CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Rat in Flight

The Water Rat, mid-flight, has an altogether unexpected encounter.

What does one do when one is in a tight spot? And not just a tight spot, say, but a really tight spot? A really tight spot that involves, for example, scores of stoats and weasels whose heads all swivel in unison toward one, and whose expressions evolve rapidly from shock to fury? What does one do?

Bluff? Freeze? Run? Hide?

All these questions whizzed through the Rat’s brain as he took stock of his situation and measured his chances. He had his blackthorn staff and his pistol, but what good were they against so many foes?

The Chief Weasel goggled in shock.

The Under-Stoat shouted, “I knew it! I knew I smelled a rat!”

Ratty cast a quick glance at the mortified Humphrey, who rocked back and forth, his paws clamped over his mouth in anguish. “Chin up, Humphrey,” he called. “We’ll be back for you.” Then he took off like a shot.

“Not likely!” yelled the Chief Weasel. “Come on, boys—let’s get ’im!”

The pack of weasels and stoats tumbled over one another in their eagerness to get ’im, stepping on one another’s tails and toes and generally getting in one another’s way.

“Don’t push! Chief, he pushed me!”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Yes, it was.”

And so forth, the way that an overly excited crowd of stoats and weasels will do, all of which only served to give the Rat a good head start. He took advantage of it and ran as he had never run before. Behind him, he heard the tolling of an alarm bell, no doubt a call for reinforcements.

Soon he came upon the beady-eyed sentry, who cried out, “Halt, who goes there?”

“What bosh!” cried the Rat as he bowled the sentry over and ran on.

Next he came to Digby, who gave him a cheery smile and wave and said, “Good-bye, Seraphina Original. P’raps you can stay for supper next time.”

“Good-bye, Digby!” the Rat called over his shoulder (for even when one is on the run, it never hurts to return a courtesy).

The Rat ran until he thought his heart would leap from his chest. He came to a fork in the trail and paused to take a quick look at his compass. He pitched his blackthorn staff down the left fork as far as he could and then hurried away down the right. At the next fork in the path, he threw his shawl down the right and ran to the left.

Some distance back, the weasels and stoats had finally sorted themselves out and were hot in pursuit. The ruses with the staff and shawl bought the Rat a few extra minutes, but soon he could hear a faint whistling behind him, shrill and high-pitched, and he knew they had picked up his track. He slowed to a trot in order to catch his breath and ponder his next move. Behind him, he heard the pitter-patter of many small feet, and the sound caused him to break into a run again. The pattering grew louder and louder, and there was a sudden shout of “We’ve got ’im now, boys!” The Rat turned and faced the Under-Stoat and his advance party of half a dozen soldiers.

“Surrender!” cried the Under-Stoat. The soldiers elbowed one another and jeered at the Rat and laughed horrid thin little laughs. “Come quiet, now, and we might go easy on you.”

“Never,” cried the Rat. He pulled the pistol from his pocket and fired a shot just over their heads. His pursuers yowled and flattened themselves to the ground. To Ratty’s great satisfaction, the cowering Under-Stoat squealed, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.”

“There’s more where that came from,” Ratty said and backed away, keeping his pistol trained upon them. He took a quick peek at his compass and turned and ran. The pistol had bought him some more time, but how much? How long before the hundred other weasels caught up to the Under-Stoat? How long before the Under-Stoat realized that one rat with one pistol could not possibly keep their great numbers at bay for long?

The overhead canopy of branches was thinning, thus admitting more light, and the undergrowth was becoming easier to negotiate. By his reckoning, he was halfway back to the edge of the wood. He thought of poor Humphrey, a veritable slave, down to his chain, a testament to the Chief Weasel’s overweening selfishness. But, the Rat told himself, he had at least found the boy and had seen that he was in good trim, if downcast. (If he had only known how downcast, for at that very moment, Humphrey was weeping the bitterest of tears. Sammy’s mother, who was one of the seamstresses working on the canopy, tried to console him with a piece of chocolate cake filched from the Chief’s private store, but so wretched was the boy that he left it completely untouched.)

