Secrets at Sea

by Richard Peck

  Here was undoubtedly little Lord Sandown, who would one day be the Earl of Clovelly. He looked like he might be a handful. But the nanny gave him a sharp jerk to keep him near her serge skirts.

  I chanced a look beyond him, and there was . . . the sea. More water than I knew there was. Gray and choppy. A world of water. The deck rose and fell. The lifeboats swung from their davits. I hoped in my heart we’d never have to get in one of those things.

  Whistles shrilled. Uniformed men tried their best to round up the humans to stand near their lifeboats and be counted. But it was like herding you-know-whats.

  My two human gentlemen stood a little apart from the crowd. The other gentleman spoke. “I shall not be needing the lap robe, Plunkett, on such a pleasant day at sea.”

  He was quite nice-looking for a human, and young in human years.

  “Very good, Lord Peter,” said my human—Plunkett.

  I nearly forgot my fear, there in the brim, staring at sky and trailing smoke. Lord Peter? Could this be the Lord Peter Henslowe the Duchess of Cheddar Gorge had named at dinner last night? Twenty-four years old and good-looking and hard to catch?

  What strange fate had brought me so near him, I wondered, in all this multitude of humans?

  I chanced another look. Beyond Lord Peter’s fine profile I saw all the Upstairs Cranstons in a clump. Sea breeze whipped Mrs. Cranston’s hat into a frenzy of feathers. I scanned her for Beatrice. But no saucy, beady eyes appeared to peer out of her squirrel pelts. And while Louise must have been someplace on Camilla’s person, I couldn’t see where.

  I chanced another look.

  As I watched, Olive detached herself from the family and staggered on the slanting deck to the railing. There she was stupendously sick over the side of the ship. Oh my, she was sick. It went on forever. I hoped there were no people leaning on the rails of lower decks.

  Her family rushed to her aid, to keep her from pitching over in that space between the rail and the lifeboat.

  “Let me go!” Olive announced. “I’m dying anyway.” She threw her head over the railing yet again.

  “Olive has not found her sea legs!” Mrs. Cranston boomed to the world. “Send for the doctor!”

  “Plunkett,” Lord Peter said quietly, “give the young lady my lap robe.”

  Plunkett and I surged forward. I cringed in his brim. Now Olive was sagging in Mr. Cranston’s big fists. She hung there, pea-green, with her damp veils plastered against her preserver and her hat over one ear. She wasn’t dying, but she was willing. And she looked her absolute worst.

  “Sir, for the young lady,” said Plunkett, holding out the lap robe for Olive’s heaving shoulders.

  “Good of you,” Mr. Cranston rumbled. Mrs. Cranston loomed up to wrap Olive in the lap robe.

  I should have seen this coming. I should have thought ahead. Why didn’t I? In the presence of a lady, even Mrs. Cranston, Plunkett . . . reached up to take off his hat to her.

  The giant sausage fingers appeared again, to grip the brim. Off came the hat. My world tipped and tilted. I skidded halfway round the trough. Then I was in the air, turning there above the sea and the lifeboat and the slanting deck. I seemed to soar somehow. I scudded like an autumn leaf, grappling with thin air. I lit directly on the ship’s railing. We always land on our feet, but another inch in the other direction, and I’d have gone straight into the sea and fed myself to the fishes. Water is not a happy subject with us mice.

  The air was knocked out of me. But I gripped the railing, fighting for breath, pulling myself together.

  Honestly, what a day.

  A murmur went up. I had appeared from nowhere. Now I was in plain sight where you never want to be. Dozens of humans were astonished to see me there. Scores of humans. I felt their eyes. “Eeeek,” said several.

  “Floyd!” Mrs. Cranston clutched her husband and shrieked. “The rats are deserting the ship. We must be sinking!”

  “Fiddlesticks, Flora,” roared Mr. Cranston. Olive still sagged in his hands. “It’s only a mouse.”

  “Oh, Mousie!” Camilla exclaimed.

  It was time I made tracks. But the railing was slick with polish. The English spit and polish. I scrabbled and skidded. I slipped sideways. Sea breeze caught my ears. My tail was all over the place. I might yet pitch into the unforgiving sea. I looked in that direction, into the lifeboat.

