The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail

by Richard Peck

  We were in the open courtyard of the Mews, behind a growing pile of manure. It was Evening Stables. The grooms were mucking out and bringing pails of carrots and mash. The stable-hand mice were just as busy, scampering hither and yon, spotting for fallen horseshoe nails and twists of wire and anything that might do a horse a mischief. In all their quick skitter, no human would notice they were at work. For every human on earth, there’s a mouse with the same job. This is well understood, unless you’re a human.

  A ruckus had just broken out. Human voices blared.

  A groom went hurtling backward out of a loose box and lit hard. You could hear the air go out of him.

  The cat’s ears rose to perfect points. We peered around the manure pile. Another almighty crash, there in the third stall along. A horse was bucking, trying to take the place apart. All the hands stood clear. The horse, a new one, was throwing his hindquarters so high that he was about to “come right over” as the saying goes.

  They’d already tied a knotted rope to his lashing tail. That’s meant to keep a horse from kicking, but nobody had told him. We saw only his hindquarters—a Windsor Grey and of course as big as a house. Horses are. It gave the cat pause, so to speak. Her backside swayed thoughtfully. I was tucked up beside her, though her fur was full of things with wings going in and coming out.

  The horse kicked out again, trying to get at the grooms. The rest of the Mews went about its business. The cat bided her time. The horse began to quiet, though no human went near that great bulging backside. This was about as close as I cared to be.

  But it was time the cat reported for work. “Stay right behind me, under my tail. Move when I move,” she muttered.

  Under her tail? “I’d rather not if you don’t mind,” I said in a somewhat mousy voice.

  “Do you want your supper or don’t you?” Her mouth hardly moved. She was already creeping forward, moving low over the cobblestones. Her ringed tail stood straight out behind. I fell in under it. We crept, eight-legged across the busy courtyard. Human feet in big hobnailed boots tramped around us. Stable-hand mice skittered. Carriage wheels turned.

  It was very dank, there under the cat’s tail. Worse yet, she stopped short once, and I was nearly faced with disaster. She took her sweet time, getting where she was going. But then we were outside the third stall along. She was winding her untidy self around the boots of one of the stable hands. You know how cats will rub round humans’ feet and lean into their ankles. She did that.

  I was a busy mouse, trying to keep out of sight under her tail, swerving this way and that. I kept meeting my tail coming back.

  A human’s voice above us roared out, “There’s my old kitty then. Puss, puss, puss.” A great gloved hand came down to catch her up, under her saggy midsection. It was a groom about to sling her past the horse into the manger. In the nick of time I grabbed for her tail with both hands. My feet left the paving stones. We were in the groom’s grasp. Then we were in the air, flying like a comet with something clinging to its tail. We arched over the enormous horse and lit in the manger.

  All cats land on their feet, except this one. She hit face-first and sprawled. I fell off her tail and got the wind knocked out of me.

  We were splayed amid the manger hay and the flung carrots. I was stuck all over with bran, and numb with fear. We were this close to the flaring nostrils and grinding molars of the Windsor Grey. His head was three rulers long. Maybe four. And those teeth—like great yellow grindstones. He nuzzled his muzzle into the manger hay between the cat and me.

  Does he eat mice? That’s all I could think of. Does he eat mice?

  THERE WAS A bit of carrot just off my left cheek. But why eat if I’m to be eaten? My appetite was gone. The cat resettled in a circle of herself. She did something offhand with her tail.

  Does he eat mice? That’s all I could think of. Does he eat mice?

  “Shift over,” a deep voice said to her. “There might be a lump of sugar in there somewhere.”

  It was the horse. The horse. Horses have language, of course. Though I supposed it was only whinnies and short answers. But full sentences? Verbs? I couldn’t believe it and was struck dumb for once.

  “Over you go,” he said, licking the cat to one side and rooting deeper with his gigantic black nose. He’d galled a shoulder. It had taken something to get him all the way from Windsor, wherever Windsor was.

  “Here, not so rough,” said the cat, thrust to one side. “It’s my job to calm you down, you great lumbering lummox. You don’t want the goat put in, do you? I could make it happen—howl and hiss till they send for the goat. Just say the word.”

