The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail

by Richard Peck

  Rodents have sat on their throne,

  Whilst bats, the ideal courtiers,

  Set the proper tone.

  It was annoying how bats in a bunch were apt to break into verse. As it happened, they thought they were bards. And they claimed mice can’t rhyme. But old B. Chiroptera didn’t like being interrupted. “You have a name, Sir!” he blared into my face. “Everybody has a name. Well, not field mice, but—”

  “Then what is my name, Your…Excellency?”

  “Why, Ludovic. Naturally.”

  “Ludovic?”

  “Ludovic,” all the bats agreed.

  I’d waited all this time for a name, and it turned out to be Ludovic?

  Old B. Chiroptera drew himself up to a higher hunch. “If only you had been listening in history class, you would have learned that the heir to the Mouse Monarchy is always named Ludovic. Right the way back to Ludovic the Confessor and Ludovic the Conqueror. 1066 and all that.”

  This was somewhat interesting, as history goes, though unclear. “I’m named for a Prince?”

  “No, Your Royal Highness.” My old teacher bowed his scaly head. “You are the Prince.”

  ALL THE BATS bowed, as you do, from the neck. And they were all bowing in my direction. Old Chiroptera himself was bowing. You cannot know the joy of seeing your old teacher bow before you.

  But my breathing grew shallow. My knees began to buckle, like Prince Havarti coming down the comb. I looked behind myself to make sure they weren’t bowing to somebody else.

  In fact, a figure stood behind me, just beyond my question mark tail. Another mouse.

  He was formally turned out as a Mouse Equerry, in morning clothes for Jubilee Day. A tailcoat over striped trousers, a silk top hat in the crook of his arm. A dogtooth violet in his buttonhole. Very smart, very aristocratic, right down to his claw-tips.

  He too was bowing to me, Ian was.

  “Your Royal Highness,” he said.

  It was Ian.

  Yeomouse Ian of the high-born Henslowes. Ian, who had managed the mousenapping that had led us both to this moment.

  He too was bowing to me, Ian was. “Your Royal Highness,” he said, from the neck as you…

  The attic went darker, and tilted. I remember nothing more.

  IN MY WHOLE body I have only two teaspoons of blood. It usually keeps quite busy. But the shock of learning who I was—and being named Ludovic—drained all the blood from my brain. The feathered helmet keeled out of my crooked arm. My knees went. Then my posture. Not even my question mark tail kept me upright. Crumpling, I fainted.

  Embarrassing, but these things happen.

  When I came to, I was lolling in a spectacles case from somewhere, my tail and sword draped over the side. Ian, Mouse Equerry, was applying a cold compress to my forehead. He seemed to fade out, then fade in again. Sometimes there were three of him. But it takes no time at all to get used to being called Your Royal Highness.

  “Your Royal Highness,” Ian was saying, “I hope you didn’t faint from hunger. There’s nothing whatever to eat in these attics but mosquitoes. Stir-fried, but still…”

  “No, thank you,” I said, very mousy. I couldn’t have kept a gnat down.

  And even now the Gentlebats in Waiting were gathering themselves for another of their choral readings. There was really no stopping them:

  The child of a forbidden marriage,

  Mews-bred and never seen,

  For it never ever pays

  To cross his grandmother, the Queen.

  This seemed to be me in a nutshell, though badly rhymed and with several important details left out.

  Where to begin? I lolled there in the spectacles case, somewhere between the mouse I had been and the mouse I would be. Ian stood by, correct as ever. How much I admired the droop of his whiskers. But was he friend or foe? Royalty needs to know.

  “Ian,” I asked, “were you or were you not a Yeomouse of the Guard? A real one?”

  He coughed quietly behind a hand. “I was a Yeomouse just for a day, Sir. Rather like yourself. Once you were discovered in their ranks after you’d gone missing from school, I was sent by the Bat Chancellor to…arrange for your removal.”

  I drew a veil in my mind over my so-called removal—being snatched up into the night air and dropping into a pole of bunch. It didn’t bear thinking about. “Ian,” I said, “have you a proper palace job, or are you a gentlemouse of leisure?”

