The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood (4 page)

Crumpet and Tabitha had once overheard Miss Potter telling Miss Woodcock what had happened. Miss Potter’s parents had been dead set against the match. Mr. Potter refused to let his daughter marry a man who was in trade, and Mrs. Potter insisted that her only daughter’s place was at home, looking after her parents as they grew older. Miss Potter had defied them and accepted the proposal, only to have her world come crashing down when Mr. Warne died just a month later, of leukemia. Tabitha had been much affected by the tale, for she had lost her only true love when he was kicked in the head by Mrs. Crook’s cow, and had never ceased to grieve.

Sarah put down a plate of kippers for the cats as Dimity looked around, admiring. “I don’t think I’ve been here since you’ve finished this room, Beatrix. It’s delightful, just delightful!”

“Thank you,” Beatrix said with pleasure.

She herself was happy with the way it had turned out. She’d had a new, separate kitchen built beside the garden, and turned this room, formerly the Jenningses’ kitchen, into the main living area—the “hall,” to use the old North Country term. She’d made a great many changes, pulling down a partition, replacing the modern shelves with an old oak cupboard she had bought at an auction, papering the walls and ceiling in a green-and-white flowery print that freshened the room and made it light and airy. She’d spread a sea-grass rug on the blue slate floor and a shaggy blue rug in front of the fireplace recess, which held a black cast-iron range with a large oven at one side. The red curtains and pots of red geraniums at the deep-set window added the final cheerful touch that made the room warm and bright and as comfortable as an old friend.

“Have a sausage, Dim,” Sarah said, forking one onto Dimity’s plate. “I was just telling Bea all she’s missed in the last two months. I’d got through Raven Hall and the Suttons’ new baby and the Irish girl who’s living with them, and as far as the vicar’s cousin and his wife.”

“Oh, yes, the Thextons,” Dimity said, and pulled down her mouth. “I pity the poor vicar.”

“Why?” Beatrix asked with concern. “He’s not ill, is he?” Samuel Sackett was a sweet man, studious and a bit distracted, perhaps, but always attentive to the cares of his flock. He was one of her favorite people.

“Not ill, exactly,” Dimity replied, adding marmalade to a slice of Sarah’s bread. “Just weary.”

“And well he might be,”
said Crumpet, wiping a trace of kipper from her whiskers with one paw.
“Those Thextons are really dreadful people, you know. I met Mrs. Thexton in the shop, where she was charging ribbons to the vicar’s account. Fancy!”

“We’re not here to gossip, Crumpet,”
Tabitha said severely. She finished licking the saucer clean.
“We must think of a way to persuade Miss Potter to invite a new cat to Hill Top.”

“Weary is right,” said Sarah spiritedly. “I should be weary, if I had to put up with that pair. They’re out to take advantage, if you ask me. Bea, have some of Elsa’s potted tongue, do. It’s delicious. What does she season it with, Dim?”

“She’ll never tell us,” Dimity replied. She tasted. “But I’d say nutmeg and cloves. And sage?” She tasted again, and considered. “Yes, sage, I believe.”

“Think I’ll try making some myself,” Sarah said appreciatively.

“I don’t suppose,” Beatrix remarked, “that the vicar’s quite up to booting them out, even if they are taking advantage.” The vicar was a mild man with a simple nature, hospitable and generous to a fault.

“Well put!” applauded Sarah. “That’s the point, exactly. He’d like to be rid of them, but it’s the getting rid that’s troubling.” She cocked an ear. “Bea, what in the world is that rustling noise?”

This was exactly what Crumpet and Tabitha had been waiting for.

“It’s rats in the wall,”
Crumpet said urgently, coming out from under the table.
“Rats—that’s what you’re hearing.”

Tabitha rubbed against Miss Potter’s ankle.
“What’s needed here is a cat, Miss Potter. A ratter who isn’t afraid of getting bitten, not that silly, harum-scarum Felicia Frummety.”

Beatrix gave a resigned sigh. “I’m afraid you’re hearing our Hill Top rats, Sarah. There’s a very old spiral stair in the wall, which used to give access to the upper floor. It was blocked up when the other stair was built, but it seems that the rats delight in using it. Mrs. Jennings wrote me that they were becoming a problem, and last night, I heard them for myself, scurrying up and down the stair.”

