The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  Miss Potter, with Jeremy beside her, could not help smiling as she watched this scene unfold, for it had been she who had loosened the saddle girths, dumping the two thieves on the ground and keeping them from escaping with their loot. But she did not like to call attention to herself or to Jeremy, and she felt the need to return to the girls, who had been left all alone in the growing dark. While the major dispatched the boot boy to summon the Justice of the Peace and the constable, Miss Potter and Jeremy melted into the shadows and made their way back to the fairy glen.

  A few minutes later, they had rejoined the girls and told them what had happened. Jeremy reported on his whirlwind race to summon the major, and Miss Potter told them about loosening the saddle girths. Of course, this also meant telling them who Irene Waring and Mr. Richardson were, and what they had been trying to do.

  “So she was a witch, after all!” burst out Deirdre. “She had to’ve been, to do something as awful as all that! Marry the major when she was already married, and try to steal the family jewels!”

  “And try to convince the major to build holiday villas along the lakeshore,” Jeremy put in.

  “That does make her a witch,” Caroline said decidedly. “A very evil witch.”

  “You weren’t afraid, I hope,” said Miss Potter. Night had fallen now, but the stars were out and the moon brightened the fairy glen and shimmered across the surface of the tarn, as if someone had spilled silver paint across the water. “What did you see while we were gone? Any fairies?”

  “Of course!” Rascal barked excitedly. “A great many! Fairies, fairies, everywhere!”

  “How are we to know?” asked Caroline, clearly frustrated. “If they are first one thing, then another, how do we know whether we’re seeing them or not? But I made a wish anyway,” she added, with a glance at Jeremy. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “That’s right,” Deirdre said, and recited the last lines of the riddle. “ ‘All about but changing form, Here a blossom, there a thorn, Tall or short, thick or thin, Guess the shape we are in.’ ” She brightened. “But I saw something, and I’m sure it was fairies, and I made a wish!”

  And then they reported what they had seen.

  Deirdre’s vision had been the most fanciful: a pair of delicate creatures with golden wings and golden crowns, slanting down a moonbeam. Caroline had seen a remarkably large tawny owl, which had drifted down out of the night sky and landed in the top of the tallest oak, gazing down at them and inquiring Whoo-whooo? in a stern owl’s voice. Both of them had seen a large badger that came out from under the ferns, regarded them thoughtfully for a time, and then vanished. And all the while, a trio of red squirrels perched on a branch above the glade, making soft chittering noises, while several other small, furry creatures—voles, perhaps, or moles, or something like—crept out of the roots of the oak trees, sniffed at the children’s hands, and disappeared again.

  “So you see,” Caroline concluded in a matter-of-fact tone, “we might have seen fairies, or we might not. It all depends.”

  “But we did!” Deirdre insisted. “I did, anyway!”

  “I don’t know about Deirdre’s winged creatures,” Rascal put in, “but the owl and the badger weren’t fairies. It was the Professor and Bozzy, and I caught a word with each of them before they left.” He grinned. “They were the ones who posted the riddle, you see. They knew we were coming, since it was Bozzy’s map we were following. It was Bozzy’s knife, too, so that much is solved.” He paused and frowned. “But those noisy squirrels—If you ask me, they’re dwelves. Oak Folk, in squirrel shape.”

  Even though Miss Potter and the children can’t understand Rascal, we can, and we shall have to be satisfied, I think, with his interpretation of events, for it is just about as close to an explanation as we are likely to come. If he is right, and if the squirrels really were Oak Folk, perhaps they were celebrating the fact that there would be no villas built along the shore of Lake Windermere, and that Raven Hall had seen the backs of Irene Waring and Augustus Richardson. They were very bad characters, after all, and it was a good thing that Miss Potter and Jeremy were on hand to keep them from getting away with the Kittredge family jewels.

