The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  On this particular Saturday night, Tabitha Twitchit, Crumpet, and Rascal were gathered in the tool shed at the bottom of the Anvil Cottage garden, where they often met to talk things over. They began by trading notes on what they had learnt from various humans about the events at Raven Hall that afternoon. Big Folk being the vague and imprecise and inventive creatures they are, each animal had heard a slightly different version of how the Luck came to be smashed.

  Tabitha had heard it from Lucy Skead, who had discussed it with Elsa Grape when she dropped in at Tower Bank House to return the gloves she had borrowed from Elsa. Lucy reported that it was Mr. Thexton who had dropped the Luck, and that Major Kittredge had been so angry that he refused to accept poor Mr. Thexton’s apology.

  Crumpet had heard the tale from Bertha Stubbs, who was so full of the story that she had run next door to tell it to old Mrs. Abbey, whose bad chest had kept her in bed and away from the festivities. In Bertha’s version, someone had bumped into Mrs. Kittredge, forcing her to drop the Luck. She had then fainted and had to be revived with champagne.

  Rascal had more to tell than either of the cats, since he had heard Miss Potter tell Mr. Heelis what Mr. Thexton had said and what had happened after that, which seemed to suggest that Mr. Thexton had some sort of knowledge about the mysterious Mrs. Kittredge which she did not want him to share.

  “Who is she, then?” Crumpet asked, feeling confused. “Is she Irene, or is she Diana?”

  “Does it matter?” Tabitha replied with a shrug. “Humans often have more than one name, anyway.”

  “It seemed to Miss Potter that it mattered,” Rascal replied seriously, “and I’m inclined to take her word for it. She’s jolly observant, you know. She sees things other people don’t. And things that other people don’t want her to see.”

  The cats certainly agreed with Rascal’s statement, but since they could make neither heads nor tails of the matter, they went on to a topic that all three of them definitely knew something about. Rats, and how to deal with them.

  “It looks as if the recruitment project has gone very well,” Tabitha said with satisfaction. “There are now four experienced ratters assigned to the Hill Top barns and outbuildings. They are working eighteen hours each, with six off to sleep. Claw and Fang came over from Hawkshead, where they were formerly employed in Mrs. Goforth’s grocery. Tiger is from the barn at the Sawrey Hotel. And Lion’s previous employment was in the brewery at Ambleside, where he was responsible for keeping rats out of the grain. The four of them tell me that they should have the situation under control shortly.”

  “Don’t forget Max,” put in Rascal, loyal to his friend. “He’s doing a rum job, too.”

  Tabitha frowned. “Max is an amateur. He kills for his dinner, and when he’s not hungry, he doesn’t. The others are professionals. Killing rats is their business. They kill round the clock, whether they’re hungry or not.”

  Rascal felt that the term “amateur” belittled Max, but he had to own that Tabitha was describing him accurately—and the others, too. They were professional killers, mercenaries.

  “Who’s doing the Hill Top attic?” Crumpet wondered. “Isn’t that where the rats actually live?”

  “I have good news to report there, too,” Tabitha replied, with the pleased smugness of a cat who has everything under control. “I don’t know his name or where he came from, but a very large, very masterful cat is now patrolling the attic—an amazingly efficient rat-killer, according to Fang.”

  “I’m not half surprised that Miss Potter’s gone and let a strange cat into the house,” Rascal remarked. “I know she doesn’t mind you lot, but I thought all the new cats were supposed to work in the barn.”

  “According to Fang, this is a cat who does not take no for an answer. He prefers to work in the attic.” Tabitha smiled, taking personal credit for this splendid outcome. “With him on the job, I’m sure we have nothing to worry about.”

  Crumpet frowned. Tabitha was always too quick to declare everything settled, when there were often loose ends that wanted tying up. “P’rhaps we’d better put out the word. If there are a great many rats in the attic and this phenomenal cat of yours allows some to escape into the village, we could be in for trouble.”

  “Not to worry,” Rascal said with a grin. “Jack Russell terriers are jolly good at going after rats, once they’re out in the open.”