  “I won’t have a goat. They smell,” the horse said with his mouth full. Oh, those grinding molars. “I’ve already kicked a cart to matchsticks today. Broke the shafts and dented the dash rail. I’d make short work of a goat. There’d be nothing left but a pair of horns and a set of hoofs.”

  I whimpered. But the cat said in her most soothing voice, “What makes you so restless?”

  “Nothing much,” said the horse. “But I like to make myself known as I’m just coming on duty. After all, I’m to pull the Queen’s carriage all the way to St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’ll need to show my best, as she won’t be up to much. Poor old soul. She’s already got one foot in the grave. She’ll do well to live through the trip.”

  I stared through straw. The cat goggled.

  “She’s pushing eighty, the old Queen. Human years, but still.” The horse chewed thoughtfully. “She’s blind as a bat and deafer than a post. And lame? It takes a block and tackle to heave her into her carriage and an act of Parliament to heave her out again. She’s on her last legs, is the Queen. If she was a horse, they’d put her down.”

  You don’t see a cat that shocked every day of the week. Even her whiskers looked scandalized. “I’ll thank you to remember you’re speaking of the—”

  “Well, she’s only human, isn’t she?” remarked the horse, dribbling feed.

  “Indeed she is not,” snapped the cat. “She rules by Divine Right. And…and a touch of her hand will cure warts.” The cat vibrated.

  “You still believe that old saw about warts?” said the horse. “I thought that went out with Queen Ann.”

  The cat stared into space. I doubt if she knew much history. Cats aren’t schooled. It would give them ideas above—

  “I forget how you lot are here in London,” the horse said. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouths. It’s all bowing and scraping in London. But Windsor’s proper horse country. The old Queen and I have an understanding. She likes a good horse, and I am one. She very likely sent for me personally.”

  “As if the Queen had nothing better to do,” the cat muttered. But now the horse’s eyes went out of focus. He was dropping manure onto his clean bedding. Quite a lot of manure. Steam rose behind him. My eyes watered. The cat had a paw over her nose.

  “Ah, that’s better,” sighed the horse. “Now it smells like home.”

  Evening Stables were drawing to a close. The blacksmith’s hammer had gone silent. Yellow light fell from those high palace windows. Figures of mystery moved in distant rooms. The cat dozed. But then the horse said, “Who’s your chum?”

  The cat whinnied awake. Her great yellow-moon eyes rolled all over and fell on me. I was trying to bury myself in fodder and oats.

  “Who?” she said. “Oh, the mouse? Nobody really. I’ve brought him for supper.”

  “Not mine, I hope,” said the horse. “I don’t eat mice. They’re all bones. I’ve had vole. They’re all right. A bit gamey. I’ve had wombat. Once.” One of his great fringed eyes glinted at me. But what could it mean?

  The cat arranged herself. She cleared her throat to tell my story. “He has blotted his copybook and burned his bridges. Not content to run off from school, he’s shown himself to Princess Ena of Battenberg—in his uniform, if you please. It’s expected to kill Marigold, the Head Needlemouse. She calls herself his aunt, though who’s to say, really? His origi
ns are murky and his future dark. I’ve brought him for a bite of supper, out of the goodness of my heart.”

  “You’re too good to be true,” the horse remarked to the cat. Then he was looking down and down and down at me. “Have that bit of carrot,” he said. “And you might nose round for a lump of sugar. It’s yours if you find it.” Both his eyes glinted at me now. “There’s always a lump of sugar if you know where to look.”

  “Well, I call that very civil,” the cat sniffed, “and better than he deserves. What do you say to the horse?”

  I’d never thanked a horse for anything before. Where to begin? I was mealy-mouthed because of the carrot.

  “Squeak up,” the horse said. “Squeak up for yourself.”

  “Yes, squeak up,” the cat huffed. “Then eat your fill and be off. It’s very nearly the middle of the night.”

  “Nay,” the horse said. “I think we’ll keep him. Plenty of room.”

