The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood Page 2

  The rising sun always enjoyed its first glimpse of the twin hamlets of Near and Far Sawrey, for the setting was uniquely beautiful and the villagers led such quaint and engaging lives. But this morning, it looked with an even greater interest at the two cats sitting on the stone fence along the garden at Hill Top Farm, the country residence of Miss Beatrix Potter (who was at that very moment asleep in her second-story bedroom, the covers pulled over her head). Of course, you have often observed cats sitting on fences, and if you know anything about cats, you know that they like to do this because it gives them a vantage point: above the fray, as it were, keeping a close eye on everything that is going on.

  Tabitha Twitchit, the senior village cat, was a calico with a handsome orange and white bib and mahogany markings. Crumpet was younger, slimmer, and sleeker, with gray fur, a red collar, and a gold bell. The pair might look as if they were simply enjoying the sun’s first caressing glance, but in reality, they had come on an urgent errand of great importance to the entire village of Sawrey. And it wasn’t long before the object of their concern—a ginger-colored cat with a white-tipped tail and delicate features—came prancing prettily down the flagstone path.

  “Good morning, ladies,” she said. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I join you. It’s a lovely morning for a nap in the sun.” And with that, she jumped up beside Crumpet and began to wash a pretty white paw.

  Tabitha Twitchit leaned forward and gave her a disapproving glare. “Felicia Frummety,” she said sternly, “you should be working, not napping. Hill Top Farm is simply swarming with rats. You have not been doing your job.”

  Tabitha, who lived with Mr. and Mrs. Crook at Belle Green, was in her third term as the president of the Village Cat Council. Her most important duty (at least she thought it was important, and perhaps you will agree) was supervising the other cats in the crucial business of keeping Near Sawrey free of rats, mice, voles, and other objectionable creatures. And Tabitha was the sort of cat who took her responsibilities seriously.

  Crumpet gave a sarcastic mew. “What? Miss Felicia Frummety, condescend to catch a rat? I doubt it, Tabitha. She’s afraid to get those pretty white paws dirty.”

  Tabitha sighed. “I fear you’re right, Crumpet.” She fixed Felicia Frummety with a long look of rebuke. “We seem to have a shirker in our midst.”

  “I am NOT a shirker!” Felicia exclaimed, annoyed. “I just don’t see the point of bothering with rats, that’s all.” She turned down her mouth in an expression of disgust. “A mouse is a sweet, delicate morsel, and nutritious, too. But rats—”

  She shuddered all the way down to the tip of her tail, which was exceedingly clean and white. “They’re tougher than old boot-leather, and covered with indigestible hair. They smell like a rubbish-bin, and they bite!”

  “Biting,” Crumpet said darkly, “is in the nature of rats.” She was quite out of patience with Felicia, a conceited young puss who gave herself airs. The other members of the Cat Council each took a turn at patrolling the gardens for voles—all but Felicia, who felt she was too good for what she disdainfully called “common alley work.”

  “Rats are formidable foes,” Tabitha said, in the tone of one who knows whereof she speaks, “and every cat worth her salt has been bitten more than once. We wear our scars proudly, as a badge of honor.” Now retired from active duty, Tabitha herself had one torn ear, a slash across her nose, and a missing claw, testimony to her reputation as a respected ratter. “But you have no scars, Felicia, for you are afraid of being bitten. Fear is not in the nature of cats. Cats,” she added emphatically, “have courage.”

  “You may call me Miss Frummety, if you please,” Felicia retorted loftily. “And I am not afraid! Not two days ago, I chased a rat right down his rat-hole. I frightened him so thoroughly that he hasn’t shown a whisker since.”

  “Ha,” grunted Crumpet skeptically. “Probably skipped straight out the back way. You’re lucky he didn’t come round and bite that pretty tail of yours, MISS Frummety.”

  “Be that as it may, Felicia,” Tabitha said, “I have been instructed by the Council to inform you that you have been officially censured for your inability to keep Hill Top Farm free of rats. We have countenanced your refusal to participate in the nightly vole patrol, but dereliction of duty is intolerable.”

  Felicia arched her back, hissed, and jumped off the wall. “Dereliction of duty!” she spat furiously. “Rubbish!”

