly this was his proper collar, with a functioning bolt, the one he’d worn since arriving in a crate all those years ago. He spun on to his back, hissing and spitting, bringing up four legs, absent claws pawing at the air.

  “Get the net on him,” the Ring Master bellowed.

  The black mesh descended and the circus boys tied him in a writhing ball. The Ring Master sneered as they dragged his old feline bones across the floor of the ring, the sawdust and dirt rubbing out his spots.

  He could see the Ring Master no more. But he heard him.

  “That old cat is so stupid. I want a panther, a black panther. Something exotic. Get me a panther, I don’t care how much they cost. Something to scare the kids.”

  He stopped fighting the net, and relaxed. Leopards are cunning, he reminded himself, and old leopards are very cunning indeed.

  He would play nicely for the rest of the day. He’d eat the chicken they gave him on show days, to sate his belly and appetite for spectators. He’d lick his coat and present himself properly. He’d walk his cage, biding his time and when the circus boys checked on him at dusk, he’d hiss and roar and he would look the part.

  They couldn’t do tonight’s show without him. He’d get one more chance. They would swap his collar for the one that doesn’t work. He would throw it off as he did every evening, in every performance from Brighton to Bristol. He’d hear the gasps, then watch as the paying spectators tucked back into their sweets, stuffing their faces as the Ring Master pretended the old leopard was on the loose.

  But this time he would prowl for real. He would beat the whip. And as he bounded from the ring and over the stalls he would scare the wits out of the parents, and particularly their kids, as his whiskers brushed their little heads.

  He would pounce on seat 28, in row E. He would kill this Lord Morgan, and savour his flesh. He would taste warm blood one last time, before the bullet struck between his eyes.

  He would ruin the Ring Master, this Big Top and all in it. He would show them he wasn’t a stupid circus animal. He would show them he was a leopard.

  “You s
illy old cat.”

  Doris the elephant plodded into the ring, just as the old leopard left on his back. The red hat on her head matched the colour of the Ring Master’s coat and cheeks, while her eyes twinkled with the sequins on her shawled, arched back. She had a habit of agreeing with the Ring Master’s words.

  “They’ll replace you with a panther, and then where will you be?” she rhetorically asked, one eye looking back.

  She calmed her nose and made straight for the buckets, which she picked up one by one, emptying cold water over her shoulders. She waited until a clown ran past, and emptied the last bucket on his head, swamping his red curly wig, making his eyes weep some more. The clown feigned shock and ran to her belly, thumping it. In a well-practised manoeuvre, she pivoted and scooped the man off his feet as he fretted and pulled at the trunk wrapping his waist. She held him aloft for seven seconds, enough time for any audience to laugh and joke, before she returned him to the ground. She bent one knee, tipping her huge head and smaller hat, imagining the applause, and waited for the Ring Master to announce her next trick.

  She loved to follow his commands. She didn’t mind when he called her dopey, or dumb. She knew that when he starved her of carrots, it was for the best. She liked his red coat, chubby cheeks, moustache and beard, which intrigued her. She remembered him as a young man, and how he’d once been kind and gentle, sleeping in the hay lining her wagon. She had felt him grow strong for a human, and then watched him grow fat as the circus toured bigger venues and the money rolled in. She had tolerated his use of the harpoon and the tears it made in her ears, and accepted it graciously when he decided her teeth should be filed, just in case.

  He was her leader and he led her across the countryside. He found water and graze. He even fed the old leopard. And when they were in the ring together, under that Big Top that was as old as she, Doris felt surrounded by family.

  Between her tricks, when she sat upon her own giant reinforced stool, her front legs resting upon her massive knees, she would let her aging lungs sigh in satisfaction as she recalled the casts of years gone by. The three lions that used to laugh at the leopard. The seal and his slapstick humour. The prancing white horses she secretly envied, and the monkey’s mother, with whom she had been such good friends. The lazy anaconda that wouldn’t even coil around the Ring Master’s neck. The European badger that lasted a season, because every paying customer claimed to have seen one before. She even remembered the tropical butterflies that came and went before anyone could give them a name.

  Most of her old circus friends had died or been sold. But without the Ring Master, none would have had a job, and what sort of life was that? So she was pleased to follow him, to be part of his herd.

  “He’s the only one clever enough to keep the show on the road,” she said out loud, in a soft, deep voice, as the Ring Master pirouetted before her, tipping his hat to the vacant benches.

  “Who’s a clever boy? Who’s a clever boy?”

  “Who’s a clever boy? Who’s a clever boy?”

  The voice, a perky squawk, came from above Doris. The elephant looked up to the ropes holding straight the centre pole of the tent. Her eyes were no good over longer distances, but she could make out a blue flash, as Bessie, the resident budgie, took to the air.

  “Who’s a clever boy? Who’s a clever boy?”

