The Tale of Briar Bank

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Your story?” Tabitha laughed scornfully. “You wanted to tell them your story?”

  “As if they cared,” Crumpet added.

  “You silly puppy,” Rascal said, with affectionate indulgence. He liked Pickles. A bit excitable, perhaps, but always up for a romp and good times. “The Big Folks can’t hear you. Oh, they can hear you barking, of course. They find it rather annoying, unless they’re following you and you are following a fox. But not even the smartest of them knows that you’ve anything important to say. Except about foxes,” he added, for it was well known that huntsmen could tell by the sound of the dogs’ voices whether and where they had found the fox.

  Crumpet snorted. “That’s because they don’t listen. They don’t pay the proper attention. They’re careless.” She was a sleek, handsome gray tabby cat with a red collar and gold bell of which she was excessively proud, as she was proud of her reasoning capacity. Crumpet considered herself to be extraordinarily gifted with intelligence.

  “But it’s really not their fault,” Tabitha Twitchit pointed out. “Their ears just don’t work as well as ours, or their brains. They don’t have our superior sense of smell. They can’t see in the dark, either.” She licked her paw and rubbed it over her face. “As everyone knows, they are regrettably deficient—compared to cats, that is.”

  Pickles shook his head sadly. “But I could have told them the whole story. Everything that happened up there at Briar Bank that awful day—although they probably wouldn’t have believed me.” He gave a discouraged sigh. “So I suppose it wouldn’t have been any good telling them. P’rhaps it’s just as well I wasn’t called as a witness.”

  “If they didn’t believe you,” put in Crumpet disapprovingly, “it was because of that wild story you told about the treasure. Everybody knows you’re not a credible witness, Pickles. You exaggerate.”

  “But I didn’t exaggerate!” Pickles protested, much offended. “I said that Mr. Wickstead and I found two small sacks of treasure. It’s not my fault that the story got blown out of all proportion. I told the truth!”

  “Two small sacks!” Crumpet exclaimed, her green eyes going wide. “Why, that’s not what you said at all. You said there were four sacks.”

  “Four!” cried Tabitha. “It was six, and the sacks were so large they had to be carried home in the wagon!”

  “I did NOT say it was four sacks,” Pickles barked crossly. “And certainly not six! I said that Mr. Wickstead put everything that we found in his game bag, and carried it home himself.”

  “Nonsense!” hissed Tabitha, flicking her tail. “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Absurd!” spit Crumpet, arching her back. “That’s not what happened at all! What happened was—”

  “There, there, girls,” said Rascal soothingly. “What matters is that we now know the truth.”

  Of course, you know the truth, too, because you and I heard the story from an eyewitness who had no reason to exaggerate the size of the treasure—in fact, every reason not to. That would be Bailey Badger, who watched as Mr. Wickstead and Pickles retrieved the two small bags of gold treasure from Briar Bank. And we saw how quickly the truth got exaggerated, as truth has a way of doing when it flies around a village, and how Auld Dolly Dorking, Lucy Skead’s mother, reminded everyone that anyone who found a treasure was curst, so that no one was in any degree surprised when Mr. Wickstead was felled by a falling tree and carried home to die in his bed. (It had not escaped anyone, either, that the tree in question was a yew, the Tree of Death, which was always planted in cemeteries.)

  As far as the villagers were concerned, it was the curse, and that’s all there was to that.

  “Well,” soothed Tabitha. “Whether you said two bags, or four, or six, it doesn’t matter, Pickles. It’s the value that counts, not the quantity.” She licked the tip of her tail. “The Wickstead treasure is priceless, we understand. Worth a king’s ransom.”

  “What counts is my reputation,” retorted Pickles indignantly. “You’ve destroyed it with your own exaggerations. Now, when I tell what really happened at Briar Bank, nobody will believe me.” I’m afraid that what Pickles is saying is true, although there’s nothing he can do about it. It is a sad fact that once one’s credibility has been destroyed, it’s all but impossible to redeem oneself.

  “Well, then, what did happen at Briar Bank?” Crumpet de“Well, then, what did happen at Briar Bank?” Crumpet demanded. “Come, come, Pickles. We should like to know how Mr. Wickstead died. Was he really killed by the tree?” She snickered. “Or p’rhaps some sly evil doer did him in?”

