The Tale of Oat Cake Crag

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Other creatures were present, too, although they were occupied with their own business and paid no attention to the people in the room, who, of course, paid no attention to them. There was a large family of mice gathering crumbs under the floor, silly and scatterbrained as mice always are, running off in all directions and forgetting where they were going before they got there. A small brown spider was dreamily spinning a new web in the corner. And another animal was present as well, nearly as large as Rascal, but heavier, dark, and handsomely striped. But she was outside, poking around under the window, where (because people were angry and talked in very loud voices) she could overhear every word that was said. After the meeting was finished, she went round the back to visit the few turnips that still lived in Mrs. Barrow’s wintry patch of garden. She was digging one up when she met Rascal and the three cats, who came out the back door.

  “Well, hello, Hyacinth,” Tabitha said cheerily. “We haven’t seen you for a while.”

  You have probably already guessed that this forager amongst the turnips is Hyacinth, the young female badger who now holds the Badge of Authority at Holly How. She and Bosworth had talked it over and decided that one of them should attend tonight’s meeting and learn what the Big People were going to do about the flying boat. Since Bosworth didn’t venture far from Holly How these days, Hyacinth had volunteered.

  “Although I don’t think there was much to be learnt tonight,” she added, when she had told the animals why she was there. “Too bad that Mr. Baum couldn’t hear what people had to say. He might have changed his mind and decided to fly his aeroplane somewhere else.”

  “It’s very strange,” remarked Rascal, cocking his head with a puzzled look. “He was planning to come.” After he and Miss Potter had returned from Tidmarsh Manor that afternoon, Rascal had happened to meet the brewer’s drayman on Kendal Road. Having nothing else to do, the little dog hopped on the brewery wagon for a ride down to the ferry, then rode back at teatime with Dr. Butters, who was returning from a call on the eastern side of Windermere. The doctor, one of Rascal’s many friends, always invited him to ride in his gig. The doctor’s horse was very fast and Rascal was delighted to accept, since he loved the feeling of the wind blowing his ears.

  “And just how do you know?” asked Crumpet.

  “I was at the landing this afternoon, when Mr. Baum got off the ferry. He had crossed over from Cockshott Point, where he keeps his aeroplane. I heard him tell Mr. Wyatt—they had been on the ferry together—that he intended to go to the meeting.”

  “You don’t suppose something happened to him, do you?” Tabitha asked, frowning.

  Crumpet giggled. “You mean, like an aeroplane crash? His own medicine, going down the wrong way?” She elbowed Felicity Frummety, proud of her clever little joke. “Get it? Going down the wrong way?”

  Felicity (the ginger cat who lives with Mr. and Mrs. Jennings) ignored Crumpet’s elbow. “If his aeroplane had crashed, I’m sure we’d have heard about it.” She shuddered. “Some of the Big People who spoke tonight were very angry. You don’t suppose somebody’s koshed him over the head, do you?” Felicity enjoyed both a delicate constitution and a vivid imagination, and loved to frighten herself by conjuring up the worst, whereupon she fled to the nearest corner and covered her eyes with her paws until the danger was past. Crumpet liked to say that Felicity gave new meaning to the term scaredy-cat.

  “I suppose he never intended to come at all,” put in Crumpet, who is a very skeptical cat. “Big Folks lie all the time.”

  “Personally, I do not suppose at all,” Rascal said in a definitive tone. “There is never any point in supposing—at least for more than a minute or two. It is far better to find out the facts.”

  “Oh, right,” said Crumpet, with a sharply sarcastic meow. “And just how far will you go to find out the facts? Where does Mr. Baum live?” She answered her own questions. “He lives at Lakeshore Manor, that’s where. On the far side of Raven Hall, on the lake shore below Oat Cake Crag. I make it”—she squinted, calculating—“well over a mile away.”

  “Which is why I had better be going,” said Rascal, getting to his feet. “Major Kittredge must be ready to leave for home. I’m sure he won’t mind if I ride along with him as far as Raven Hall. From there, I can take the path through the woods. Won’t be far at all.”

  “Not far to go, maybe,” Crumpet said ironically. “Plenty far to come back.” Crumpet wasn’t lazy, but she did like to conserve energy.

