Chapter 8
They came for Mrs Mouldywarp in the still of the night, when not even the wind stirred in the branches and frost glittered in the cold moonlight.
She and the Mister were tucked up tight under the counterpane, her little cap pulled down snug over her ears, when there came a scratching at the window that might have been a branch tapping in the breeze, if there had been any breeze and Mr Mouldywarp had not been so assiduous with his gardening.
Mrs Mouldywarp might have been a postmistress and the most literate person in Hexwood village but she was also, still, underneath it all, a mole: a small creature that must always be alert for predators, even if her rational mind knew that all the predators were at this moment fast asleep, having had too much to drink at The Green Knight. Which is to say: she slept lightly. Even such a small sound was enough to wake her.
The late fire was still glowing dimly in the grate. Beside it, the brass bedwarmer gleamed red and gold. The curtains were drawn but through a crack the moonlight glanced off the china postbox on the mantelpiece and the picture of her husband in his new postman’s uniform. Nothing in the room moved.
There came the sound again. At the window.
“Diggory,” she whispered, clasping her husband’s elbow under the covers.
Mr Mouldywarp was also a small mammal and woke with start, sitting up in bed.
“The pillarbox is too full!” he said, his dream still hanging about his head.
“‘Ere, it’s freezing out ‘ere,” said a voice at the window.
“Yeah, let us in,” said another. "I’ve got icicles growing off my whiskers.”
“Diggory,” said Mrs Mouldywarp, keeping hold of her husband’s elbow, even as he started again, "there’s someone outside the window.”
“Yeah, and they’re freezing,” said the first voice.
“Who’s there?” said Diggory Mouldywarp, trying to sound like a larger mammal than he was.
“We’re here to collect you,” said the first voice.
“Hold up,” said the second, "we need the password.”
“Oh yeah,” said the first voice. “What’s the password?”
“What password?” said Diggory.
“Hold up,” said the second voice. “Maybe we’re the ones supposed to say it. To identify ourselves.”
“Oh yeah,” said the first voice. “The password is ‘librarian’.”
“What password?” said Diggory, again.
“The one to identify ourselves,” said the second voice. “It’s librarian.”
“Is that the right password,” said Diggory to his wife.
“Blowed if I know,” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “Ask them.”
“Is that the right password? Librarian?” said Diggory to the voices.
“There,” said the first voice. “Now we’ve all said it, you open the window.”
The two moles got out of bed. Mrs Mouldywarp got into her dressing gown and Mr Mouldywarp pulled the curtain to reveal two weasels standing in the flowerbed, domino masks covering their eyes.
“Who are you?” said Diggory, alarmed that there actually were predators up and about, even if they were small ones. “What do you want?”
“We’re Emergency Actions,” said the first weasel. “We’re here to emergency collect the old lady.”
“Less of the old, young man,” said Mrs Mouldywarp, sharply.
“What are you talking about?” said Mr Mouldywarp. “What Emergency?”
“The planning committee,” said the second weasel. “They sent us to collect your missus.”
“In the middle of the night?” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “Why on earth?”
“Don’t ask me, lady, begging your pardon,” said the first weasel. “They don’t tell us anything but go and collect the postmistress, that’s all.”
“Mere functionaries,” said the second weasel. “That’s what that hare said.”
“It’s that business with the witch, Diggory,” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “You know, the book I told you about. I better go, they might have found something. They’ll need my help if they have.”
“You can climb out of the window, lady,” said the first weasel. “We’ll help you down.”
“I shall do no such thing,” said Mrs Moudlywarp grandly. “I shall find my galoshes and an overcoat and I shall go out of my own front door like a sensible, grown-up mole.”
“Suit yourself,” said the second weasel. “We just thought it would be fun. Spy stuff, you know. We’ll meet you round the front, then.”
Through the silent wood the weasels led the mole, one constantly darting forward to scout out the way while the other chivvied little Mrs Mouldywarp along. They slipped between the sleeping houses of the village and up the side of The Ledge. They were climbing up secret stairs that ran under the ferns, tunnels through thickets of bramble, through ditches hidden by leaves. Above them the wood was bright and cold with moonlight, every branch and frond rimed with sharp frost, but down here the small world of the animals was dark and safe.
At last they came out alongside the great cathedral of beech trees where the farewell party for the witch had been held, and scampered along the ridge of The Ledge to the very end, where a single house teetered on the edge of the cliff, looking down at the River Ringing below.
This was the fox’s house. Reynard claimed he lived outside of the village because he needed room to think and he liked the view from The Ledge out over the stone ring and fields beyond. Also, he was by far one of the biggest animals in Hexwood and he found a lot of the buildings in the village a little too snug.
The weasels showed Mrs Mouldywarp up to the front door and then slipped back into the night. Entrance was solely for members of the committee, evidently. She knocked and heard a door open somewhere deep in the house and the fox’s voice coming up a stairwell.
“We may need ingredients, of course,” he was saying. “I believe spells often need particular ingredients, or even specific times and places to work. Although now I say that I can’t for the life of me think why I should think so. It feels right, don’t you think? More like a ritual?”
The door opened.
“Ah, Mrs Mouldywarp,” he said. “And that makes eight, which is all of us, I think, although I am even worse at numbers than I am at letters. But that is why you’re here, of course. Come in, come in, dear lady; we’re all down in the den.”
He took her coat and overshoes and, closing the door behind her, ushered her down a hall that seemed quite enormous to her, and through a door to a staircase leading down. The stairs, which were fox-sized after all, were rather too deep for Mrs Mouldywarp and he had to help her down each one.
“I’m afraid this house rather does ramble. I keep having new ideas for rooms and just digging out more. Terrible habit I know, but I do find a new room provokes new thinking, don’t you find? And then one also has the delicious experience of rediscovering rooms one had forgotten, like old friends. Here we are, just in here.”
‘Here’ was a small, wood-panelled room with a cheerful fire in the grate and small chairs pulled up to it for Cuwert the Hare and Buck Rabbit. Mr Tuft, the schoolmaster, and Urchin the Hedgehog were perched together on an ottoman, while Lady Ermine and Miss Sleekit were sitting on the edge of a low chaise longue and helped Mrs Mouldywarp up to join them.
“Can I offer you anything, madam?” said Reynard. “There’s tea in the pot, or a spot of something stronger? Buck is working through my whiskey, as is his wont.”
The walls of the den were covered in hunting prints, but in all the pictures foxes were hunting people.
“Tea will be sufficient,” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “Am I to suppose that you managed to find a spellbook?”
“We did,” said Reynard, "and there it is.” He gestured to a coffee table on which sat a large, square, leather-bound book. “Quite the thing, isn’t it? Of course, it would have been better if you had been able to choose a book, as you can read; but Master Ruckenau put paid to that, and of course the weasels quite mucked everything up. But as soon as Buck and I saw this book we knew it had to be magical. Don’t you think?”
“Can I see it?” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “You’ll have to hold it for me.”
“Of course, of course,” said Reynard, picking it up. “We’ve had a look and it's full of pictures of goblins and strange objects; quite the thing.”
“Can you read it, madam?” said Mr Tuft. “The script was a little too complicated for me.”
“I think so,” said Mrs Mouldywarp. “Let me see…
“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
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