The Willows and Beyond (26 page)

Toad had no sooner seen this display of raw and warlike intent, and realized with considerable alarm that this was not to be the quiet protest he had imagined, than he heard an answering shout from the other bank, where a number of the High Judge’s gamekeepers, wardens, grooms and other estate workers were standing.

A good few of these large, tough-looking gentlemen Carried staves as well, and the gamekeepers had twelve-bore shotguns. Plainly they meant business, and they answered the Lathbury folk’s welcoming shout with a roar of disapproval and contempt.

Toad saw that he was as much the target of this verbal assault as he was the focus of the cheers and hopes of the Lathbury side. As they approached the Hat and Boot Tavern, with rival forces gathering on either side, what fuelled his alarm still more was the sight of the massed ranks of constabulary upon the bridge, there to keep the peace.

The faces and eyes of these stolid and well—armed constables had about them a fierce and determined look, and caught as they were between two opposing factions, their mutual gaze fixed itself upon Mr Toad as if he alone was the cause of the trouble.

There was no way back. However much he might have liked to turn about and flee, the crush of supporting craft upon the River, not to mention the presence of police boats, made this impossible. Instead Toad found his launch heading gently for the bank by the bridge. Immediately several sturdy officers, including Toad’s old friend the Senior Commissioner of Police, hurried down the bank, grasped the painter of Toad’s launch, and hauled its unhappy and now frightened admiral ashore towards a pair of waiting handcuffs.

The Commissioner of Police was very well aware, however, that arresting Toad in full view of the rebellious mob that for some peculiar reason so revered him might prove unwise.

“Mr Toad,” essayed the Commissioner, raising his voice somewhat because the crowds were becoming increasingly raucous, “I wish this affair to end soon and peaceably and you would be ill-advised to provoke the forces of law and order further. I therefore offer you this chance of speaking to your followers. Please urge them to go back to their homes without causing an affray!”

Toad was only too happy to accept this offer, thinking he might slip away unseen, but the Lathbury men immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was being arrested, and surged forward, and as the constables attempted to restrain them, tempers became even more frayed.

Worse still, the moment Toad realized that so great and powerful a personage as the Commissioner himself was not only encouraging him to make a speech, but had actually ordered the constables to aid his passage to the most prominent part of the bridge and raise him up that he might be heard, his earlier fears fled him and he felt suddenly dangerously light-headed. Toad liked nothing better than an audience, and now the cries of encouragement and support from the Lathbury men so swelled him up with vanity and pride, that all common sense left him at once and he felt impelled to speak out.

“O, please be sensible, Toad!” cried the Mole, who by now had clambered out of the launch with the others. “Please do not say anything too provocative!”

“Provocative?” cried Toad, waving his arms about and climbing up onto the bridge’s balustrade that he might be seen by his audiences all the better. “I shall
certainly
be provocative!”

The Lathbury men cheered at these wise and noble words, while the constables looked on helplessly, for Toad was rather beyond their easy reach and they were in danger of pushing him into the River if they tried to stop him speaking, thereby provoking a full-scale riot.

“For what common and ordinary citizen of our noble realm would not be provoked at the sight of such bullies and thugs as we seem to see upon the far bank of the River?” continued Toad in a loud voice.

This initial sally from Toad brought complete silence, as all waited to see if he would continue in this vein. But Toad, so full of pride a moment before, now saw the angry faces of the High Judge’s men, who seemed so much bigger and stronger all of a sudden, and decided there and then that he must immediately retract, recant and escape. Perhaps with a quick a leap into the River and a hasty swim downstream, he might yet escape, with his life.

Then there came a shout from the Lathbury side that puffed up his pride once more, making him quite forget the danger.

“You’re a great gennelman, Mr Toad, and we’re glad you’re going to tell those brutes the truth!”

This ill-judged remark came from Old Tom, Toad’s old drinking companion from the Hat and Boot Tavern, and it provoked a good many cheers and huzzahs of the kind Toad found even more intoxicating than the Tavern’s ale.

“Brutes they certainly are!” cried Toad to renewed loud cheering, though he needed no further encouragement. “Brutes in mind and body, who think nothing of threatening the honest citizens of Lathbury with their sticks and guns!”

“Mr Toad,” called out the Commissioner, who now saw that his attempt to win Toad’s support had gone horribly wrong. “I am hereby placing you under —“

“Listen to the voice of corruption!” called out the very foolish Toad, who intended to enjoy himself while he might. “Listen to the man who seeks to protect with his corrupt constables those who have purloined the common land!”

The cheers at this, and accompanying cries of righteous anger (on one side) and rage (on the other), were loud indeed, and both sides so pressed and surged forward upon the bridge that the outstretched arms of the arresting officers were swept harmlessly away from where Toad stood.