  But perhaps Rascal is wrong, and the squirrels were only squirrels, for there have always been a great many red squirrels in Cuckoo Brow Wood, and they are rather unruly creatures, and like to leap from branch to branch and make a great deal of noise.

  When it comes to magic, and the mysteries of May Eve, none of us can know for certain, can we?

  36

  The Last Word

  WEDNESDAY, 1 MAY

  Still, there are probably some who would say that the children must have seen real fairies on May Eve, for all three got their wishes.

  This surprising outcome occurred at the May Day celebration in the Sawrey School yard, after the vicar had given his invocation, thanking the Almighty for His gracious goodness, and the Village Volunteer Band had struck up “God Save the King.” Everyone joined lustily in the first verse:

  God save our gracious King

  Long live our noble King,

  God save the King.

  Send him victorious,

  Happy and glorious,

  Long to reign over us:

  God save the King.

  When they began the second verse, the vicar found his heart lifted up in joyful thanksgiving for all that had happened during the past few days and cast a grateful glance at Miss Potter, who surely had done more than anyone else to bring it all about, vanquishing not only the duplicitous Irene Waring and the nefarious Mr. Richardson, but the unendurable and knavish Thextons, as well:

  O Lord, our God, arise,

  Scatter our enemies,

  And make them fall:

  Confound their politics,

  Frustrate their knavish tricks,

  On thee our hopes we fix:

  God save us all.

  And then came the moment everyone was waiting for. Ruth Leech was crowned Queen of the May and gave the May Queen’s proclamation, calling on all creation to join together in peace and love, after which the schoolchildren danced the May Pole dance without a single mistake for the first time since anyone could remember. Their success was a great surprise to all, making the dancers exceedingly happy, their parents exceedingly proud, the teachers most exceedingly relieved.

  But you will not be surprised by what happened next, surely, for (if you were paying attention in Chapter Thirty-four) you already know what Mr. Heelis and Miss Potter said to Lady Longford, and what her ladyship agreed to do, and that she had already written out her cheque and handed it to Mr. Heelis.

  So I am sure you were expecting to see Lady Longford seated in a place of honor on the wooden platform in the school yard, and to hear Captain Miles Woodcock announce that her ladyship had graciously endowed the Longford Scholarship in memory of her dear, departed husband, whose philanthropy was known to everyone throughout the Land between the Lakes. And you will not be at all surprised but only pleased by Captain Woodcock’s announcement that the first award was being made to Jeremy Crosfield, so that he could attend Kelsick Grammar School in Ambleside.

  But Jeremy, Caroline, and Deirdre were expecting none of this, and their gasps of astonished delight could be heard in the jaw-dropping silence between Captain Woodcock’s announcement and the round of ringing applause congratulating young Jeremy for his achievement and Lady Longford for her astonishing generosity.

  “It’s the fairies!” Deirdre whispered to Caroline. “We saw them, and we wished, and they granted our wishes!” She cast her eyes in the direction of Cuckoo Brow Wood, which rose up the hill beyond the school. “Thank you, fairies!”

  Caroline had to agree, because she knew very well that her grandmother pinched every penny until it squeaked twice, and only the fairies could make her let loose of the pounds and shillings it was going to take to pay Jeremy’s tuition and board bill.

  And when Bosworth Badger and Galileo Newton Owl heard the happy news tha
t afternoon, they, too, were astonished, for while they had done their part in bringing the children and the fairies together (which was why they had posted the riddle on the oak tree), they had no idea that Jeremy had received a scholarship and was therefore no longer destined to spend his life mixing powders and potions in the apothecary’s shop. They received this word from Rascal, who found them together in the library at The Brockery, enjoying their tea and toasting their toes in front of a comfortable fire.

  “Oh, I say!” the badger exclaimed, when Rascal had told the whole story. “Bully for Jeremy!”

  “And just whooo,” the Professor inquired, “is responsible for this? Such generosity on Lady Looongfooord’s part has little precedent, sooo far as I am aware.”

