The Tale of Applebeck Orchard (8 page)

“I’m dreadfully sorry,”
Max said, feeling now that this really was an ill-advised errand. No matter the ferret’s size, his teeth were undeniably sharp.
“We’ll come back another time, when it’s more convenient.”
He tugged at Tabitha’s tail.
“Let’s go,”
he whispered urgently.
“Now!”

The ferret peered around the others and gave Max a penetrating look.
“Who’re you? And where’d you leave your tail?”

“Ah,”
said the ferret thoughtfully.
“I have always wanted to meet a Manx.”
He made a clucking noise.
“Well, since the lot of you are already here, and I’m already awake, I suppose I’ll have to hear what this is all about.”
He turned with an undulating, snake-like motion and Max saw that he was very long—longer than a cat, counting his long tail—and very lean and lithe, like a weasel.
“Come on,”
he said over his shoulder.
“But one at a time, mind. Single file, no shoving. Last one in, close the door. We don’t need any more callers.”
And with that, he slithered down the burrow.

This was very like a tunnel, so narrow and twisting that the animals could only go single file, ducking their heads, dropping their tails, and sucking in their breaths to squeeze themselves smaller. Rascal led the way, since he was used to creeping into burrows (he was, after all, a fox terrier), and also because he was acquainted with their host. Tabitha and Crumpet came after, and, as usual, Max brought up the rear, closing the door behind him and throwing them into inky darkness. If he could only manage to turn around, Max thought, he would, and let the others go on without him. But the burrow was so narrow that turning was impossible. There was nowhere to go but forward and down. And then up again, and then down and up and around and around until Max was no longer sure which direction they were going.

Just when he had decided that they were doomed to follow the ferret to the very center of the earth, the turning and twisting stopped and the burrow opened up into a surprisingly pleasant parlor, neatly circular in shape, with a high, domed ceiling, and large enough so that three cats and a small dog and a ferret could fit comfortably into it with very little crowding. The room was nicely furnished with one or two thick white fleeces spread on the floor in place of rugs, a fireplace with a carved wooden mantel, a bolstered brown velvet settee, and a ferret-sized lounge chair constructed like a canvas sling. There was a desk against the wall and shelves filled with what looked like pieces of sculpture and a table with a small paraffin lamp.

But this lamp was not burning at the moment, for the room was amply lit by the natural light that spilled in through a window-sash, set into the ceiling for a skylight. Above the skylight, through a screen of leafy green bushes, Max could see a swathe of clear blue sky, so bright it made him blink. But that wasn’t all that made him blink, for the walls of this round room were whitewashed, like the walls you have seen in art galleries, and on them hung some very fine water color landscapes, along with beautifully detailed studies of small animals—rabbits, voles, frogs, badgers, foxes—all tastefully framed.

Max stared at the paintings, feeling his pulses quicken. He had never seen such beautiful objects in his entire life. The landscapes glowed with the emerald green of grass and tree and the silver-blue of lake and the scarlet and gold of flowers, and the animal studies—remarkably clever and perceptive—were done with infinite attention to the intricacies of ears and whiskers. The only pictures Max had seen that he liked as much as these were the ones drawn by Miss Potter, in her little book about the rats at Hill Top Farm, which had been much admired by the team of cats who helped get rid of the rats. But these—

“Oh, my,”
Max breathed, looking from one painting to another and feeling as if they were all just too beautiful and amazing for any other words.
“Oh, oh, my.”

“You like them?”
asked the ferret, at his shoulder. Standing on his haunches, he was about half a head taller than Max.
“They’re mine, of course, but if you don’t like them, don’t say you do. I can’t abide hypocrisy.”

“Oh, I like them,”
Max whispered.
“I do, very much.”
And then, almost incredulously,
“You don’t mean to say that
you
painted them?”

“I certainly did,”
said the ferret, sounding put out.
“What do you think all that is over there?”
And with an impatient wave of his paw, he gestured toward an alcove that Max had not yet noticed, containing an easel and a table with paint pots and brushes. An artist’s smock was draped over a stool, and an artist’s beret hung on the easel.

