The Blue Cat of Castle Town

by Catherine Cate Coblentz

  “Gil — roy,” said the kitten sleepily. “John. Ho — ho — hum!” He opened his mouth so wide and tipped his head so far back one would have thought he expected to swallow the stars.

  “Ho — ho — hum!” After all the kitten had never before been long away from the warm nest of dried clover, Queen Anne’s lace and chickory. Nor tried to stay awake all night for that matter. While naturally the light of a blue moon is soothing.

  He meant to listen very carefully. But the voice of the river was gentle and slow. The cat settled down and closed his eyes so the light of the blue moon on the waters should not distract him. And almost at once he began to sink deeper and deeper into the dark velvet softness of a kitten’s sleep.

  But the river was too busy telling its secrets to notice. Or perhaps it did notice and thought — Well, after all, I am keeping my part of the bargain.

  “Beware of Arunah Hyde,” it whispered. “Beware! Never sing your song to him. Take heed of what I say, blue kitten. For you and Arunah work different spells. Arunah loves gold very much. And the dark spell he is fashioning has him in its clutches. He seeks after something and knows not what, so he seeks the more desperately. His hands are full and spilling over with gold. But his heart is empty of beauty and peace. He has never known content.

  “The top whirls fast and yet faster,

  Till it falls, slung wide from its whirling.

  The spring wound too tight will break from the straining.

  “There is Bright Enchantment and man is its master.

  And there is dark seeking forever, and that masters the man.”

  So sang the river. “Forever and ever, and ever.”

  By this time the kitten’s nose was buried deep in his paws, and he sighed a little in his sleep. While the wind swept through the valley in a long, dreary moan.

  The river spoke a little louder. “And in trying to rid himself of the dark spell, Arunah is but spreading it. Arunah is planning now to make Castle Town the center of the Vermont Universe.”

  The blue kitten opened his eyes and shook the river spray from his whiskers.

  “Vermont? Universe?” he asked sharply.

  “It is all the same,” declared the river. “Any Vermonter will tell you so.”

  “Ah,” said the kitten. And he curled down once more and drew the dark, soft sleep back over him like a shawl. But this time the tip of his left ear stuck out, and it did hear a little. Though the kitten was not to remember for a long, long while what the left ear heard.

  The river took up its murmuring. “So, whatever you do, blue kitten, beware of Arunah Hyde. Never, I warn you, sing your song to him. Arunah, too, has a song. And that spreads his dark enchantment. One of you will win in the end, for on your two songs does the future of Castle Town depend. And in the end, too, one of you will be overpowered by his own song.”

  Had the kitten been awake — really awake, he would have cried out like his mother that such words were nonsense.

  “Now, remember, the name is Arunah Hyde,” repeated the river. Then, with a sharp swish, it flung a dash of cold water over the small form curled by the reeds. “Did you hear what I said, blue kitten?”

  “Of course,” sniffed the kitten with a shiver, sitting up now very straight. “His name is Arunah Hyde.”

  “Mm!” came from the river. “Beware too of the man who wants office because he thinks the office will make him important.”

  “Of course,” yawned the kitten.

  “And of the loud talker, the one who wants to show off and have things better than his neighbors.”

  The kitten yawned again. This time as his head tipped back he saw the blue moon. It was climbing fast. It was right above him.

  “Have you told me all I should know?” he asked the river.

  “All, blue kitten? Why, I am just beginning.”

  The kitten did not like the tone. He lifted his head and stared across the river as though much interested in the bushes on the other side. “After all,” he said loftily, “I am the blue kitten. And I can learn some things for myself!”

  But the river went on as though it had not been interrupted.

  “There is a carpenter in Castle Town, a simple man, and no one knows him well. Yet he, like yourself, was born to the sound of the river’s singing. His father was a silversmith. And he sang the song well. But when he wanted to teach his son to work with silver, the son would not listen. Yet the sound of the river’s song is forever in the son’s ears. Perhaps you will meet this man.”