  “A mouse—overnight in a manger?” The cat drew up a paw to her front fur. “There’s bound to be a rule against that. Think of the droppings.”

  “And yet I find him strangely calming,” the horse observed.

  “Well, I never!” spat the cat. But the horse was already pulling up his left foreleg and leaning into the wall. It was the way he slept, as I was to learn. Before his giant eyes flickered shut, he again glinted both of them at me.

  PART TWO

  The Royal Park

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Peg’s Ear

  I DREAMED I was late for school and woke to the hot breath of the horse. Though I’d grazed off and on all night long, I didn’t know where I was. But my belly was pleasantly round. Gray day was beginning to dawn, and the cat had already vanished. The grooms’ housekeeper put down a saucer of milk for her.

  “Burrow a little deeper in the straw,” the horse said confidentially, “and mind your tail. The stable hands will soon be round to muck out. I’ll give the first one a good swift kick, just to let him know who’s boss. I’ll send him sailing. But then I’ll let them groom me. I like that. Mind you stay under the straw. I’ll see to it they don’t mess about with the manger.”

  I lurked low as the humans went about their Morning Stables business. After they picked up the stable hand who’d been kicked out into the courtyard, they polished brass and cleaned the exercise harness. One of them stood too near to be kicked and trimmed the horse’s heels. I supposed that once he’d been groomed, they’d throw a saddle on him to be exercised. Then I could slip quietly off. But where?

  Finally the stable hands clumped back to their quarters to change into their riding gear. “Up you come,” said the horse.

  I surfaced there at the end of his nose, my ears scooping straw. “No sugar lump?” he asked in his loose-lipped way. “Not to worry. The world’s full of them if you keep your eyes open and your nose to the wind. We’ll be going out for a turn in the park today, just a quick canter. Only a bit of a trot and a stretch before tomorrow and the main event.”

  We?

  “Time you saw a bit of the world, if you’re to find your place in it,” the horse said. “Nobody ever learned who he was by staying in the stable.”

  Who knew a horse had such deep thoughts? And he whinnied less than the cat. They’d given him fresh water, and he sprayed me as he spoke. “Scamper up my face and turn north at the eye. Ride in that ear. You’ll just about fit, like the cork in a bottle.”

  I gaped. I was hip-deep in a manger and stuck all over with oats and bits of straw. And a horse was inviting me to ride in his ear.

  “Step lively and show a pair of heels,” he said. “The grooms will be here any minute. And mind you hang on for dear life. I’m apt to flick my ears. It’s a thing we do, certainly in fly time and if there’s a young filly about. No, not that ear. The other one. I’m a bit deaf in that ear, so if you stop it up, it won’t much matter. And we won’t speak again after I take the bit. Some of the grooms are brighter than they look. Just wedge yourself in and keep your wits about you.”

  His name was Pegasus. Peg for short. They’d nailed the name on a board above his stall. He’d let them throw a bridle and a saddle on him. Now he glittered in bright brass work. He was blinkered. A worried groom sat carefully astride him. And I in his ear.

  It was waxy in there. I slipped and slid before I found my feet. It took all my bravery. I was a mile off the ground. Now we turned to the gate, along with the other horses and riders. Peg led, and his groom had nothing to say in the matter.

  Out we trotted under the clock tower in a river of gray and bay horseflesh into the Buckingham Palace Road. Fog was just burning off a London morning.

  I cowered in Peg’s slick ear. The Buckingham Palace Road was tangled with hackney coaches and broughams and a thundering great brewer’s wagon. Omnibuses top-heavy with humans swayed past. Harnesses jingled. The whole of London smelled oddly like Fitzherbert.

  Death beckoned from every gutter and loitered at every turn, under the boots and the hoofs. Humans darted across the traffic. The road sweepers were slapping mud and manure from one side of the road to the other with stumpy brooms. One flick of Peg’s ear, and I’d be down in the mire myself, being swept up.

  We turned past the grand front of Buckingham Palace. The Queen’s own soldiers were just falling in for the Changing of the Guard: bright red and bristling with bayonets. Beavers on their heads. Their boots polished to mirrors. My eyes were out on stalks to take it all in.

