The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail

by Richard Peck

  Down on all fours I moved among the begonias, nosing my way forward because there was nothing to go back to. I was in a little shady glade under a tree when I took one step too many.

  All at once I was in the air again, dangling just clear of the ground. I hung helpless, swaying in a net attached to a tree branch by a single silken thread. I knew this net. It was one my aunts had made for catching butterflies. Very strong, these nets. You don’t get out of them in a hurry—or ever if you’re a butterfly.

  Unknown hands had rigged this butterfly net with a trip wire. I was trussed tight with my tail trapped. And in the next moment I was staring straight at another mouse. We were nearly nose to nose, though I was upside-down.

  I was trussed tight with my tail trapped.

  It could have been worse. He might have been a squirrel who took me for an acorn. But no, he was clearly a mouse. And in full uniform, if you please: a scarlet and gold doublet with some sort of motto stitched across his front, a ruff in a starchy circle around his neck, red breeches with a stripe and an opening behind for his tail. Between his ears a black velvet hat with red, white, and blue ribbon remnants. I knew this work too. Very professional needlework. First rate.

  He was fully kitted out as a Sergeant Major of the Yeomice of the Guard. You never saw anything like it—all this scarlet serge and gold braid on a mouse. He had everything but the buckle shoes. I’d often wondered who it was who wore these uni—

  “Halt!” he barked, though of course I had.

  Before I could squeak up or even think, he was whipping forth a businesslike sword from his scabbard. It may have been one half of a human lady’s manicure scissors. Daylight flashed on its wicked edge as he drew back for an almighty swing.

  I thought of the French Revolution, and closed my eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Life of Drum and Trumpet

  NAKED STEEL SLASHING above my ears severed the thread that hung me from the tree. Down I dropped, in a heap. The Yeomouse of the Guard snipped the last threads that bound me. My tail fell in its customary question mark behind. I struggled upright and considered making a run for it.

  It wasn’t to be. The Yeomouse looked me up and down. Mostly down. “Field mouse?” he inquired. He had a twitch to his whiskers.

  I could scarcely believe my ears. “Field mouse?” I drew up to show him my best bearing and perfect posture. “Field mouse?”

  He seemed to wave me away. “We’ll get all sorts here during the jubilee,” he said. “Country people in droves up to town for the royal parade. Country mice. Field mice. All sorts. Harmless, most of them, but no business being here in a royal park. And the palace itself is strictly off limits, except to the official and invited.

  “We’ve even had a chinchilla this morning. Would you believe it? Curious-looking cove. Odd ears. All the way from South America, somehow. Didn’t speak a word of English. We had to go for an interpreter. Then he said he was looking for the Argentine embassy. I ask you! We escorted him off the premises. It’s been that sort of day, and things can only get worse tomorrow.”

  He was very full of himself, this Yeomouse. Clearly a sergeant major, from the stripes on his sleeve. And I hadn’t particularly cared for that field mouse remark. He stroked his whiskers, so I stroked mine—though mine were soft and silky and not the bristles I wanted them to be.

  But now he’d sheathed his worrisome sword, so I wondered if I could make an example of him. I made a pair of fists. My knuckles were still swollen from the latest thwacks from the toothpick, so they made a good showing.

  “Care to go a round of fisticuffs to see who’s the better mouse?” I inquired. This was cheeky, and I’d never won a fight. Still, there’s always a first time. He wasn’t all that much bigger. He was mostly just uniform. I danced about a bit as boxers do. But then I got tangled in the net strings and fell over.

  “Have you any idea how ridiculous you’re being?” The Yeomouse’s hands were on his red serge hips. “I have the authority to throw you in irons and put you away until the next reign.”

  “On what charge?” I demanded, staggering to my feet.

  “Trespass, for a start,” the sergeant major snapped.

  This was too much. “Trespass?” I pointed my longest finger past him. There on the far horizon was the north wall of the Mews. I was this close to home. This far. “I happen to be a mouse of the Royal Mews.” I slapped my scrawny chest. “Trespass, indeed. We meet upon my native ground. Practically.”