  “The name?” demanded the blue kitten, who was getting very weary. Besides the blue moon was moving toward the west. And when the moon should disappear, he understood — for his mother had warned him — he must have learned the river’s song. Blue moons come seldom in a kitten’s life. Or in anyone else’s for that matter.

  “The name is Thomas Royal Dake. His mother gave him the name Thomas. But his father insisted on Royal. That,” explained the river, “is a term applied to kings.”

  “But this man is only a carpenter.”

  “Only a carpenter,” agreed the river. It lingered over the syllables, as though it loved them.

  “Dake,” said the blue kitten. “Thomas.”

  “Royal,” added the river.

  “Umph,” sniffed the kitten. “Is there anyone else in Castle Town whom I should know?”

  “Well, there is a girl in Castle Town, who is not anything at all. She is not rich and she is not pretty. And she has an ugly name. She is lonely, for her mother is dead. I know nothing about her voice, but she has an ear for sounds. She listens to the wind, and to the gurgle of the brook, or so I am told. So, she might listen to you. She …”

  “We had better get on with the song,” said the blue kitten, not bothering to learn the girl’s name. For the moon had passed its zenith.

  “Oh, well,” groaned the river, “there are some things, small kitten, which as you say, you must learn for yourself. Most certainly you will have a hard time. But it is not my fault — not really!”

  Now, the blue kitten of Castle Town was smarter than most. Of course being blue had something to do with it. So by the time the blue moon took its last look across the valley before slipping out of sight, the blue kitten had learned all the river’s song, that song as old as the world itself. For the Creator of All Things was the first to sing it.

  Only as he was leaving, the river said a trifle contemptuously, “After all, you may turn out to be only an ordinary cat.”

  “An ordinary cat!” Sniff, went the blue kitten who had learned the river’s song. “An ordinary cat!” The very idea!

  In the dawn his mother was waiting for him by the haycock. She washed his face for the last time, taking good care that his ears were clean. Pink ears are so becoming to a blue cat. She looked thoughtfully at his fine, long, white whiskers and at the eyebrows which sprouted up like two small fountains above his amber eyes. She approved of the softness and whiteness of his waistcoat. That was the result of a good diet. The very last thing she did was to count the black hairs on the end of his tail.

  “After all,” she said then thoughtfully, “you may turn out to be an ordinary cat.”

  Then the blue kitten, who didn’t for an instant believe these words, walked proudly out of the meadow. Even before the sun rose he was on his way to Castle Town to find a mortal who would listen to his singing and would learn the river’s song. And he was, the blue kitten assured himself, he was the blue kitten. And some day he would be the blue cat. That was not an ordinary thing. Not by any manner of means! Pssst! The idea!

  CHAPTER THREE

  EBENEZER SOUTHMAYD, THE PEWTERER

  JUST outside Castle Town the blue kitten saw a narrow lane leading off from the main road and meandering over a hill. At the bend of the lane a wisp of smoke was rising from a chimney. The house itself, he decided, was hidden by the thicket of cherry and alder. Sitting in the dust of the main road and gazing at the smoke, the kitten found all the teaching of the river and h
is mother coming to his aid so that he could understand even the ways of mortals. Smoke meant a fire. And fire, with mortals, meant food. And a hearth for a most important blue kitten.

  Having come to this conclusion, he stood up and hastened along the lane. A young tabby, in the doorway of the barn next to the small, unpainted house, stopped washing her face to watch him. But, beyond noticing that she was an ordinary yellow cat, the blue kitten paid no attention. After all, a barn cat was scarcely in his category. Instead, holding his head and tail high, he marched straight to the doorstone at one end of the house and sat down expectantly. When nothing happened he began to demand admittance, his tone growing louder and louder.

  A girl opened the door and looked at him. She is very ugly, thought the kitten. But then I suppose mortals can’t be as beautiful as cats. After all she may have a good hearthstone.

  He peered around her and into the room. It was the first room the kitten had seen. But by virtue of his color and his association with the river, as well as his long days in the meadow, he could list everything at once.