  “And what about after?” Crumpet went on. “What’s to keep this cat at Hill Top? If he’s such a great muchness of a killer, what do we do if he decides to move into our gardens?”

  Tabitha frowned. “But that would violate the Rule, Crumpet.”

  “So?” Crumpet asked. “Who’s going to stop him? Are you?”

  Tabitha twitched her whiskers. “I really don’t think he will—”

  “That’s exactly the trouble, Tabitha,” Crumpet interrupted. “You haven’t thought far enough ahead. A cat who listens only to himself is a cat who is out of control. The next thing we know, he will be going about as a roaring lion, seeking for whom he may devour. First Peter, Chapter five, verse fifty-eight.”

  “Crumpet,” said Tabitha in an indignant tone, “you are making far too much of this. As usual, you—”

  “As usual,” Crumpet put in loftily, “I am pointing out something you have overlooked. You may be the oldest cat in the village, but you are not necessarily the wisest. You—”

  “Dry up!” barked Rascal. “Right this minute!” With sulky glances, the cats subsided, and Rascal went on. “If that’s all there is to say about that, ladies, I have something to tell you.”

  He told about the magical glade that he and the children had discovered and the riddle they had found pinned to an oak tree with a silver knife—although he said nothing about the plan for May Eve, since the cats would undoubtedly want to go along, which he didn’t intend to allow. May Eve was his show, and he wasn’t sharing it.

  Tabitha frowned. “I shouldn’t think you’d want the children to be involved with those dwelves, Rascal. They’re a trying, troublesome lot. You’re lucky you got back safely.”

  Rascal hated to reveal his ignorance, but he felt he had to know, especially since Tibbie had said more or less the same thing. “Tell me about those dwelves,” he said. “Who are they?”

  “They’re Oak Folk,” Crumpet replied. “Several generations ago—a generation is a very long time, where Folk are concerned—some dwarves and some elves became . . . well, friends. Then there were a few weddings, and the Fern Vale dwelves are the result.”

  “What do they look like?” Rascal asked, now feeling anxious.

  Crumpet snickered.

  Tabitha frowned. “Well, I’ve never seen one myself, but—”

  “Just how do you know?” Crumpet challenged, twitching her tail. “Why, you might be talking to one at this very moment!”

  “Excuse me?” Rascal said, even more anxiously.

  “They’re shape-shifters,” Crumpet explained. “They take whatever form they like. Just when you think you know what they are, they’re something else altogether. They can look like a leaf, like a tree, like a human, like a squirrel.” She gave Tabitha a meaningful glance. “Like Tabitha.”

  “I am definitely ME,” said Tabitha frostily, “although I’m not too sure who YOU are, Crumpet.”

  “Don’t fret yourself, Tabitha,” Crumpet replied in a knowing tone, and licked her paw. “If you are Tabitha, that is. When one is dealing with dwelves, one never knows.”

  “Oh, really!” Tabitha exclaimed, now thoroughly irritated.

  “Oh, Jimminy,” Rascal muttered, remembering the riddle. “Tall or short, thick or thin, Guess the shape we are in.”

  “That’s it, exactly,” Crumpet replied. “It’s all guesswork with dwelves. You’re never quite sure what to expect, and before you know it, you’re upside down and inside out. That’s why most commonsensible animals avoid them. They may be very helpful—”

  “Or they may make things difficult,” said Tabitha, f
orgetting her irritation. “They may give you perfectly reliable directions for going on a long trip somewhere—”

  “Or they may happily send you off on a wild-goose chase,” said Crumpet. “With dwelves, there’s no predicting.”

  “Indeed,” Tabitha said, and her eyes grew round. “Why, they’ve even been known to carry off kittens, and make slaves of them. And children, too!”

  “That’s beastly!” Rascal exclaimed.

  “It’s nonsense,” Crumpet said. She frowned at Tabitha. “It’s just talk, Tabitha. You know how Big Folk are. They love to sit around the fire on a winter’s night and make up stories. The Folk are mischievous, but they’re not deliberately malicious.”

