Chapter 2 - Badger Has Doubts
Badger woke to find Radagast mending the fire. "Good morning Badger, and thank you." "What have you to thank me for?" asked Badger, half asleep and grumpy after a disturbed night. "Well chiefly for letting me sleep, I feel greatly restored this morning." Badger was hungry and the mantle clock showed it was late. Guiltily he remembered his lone supper and lack of hospitality. "Come along to the kitchen." he said, "You can tell me everything after bacon and eggs and coffee."
That and mushrooms, black pudding and much else later, the two re-convened in the study. Badger had many questions, and considering their largely silent meal a sufficient preliminary launched straight into business: "You mentioned enemies and pursuit last night."
"Did I? Well that does sound rather melodramatic. The fact is that lately I've spent rather a lot of time among men and have drawn too much attention to myself. Once, as I'm sure you've seen, anyone - absolutely anyone - could go into a country inn and obtain discrete and courteous service, no strange looks and no questions asked - provided only they had the jingle of coins in their pocket."
Badger nodded, recalling juvenile adventures with Otter. "Go on".
"Everywhere I go now I feel men's eyes on me and hear muttering behind my back. When I enter an inn room it falls silent; the service I get is grudging, even rude. More than once I have been refused! When I leave others follow me and I have to loose them. A wizard can defend himself, but it is very tiresome. The police have been a bother too: in town detectives have accused me of 'practicing medicine without a licence', and more than one fat rural constable has threatened to arrest me for 'vagrancy'!
"It is my habit to call at farmsteads and offer my services in return for a little board and lodging. Even when they have not known me from Adam I have been welcomed in, made to feel at home and have left with thanks and 'come back soon' ringing in my ears. Not any more! The last place I visited tried to set their dogs on me. Those wise beasts courteously escorted me back to the highway and we parted with dignity.
"Someone or something has been stirring up the populace against me. I feel in danger constantly."
"But you said that you felt safe here?"
"I do Badger; I felt safe once I entered the Wild Wood and doubly so once I was underground. I do not know why, and it seems contrary given the reputation of the place, but it may have to do with my reason for being here.
"Which is?"
"To talk to you Badger. But you still have doubts about me. I have, well … I have lost my staff, which does not help. When I open my chest that should prove my credentials I think."
Badger grinned, "You lost your staff but brought luggage with you!"
"No no! I left my chest here long ago – very long ago indeed, before there was a Wild Wood. Your ancestors have had it in their home ever since: a metal chest the size of a travel trunk, very heavy and covered with runes. Your grandfather - or great grandfather perhaps – had it hidden in a sub cellar for safe keeping. You do still have it?"
"Sub cellar? Don't know what you mean, and I don't recall any metal boxes either. Let's get back to what you were saying: your treatment by landlords and farmers seems to me a long way short of being 'pursued by enemies'."
"Well, I have not told you everything, as you might well have guessed. The important thing is that you have treated me very differently: I invade your home uninvited and you give me breakfast, even though you doubt me.
"You may find something in one of those notebooks you found that will reassure you. Your … ah … predecessor was a great one for writing things down."
With Badger's blessing the visitor went back to the kitchen to "tidy himself up a bit" and get as clean as he could without a change of clothes or the offices of a modern bathroom. Badger, meanwhile, went through the contents of the document wallet more methodically. A printed book "Ruff's Guide to Wizardry" Badger had looked at last night. It was short, but lacked an index. The author described the various sorts of wizard with a schoolmaster's attention to detail, but did not give any names. One exercise book, written in a much smudged copperplate, was grandly titled "The Red Book of Westmarch (A Copy)" but came to an abrupt end halfway through a sentence on page eleven. It had no seeming relevance to wizards and Badger put it aside. A sheet of foolscap had on it some crude pencil drawings, one of which might be of an old chest; but there was no writing on it, not even a caption. Other items were equally unhelpful, and Badger was finally left with the notebook. It was a record of sundry events, several pages had been ripped out from the front, and the first extant page began with a date about a hundred and twenty years ago. Badger began to read it through carefully, tracing down each page with one paw. Most entries were brief and rather mysterious:
"CW reports Pan seen at dawn in stoat's glade."
"R left at dusk with young Otter."
The last entry, at a date when Badger's father must have been a cub, was interesting:
"CW's heavy gang carried off the wizard chest to new hiding place I am not to know!"
Radagast returned, looking more presentable. "I stopped to do the washing up, so you have had plenty of time to read. Did you find out much?"
Badger waved the notebook. "There are plenty of entries in this that 'R did this' or 'R did that', but even if I accept that 'R' is Radagast, there nothing to prove that Radagast is you. There is no description of this 'R', or 'the wizard', or 'the brown wanderer', or 'the master', or any other individuals."
"Then it is not the notebook I thought it was. What a bother. I am 'R' I am sure, and 'the brown wanderer' is me for certain. The 'master' will be someone else. Is my chest mentioned?"
"A chest is, twice. The first says …" and Badger leafed through the notebook and read "R asked to see his box, and father took him off to the west wing. I was not allowed to go with them, and father locked the door behind him."
Radagast looked relieved. "That will be it: in the far end of the west wing are steep steps going down. The chest is in one of the little rooms at the bottom, under a stone trapdoor." Badger shook his head and read out the final entry, adding "CW must be the Chief Weasel, but not the current fellow of course, old as he is. Look at the date. It was probably the present chief's uncle."
"None-the-less I – or we – must visit the Chief. That entry you read confirms my story I think: I am Radagast the wizard and a family friend of long standing. You do accept that don't you?"
"Prove you are a wizard and I'll be much happier."
"That is easy enough. You use a walking stick do you not, because of an injured foot? Well you have been roaming around this place without your stick since you came through your front door last night."
Badger stared at nothing and then at his left leg. His jaw opened and closed silently for a while. But, animal that he was, he recovered swiftly. "The Chief Weasel, poor fellow, is bed-ridden and near witless; his nephews are eyeing each other in expectation that one of them will be made Chief at any moment. No, it is old Ma Ferret we must go and see."