  Rascal ignored her. “Anybody want to go with me?” he asked, looking around the little group. “Tabitha?”

  “Not I,” said Tabitha firmly. “I have a date with a vole in the Anvil Cottage garden.”

  “You won’t find out a thing,” Crumpet remarked cattily. She smoothed her whiskers. “Waste of time.”

  Felicity shook her head. “I don’t go beyond the village at night.” She shivered. “One never knows what beasts one might encounter.”

  “Well, then, it’ll have to be just me,” Rascal said bravely. “I’ll let you know what I find out.” It wasn’t that he was afraid, of course. Jack Russell terriers are never afraid of anything. Or rather, they never admit to being afraid—which is not quite the same thing.

  “I’d love to go with you,” Hyacinth offered. Unlike the village cats, who are domesticated creatures with a preference for staying close to home, badgers are adventuresome animals, always eager for new experiences. “But I doubt that the major would offer me a ride,” she added, “and I don’t think I can run as fast as the major’s horse.” Most Big Folks in the Land Between the Lakes are prejudiced against badgers, whom they think of as pests who raid gardens and chicken coops. Granted, badgers do a certain amount of this, for they have to eat, too. If badgers have set up housekeeping in your neighborhood, you would do well to fence your turnips (Mrs. Barrow has not) and install a strong clasp on your chicken coop door.

  “He probably wouldn’t offer,” Rascal agreed with a grin. “But the gig he’s driving has an empty wooden box on the back, for carrying bundles and such. I’ll distract him and give you time to jump into it. He’ll never know you’re there.” Rascal was happy to have Hyacinth along, because badgers have very strong claws and are fierce fighters, particularly when they are cornered. He knew he could count on Hyacinth to back him up if they ran into something unexpected and . . . well, dangerous. In that event, the cats wouldn’t be any help at all. It was just as well they stayed home.

  So Rascal ran to Major Kittredge’s gig and barked and jumped and begged with a great deal of excited energy, and the major, who knew the little dog, immediately invited him to sit on the driver’s seat. Whilst this was going on, Hyacinth climbed into the box and shut the lid. As it turned out, the box wasn’t completely empty. It contained (in addition to one badger) a dozen eggs that the major was taking home to his wife, as well as a parcel of biscuits that Mrs. Woodcock had baked for her sister-in-law’s tea. Showing great restraint, Hyacinth touched neither the eggs nor the biscuits, feeling that since she was getting a free ride, so to speak, she ought not to take advantage. A less well-mannered badger might have enjoyed supper en route and arrived fully fed.

  The horse was fast and they reached Raven Hall expeditiously. Rascal made a big show of thanking the major whilst Hyacinth climbed out of the box and hid in the shrubbery. The two met a few moments later and made their way to the footpath that led through the trees of Claife Woods. The nearly full moon was rising over the lake and cast a silvery light, more than enough to see the narrow path that wound through the still-leafless trees. And since both the badger and the dog are accustomed to going about the countryside after dark, they had no trouble at all in finding their way to Lakeshore Manor, where Mr. Baum lived.

  The two-story, early Victorian manor house, built of brick and topped with a slate roof, was set on a bluff above the waters of Windermere. Before it, a grassy park sloped steeply to the lake’s edge, where the moon painted a wide swath of silver across the water. Behind it
towered the high cliff of Oat Cake Crag. The house was dark and seemed (so Rascal thought) to wear an almost frightened look, as if it were waiting for something.

  “No lights,” Hyacinth whispered. “P’rhaps Mr. Baum has already gone to bed.”

  “Or he’s gone out and hasn’t returned,” Rascal replied. But where had he gone? Not to the pub, certainly. And they hadn’t met him on the road to the village, or on the path from Raven Hall.

  At that moment, there was a stir in a tree on the crag, followed by the ominous crack of a twig. A dark triangular shadow swooped with frightening suddenness down the face of the cliff, exactly like the shape of a falling man.

  Hyacinth ducked under a bush, remembering Parsley’s tale about the ghost of a Scottish soldier who had fallen to his death from the crag. Was it the ghost? But Rascal (who had a pretty good idea what was going on) bravely stood his ground.