  I froze. There on a bench, sitting in orderly rows, were easily twenty mouse boys. Mouse Scouts. Standing over them was Nigel, taking roll. They too were having lifeboat drill. They all looked up in surprise at me, though nothing surprises Nigel.

  I didn’t pick out Lamont from among them. I simply didn’t have the time. I ran for my life.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Royal Command

  PURE PANIC HAD sped me out of Camilla’s cabin. Instinct led me back. Now I lay panting under her bed, planning never to budge until we docked. Exhausted. My head rattled with all I’d been through—the tipping hat brim, the endless sea, all those humans. From the cabin next door came Olive’s piteous moans and a deep voice. The doctor must have arrived.

  Though I didn’t mean to blink until Beatrice and Louise were back, I dozed off and dreamed that I’d missed the railing and was feeding myself to the fishes. A dream of time running out.

  Voices brought me to the surface. “Oh for pity’s sake, Helena. Napping in the middle of the day?”

  Louise was back, and with her Beatrice. Beatrice sneezed.

  “That squirrel cape of Mrs. Cranston’s is disgusting,” she said. “It reeks of mothballs and camphor and . . . squirrel. I like to have suffocated.”

  I gathered myself up and did something with my tail. I had hardly slept. “But what about the sea, Beatrice?” I said with my usual concern. “Weren’t you terrified?”

  “I never really saw it,” said the provoking girl. “I couldn’t fight my way out of all those dead squirrels.” Beatrice pondered. “Oh, I did just manage one peek. I saw you on the railing, Helena. Honestly, what were you thinking?”

  I would not dignify that question with a reply. I turned to my other sister. “And where were you the whole time, Louise? I looked and looked.”

  “I was in the patch pocket on Camilla’s duster coat, just under the life preserver. I could see everything. Really, Helena, showing yourself to all those humans! When Mrs. Cranston began screeching about rats deserting the sinking ship, I was so embarrassed I didn’t know which way to look. I’m surprised some human didn’t fold up a newspaper and give you a good swat.”

  We were nose to nose to nose under the bed. I bristled, but refused to explain. I have my pride. Besides, we were interrupted. A commanding voice came from the door.

  “ ’Ello, ’ello, anybody at ’ome?”

  We goggled at each other. Beatrice quivered.

  “I ’ave ’ere an invitation from ’Er Royal ’Igh-ness, the Duchess of Cheddar Gorge, Mouse-in-Waiting to the daughter of ’Er Majesty Queen Victoria. She commands your company for tea this very afternoon!”

  We gaped. Then we ran squeaking into one another. Then we emerged from under Camilla’s bed, all agog.

  And there before us stood . . . Lamont.

  Lamont!

  He sat back on his spindly haunches with his hand propped on one of them. He was trying to be as much like Nigel as he could manage. Oh, how hard he was trying.

  “Lamont,” we demanded, “what are you saying, and why are you saying it like that?”

  He preened. “I’ave the honor of being Nigel’s new assistant cabin steward. “ ’E picked me over all the others! We are a team, me and Nigel!” He preened again.

  “Nigel and I,” I said.

  “Nigel and I. And you three are wanted for tea with the Duchess at quarter past four o’clock sharp.” Lamont stroked one of his sparse whiskers as if it were one of Nigel’s gorgeous ones.

  But why in the world would the Duchess want us for tea? We asked this.

  “It’s a Royal Command,” said Lamont down hi
s nose. “Ours is not to reason why. Ours is to turn up on time.”

  “But how will we know when it’s quarter past four o’clock?” Beatrice said. She had a point. We mice are not good with time. For us, it’s always run—

  “The gong will sound at four o’clock to summon the ’umans to their tea in the Winter Garden,” said Lamont, who was ’ardly—hardly Lamont at all. “Once they’re out of the way, then you three ’ightail it for the Duchess’s suite.”

  “But where—”

  “I shall meself conduct you,” Lamont said grandly. “Now, if there are no further questions, I’ave other duties. Nigel keeps me on the ’op.”

  Then he was under the door and gone.

  We gazed at where he’d been.

  “Why don’t boys ever want to be themselves? Why do boys always want to be somebody else?” asked Louise, who wanted to be Camilla.

