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Blastburn is a hodge-podge of factories and mills, potteries and workshops. Over the town hangs a grayish pall of ash bleeding from numerous chimneys and smokestacks. The air is chewy, say some of its residents, but not very filling.
The industry that so permeates the valley leaves little room for nature to show itself. Its streets boast no trees, no gardens. A few weeds may grow on the slag heaps where the dish factories have cast their dross, but there is little on this late April day to indicate that spring has come.
Behind a shabby butcher shop, a little girl rummages through a pail of scraps. Her dark hair is chopped raggedly short and her clothes are worn. Her petite frame is laden with a number of encumbrances: She is thrifty by nature, and has gleaned bits and bobs she believes may be useful, including a short length of rope from an alley and an empty flour sack from behind a bakery, all tucked into the bucket with cans for various acquisitions.
Her expression is cheerful as she selects small chunks of spoiled meat. She places them carefully into an old tin can, smiling with satisfaction. Anna-Marie is not quite nine, small for her age, but she has a good deal of energy and initiative. One of the numerous projects through which she earns her living is the collection of frogs. There is a small lake near her home, currently boasting a goodly supply of frogs and tadpoles. She has reasoned that frogs eat flies and flies are attracted to rotten meat. In order to fatten up as many frogs as she can, she plans to place the scraps near the pond to attract flies for the frogs to feast upon.
Anna-Marie is not the only one who has designs on the butcher shop’s leavings. A swift, dark brown blur shoots out from between the ash barrels to snag a particularly choice bit of offal.
The movement catches Anna-Marie’s attention, and she watches closely to see where it came from. If it’s a rat, she decides, she will kill it if she can—if she can add it to her pickings, all the better, and there will be one less rat in Blastburn.
After a few moments of quiet, a paw appears, followed by a lighter brown head. It’s a cat, not a mouse, and Anna-Marie smiles to herself. It’s been six months since her cat Sidi was lost overboard on the crossing from France to England, and she has missed feline companionship.
From among her various pieces of impedimenta, she stealthily extracts the flour sack. Holding it at the ready, she places a large gobbet of meat nearby and waits for the brown cat to present itself.
It creeps forward, ribs showing, much more intent upon the tidbit than the girl. As it devours the scrap, Anna-Marie pounces. She catches the cat by the scruff of its neck and wrestles it onto the sack.
The cat is none too pleased by these actions. It yowls and struggles, hooking its claws into the sack, into Anna-Marie’s coat-sleeve and into Anna-Marie herself.
“Non, Monsieur Le Chat,” she chides as blood flows from the scratch. “Come home with me, and all will be tres jolie. There are ample mice to feed upon, and you will be quite snug.”
The cat does not listen to her admonitions. Nevertheless, she does eventually encase the beast within the bag, thoughtfully tossing in a chunk of meat to keep it engaged. She secures the mouth of the sack with the scrap of rope, lest the exertions of the cat cause her to drop it. The cat isn’t grateful for the morsel; it writhes and swears as she departs the butcher’s yard and makes her way out of town.
The heights above Blastburn gradually display green grass and wildflowers and the occasional tree. At the ridge, a high wall surrounds what was once the grand estate of the town’s founder, Anna-Marie’s grandfather, Sir Quincy Murgatroyd.
Anna-Marie leaves the rutted road and makes her way into the copse of trees that conceal a gap in the wall. She calls a fond, “Bonjour, Noddy!” to the pony stabled there, and ducks into the surreptitious entrance to Midnight Park.
Here, spring is evident: the chestnut trees are beginning to bud, the grounds are carpeted with lush grass dotted with bluebells and buttercups.
Although Sir Quincy’s manor is now a tangle of blackened timbers, his family and their loved ones have found sanctuary in what was once the ice-house. The circular building is largely underground, only its domed roof showing. An unconventional domicile, it’s quite cozy and suits them admirably.
Entering the ice-house with her burden, Anna-Marie hears the lively strains of violin music. In the big room, Mr. Oakapple is practicing, while Lady Murgatroyd sits at her loom, occupied with her weaving. She greets them, and bids “Bonjour” to Lucas; he’s sitting on the floor, showing little Betsy Braithwaite how to make a tower of rough-hewn wooden blocks.
Redgauntlet is first to take notice of her acquisition. The hound ambles over to sniff at Anna-Marie—her labors bring her into contact with a variety of fascinating scents—and becomes intrigued by the flour sack. When he pokes it with his nose, the cat hisses indignantly and begins to squirm afresh.
“What do you have there?” Lucas asks, and the adults turn to look.