  Without a sound, not even a rustle of wings, the shadow settled in the top of a nearby tree. “Whooo?” inquired the owl’s commanding voice. The great head swiveled from side to side, the amber eyes glaring. “Whooo goooes there, I say! Halt, and identify yourselves!”

  “Good evening, Professor,” said the dog in a deferential tone. All of the local animals know that it is well to speak respectfully to the owl, who is quite large and formidable. “It’s Rascal, from the village. And Hyacinth, from Holly How. We hope we haven’t disturbed you.”

  “Yooou have not,” the owl said in a kindlier tone, and settled his feathers. To tell the truth, he was rather glad to see Rascal, who had a nose for news and often carried interesting bits of village tattle. “A bit far from home, I’d say. What brings yooou here at this hour of the night?”

  “We rode with Major Kittredge,” the dog explained. “Mr. Baum was supposed to come to the meeting at the pub tonight, so people could tell him how they feel about his aeroplane. But he didn’t, and everyone is wondering why. Hyacinth and I thought we would try to find out.”

  “That is commendable,” replied the owl. “But I doubt that yooou’ll learn anything. There’s nooobody at hooome. There’s been nooobody at hooome all evening. At least,” he amended, “since I have been here.” He raised his round eyes to the moon. “Which (according tooo the stars, whooose passage I have been observing from my vantage point atop the crag) has been a considerable while. Three hours at least, I shooould say. Venus is now past ten degrees from its meridian and Jupiter has nearly reached its zenith, which is tooo say—”

  “Nobody at home?” Hyacinth interrupted, coming out from under the bush. She had never felt it necessary to defer to the owl, whom she viewed as rather a stick-in-the-mud. She was always polite, though, because the Professor was Uncle Bosworth’s friend and, as an older animal, deserving of respect. She was also quite aware that once he had well and truly launched into a lecture on the movement of the stars, they were likely to be here all night.

  “That’s odd,” she went on, before the owl could get his second wind. “If Mr. Baum didn’t come to the meeting and he’s not here, where is he?”

  The Professor had not liked the idea that a female badger might hold the Holly How Badge of Authority, and when Bosworth had first mentioned the possibility, the owl had opposed the appointment vigorously. He was in fundamental agreement with the French novelist Guy de Maupassant, who said, “The experience of centuries has proved to us that females are, without exception, incapable of any true artistic or scientific work.” The owl believed, as he had said to his friend Bosworth, that females suffered from “certain innate and irremediable intellectual deficiencies” and should not be allowed to hold positions of authority.

  However, since the owl was an owl and not a badger, his opinion regarding the Badge of Authority had not been considered. After a grueling test that proved to Bosworth that she suffered from no deficiencies of any sort, Hyacinth had been named to the post. Which did not mean that the owl had to like it. Moreover, he did not like to be interrupted when he was discussing the stars. In fact, he did not like to be interrupted at all.

  He turned a severe gaze on Hyacinth. “Perhaps Mr. Baum met with an accident on the way tooo the village,” he suggested in an icy tone. He lifted his wings, shook them, and resettled them. “An unfortunate possibility, but a possibility nooonetheless. The horse runs away, the cart is overturned, the driver is throoown out and killed. It’s a possibility that must be considered.” Having settled the matter, he took a deep breath and went on. “Now, as I was saying about Jupiter—”

  This time it was Rascal who interrupted, since they really had to get on with the discussion and not be sidetracked by an academic dissertation on the stars. “But we came by the road, Professor, and we didn’t see anything of Mr. Baum. So I don’t think there’s been an accident.”

  “We didn’t come by the road the whole way, though,” Hyacinth reminded him. “We only came by the road as far as Raven Hall, with Major Kittredge. After that, we followed the path through the woods.”

  “Yes, of course,” Rascal said, seeing immediately that Hyacinth was right. “So we need to go back by the road and see if there’s any sign of—”

  “Wait a minute,” Hyacinth said, holding up her paw. “What’s that?”

  Rascal looked around. “What’s what?” he asked nervously.

  “That noise,” Hyacinth hissed. “Listen!”

