by Richard Peck
Worse, he had it in for me from the first day. No question about it.
I felt his old, dim, ruby eyes boring into me through the smoked lenses of his spectacles.
In my opinion, you’re either English or you’re not. We took him for a foreigner. The nameplate on his desk read:
B. CHIROPTERA
and following that in flourishing letters:
M.A.
This stood for Master of Arts. I don’t know about that, but he was certainly master of the toothpick, as my knuckles proved. Just let my mind wander for a second, and wham went the toothpick in old B. Chiroptera’s webby hand down on my knuckles with a painful thwack. Yes, mice have knuckles, and mine were swollen up like raisins half the time. My ears scalloped, my eyes mismatching, my knuckles raisins—would it never end?
I’ll say this for him, old Chiroptera. He knew his history, backward and forward. And of course human affairs have always been entirely dependent upon mice.
For old Chiroptera, history was always the worst of times, never the best. Even in his reedy, cheeping voice like a rusty hinge he had us on the edge of our alphabet blocks with his lecture on Mice of the French Revolution.
It wasn’t just human heads that rolled. Never think it.
Down came the razor blade of many a miniature guillotine: chop! Mice necks are not easy to find, but the guillotine found them. Many a mouse head, suddenly separated, dropped into the fatal basket, whiskers still twitching—or went rolling across the slick cobblestones of Paris. Severed heads, sightless eyes seeming to stare! Three blind mice and then some more. In all his lessons, old Chiroptera was on the side of the aristocrats and royalty, but this did not stop the chop of the guillotine in his tales.
Boys like blood, but even Fitzherbert and Trevor were scared witless, though they were twice the headmaster’s size.
And while he must have been foreign, he seemed to have swallowed the English dictionary. You never heard so many unnecessary words in your life.
“Unaccustomed as I am,” he often cheeped, “to scholars as pusillanimous, unprepossessing, even preposterous as you lot, I can only hope to insinuate some nuggets of knowledge into the minuscule cavities between your heedless ears.”
Oh, it was a grim place altogether, was the Royal Mews Mouse Academy. I can’t tell you—almost preposterously awful.
Behind old B. Chiroptera at the front of the burrow hung a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. It had been gnawed out of a picture postcard and hung in a place of prominence. Over it was draped a banner to proclaim her Diamond Jubilee: Sixty Years Upon the Throne.
I hadn’t imagined her like her picture. I’d thought she’d be wearing a crown and floating on a cloud. Something like that. I thought she might be eating cheese.
We squeaked the school song in chorus every morning to start the day. Most of our voices had changed, though few for the better.
Beneath the hoofs,
Within the walls,
We lurk prepared
When duty calls.
We are not moles,
We are not voles,
And thankfully there are no trolls.
We’re mice who labor all unseen,
We’re mice in service to the Queen.
God save the Queen, and all her relations,
And keep us meek in our proper stations.
Then three halfhearted hurrahs and a weary cheer, and we fell to our studies and pulling each other’s tail. All the while, this old human lady stared down at us from her picture. Her eyes in their saggy sockets seemed to follow me.
I DID NOT care for school. But sore knuckles will cure a wandering mind. I learned my letters and how to string words together. Look at this page. And I learned my numbers up to twelve—as far as the ruler went.
We had to know the whole history of Queen Victoria too, her entire family tree all the way back to the roots, all the way down to the twigs. I learned everything except who I was.
But friends? No. There I sat dreary day in and dreary day out, fidgeting at the end of my ruler at the number twelve mark with nobody wanting to sit next to me at eleven.
The eyes of old Queen Victoria seemed to find me even there. She was the greatest queen in human history, and all-powerful. Also very sharp-eyed for a human. Maybe she was all-knowing too. Maybe she knew who I was.
That notion took root there in the minuscule cavity between my notched ears. And there that notion grew and grew as the Queen’s jubilee grew nearer and nearer.