The Rat dashed around a large elm tree and ran smack into a figure on the trail, knocking them both flat to the ground. Loaves of bread flew in all directions. The Rat leapt to his feet, as did the stranger, both prepared for the worst. They gaped at each other in shock. The Rat had run into Matilda. It took him a moment to find his voice, for his brain had quite deserted him. He said, “So terribly sorry!”

She stared at the gypsy and murmured, “Oh, it’s you. I know it’s you. I’d know you anywhere. But why are you dressed like that? And why did you run away from my burrow that day? And why,” she added sadly, “did you never come back?”

These words were as a balm to the Rat’s sore heart, but there was no time to revel in the moment. “I can’t explain just now,” he panted. “The stoats and weasels are after me. And I didn’t come back because of your suitor.”

Bewildered, Matilda said, “Suitor? I have no suitor—only my cousin Gunnar, who was visiting for the day. I waited and waited for you to come back, but you never did.”

The blood pulsed in the Rat’s brain, and once again he heard the ancient invisible singers, the vast immeasurable chorus of ancestors chanting, “You must … you will.”

In the distance, he could hear the baying of his pursuers.

“I must fly,” he said. “But I promise you this: I will be back.” He took her paw in his. They gazed deeply into each other’s eyes and then gently, ever so gently, touched noses.68

Then the Rat did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He wrenched himself away and soared off, calling over his shoulder, “I promise you!”

By the time the stoats and weasels had come upon Matilda, they found her resting on a fallen log, her basket of loaves tidily packed at her feet.

“Did you see him?” demanded the Under-Stoat.

“See whom?” she stalled politely.

“The Water Rat. He must have come this way.”

“I saw no rat at all.” She paused and pretended to think. “Hmm, I did see an old gypsy woman. Surely you don’t mean her?”

“That’s him! That her’s not a her—he’s a him, and he’s a right evil ruffian. Which way did he go?”

“My goodness, what could you possibly want with that old woman?”

“Never you mind. Now, tell me quick, which way did he go?”

Matilda, having watched the Rat head southwest, pointed northeast, and the pack took off, much too busy howling and tripping over themselves to notice that she held her paw behind her back, fingers crossed against such a lie.

*   *   *

It was now fully dark. At the edge of the Wild Wood, the Badger and Mole huddled dolefully beside a signal fire they’d built in hopes of guiding their friend home. Mole gnawed his knuckles and tried not to imagine the worst, but the sun had long set and there was no sign of the Rat. Every now and then, some small nocturnal animal stirred in the forest, causing Mole to lift his head expectantly, only to have his hopes dashed each time. Badger had given up on this hours earlier and merely stared morosely into the fire.

Finally, the poor Mole, whose heart was cracking in two, leapt to his feet and burst out, “They’ve found him out, I know they have!” He paced back and forth. “We are such fools, Badger. We should never have let him go it alone. The three of us should have marched in, one for all and all for one, and taken our chances. But did we do that? Oh, no. We sent in a poor, defenseless water rat who—”

“Hush,” hissed Badger, raising a paw.

“Probably didn’t have any idea what he—”

“Hush!” snarled Badger, and so fierce was his command that the Mole shut up immediately. The Badger slowly rose to his feet.

“What is it?” whispered the Mole.

“Do shut up and listen.”

The Mole strained to listen with every fiber of his being. And then he heard it. Or rather, felt it, for a mole’s vibratory sense is exquisitely keen. What he felt was the faintest rhythmical pounding on the ground some distance away in the Wild Wood, a regular pounding as would be made, for example, by a running animal. The Mole threw himself to the ground and pressed his whiskered cheek to the earth, the better to detect the source.

“Can you feel it?” whispered Badger.

“It’s getting stronger,” uttered Mole softly. “Yes. It’s … it’s … coming this way.” The Mole leapt to his feet. “Suppose it’s him? Suppose it’s Ratty? Oh, it’s got to be him.”

