The Tale of Holly How

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  “I agree with you, Mr. Heelis,” Miss Potter said gravely. “I spoke with Caroline this morning. She said that Miss Martine pinches.”

  “She . . . pinches?” Miles asked, at a loss.

  Miss Potter’s lips tightened. “It is a method that governesses use to discipline headstrong young women. I know of it from my own experience, for I was exceptionally headstrong, as a girl.” She looked anxiously from Miles to Heelis. “But we mustn’t stand here talking, when Caroline may be lost!”

  “Yes,” Heelis said, turning to Miles. “Remember that little boy who wandered away from the Sawrey Hotel? I think we had better assemble the men and dogs, without delay.”

  Miles put down the tongs. He remembered that lost child very well. They had called out every man in the district to help search, and had found nothing. Somewhere, up there . . . he shuddered. “I agree,” he said soberly. “The wood is a wild place. I shouldn’t like to spend the night up there, myself.”

  “To make matters worse, there’s another storm coming,” Heelis put in. “Thunderheads are piling up in the west. We’ll have rain by sunset—a hard rain, from the look of it.”

  “Oh, dear,” Miss Potter said. And then, with determination, “Caroline must be found! As quickly as possible!”

  “We’ll go over to the Arms and ask Mr. Barrow to ring the bell,” Miles said.

  “Right,” Heelis agreed, already heading for the door. “That’ll bring everyone out in a hurry.”

  Mr. Barrow had two children of his own, and the idea that the young Miss Longford might be lost somewhere in Cuckoo Brow Wood was enough to galvanize him into action. He pulled a hand bell out from under the bar, ran out on the steps, and began to ring it as hard as he could. Within the next few minutes, the villagers spilt out of their houses and gathered in front of the Arms to find out what had happened. Hearing the news and realizing the urgency of the situation, the men rushed home to collect rain gear and lanterns, whilst the wives (since the men would miss their suppers) hurried to make meat-and-cheese sandwiches and brew jugs of hot tea to be taken along. Thirty minutes later, about three dozen men were on their way out of the village by horse and cart and on foot, heading in the direction of Cuckoo Brow Wood.

  Will Heelis had been wrong about the rain, however. The storm did not wait until sunset—or, rather, the hour at which the sun usually set, for dark clouds had completely covered the sky, and the evening was as black as the blackest night. A fierce eddy of wind swept up dust and sticks and dried leaves and sent them whirling through the air, and there was a rushing sound in the great beech trees as the coming storm whipped their branches. A jagged streak of fire split the dark sky over Esthwaite Water.

  And just as the men started up Stony Lane, the heavens opened and the rain came down with a crash and a roar.

  24

  Bosworth Is Interrupted

  One of the unique features of The Brockery, Bosworth Badger had always thought, was the hostelry’s many fine doors. There was of course the grand main entrance, where the formal coming and going and greeting of guests took place, with its handsome umbrella stand just inside the door, and on the outside, a fine iron bell-pull and thick cocoa-fiber doormat and an engraved brass plate, announcing:

  The Brockery

  There were, in addition, a half-dozen informal side entrances, each one conveniently located at the end of a meandering corridor and, on the outside, cleverly camouflaged by heather and rocks. These were used by the occupants on a daily basis, to avoid tracking dirt and leaves into the front hall. There, one found pairs of galoshes lined up in a row, and caps and coats hung from pegs. And at the kitchen entry, there was a special shelf with a bucket and basin and towel for washing up, in case one came in muddy from the garden, and a place to put parcels.

  And, finally, there were the many unmarked emergency exits that opened onto the rocky rear of Holly How, which was overrun by tangled briars. These were almost never used as entries, but they were convenient for any of The Brockery’s boarders who felt the need to make a hasty exit without attracting attention. (The Badger Fourth Rule of Thumb requires that badgers take no notice of friends and colleagues who find they must depart without begging leave.) Emergency exits were also available for use in the unfortunate circumstance that all of the occupants of the sett had to be quickly evacuated—under attack by badger diggers, for instance. Luckily, this had not happened on Holly How, which had been for quite a long time under the protection of the Longford family, but one always had to be prepared.