CHAPTER THREE
Two Crimes
YEARS SEEMED TO pass, though years can’t do that among mice. But you know how time seems to stand still at school. Then my school days were over—in a twinkling. I broke two rules when one would do. And the timing was not good. It all happened only two days before Queen Victoria’s great jubilee. If I could just have held out a day or so more, there’d have been a school party. With cake. Cheese cake.
But Trevor and Fitzherbert were finally fed up with me. They seemed to think I was the culprit who stuck a caterpillar—a young one just furring out and not quite alive—in each of their packed lunches. Though they could prove nothing.
Rumor reached me that the minute our teacher’s back was turned, they meant to pound me into a jelly to discourage my school attendance. Don’t be different unless you want your brains battered out.
And so when Trevor and Fitzherbert filled up the school door that dark morning, I turned tail on those hulking hearties making four fists—and on a formal education.
Blindly I fled. I tore back down one tunnel and up another, feeling hot bully breath on my hindquarters. I scampered like the wind with my tail in the air and my heart in my mouth, until Trevor and Fitzherbert and school fell away behind me. Then I skidded into dazzling daylight.
I blinked and drew up. My feet tangled in tanbark. All around me came the pounding of hoofs and the voices of humans.
I froze, one hand to my throat. Somehow I’d blundered right out onto the rough ground of the riding school for royal children. It was a vast room as big as all outdoors. Flags flew all round it for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. I’d skidded to a stop beside the long oval track. Ponies pounded around it, manes flying, dust rising. I couldn’t budge, not out here in the glaring open. Sometimes if you keep your head down, you’ll look like something the horse dropped. There were droppings quite near me.
Round and round the ring the perky ponies cantered. On each one of them a human Princeling or Princess of the Royal Blood. We’d learned them in school, from old Chiroptera. Droves of them and little foreign royalties too, here for the jubilee. Belgians, Danes, all sorts. They’d be eating cake, and plenty of it. They’d be stuffing their royal faces.
Harnesses jingled. Leather sighed. I was entirely too close, but dared not move. We were in the middle of a class. The young royals had to ride with their hands gathered in their laps to learn how to give themselves firm seats. The young princesses rode side-saddle, working hard to keep their balance. They carried small whips they could not use, to occupy their hands. Posture counted. In royal circles posture always counts.
Round and round the ring the perky ponies cantered.
I drank in all these smells of pony sweat and leather polish. The whisking tails, the well-bred whinnies. The royal hands clasped in their royal laps. Real life beats school every time.
It was only myself out there, taking it all in like a small bright-eyed horse dropping. And far from where I should be. Far.
A halt was called, and grooms darted out, carrying wooden hurdles. The riding master bellowed another command. The ponies shook themselves, nickered, and aimed at the hurdles. Now the young royals had to clear their fences. The hurdles were low, only a ruler off the tanbark. But it wasn’t at all easy.
A hurdle stood across the track quite near me.
Around came little Maurice, Prince of Battenberg. He was well-fed but so short that his small booted feet stuck straight out above his pony’s round sides. The stirrup irons flapped uselessly
.
He set his jaw and made it over, though I expect you could see daylight between the saddle and the Prince.
Then here came his older sister Princess Ena of Battenberg. Though not quite a grown-up young lady, she was decked out a treat in her black habit and a hat like a silk cylinder. Her knee in the leather-bound skirt hooked over the horn of her saddle. As her pony cleared the hurdle, her hands were down and her chin was up. One of her nostrils flared like the pony’s. She wasn’t a Queen’s granddaughter for nothing.
Then her pony shied, shuddered to a halt, and nearly shrugged her off.
And why? Because he sensed me there and didn’t know what to think. These ponies are well-trained but brainless. They can take commands, but any little thing confuses them. And I was a little thing.
A hoof jittered and drew back. Princess Ena swayed. All her instincts were to reach for the folded reins, to start the pony with a touch of her boot. But she sat unmoving. Now she was looking down to see what spooked her pony. Down, down she looked. And there was I, looking back. Her eyes grew larger.
I had never met a human gaze, let alone a royal one.
I was hypnotized, or very close. Time stopped. Now Princess Ena’s eyes were saucers. A gloved hand stole up to her mouth.
