The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood (36 page)

And in that moment, quick as a wink, Mr. Richardson seized the advantage. He snatched up the fallen bag of jewels and silver and strode to his horse. “There appears to be some sort of difficulty about your saddle, my dear,” he said with an ironic chuckle. He untied his horse and gathered the reins. “How very regrettable.”

Irene Waring suddenly found her voice, and spit out some very nasty names which I will not repeat here. “You cad!” she cried furiously (or words to that effect). “You rascal! You cur!” She scrambled to her feet. “You sabotaged my saddle! You meant to make off with the jewels all along!”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Mr. Richardson protested, as he slung the bag onto his horse’s back. “But you are clearly unhorsed, and there is no time to spare. Forgive me, dear Irene, but I must be off.” And with that, he leapt gracefully into the saddle.

But this did not turn out as Mr. Richardson intended, either, for he was not even settled in the saddle when it slid away underneath him. With a sharp cry, he tumbled onto the ground on the other side of his horse, landing with a decisive thump.

Which gave Irene Waring the opportunity to seize the bag of jewels and use it to beat Mr. Richardson about the head and shoulders, which must have been quite painful, for the bag was heavy. He got to his feet and hunched over, trying to ward off her blows, remonstrating with her loudly. But there was no stopping her. In fact, she might have beat the poor fellow senseless if she had not been interrupted by a sudden firm command from the shadows under the trees.

“Hold there, you scoundrels!” It was Major Kittredge. “Stop, thieves! You’re not getting away with this!”

Irene Waring screamed, dropped the bag, and turned to run. Mr. Richardson reached into his pocket for the gun he had hidden there, but just as he was drawing it out, he was tackled by the butler and boot boy and roughly wrestled to the ground. Major Kittredge’s valet grasped Irene Waring’s arms and pinned them behind her.

“He did it!” she shrieked piteously. “He stole them, Christopher! I was only trying to get them back so I could return them to you.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Mr. Richardson growled. “She burgled them out of your safe, Kittredge. I confiscated them on your behalf.”

“Quite,” said the major dryly. “Come on, you two. We’ll see what Captain Woodcock has to say about this.”

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

 
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:

 
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:

 
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 that 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 1907
¹

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.”