  Tabitha went on as if Felicia had not spoken. “Understanding that the situation at Hill Top is out of control, the council has authorized me to offer you a special assistant—a volunteer cat who will come in and help you get rid of the rats.”

  “Help ME!” Felicia exclaimed indignantly. “Stuff and nonsense. Hill Top Farm is my affair, and mine alone. You know the Rule, Tabitha Twitchit. No poaching on private property. So you and your council can keep your collective noses out of MY house, MY barn, and all MY outbuildings.” Having delivered this tart riposte, she twitched her gingery tail disdainfully and stalked off in the direction of the barn, her nose high in the air.

  “How . . . how insulting!” Tabitha sputtered heatedly. “The nerve of that young hussy, taking that tone to me!”

  “Don’t take it to heart, Tabitha,” Crumpet said soothingly. “Felicia will come to regret her impudence. But something really must be done, you know. The Hill Top rats are completely ungovernable. Why, at nine o’clock last night, while the Stubbses were sitting beside the fire, a pair of Hill Top rats attempted to raid the bread cupboard.” Crumpet lived with the Stubbses and prided herself in keeping their cottage free of both mice and rats. She grinned ruthlessly. “I showed them my teeth.”

  “Yes, something most certainly must be done,” Tabitha muttered. “But Felicia is quite within her rights to invoke the Rule.”

  The Rule (properly known as the No Poaching Rule) was the foundation of each cat’s amicable relationship with every other cat in the village. Any cat might kill a rat, mouse, vole, or other vermin in another cat’s front or back garden, but NOT in the house or in any outbuilding unless expressly invited to do so by the human owner. No one knew who had made this Rule or how long it had been in existence, but it had been passed down from one generation of cats to another as long as anyone could remember and was held to be absolutely inviolate. To break it would be to risk the disintegration of the social order.

  Crumpet knew this rule, of course, and never hesitated to invoke it when one of the younger cats strayed into her territory. She did not like to think, however, that an equitable solution to the problem of the rats at Hill Top Farm might be constrained by the Rule. Surely, there was a way to deal with the matter.

  “The problem is that Miss Potter is a city lady,” Crumpet muttered. “She’s owned Hill Top for nearly two years now, and she likes to think of herself as a farmer. But she still has a great many lessons to learn when it comes to animal management. She seems to find it difficult to take a firm position on the matter of rats.”

  “Yes,” said Tabitha. “In fact, I’ve heard her say that she once kept a rat as a pet. His name was Sammy, and she was very fond of him.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “A pet rat—when she might have had a nice, companionable cat!”

  “Even the best of humans are often illogical,” Crumpet said sadly. “And if Miss Potter allows the rats at Hill Top to carry on as they are, the entire village will soon be overtaken. You know rats, Tabitha. They have no restraints and not an ounce of pity, and they multiply faster than rabbits.” She laid back her ears. Thinking about the menace, she felt cold and frightened. “First Hill Top, then the Tower Bank Arms and Anvil Cottage, and after that, the entire village. No cottage will be safe from the ravaging horde. We will be completely overrun!”

  “We will indeed,” agreed Tabitha in a somber tone. “But I have an idea, Crumpet. What do you think of this?”

  When Crumpet had heard Tabitha’s plan, she cheered up immediately—and I think you will, too, when you have heard what it is.


  2

  Miss Potter Flings Down the Gauntlet

  Beatrix Potter awoke a little later than her usual hour, jumped out of bed, and opened her window wide to take an eager breath of the fresh spring air. She had arrived at Hill Top Farm late the previous night, having spent a tiresome Tuesday on the railroad train from London. But a night’s sleep between lavender-scented sheets had entirely refreshed her. If any traces of the winter’s London fogs lingered in her lungs, they were whisked away by that first breath of clean, clear air. And if any London worries clouded her mind, they were gone as well, banished by the cheerful sight of green hills, wooly white sheep, and bright blue sky. It was as if she had awakened on the first day of spring and found the world a newly marvelous, magical place.

