All at once the cat’s nerve broke, for Magnus was now but a yard from it, and it rose and began to turn away. And as it swung round, lion-like no longer, Magnus made his move. With a most un-Christian lack of love for his enemy and a great cry of ‘Bite you!’ he sprang for the departing tail and once again fastened his jaws upon its ginger tip.
But how different was this from that first encounter! Five times as heavy, five times as strong, his long cutting teeth five times as sharp as on that other occasion, Magnus lay back and hauled like the anchorman in a tug-o’-war team as the now terrified cat made desperately for home.
Scrabbling madly at the ground, it somehow managed to drag its fierce assailant into the fringe of the forest of Brussels, only for Magnus to wrap his own tail around the strong stem of a sprout plant, and take the strain. Something had to give!
Suddenly, with a blood-curdling screech of pain, the cat broke free. But at what cost! For as it disappeared from their sight at speed, the watchers could see the spoils of victory hanging from Magnus’s jaws.
Slowly he came towards them, out of the blood-flecked Brussels sprouts, and like the matador who offers to the ringsiders the ear of the vanquished bull, laid on the ground below the hutch an inch of ginger tail-tip.
‘Nasty!’ said Magnus thoughtfully, cleaning his whiskers.
Above him there was pandemonium as the onlookers expressed their joy. ‘’E done ’im, ’e done ’im, ’e done thik girt ole moggy!’ squeaked Madeleine as she waltzed wildly around the floor in her excitement. As for Marcus Aurelius, only Latin was good enough for this moment. ‘Victor ludorum!’ he cried. ‘O Magnus magnificens, te salutamus!’
But it was Roland who unwittingly provided the title by which Maddie and Markie’s giant son was always to be known when future generations of mice spoke of his deeds.
‘What a lad you’ve got there!’ he boomed to the proud parents. ‘What size! What strength! Why, he’s a positive powerhouse!’
‘Powermouse, you means!’ said Madeleine with a squeal of laughter.
And so Magnus Powermouse got his name.
SEVEN
To the Potting Shed
When the cheering had died down and Magnus had scaled the table to be introduced to the rabbit (‘Call me Uncle Roland, dear boy!’), it was plain to all that the wire mesh was far too small to allow him to enter the hutch. He could not even get his foot through it.
‘Bite it!’ said Magnus, and his excitement at the idea, coupled with his raging hunger, forced from him the longest speech of his young life. ‘Magnus make big hole!’ he said. ‘Come inside Uncle Roland’s house! Eat all food! Nice!’
Madeleine beamed with fatuous pride at these remarks, while Marcus Aurelius considered them critically.
‘Such a course of action is undoubtedly possible,’ he observed. ‘Teeth sharp enough to cut through a cat’s tail would make short work of this wire. Of that I have no doubt.’
‘Nor have I,’ said Roland. ‘But, I ask you, is it wise?’
‘Wise?’
‘Consider the situation. We are all dependent upon the humans for our livelihood, directly in my case, indirectly in yours, Imagine their feelings this morning when they see their cat. Their bob-tailed cat. An accident, they may suppose. Or next door’s dog. But if on top of that, they come down here – as they shortly will, to feed me – and find not just the evidence, lying down there on the ground, but a great hole cut in the front of my hutch, what do you suppose they will think?’
‘They’ll think something funny’s been going on, said Madeleine absently.
‘No, no, Maddie,’ said Marcus. ‘You do not see what Mr Roland means. The humans will think that he is the culprit. All the evidence will then point to it.’
‘And they eat rabbits,’ said Roland quietly. ‘Don’t forget that.’
At the mention of eating, Magnus, who had not understood the conversation, set his teeth to the wire.
‘No, Magnus!’ cried Madeleine sharply. ‘Mummy says no!’
Surprise made Magnus let go, but this was quickly succeeded by another reaction. Never had he been crossed before, never denied or forbidden anything. He shouted angrily at his mother, ‘Nasty Mummy! Magnus want bite wire! Magnus want food!’
‘Perhaps you should humour him, Maddie dear,’ said Marcus Aurelius uncertainly. ‘We don’t want any unpleasantness.’