  “How can we go to tea like this?” Beatrice said. She looked down at herself.

  “Fur is perfectly correct for travel,” I pointed out.

  “For tea with a Duchess? A royal whatever?” Beatrice said. “I doubt it. I doubt it seriously.”

  Provoking girl, but she had a point.

  At quarter past four o’clock, probably, we were at the Duchess’s doors with our hearts in our mouths. Know-it-all Lamont had led us up and up through the ship to this very grand deck. The carpet was thick. The brass work gleamed like gold.

  The sounds of a string quartet echoed up from the Winter Garden. The humans were having tea there. Not Olive, of course. Olive was in bed.

  Still, we’d darted and scurried the whole way and hoped not to be noticed. After all, look at us.

  There was Beatrice in an elegant skirt of Swiss cotton, a handkerchief folded and gathered at the waist, though she has no waist. And look at Louise, in Camilla’s handkerchief with the embroidered violets, flounced, and a high Empire waistline. And I in white linen with a crocheted pink border, which is right for my coloring. We looked nice.

  Following Lamont’s patchy tail, we went in under the doors. It wasn’t easy in these skirts. On the other side in the Duchess’s front hall stood a very small mouse, hardly life-sized. She was hip-deep in the carpet and then some.

  “What names?” she inquired.

  “The sisters Cranston,” Lamont said, “’Elena, Louise, and Beatrice.”

  The undersized mouse wrung her hands.“Oh, I shall never remember all that.”

  “Never mind.” Commanding Lamont waved a hand. “I’ll announce them. Show us the way to the Duchess!”

  How he got all this training in a single day I’ll never know. He may have learned better away from school. Besides, he wanted to be Nigel.

  We crept into the drawing room on all fours, not easy in these skirts. Beatrice tripped herself up and nosed into the Persian carpet, twice. The furniture was overstuffed cut velvet with tassels. The paneled walls were hung with paintings of female humans swinging in beribboned swings. So this was how royalty traveled. You wouldn’t know you were at sea. The room hardly swayed. A fire snapped and crackled in the marble hearth.

  Before it, outlined in flame, the Duchess of Cheddar Gorge, Mouse-in-Waiting to the daughter of the Queen, leaned upon her matchstick cane with the gold top. Firelight burnished the tiara between her ears. The room was enormous around her, but she filled it with her being.

  “The sisters Cranston,” Lamont announced in a piping voice that crackled like the fire. “’Elena, Louise, and Beatrice.

  “Curtsy,” he muttered, as if we wouldn’t. We dropped three curtsies. We did our best.

  Lamont withdrew. The Duchess looked us over. She was shaky on her pins, but sharp-eyed. “What pretty skirts,” she deigned to say, looking away.

  Beside her on the brass fender of the hearth a tea was laid out: steaming thimbles and a variety of crumbs; tea cake and crumpet and cucumber sandwich, on polished British pennies. Bits of cheese, a creamy Bel Paese, tastefully arranged.

  We had soon settled on the hearthstones, the fire warm on our faces. Our skirts collapsed picturesquely around us. The undersized mouse and two more like her moved among us, serving us our tea. It was excellent. My crumb of tea cake had a raisin in it.

  It took the Duchess no time at all to come to the point. “We shall explain the circumstances of our household,” she said over a thimble. “In addition to ourselves, Her Royal Highness Princess Louise is attended by a human lady-in-waiting, Lady Augusta Drear. They naturally do not take tea in the Winter Garden. We rarely partake in public. At present the Princess is being kneaded in the Turkish bath.”

  We stared.

  “She is having a massage,” the Duchess explained, “and Lady Augusta is holding the towel.”

  My stars, we thought. This is certainly life at the top.

  “We live quite differently at home, when we are In Residence,” the Duchess continued. “We would hardly have our tea off a fender and pennies there! We have our own fine doll china in our quarters within the palace walls.”

  We stirred.

  “Buckingham Palace.”

  The Duchess looked wistful at the thought of home. “Are there any questions?” Her missing eyebrows rose high. Her eyes sought me out. I felt special. As this was something like school, I put up my hand.

  “Yes, my dear.”

  “Only one question, Duchess. Does the Princess Louise, daughter of the Queen, know you are her Mouse-in-Waiting? Does she acknowledge your presence?”