  All around her, Hill Top Farm, too, was wakening from its long winter sleep, stretching in the morning sunlight, taking a deep, full, happy breath of spring, and contemplating the beginning of another lovely day. In the barnyard beyond the garden, Blossom, the new black-and-white Galway calf, bawled for her breakfast. Beatrix’s favorite Berkshire pigs, Aunt Susan and Dorcas, chuckled merrily in the mud of their pigsty, as a trio of busy red hens—Mrs. Bonnet, Mrs. Shawl, and Mrs. Boots—scurried past on their way to the garden to see if the early worms might be out and about. A parade of gleaming white Puddleducks headed in the opposite direction, on the way to Wilfin Beck for their morning swim. Mustard, the big yellow dog who had recently come to work at Hill Top, kept a watchful eye on things from the barn doorway, at the same time warming his creaky old bones in the morning sun. And on the fence, in companionable contemplation, sat two of the village cats, Tabitha Twitchit and Crumpet, while Felicia Frummety, the Hill Top cat, was making her way to the barn, to search (it was to be hoped) for rats.

  Beatrix smiled down at the scene before her. If she could only open her arms wide enough, she would embrace every single wonderful thing, from the cats on the fence to the clucking chickens in the garden and the tiniest of the Puddleducks dabbling heads-down, tails-up in the beck. Not to mention the lambs on the hillside and the larks in the sky and—

  “Good morning, Bea!” a woman’s cheery voice called. “I’ve brought you a fresh-baked loaf of bread for your breakfast.”

  Beatrix looked down. Sarah Barwick was standing on the flagstone path below, her sleeves rolled to the elbows, a basket in her hand.

  “Good morning, Sarah,” Beatrix said. “My goodness, you’re out and about early.”

  “You’re late getting up,” Sarah replied in her downright way. “I’ve been baking for hours already. But I s’pose you can be forgiven, poor thing, since you must’ve been very tired from your journey. I’ll just go inside and put your kettle on, shall I?” And without waiting for an answer, Sarah disappeared through Beatrix’s door. The two cats leapt down from the fence to follow her.

  Beatrix hurried to comb her hair and dress in what she had come to think of as her farm costume—a simple blue blouse, gray tweed skirt, and a gray knitted cardigan—and hurried downstairs. Sarah had poked up the fire until it blazed brightly and was busily slicing bread and setting out butter and marmalade. A pot of sausages was warming on the range while tea brewed in the green china pot.

  Sarah looked up from her task. “Thought you deserved a bit of a welcome home,” she said with a wide smile. “What’s it been since you were last here? Two months?”

  Beatrix made a face. “Eight weeks and five days.”

  She had been trying to get away from her parents for the past fortnight, while her mother—always a hard woman to satisfy and rarely pleased with anything Beatrix proposed to do—came up with first one thing and then another that must be done before she might leave. But Beatrix was determined. While she might have to live in the gloomy house at Number Two Bolton Gardens, Hill Top Farm and Sawrey Village were her true home. Now that she was finally here, she didn’t intend to waste a single instant. There was so much she wanted to do! Meet the new lambs and piglets, work on drawings for her new book, take a long walk in the woods to sketch the spring flowers—

  “We’ve missed you, dear,” Sarah said, picking up the teapot, “and that’s God’s truth. The village isn’t the same without you.”

  Beatrix sat down at the table and let Sarah pour her a cup of steaming tea. “How kind of you, Sarah,” she said gratefully. “Thank you.” She smiled down at the two cats peeping out from under the tablecloth. “Hello, Tabitha. Hello, Crumpet. Nice to see both of you.”

  “Hello to you, Miss Potter,” Crumpet returned politely. “Tabitha Twitchit and I should like to be among the first to welcome you home.”

  The cats had another reason, of course, for coming into Miss Potter’s house—for trespassing, that is, on Felicia Frummety’s territory. Tabitha had proposed to Crumpet that they persuade Miss Potter to invite another cat to deal with the rats at Hill Top. If Miss Potter herself extended the invitation—well, then, Felicia should simply have to accept it.

  “Kind? Oh, I shouldn’t say so,” Sarah rejoined, sitting down and helping herself to a sausage. “I have to eat, don’t I? And since I’d put my buns to rise, I thought I’d just pop on over and we’d both have a bite of breakfast while I caught you up on the news.”

