A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines Page B

her away feelin’ champion, then t’next time you went you were back where you started. You just couldn’t reckon it up at all.’
    He looked down at Mr Farthing, eyes animated, cheeks flushed under a wash of smeared tears and dirt.
    ‘You make it sound very exciting though.’
    ‘It is, Sir. But most exciting thing wa’ when I flew her free first time. You ought to have been there then. I wa’ frightened to death.’
    Mr Farthing turned to the class, rotating his trunk without moving his chair.
    ‘Do you want to hear about it?’
    Chorus: ‘Yes, Sir.’
    Mr Farthing smiled and turned back to Billy.
    ‘Carry on, Casper.’
    ‘Well I’d been flyin’ it on t’creance for about a week, an’ it wa’ comin’ to me owt up to thirty, forty yards, an’ it says in t’books that when it’s comin’ this far, straight away, it’s ready to fly loose. I daren’t though. I kept sayin’ to missen, I’ll just use t’creance today to make sure, then I’ll fly it free tomorrow. But when tomorrow came I did t’smack same thing. I did this for about four days an’ I got right mad wi’ missen ’cos I knew I’d have to do it sometime. So on t’last day I didn’t feed her up, just to make sure that she’d be sharp set next morning. I hardly went to sleep that night, I wa’ thinking about it that much.
    ‘It wa’ one Friday night, an’ when I got up next morning I thought right, if she flies off, she flies off, an’ it can’t be helped. So I went down to t’shed. She wa’ dead keen an’ all, walking about on her shelf behind t’bars, an’ screamin’ out when she saw me comin’. So I took her out in t’field an’ tried her on t’creance first time, an’ she came like a rocket. So I thought, right, this time.
    ‘I unclipped t’creance, took t’swivel off an’ let her hop on to t’fence post. There was nowt stoppin’ her now, she wa’ just standin’ there wi’ her jesses on. She could have just took off an’ there wa’ nowt I could have done about it. I wa’ terrified. I thought she’s forced to go, she’s forced to, she’ll just fly off an’ that’ll be it. But she didn’t. She just sat there looking round while I backed off into t’field. I went right into t’middle, then held my glove up an’ shouted her.’
    Billy held his left fist up and stared out of the window.
    ‘Come on, Kes! Come on then! Nowt happened at first, then, just when I wa’ goin’ to walk back to her, she came. You ought to have seen her. Straight as a die, about a yardoff t’floor. An’ t’speed! She came twice as fast as when she had t’creance on, ’cos it used to drag in t’grass an’ slow her down. She came like lightnin’, head dead still, an’ her wings never made a sound, then wham! Straight up on to t’glove, claws out grabbin’ for t’meat,’ simultaneously demonstrating the last yard of her flight with his right hand, gliding it towards, then slapping it down on his raised left fist.
    ‘I wa’ that pleased I didn’t know what to do wi’ missen, so I thought just to prove it, I’ll try her again, an’ she came t’second time just as good. Well that was it. I’d done it. I’d trained her.’
    ‘Well done, Billy.’
    ‘It wa’ a smashin’ feeling. You can’t believe that you’ll be able to do it. Not when you first get one, or when you see ’em wild. They seem that fierce, an’… an’ wild.’
    ‘And was that the end of it then?’
    ‘More or less, Sir. After that I introduced her to t’lure; that’s a leather weight tied on t’end of a cord. You tie meat on to it and swing it round and she flies round an’ keeps stoopin’ for it.’
    ‘Yes, yes. I remember a falconer once demonstrating it on television. He swung it round in a similar fashion to a bolus, and each time the hawk swooped in, he swung it down and kept it just out of its reach. The donkey and the carrot principle.’
    ‘That’s right. You fly ’em to a lure to keep ’em fit. An’ that’s as