The Badger raised his muzzle and scanned the air.

And now the two animals could hear it distinctly, the noise of a distant animal crashing through the bracken. Was it coming their way? Mole shivered and his teeth clicked. Yes! It was getting closer. And now they could tell that it—the runner—was headed straight for the signal fire, which gleamed like a beacon of hope and safety in the vast blackness of the night.

From out of the forest sprang the Water Rat, fur on end. He fell with a cry on the shoulders of his friends.

“It’s you, oh, Ratty, it’s you!” cried Mole. “We’ve been so worried, oh, I can’t begin to tell you.” Laughing and crying, he embraced the Rat.

The Rat gasped for breath. “My friends.”

“Ratty,” said Badger somberly, “you gave us both a turn. No, don’t try to speak. Let us get you back to the Hall. You can give us a full report once you’ve got a good meal inside you. Mole, leave off squashing the life out of him.”

They half carried the exhausted Rat back to the Hall, changed him into a dressing gown, parked him in front of the library fire with his feet propped up, and fed him a restorative supper of hot thick soup and a glass of sherry.

Mole studied his friend as he spooned up his soup and gradually revived. The Rat was worn and filthy but strangely ebullient. Mole said, “Ratty, I have to say, this has been the longest day of my life, having to sit and do nothing but wait for you all day.”

Rat exclaimed, “Has it only been a day? Goodness, it feels like a lifetime. There’s so much to tell you. First off, and most important, Humphrey is safe. I don’t think they’ll harm him, because he’s the only one who can fix that wretched balloon.”

Rat described the scene in the forest with Humphrey laboring away. When he came to the part about the chain, Badger growled, a hair-raising noise indeed. “I’ll tan that Chief Weasel’s hide, I will.”

“Actually,” said Ratty, “I think it’s as much the fault of the Under-Stoat as anyone.”

“Him too. I’ll see both their hides tacked up on the shed.”

“Go on, Ratty,” urged Mole. “Did they see through your disguise? Start from the beginning and tell us everything.”

So the Rat started from the beginning and told them everything. (Well, almost everything.) He told them about limping past the sentries, about reading the Chief Weasel’s fortune, which had Mole laughing until he cried, about Humphrey’s unfortunate remark that had almost cost the Rat his life. He told them about his terrifying flight and the wily tricks he’d employed to throw his pursuers off course, which greatly impressed the Badger. But when he got to his collision with Matilda, for some reason he could not explain, he glossed over her name, saying only that he had run smack into a baker. There was some part of him that was reluctant to share their moment, that felt it was not for public consumption. Not that Mole and Badger were the public, by any means—no, no, it wasn’t that at all. It’s just that what had transpired between him and Matilda was something secret. And sacred.

Mole, acutely attuned to his friend’s mood, noted that Ratty momentarily faltered at this particular part of the story before picking up the thread of his narration and moving on, ending with his final flight toward the bright dot of the signal fire.

“Let me tell you,” Ratty said, “never in my life have I been so glad to see a fire. I can’t tell you how it heartened me to know that the two of you were keeping watch. It was sheer genius of you to light it. My dear friends!”

The Rat sniffled, Badger cleared his throat, and Mole brushed away a tear.

“What do we do now?” asked Mole. “If we don’t hurry, by the time we get back they’ll have moved camp.”

Badger said, “We’ll send for the otters first thing in the morning. There’s nothing left to be done tonight except to let Ratty get a good night’s rest.”

The Mole yawned and said, “I don’t know why I’m so exhausted. All I did was sit and wait.”

“And worry,” said Ratty. “The worrying can wear a body out, too. Rightio, I’m off to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.” He took his candle and headed up the stairs.

Badger’s head gradually drooped on his chest, and he began to snore quietly. Mole stared unseeing at the fire and somberly wondered what it was that his oldest, dearest friend was keeping from him.