  The Duchess looked pensively into the fire. “She does and she doesn’t. To royalty, all the rest of the world are rodents in a manner of speaking. As for her lady-in-waiting, Lady Augusta Drear, she is mortally afraid of mice. And so I must exercise all my tact as I go about my duties.”

  We tried to take in all this information, and the cheese.

  “That brings us to the purpose of this tea,” the Duchess said. “We dare not tarry, as the servants will soon be back and the Princess and Lady Augusta will be returning from the Turkish bath. Time is short. But then, time is always running out for mice, don’t you find?”

  We did.

  “Certainly Lady Augusta must not discover us in plain sight having tea off the fender. One mouse sends her into hysterics. Four mice, three of them in skirts, would send her overboard into the open sea. She is high-strung.”

  The Duchess set her thimble aside. A small mouse maid whisked it away. The other two were already clearing the fender of pennies. Good little workers, all three of them, though I don’t suppose they dusted.

  The Duchess cleared her throat. “It has been brought to our attention that your human Cranstons have not had a good day at sea. We understand that the older daughter is a poor sailor. And the mother was heard to cry out that the ship was sinking during lifeboat drill. This shows a great lack of tact. In fact, none.”

  How true.

  “The family is not using their time at sea to meet the right people. Apart from the ship’s doctor, they don’t seem to be meeting anybody at all.”

  They wouldn’t. The Upstairs Cranstons never were very good mixers.

  “This is an opportunity tragically lost,” the Duchess declared. “How important these ocean voyages are when people are thrown together. Dynasties have been decided. And so we must take steps. It is all for the sake of family.”

  And that, of course, is a thing I’ve always believed.

  The Duchess was already hobbling across the carpet to a fine writing desk, probably Chippendale. Firelight glowed in its polish and winked on its brass drawer pulls. We followed. At the desk’s elegant feet, the Duchess looked up. You could hardly see to the top.

  “My leaping days are over,” she said with feeling. “And my climbing days are coming to a close.” She took my arm and drew me near. “You will have to help me up those drawer pulls to the top, my dear.”

  Ours is not to reason why. It took all of us to get her there. I went first, pulling her from drawer pull to drawer pull as the Persian carpet fell away below us.
Beatrice and Louise boosted her from behind with her tail all over their faces. None of this was easy in these skirts. The Duchess carried her walking stick in her teeth. She was a game old thing.

  We were no sooner at the cluttered top than she got busy, hobbling over the blotter, swerving around the inkstand. “Now, where is that guest list?” she wondered aloud. “I know Lady Augusta was working on it only this afternoon. Ah!”

  She nosed a sheet of cream-laid paper our way. The names on it were written in a flowing script.

  “I will explain. Her Royal Highness the Princess Louise will honor a very few of her fellow passengers at an evening reception in the near future. A little music and light refreshment.”

  We stared, mystified.

  “One of our several talents is that we can copy the Princess’s handwriting,” she said. “Being artistic, she writes in a beautiful script. So do we.”

  “Oh for pity’s sake,” Louise blurted. “She’s going to invite the Upstairs Cranstons to the Princess’s reception!”

  We gasped and goggled. The Duchess nearly smiled. We glimpsed her terrible teeth. “Ink,” she ordered, “and a pen.”

  EVEN GETTING THE lid off the inkstand was a job. And you should have seen the pen in the Duchess’s hand. It was like writing names with a telephone pole.

  But, oh, she was deft. With her old bent back crouched over the page, she wrote an artistic hand. Her letters had loopier tails than her own. Each time we three carried the pen back to be dipped in ink, she ran a hand down the arch of her aching back.

  Oh, she was deft.

  But the names emerged, drying upon the page:Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Cranston

  Miss Olive Cransten

  Miss Camilla Cranston

  It was not the work of a minute, and time was running out. Handing the Duchess back down from one drawer pull to another was no picnic either. And her breath like to take the finish off the desk.

  But we were at last once more before the fire, shaking out our skirts. In the crackling quiet, music still welled up from the Winter Garden. Yet it was time to go. The whole business had taken a lot out of the Duchess. She was sadly bent. “I have done what I can. The rest is up to you.” She stroked a tangled whisker.