  This evening, after finishing his supper, Bosworth was ambling about the back hallways of The Brockery. Wearing his oldest dressing gown and a pair of down-at-the-heel slippers, with a candlestick in one paw, a notebook in the other, and a pencil behind his ear, the badger was intent on completing the annual Survey of Renovation Requirements. He had been intending to complete this important bit of regular business for some time. He had, in fact, got a start on it at least twice this week, and once the week before, but it was a boring task and a very dirty one, and somehow it never seemed quite pressing enough to demand his attention.

  The Survey required him to inspect the entire sett, which meant going from room to room, through hallways and corridors and passages and galleries and arcades and chambers, some vaulted and very grand, others low-ceilinged and cellarlike, with nothing much to recommend them. Many of these rooms had not been occupied since Bosworth’s grand-father’s time, and, truth be told, were dreadfully shabby and in need of a good turning out. The dry dust on the floors rose up in clouds and settled on the badger’s dressing gown and got into his mouth and nose, sending him into a fury of sneezes. It was not a job for which he could summon much enthusiasm, and he was easily distracted from it.

  And at just this moment, having jotted the note that Room 37 required both whitewashing and a new carpet, he was distracted once again—this time, by the sound of someone scritching and scratching and stumbling in a hasty way down the sloping corridor outside the chamber, from the direction of the out-of-doors. Feeling rather cross, he went to the door and put out his head to see who it was. This particular corridor had not been in use for quite a while, so it was very dusty, very. And here was someone, or something, scrambling in from the outside and stirring up dust—such a thick cloud of dust, in fact, that whoever was doing it could not even be seen.

  “Who,” Bosworth spoke sternly to the cloud, “are you?”

  “Please, sir,” the cloud said, in a high, piping voice. “I’m Tuppenny, sir.”

  Bosworth stared. The creature that had emerged out of the settling dust was a . . . well, to tell the truth, Bosworth didn’t know what it was. He had met all sorts of animals in his life—stoats and weasels and ferrets and foxes and rats and mice and voles and squirrels and otters—but he had never seen a creature like this, as fat as butter and round as a ball, with long orange fur that was completely disheveled and coated with dust, and black eyes and a twinkling nose and almost no ears at all. And no tail. Not a sign of a tail. The poor creature must have left it somewhere, although of course, a badger could not comment on this without violating the Badger Thirteenth Rule of Thumb: One must not inquire about missing ears or tails, because the world is full of traps and snares and animals are prone to be accidentally involved with them.

  “Tuppenny, eh?” he said at last, in the sort of pitying tone that one might use to a creature who lacked a tail. “That’s a who. What are you?”

  “Please, sir,” said Tuppenny, shook himself violently, and sneezed twice. “I’m a guinea pig.”

  “Go on,” scoffed the badger, with a disbelieving laugh. “Pigs don’t have fur, especially orange fur. And they have snouts and very nice curly tails. I’ve seen all sorts of pig breeds, spotted and speckled and plain and fancy, and you are most definitely not a pig!”

  “But I am a pig, sir,” snuffled Tuppenny. Tears welled up in his eyes and trickled down his dusty cheeks. “My ancestors came from South America, you see. At least, that’s what
I’ve been told.”

  “Oh,” Bosworth said, now genuinely sorry that he had offended the little chap, who couldn’t help being whatever sort of ridiculous, tailless creature he was. “Well, I’m sure that accounts for it, then,” he went on, in a kindly, comforting tone. “Pigs in South America are undoubtedly different from pigs in the north of England.”

  “P’rhaps,” said Tuppenny. “If you’ll excuse me for asking, sir, who are you? What are you?”

  “I?” asked the badger in some surprise, for he rather fancied that his sort were unmistakable. “Why, I am a badger. Bosworth Badger XVII, at your service.”

  “A badger?” Tuppenny’s black eyes grew enormous. “But . . . but I thought badgers were fierce and unfriendly, like stoats and weasels.”