  The animals fell silent. For a moment, they heard nothing—nothing except the companionable conversation of the wind in the trees, the soft slush-hush-slush of the lake waters lapping against the shore below, and far away, the inquisitive crawk? of a night heron.

  “Really,” said the Professor, still irritated at Hyacinth. “I dooo not think—”

  “Shush!” said Hyacinth.

  And then all three of them heard it at the same time: a long, low moan. Then one word, low, weak, quavery.

  “Heellllp!”

  It seemed to come from somewhere behind them, at the foot of the cliff.

  “Whooo?” cried the owl, lifting his wings and turning his head from side to side to peer into the darkness all around. “Who-who-whooo?”

  “Where?” barked Rascal sharply, turning around several times. “Where? Where are you?”

  But Hyacinth wasted no time in asking questions. With her nose to the ground and her ears tuned for any sound, she made off into the dark, moving silently and skillfully in the way of a badger who knows what she’s looking for. It didn’t take her long to find it, either, in a thorny tangle of bushes growing out of a heap of fallen stones at the foot of the cliff, some thirty yards away. That’s where she made her chilling discovery.

  For a moment, all she could do was stare. Then she raised her voice. “Over here!” she cried urgently. “Rascal! Professor! Over here!”

  When the others reached Hyacinth, they found her crouched beside the sprawled figure of a man. His arms were flung out wide, his legs at odd angles, his head bleeding badly.

  “Whooo?” asked the owl somberly. “Whoooooo?”

  Rascal didn’t have to look twice. Hyacinth and I have already guessed, and I’m sure you have, too. But since the owl has asked . . .

  “It’s Mr. Baum,” Rascal replied.

  10

  “Is He Dead?”

  With a frightened cry, the injured man struggled to push himself up, looking wildly at the three animals clustered around him. Then, coughing weakly, he fell back against the rocks and lay very still, as still as death. He was a heavyset fellow, of a substantial size and girth. His eyes were closed, and in the moonlight, his round face was pasty-white. A trickle of blood oozed out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Is he dead?” the owl inquired anxiously, peering down.

  Hyacinth bent closer, checking the man’s breathing. “No,” she said, “at least, not yet. But he’s very badly hurt.” She looked up at the crag looming above them. “He must have fallen from up there, wouldn’t you say? He needs a doctor. But how can we—”

  “There are servants in the house,
” the owl said. (He always had an answer for everything.) “We must rouse them. Rascal, gooo and bark at the windows.”

  “But there aren’t any servants,” Rascal replied grimly. “At the ferry today, I heard Mr. Baum tell Mr. Wyatt that he had to let them go. He said he had put all his money into that aeroplane and couldn’t afford to pay them.”

  The man moaned again, but very faintly, and closed his eyes. “We have to get help,” Hyacinth said. “Quickly!”

  Rascal turned to the owl. “Raven Hall is not too far away. You could fly there and bring someone back, Professor. Fly fast!”

  “No.” Hyacinth shook her head. “That won’t help, Rascal. No offense, Professor, but nobody will pay attention to an owl.”

  “Oooh, cooome now!” the Professor exclaimed, deeply affronted. Still, while he would never admit it, he knew that the badger had spoken sensibly. Big Folks are clever. Some are even clever enough to construct machines that fly. But they simply do not have what it takes to understand animal language, particularly the languages of wild creatures. Some amongst them might interpret his calls as an omen of death, but the more enlightened—Major Kittredge, for instance—would view that as mere superstition. As far as the major was concerned, his alarm cries would be just so much night noise.

  “Well, they certainly won’t listen to me, either,” Hyacinth said in a practical tone. “In fact, somebody would probably shoot me. Rascal, that just leaves you. You’ll have to go and get help. Hurry.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Rascal said without hesitation, and set off. Racing through the night, he followed the path through the woods, back to Raven Hall. When he reached it, he saw that most of the windows were dark and guessed that the residents had gone to bed. By moonlight, the house looked even more commanding than it did during the day: an imposing example of baronial Gothic, a Victorian version of a medieval castle, with crow-stepped gables and turrets topped with candle-snuffer caps and battlements. Rascal could almost imagine that defenders were stationed behind those battlements, ready to pour boiling tar upon the head of any intrepid trespasser.