The Tale of Castle Cottage (2 page)

 

Lucy Skead
is the village postmistress. She lives with her husband,
Joseph
(the sexton at St. Peter’s, in Far Sawrey), at Low Green Gate Cottage.

 

Mr. Bernard Biddle
is a local contractor who manages construction projects for people. Among other workers, he employs
Mr. Lewis Adcock
, a carpenter who lives in Far Sawrey, and
Mr. Maguire
, who lives near Hawkshead. Mr. Biddle lives at Hazel Crag Farm, where
Mrs. Framley
keeps house for him.

Crumpet
, a handsome gray tabby, is the new president of the Village Cat Council; she makes her home with Bertha Stubbs.
Tabitha Twitchit
(an elderly calico with an orange and white bib), has recently retired from the position in order to move to the Vicarage with the new Mrs. Sackett.
Felicia Frummety
lives at Hill Top Farm.
Treacle
and her kittens live at High Green Gate.
Max the Manx
lives with Major Ragsdale in Far Sawrey.

 

Rascal
, a Jack Russell terrier, lives with the Crooks at Belle Green but spends his time managing the daily life of the village.

 

Hyacinth Badger
is in charge of The Brockery, a famous animal hostelry on Holly How, and holds the Badger Badge of Authority. Also in residence:
Bosworth Badger XVII
, former holder of the Badge of Authority (now retired); Hyacinth’s mother,
Primrose
, chief housekeeper; and
Parsley
, The Brockery’s chef.

 

Bailey Badger
lives at Briar Bank, where he maintains an astonishing library.
Thackeray
, a well-read guinea pig, lives there, too.
Thorvaald
, a teenaged dragon, frequently visits his bookish friends but spends much of his time on assignment for the Grand Assembly of Dragons.

 

Professor Galileo Newton Owl, D.Phil.,
is a tawny owl who conducts advanced studies in astronomy and applied natural history from his home in a hollow beech in Cuckoo Brow Wood.

 

Rooker Rat
and his evil gang of ratty friends (Jumpin’ Jemmy, Firehouse Frank, et al
.
) have invaded Near Sawrey.

PROLOGUE

The Remarkable History of a Book

 

 

Our story begins (as do many very good stories) once upon a time and far, far away, in the year of the Lord 793, in a monastery on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, at the eastern rim of the green and beautiful Britannia. The winter had been stormy and many ominous omens had led the monks to whisper that the hand of God was turned against the world, or their part of it, because they had been misbehaving. They had eaten too well and lain idle too long and enjoyed too much of the fruit of the vine.

The bishop of Lindisfarne, however, was not thinking about the hand of God at this moment. He was crouched behind a stone parapet, clutching his brown woolen cloak with one hand and shielding his eyes with the other.

“Where?” he muttered, peering out across the gray expanse of the North Sea, its waves whipped by an angry wind. “I don’t see them. Where are they?”

“There!” the sentry cried, and pointed.

The bishop followed the pointing finger and saw what he had dreaded to see: far away against the horizon, three great Viking longboats riding the wintry tide inward to the island’s shores, their square sails colored blood-red. He could not make out the fearful dragon-headed prows, but he knew what they looked like and knew also that when the ships had sailed as close as they could, the commanders would drop the sails and all hands would lay on the oars. The light, lean, shallow boats, manned by expert Viking seamen, could maneuver through shallow surf and river estuaries along the coast with ease. They would be upon the undefended monastery in a matter of hours.

A great fear rose up in the bishop’s heart, and he turned to his secretary. “Brother Aelred, sound the alarm and begin the evacuation. The tide will be out soon, which will give our brothers just enough time to cross to the mainland and begin our trek to Norham. Then meet me in the chapel. We must see to the safety of the books.”