“I’m sorry,”
Max said humbly, finding all of a sudden that his view of the ferret had altered. This couldn’t be the same ferret who was so wild and unmanageable that his owner had decided that training him was impossible—or could it?
“I never would have thought.”

“No,”
said the ferret, giving him a measuring look.
“I don’t suppose you would.”
He put his head to one side, studying Max.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever had your picture painted, either. Have you?”

Max was so taken aback by the question that he almost swallowed his tongue.

Tabitha cleared her throat.
“About that footpath,”
she began.

With a sigh, the ferret turned away from Max.
“Tea first,”
he said.
“I always have tea when I wake up in the morning.”
He scowled at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“Although I have to say that I’m not usually awakened so early. And I am not accustomed to entertaining company at this hour—in fact, I am not accustomed to entertaining company at all.”
To Tabitha, he said,
“You seem to be in charge. Come and lend a paw, will you? I shall have to see whether there are enough cups to go around.”

While Fritz is rummaging for cups and Tabitha is measuring out the tea and Max is still absorbed in the ferret’s art and Crumpet and Rascal are waiting patiently for everyone to get back together again, I will tell you the ferret’s story. I am sure you’re wondering how an animal with a fine talent for landscapes and portraits found himself under a bank beside Wilfin Beck, especially since we know that there are no ferrets in the Land Between the Lakes.

That is, there are no wild ferrets. Fritz himself was no wilding. In fact, he was quite a civilized ferret, and the true story of his life is nothing at all like the tale the village animals have heard. Before coming to the Lakes, the ferret had belonged to a cultured London gentleman who, like many owners of ferrets (Queen Elizabeth I, for example), took Fritz everywhere he went, to concerts, gala balls and dinners, museums and art galleries, even on holiday abroad. When Fritz and his master walked around the streets of London, the ferret wore a collar and a leash. When they were traveling, he had his own special ferret cage, custom-made and furnished with a comfortable sleeping hammock, a food bowl, and everything that might entertain a ferret on a long journey. And their journeys were frequently very long, for Fritz’s master was fond of travel. Fritz had been to Paris, to Rome, to Berlin. He’d been to the Brighton Pier, to the Cornwall Lizard, to the Highlands of Scotland, and to the world-renowned Lake District.

And it was in the Lakes—just here, in fact, near Wilfin Beck, on the road between Far Sawrey and Near Sawrey—that the worst had happened, the very worst. There had come an immense storm of blinding rain and thunder and lightning. Frightened, the horses ran away with the coach in which his master was riding and it overturned. The master was carried off to the Sawrey Hotel, where he died the next day. Fritz himself was not injured, but when the coach overturned, his cage was thrown into the brambles. The door popped open and Fritz, frightened nearly out of his ferret wits, slithered through the prickles and down a muddy bank, where he hid in an abandoned weasel’s burrow under the bridge. He waited patiently for his master to come and rescue him, but as the days went by and no one came, it dawned on him that he was now on his own. No human was going to provide his meals, a place for him to sleep, and entertainment. If he were to survive, he should have to pay strict attention to the basics—food, water, shelter. And he should have to depend entirely on his own resources.

Thankfully, this was not difficult. Like all ferrets, Fritz had a natural taste for mice, voles, rabbits, and other small, furry creatures, and since his teeth were quite sharp and his sense of smell even sharper, he had no trouble making a decent living—at least as far as his meals were concerned. A large rabbit warren was conveniently located on one side of the road and Wilfin Beck lay at his door, so he never went to bed hungry or thirsty.

I am sure you are thinking that, having escaped into the wild and gained his freedom, this ferret must be very happy. He was decently fed, he lived under a bridge where people’s comings and goings kept him amused, and he had a comfortable hole in the ground in which to sleep.

Within a few months, however, Fritz realized that mere survival was not enough. He missed the cultured life, the concerts and museums and art galleries. But he was an intelligent and resourceful ferret. The first thing he did was to move house, to a larger burrow farther downstream, where the Coniston coach rumbling overhead did not wake him in the mornings. The burrow had once belonged to a badger family and was quite extensive, needing only a little remodeling—a skylight in the central parlor, windows in the rooms on the side of the hill, that sort of thing. He furnished it with odd bits he borrowed from the village, and when that was done, he turned his attention to something he had long wanted to do. Ever since he and his master had visited Paris, where he had seen the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent Van Gogh, Fritz the ferret had wanted to be a painter.