  The sergeant major considered me.

  “From the Mews are you? Might have known. But if I was you I wouldn’t say so, not out here in the world. After all, the Mews is only a barn, isn’t it? And smells like one. Come to that, so do you.”

  The sergeant major smirked. Behind me begonias stirred. A wheeze of muffled laughter rose from back there. I chanced a glance behind to see here and there the black velvet hats and pointed ears of more Yeomice of the Guard poking up from the herbaceous border. Guardians of the wall, no doubt. I was surrounded.

  But my spirit was unbowed. “In case you haven’t heard, we of the Mews keep the royals rolling. Human and mice alike, we are even now preparing the Queen’s landau for her parade tomorrow.” I had fluffed out all my fur.

  “You astonish me,” said the sergeant major, though he didn’t look particularly astonished.

  “As for smelling like a horse,” I continued, “I arrived on a horse.” I squared up my shoulders, such as they were.

  “You came by horse?” The Yeomouse’s eyebrows rose. His whiskers nearly twitched off his snout. “Did you ride astride or side-saddle? I’m only asking.”

  At that, the begonias burst into helpless laughter.

  “I rode in a horse’s ear and got flicked out,” I said with dignity. “Then I dropped off a twangy branch and fetched up in a shady glade.”

  The begonias were in hysterics now and no doubt falling about. The sergeant major was tearing up. He wiped his eyes. “All right, all right,” he said. “Don’t tell us how you got here if you don’t want to.”

  “It is the simple truth,” I said importantly. “Besides, I am very possibly being followed by a search party. I have the distinct sense of being sought after.”

  The sergeant major peered around me, in search of a search party. But there was nothing back there but my tail and the giggling begonias.

  “And now I had better be on my way. I need to find my horse,” I explained. “Who knows how long it may take to catch up with him? On Jubilee Day he’ll be drawing the landau with Queen Victoria in it, and I need a word with her regarding a personal matter. I’ll thank you to escort me off the premises. Like the chinchilla.”

  The begonias whooped.

  The sergeant major could hardly speak for laughing, which I found rude. His finger was in my face now. “No, son, you’re not going anywhere. We’re short-handed these jubilee days. Stretched thin. I can hardly spare the mousepower to put you under guard. Do you know your left foot from your right?”

  “Naturally,” I said. Surely he wouldn’t need proof?

  “And can you march?”

  “Anyone can,” I remarked.

  “I don’t know about that,” the sergeant major said. “You fall over.”

  “It was the net,” I said.

  “Are you not yet full-grown, or just short?”

  “A bit of both, I suppose.” I had already drawn myself up as far as I would go.

  “I shall very likely live to regret this, as you seem to have dropped out of nowhere,” the sergeant major said gravely. He was the picture of skepticism. Also pomposity. “But how would you like to be a Yeomouse of the Guard? It’s either that or you’re my prisoner. What’s it to be?”

  I stared at this so-called choice. A silence lingered. There was only the quietest susurration. And it was from somewhere on high.

  I’d hoped to find my fate, but had my fate found me? Was I meant for a life of drum and trumpet and the defense of the palace? A Yeomouse of the Guard? I l
iked the uniform. It was far smarter than the school blue. And I liked the sword. Useful things, swords, in a world of nets and everybody’s bigger.

  And so with a small shrug, I lifted my arm and gave the sergeant major a salute with my spindly fingers splayed flat against my forehead.

  YEOMEN OF THE Guards—humans—are all very well in their place, as Gentlemen of the Bedchamber and Back Stairs. They have good figures for bowing and scraping. But it takes Yeomice to guard your boundaries and patrol your perimeters. We’re never really off duty, you see. At this very moment that you and I are sharing, Yeomice are on picket and post down among the waxy begonias, guarding the walls of the Buckingham Palace Royal Park. You won’t see us, but we’ll see you—everywhere you fail to turn.

  But it was my fate to be a Yeomouse of the Guard for only a single day. Still, a mouse day is much bigger than yours. We keep busier. We get more done. And a red-letter day, because I made my first friend. Or so he seemed to be.

