So much seemed to be happening at once. Louise, during the ascent,
chose to emit as a battle cry, a challenge, I know not what, the motto
of the Order of St Michael and St George, Auspicium melioris aevi!
Token of a better world, or hope of a better age, also the motivating
pledge of the Raffles Institution, Singapore, which I considered to be
appropriate under the circumstances, with its reference to the
conclusions to be drawn from birds in flight, so different from the
cunning but murderous landlocked hordes we had just been delivered
from. Her sugarpink diode alight I dutifully depressed it and we sank
gently to the surface of a track with the armed fence to our backs as
she shuddered forth in a basso continuo that rocked the woods -
Freeze dry! Freeze dry! Freeze dry! The only way to stop decay! I
could almost hear the castle window panes rattling, and after her
reckless earlier failures I now doubted her cloaking tactics and fully
expected security lights to pin point our position while teams of jeep-
driven marines closed in on the unexpected moose queen of the
moors on a visit to her peer.
We entered the formal parkland of the castle by the vegetable
gardens. Here I was reminded of my lost sandwich and my gnawing
hunger, suppressed by the frenzied attacks of the Terror Birds,
suddenly hit me as if I were St Erasmus undergoing martyrdom. Even
a single goji berry would have been welcome. But it was clear by the
way she passed the rows of delicious runner beans and the
cloudberries tantalisingly dangled almost within my reach, that she
didn't give a kappa's-fart for my pangs; she was floating along on her
potent berry while I, marooned in her belly on a starvation diet, could
only dream of spread plaids of scotch eggs, venison patties, oatcakes
with raspberry jam, scones with thick yellow cream eaten to bag
pipes in a great open space while birds of prey dropped fresh rabbits
at the feet of French chefs who rapidly prepared pates of a delicacy
that would have been a delight even in cases of death by over
ingestion. And surely the western countries I mused, as the last
lingering rows of crottes d'ours were passed, are putting themselves
to death by hyper farcing in a manner indicative of a mass maturity
that still had many cycles to undergo. Melior aevum indeed!
Raspberry cages for all! It was a long cry still.
Louise had halted. We could make out the hands on the clock tower (I
was mistaken in attributing the midnight carillon to the stable clock,
whose lesser stannite resonance could now be heard a maddening