It wasn’t hard to contrive a painter’s kit. He made a wooden easel, found scraps of canvas in the shed behind the Tower Bank Arms, and raided Miss Potter’s collection of water colors and brushes at Hill Top Farm. His first two or three paintings were not very good, but it wasn’t long before he began to feel at home with his art, and to work away at it in earnest. He settled into a routine, foraging at night, sleeping in the morning, and, when the early-afternoon light flooded his new burrow, settling down to paint. He even found some clay and began to create sculptures. He was perfectly happy, as well he might be. But I am sad to say that he was also perfectly lonely.

“Ah,”
said Rascal, getting to his feet.
“Here’s tea.”

“Sit down,”
Fritz said hastily.
“Mind your elbows and tails, everyone, or you’ll knock something off the shelves.”
He busied himself with the tray as Tabitha handed out the cups.
“Sugar? One lump or two? Milk or lemon? I’m sorry to say that there are no scones—I wasn’t expecting company—but help yourself to a biscuit.”

When everyone was provided for, there were a few moments of silence, and then Rascal said,
“It looks like losing that footpath is going to be a bit of a problem to the villagers. We wonder—”

“We want to know,”
said Tabitha, taking charge,
“why Mr. Harmsworth stopped the path.”

“Mrs. Stubbs has threatened to put a rock through Mr. Harmsworth’s front window,”
Crumpet put in, and Max said, in a low voice,
“The children will have to walk the long way round to school.”

“I agree that it’s a problem,”
the ferret said.
“But I doubt very much that Mr. Harmsworth can be persuaded to open the path. He closed it because of the haystack fire.”

Max stared at him. Of course. The haystack at the edge of Applebeck Orchard had burned a few nights before. To most of us, perhaps, a haystack is a small thing, just a heap of straw, and what’s so important about straw, for pity’s sake? It’s just dead grass. But to a farmer, a haystack represents a considerable investment in time and labor, not to mention the farm animals’ supply of winter food. When one catches fire, whether by lightning or spontaneous combustion or otherwise, it isn’t a trivial loss.

“You’re suggesting that someone using the footpath might have set fire to the haystack?”
Tabitha asked, frowning.
“And that Mr. Harmsworth closed the path to keep it from happening again?”

“If that’s the case,”
Rascal observed,
“blocking the path is likely to make things worse. It won’t be a haystack next time. It will be a toolshed or a cider shed or a barn.”
His voice dropped.
“Or a house.”

“That settles it,”
Crumpet exclaimed, in an authoritative tone.
“This is a flammable situation. I think we should—”

“We really don’t care what you think, Crumpet,”
Tabitha interrupted loudly.
“I am the president of the Council and I will tell you what—”

“No, you won’t,”
Crumpet cried.
“And what’s more, you can stop interrupting me. I am sick to death of—”

“QUIET!”
the ferret roared. When everyone was silent, he went on, in an irritated tone.
“I do wish that you would talk one at a time. And quietly, please. This shouting and quarreling is very uncivil. Where did you animals learn your manners? In a barnyard?”

Everyone fell silent. Crumpet licked her paw carelessly, as if she did not feel rebuked, which of course she did. Tabitha glanced up at the ceiling, trying not to look embarrassed. Rascal hung his head. Max suppressed a chuckle, thinking what a surprise the ferret had been. They had expected a fierce, barbaric animal who, given half a chance, would tear them limb from limb. Instead, they had found one who could teach them lessons in deportment.

“That’s better,”
Fritz said after a moment.
“Well, then, I will tell you what I know. I was coming home from dining at the rabbit warren on Friday night, when I saw Mr. Harmsworth. It was past dark, and he’d brought a lantern and his horse and a cartload of wood stakes and wire and a bucket of hot tar. He took down the stile and built the barricade across the path, all the while muttering to himself.”