“Oh, rats,” Dimity said with a shiver. “You really have to get after them, Beatrix. If you don’t, they’ll take over the rest of the village, and everyone will be annoyed at you for letting them get a foothold. Doesn’t Mrs. Jennings have a cat?”

Sarah chuckled. “The current Hill Top cat is a bit like our vicar. Not quite up to giving the rats the boot.”

“Precisely,”
said Crumpet, twitching her tail.
“What’s wanted is a cat with a mouthful of sharp teeth and the will to use them.”

“Exactly, Miss Potter,”
Tabitha said.
“I know of several cats who are currently looking for assignments—creatures of substance, with plenty of claw and sinew. I should be glad to send them around, and you can give them a trial.”

“Bless me,” Sarah said admiringly. “Just listen to all that mewing. You’d think the creatures were talking to us, wouldn’t you?”

“Perhaps they are,” Beatrix said with a little laugh. “I imagine that they are remarking that what Hill Top needs is a new cat.”

“Yes, yes, yes!”
shrieked the cats, in unison.
“A new cat!”

“That should be easy enough,” said Dimity.

“I suppose,” Beatrix sighed. “Unfortunately, I’m rather partial to rats. I had a white one once, you see, as a pet. Sammy—a very sweet and affectionate fellow. And some cats can create as many problems as they solve. But in the present circumstance, I’m afraid I have to agree. One simply cannot have rats running riot.”

“You see, Tabitha?”
Crumpet said with satisfaction.
“Miss Potter isn’t like the other humans. She really DOES understand what we say.”

Crumpet and Tabitha (in fact, all of the animals in the Land between the Lakes) were sadly aware that the Big Folk rarely understood them when they tried to communicate what they knew or how they felt. Some were different, though. Miss Potter often seemed to understand, as did Jeremy Crosfield and several of the other children—the quiet ones, who preferred to sit still and listen rather than run around screaming and waving their arms all the time.

“I can’t think what she means, though,”
Tabitha said with a frown,
“about cats becoming part of the problem. How could that be true?”

Sarah handed Dimity a dish of rhubarb. “I told Bea about the Kittredges coming to Raven Hall, but I didn’t go into detail. You know more than I do about it, I’m sure.”

“I know Major Kittredge, of course,” Dimity said slowly. “The Kittredge family has lived at Raven Hall for generations, so everyone in the village is acquainted with him.” She took a spoon and busied herself with her rhubarb. “The major was quite a handsome man before he got shot up in that appalling war.”

“All wars are appalling,” Beatrix said soberly. Her parents had brought her up as a Unitarian, but she occasionally attended Quaker meetings, and leaned toward the Quakers’ pacifist ideals.

Dimity nodded distractedly. “I haven’t seen the major since he returned, but I understand that he lost an eye and an arm. He spent quite a lot of time in hospital after he got back.” Her eyes filled with sadness. “Such terrible luck for such a good man.”

“Raven Hall,” Beatrix said, pouring herself another cup of tea and pretending not to notice that Dimity seemed unusually affected by the major’s plight. “That’s the Gothic mansion at the top of Cuckoo Brow Wood?” She walked in that direction occasionally, following a path that took her to Fern Vale Tarn, and had glimpsed the house through the trees, a forbidding pile of stone, with turrets and towers and a darkly unpleasant look, although someone had told her that it had been designed by David Bryce, the architect who built Balfour Castle.

“Raven Hall is where the servant girl drowned last year,” Sarah put in. “And where the housekeeper went mad and shut herself in the pantry.” She shuddered. “The villagers say it’s haunted by a woman in a gray silk dress, who drifts about, jangling a great lot of old-fashioned keys.”

“The villagers say all sorts of silly things,” Dimity said sharply. Softening her tone, she added, “There’s been no one living there—except for the staff, of course—since Major Kittredge’s parents and his older brother were killed in a carriage accident five years or so ago. The major had just gone off to South Africa at the time, to fight the Boers.” She sighed. “There’s been a great deal of misfortune in the family, I’m afraid, in spite of the Raven Hall Luck.”

“In spite of—” Beatrix frowned in confusion, thinking that something didn’t make sense. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s Luck with a capital L,” Sarah told her. “The Luck is a fancy glass goblet, said to have been handed over to one of the Kittredge ancestors by the Fairy Folk who live in Cuckoo Brow Wood. As long as it stays in one piece, the place is supposed to have good fortune.” She snorted contemptuously. “A lot of good that magic Luck has done ’em. If the Folk offer me a goblet, I’ll tell ’em they can jolly well keep it for themselves.”