The cat complains loudly at the dog’s attentions, answering the question even as Anna-Marie replies. “A poor hungry cat who was hunting behind the butcher’s shop.”
“How nice,” says Lady Murgatroyd. “We do not have many mice in here, but as far as I’m concerned, any is too many.”
Redgauntlet back hastily away; the cat has landed a swat against his nose through the cloth, and he regards the bag with suspicion.
“Let’s hope that they can co-exist peaceably,” Mr. Oakapple says, his bow suspended against the fiddle strings. “A good mouser would be a boon to our household.”
Lucas calls the dog to him as Anna-Marie begins to untie the rope holding the sack closed. He is thirteen, and has learned that his young friend can be quite determined; the best thing to do is hold Redgauntlet back and hope that he and the cat won’t create a kafuffle.
As the rope comes free, the cat lunges out of the bag. It surveys the room and regards them balefully. Its fur is dusted with flour and it glares at them with bright blue eyes.
Lucas gasps and lets go of the hound’s collar. The dog takes a wary step forward, and the cat darts away, secreting itself in the dark corner beneath Lady Murgatroyd’s loom. Redgauntlet sits, looking pleased with himself.
“What’s wrong?” Mr. Oakapple asks the boy.
“A white cat with blue eyes,” he says slowly. He stares toward the corner where thee cat has retreated to lick itself clean.
“Non,” says Anna-Marie, who is crouched down, looking under the loom. “It is only flour. He is brown, with a very dirty face and paws. Oui, Monsieur Le Chat,” she addresses the fugitive. “Cleanse yourself well. We are all tidy here.”
She is not paying attention to Lucas’s consternation, but the adults have taken note.
“Are you alright?” Lady Murgatroyd asks quietly.
“It isn’t a ghost,” Mr. Oakapple adds with a smile, “even if it does resemble one.”
“When I lived in India,” he begins, his voice shaking. He hesitates.
“You lived in India?” Lady Murgatroyd sounds intrigued.
“Before my parents died of cholera and I was sent to Sir Randolph at Midnight Court….”
“I wasn’t aware of that,” she remarks, her tone gentle. “So often children are placed in boarding school if their parents go abroad.”
“I was too young for school when we first departed, so I went with them,” he tells her. “I lived most of my life in India, I only returned…just two years ago. It seems like much longer….” His voice trails off, and he stares toward the corner where the cat has retreated.
Mr. Oakapple begins to play again, his bow coaxing a thoughtful tune from the strings. Little Betsy takes advantage of her minder’s distraction to toss one of the blocks, which falls down behind a tower of books.
“I imagine England is very much different from what you were accustomed to,” Lady Murgatroyd says, nodding. “India is a good deal warmer, is it not?”
“Indeed, I have never been so cold as I was at Midnight Court,” Lucas says, shivering. “Sir Randolph was very stingy with coal and candles, and the food—“ He swallows, stomach roiling at the memory.
“I can attest to that,” Mr. Oakapple comments with a little glissando. “Fatty mutton, boiled turnips and occasionally a carrot or two, for weeks on end. Given how much the cook was budgeted, and how seldom she was paid, one can hardly fault her lack of enthusiasm, but the fare here, my lady, is much preferable.”
Lucas says nothing to this. English food is bland and horrible, he decided soon after his arrival. Even now, his tongue longs for the bite of curry, the warmth of cardamom and the sweetness of coconut milk. Although he has learned to be grateful to have food, having gone without, he misses the tastes of his childhood.
“How fascinating it must have been,” Lady Murgatroyd sounds intrigued. “Did you ever see a maharajah?”
“Only at a distance, in a procession,” Lucas answers. For a moment, he’s lost in a swirl of vivid colors—rich silk turbans, the brocade of saris adorned with golden thread, bright banners a-flutter in the marketplace. The drabness that surrounds him is nearly intolerable, but he can’t go back. He can never go back….
Anna-Marie has brought a dish of water for the cat, who is still busily washing itself in the corner. “Were there elephants?” she wants to know.
“Yes, they use them like farmers here use teams of oxen. But they’re much bigger and very strong.” For a moment, he can almost smell elephants.
Mr. Oakapple continues to play his violin, a slow, wandering melody that reminds Lucas of an tune his ayah used to sing to him at bedtime.
“Perhaps you might write about your experiences in India,” Lady Murgatroyd suggests, guiding her shuttle through the threads on the loom. “I’m sure it would be highly enlightening for those of us who have never been there.”
“Perhaps I—“
There is a sudden streak of motion. The cat darts out from under the loom, chasing something. With a prodigious leap, it topples the stack of books behind which Betsy’s block landed, and its back—now more tan than white—can be seen as is pursues something amid the scattered volumes.
After a few moments, it emerges, a limp grey form dangling from its jaws. It saunters over to Anna-Marie and drops its prey at her feet.
Although most of the flour is gone, the sparkling blue eyes remain, and Lucas swallows hard.
“There are tigers in India, you know.” He speaks mostly to Lady Murgatroyd. “They’re big orange beasts with black stripes and yellow eyes. Fully grown, they’re as big as…as a pony.”
The music is softer, and even more haunting. Anna-Marie coaxes the cat into her lap where it lounges, grooming itself after its exertions.
“Two years ago this spring, there was a tiger causing a great deal of trouble near the outpost where we lived. It killed a water buffalo and two field workers. The men of the village formed a hunting party. They tracked it down and killed it. They discovered it was a tigress, and they found her cubs. There were three of them. Two were perfectly ordinary, with orange fur and yellow eyes—but the third cub was white—and its eyes were blue.
“No one had ever seen such a thing, and the natives were afraid to kill it. Even the soldiers were loathe to destroy it—they thought that such a curiosity ought to be in a menagerie. My mother was glad that the tigress was no longer a threat, and my father shook his head over the superstitions of the villagers.
“The white cub was paraded through the marketplace in a cage. I saw it—perhaps half as big as Betsy, and frightened by the crowds. It looked directly at me with its big blue eyes, and I felt sorry for it—they’d killed its mother and its siblings and it was all alone in a cage.”
“The poor thing!” Anna-Marie is indignant. Betsy reaches out a plump hand toward the feline, which permits a brief pat before climbing out of the toddler’s reach onto Anna-Marie’s shoulder.
“The ‘rajah who governed the province wanted it, to guard his palace, we were told, and sent a company of his men to collect it. There was a big celebration in the village the night before they were going to take it away—“
Lucas stops, his stomach churning. He hasn’t talked about this since it happened.
‘I crept out of my room late that night, and out of our bungalow. I went to the loggia at the garrison where the cage was being kept…I was going to free it.”
“Good for you!” Anna-Marie exclaims, but he shakes his head.
The blue-eyed cub hadn’t understood that he wanted to help it. It hadn’t been grateful, like the lion with the thorn in its paw in the fable his mama used to read to him. Lucas still remembers the pain as the small tiger sank its fangs into his arm and raked its baby claws down his side, tearing his nightshirt.
“No, not good. They caught me, and threw a blanket over the cub before it could run away.” He’d been happy to see it back in its cage. If it could cause such harm as a baby, he didn’t want it on the loose as an adult. The soldiers who’d saved him from his folly had dragged him to the magistrate’s house, and his father had been sent for. “Everyone was very angry with me.”
‘What happened to le petite tiger?” Anna-Marie asks, pulling the cat down into her lap again and scratching behind its brown ears.
“The ‘rajah’s men took it away the next morning, as planned.” Lucas sighs. “I would have been in Coventry for ages, but my mother wasn’t well. Then she died, and my father, and quite a few people in the village. My ayah said the white tiger had cursed us.”
“What’s an ayah?” Anna-Marie wants to know, and the cat echoes her with an interrogative, “Mrrreh?”.
“A native woman, like a nanny.”
“An au pair,” Mr. Oakapple contributes, and the girl nods. The tune he’s playing now is less wistful, more jaunty, like a marching song. “And so you were sent to Midnight Court?”
“Yes. The magistrate wrote a letter for the captain of the ship to England, and I was kept locked in my cabin for the whole voyage.”
“Were they concerned about contagion?” Lady Murgatroyd asks.
“No, I don’t think so. I think they were afraid I’d be a trouble-maker. There was no porthole in my cabin, either, so I didn’t even get to see the Suez Canal when we passed through it.”
“What a shame.” Lady Murgatroyd says regretfully. “To deny you such a novel experience. I’m sure it would have been quite educational.”
Mr. Oakapple stills his bow with a sharp squeak. “You don’t believe that foolishness about a curse, do you?”
“No,” he protests, though it sounds unconvincing even to his own ears.
“Unfortunately, outbreaks of cholera are not uncommon,” Lady Murgatroyd points out.
“I know,” Lucas agrees. They would probably be aghast if he were to say that he sometimes thinks being in England is a curse in itself, with its bland food and drab clothes and chill climate. It’s like an exile he can’t escape. He must simply make the best of it, that’s all….
“Write about India,” Lady Murgatroyd repeats as Mr. Oakapple begins to play a tune they all know.
“As for Monsieur Le Chat,” says Anna-Marie, tickling the brown and tan cat, “I think I shall call him ‘Rajah’.”
.