  We had to dress in pairs, to tie the other’s ruff at the back of the neck, to arrange his tail around his breeches.

  It was Yeomouse Ian who appeared suddenly beside me. He seemed to have thrown himself together in some haste. And there was the slightest whiff of undigested insect hovering over him: But as he was completely kitted out, he was ready to help the new boy. The moment we met, I wanted to be just like him.

  He was very grand indeed, was Ian. Not handsome—far from it really. His profile wasn’t stirring, but he had that weak and peaky look about the face and under the chin that is the badge of the English upper classes. His whiskers were even wispier than mine, but they drooped with a casual abandon. Very prominent teeth, the pair up front. Very prominent. How nice to be him, I thought—from the first moment we met in the changing room.

  He seemed to be kindness itself, in his lordly way, which made a change from Trevor and Fitzherbert and that lot. “You’re not to take the sergeant major nearly as seriously as he takes himself,” Ian advised. “He’s mostly bluster, and he tends to strut. In truth, he’s really quite far down the chain of command. I rather suspect him of timidity. The bigger the mouth, the greater the fear.”

  “Is that a saying?” I asked Ian, admiring it.

  “It is now, I suppose,” he replied with easy pride.

  How gentlemousely was Ian. When he’d helped me into my uniform, he stood back so I could bask in myself.

  Mice and men alike look better in uniform than out of it. I looked remarkably good in mine. I stared down my scarlet self, emblazoned with the gold-thread symbols of England, Scotland, and Ireland: the rose, the thistle, and the shamrock, all beautifully worked across me.

  And above all, where my chest should be, the Yeomice Motto, picked out in businesslike black thread, though I’m not sure I understood it entirely.

  It read:

  SEE, DON’T SAY

  Yeomice don’t have mirrors. But we have each other. How I longed to be turned out like Ian, down to the last tuck in his tunic.

  Mice and men alike look better in uniform than out of it. I looked remarkably good in mine.

  “Shall you be one of the sergeants major one day?” I asked. “Or even the Captain of the Yeomice of the Guard himself?”

  “It’s very hard to say. I’m rather adrift in the world, being a younger son. It’s my older brother who will inherit the title and everything else. And so something has to be done with me until I can find myself in the world. Awkward, really, being a younger son. But one must simply take courage and soldier on.”

  The thought that Ian too was looking for his place in the world gave me heart, though I was nothing like as grand as he. I was smaller too, though we’d get round to my size soon enough in this conversation.

  Meanwhile, I was admiring myself. I liked to think Aunt Marigold had sewn this particular uniform. And the hat too, like a black velvet mushroom, setting off my ears. The very thought of Aunt Marigold, and my eyes went wobbly and moist.

  Ian noticed. “It’s quite a good fit, that uniform. Might have been made for you. You slipped right in. In fact, you’re really rather slick.”

  “Waxy,” I explained, “from the begonias and the horse’s ear. I arrived by horse.”

  Ian cleared his throat behind a polite hand. “It is quite all right if you’d rather not say how you got here.”

  “It’s the simple truth,” I said, for all the good that seemed to do.

  To change the subject he said, “I’m Ian Henslowe. Rather an old family, actually.” Once more Ian coughed courteously behind a hand.

  “We came over with the Conqueror. 1066 and all that. And an unpleasant channel crossing by all accounts.”

  I blinked at all this sudden family history, rolled out like a tapestry. “I can’t trace myself back farther than me,” I said. “Everything before the warming oven’s a blank. My eyes wouldn’t have been open yet. Still, I must have had a mother.”

  “Oh yes, you certainly had a mother,” Ian agreed. “Unquestionably.”

  “And a father,” I said.

  “Quite.” Ian looked down.

  “I haven’t even a name,” I said, taking pity on myself.

  “Never mind. Not everyone’s named,” Ian pointed out. “Take field mice. They never are.”

  I sighed.

  “Besides,” Ian said, “Nameless is Blameless.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “At school I was Mouse Minor.”