Dimity sighed. “One can hope that having the master at home will change the luck of the place, even if his new wife—” She broke off.

“Even if she what?” Beatrix prompted. This was the second time the new Mrs. Kittredge had been mentioned with hesitations and odd looks, and she was getting curious.

“Nobody quite knows who she is, you see,” Dimity said lamely.

“And if there’s anything that this village can’t abide,” said Sarah, “it’s not knowing who somebody is, when they think they ought. And in the case of the mysterious Mrs. Kittredge, they smell a rat.”

“I am confident,” said Dimity loyally, “that Major Kittredge would not have married someone who is not perfectly nice, in every imaginable way.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Sarah said. “But the real difficulty is that she has red hair, you know. Well, we
don’t
know, actually,” she amended, “because none of us have seen her. But that’s what the head housemaid at Raven Hall told her sister, and her sister told Lydia Dowling. Although of course, it’s not just the red hair. It’s her manner. Mrs. Kittredge’s manner, that is.”

“What’s wrong with red hair?” Beatrix asked with interest, reflecting that her own, while mostly brown, had rather a reddish hue.

Sarah lowered her voice dramatically. “The ghost of Raven Hall is supposed to have red hair. Some are saying that the new Mrs. Kittredge is the Raven Hall ghost, come back to life. And Lydia Dowling says she must be a witch. Witches always have red hair.”

“A witch?”
Tabitha inquired with immediate interest, not surprisingly, since it is widely known that cats are quite familiar with witches.
“We haven’t had a witch in the District since my grandmother’s days, when old Mrs. Diggle practiced the Craft. I wonder what kind of witch Mrs. Kittredge is, and whether she—”

She stopped suddenly and grew very still, her eyes narrowing, her whiskers twitching.
“Look, Crumpet,”
she said, very low.
“There, in the corner, just by the cupboard door!”

Crumpet crouched, every muscle tensing.
“Not to worry, Tabitha. I’ll take care of him.”

“No!”
Tabitha put out a warning paw.
“Remember the Rule!”

“That witch business is nothing but old-fashioned superstitious rubbish,” Dimity said heatedly. “I do wish Lydia Dowling would keep her opinions to herself. It’s appalling to call the major’s wife a—” She broke off. “A rat!” she shrieked, and jumped up onto her chair.

“Get that rat, Crumpet!” Beatrix cried.

And then, Miss Potter having given a direct order (so that the Rule was no longer in question), Crumpet bounded across the floor and pounced fiercely on the bold, whiskery fellow who had ventured out of the cupboard. She gave him two savage shakes. The rat uttered a single terrified squeal and went limp as a rag doll.

“There, there, Dim,” Sarah said in a comforting tone. “You can come down from your chair. Crumpet’s taken care of the foul beast.” She chuckled. “You see, Bea? What you need is a really first-rate ratter.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Beatrix said, as Dimity climbed off the chair. “It is time to fling down the gauntlet. I shall look into getting another cat straightaway—although he will have to live in the barn.”

“How about Crumpet?” Sarah asked. “That was an impressive catch.”

“Mrs. Stubbs wouldn’t part with her.” Beatrix went to the door and opened it wider. “You were very quick in dispatching that fellow, Crumpet. Now, take him outside, will you? That’s a good cat.”

“Glad to oblige, I’m sure,”
Crumpet said, around her mouthful of warm rat. She strutted out the door with an envious Tabitha at her heels, feeling quite proud of herself—as I daresay you would, if you had just rid the world of an exceedingly ugly rat.

“Let’s see,” mused Sarah, as Beatrix came back to the table. “We were talking about the mysterious Mrs. Kittredge, who may or may not be the Raven Hall ghost come to life. And Dimity was feeling cross with Lydia Dowling for saying that she’s a witch.”

Dimity took a sip of tea to steady herself. “I’m sure Lydia was only trying to be funny,” she said. “But this is a very old-fashioned village. There are some who still believe in witches and ghosts and fairies. One has to be careful about what one says,” she added sternly.

“Is Mrs. Kittredge from around here?” Beatrix asked. She knew from her own experience that the villagers were clannish and apt to feel antagonist toward off-comers.

“From London,” Sarah replied. “Of course, that’s part of it. That, and her clothes. The housemaid said she’s never seen so many grand dresses and so much fine jewelry. Must have set the major back thousands of pounds.”