The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail

by Richard Peck

  The fire had burned to embers, and the Queen was a bit smaller, though of course still a mountain to me. She was ready for a catnap, if you’ll excuse the expression.

  Far below her windows, I knew the Royal Mews must be stirring. The stable hands were mucking out. The stable-hand mice were darting this way and that, gathering up horseshoe nails and twists of wire and anything that might do a horse a mischief. Peg was taking the bit whilst the grooms burnished him to a high sheen to lead the Queen’s landau, right across London.

  It was time to go, but you do not show your back to the Queen. To her, we are all spineless, rodent and human alike. Getting out of the saucer and down from the writing table was going to be a bit of a job. Never turn tail on royalty.

  She gathered her hands before her. They were like two small pin cushions, with liver spots. And she watched to see how I’d take my leave. Her gaze was more blue than milky now.

  “You did not do wrong in coming to us first,” she said. “But do not expect to find all your answers in the first asking.” Her mouth pulled into a sharp vee that was something like a smile. A wintery smile, but she was in the winter of her life. “And we suppose we must be grateful that you had not come about warts.”

  I was just stepping backward out of the saucer, reining in my tail. “But, Your Majesty, will a touch of your hand cure warts?” I asked, squeaking right up.

  “Do you have warts?” she asked, though I was plain to see.

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Then we shall never know, shall we?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Rush of Black Wings

  I’D SWUNG INTO the royal bedchamber on a serving maid’s apron strings. But I had to show myself out. The door was nothing. To mice, doors never are. We slip right under the tightest doors in your palace. I especially, being slick and small.

  Beyond the dark corridor, the palace was waking. Breakfast crockery clashed, far off, and a kettle sang. The floorboards creaked, warming with the morning, caught between dry rot and rising damp. Mice have very keen hearing, and need it.

  My head was heavy from all I’d learned straight from the drooping lips of Queen Victoria. Now I wanted to slip down the nearest mousehole and sleep the day away with my tail tucked. But there was no time for that because you don’t get all your answers from the first asking, and so I must ask again. Besides, I had a name to make for myself in a life of struggle and success. Mice don’t have all the time in the world.

  Heavy human boots thudded behind me. I could only flatten myself against the wall. I might have been a bubble of gray paint along a skirting board. A giant human tramped past. In his hand was a wire cage crowded with flashing eyes and flailing tails.

  It was the Royal Rat Catcher, who’d already been round his traps this morning. How useful the Royal Rat Catcher, as rats have no real language apart from whining, and they’ll eat anything smaller than they are. And think of the droppings.

  He turned down a spiral of stairs. I turned up it. The attics lurked at the top. A moment too late I heard a sound from on high. The same cheeping, silken sound of the royal park treetops. That same susurration.

  I whipped round to fling myself off a stair step, but tangled in my tail. And they were all over me, battering me about by the rush of their black wings. And again that dire smell of mildew and undigested insect. Webby hands seized me under my arms and once more I was rising through dark air. My hands and feet dangled.

  Whoever they were—whatever—they were sure of their way. We swerved from attic to attic, skimming the slanting ceilings. They kept up a steady cheeping in both my ears, but I heard their separate hearts.

  PALACE ATTICS ARE crowded places. The footmen sleep in some of them, and dress in pairs. In others, aged boot boys and clock winders live out their lives, slumped at the feet of their bunks. And in certain attics, where no human foot falls and long-forgotten luggage stands in stacks, live the bats.

  Bats! Of course—the webby hands, the silken wings. The row on row of chattering teeth. Bats! I’d been in their terrible power as soon as Peg had flicked me out of his ear. They’d monitored my entire Yeomouse career from their cheeping treetops. Though they hang upside-down, they miss nothing.

  Now we were in their lair at last, this batty attic. Circling, they dropped me like a parcel on a floor thick with beetle shells, and worse.

  I sprawled.

  The pair of them who had twice mousenapped me settled on the rafter just above. With their spooky, spokey fingers, they drew their wings about themselves and looked down, keeping their red eyes on me.