And I saw what she saw. I wasn’t all fur and four-legged. I was sitting back on my haunches, practicing good posture like hers. I rose and bowed, of course, from the neck, as you do. I might have said something. I usually did, but the rule is that royalty always speaks first. She screamed.
I was in my Royal Mews Mouse Academy blazer with the gold thread crest. I was dressed, and you dare not be where humans can see. It isn’t done. It raises too many questions.
The pony stamped and curved his neck.
From on high the riding master’s voice boomed: “Keep his head up!”
The humans in the stands—nannies, governesses, tutors, humans like that—were on their feet.
But it was too late to keep the pony’s head up. It was down, and he was bucking. His rear hoofs were in the air, and so was Princess Ena, taking a tumble over the tossing mane and arching head. The pony sucked wind, and Princess Ena plunged toward tanbark. Her whip spun in the air, her skirts flared. Cries rose from the sidelines. She hit the ground and sprawled. Her silk cylinder hung from a hat pin. And I was gone.
I zigzagged like lightning away, down the nearest mousehole. I fled as if something was pursuing me—hot upon my flailing tail. Down in the darkness I was surer something was there behind me.
But I dared not be found. Not only had I run away from school, I’d let a human see me dressed. Two crimes, one of them unforgivable. Life as I’d known it was over for me.
Finished.
I TUNNELED THE day away, up one mouse road and down another. Down, down beneath the Mews. Whenever I met another mouse passing by, I turned my face to the streaming wall. Somewhere I shrugged out of my uniform and hid it away within the earthworm earthworks.
I couldn’t go back to school, not back to old B. Chiroptera and the Four Fists. And I couldn’t go back to the needlemice workroom and Aunt Marigold. I’d let her down. I could only lurk. And after a while I was hungry.
From the courtyard cobblestones above me came the thump and thunder of horses and carriages as the rehearsal for the Diamond Jubilee went on and on. Everybody had a job but me. Throughout the British Empire mice and humans alike unfurled their banners for the approaching jubilee. Everybody but me. I was about as low as I could get.
And that was before I met the cat.
CHAPTER FOUR
Evening Stables
BY THEN THE shadows of afternoon would have been reaching across the Mews, far above. It must have been nearly time for Evening Stables, when the horses are fed and watered and bedded down for the night. I could have used some feeding myself. I’d left my packed lunch in my uniform.
Somehow I found myself at large along the Old Kent Road, the major Mews mouse thoroughfare, about three rulers under the cobblestones. It’s a dual carriageway, the Old Kent Road, and far too public.
Big enough to echo. I ought to have been holed up somewhere tucked away, amongst the black beetles, listening to my stomach rumble.
Then I looked up, and there was the cat.
The great ungainly fluffy thing filled the entire space, moving in a crouch, coming my way. Her matted fur swept the tunnel sides. Her waxy pink ears were bent back along the tunnel top. Her eyes glowed like lamps. Cats see in the dark, though not as well as we do. She had no name, of course. Mews cats don’t. It would give them ideas above their station.
And there was I just off the end of her leathery nose. I know what you’re thinking. Cats. Mice. She was certain to pounce and have me for her tea.
But no. That may be the way of the world, but it’s not how the Mews works. After all, we’re in the service of the Queen and all her relations, so we have to rub along together.
I’d need to plaster myself against the tunnel wall and be swept by her filthy fur as she lumbered past. But when she saw me, she stopped. And whinnied. Threw her head back as far as possible, loosened her lower lip as much as possible—and whinnied.
A simple meow would have sufficed, but she worked with the horses, up in the stables. She may even have thought she was one. They put a cat in with a restless horse overnight, to calm it down. And if a cat doesn’t do the trick, they put in the goat. Everybody has a job. Everybody but me.
Being a Mews mouse, I have some horse in my blood, but I never thought I was one. I didn’t whinny. I never nickered.
I sneezed. I’m allergic to cat fur, and hers was full of chaff from the stables.