  Bessie buzzed the top of the tent, alighting on a long strand of bunting. She was an English budgie, larger and more impressive than American budgies that had become popular in London. She was a blue bird, thought more interesting than the green varieties, and she had spangled plumage, bearing a proud azure chest and white wings. She was a rarity, she kept telling her friends, and she was the main act, her aerial acrobatics the highlight of every performance.

  The only trouble with Bessie, however, was that no one, apart from Doris, the anteater, the monkey and the old leopard, noticed that she was alive. She was too small to be seen at a distance, and she flew too high for the audience to register her spins and loops. She talked constantly, chattering and squawking, advertising herself as the most exotic parrot in all Europe. But the Ring Master and circus boys had long since forgotten her. They had stopped giving her seed, having converted her cage to house the most interesting rats caught under the wagons. She fed from the fields and slept in Doris’s dorm, and each day during every rehearsal and evening show she entered the Big Top and gave it her all. But she took not one penny at the gates and received not a moment’s applause. Bessie could have been a common sparrow for all it mattered to anyone but her.

  “And now, ladies and the gentleman,” shouted the Ring Master as he twirled upon the heels of his shiny leather boots. “The last act of the evening! A creature you wouldn’t dare to presume exists! A wild man captured deep in the heart of the jungle!”

  He took stock, catching his breath and giving his pretend audience time to catch theirs.

  “A wild man I tell you! A wild man with a body covered in fur! A wild man, covered in fur, who will terrorise this circus, and everyone in it! I give you, the wild man of the Amazon!”

  The Ring Master threw open his arms, inviting the beast to appear through the fading white curtains to the side of the ring, the same veil through which the old leopard has just passed.

  The curtains twitched without parting. The Ring Master stood, eyes wide open, mouth agape. The curtains moved again, a tiny arm reaching through, searching for something to grab. The Ring Master bucked his shoulders, throwing his hat and whip to the sky. A tiny black, brown and white pin monkey parted the material and tottered into view wearing his own very small red hat and miniature red waistcoat.

  Doris chuckled, as she did each time they rehearsed this moment. She knew how, during a performance, the appearance of this tiny monkey punctured the giant tent, deflating the tension within, drawing outrageous laughs from the audience.

  Edward the pin monkey walked forwards and took off his bowler. He held both arms in the air, mimicking the Ring Master, and tottered into the ring, using his tail to balance his unsteady hips.

  “A wild man covered in fur! A wild man of diminutive proportions! Have you ever seen such a thing?”

  The Ring Master was on a roll.

  “Hold on to your bags, ladies and gentleman. Hold on to your hats and your money, for this is a wild man of terror!”

  He paused long enough to imagine the audience laughing again. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he cracked his whip. The air inside the tent split, making Doris’s knees twitch.

  In a flash Edward collapsed on to all fours, running across the dust. He was up over the cheap seats, with the limited view reserved for the poorest children. He bound left and right, arms outstretched, grimacing and shrieking, his sharp white teeth glinting in the gloom. He practised his movements, dipping his hands into purses, feeling for pennies and hoping for a sovereign or posh watch. He scampered back down to the ring and climbed on to the shoulder of the Ring Master, who gave him a grape to distract the punters, as Edward pretended to drop his loot into his keeper’s pockets. He then returned to the stands, to once more rehearse terrorising and secretly robbing his imaginary audience.

  Bessie flew down from on high, dive-bombing the seats, in her mind adding to the commotion, while Doris raised her bulk off her stool and trumpeted so loudly that she hurt her lips. She loved this part of the show more than any other. The grand finale! The wet clown drenched the dry clowns, and Doris pretended to drench the crowd. The giant anteater returned, running circles around the ring, his head bobbing up and down, struggling to keep his spectacles upon his long nose.

  During the real show, Edward would now make a mockery of those in the audience who had mocked his entrance, and if he wasn’t tied up in a black net, the old leopard would get to loosen his muscles, running further and for longer than he would at any other time of the day.

  “Enou
gh!” screamed the Ring Master. “Enough!”

  Doris bowed her head and the clowns stopped smiling. Edward returned to the Ring Master’s shoulder seeking another grape, while Bessie alighted upon Doris’s head, not that anyone noticed. Another good rehearsal, Doris thought.

  The anteater, however, kept on running. His massive claws on his front paws kept digging into the sawdust as he trotted as fast as he could around the outside of the ring, his black and white hair brushing the barrier the poorest children struggled to see over.

  He trotted so fast his spectacles started to steam. He didn’t see the Ring Master traverse the ring, or the whip coming until it flicked across his long snout. The force of the blow was too much: those huge, powerful front legs, so good at digging, buckled beneath him. He turned his snout to stop it gouging a line in the dust, and fell to the ground, his back legs tumbling over his chest. He came to rest staring down his nose, at a pink cut opening next to three thin wispy scars that crossed his face.

  “No! No! No! No!” the Ring Master screamed at everyone in the tent. “Why doesn’t this stupid animal learn? If he runs next to the barrier, they can’t see him!”