The Tale of Applebeck Orchard (2 page)

Tabitha Twitchit
, president of the Village Cat Council, is a calico cat with an orange and white bib. Tabitha’s rival,
Crumpet
, is a handsome gray tabby cat.
Max the Manx
is once again between assignments and looking for steady work.

 

Rascal
, a Jack Russell terrier, lives at Belle Green but spends his time making sure that the daily life of the village goes according to plan.

 

Fritz the ferret
has a reputation as a disagreeable hermit. Escaped from captivity, he now lives alone near the bridge over Wilfin Beck.

 

Bosworth Badger XVII
keeps The Brockery, an animal hostelry on Holly How.
Parsley
serves up fine meals from The Brockery kitchen, while
Primrose
manages the housekeeping, ably assisted by her daughter,
Hyacinth.
Her son,
Thorn
, has been traveling since January.

 

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 at the top of Cuckoo Brow Wood. As far as he is concerned, his is the final say on any important matter in the region.

 

Kep
the collie is top dog at Hill Top Farm. Other notable barnyard animals include
Winston
the pony;
Aunt Susan
and
Dorcas
, the Berkshire pigs;
Kitchen
the Galway cow; and
Blossom
, her calf.

PROLOGUE

Before the Beginning

Every story has a beginning. Ours opens on a bright August morning in 1910, in the Lake District of England. The sun, eager to be about his day’s work, has already waded through the layer of cottony mist that blanketed Lake Windermere, clambered up the steep eastern slope of Claife Heights, and launched himself with a cheer into the clear blue sky above the Land Between the Lakes, a vantage point from which he can beam down upon the leaf-green and lake-blue earth.

But before every story there is . . . well, another story. For this is not the first time the sun has made his daily journey across the Land Between the Lakes. A great deal of time—a vast immensity of time, an unthinkable infinity of time, human and otherwise—has transpired before the beginning of our story. In fact, you might think that the sun is already quite tired of his day-in and day-out routine, for he has climbed Claife Heights more times than you or I could possibly count.

But if you asked the sun, I’m sure he would tell you that every day brings something interesting and intriguing to observe. He has seen mountains rise beneath him, volcanoes erupt in his face, and seas ebb and flow. For a long time he watched icy glaciers advancing and retreating as they carved the ancient rock, scooping out convenient places for lakes and dropping enormous boulders here and there as if they were pebbles carelessly falling through a hole in a boy’s pocket. All this ice made the earth shiver and even the sun felt a little chilly and remote and not terribly interested in what was going on below.

But then the weather warmed. The sun took off his overcoat and mittens, the ice thawed, and rivers and streams took over the job of pushing rocks here and moving mountains there, and generally rearranging the furniture. The lakes brimmed and green things made themselves at home, putting down roots and thrusting up leaves—mosses and lichens at first, then heather and bilberry and fern and willow and alder and finally oak and beech and yew and juniper and the lovely hawthorn. Animals set up housekeeping in the dales and fells, fish filled the lakes, birds took to the skies, and the sun was happy for the company.

And then the animals had to move over, because people had arrived. First came the clans who worked with stone, then iron and bronze. These people did not travel much farther than they could walk in a day, having nearly everything they needed and wanted right in front of their noses. But then the Romans landed in the south of England. Since they had already traveled a considerable distance from Rome, you’d think they’d be ready to settle down. But they weren’t, so they built a network of military roads and a massive wall of stone and turf right across England, east to west, to separate the civilized from the barbarians (although the sun was hard-pressed to tell which was which).

But things didn’t exactly turn out as the Romans planned, and a few centuries later, they packed up and journeyed back to Rome. The Celts carried on until they were joined by the Angles and the Saxons, and they continued carrying on as the Norsemen arrived and settled around the lakes, farming in the dales and pasturing sheep in the fells. The old Roman roads conveyed wayfarers from one market town to another, whilst the villages and farms were linked by cart-ways suited to oxen and carts, bridleways suited to horses, and narrower footways suited to people. These were a great convenience, permitting people who lived in one valley to travel over the mountain to the next valley. Everyone went from cottage to market and church and field by the most direct and shortest route, and all got on quite famously.

But then people began buying and selling the land and constructing stone walls around the parts of it they owned, miniature versions of the Roman Wall. Hills were enclosed and divided, woodlands were fenced, fields hedged. The Age of Enclosure had arrived, and the land that was once used by many in common—for picking fruit, pasturing livestock, gathering wood or bracken or peat or stone—became the private and exclusive property of a few. More than seven million acres of England’s fields, forests, pastures, and uplands were turned over to private ownership and enclosed.

The sun was baffled by this, and failed to see how all those walls, fences, and hedges made life better for anyone, except possibly for the few rich people who owned the land. In fact, it looked to him as if all these barriers were a frightful nuisance, getting in the way of people and animals and requiring the bother of gates and stiles so people could continue to do their ordinary business, going along the by-ways they had used since longer than any could remember.

