The snow had fallen thickly around us in the dugout and the tarpaulin roof had buckled under the weight of it. I wondered if it would collapse altogether and we would be buried alive under the sheer weight of snow above us.
‘We’re leavin’ now, Tig,’ said Cal. ‘I’m numb to my innards an’ we’ll be struggling tae drive back. The blizzard’s eased for a while and we need tae get home while we can.’ Cal took a last slurp of lukewarm coffee from the flask then offered it to me. ‘Finish that. I’ll go an’ clear the snow off the windscreen and get the heat going.’
‘Okay,’ I sighed, knowing there was no point in arguing.
We’d sat in the dugout for over two hours, watching nothing but the snow hurl itself to the ground. Cal left and headed towards the Land Rover, parked beyond a stone outcrop in the valley behind us. I peered out through the tiny window of the dugout as I sipped the coffee, then turned off the hurricane lamp and crawled outside. I didn’t need my torch as the sky had cleared and now twinkled with thousands of stars, the Milky Way clearly visible above me. The moon, which was waxing and within two days of being full, shone down, illuminating the pristine white blanket that covered the ground.
The utter silence that came just after fresh snowfall was as deep as the sparkling carpet that claimed my feet and most of my calves.
Pegasus.
I called him silently, searching for him around the cluster of birch trees that marked our special place. He was a magnificent white stag, whom I’d first noticed when I’d joined Cal on his rounds of the estate counting the deer. Pegasus had been grazing amongst a cluster of red stags and at first I’d thought that perhaps he was yet to shake the snow from his body. I’d alerted Cal and pointed out the spot, but by the time he’d focused the binoculars, the herd had moved away up the hill, camouflaging the mystical and all-too-rare creature that ran somewhere in their midst.
Cal hadn’t believed me. ‘White stags are akin tae the golden fleece, Tig. Everyone searches for them, but I’ve been on this estate for all o’ my life an’ I’ve never seen the hide o’ one.’ Chuckling at his own joke, he’d climbed back into the Land Rover and we’d moved on.
I knew, however, that I had seen the stag, so I’d returned to the copse with Cal the following day, and as often as I could after that.
My patience had finally been rewarded as I’d crouched behind a thicket of gorse and trained my binoculars on the ragged birch trees. Then I’d seen him, standing away from the others just to my left, perhaps only ten feet from me.
‘Pegasus,’ I’d whispered, the name arriving on my tongue as though it had always been there. And then, as if he knew that was his name, he’d lifted up his head and looked at me. We’d held eye contact for perhaps only five seconds before Cal had arrived beside me and sworn loudly in wonder at the fact that my ‘flight o’ fancy’ had actually been real.
That moment had been the start of a love affair; a strong, strange alchemy connecting us. I’d rise at dawn, when I knew that the herds were still taking shelter from the biting winds at the bottom of the valley, and drive to the cluster of trees that provided scant protection from the bitter cold. Within a few minutes, as if he sensed my presence, Pegasus would appear. Each time, he’d take a step closer and, following his lead, so would I. I felt he was beginning to trust me, and at night I dreamt of one day being able to touch the velvety grey-white of his neck, but . . .
At my old animal sanctuary, my natural ability to connect with the young motherless or injured deer that had been brought to us to nurse back to health had been an asset. Here at Kinnaird, the livestock were wild, living as nature had intended them to and roaming the twenty-three-thousand-acre estate with minimal interference from humans. Apart from controlling their deaths through the organised culling of both stags and hinds.
During the shooting season, wealthy businessmen arrived at the estate on corporate hospitality jaunts and paid exorbitant prices to shed their aggression through their first experience of a live kill, then returned home to hang a deer’s skull on their wall as a trophy.
‘There’s nae natural predators left, Tig.’ Cal, the estate ghillie – whose gruff manner, and Scottish accent you could cut with a knife, hid a genuine love for the natural wilderness he struggled to protect – had done his best to comfort me when I’d first walked into the estate larder to find four blooded and skinned hinds hanging by their hooves. ‘We humans have tae take their place. It’s the natural order of things. Y’know their numbers have tae be kept under control.’
Of course I knew, but that didn’t make it any easier when I was faced with mutilated life, snuffed out by a man-made bullet.
‘O’ course, Pegasus is somethin’ different, somethin’ rare an’ beautiful. He’ll not be touched on my watch, I swear tae you.’
How word had got out that a white stag had been spotted on the Kinnaird Estate and passed to the press, I didn’t know, but it was only a few days later that a journalist from the local newspaper had beaten the treacherous path to our door. I’d been beside myself, entreating Cal to deny Pegasus’s existence – to say it was a hoax – knowing that a white stag’s head was catnip for any poacher, who would sell it on to the highest bidder.
Which was why I was standing here now at two in the morning, in an eerie frozen wonderland. Cal and I had constructed a primitive dugout close to the copse of birch trees and kept watch. All land in Scotland was open to the public, and we had no idea who might be prowling around the estate in the darkness.
I walked slowly towards the trees, begging the stag to make an appearance so I’d be able to go home and sleep, knowing he was safe for one more night.
He appeared as if from nowhere, a mystical sight as he raised his head to the moon, then turned, his deep brown eyes fixed upon me. He began to walk hesitantly towards me, and I to him.
‘Darling Pegasus,’ I whispered, then immediately saw a shadow appear on the snow from the cluster of trees. The shadow raised a rifle.
‘No!’ I screamed into the silence. The figure was behind the stag, his gun aimed and ready to fire. ‘Stop! Run Pegasus!’
The stag turned round and saw the danger, but then, rather than bolting away to safety, he began to run towards me. A shot rang out, then two more, and I felt a sudden sharp pain in my side. My heart gave a strange jolt and began to pound so fast that dizziness engulfed me. My knees turned to jelly and I sank onto the snowy blanket beneath me.
There was silence again. I tried to hold on to consciousness, but I couldn’t fight the dark any longer, not even for him.
Sometime later, I opened my eyes and saw a beloved, familiar face above me.
‘Tiggy, sweetheart, you’re going to be all right. Stay with me now, won’t you?’