  “Badgers can be fierce when fierce is called for. We are unfriendly when threatened, although for the most part, we are quite hospitable.” Bosworth smiled, to show that he was feeling neither fierce nor unfriendly at the moment. “P’rhaps you’re called Tuppenny because you’re somewhat less than a guinea, eh?” Then, fearing that this last remark was might have given offense, Bosworth hurried on. “Have you come to stay for a few days, then?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” said Tuppenny dubiously, wiping his nose on his paw. “Actually, I didn’t intend to go anywhere at all, but the girl put me in a basket with a hole in the bottom and I squeezed out and went for a stroll. And then after a time I wasn’t sure where I was, because all the rocks and brambles all looked alike, you see. And then it began to rain rather hard, and I thought I had better get in out of the wet, so I poked my head into a hole behind a rock, and the next thing I knew, I was tumbling down a very steep slope and when I had got to the bottom I found I couldn’t climb up it again, no matter how hard I tried, and I was so frightened you just can’t think, sir! So I just came along your hallway, which seems to be in need of a good sweeping out, although I daresay that’s not your fault, of course, even though you are a badger. And now I’m here and—”

  “Rain?” whispered Bosworth urgently. “Did you say it was raining?”

  The moment he had heard the word, his nose had begun to twitch, and he could smell that best and most compelling of all smells, the smell that a badger loves better than any other: the rich, sweet scent of rain-drenched earth and rain-washed air, of wet heather and damp fern and dripping bracken. The magical fragrance penetrated the dark and dusty and very dry hallways of The Brockery and called out to the badger in a sweetly seductive whisper, a slippery, sinuous, sibilant whisper: the enticing murmur of “Earthwormsss! Earthwormsss!”

  Bosworth inhaled deeply. The whisper was a summons that reached down into his very soul, tugging at him irresistibly, so that he found himself dropping his notebook and pencil and shedding his dressing gown and kicking off his slippers and muttering to himself, “Yes, yes, quite right, to be sure.” He took several urgent steps in the direction from which Tuppenny had come, then recollected his responsibilities as a host and turned.

  “Well,” he said hurriedly, “now that you are here, Tuppenny, you really ought to stay. Here, take my candlestick and go down that way a bit—slowly, mind you, so that you don’t stir up too much dust. Turn right at the first corner, and left at the second corridor, and you will find yourself outside the kitchen.”

  “Kitchen?” Tuppenny brightened. “I wonder if there might be a bit of something to eat. I haven’t had anything since lunch, you know. I’m supposed to eat grass, but if there’s a bit of sticky bun—”

  “I’m quite sure there is,” Bosworth replied. “Just put in your head and ask Parsley—she’ll be delighted to oblige you. And then you can look up one of the rabbits, Flotsam or Jetsam, whichever is handy, and ask her to show you a place to sleep. We’ve plenty of room, you know, and guests are always welcome here.”

  But all the while Bosworth was talking, he was smelling it. He lifted his head and sniffed again. Yes, there it was, that delicious, that delectable odor, the odor of damp earth and fresh green leaves and—

  “But please, sir,” asked Tuppenny plaintively, “where is ‘here’?”

  “Here? Why, this is The Brockery, of course,” Bosworth said, tossing it back over his shoulder, for now he had forgotten all about being a host and was scampering up the corridor in the direction of the opening through which Tuppenny had tumbled. As he ran, the smell of rain-wet moss and damp bracken grew stronger and stronger, pulling him forward with the voluptuous promise of soft earth and earthworms. At last, he reached the steep slope that led up to the opening. Being a much larger and heavier and more experienced animal—unlike the smaller, quite ridiculous pig—he was able to scramble right up the slope with no difficulty at all and thrust his nose out into the dark, rain-soaked night. And then with one quick shove of his powerful back legs, he was all the way out, into the blustery, blowing darkness and the wet foliage, onto the sweet, rich earth, which felt soft and moist and yielding under his paws.

  “Whuff,” said Bosworth, expelling all his breath in one great huff and refilling his lungs with fresh, cool air. “Wheee!” he whooped, tucking his tail under his chin and turning a complete somersault. “Oh, I say,” he cried, landing on four feet and dancing a delighted jig, “This is simply . . . simply . . . simply smashing!”