There’s not a lot to a mouse sneeze, but the cat looked down at me. She blinked her great yellow-moon eyes, sucked a fang, and spoke. With our long history, cats and mice have something of a common language. And her language was common indeed. “Well, look what the cat dragged in, so to speak,” said the cat. “Mouse Minor himself!”
I drooped. I’d been making myself scarce all the livelong day, and the cat knew me at a glance. The cat. A droplet formed at the end of my nose. The cat’s eyes rolled over me. “Truant from school!” she brayed with a slight whinny and a small smirk. “You’ve blotted your copybook for good and all.”
News travels fast in a mews, and cats are terrible gossips. This one was. I supposed she knew all about me and the Prin—
“Pity about Princess Ena,” the cat observed. She was breathing all over me and there was treacle on her breath. “The Princess took quite a tumble.” The cat sucked her other fang. “They say she must have been knocked senseless. Swears she saw a strange, misshapen little creature wearing—”
“Yes, all right, all right,” I said. I was just about at the end of my string. “It was me. I’ve blotted my copybook and burned my bridges.”
“Haven’t you just!” said the cat. “Still, it makes a good story. Tell me all about it—straight from the mouse’s mouth.” She drew her paws together and settled before me. There was no way round her, the great fluffy, untidy thing.
With a sigh, I talked us through my dreadful day: Trevor, Fitzherbert, the canter, the hurdles. Princess Ena in the air.
The cat heard me out, though she was not deeply moved. Cats aren’t. “Yes, well, as I understand it,” she said, “they’re all at sixes and sevens at the Mouse Academy, wondering where you’ve got to. Rumor has it, the headmaster has set aside a fresh supply of toothpicks with your name on them. There’s talk of sending out search parties. I wouldn’t like to be you when they find you.” The cat grinned.
I whimpered. I couldn’t help it. Dared I look back to see if a search party was gaining on me, up the Old Kent Road? It was just the cat talking, but still…
“You’re all washed up in the Mews,” she remarked, “as I need hardly tell you. You’ll have to try your luck elsewhere.”
Elsewhere? “Elsewhere?”
“Outside the gate.” She rolled her eyes in a direction.
But I’d never been outside the gate. It was London out there, a great city wrapped in pea-souper fog swirling round our walls. A sleepless city of clattering carts and smoking chimney pots and the striking of church clocks over crowded graveyards. A city of night even at noon.
I began to whine. “But I don’t know anybody out there.”
“Quite,” said the cat. “Better still, nobody knows you.”
I cowered. Never turn to a cat for consolation.
“There’s a great world out there,” said the cat. “All except the palace.” She meant Buckingham Palace that rose like a mysterious mountain above the Mews. But the Mews and the palace were strictly separate worlds. “The palace is no place for the likes of you.”
How sure the cat was. But then cats are. “I can’t crouch here gossiping,” she said. “It’s time for Evening Stables. I had better stir my stumps. Some of us have jobs.”
But all she did was yawn, the lazy thing. I could see inside her enormous mouth, all that pinkness disappearing down into circles of darkness. She stretched out a paw within a whisker of where I drooped, and worked her furry shoulders.
“They’re bringing in another horse from the country, from Windsor Castle,” she remarked, “to help draw the Queen’s landau for the jubilee procession. And a new horse will need settling in. You know horses—very skittish. And there’s something wonderfully calming about me.
“It’s a gift.” She preened.
Then she whinnied a sigh as if she had a night’s hard labor before her. Though all she ever did was settle into the manger and sleep till Morning Stables whilst the horse grazed around her.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting your supper,” she was saying. “Flatten yourself against the wall and let me pass. Then fall in behind me. It’s about the best you can do in the circumstances. Beggars can’t be choosers. Any port in a storm. Besides, they won’t think to look for you in a manger. It will buy you some time.”
We crept along the Old Kent Road, I behind the cat’s sagging hindquarters and her swaying tail. In no time at all we’d eased up through a pair of loose cobblestones in the south block stables. Her rear left paw sprang off my head, and up she went, barely squeezing through a space, leaving a circle of loose fur behind—the only grooming she got. I sneezed.