  “We should very much like to know,” Tabitha repeated, in a tone more kindly than Crumpet’s. “It’s a pity that Captain Woodcock wouldn’t allow you to enter your testimony in evidence, but we shall be glad to hear it.”

  “Of course we shall!” exclaimed Crumpet, who had just had a very bright idea. “And we shall do it right! We’ll have another inquest. Rascal can be bailiff and swear you in, Pickles. I’ll be the Justice of the Peace and ask the questions. Tabitha can be the jury.”

  “No, no, Crumpet,” Tabitha objected. “I should be the Justice of the Peace. After all, I am the president of the Village Cat Council. I am Senior Cat.”

  “Oh, you certainly are,” Crumpet said cattily. “You are very senior, Tabitha. In fact, you are so senior that you can barely get around. You ought to think of retiring and letting someone younger do the job. And who is best suited to the task? Moi, of course.” She lifted her chin and raised her voice. “MOI!”

  “You?” Tabitha was shrill. “You are nothing but a silly puss who thinks too well of herself. You need to learn humility. And I’m just the one to teach—”

  “Tabitha!” Rascal barked authoritatively. “Crumpet! Let’s not quarrel! I’ll be the bailiff and the Justice of the Peace. You two can be the jury and render a verdict. Now, go sit on that shelf over there—that’s your jury box. Pickles, sit on that wooden box and hold up your paw to be sworn.”

  “He can’t be sworn,” Crumpet objected sourly. She still thought she ought to be the Justice of the Peace. “We don’t have a Bible.”

  Rascal looked around. The storage shed was full of cast-offs from the inn, including a broken lamp, several discarded jugs and pots, and a box of books. “We have this,” he said, picking up the first book he laid his paw on. “We’ll pretend it’s a Bible.”

  Pickles squinted at the book. “I don’t think—” he began.

  “It’s not quite the same thing as—” Tabitha remonstrated.

  “Personally,” said Crumpet, “I am of the opinion that—”

  “Oyez!” barked Rascal loudly, overriding their objections. “Oyez, Oyez! This court is in session!”

  And with due solemnity, Pickles was sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God—on a leather-bound copy of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

  Rascal sat on his haunches behind the overturned flowerpot, using it as the judge’s bench. He picked up a broken-handled hammer to serve as a gavel and began. “Now, then, Pickles,” said he sternly, “You will confine yourself to the facts, please. You accompanied Mr. Wickstead on the afternoon of his death?”

  “Yes,” Pickles said. “That’s a fact,” he added.

  “What time was that?”

  “We left about nine in the evening. Another fact. We had a lantern. Also a fact.”

  “And where were you going?” Rascal asked, adding in an admonitory tone, “You don’t need to restate the thing about it being a fact. We’ll stipulate it.”

  “I just want to be sure they know it’s true,” Pickles said, eyeing the jury.

  Rascal nodded. “Well, then. Where were you going?”

  “To Briar Bank.”

  “And your purpose?”

  “This is so boring,” one of the jurors meowed, sotto voce, to the other. “When are we going to get to the good part?”

  “Your purpose?” Rascal repeated, glaring at the cats.


  Pickles cocked his head, perplexed. “Why, to go with Mr. Wickstead. What other purpose would I have?”

  The jury giggled.

  Rascal gave a long-suffering sigh. “And what was Mr. Wickstead’s purpose?”

  “Oh, that.” Pickles’ expression cleared. “He was putting the treasure back.”

  “What?” Rascal cried, astonished. “He was putting it back? You mean, back in the place where he first found it?”

  Pickles nodded.

  “Why in the world was he doing that?”

  “He didn’t say, but I assumed—” Pickles looked at Rascal, frowning. “Can I say what I assumed? I mean, it’s not exactly a fact, it’s more like a guess, based on . . . well, on some things he said to me. But it’s a pretty good guess, if I do—”

  “For pity’s sake, just SAY it!” cried the jury in one voice, leaning forward impatiently.

  Rascal banged the flowerpot with his gavel. “The jury will be silent,” he barked. To the witness, he added, “You may state your assumption.”

  “Wonderful,” muttered Crumpet.

