The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (13 page)

Beatrix drained her cup and set it down. “Then I don’t suppose Mrs. Thompson is entirely pleased that the vicar is getting married.”

Mrs. Beever laughed shortly. “Doan’t suppose she is, now, do I? Wouldn’t surprise me in t’ least if t’ new Mrs. Vicar finds another cook-housekeeper reet soon after t’ weddin’, an’ pore ol’ Hazel finds hersel’ out in t’ lane w’ her satchel.” She picked up the pot. “More tea, Miss Potter? Another scone an’ jam? Or some of Mrs. Jennings’ butter?”

Beatrix declined, thanked her hostess, and then thanked her again. In fact, she was truly thankful, for Mrs. Beever had given her something important to think about.

Just how unhappy was Mrs. Thompson at the prospect of the vicar’s marriage to Mrs. Lythecoe and the potential loss of employment?

And to what lengths would she go to stop that from happening?

As Miss Potter was calling at Tidmarsh Manor, Thorvaald the dragon was happily making himself at home not far away, at Briar Bank, the very old, very large, and mostly abandoned badger sett that was home to Bailey Badger and Thackeray the guinea pig.

Thorvaald wasn’t a stranger at Briar Bank, of course. In fact, it had been his official address for centuries before Bailey Badger was born. He had been assigned by the Grand Assembly of Dragons to guard a hoard of Viking gold hidden there, in a distant chamber in the farthest corner of the sett. But please don’t assume that this was some stirring adventure, fraught with danger and enlivened by derring-do. It had been an excessively boring assignment and Thorvaald had slept through most of it. Treasure-guarding, as he said, was about as exciting as doing the washing-up.

And then, through a series of tragic-comic misadventures, the dragon had at last been released from his gold-guarding assignment. Or rather, he had released himself from it, by the simple expedient of depositing his priceless Viking gold with the British Museum—by air mail, if you can imagine such a thing. He dropped it at the foot of a bobby, dozing against a lamppost just outside the museum.

“ ’Twere magic, that’s wot ’twere,” said the incredulous bobby, according to an article in
The Times.
“Just fell out of the sky, it did, in a pair o’ leather satchels.” (You’ll find the full story of the here-and-gone gold hoard in
The Tale of Briar Bank.
)

But if our dragon thought that giving away the gold would free him from his obligations to the Grand Assembly of Dragons, he was wrong. The Assembly felt that the gold did not belong to Thorvaald, and he had no business donating it to the museum. Moreover, the members of the Assembly were greatly annoyed at him for his part in the death of Illva, his fiery supervisor, who had flown into a barn. (Throughout the Land Between the Lakes, the resulting explosion and fire were reported to have been caused by a meteorite.) It was a good thing that the dragons didn’t know everything that happened that day. If they had, they would have done more than reprimand Thorvaald. They would probably have canceled his flight permit and put out his fire.

But it was clear to the Assembly that they had to do something to curb Thorvaald’s juvenile enthusiasms and instill a greater sense of duty and discipline in the young dragon. So they assigned him to the census, sending him hither and yon, investigating reports of dragons. All of these had proved to be wild-goose chases, or wild-dragon chases, as the case may be, including his trip to Scotland, where he was supposed to discover whether the Loch Ness monster was real or a figment of someone’s fertile imagination. Thorvaald’s failures to discover and document the whereabouts of dragons had not, I fear, impressed the Assembly, who felt that he probably hadn’t worked as hard as he might have done. In fact, one of the senior dragons had been heard to remark that he ought to be hauled home and put to work waiting tables in the dining hall, where the dragon-master could keep an eye on him. He was thoroughly in disfavor—in the doghouse, a modern person might say—and he knew it.

So Thorvaald was taking a few days off to think about how he might reestablish himself in the Assembly’s good graces. He should have to do
something
important and soon, or he would forever find himself assigned to fruitless tasks like the census—or worse, waiting tables in the dining hall. There was so much to be accomplished in this world: deeds to be done, wrongs to be righted, knowledge to be gained. Like many young dragons, Thorvaald was an idealist. He earnestly wanted to do his bit, to make his mark. He wanted to create a reputation for himself in the Wide World. But he could do none of these things if he were condemned to the life of a mere census-taker.

While he reflected on these matters, Thorvaald was happily content to serve as a portable stove, warming the parlor at Briar Bank on a chilly night, or to stoke up his steam boiler to heat the tea kettle, or to provide a light for Thackeray’s pipe or for the kitchen fire, when it went out. He also served as a foot warmer in the evenings, so that the badger and the guinea pig could keep their toes cozy while Thackeray was reading aloud or Bailey was telling a story.

Bailey enjoyed this very much and often thought that he had missed a great deal in his earlier life, shunning companionship and playing the role of the curmudgeonly bachelor badger. Tonight, as he glanced from Thackeray to Thorvaald, he was happily reminded of the Seventeenth Rule of Thumb:
Hold a true friend with both paws.
His life was so much more enjoyable now that he could share it with others, although there was sadness, too. Thorvaald was only visiting and would be gone again before many days.
Hold a true friend with both paws,
the Rule said, and went on,
but be willing to let him go when the time comes.
That time was not tonight, however, and Bailey was intent on enjoying his dragon as long as possible.

Thorvaald even added a few tales of his own to the telling, for his census work had taken him to some rather interesting places in search of undocumented dragons. He told about flying across the Pacific to the island of Hawaii to watch Mauna Loa’s lava fountains erupt and the rocks glow cherry-red and flow in curling, scarlet ribbons toward the ocean. No dragon there, although the sight of all that molten rock had certainly warmed his soul. Thorvaald had experimented with a few of the rocks to see if he could melt them, but his fire just wasn’t hot enough. He would have to leave that sort of business to Mauna Loa, who seemed to be very good at it.