Time passed, as time has a way of doing. A young girl named Victoria became England’s queen, and then grew to a very old and much loved lady. The kingdom prospered, and railways and roads were built to carry newly manufactured goods to seaports and cities. By this time, there were a great many more people in the Land Between the Lakes. They came afoot, on horseback, by carriage and coach and bicycle, and even by motor car, an occasional brash
toot-toot!
frightening the birds into flight. A ferry made regular (more or less) trips across Lake Windermere and the railroad arrived at the edge of the district. It was kept by public opinion from going farther than Windermere Station, so there it had to stop and turn around and go back to London, sulking all the way.

The railroad and ferry brought even more people, of course, so that the more-traveled lanes became turnpikes and the less-traveled lanes became roads, and some of the paths became lanes, and others—well, they kept to being footpaths, for the convenience and pleasure of those who still, by choice or otherwise, went on foot. And because they had been footpaths for a very, very long time, everyone thought it quite reasonable that they all should go on being footpaths, forever, no matter who might own the property over which they crossed.

But that did not happen.

And that is where our story begins, on an August morning in 1910, in the Lake District of England.

1

The Village Animals Confront a Crisis

It was the sort of bright, dry day when farmers in the Land Between the Lakes could cut their hay and stook their barley and oats without fear that their crops would get wet and spoil. The sun had just scrambled to the top of Claife Heights and was preparing to coast across the sky in the direction of Coniston Old Man, the great, broad-shouldered fell that loomed against the western horizon. The Sawrey Village animals were gathered on the grass in front of Belle Green, the house at the top of Market Street, to discuss a just-discovered and exceedingly disturbing problem.

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
asked Tabitha Twitchit crossly, curling the tip of her tail over her front paws.
“What is all the fuss about?”
A calico cat with a fluffy orange and white bib, Tabitha was getting on in years and had become (I am sorry to say) rather stout. But while the increase in girth had somewhat slowed her mousing abilities, it had not dulled her curiosity. And as senior cat and president of the Sawrey Cat Council, she felt it her obligation—and her entitlement—to be fully informed about and completely in charge of everything that went on in the little Lake District village.

“It’s about the footpath,”
Rascal explained. He was momentarily distracted by the sight of Sarah Barwick, owner of the Anvil Cottage Bakery, pedaling her bicycle up Market Street in the direction of Castle Cottage, her wicker basket piled high with morning deliveries of bread and scones. You could set your pocket watch (if you had one) by Miss Barwick, Rascal thought with approval. A Jack Russell terrier with a strong organizational sense, he always felt more comfortable when people went about their business (which was Rascal’s business, too, of course) in the usual way, at the usual time, by the usual means. Which was why this affair of the footpath was so unsettling.

“The
public
footpath,”
Crumpet said with emphasis.
“Through Applebeck Orchard.”
Crumpet, a handsome gray tabby with a red collar and a gold bell, set a great store by factual precision, having little patience with animals who omitted pertinent details from their reports. As you might guess, this habit did not endear her to everyone, especially because Crumpet’s tongue was sharp and she did not hesitate to use it.

“The problem, you see,”
Max the Manx said glumly,
“is that Mr. Harmsworth has blocked the footpath—at both ends. He took down the wooden stile and built a great barricade of wire and wood in its place.”

Max was a stocky black cat with a noticeable absence of tail, an hereditary trait that came about (as Max will tell you himself if you give him half a chance) at the time of the Great Flood. The ancestral Manx was the very last animal to board the ark and his tail was accidentally shut in the door by Noah himself, who was in a hurry to get everyone in out of the rain. Max was by nature a gloomy puss, but he was even gloomier lately. He had been without steady work for some months, and was in the market for a new job and a new home. He had yet to find either. The villagers seemed to have a prejudice against cats with no tails.

“At both ends!”
cried Tabitha, aghast.
“But that means—”

“It means that everyone will have to go the long way round to get to Far Sawrey.”
Crumpet lifted her right paw and looked critically at her claws. She always took special care to keep each in perfect condition. An unwary mouse, a careless vole, an incautious bird—one never knew when a very sharp claw might come in handy. Crumpet believed in being prepared for any eventuality.

“People will have to walk farther to get to church,”
Rascal added in a practical tone,
“and school
.
And the butcher shop.”

“Think of the children,”
Max said gloomily.
“Especially in the winter. And some of them don’t have proper boots.”

Now, the closing of a footpath may not seem very important to you and me, since we depend on automobiles to take us here and there. Why, we even drive the two or three blocks to the grocery store! But it was a crisis of great significance to the residents of both Near and Far Sawrey, who mostly walked where they needed to go. To understand why it was so important, you might take a moment to glance at the map at the front of this book. You will see that the path through Applebeck Orchard shortens the distance between the two hamlets by over a half-mile. This is a great improvement in any weather (as I’m sure you’ll agree), but especially when people are loaded with baskets or buckets or schoolbooks and when it is raining or snowing or very warm or very cold. For as long as anyone could remember, the Applebeck Footpath had saved people hundreds of extra steps every day. They would not be happy to find it blocked.