  Sarah—also known as “Sarah Scones”—owned Anvil Cottage Bakery. Although she had been in business for only a little over a year, she was already considered the best baker between Kendal and Hawkshead. No one would ever call her pretty: her nose was too prominent, her mouth too wide, and her face too emphatically freckled. But her dark eyes sparkled with an unquenchable good humor, and she was unusually courageous and bold. She dared to smoke cigarettes in public, for instance; and she had a great deal of down-to-earth practicality, evidenced in her brown corduroy trousers and red jumper. The villagers had been scandalized when this trousered New Woman inherited Anvil Cottage from Miss Tolliver and set up a bakery there. But even Mathilda Crook had to admit that there was not an unkind bone in Sarah Barwick’s body, and Elsa Grape (who prided herself on her baking) conceded that Sarah’s muffins were really quite tasty, although her scones could do with some improvement.

  “Oh, yes, the news!” Beatrix said happily, with her mouth full. “I’m as hungry for news as I am for your fresh bread, Sarah. I hope I’m not a gossip, but I want you to tell me everything. Has Grace Lythecoe’s arm mended? What’s been heard from the Crabbe sisters? And how is Caroline Longford getting along?”

  Beatrix missed the villagers while she was in London, and when she returned, she was always anxious to find out how they had got on in her absence. Learning who had been born and who had died, who had acquired a new pig or a new piece of land or a new spouse—this sort of thing connected her once again to the little village, which was so full of life and energy and delightfully vivid people. And Sarah Barwick was always a reliable source of news, since she was out and about so often on her bakery route.

  “Oh, well, gossip,” said Sarah, with a dismissive wave of the butter-knife. “There’s plenty of that, if you like. But to answer your questions, Dr. Butters has pronounced Grace’s arm on the way to mending, although she’s still wearing it in a sling. The Crabbe sisters remain in Bournemouth, but the elder Miss Crabbe died just before Christmas.”

  Beatrix made a regretful noise, although she doubted that many mourned the passing of Miss Crabbe, the former head of the village school. She had been responsible for a great many misunderstandings in the last few months of her tenure.

  “And Caroline is not doing well in school, I’m sorry to say,” Sarah went on. “Mrs. Beever tells me that her grandmother won’t allow her to keep company with the village children. Lady Longford blames them for Caroline’s difficulties.”

  Beatrix frowned. Mrs. Beever was the cook at Tidmarsh Manor, and would certainly know what was going on there. The report made Beatrix sad. She was especially fond of Caroline, and did not like to think that the girl might be lonely and was not doing well in school. She should have to see whether something could be done
about the situation.

  Sarah took a bite of bread-and-butter. “But it’s the doings at Raven Hall that have got the village tongues wagging at both ends. Christopher Kittredge—he lost an eye and an arm to the Boers in South Africa—has come back and brought a new wife with him. She’s quite a mystery. Everybody’s keen to find out more about her.”

  Beatrix was about to ask what was meant by “quite a mystery,” but Sarah was going on. “And Rose Sutton is expecting again, which will make eight, won’t it?”

  “Seven,” Tabitha amended. “I was over there just this morning. The Irish lass who’s come to live there—Deirdre, her name is—gave me a plate of fresh milk, which I call very kind.”

  “Seven, I think,” Beatrix said. The Suttons were her neighbors, just down the hill in Courier Cottage. Desmond Sutton was a veterinarian; his wife Rose helped him out in the surgery, when she wasn’t tending to their rapidly growing family.

  “Yes, seven,” Sarah said, counting on her fingers. “Anyway, the Suttons have taken a girl from the orphanage—Deirdre, her name is—to live with them and help out, which does make eight, of course. And the vicar has had company ever since Christmas. Some sort of distant cousins, and not a happy pair, either, from their sour looks. They—”

  Whatever Sarah was about to say about the vicar’s unhappy guests was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Come in!” she shouted with enthusiasm, and then, covering her mouth apologetically, added, “Oh, sorry, Bea. It’s your house.”

  The door opened. “Good morning!” chirped Dimity Woodcock. “Mrs. Jennings told me you’d got back last night, Beatrix. How lovely to see you!” She set down a basket and took out some covered dishes. “Elsa thought you might not have enough in the house for a good breakfast, so she sent some potted tongue, a bowl of stewed rhubarb, and a plate of kippers. Hello, Sarah.”