  “He was putting it back to keep someone else from finding it,” Pickles said. “And maybe taking it,” he added.

  “Someone else?” Tabitha cried. “Who?”

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Rascal said, feeling that he was losing control of the situation. “Who?” he asked, addressing the witness.

  Pickles shifted position. “His sister.”

  “His sister?” Rascal asked in surprise. “You’re referring to Miss Wickstead?”

  “That’s right. You see, he found her taking photographs of the treasure, which seemed to disturb him.” Pickles smiled sadly. “Mr. Wickstead talked to himself sometimes, and sometimes he talked to me. In this case, I overheard him saying to himself that he didn’t trust her. Miss Wickstead, I mean. So when he took the treasure back to Briar Bank, I assumed he wanted to hide it from her.”

  “All six bags of it?” Crumpet interrupted.

  “Four,” disputed Tabitha.

  “Two,” Pickles corrected, with a hard look at the jury. “Two small leather bags. No more, no less.”

  “So,” Rascal said firmly. “Mr. Wickstead carried the two leather bags full of treasure to Briar Bank. And then what?”

  Pickles scratched his nose with his paw. “Then he told me to put them back where they came from in the first place.”

  “Which was?”

  “An open badger burrow.” He cocked his head. “Well, not exactly open. There’s a big yew tree there, and the roots rather cover up the hole, as tree roots do. And there are rocks and twigs. And bracken. The usual sort of things.”

  The jury fidgeted.

  “So you put the bags back into the badger burrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far into the burrow?”

  “Well,” said the dog, “I—”

  The jury sighed impatiently.

  “Never mind about that,” Rascal said. “What happened next?”

  “I’m not . . . exactly sure,” Pickles said doubtfully. “I mean, whatever-it-was happened while I was in the burrow, you see. I had just put the second bag back where I found it and was turning around to come out, when I heard—” He stopped, biting his lip. “I heard—”

  The jury leaned forward.

  “You heard?” Rascal prompted.

  Pickles closed his eyes as if to help him remember the scene. “I heard a loud cracking and splintering,” he said, in a very low voice. “Like a tree . . . snapping off. Then there was a tremendous crash, you see, and the ground shook, like an earthquake. Some rocks began to fall around me, and there was a lot of dust. I was afraid the ceiling was going to come down.” He took a deep breath. “When I crawled out, I saw poor Mr. Wickstead lying on the ground. He . . . he wasn’t moving. The top part of the yew tree was lying on him. I knew right away he was badly hurt.” A tear trickled down his furry cheek. “Mr. Wickstead was always good to me, you know. I miss him. I miss him very much.”

  “Yes, of course you do,” murmured Tabitha softly. She had had a soft heart and had never quite got over Miss Tolliver’s sudden death. She also understood that Pickles was probably uncertain about his future. Billie Stoker might keep him. But would Miss Wickstead want him around Briar Bank House, as a reminder of the tragic way her brother had died?

  “The yew tree.” Rascal frowned, trying to picture the scene. “You mean, it came down, just like that? Snap, crackle, splinter, and the top popped off? All by itself?”

  “All by itself?” echoed Crumpet skeptically.

  Pickles bit his lip. “Well, not exactly,” he said. “That is, it—”

  “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” Rascal demanded. “Did the wind push it over?” He stopped, remembering. “No, it couldn’t have been the wind. Mr. Stoker, in his sworn testimony, said it was calm as calm could be the night Mr. Wickstead died.” He frowned sternly. “Unless you wish to contradict Mr. Stoker, in which case we shall have to consider bringing charges of perjury against somebody.”

  Pickles shook his head. “It wasn’t the wind. It was—” He swallowed.

  “It was WHAT?” cried Crumpet, now completely out of patience.

  “You are under oath, Pickles,” Rascal reminded him gravely. “How did the tree come down?”

  Pickles was looking quite miserable. “There was . . . there was something in the top of the tree. Something very . . . large.”

  “Something IN the tree?” chuckled Tabitha. “Really, now, Pickles.”

  Crumpet snickered. “Something large? An eagle, maybe?” She cackled. “An ostrich? A moa? A gyrfalcon?” By this time, she was howling with laughter.