Then he had been sent to Siberia to see whether there might be a dragon or two in the region of Tunguska, where a few years before (in 1908) witnesses said that a great stream of fire had split the sky from horizon to horizon and that an explosion in the sky had flattened the trees for hundreds of square miles. After a lengthy investigation, Thorvaald determined that the event had been a meteor explosion and reported to the Assembly that no dragons had been involved. A few of the dragons had grumbled about this, for they had been very sure that the Tunguska explosion had been a dragon-caused event and wanted to take credit for it.

Thorvaald’s third assignment was in America, where he was supposed to scout out Yellowstone National Park. This evidence harbored a great many geysers—evidence, the dragons hoped, of a large dragon colony, or at the least, a small outpost. Extensive exploration, unfortunately, had turned up no dragons, but the sight of Old Faithful in the moonlight, its fountain of water and steam like boiling silver, had been astonishing. Thorvaald was glad he went.

“You must have been disappointed when you didn’t find what you were looking for,”
Thackeray remarked.
“You’ve invested quite a lot of time and effort in those trips.”

“That’s what the Aszsembly said,”
Thorvaald replied sadly.
“They thought I should have been able to find
something
to add to the censuszs. But you can’t count a dragon that isn’t there.”

“And Loch Ness?”
Bailey prodded.
“Tell us about the monster.”

This tale was also a story of disappointment, for Thorvaald had not found any evidence that the monster existed, much less that it was actually a seagoing dragon, as the Assembly had hoped.
“I patrolled the loch for several nightszs,”
he said.
“I flew the entire sixty-mile length, from Invernesszs in the north to Fort William in the south.”
He sighed gustily, and Bailey moved out of the way of his steamy breath.
“All I sszsaw was a patch of disturbed water and a shadow that may or may not have been the monszster. Of course, it was night, and the moon was only a sliver, and I couldn’t szsee very much. That’s what comes of being a dragon and having to go about after dark, for fear of attracting too much of the wrong kind of attention.”
He sighed again.
“If I had been able to fly down closzse to the water during the daytime, I might have actually caught the monszster in operation.”

“We all have our limitations,”
Thackeray remarked sarcastically.

Bailey gave the guinea pig a stern look. Thackeray was not exactly jealous of the dragon, but there might be a bit of competition going on there, Bailey thought. He shifted the subject slightly by mentioning the note from his great-great-grandfather that he and Thackeray had found in the pages of Trollope’s novel
Framley Parsonage.

“An eyewitness account of a monszster in Windermere?”
the dragon asked eagerly, and his belly glowed with excitement.
“I don’t think the dragonszs have heard about thiszs, or they would no doubt have asked me to look into it. Have you szseen the creature yourself, Bailey?”

“No, I haven’t,”
Bailey replied.
“Thackeray and I just found the note a few nights ago. Anyway, I’m not sure you can trust my great-great-grandfather’s report. He was a truthful old badger, but a bit nearsighted, I am told.”
Nevertheless, he got out the note and showed it to Thorvaald.
“A snakelike creature with three humps and a long neck,”
the old badger had written,
“about the length of the ferry boat. Saw it from Oat Cake Crag, swimming between the shore and Belle Isle.”
After it was read, Bailey folded up the paper and put it with his hat, to take to Hyacinth for recording in the
History.

“Three humpszs and a long neck!”
the dragon exclaimed with a hiss of steamy enthusiasm.
“Why, that’s exactly what the Loch Ness monster was supposzsed to look like. Perhapszs the two are related!”

“Perhaps,”
said Thackeray dryly,
“they both came out of the same bottle of Scotch.”

“My great-great-grandfather did not drink,”
Bailey said, a little offended.
“He was a teetotaler.”
He added, thoughtfully,
“Of course, Windermere is very deep—over two hundred feet at the northern end. It was originally known by the Norse name of Vinandr’s Mere.
Mere
is the Old English word for ‘lake.’ ”

“Perhaps the Norseman Vinandr dropped a baby dragon into his lake.”
Thackeray snorted a laugh.
“And it’s been growing ever since. Imagine that, if you will!”

“It’s more likely to be a very large pike,”
Bailey replied.
“Some of them do grow to be quite large.”

The dragon ignored him.
“Your great-great-grandfather said he saw this monster from Oat Cake Crag, Bailey. Where iszs that?”

So then Bailey had to tell the story about the Scottish soldiers who had camped on the crag and cooked their oat cakes there and found it a very fine lookout, until one of their number stepped over the edge and fell to his death on the rocks below.
“The story has passed into legend,”
said the badger.
“I have heard it renewed lately, for there have been a few sightings of a dark, ghost-like shadow falling from the top of the crag—the ghost of the Scottish soldier, it is said.”

“Most likely an owl,”
remarked Thackeray, who didn’t believe in ghosts. However, he had not previously believed in dragons, either, so you may discount his remark if you wish.

“But if your great-great-grandfather saw the monszster from that point,”
the dragon said, now very enthusiastic,
“it standszs to reason that it would be a good place for me to szset up a lookout.”

“I’m not so sure about that,”
Bailey said dubiously.
“It’s a rather exposed crag. On a moonlit night, someone might look up and see you. You are large, you know. And you do glow.”

The dragon looked down at his belly.
“I can try to turn it off.”

“No, you can’t,”
said the guinea pig.
“Turn off your fire and you won’t be a dragon anymore. You’ll just be a large green lizard with a long tail.”
He grinned.
“Get used to it, Thorvaald. You are what you are.”

The dragon heaved a huge sigh.
“But I’ve got to find some way to redeem myself in the eyes of the Grand Aszsembley!”
he moaned.
“Otherwise, I’ll be doing the census forever. Or worse, I’ll be waiting tableszs in the dining hall.”