  “Dudley—Lady Longford’s spaniel—tells me it was Miss Potter’s idea,” Rascal replied. Dudley was not always forthcoming, but the fat old spaniel had been so impressed by the adroit way Miss Potter had managed his mistress that he just had to tell Rascal all about it. “And Miss Potter,” Rascal added, “was the guiding genius behind the major’s capture of the two thieves. If it hadn’t been for her, they would have got clean away.”

  “And what will happen tooo the miscreants?” asked the Professor, blinking sleepily. Parsley’s raisin scones were deeply satisfying and the fire was making his feathers delightfully warm. His afternoon nap seemed imminent.

  But Rascal couldn’t answer that question, for the simple reason that it had no answer just yet. Irene Waring and Augustus Richardson were being held at the Hawkshead gaol and would be arraigned at a magistrate’s hearing on Thursday. They would no doubt be bound over for the assizes, where a jury would weigh the charges against them and assess their punishment.

  “And what,” the badger said, getting up to put another stick on the fire, “has become of the Hill Top rats?”

  Rascal shook his head. “That is a most incredible story,” he said. “It appears that one of the attic’s regular residents—a fellow named Ridley Rattail—employed a cat to get rid of the riff-raff, then bundled him off in a beer-barrel.” He told the tale as he had heard it from Max the Manx, who was enjoying his new employment in the Hill Top barn.

  “Astonishing,” said the badger.

  “Very gooood,” said the Professor as he nodded off to sleep.

  And that, I think, will be the end of our story, for the Professor always likes to have the last word.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Beatrix Potter in 19071

  1907 was a busy year for Beatrix Potter, between paying the proper attention to her parents and the necessary attention to her growing establishment at Hill Top Farm. It was the farm that captured her imagination, and she gave it as much time as she could.

  By the spring of 1907 (when this book takes place), Beatrix owned sixteen Herdwick sheep, six dairy cows, and six pigs, including Aunt Susan, who (as she wrote to Harold Warne’s daughter Louie) was “very fat and black with a very turned up nose and the fattest cheeks I ever saw [and] likes being tickled under the chin.” Aunt Susan was so tame that she nibbled Miss Potter’s galoshes. But while Beatrix could treat her animals as friends, she could also be realistic about them. In August of that year, she wrote to Millie Warne (Norman’s sister), that she had gone out early that morning to photograph the lambs before they were taken to market. “Oh shocking!” she remarked dryly. “It does not do to be sentimental on a farm. I am going to have some lambskin hearthrugs.”

  The rats, of course, were a continuing problem. The previous fall, she had written to Millie about her struggles with them:

  The rats have come back in great force, two big ones were trapped in the shed here, besides turning out a nest of eight baby rats in the cucumber frame opposite the door. They are getting at the corn at the farm. Mrs. Cannon calmly announced that she should get four or five cats! imagine my feelings; but I daresay they will live in the outbuildings.

  The outbreak seems to have been brought under control by the summer of 1907, in part because of the building program, which included a new barn and milking parlor, zinc strips on the bottoms of the doors, and cement skirtings around the house—as well as the cat campaign managed by the farmer’s wife.

  But Hill Top Farm and its animals were not Miss Potter’s only concerns, for she was actively engaged with her creative work. The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit and The Story of Miss Moppet had been published in panorama format in November 1906. For Christmas 1906, she gave Winifred Warne an illustrated story called The Roly-Poly Pudding, which she continued to work on throughout the year and into 1908, using the interiors of Hill Top as her settings. (In 1928, the book was renamed The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, to conform with the other titles.) In late August 1907, while on holiday in Keswick with her parents, she celebrated the publication of The Tale of Tom Kitten. The first printing of 20,000 copies sold out in two months and a second printing of 3,000 copies was ordered in December, for Christmas sales. Warne was soliciting French and German publishers, but Beatrix (always a perfectionist when it came to published materials) was not pleased with the translations. In September, she wrote from Wales, where she and her parents were staying at Gwaynynog:

  That French is choke full of mistakes both in spelling & grammar, I daresay it is the English type-writer’s slip-shod reading of the MSS; but we shall have to have the proof sheets read very carefully.