  And although you (like Crumpet) might be inclined to dismiss this last bit as a midwinter night’s tale, Rascal was definitely feeling worried, for if these dwelves were as untrustworthy as Tabitha said they were, it might not be safe for the children to go back to the glade on May Eve. Still, perhaps Crumpet was right, and it was all just talk. Perhaps the dwelves were gracious and charming and entirely hospitable.

  And anyway, worried or not, there was nothing he could do to stop the children from going. Their plans were made, and there was no way he could persuade them to change.

  The only thing he could do was go along, and try to keep them safe.

  25

  Foul Murder Afoot

  While the Big Folk slept and the village animals discussed village business, appalling events were happening just across the road and up the hill.

  Foul murder was afoot in the Hill Top attic, in the person of the Cat Who Walks by Himself.

  The Cat had not yet lived up to his promise to exterminate all of the rats in the attic, but he had every expectation of doing so quite soon. By eleven o’clock on Saturday night, he had made short (but bloody) work of the concertina player and the trio of can-can dancers, along with a half dozen of the billiard-playing crew. Next, he set up an ambush behind a stack of boxes at the top of the staircase, where, with a regrettable lack of gallantry, he lay in wait until a party of revelers emerged with a string of sausages and a large cheese they had hauled from the dairy. Without warning—the Cat was restricted by no rules of gentlemanly warfare—he sprang silently on the lot and tore them limb from limb, scattering rat tails and shreds of rat fur and bitten-off rat ears far and wide, leaving scarcely anything behind to serve for a decent funeral. Then he helped himself to the sausages, too, and a goodly portion of the cheese.

  Satisfied, the Cat went down to the dark kitchen and sorted through the cupboards until he found Miss Potter’s store of medicinal brandy. He took several hearty nips and, feeling very sleepy, padded up the main staircase to Miss Potter’s second-floor bedroom, where he jumped up onto the foot of her featherbed. She woke up and pushed him off, but he was the Cat Who Walks by Himself and had a distinct preference for soft, warm featherbeds, as opposed to hard, cold floors. He jumped right back up, turned around several times to make a cozy little nest, and purred himself to sleep.

  But while the Cat and Miss Potter slept, there was chaos in the attic. Glimpsing the fate that awaited them, many of the rats made a precipitous departure, taking with them only what they could carry and abandoning the attic like . . . well, like rats leaving a sinking ship. But once they got outdoors, they discovered (as had Ridley Rattail) that there was nowhere to run. They couldn’t go to the Hill Top barns, for the outbuildings were now being guarded by a formidable federation of five cats—Fang, Claw, Max, Lion, and Tiger.

  So the fugitives faced a dilemma. Should they go to Tower Bank Arms, with its deadly traps? Or Buckle Yeat Cottage, with its cramped attic and miserly kitchen? Or Farmer Potatoes’ barn, which was warm and dry and just a short scamper away from Sarah Barwick’s bakery?

  One didn’t have to be a precociously clever rat to decide in favor of Farmer Potatoes’ barn. Before long, the place was full to the rafters with refugee rats, and the first fetch-and-carry units were being dispatched in the direction of the bakery, where a reconnaissance team had discovered a batch of yeast rolls rising.

  But not all the rats fled the attic. There were quite a few who had been absent when the initial attacks took place and had not seen the Cat at work. When they came home and found their friends and colleagues slaughtered, they were more angry than terrified. They gathered in groups, snarling and gnashing their teeth and vowing to wreak a terrible vengeance on the Cat who had committed these foul murders.

  At last, after an extended discussion which (rats being rats) occasionally and regrettably deteriorated into name-calling and fisticuffs, the pack decided it was time to take matters into their own paws. They chose a commander, a rugged, robust, rough-looking rat named Custard, who had gained his military experience when he lived for two years under the floorboards of the training barracks of the Cold-stream Guards. Commander Custard knew a thing or two about going to war. Following his orders, the rats began to gather their weapons: stout cudgels constructed from clothes-pins, lances fashioned from hatpins stolen from the pin cushion on Miss Potter’s chest of drawers, cutlasses crafted from broken knife blades, and slings made of shoelaces and scraps of leather, with marbles stolen from the Jennings children for missiles.

