Ken Follett - A Place Called Freedom (1995)

Hinds made perfectly good eating but it was more usual to shoot the big stags with their spectacular antlers. Jay examined the mountainside above the hinds. He saw what he had hoped for, and he pointed. “Look—two stags … no, three … uphill from the females.”

“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 and wriggle. One of the keepers made the dogs lie down and covered their eyes with handkerchiefs, to keep them quiet. Sir George and the head keeper slid downhill to a ridge, raised their heads cautiously and peered over. When they came back to the main party, Sir George gave orders.

He spoke in a low voice. “There are four stags and five guns, so I shan’t shoot this time, unless one of you should miss,” he said. He could play the perfect host when he wanted to. “Henry, you take the beast on the right here. Robert, take the next one along—it’s the nearest, and the easiest shot. Jay, you take the next. Miss Hallim, yours is the farthest, but it has the best head—and you’re a pretty good shot. All set? Then let’s get in position. We’ll let Miss Hallim shoot first, shall we?”

The hunters spread out, slithering across the sloping mountainside, each looking for a lie from which to take aim. Jay followed Lizzie. She wore a short riding jacket and a loose skirt with no hoop, and he grinned as he watched her pert bottom wriggling in front of him. Not many girls would crawl around like that in front of a man—but Lizzie was not like other girls.

He worked his way uphill to a point where a stunted bush broke the skyline, giving him extra cover. Raising his head he looked down the mountain. He could see his stag, a youngish one with a small spread of antlers, about seventy yards away; and the other three ranged along the slope. He could also see the other hunters: Lizzie to his left, still crawling along; Henry to his far right; Sir George and the keepers with the dogs—and Robert, below and to Jay’s right, twenty-five yards away, an easy target.

His heartbeat seemed to falter as he was struck, yet again, by the thought of killing his brother. The story of Cain and Abel came into his mind. Cain had said My punishment is greater than I can bear . But I feel like that already, Jay thought. I can’t bear to be the superfluous second son, always overlooked, drifting through life with no portion, the poor son of a rich man, a nobody—I just can’t bear it.

He tried to push the evil thought out of his mind. He primed his gun, pouring a little powder into the flash-pan next to the touchhole, then closed the cover of the pan. Finally he cocked the firing mechanism. When he pulled the trigger, the lid of the flashpan would lift automatically at the same time as the flint struck sparks. The powder in the pan would light, and the flame would flash through the touchhole to ignite the larger quantity of powder behind the ball.

He rolled over and looked across the slope. The deer grazed in peaceful ignorance. All the hunters were in position except Lizzie, who was still moving. Jay sighted on his stag. Then he slowly swung the barrel around until it pointed at Robert’s back.

He could say that his elbow slipped on a patch of ice at the crucial moment, causing him to drop his aim to one side and, with tragic ill fortune, shoot his brother in the back. His father might suspect the truth—but he would never be sure, and with only one son left, would he not bury his suspicions and give Jay everything he had previously reserved for Robert?

Lizzie’s shot would be the signal for everyone to fire. Deer were surprisingly slow to react, Jay recalled. After the first gunshot they would all look up from their grazing and freeze, often for four or five heartbeats; then one of them would move and a moment later they would turn as one, like a flock of birds or a school of fish, and run away, their dainty hooves drumming on the hard turf, leaving the dead on the ground and the wounded limping behind.