  In addition to these creative efforts, she had begun work on her next book, The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck. On all fronts, and by any standard of measurement, 1907 was clearly one of Miss Potter’s most productive years.

  On the matter of fairies, Beatrix Potter held a firm opinion. In a journal entry (November 17, 1896), she wrote:

  I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense, to fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet to feel truly and understand a little, a very little, of the story of life.

  In 1911, she wrote a story for two little girls in New Zealand about an oak fairy who tragically loses her home when her ancient oak—“enormous, tall and bold” is cut down and the wood used to build a bridge. “The Fairy in the Oak” ends happily, however, when the oak fairy takes up residence in the oak timbers of the bridge, “and may live there through hundreds of years; for well-seasoned oak lasts for ever—well seasoned by trials and tears.”

  When Beatrix and Willie Heelis were married, Willie’s little niece, Nancy Nicholson, was delighted to discover that her belief in fairies—she called them Oakmen—was shared by Mrs. Heelis:

  I remember my amazement on my first visit to Sawrey, when this new aunt left the grown-ups and came to me to imagine windows and doors in the trees with people peeping out.

  In 1916, Beatrix wrote a six-page story for Nancy’s Christmas present, featuring the Oakmen, whom she drew as dwarflike creatures with white beards, brown leggings, red coats, and red pointed hats. Later, she wrote to Fruing Warne that she would have liked to make a book of the fairy-tale letters she had written to Nancy, adding, “I see the little men peeping round the mossy stumps and stones whenever I go up to the wood.”

  That project did not come to fruition. However, Beatrix did write a much longer tale, The Fairy Caravan (published in the United States in 1929) about a traveling animal circus that was invisible to humans, rewriting “The Fairy in the Oak” as the last chapter. The year before she died, she wrote that the inspiration for The Fairy Caravan came from a magical sight she had seen on the fellside:

  In a soft muddy spot on the old drove road I had found a multitude of unshod footprints, much too small for horses’ foot-marks, much too round for deer or sheep. I wondered were they foot marks of a troupe of fairy riders, riding down old King Gait into Hird Wood and Hallilands—away into Fairyland and the blue distance of the hills.

  I think it is not at all fanciful to say that Miss Potter believed in fairies to the very end of her own
quite magical life.

  Susan Wittig Albert

  Resources

  There are many excellent resources for a study of Beatrix Potter’s life and work and the Lake District of England at the turn of the century. Here are a few of those that I have found most useful in the research for this book and the series as a whole. Additional resource material is listed in the previous books and on my website, www.mysterypartners.com.

  Beeton, Isabella. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861, facsimile edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1969.

  Denyer, Susan. At Home with Beatrix Potter. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 2000.

  Hervy, Canon G.A.K., and J.A.G. Barnes. Natural History of the Lake District. Frederick Warne, London, 1970.

  Jay, Eileen, Mary Noble, and Anne Stevenson Hobbs. A Victorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter’s Drawings from the Armitt Collection. Frederick Warne, London, 1992.

  Lane, Margaret. The Tale of Beatrix Potter, revised edition. Frederick Warne, London, 1968.

  Linder, Enid and Leslie. The Art of Beatrix Potter, revised edition. Frederick Warne, London, 1972.

  Linder, Leslie. A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter. Frederick Warne, London, 1971.

  Potter, Beatrix. Beatrix Potter’s Letters, selected and edited by Judy Taylor. Frederick Warne, London, 1989.

  ———. The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881-1897, new edition, transcribed by Leslie Linder. Frederick Warne, London, 1966.

  Rollinson, William. The Cumbrian Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore. Smith Settle Ltd, West Yorkshire, UK, 1997.