  “Not really a name, when you think about it,” said Ian. “And where did you say you were at school?” Now he was helping me slip the cross belt over my left shoulder. And if that was my left shoulder, the foot on that side was bound to be my left foot. It stood to reason.

  “I was until recently a scholar of the Royal Mews Mouse Academy.”

  Ian had drawn me a long-handled halberd from a pool in the armory.

  A sword of my own!

  Hearing my school, he lurched lightly, but recovered. “I believe some of these minor schools are quite good in their way.”

  “Quite good,” I said. “I know my numbers right up through twelve and rather more about the French Revolution than you’d care to hear.”

  “Well, there you are,” Ian said smoothly. “What more need one know?”

  He was a gentlemouse all the way through, was Ian. Courtly, though I had nothing much to compare him to. I wondered if he’d ever been in the presence of Her Human Majesty Queen Victoria, but didn’t like to ask. He would certainly know how to act if he were. Besides, I needed to squeak up for my school. “There is nothing minor about the Royal Mews Mouse Academy. It is always in the top five mouse schools throughout the British Empire.”

  “Of course.” Ian perked up my ruff and gave my tunic a tug. “All schools are in the top five.”

  We were stepping up our pace because we’d shortly be on parade. That’s military service for you: You’re either primping or marching. Ian stood back again to see that I was turned out and standing tall. In fact, I was standing my tallest. I was practically on tip-claws.

  “Are you not quite grown or just short?” Ian wondered.

  I sighed.

  “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “That was a personal question, and quite uncalled for. I withdraw it. I suppose you just think of Napoleon and get on with it.”

  Everyone around us was perking up one another’s ruff and assisting with the arrangement of tails. “Do take care not to tangle that sword in your feet,” Ian said. “It wouldn’t do to fall over on your first day.”

  I sighed again.

  And before I knew it, we were on our way to the parade ground. And yet more hidden worlds were about to unfold before me.

  Many are the mysteries of mousedom.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Yeomice on Parade

  I’D RATHER HOPED our Yeomice barracks, our armory and mess, would be sunk beneath Buckingham Palace itself. Someplace convenient to Queen Victoria herself. But no. We were quartered at the farthest end of the royal park.

&nbs
p; Right at the end of the known world, as far as I knew, among all that bramble and briar.

  A woodsy copse, in fact, with so little of London about it that the starlings darted in the treetops, safe from the slingshots of human boys, or the traps of the hungry. Indeed the foliage above teemed with life. It susurrated madly.

  Lost in a tangle of rhododendron stands the ruin of an ancient potting shed, far older than the palace. There in its forgotten foundations Ian and I had prepared for parade. Now as we made our way to the grounds, Yeomice swarmed from everywhere. It was rather like that moment with the begonias.

  Ian was inclined to stroll when everybody else was hurrying. I noticed that about him. Only a small screen of tree and bush stood between the potting shed and the parade ground beside the lake.

  And there just off the path was a mouse graveyard. You’ve been past many a mouse graveyard without noticing it, and I’d have missed this one myself, without Ian. We don’t have tombstones, you see. They would raise too many questions—questions that could end up in zoology textbooks. But beside a grave outlined by the smallest pebbles Ian drew us up. Then standing his tallest, he presented a smart salute, so I did too.

  It was the Tomb of the Unknown Mouse, as Ian explained. There was to be a wreath-laying as part of our jubilee observances. The Unknown Mouse had fallen in some earlier rodent conflict. Cats had been behind it, of course, as cats always are. The world is a hard and warlike place out here beyond the walls of the Mews. I felt a touch of homesickness for my old home.

  The other Yeomice scampered by us, adjusting their swords as they went. But Ian led us a little deeper into the mouse graveyard. Under a canopy of spiky holly leaves, scented with pine, were other graves, very faintly outlined. You had to look twice. They were naturally not the graves of ordinary mice, not here in a royal park.

  Very little daylight fell upon this hallowed ground. But it was more sad than eerie. Ian lingered beside a grave, and so did I. We didn’t salute, but I noticed that he was watching me.