  Mine adjusted to the awful dark. There were bats everywhere, folded like umbrellas hung from rafters and luggage straps.

  A major infestation. Many more than twelve. Many. It was a bat barracks, a…battery. They seemed to sleep in shifts. My two were crouching watch over me.

  And up there on the top rafter in one faint golden glimmer was my Yeomouse uniform hanging from a splinter in a pinpoint of light.

  “My uniform!” I cried out.

  The bats gazed down at me. They were nearly cheek to cheek with their chins propped on their ghastly gathered hands. Being bats, they had mustaches. Hideous, really.

  “You von’t be needing your univorm,” said one of them.

  Of course they’d be foreign, being bats. Romanian. Transylvanian. Something.

  “No,” said the other one, “de last thing you vill need is dat univorm.”

  So all was lost. Once more I glimpsed a scene that was surely only moments ahead: the pair of them picking my bones clean in the privacy of these bat barracks. I remembered my sword plunged somewhere in the distant palace gardens and gave myself up for lost, just short of my goal. All my struggle, and no success. I was a goner. Rats will eat anything smaller than they are. Bats will eat anything at all. Bats can live on mosquitoes, and if you can live on mosquitoes, you’ll eat anything.

  They are omnivores, as any schoolboy knows. The word came straight from my old headmaster’s vocabulary list. I thought fondly of my brief past, even of school, as my future seemed to grow shorter than I was. I wondered if tasting of strawberry would work for me or against me.

  With that very thought, a small, hunched figure bustled around from the far side of a steamer trunk covered with ancient labels.

  She seemed robed. But then, bats’ wings are joined to their hands in rather an odd arrangement. When they aren’t in flight, they all seem to be wearing robes. Shrouds, really. Under her wings this bat wore a starchy white apron. Between her ears a crisp cap. She was no bigger than I, but all business. Some sort of housekeeper, if you can imagine a bat in that position. She sized me up in an instant.

  “Nobody said ’e’d be pink with black bits!”

  Her hands seemed to be on her hips. You couldn’t really see, for the wings. “’Ere, you two!” She squinted up to the rafter with my bats on it. “Wot’s the meaning of this? You were to deliver ’im in good condition. Rules is rules.”

  Silence came from up there. Then one of them spoke. “Vee drooped him into a pole of bunch.”

  “A wot?” Her cheeping voice had a real edge to it. Not foreign, but common as a cat.

  “A bowl of punch,” I said.

  “Honestly.” Her red eyes rolled. “You can’t get ’elp nowadays. Nobody wants to work, and that pair ’aven’t a brain between them. Come with me. I ’ave some ’ot water ready.”

  “Am I to be boiled and eaten?” All the fight had gone out of me.

  Bats are weak-eyed. She squinted at me. “Boiled and eaten? Not that I know of. But that pink is not a good color on you. You’re to be washed and outfitted. Step lively and show a pair of ’eels, or I’ll ’ave orf your ’ead myself.”

  The far side of the steamer trunk was busy with bats. The crumbly floor was black with them. Some in starchy caps with their wings rolled up and hard at work. There was the odd bat valet in a striped waistcoat, smelling of leather soap and Brasso. There was even a bat barber, as I was to
learn. This end of the attic seemed to be a sort of bat servants’ hall. The world is an unexpected place, but then, bats need their support staff like anybody else.

  When the bat housekeeper marched me into their midst, needlebats looked up from their mending. Bat laundresses lifted their streaming faces from copper boilers.

  And they all had something to cheep. “Vat a peculiar color.” And “Surely not his natural shade.” And “Vat are dem black bits?” And, of course, “Is he not yet full-grown or just short?”

  A pair of small laundresses stepped up with pails of soapy water to dash over me. Then they set about me with a pair of bristly brushes till I was back to my natural gray, slumping in a pool of pink with floating black bits.

  “Posture,” a laundress hissed into my ear before they withdrew.

  And in, say, twelve minutes more I stood in front of a human lady’s mirror, gone missing from her reticule. It leaned against the steamer trunk. If you’re missing a pocket mirror, a bat probably has it unless a magpie took it off you. Very vain, magpies and bats, though heaven knows why.