  A table, with no cover. Two straight chairs, never made for a cat to curl in. A spinning wheel in one corner and a cobweb or two. A hearth, yes. But nothing comfortable there on which a blue kitten could properly lie. Not even a decent fire, for the wood burned sullenly as though minded to go out any minute. The kettle on the crane above gave forth no comfortable humming. A mortal’s house, decided the kitten, certainly lacked the comforts of a meadow.

  Yet, disappointed though he was, the blue kitten sat down on the doorstone and started the river’s song.

  “Go away,” said the girl sharply at the very first purr. “Go away.”

  But the blue kitten finished one line.

  Then the door slammed in his face. He thought he heard a sob, but he was too provoked to care. The idea of not letting him in! Of not at least giving him a good breakfast! Was he not the blue kitten? And could he not sing the river’s song?

  A sheep in the pasture beyond spoke disdainfully, but the young tabby in the barn doorway mewed in a friendly fashion. The kitten paid no attention. Instead, after huffing himself up and up to show how provoked he was, he turned about. And looking neither to the right nor to the left, he marched down the lane and back to the road, which he had so hopefully left such a short time before. Then on and on he padded, on and on, until he came to the edge of the town, and the edge of the village green as well.

  “Now I am in the part of Castle Town where the houses are set close together for company,” he said to himself. “Let me see. I should look, the river told me, for Ebenezer Southmayd, John Gilroy, Arunah Hyde or — oh, well, a carpenter and a girl. But surely one of these first mortals will listen and sing the song. I shall not need to remember the whole list.”

  After all, decided the blue kitten, stopping to admire himself in a well at the edge of the village green, after all, I am a good-looking kitten. Anyone — anyone at all, except of course that ugly girl in her ugly house — will be glad to listen to me!

  He leaned over farther to see whether his whiskers and his eyebrows were in order. A little farther, and suddenly the waters of the well fairly rushed up to meet him. There was a loud splash.

  And there he was, in the cold and wet, going down and down.

  He managed to give one wild despairing yowl before the waters closed over him completely. He had no time to shut his eyes, and he glimpsed for one brief moment a man’s face framed in white hair, peering at him from the rim of the well.

  Then with a terrible creaking and groaning something began to move down and down, closer and closer. The blue kitten was too frightened now even to use his knowledge and good judgment. Instead he sensed only a mighty fear which his ancestors had sometimes known. There was no doubt about it, this must be the dark spell coming to swallow him up. That would be a fate far worse than drowning.

  The creaking and groaning stopped, and sure enough the spell was beneath him, was all around him, was fairly scooping him in. I am about to be digested, like a mouse, decided the kitten. And I shall never, never know a hearth to fit my song. Oh, dear! Why did I ever, ever listen to the river?

  The creaking and the groaning, which was really the sound of a windlass, began again. Now the blue kitten was being lifted up and up. Then the loaded bucket filled with its strange burden was seized and turned over. And the kitten was dumped on the grass. There he lay, on the village green, looking more like a sopping wet dishcloth than a blue kitten.

  So that was the way the blue kitten was introduced into Castle Town. Dipped, like a piece of trash, out of a well! It was most humiliating.

  The kitten felt terribly ashamed of himself. But the man with the white hair framing his face, picked him up — as cats should be picked up — by the scruff of his neck. With water dripping from his chin, his tail, his paws, and even from the tips of his ears, he was carried through a door and put down, gently enough, on a hearth beside a brick furnace. The bricks felt warm and almost at once a comfortable feeling began to creep along the cat’s backbone.

  Still he lay there, sprawled out, pretending he was half-drowned, which he wasn’t at all. He hadn’t been in the water long enough to be even a quarter-drowned, or an eighth-drowned, for that matter. But, being sorry for himself, he wanted the man with the white hair to be sorry too.

  He had, the kitten recalled, been told that his task would be hard and there would be many difficulties. But he had never dreamed it would be as difficult as this.