“But, my friends,” continued Toad ecstatically, “their truncheons shall not hurt us, for liberty knows no pain, and their handcuffs shall not stop us, for freedom knows no restraint!”

“Liberty!”

“Freedom!”

“Deliverance!” The cries came thick and fast now, answered by an ugly roar from the other side.

Toad threw caution to the winds and continued more boldly still: “The guns of the coward, I say, shall not frighten us! For the great tree of freedom cannot be felled, nor can death itself take from us our dream of the land of liberty —“

“Hurrah for Mr Toad!”

This last cry, though somewhat less raucous than the others, was still loud enough to be heard by most, and rather surprisingly it came from the Mole. He had been so carried away by his friend’s eloquence that he too had lost all sense of public order and propriety.

This sudden display of support from one whom all knew to be a law-abiding citizen was too much for the Senior Commissioner. Having signally failed to arrest Toad when he should have done, and then compounded the error by letting that dangerous and criminal animal incite his followers, the Commissioner decided that an example might as well be made of the Mole — and Nephew, Badger, Grandson and Master Toad too.

Now Toad might very well be a coward and fool unto himself from time to time, but he could not abide injustice, especially not threats to ones he held as dear as his River Bank friends. They could arrest
him
if they must, but his friends they must leave untouched.

He turned to point past the angry ranks of the High Judge’s men up towards Lathbury Chase, whose purple heather was gloriously ablaze with autumn sunshine, a beacon of liberty and hope if ever there was one.

“See there!” he cried. “They wish to rob my brave friend Mr Mole of that sight of freedom forever, as if it were not enough that they have exiled him from his lifelong home at Mole End! They seek as well to cast their shackles upon Mole’s brave young Nephew and Badger’s Grandson, that they might grow old in the confines of a dungeon in the Town Castle!”

“Shame on the constables!”

“Destroy the gamekeepers!”

“Throw the lot of ‘em into the River!”

Toad raised a hand to quieten the mob, as assured in his command of the situation as any Roman orator. Indeed, if ever there was a moment in Toad’s long and eventful life when he actually resembled the imperial and triumphant Toad depicted by his cousin Madame Florentine d’Albert-Chapelle in the statue she had made for him some years before, which still stood in the grounds of Toad Hall, this was it.

A baying rabble. A raised hand and imperious stare at friend and foe alike. A decline towards silence and an expectant hush. And Toad, speaking once more.

 “What is more, they intend to flog my young ward Master Toad, light of my life, hope of my dotage, and lock him up in a solitary confinement that his sensitive soul and fine feelings will not long endure — and as for Mr Badger, whom you all know to be a wise and honest gentleman, I understand they already have the rack and hot irons ready for him that he might make a false confession!”

It was enough, and if Toad said more his words were never heard. He had said enough to inspire the men of Lathbury to action and they now began to break the police ranks and throw as many as they could into the River below, while their wives and children hurled after the defeated constables anything they could lay their hands on, pots and pans, brooms and brushes, shoes, butter churns and cobblestones and a good many empty beer bottles, supplied by the new landlady of the Hat and Boot, who had been trying to clear out her cellars for some months past.

With the constables pushed aside and scattered, and the briefly arrested Mole and the others swiftly freed, the mob reached the top of the bridge. There Toad had time only to gasp, “Now, steady on, you fellows, I really think perhaps we ought — to — think — again —“ before he found himself hoisted from his vantage point, and placed upon the broad and sturdy shoulders of the Lathbury men.

From this new, unstable and moving vantage point Toad discovered he had fallen prisoner to his own eloquence. Cry out as he might, struggle though he tried, Toad could not break free from the eager hands that held him, nor escape the brutal and savage charge down the other side of the bridge towards the High Judge’s waiting men, of which he was the reluctant figurehead, leader and vanguard.

“No — really — I mean — perhaps we could —
help!”

It was all in vain that Toad looked round desperately for aid from his friends, for they too had now been hoisted high upon massing human steeds far beyond the control of any one of them.

It was a challenge, a danger, to which they each responded differently. The Mole, who was renowned along the River Bank for the way in which once moved to ire he could fight alongside the best of them, was no disappointment now. He had his trusty cudgel in his hands and as he was borne swiftly down towards the High Judge’s men he swung it about his head and let out his battle cry: “A mole! A mole!”

Nephew, normally as little given to anger and assault as his uncle, was now inspired to grasp one of the milk churns and set upon the enemy with gusto, ably supported by Grandson.

Master Toad, who had come dressed and armed like a cavalier, had fortunately had his rapier struck out of his grasp early in the fight. He was reduced now to flailing about with his fists, which since his arms were short and he had been hoisted high was more impressive than effective.

The Badger, too frail to do more than allow himself to be carried about as if he were the regiment’s colours, was nevertheless too high off the ground to get seriously hurt, and began to quite enjoy himself.