Three hours brought the invaders’ ships very near the shore. But by that time the little procession of refugee monks had safely crossed to the mainland and begun moving swiftly up the narrow lane that led north to Norham, near the Scottish border. They bore on their stooped shoulders their most precious possessions: two carved wooden coffins containing the sacred remains of Cuthbert and Eadfrith, beloved bishops of Lindisfarne, and two smaller and even more beautifully carved boxes enclosing the sacred books that Eadfrith—an artist of unparalleled skill—had made.

The books were a marvel, unlike anything that the monks of Lindisfarne (or anywhere else, for that matter) had ever seen. The first—the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—was composed of 258 vellum leaves carefully prepared from calfskins, exquisitely lettered and gloriously illuminated and sumptuously bound in leather and decorated with silver and hammered gold and precious gems. Eadfrith had used the same plan for his
Book of the Revelation of John
, except that he had died in the middle of the eighth page, so that was the end of that.

But even though the work was incomplete, all who saw the Lindisfarne Gospels and
Revelation
were breathless with admiration—as were the monks, who treasured this precious legacy and vowed to keep it out of the hands of infidels. They would take it with them wherever they went, even to the ends of the earth.

They didn’t have to go quite that far, but almost. The abbot at Norham discovered that it wasn’t easy to feed a multitude of monks without a miracle of loaves and fishes, which he couldn’t quite manage. So the Lindisfarne crew packed up the bones of Cuthbert and Eadfrith and their beloved books and set off again, wandering through the north of England and having a great many adventures until, as the story goes, they came at last to the shore of the River Wear. They stopped to have a bite of lunch, but when they got up to leave, Cuthbert’s coffin had become so heavy that no amount of huffing and puffing would move it. The monks quite rightfully took this as a sign (wouldn’t you?) that they were supposed to stay where they were. They cut down a few trees and built a wooden shelter to keep the rain off and prepared to live a lonely life in the woods.

But people will talk, and the tale of that miraculously immobile coffin naturally got around. Soon, pilgrims were arriving from all over northern England, eager to see Cuthbert’s coffin and the splendid books created by Eadfrith. It wasn’t long before a grand stone church, Durham Cathedral, was erected nearby and the bishops’ coffins placed in ornate tombs, where people brought offerings of gold and jewels in hopes that Cuthbert (who by this time was considered a saint) would cure them or save them or give them sons or another piece of property. Eadfrith’s books were settled, too, in the cathedral library (where you could see them if you had a library pass), and all was peace and quiet.

It didn’t last. Several hundred years later, Henry VIII looked around his kingdom and noticed that the monasteries had accumulated a great deal of gold and property. He was in the mood to go to war with France and needed quite a lot more money than he had, so he ordered the abbots and bishops to hand it over. The vast properties were sold or given to the king’s best friends and supporters, and the gold and jewels went straight into the king’s capacious pockets.

But the books in the monastic libraries were a different story. Henry had no time for reading (he was more interested in wives) and nobody quite knew what to do with them. So the monastic libraries—among them the library at Durham Cathedral—went to London. There, many books were thrown away or burnt, others were stored in the Tower, and still others were sold. And the man who had his eye on Eadfrith’s beautiful books was Sir Robert Cotton.

Sir Robert was seized with the odd (for his time) notion that ancient books were valuable and ought to be preserved for posterity. He shelved his library in cabinets topped with the busts of Roman emperors. Not having access to the Dewey decimal system (which wasn’t invented until 1873), he cataloged each of his acquisitions by the emperor’s name, the shelf number, and the position.

For example, if you should like to read the great Anglo-Saxon poem
Beowulf
(Sir Robert possessed the only surviving manuscript) you would find it listed in his handy catalog as
Vitellius A.xv.
You would go straightaway to the top shelf under the bust of Vitellius, where you would find what you were looking for fifteen items from the left. On neighboring shelves and quite within reach, you could see not just one but two copies of the Magna Carta, as well as
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(yes, the very same one that reported dragons portending the Viking invasion of 793) and two great fourteenthcentury poems,
Pearl
and
Sir Gawain.
Of course, it was quite natural that Sir Robert would want to acquire the Lindisfarne Gospels (even though a thief had already made off with its priceless gold-and-silver cover), as well as the
Revelation of John
, which still had its beautiful cover. So acquire them he did, and put them on the fourth shelf of a cabinet topped by the bust of Nero.

But while Sir Robert might be an admirable collector of the rarest of rare books, he had an unfortunate habit of speaking up often and loudly against the Crown. So Sir Robert was arrested on trumped-up charges of treason, and his library was confiscated. Eventually, however, his extensive collection, including the Magna Carta and
Beowulf
and
The Chronicle
and the Lindisfarne Gospels, became the property of the British Museum.

All but Eadfrith’s fabulous, unfinished
Book of the Revelation of John
. When Sir Robert’s library was moved to the museum, this book was nowhere to be found. The title was in the library catalog, recorded in the neat handwriting of Sir Robert’s secretary. But several other important books had gone missing (thankfully, not the Magna Carta or the Gospels), and all that anyone could think was that a malicious thief must have helped himself.

So for several hundred years, what had happened to Eadfrith’s beautiful
Revelation
remained a great mystery. Remained a mystery, that is, until Miss Beatrix Potter, herself a well-known and much-admired maker of books, discovered the book, hidden in a—

But now we have reached the point in our story where we must begin to pay attention to small and intimate moments, rather than to the vast sweep of history.

So let us begin.

1

Miss Potter Works Under Difficulties

I enclose 8 [illustrations for
Pigling Bland
]—probably some of them will want touching up. It is awkward working under difficulties. I fear the drawings may be worse for it.

 

 

Beatrix Potter put down her pen, pushed her chair back, and stood up. Her shoulders were aching, not a good sign, for she had lately been ill—seriously ill—with influenza. In fact, Beatrix had spent most of March and April in bed at Number Two Bolton Gardens, in Kensington, where she lived with her parents. But now it was July, and she was back at her farm in the Lake District and feeling much better.

The illness had set her back considerably on the current book project—
The Tale of Pigling Bland—
which was spread across the table in front of the window. They had been miserably tedious months, darkened by her mother’s tight-lipped silence and her father’s unpredictable angers, and lightened only by letters from friends—especially from Dimity Kittredge and Margaret Woodcock, who had kept her informed with entertaining accounts of the villagers’ doings.

The letters had been a blessing, Beatrix thought, and they had made her laugh. No one would ever guess that so many amusingly scandalous bits could be brewed up in such tiny hamlets as Far Sawrey and Near Sawrey (where Beatrix’s farm was located). (If you’re wondering how these villages came by their names, I can explain it to you very simply: Near Sawrey is nearer the market town of Hawkshead, while Far Sawrey—which is nearer Windermere and the ferry landing—is farther away by a half mile or so. Of course, both Near and Far Sawrey boast a pub and a post office, and each feels itself superior to the other, as I’m sure it is. In the Land Between the Lakes, all hamlets and villages and towns are naturally superior.)

But what had really sustained Beatrix during those wretched months were the letters from Will Heelis, full of details about things that needed to be done at Hill Top and at Castle Farm, along with plans for the purchase of several pieces of land along the shore of Esthwaite Water. The letters, strong and warm and caring, helped to connect Beatrix, far away in London, with all she held dear here in the Land Between the Lakes: her two farms, her Herdwick sheep and cows and pigs and even the silly chickens—and with the letter writer himself. For Will Heelis, Beatrix’s solicitor, land agent, and friend, was also her fiancé, a fact that finally, after months of angry arguments followed by equally angry silences, had been accepted by her parents.

But only grudgingly accepted, I am sorry to say, and not yet agreed to, which had been a great part of the reason for the months of ill health Beatrix had suffered. She was not the kind of person who enjoyed rows, and the constant state of near-war at Bolton Gardens sapped her strength. That, and the necessity of remaining in dirty, grimy London, when she would much rather be at her farm, where she could breathe clear air, enjoy her animals, and be near to Will.