  And so, in a giddy delirium of delight, the badger ran through the shadowy briars and brambles, poking his nose into first this and then that bewitching bit of green moss and brown leaf mold, snapping up earthworms and swallowing them whole, or as nearly so as possible, to avoid getting grit in his teeth. Ten earthworms, twenty, thirty—he lost all track, because he was gobbling them down as fast as he could catch them, which was fast indeed, since the earthworms also loved the rain and had come to the surface of the earth as eagerly as he had scrambled out of his hole.

  Engrossed in the pleasure of eating as many earthworms as possible, Bosworth had made a complete circle around a pile of rocks as big as a house, before he realized that it was indeed a house—the old shepherd’s hut on the back side of Holly How, used only occasionally now, and mostly by fell-walkers. He paused, sat up on his haunches, and lifted his head. There were voices coming from inside the hut, a boy’s voice and a girl’s voice, and the furtive gleam of a candle. After a minute, Bosworth realized that this was the same pair he had seen a few days earlier, and that the girl was the one who had left the strange writing in one of The Brockery’s side entrances. They were having what sounded to the badger like a Very Serious Discussion.

  “It was wrong of you to run away, you know,” the boy said, in a mildly rebuking tone. “They’re all out looking for you. All the men in the village, and the dogs. They think you’re lost. And they’re afraid you’re in danger.”

  “I am in danger, so you can just stop lecturing me.”

  The boy cleared his throat in a disbelieving sort of way.

  “But not of getting hurt in the woods,” the girl went on. She sounded angry, and determined, and not at all rebuked. “And you would have run away, too, if you’d heard people saying things like that about you.”

  “People?”

  “Miss Martine and Dr. Gainwell.”

  “What did they say, then?” The boy sounded as if he was humoring her.

  The girl took a deep breath. “I told you, Jeremy. I was sitting in the garden outside the library. The window was open and Miss Martine and Dr. Gainwell were in the library. They were talking about me.”

  “Did they mention you by name?”

  “No, they just called me ‘the girl,’ but I’m the only girl at Tidmarsh Manor, aren’t I? Anyway, Miss Martine said that I threatened their plan, and Dr. Gainwell said he didn’t know what she was talking about, because I’d be going away to school in a few weeks, and then she’d have free rein.”

  “Free rein?” The boy was puzzled. “Free rein to do what?”

  “To carry out their plan, whatever it is,” the girl said impatiently. “It has something to do with ‘the old lady,’ who has got to be Gran
dmama. Anyway, Dr. Gainwell said he didn’t see how I could threaten the plan, because I didn’t have any power. And she said he’d never been able to see anything, even when he was a boy, unless it was an inch in front of his nose.”

  “But I thought Miss Martine and this man had just met,” the boy objected.

  “That’s what they want people to think,” the girl said, “but it’s obviously not true. They must’ve known one another for a long time. And I don’t think he’s a missionary, either. His hands are wrong.”

  “But if he says you can’t threaten their plan, whatever it is, then what do you have to be afraid of? Really, Caroline, I don’t understand—”

  “But I do threaten their plan!” the girl wailed. “I don’t understand it either, but she said I threatened it, by my very existence! And he said that she surely couldn’t be suggesting that they—” She stopped.

  “They what?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl said wearily. “She got up and closed the window, and that’s when I ran away. It . . . it sounded as if he thought she wanted to be rid of me.”

  “Well, they are going to be rid of you,” the boy said reasonably, “when you go away to school.”

  “No, not that way. Get rid of me forever, I mean. Make . . . something happen to me. That’s why I hid up here. I was in the woods and I heard him calling my name and knew he was looking for me. I ran up here to get away from him.”

  The boy gave a skeptical chuckle. “Now, really, Caroline, don’t you think that you’re—”

  “I am not exaggerating, Jeremy Crosfield!” the girl cried. “I’m not imagining things, either. And if that’s what you really, truly think, you can just go away and leave me alone. I can take care of myself, you know. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I don’t need you to look after me.”