  I began to look a bit ahead. If I could just hang on here in Peg’s ear a day and a night, if I could stop his ear and eat his feed till he was hitched up to the Queen’s landau, I might just find my way to the Queen herself. Somehow.

  In her infinite wisdom, perhaps she could give me a clue or two about who I was and who I was to be. Worth a try, I thought. I was young. I believed anything could happen.

  Round the far side of the palace we started up the broad avenue of Constitution Hill. Ahead was the green blur of Hyde Park we’d learned in geography class.

  But I wasn’t fated to see it for myself that brightening morning. Oh no.

  Now we were high-stepping along the wall of Buckingham Palace’s back garden, through a leafy tunnel of trees. I’d never seen an entire tree before—only the odd leaf scudding into the Mews courtyard. The trees sighed in the morning breeze and were very fine except for the squirrels. Great ugly things stuck like leeches to the tree bark, some of them upside-down. Their tails were bushy and flicky and their heads bullet-shaped. Tree rats, really. Mean eyes.

  I shrank in Peg’s ear, but kept an eye out. Tweedy ladies and tailored gentlemen rode sleek horses up and down Constitution Hill. All very well turned out, humans and horses alike, though none of them a patch on Peg.

  Coming our way from the park was a lady riding aside on a fine young chestnut filly. The breeze played in the lady’s veils. The morning caught all the lights in the filly’s coat. Very dainty for a horse.

  She nodded to left and to right. There was a high polish on her hoofs.

  A quiver of pure electricity shot through Peg. A moment too late I lunged for the stubble edge of his ear. The beauteous filly was just passing us when his ear gave an almighty flick, and I rocketed through thin air, completely uncorked and scudding like a leaf.

  A quiver of pure electricity shot through Peg. A moment too late I lunged for the stubble edge of his ear.

  My hands grabbed at the sky-blue morning. The wind screamed in my notched ears. My tail asked questions all over the air.

  Broken glass lined the top of the palace garden wall. I was almost ripped to shreds when by the chance of a lifetime I lit on a low-hanging tree branch instead. Scrambling, I found my balance—blind with fear and all these leaves.

  Below me the horses of the Royal Mews clip-clopped on to the park, Peg naturally in the lead. Wait, cried out a tiny voice in my heart.

  Wait.

  I COULDN’T SEE an inch ahead, for the leaves. I could be making straight for a squirrel. You don’t k
now how it feels, being flicked out of a horse’s ear into a fully leafed-out tree. You have no idea.

  And how suddenly still it was up here, above everything. Almost silent except for a faint, echoing cheep. And a slight susurration. Which is a word off of old Chiroptera’s vocabulary list at school. You could look it up. Two r’s.

  It was better to keep moving. I skittered ahead from one tree tangled with the next. Nothing much seemed to be happening up here, bar the odd ladybug hunting aphids. But somehow I felt eyes upon me. Though not for long, for I found myself on a limb too thin. It bent under my weight. I was full of oats, remember.

  The limb twanged, and once more I was in the air with the wind singing in my ears. I lit in a bed of waxy begonias. I don’t suppose begonias have ever broken your fall, but these broke mine. They were in an herbaceous border within the wall. The sound of the Constitution Hill traffic was faint and far off.

  I parted the begonias. I was as waxy as they were, but they were taller. Most things are. I peered out across the private parkland stretching behind Buckingham Palace. The long palace doors stood open to a vacant terrace. Nothing stirred in all this vast garden with its acres of lawn and grove and lake. I hadn’t known England itself was this big.

  Though it was in the heart of London, there was nothing of London about it. No smell of drains here and only a little wisp of yellow fog drifting in. But this much open country stirs misgivings in a mouse. Birds wheeled high overhead and slid down the wind. With birds you never know. You hear things about birds. Linnets will sing you a merry song. Other sorts snatch you up and drop you on a rock to crack your skull. And magpies will rob you blind. You just never know. There in the distance a bunch of blackbirds were worming the lawn. Four and twenty of them perhaps, however many that might be.