  “A phoenix!” cried Tabitha, and both cats were convulsed.

  “The jury will be silent!” Rascal roared, and they subsided, putting their paws over their mouths to stifle the giggles. “Well, what was it?” he asked the witness. “This large thing in the tree. Did you see it?”

  “I saw it as it flew away,” Pickles said, and gulped.

  “So it was a bird, then,” Rascal said, glad to have that settled.

  But Pickles shook his head. “No, not a bird. It was . . . it was . . .”

  “A duck,” derided Tabitha.

  “A goose,” mocked Crumpet, rolling her eyes.

  Rascal banged with his gavel. “Order! We will have order in this court! I direct the witness to answer.” Out of the side of his mouth, he added, in an urgent whisper, “Come on, old chap. Out with it!”

  Pickles covered his eyes with his paw. “It was a . . . dragon.”

  “A dragon?” echoed Rascal incredulously.

  “A DRAGON!” cried the jurors in one outraged voice. “There ARE no dragons!”

  “A dragon,” whispered Pickles. “Not a huge dragon. Actually, a rather small dragon, as dragons go. Not that I’ve actually seen any,” he amended hastily. “Only pictures in Mr. Wickstead’s books. But this dragon was large enough,” he added hastily. “A little larger than Kep the collie. Oh, and he had wings, leathery wings. And green scales and a tail.” He closed his eyes, concentrating. “Yes, a tail. I’m sure of it. Which made him look larger, of course.”

  “Wings and scales and a tail,” Crumpet repeated cynically. “The next thing you know, Pickles will be telling us that his miniature dragon breathed smoke and fire.”

  “He did!” cried Pickles, opening his eyes wide. “Yes, that’s right, Crumpet. There was smoke. And fire! That’s how I could see him. It was dark, you see, and Mr. Wickstead dropped the lantern when he fell. But the dragon gave enough light to—”

  “Impeach this witness!” Tabitha hissed angrily. “We can’t believe a word he says. First he lied about the size of the treasure, and now he’s making up a ridiculous story about a dragon.”

  Pickles gave a disconsolate wail. “Why would I make up something like this?”

  Tabitha shrugged. “So we’ll think you’re important, I suppose.”

  “When you’re noth
ing but a foolish little puppy who hasn’t a brain in his head,” Crumpet added.

  At this, Pickles was reduced to tears. “But it’s true,” he sobbed. “I swear it! The dragon was big enough so that when he was perched in the top of the tree, he snapped it right off. And the tree came down, and the dragon, and—”

  “So you’re saying that this miniature dragon murdered Mr. Wickstead,” Rascal said, trying his best to piece the scene together.

  “Well, I don’t know about ‘murdered,’ ” said Pickles, wiping his eyes on the back of his paw. “That is, I don’t know whether he was deliberately trying to hit Mr. Wickstead with the tree, or—”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” muttered Tabitha.

  “I have better things to do than listen to this ridiculous story,” Crumpet growled. “Adjourn the inquest, Rascal. We’re not getting anywhere.”

  “But we can’t adjourn without a verdict,” Rascal reminded them hastily. “What say you, jurors? Death by accident? Death by misadventure? Death by—”

  “Death by dragon!” chorused the cats. “Court’s adjourned!” And with that, they jumped off the shelf and scampered out into the snow, shouting with wild laughter.

  “But it’s true,” Pickles said sadly, after they had gone. “I’m not lying, Rascal. Every word I’ve said is the truth.”

  “You shall have to prove it, then,” said Rascal, with a discouraging shake of the head. “The witness is dismissed. You may step down.”

  “But how in the world am I to prove a dragon?” Pickles cried in despair.

  I am sure you must understand his feelings. For while most of us are called upon to prove quite a few things in the course of our lives—geometry theorems, or last wills and testaments, or a claim we have staked, or a bowl of yeast dough, or our strength, or whether we truly love someone, or where we actually were when we were alleged to have committed some youthful indiscretion—I think we must admit that the difficulty of proving a dragon is almost as great as that of proving God or heaven or hell or any of the other things we may believe in but have not actually seen.

  “Prove a dragon? I’m afraid that’s your problem.” Rascal tossed his gavel aside. “Court’s adjourned. You can go home now, Pickles.”