The Cuckoo Tree

[sawyl]

The sixth in chronological order, Joan Aiken's The Cuckoo Tree was actually written a decade before The Stolen Lake and almost three decades before Limbo Lodge, consequently there are few minor glitches in the overall continuity but nothing that detracts from the overall story.

The book opens with Dido Twite and an injured Captain Hughes travelling from Chichester to London with urgent dispatches for the Admiralty. When their coach is overturned, Dido seeks help from nearby Tegleaze Manor and its eccentric, poverty-stricken inhabitants. Unable to refuse Dido's request out of hand, Lady Tegleaze agrees to allow Captain Hughes to recuperate at Dogkennel Cottages under the dubious care of the malevolent Mrs Lubbage, the local wise woman.

Dido befriends the locals — Mr Firkin, the blind shepherd; Tobit Tegleaze, heir to a valuable Brueghal; and Cris, a strange child living in secret with Mrs Lubbage — only to realise that Mrs Lubbage, Tante Sannie, and Colonel FitzPickwick, the Tegleaze's bailiff, appear to be caught up in a complex Hanoverian conspiracy to interfere with the forthcoming coronation of Richard IV. With the help of a group kind-hearted smugglers, the Merry Gentlemen, Dido rushes to London to prevent the King from being deposed before he is even crowned.

The Cuckoo Tree slots easily into the sequence, although it clearly has more in common with Nightbirds on Nantucket, than the later Roman American novels. Some of the details don't quite dovetail — thus, it is not entirely clear how Captain Hughes has managed to acquire his head wound or why he is no longer the martinet of The Stolen Lake — but none of this is particularly important. While not as obviously magical as its chronological predecessors, it's made pretty clear that Mrs Lubbage's hexes and Tante Sannie's abilities can't be written off as mere coincidence.

The conspiracy plot, with its series of twists and turns, works well and the finale, which takes place in St Paul's during Richard IV's coronation, is genuinely gripping and exciting. The story also serves to reintroduce some familiar characters from earlier in the series, with Dido's dubious father Abednego appearing as one of the Hanoverian plotters and Simon, now Duke of Battersea, appearing in a cameo that sets the stage for his return in Dido and Pa.