  “As I have told you, Sir, I am a younger son, and so I must make my way in the world. I have been in training to be Mouse Equerry to the heir to the Mouse Throne.”

  Oh, I thought. “And that would be me?”

  “In fact it’s meant to be Prince Bruno of the Havartis. The Queen of the Mice has had to look as far as Denmark for an heir. She does not know you exist. Your mother, the Princess Royal, dared marry for love. When she died at your birth, the Queen was told that you died too. It was too dangerous to tell her you lived. We try not to cross her.”

  “Ah yes, I’ve been told that my…grandmother lacks the human Queen Victoria’s sunny disposition. In fact it was Queen Victoria herself who told me.”

  Ian boggled. The Bat Chancellor blinked. He hovered nearby, a bit worried I might scamper down the nearest mousehole again, feathered hat and all.

  “Yes, Ian. I am able to communicate with a human if I squeak up, at least with Queen Victoria. Do you suppose it’s because I am half royal myself?”

  “Very possibly,” Ian said faintly. “Her Human Majesty granted you an audience?”

  “Yes, not long after I’d given the Bat Air Force the slip and took that swan dive into the strawberry punch.”

  Old B. Chiroptera winced.

  “She rather had to grant me an audience. I was in her saucer.”

  “If you say so, Sir,” Ian said with quiet dignity. “And did you arrive by horse?”

  “No, Ian. By then Peg would have been snug in the Mews and fast asleep. I arrived on a chambermaid’s apron strings.”

  “Just as you say, Sir,” Ian said.

  Why am I so hard to believe? I always tell the truth.

  But by then we were all realizing the jubilee morning was ticking away. Every moment took us nearer a first meeting with my grandmother, the Queen of the Mice. It was a lot to think about. You could hear my heart.

  “I suppose I shall come as a great surprise to Her Majesty.” I had staggered out of the spectacles case and stood swaying. Ian was giving my feathered hat a brush and handing it to me.

  “Yes,” he said sadly, “and Her Majesty hates surprises.”

  To speed me on my way, the bat bards broke into yet another of their verses:

  Make way for the undersized Princeling—

  His very existence unknown—

  As he braves his way on Jubilee Day,

  Bound for the royal throne.

  Very annoying. And they weren’t finished:

  Onward he ventures, this scrap of a mouse,

  Approaching his crucial hour;

  Gird his small loins with our best advice:

  Never say no to power.

  Then out of nowhere webby hands seized me in steely grips and jerked me upward. Breeze rushed between my toes. The attic floor and Ian fell away below me. I could feel the beat of the bat pilots’ separate hearts. Apparently I was traveling to my fate by air.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A Field of Gray

  WHILE QUEEN VICTORIA was still at breakfast in her bedchamber that morning, her jubilee procession was already beginning to pass through the gold-tipped palace gates below.

  You could hear the proud clatter of hoofs from wherever you happened to be. And the roar of the crowd.

  At eleven the first guns fired their salute. How well I knew eleven from the ruler. At a quarter past it, Queen Victoria rolled out through the gates in a landau drawn by eight of the best Windsor Greys with Peg in the lead position. High-stepping Peg, whose brasses blazed in the cloudless blue-sky day.

  He led th
e way right across London through a sea of flags and crowds singing “God Save the Queen” to the steps of St. Paul’s, where the world gave thanks for all the years of Queen Victoria’s long reign.

  In a queue of carriages behind came the royal children and grandchildren. Forty grandchildren. They waved back to the crowds and shook small Union Jacks.

  I cannot say I saw this brave sight myself. But it is recorded for all history to come, as it was the first great event captured by the new moving-picture camera. Pictures that move! Whatever next?

  WHEN DISTANCE HAD swallowed the procession, silence fell on Buckingham Palace. All the help melted away like the dew on the morning. The Pages of the Presence and the Pages of the Back Stairs. The Body Linen Laundresses and the Bedchamber Women. The Fire Lighters and Footmen, the Butlers and Under Butlers. The lot. Human servants work very little in the absence of their masters. They are often in the kitchens, swilling champagne. When the cat’s away…if you’ll excuse the expression.