  Finally the kitten opened one eye and then the other. There were little shadows dancing on the floor. And looking above him for an instant he saw that the bricks against which he leaned held an open furnace — something, he supposed, like a blacksmith’s forge in the shop where his mother had boasted of once overpowering a fine young rat. Over the furnace was a sheltering hood. The whole effect was unquestionably, in the kitten’s mind, very cozy indeed.

  Then his whiskers twitched, remindingly, and he brought his head down. Right in front of him stood a porringer full of milk. The kitten lapped up the last drop, and with his tongue polished the porringer around the rim as well as on the inside. After that he set about drying himself. In that comforting business he forgot to think any more about being drowned.

  Besides being warm, it was a cheerful-looking room in other ways. There was a counter filled with bright tinny-looking teapots and sugar bowls and pitchers. The handles and spouts on these annoyed the kitten. Somehow they didn’t seem to belong to the teapots, the sugar bowls and the pitchers — not as a kitten’s tail, for instance, belonged to a kitten.

  But on a higher shelf the kitten saw some plates and a tankard or two which were strangely different from the ware on the counter. There was a soft glow about the dishes on the high shelf, which somehow reminded the blue kitten of the moonlight on the river the night he had listened to the river’s song. And the handles on the tankards, which stood on the high shelf, did belong. The kitten stretched his neck in order to admire them.

  “So, kitten, you like the pewter I fashioned in the old days, do you?” asked the man whose face was round as a pewter plate, and whose cheeks were the color of ripe apples. And the speaker, too, paused to gaze at the dishes on the high shelf.

  “Well, the pewter there on the shelf was from a good formula. The master of all American pewterers gave it to me. And the molds were the best in Connecticut. But it took a long time to fashion such pewter. And there wasn’t any money in it.”

  Pewter! Hmm! thought the kitten. This must be Ebenezer Southmayd, the pewterer! Well, my mother and the river were right. I did go through a lot, falling into the well and being two-thirds drowned, to say nothing of being four-thirds frightened to death.

  But now, thank goodness, I have only to sing my song and I shall have a comfortable hearth forever. I certainly am glad I listened to the river!

  He curled his long blue tail around him and sat up straight to show off his fluffy white waistcoat. Then, slowly, for he must reme
mber each line, he began to purr.

  “Sing your own song, said the river.”

  Ebenezer Southmayd, who was mending a teapot spout for a neighbor, laid down his soldering iron and looked over the top of his spectacles.

  “Why, kitten!” he cried in amazement.

  Oh, it was easy enough, this matter of getting a mortal’s attention, thought the kitten, as Ebenezer Southmayd put his elbows on his knees, cupped his face in his hands, and stared at the bundle of blue by his hearth.

  “With your life fashion beauty,” the kitten purred.

  Ebenezer lifted his eyes toward the bright, tinlike dishes on the counter. “Stuff!” he said, contemptuously. “Stuff! Any country pewterer could have made them!” His eyes ran over the teapots with their ugly spouts, over the sugar bowls and the pitchers with the handles which didn’t seem to belong to them. He sighed deeply.

  “Riches will pass and power” continued the kitten.

  “I never had much of either,” said Ebenezer.

  “Beauty remains …”

  The man’s eyes went to the single high shelf.

  “Beauty remains …” he echoed. “Yes, I knew that once, blue kitten. There are the plates and the tankards to prove it. There is the work I would not sell.”

  “Sing your own song.”

  Ebenezer looked at his hands.

  “All that is worth doing, do well, said the river.”

  Ebenezer brought his gaze back to the singer.

  “Certain and round be the measure,

  Every line be graceful and true.”

  Really, thought the kitten. He was singing very well. He had not realized his voice was so good. He — then he ducked his head just in time.

  For Ebenezer Southmayd had jumped up from his stool. He was grabbing the pitchers, the sugar bowls, the platters and bright plates from the counter and flinging them in all directions.

  Without any warning, a pitcher came out of nowhere and settled down over the blue kitten’s startled ears. And though both his front paws went up at once he could not budge it. He was a knight encased in armor now all right, but with no holes in his helmet through which he could peer. And with precious little air to breathe.