‘Unpleasantness?’ cried Madeleine on a rising note. ‘Humour him? I’ll give him what for if he don’t do what he’s told, that’s what I’ll do. You leave that wire alone, Magnus, and you get down off the table, this instant, d’you hear me, you naughty boy?’
There was a moment’s silence and then, in very sulky tones, ‘Magnus bite Mummy,’ said the naughty boy.
At this Madeleine’s control broke. Doting mother she might be, upon this child more than upon all her many previous children, but there were limits. She had been brought up to respect her elders and betters and only to speak when spoken to. ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ – even now she could hear the acid voice of an old maiden aunt laying down this law.
Furiously she shot through the wire and fastened her needle teeth in the tip of her son’s large snout. There followed a squeak of pain, a scrabbling of claws as Magnus tried to keep his balance on the edge of the table upon which the hutch stood, and then a loud thump as he hit the ground below.
‘Serves you right,’ called Madeleine. She turned to Marcus Aurelius. ‘’Tis all your fault, Markie,’ she said. ‘You should have been firmer with him when he were little.’ And she ran down the table leg.
Roland’s nose twitched madly at the expression on Marcus’s face. ‘A very determined lady,’ he said in his deep tones. Marcus made no reply, so he went on, ‘However, we have not solved the problem of feeding the lad, have we?’
Marcus Aurelius still made no answer. His feelings, usually so controlled, were in a terrible muddle. As well as the fear which never left him when outside the safety of his den, he felt still the pride at Magnus’s victory over the cat mixed up with the disapproval of his son’s insolence and the shame of being told off (and most unfairly told off, he said to himself) by his wife in front of this distinguished new friend.
All of this Roland sensed. Below them they could hear Magnus saying plaintively, ‘Mummy hurt nose,’ and Madeleine dealing with the matter as mothers do – ‘You should have done what Mummy told you. Mummy knows best. There, there, don’t cry, Mummy will kiss it better.’
Roland turned carefully towards Marcus Aurelius, his long ears dragging on the hutch floor with a soft slurring noise.
‘Women are good at those sorts of things, aren’t they, old chap?’ he said in a man-to-man voice. ‘But it’s the breadwinners who really matter, eh? Now as head of the family, no doubt your prime concern is to solve the question of an adequate food supply for your boy?’
‘Yes,’ said Marcus.
‘And obviously you have worked out, clever fellow that you are, that there’s a store of this mixture that they feed me, somewhere about the place?’
‘Yes,’ said Marcus.
‘You’re a sharp one. I can see that you know where it’s kept.’
Marcus tried hard to look knowing.
‘My word, yes,’ said Roland. ‘I should have realized that a chap of your intelligence would have known where it was.’
‘You mean,’ said Marcus hopefully, ‘in the . . .?’
‘Exactly,’ said Roland. ‘So if I were you, I’d pop down to that excellent little wife of yours and tell her to stop worrying because you’ve got it all worked out. Be masterful, y’know. But what am I saying? Anyone can see that you’re the master in your own house.’
‘Yes,’ said Marcus.
‘Or, for that matter, in the potting shed,’ said Roland quietly, his nose twitching.
‘Ah,’ said Marcus Aurelius. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just on my way there.’
Madeleine was amazed, to say the least of
it, when Marcus Aurelius came shinning down the table leg and snapped at her in a sharp voice of command.
‘Follow me!’ he said. ‘At the double.’
‘Crumbs!’ said Madeleine to herself. ‘Whatever’s come over the old chap? Hope he knows where he’s going, he’s as blind as a bat.’
She was turning to obey her lord and master when a thought struck her. ‘Magnus,’ she said, ‘pick up thik old cat’s tail and fling un over into next door’s garden, and then come on after us.’ Let someone else get the blame, she thought.
She ran on after Marcus. ‘Where are we going, Markie?’ she panted as she drew level.
‘To the potting shed!’ cried Marcus Aurelius confidently.
The potting shed was in the far corner of the cottage garden, diagonally opposite the pigsty, and much too far away from either their summer or winter homes for the mice ever to have visited. Madeleine, however, knew whereabouts it was and she was reasonably certain that her husband did not. Something told her not to upset his newfound confidence by criticism, so she ranged level with him and by tactfully shouldering him round as they ran got him pointing in the right direction. Behind them they heard the groundshaking thunder of feet as Magnus caught them up.
When they reached the open door of the shed Marcus Aurelius stopped and faced his wife and child. A Moses among mice, he had led his people to the Promised Land, and he wanted the moment to have its full dramatic effect.
‘Here,’ cried Marcus Aurelius, ‘is plenty!’ and he climbed upon a stack of boxes and thus on to a shelf. Upon it, his nose told him – for his eyes were too weak – was the supply of rabbit food. What his nose did not tell him about was the danger that lay between him and that splendid-smelling brown paper bag towards which he rashly bounded. Madeleine saw it but too late.
‘Markie!’ she cried in horror. ‘Look out! Mind the –’ but her words were cut off by that awful sound that comes as a death-knell to many a mouse.
‘Snap!’ went the trap.
EIGHT
Daddy Means ‘Thank You’
All his life Magnus remembered the noise his father made in the trap. It was the more horrible to hear, the more awful to recall, because it was a very small noise.
Marcus Aurelius, running blindly for the bag of rabbit food, had stepped upon the very edge of one corner of the pan, and the cruel metal arm, springing shut with the speed of light, caught him by the toes of one hind foot.
‘Oh! Oh!’ cried Marcus Aurelius quietly. ‘Oh!
Oh! Oh!’
Beside him Madeleine was frantic with distress at the sight and sound of her husband’s agony.
‘Markie! Markie!’ she whispered through chattering teeth. ‘What shall us do?’
No mouse, she knew, ever got out of a mouse trap. Even those who avoided the usual broken neck and were held as tortured prisoners by tails or ears or legs, must die, of shock, or pain, or starvation. And anyway, finally, the humans would come.
Even as she thought this, she saw through the open door of the potting shed the man come out of his cottage and start across the lawn towards them, a little bucket swinging in his hand.
If only she were strong enough to lift the spring-arm and release the wretched captive! But it would need a mouse of giant strength to do such a thing, she thought. A mouse with jaws of tremendous power, she thought. ‘A powermouse!’ she cried. ‘Of course! Of course! Magnus, come quickly, there’s no time to waste!’ For already the man was halfway to them.
Magnus blundered forward and licked his moaning father’s nose in sympathy, half-drowning him in the process. He sniffed the sprung trap.
‘What this?’ he said.
‘It’s a mouse trap,’ said Madeleine.
‘Nasty.’
‘Of course it’s nasty, you silly boy! Save your breath and get Daddy out of it.’
‘How do that?’
‘Grab ahold of this arm with your teeth, here, see, and lift it.’
Magnus gripped in his mouth the metal of the spring-arm, held a fraction of an inch above the wooden pan by Marcus’s toes, and lifted. Trap and trapped mouse dangling from it, flew up into the air.
‘Oh! Oh!’ said Marcus Aurelius weakly.
‘No! No!’ said Madeleine. ‘Stand the other way around, Magnus. Put your feet on the pan, here, see, to hold it down while you pulls.’
Magnus turned and stood upon the trap and took a fresh grip on the spring-arm. He strained backwards with all his might but the spring was very strong and it seemed that he would not be able to move it.
Half-mad with worry, for now she could hear the man’s footsteps outside, Madeleine screamed furiously at her son. ‘Harder! Try harder, Magnus!’ she screeched. ‘Or I’ll bite your nose again!’ And at this threat Magnus jerked his head back and the spring-arm rose. Only a fraction did it move, but it was enough for Marcus Aurelius to pull his foot away.
‘Quick, quick!’ hissed Madeleine. ‘Behind these flowerpots, the pair of you.’ And when the man entered the shed there wasn’t a mouse to be seen. He picked up the bag of rabbit food and poured some into his little bucket. His mind on other things, he did not notice the sprung trap which lay where Magnus had dropped it, the marks of his teeth upon its rusty arm and upon its wooden pan a dark drying spatter of little blood drops.
When the man’s footsteps had died away, they all came out of their hiding-place. Magnus made straight for the rabbit food. He slashed the paper bag open so that a thick brown river of the stuff ran out over the shelf and he fell upon it, jaws champing rhythmically.
Marcus Aurelius limped painfully out from behind the flowerpots, supported by an anxious Madeleine.
‘Oh, Markie, Markie, your toes is all broken,’ she whispered.
‘My toes are all broken,’ said Marcus automatically.
‘Yes, yes, I know dear. Does it hurt very bad?’
‘Badly, Maddie. Yes, very badly.’ He paused. ‘Very badly indeed,’ he said.
‘Try a bit to eat, dear,’ said Madeleine gently, ‘while I cleans your poor foot up,’ and she set to licking the injured part.
‘Come on, Daddy,’ said Magnus with his mouth full. ‘Nice grub. Make Daddy better.’
By the end of the morning things were looking up. Marcus Aurelius’s foot was still very painful (it was to leave him with a limp for the rest of his life) but a good meal and the tender ministrations of his wife had combined to restore him to something like his old wordiness. The guilt which he felt at having spoken scathingly of his son to Roland, added to genuine gratitude, led him to deliver a short formal speech.
‘Magnus, my boy,’ he said, ‘I have to thank you, from, I may add, the bottom of my heart, for your remarkable feat of strength in releasing me from that . . . object.’ He could not bring himself to say ‘trap’. ‘But for you I should undoubtedly have experienced that cure of all diseases, that pale cold state that makes equal the high mouse and the low, that closes all, that cometh soon or late, that taketh all away. Pray accept my gratitude, dear boy. My undying gratitude, I may truthfully say.’
Magnus looked puzzled.
‘Daddy means “thank you”,’ said Madeleine.
She looked fondly upon her loved ones. Her husband was in pain, certainly, but alive, in his right mind, saved from a horrid fate! And his saviour, that powermouse of a son of theirs, his mighty jaws still working, his great stomach happily distended – what a giant among mice was he! ‘A most honourable condition,’ that nice Mr Roland had said. Everything in the garden was lovely.
But immediately, such was her nature, Madeleine began to worry. Marcus Aurelius would need nursing, careful nursing. But where? He would not be able to forage for himself for some time, he would need to be close to a good supply of food.
Should they go back into the cottage? No, Magnus could not, and though Marcus would be warm in his den it would such a business carrying all his food to him along those long corridors behind the wainscot, food that would be hard to get, too.
Should
they stay here in the potting shed? Magnus perhaps. Plenty of grub here, and Magnus with his youth and his strength and his thick coat would not mind the cold; but it would not do for Marcus. He must have warmth and comfortable lying. Back to the pigsty? But it would not provide these necessities.
Madeleine was not normally at a loss in the making of commonsense decisions. She did not like to bother Marcus Aurelius for his opinion, especially since he was now dozing uneasily, his injured foot stuck stiffly out from his side. She looked across at Magnus.
Suddenly, perhaps because of his deeds that day, he seemed no longer a baby but a fully grown mouse. Or at least I hopes he’s fully grown, she thought. For the first time, she sought his advice.
‘Magnus,’ said Madeleine. ‘Where’d be the best place for Daddy to go, to rest up comfy, warm, with plenty to eat, till he’s better?’
‘Gunk Roll,’ said Magnus without looking up.
Instantly Madeleine changed back into her role of disciplinarian.
‘How dare you speak to me with your mouth full?’ she snapped. ‘You ever do that again, I’ll box your ears!’
Magnus backed hastily away and swallowed.
‘Go to Uncle Roland,’ he said. ‘He nice. Safe place, no cat, no trap. Plenty grub. Daddy like.’
Madeleine considered. She was sure the rabbit would offer them sanctuary, they could snuggle up to him for warmth, food and water would be on hand. But the journey there would be terribly slow, Marcus Aurelius hobbling, an easy prey.
‘Go in dark,’ said Magnus as though reading her thoughts.
‘But the owls . . .’
‘Bite you owl!’ cried Magnus cheerfully.
‘But where will you go?’
‘Come back here. Plenty place hide. Good grub.’
And so it fell out. When night came, they made their way out of the potting shed and back across to the rabbit hutch, Marcus painfully on three legs, Madeleine anxiously, her eyes searching the darkness, her nose a-quiver, Magnus confidently, his heavy muzzle swinging from side to side as he cast about for something nasty to bite.
Magnus Powermouse Page 4