  For a single moment the great palace was like a picture of itself, framed in quiet. Nothing moved until the next moment when the palace flickered to life again.

  Fur stirred. Fur the same gray as the shadows. Floral arrangements grew ears. From somewhere a handkerchief skirt whisked across parquet. And suddenly the palace burst into new being. Every palace—every house—gets busier when the humans are away. Every time a human walks out of a room, something with more feet walks in.

  Long velvet curtains swayed, and mice dropped down. Antimacassars moved, and mouse snouts thrust up through the cutwork. From across gilt frames in the Picture Gallery, mice crept in long lines, and from every crack in the plaster. Tails added to the fringe on the upholstery. Chandeliers tinkled with us. We were everywhere. Tapestries rippled mysteriously.

  Bats may have us all outnumbered, but the mice of Buckingham Palace far outnumber the palace humans. And we naturally make better use of the space.

  As a rule, the greatest rodent events must take place in the darkest watches of the night. But on Diamond Jubilee Day let the sun shine upon us. Let great shafts of light fall across the grand clutter and marble paving of these royal rooms, and us!

  And so we used every cranny and crevice and anteroom. We regrouped in butlers’ pantries and fanned out. We swarmed out of every royal water closet, flushed with excitement. A very high society mouse wedding was under way before the hearth in Princess Louise’s suite. Mouse mites were being christened at the foot of the font in the Royal Chapel.

  But the real and royal reason for our day lay yet ahead. In fact Queen Victoria’s entire Diamond Jubilee might have been arranged for a different Monarch altogether, and her alone.

  The palace clocks were ticking toward twelve when Her Unmentionable Majesty the Queen of the Mice would receive the foreign delegations in a special Jubilee Court. There was loose talk of a surprise announcement. After all, the Queen of the Mice was getting on. Power would pass. But to whom? Rodent rumors ran riot.

  And so as the clocks nudged noon, the best-born mice from across Europe made their way to the Throne Room, where prisms drip against gold, and power pulsates.

  The Throne Room dwarfs humans, let alone mice. But the floor was a field of gray, aglitter with mouse medals and tiny tiaras. How proud they were to be admitted to the Great Sovereign Secrecy of the Court. For after all, if the Queen of the Mice were common knowledge, it would raise too many questions, some of them in Parliament.

  And so every regal snout from here to Greece turned to the empty dais below Victoria’s throne, waiting for what came next. Commoner mice clung to the edges of the crowd: regular, everyday mice who keep the palace and the Mews and the world ticking over. More useful than royals, really.

  It was a moment in history that did not lack witnesses, who told and retold the tale long after.

  The choristers were the first through that mousehole behind the throne. Mice boys from the Palace Choir School that keeps within the walls of the Music Room and inside the grand piano. In they filed, jostling and pulling one another’s tail, as you do. They formed into two lines to scamper up the rear legs of the throne. Not an easy job in their robes with big pussycat bows, if you’ll excuse the expression, under their little pointed chins.

  They assembled, sopranos all, up there on the seat of the throne, a choir loft now. Then they burst into what was our Mouse National Anthem before the humans got to it:

  “Land of hope and glory,

  Mother of the Cheese!”

  the choristers sang. Being boys, they were always hungry.

  Mice of all dynasties stood stiffly to attention, right back to the Bulgarians at the rear of the room. How long they’d rehearsed those bows, those curtsies.

  The choristers’ last squeaks still hung in the air when through the mousehole trooped the Yeomice of the Guard, all in scarlet with the streamers streaming from their mushroom caps. Clanking with cutlery, they swarmed into a massive force around the four claw feet of the throne.

  In command was the Captain of the Yeomice, more imposing off his chipmunk than on it. How perfect his posture, his body beneath the gold fringe all muscle like a hummingbird. His back-flung shoulders massive in mouse terms.

  The room grew restless, sensing the approaching presence of the Queen. Tails flailed. You could have cut the tension with a cheese knife. But first, here came her faithful retainers, the bats, in a haze of undigested insects. The Bat Chancellor and Air Marshal, old B. Chiroptera, lurched along in the lead.