  While the male rats armed themselves, the female rats embroidered the regiment’s motto, Nulli Secundus (Second to None), on scraps of material left from Miss Potter’s red curtains, and rolled bandages from strips of white cotton stolen out of her work basket. The boy rats who were too young to fight made pipes out of hollow willow twigs and drums from Miss Potter’s best napkin rings, with pieces of wash-leather bound on top and bottom with cobbler’s thread, and drumsticks from matchsticks found beside the fireplace in Miss Potter’s parlor. A very old rat, blind in one eye, had grown up in the mess hall of the B Company of the Scots Guards and had learnt a great many military ditties. He taught them to play “The Soldiers of the Queen, My Lads,” and within an hour, they were piping and drumming with good spirit.

  While the ladies sewed, the pipes piped, and the drums drummed, Commander Custard formed his troops into squads and platoons. For the rest of that night and into the early hours of Sunday morning, they drilled and maneuvered in the middle of the attic floor, their squad leaders counting cadence—“One-two-three-hup!”—and barking orders—“Column left, march!” “Right flank, march!”—as well as shouting general exhortations: “Look smart now, boys!” and “Keep up the cadence.” Some of them practiced flinging themselves flat onto their bellies and crawling through an obstacle course created from broken clay pots, old boots, a discarded umbrella that had belonged to Miss Potter, rolled-up carpeting, and piles of magazines, while others deployed from columns into lines and assaulted dummies hastily manufactured from woolen socks stuffed with bran. I tell you, it was a stirring sight. Any rat with an ounce of martial instinct in his soul would have been moved to tears.

  Meanwhile, the sergeants and lieutenants gathered with Commander Custard around an improvised map table to develop a battle plan. The troops would be stationed at the top of the stair, with the cudgels on the right flank, the cutlasses on the left flank, and the lancers in the middle. The slingers, well back, would launch a deadly barrage of marbles into the killing zone. When the Cat crept up the attic stairs, they would converge upon him all at once, take him by surprise, and—before he could unsheathe his terrible claws or bare his frightful fangs—they would kill him dead.

  It was an admirable plan, and when Commander Custard announced it to the troops, the rafters rang with enthusiastic cheers. Within the hour, the army was deployed with their weapons at the ready, while their sergeants and lieutenants went up and down the ranks, exhorting the troops to do their best and fight as bravely as they could, and the troops replied with loud cheers and huzzahs and other things of that sort, as soldiers do when they are trying to hearten themselves to do something they really do not care to do.

  Yes, it was a splendid plan, masterfully conceived and executed with discipline and d
evotion to duty. And when the Cat for whom they were waiting opened the door and stepped out onto the field of battle, the rats made a splendid, spirited, heart-stirring effort. The lancers lunged, the cutlasses slashed, and the cudgels bludgeoned. The pipers piped and the drums drummed and the spectators cheered at the top of their lungs. Throughout the attic could be heard the sounds of brutal battle and the valiant cries of “Fell the fiend!” “Slaughter the swine!” and “Butcher the brute!”

  But all the lunging and slashing and cudgeling, all the piping and drumming and cheering and shouting, availed them nothing. The Cat who faced them was three times larger and five times more powerful and ten times more savage than any cat they had ever seen. He brushed off the lances, swatted the cudgels, slapped away the cutlasses. The hail of marbles bounced harmlessly off his fur and rolled away, unnoticed. He began to use his claws and fangs with cruel abandon.

  Commander Custard, who had led the lancers’ charge against the foe, was amongst the first to die, his brave rallying cry—“Stand your ground, boys, stand your ground to the last!”—ringing through the ranks.

  And within a matter of minutes, the battlefield was littered with headless rat corpses, broken weapons, and trampled flags. The blood of brave warriors ran ankle-deep, while the desolate wails of bereaved widows and orphans filled the air.

  Custard’s Last Stand was over. The army was defeated.

  26

  Ridley Rattail Has a Dream

  Ridley Rattail was not present at the battle, but no doubt he would have been pleased if he had watched it happen. Wasn’t this what he wanted? Wasn’t the utter rout of the rats exactly the outcome he had intended when he posted his advertisement? The Hill Top attic was rid of its rowdy rabble-rousers at last, and life would soon return to normal.