  As I wasn’t so slick now, it had taken several bat valets to get me into my new uniform, using buttonhooks. It fit like a footman’s glove. And when I saw myself in the mirror, I took my breath away. It was by far the best uniform ever seen. Blinding white against my natural gray with row on row of gold buttons. There was plenty of room up top for a chest I did not have and for medals I had not won. Epaulets, gold-fringed, gave me shoulders. A high braided collar made much of my neck and even offered up a bit of chin.

  And a sword strapped on. Only for show, of course, but gold. And I had a hat, to be held in the crook of my arm. A white tropical hat exploding with pinfeathers.

  The uniform of the Yeomice of the Guard wasn’t a patch on this one. If Princess Ena had only seen me as I was now, she’d have fallen off her pony twice.

  At the last moment a bat barber had stepped up to give my whiskers a light trim and to even up my ears somewhat. My head was swollen and awhirl. I was either about to become the Head Doormouse at the Ritz Hotel or a case of mistaken identity. I only hoped they wouldn’t take away this uniform too soon. By now I’d quite forgotten about being boiled and eaten.

  When I saw myself in the mirror, I took my breath away.

  Bats flocked, to admire my finery and to catch glimpses of themselves in the looking glass. I hung in a great fog of their mildew and undigested insects, wondering how long this could last.

  They had done me up for some grand function, even an appearance at court.

  Court?

  Could it be? “I say,” I said to the clustering bats, “this is surely court attire. Am I to have an audience with Her Mouse Majesty, the Queen of the Mice?” It seemed too good to be true, and I wondered if Queen Victoria had put in a word for me.

  But all was silence around me. Then a great cheep welled up. My mousenappers swooped in from their rafter and ran riot over our heads, cheeping in horror and warning. Every bat was at sixes and sevens.

  What had I said?

  The bat housekeeper took her hand from her mouth to say, “Never mention the Personage you just mentioned. She stands at the top of the Great Truth and Central Secret of the British Empire! Some things is too Mighty and Mysterious to bandy about. Besides, it raises too many questions.

  “Blimey, ’oo doesn’t know that?” she added. “Were you born in a barn?”

  How embarrassing, I thought. But then a voice echoed through the batty attics:

  “His Excellency the Bat Chancellor and Air Marshal vill see him now.”

  I jumped. What next? Webby hands set about me. I glittered one last moment in the mirror. “But who is he?” I called out to the housekeeper.

  “’Oo indeed!” she replied. “Only the chief advisor of She Who Carn’t Be Spoken of Aloud, that’s ’oo! Mice can’t make a move without bats. ’Oo doesn’t know that? Orf you go. Rules is rules.”

  At least I was dressed for the occasion. I looked down me, and above a button I saw tiny stitchery in gold thread. An A and an M with a small flourish.

  A.M. Aunt Marigold. She’d made this uniform. Every tuck taken was hers. I recalled how she used to snatch me up by the tail to tell me of my shortcomings. And so my heart and eyes were full as I was led off to the Bat Chancellor and Air Marshal for reasons too mysterious to mention. And because mice can’t make a move without bats.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Fate Unfolds

  AN OLD PLUSH curtain hung from a rafter. Worrisome hands swept it aside, and I was led up. In the gloom beyond, dozens and dozens and dozens of bats stood row on row. They looked like judge and jury to me. Black silk wings wrapped tight as cigars. On their heads were strange, out-of-date hats with tassels hanging down. Medals for unknown battles swung from their hollow chests. Some were withered by time. Some were so scary, you wondered if they could see themselves in mirrors. The chamber burned red from their eyes. And the smell could knock you down.

  Bats, bats on every side. Poking fingers thrust me forward across the murmuring attic. Like the cheeping treetops, they chanted:

  From burrows deep

  To manger hay,

  We were never far away.

  And:

  From horse’s ear

  To Yeomouse red,

  You were never far ahead.

  It was all eerie in the extreme. Dead ahead now, a figure hulked over us on a Twinings Tea caddy. A crabbed and crouching shape, dusty against the dimness. His eyes were embers behind his smoked spectacles. His clutching fingers were like the spindly spokes of a broken umbrella. He pointed one of those dismal digits down at me.

  My feathered headgear nearly took flight out of the crook of my arm. My knees were a pair of jellies.

  “Mouse Minor!” he cheeped in a voice like a rusty hinge.

  No. How could it be? But it was. Only my uniform held me together. Only my tail kept me upright.

  Here looming over me was the ancient headmaster of the Royal Mews Mouse Academy. It was B. Chiroptera, M.A., our old teacher. Suddenly I was back in the schoolroom where I’d begun. My knuckles remembered, and throbbed. Even the smell was familiar.

  It is unnatural to see any teacher outside school. But this was stranger still. He was a bat?

  Of course he was. Why hadn’t we seen? That grim gown wrapped round him had been his furled and musty wings. Those rows and rows of chattering teeth. The dim rubies of his eyes behind the smoked lenses. Those naps he stole through the day because bats are nocturnal.

  Nocturnal! Another word from his endless vocabulary list. We scholars had thought he was merely old and crazy. He was, of course, but he was a bat into the bargain.

  As well as Bat Chancellor and Air Marshal, whatever that might mean. A double life? A secret agent? You never know the full truth about a teacher. And he was everywhere I turned, practically in two places at once. But then, bats can fly. Very worrying.

  “What a merry chase you have led us from a schoolroom where you benefited from my teaching and protection,” he wheezed, shaking his scaly old head.

  “All the right sort of schools are bat-run, of course, from burrow to belfry,” he said, off on a tangent as usual. “How much the world has to learn from us. Yes, I think you’ll find that all the best teachers are old bats.”

  He sighed in admiration of bats everywhere, especially himself, and plunged on: “If only there were time in this crowded day, I could expand upon the importance of bats. We are a quarter of all mammals and the only mammals who fly. And so we are both faculty and air force, as you have reason to know. And an air force is a thing humans will never have! Where are their wings?”

  He was droning on as he does, and drifting far off the point. A bat or two near me yawned.

  But then he remembered himself and wrapped his robes. “And now your flight has ended, Sir! You vanished just when you were most needed. But scamper all you will, you cannot escape your fate. And justice will be done!”

  Bats circled me s
ilkily, chanting:

  He can run, but he can’t hide,

  Comes soon the moment to decide.

  Decide? Decide what? Oh wake me from this nightmare, I squealed inside. But it was no nightmare. It was every bit as real as the rest of this story.

  My knuckles throbbed and the collar tightened round my throat. They couldn’t have my head off. This wasn’t France. Still, they might easily throw me in irons and put me away till the next reign. With dungeon doors clanging in my head, I broke my silence. Squaring my gold-fringed shoulders, I squeaked up.

  “It’s unfair.” I stamped a small foot.

  The bats boggled and looked blank. “Unfair?”

  The chancellor trained his smoky lenses on me. “In what regard, Sir?”

  “I confess I ran away from school,” I squeaked. “And at just the wrong time. If only I’d hung on till today, there’d have been a party for the jubilee, with cake. And yes, showing myself in school uniform to a human raises entirely too many questions. But I hardly think this calls for two mousenappings and a trial. Besides, you’re not a jury of my peers. You’re bats.”

  I began rather to like the sound of my own squeak. “Have you nothing better to do than persecute the runtiest mouse in the Mews?” I shrank up a bit in the uniform, though it fit like a glove.

  “Besides, I can’t be blamed for anything because I’m nameless. And…Nameless is Blameless.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. Bats stared. “He thinks he’s nameless,” they murmured among themselves. Their tassels swayed. “And he takes us for a jury? What poppycock. We are Gentlebats in Waiting to His Excellency B. Chiroptera, Bat Chancellor to Her Unmentionable Majesty. Mice make the world go round, but they can’t budge without bats.” Etc. Then they began to chant:

  Back, back through the mists of time