  Nothing very festive about bats, of course. Not a handsome species. They hardly have profiles. Better behind the scenes. Far better. But they too must have their Jubilee Day in the focus of fame. Room on the dais was made for them, black against the scarlet of the Yeomice.

  There followed the ladies-in-waiting, and so the Queen herself was not more than a whisker away. Her Dames of the Bedchamber, Rodentesses of the Royal Personage, Mice Maids of Honor were all in full court feather. Their skirts were so enormous, they had to be thrust from behind by many hands through the mousehole.

  The dais sparkled with the diamond chips in their ears and far down their furry fronts. How wasp their waists, though mice don’t really have waists. They bore floral tributes to their Queen, scattering petals, and arranged themselves picturesquely, blotting out the bats. You cannot beat the English for pageantry. And mice we may be, but we are English first. All Europe was agog.

  Now the great moment was at hand. Mouse pages in powdered wigs unrolled a long hair ribbon to serve as red carpet, from the mousehole to the very front of the dais. Yeomice presented arms. Bats bowed. Ladies-in-waiting fell to the floor in their curtsies. Above, the choristers were all eyes, hungry for their first glimpse of her, the Mother of their Cheese.

  Then she was there, suddenly visible, thrust by many hands from the darkness of mystery to the glare of the Throne Room. She was no longer slender, and her skirts were half a ruler wide. When these skirts settled around her, they were butterfly wings sewn in an intricate pattern. I knew that needlework. I knew the nets that had trapped the butterflies.

  The Queen of the Mice shimmered in every color as she advanced along the red carpet. Though as a rule she wore only deepest black, in mourning for her daughter, the Princess Royal. But then Her Human Majesty Queen Victoria had herself today left off the black mourning for her late husband. Perhaps this pair of queens had decided it between themselves.

  Mice are not known for their necks, but the Queen was roped with seed pearls from chin to knee. Her crown was a diamond ring similar to one that had gone missing from Princess Alexandra’s jewel case some while back, though a reward was still offered for its recovery. The Queen came forth as if on a set of small wheels. Her skirts fluttered like flight.

  Now she stood before the throne, arranging shawls as fine as spiderweb around her gray shoulders. She looked out over all the Europe that counted. And she did not appear happy to see them, though the room was practically on its knees and bowing from the neck as you do.
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  “Bela!” the Queen of the Mice cried out.

  Bela?

  “Where is he? We want Bela!”

  And from the bats beyond her, the Bat Chancellor loomed forth. Bela? The B in B. Chiroptera was for Bela?

  “Your Majesty?” he inquired into her jeweled ear.

  “Time is running very short, Bela,” she said in a stage whisper. “The Others will soon be back.” She meant the human royals. For mice, time is always running out. We are all rather here today—

  “We haven’t the time for proper presentations,” snapped the Queen. “Run the foreign delegations past us. And let us take them at the gallop.” She sighed. “So many of them, so few of ourself.”

  And so the foreigners came, waved on by the Bat Chancellor. They flowed past the dais in a jiggle of quick bows and sudden curtsies. The Germans first, with small spikes on the tops of their helmets and tiny jackboots. And what a lot of them: every living Liederkranz and all the Limburgers. An unbearable number of barons and countless countesses.

  The Belgians followed in a great mob. And hard on their heels the Spanish, their claws clicking like castanets across the marble. Then the Russians in all their barbaric splendor. Romanov rodents in caterpillar-fur caps. Even one of the Gorgonzola princes from Italy, looking very blue-veined.

  Then here came the Danes.

  The Queen had been frozen in dignity and disapproval. Now she thawed. Her gaze skipped over several Danish princesses and fell upon Bruno, Prince Havarti. He was packed into his court clothes. A ribbon rattling with medals strained across his front. His breeches ballooned behind.

  With the smallest of gestures, the Queen of the Mice summoned him forth, while the world craned their necks to see.

  It took Prince Bruno two tries and a boost from behind to make it up onto the dais. It had been hard enough for him to get down the comb at the wreath-laying ceremony. But at last he was before the Queen. Damply, he bowed as low as he could.

  Rumor had reached the farthest end of the room—right back to the Bulgarians—that the Queen of the Mice might make a startling and historic announcement. But, wait—she’s speaking now: