House of Tribes

by Garry Kilworth

  All that week, at various hours, Hearallthings played the piano from within. On the second night a noticeboard appeared in the garden, with thick red symbols on it. On the fifth night there was feverish packing. On the seventh night the nudniks in the House went out with their suitcases and climbed into their vehicle. They drove away for good.

  The Headhunter was with them.

  So were the cats and the dog.

  The Great Nudnik Drive was a success.

  The House had been left to the mice.

  JARLSBERG

  ‘THE VERMIN HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT!’ WENT UP THE cry. ‘The bounteous larder is ours!’

  Immediately the nudniks had gone there was a great scampering and running, as the cry rang out and mice headed towards the magnificent larder in a body. They tumbled down the stairs, they flowed from holes in the skirting-board, they came in rivers from behind the wainscot. They poured into the kitchen from all directions, through the doors, through holes, out of the lean-to woodshed. Into the glorious larder they went, squeezing under the door, finding the secret passages bored by the kitchen mice when they had owned it.

  There was great joy and feasting in the House. Mice scrambled over food cramming themselves, calling to one another in high voices, congratulating everyone, especially themselves, especially Gorm, especially Hearallthings.

  Phart and Flegm became so gorged on honey they got drunk on vinegar afterwards, mistaking it for wine.

  Gorm-the-old stuffed himself on cold mashed potato, until his eyes rolled in his head, and he flopped over and fell asleep in the dish, grumbling away to himself.

  Frych-the-freckled swilled down blancmange by the mouthful, her young ones huddled around her, licking the drips that fell from her matronly whiskers.

  Iban and Astrid rolled in some butter, covering their fur, then ate their way furiously into a great towering blackcurrant jelly which collapsed and almost drowned them.

  Whispersoft yelled to everyone he saw that the biscuits were terrific and managed to spray crumbs over half his tribe in the process. And Goingdownfast, deciding to give any onlookers a demonstration of his swimming ability in the jug of milk, almost drowned.

  Ulf ate a whole garlic clove and wilted anyone who came within breathing distance thereafter.

  There were clouds of mustard powder, pepper and salt, flour and bran, filling the atmosphere, causing the tribes to sneeze and gasp for breath. Cornflakes were crunched, underfoot as well as in mouth. Apples were gnawed. Bread was ignored.

  However, there were those who ate sparingly, remaining aloof from the general debauched banqueting. I-kucheng and his faithful follower Skrang were among them: they were not the kind to wassail. Nor was Treadlightly. She even cached some of the food near her nest. Iago, the book gourmet, also looked on in disgust, telling his fellow tribesmen that there were nice new magazines and newspapers to be had, in the now catless living-room, and to stop glutting themselves on rich food which would lay them low for eons afterwards.

  Pedlar was not fashioned of the same stoic material as his mate. To his eternal shame he flung himself on to a desert of sugar and devoured the crunchy sweet sand until he had reduced it to a beach. Thereafter he moaned for an hour as the stuff passed through his system and gave rise to much pain, many words of regret.

  There was food for all, of every description, to be eaten in vast quantities, but there was one fare which was still treated with great reverence, eaten only after I-kucheng had blessed and purified the eaters in a small impromptu ceremony, and then only tasted in small amounts.

  It was the ambrosia of mice, the provender of the rodent gods, the stuff of dreams: delicious, delightful, delicate CHEESE.

  Finally, Kellog arrived, emerging through one of the large holes from the kitchen which had its exit under the meat tray. Mice immediately cleared a space for him. Without a word he strode through the middle of the food, stepping in custard and cake, potato and sausage meat, leaving large clawmarks in his wake. When he came to a huge chunk of cheese and a bowl of cream, he settled down on his fours to eat through both of them. Not a mouse dared ask to share even a morsel of either with him. Goingdownfast, who had been drying off behind a loaf, was hastily smuggled out through a secret passage.

  The only words Kellog spoke, with his mouth full at the time, were these:

  ‘When I find you-know-who, I’ll break his nasty little neck.’

  Thereafter the banquet was conducted in a hushed and not altogether pleasant atmosphere.

  TORTA SAN GAUDENZIO

  Over the hours and nights, Kellog had come to accept Merciful’s presence in the attics as inevitable. He had hoped in the beginning that she would find another roost and leave him king of the roof, but when it became evident that this was never going to happen he ceased to be concerned.

  Kellog was of course even more wary of Merciful than he was of rhymers, as well he might be, for her kind was the nemesis of all rodents. Her natural prey was mainly insects, with some voles and mice, but Kellog knew she would kill a rat if that opportunity presented itself. In size there was little difference between the two of them: their body lengths were about the same. In ferocity and weapons however, she was the undoubted superior. If it came to a battle between them, there was no question that she would be the winner.

  Thus, when she came to the water tank to wash, he stayed deep in his nest, and trembled. He hated being afraid of her, just as he hated not being lord of the attics: she had taken over that position. Once upon a time he had been the only creature to be feared amongst the attic mice. Since she had arrived, he had become the secondary fear, and she the primary.

  If he heard the water being used, he would peer out cautiously, just once. Then, if he saw her facial disk, with its piercing eyes, he would duck back inside his nest with his heart beating at twice its normal speed.

  The reason he had to look out was because, though he knew the difference between the sound of a mouse drinking and the sound of Merciful washing, Goingdownfast had once or twice simulated the owl’s bathing sounds to frighten Kellog. Kellog now risked death looking out of his nest, to make sure it wasn’t Goingdownfast tricking him. Even being rhymed to death was preferable to being fooled by that wood mouse he hated so much.

  That very morning, Merciful had been to the water tank for a bathe. Kellog had looked out, seen her feathered form, with its vast array of terrible hooks, and then cowered in the back of his nest for the rest of the washing period. He had prayed of course, as he usually did, for the owl to get caught on some projection and drown. It had been known. Owls did like to bathe and they sometimes drowned in attic water-tanks. Kellog wasn’t quite sure how this happened, but he wasn’t above wishing for it. The Grand Nudnik Drive had seen off the humans and if only something could do the same for Merciful, it would certainly be the cherry on the cake.

  While she washed, Merciful made funny chirruping sounds, which might have endeared her to any listening nudniks, but Kellog found them chillingly evil.

  Later on, Kellog had another visit, this time from Timorous, to finalize their plans for killing Goingdownfast. The place where the deed was to be carried out had already been agreed upon: it was simply a matter of setting the date and time. Three nights hence, when the dusk was three-quarters grey, Timorous told his accomplice in murder, this would be the time to strike. Agreed, replied Kellog, anxious to have it over and done with, once and for all.

  Then Timorous left him to dream: of delicious rotten cheeses full of meaty little maggots; of sacks of flour crawling with weevils; of apples covered in sweet brown bruises.

  KÜMMEL

  SINCE THE NUDNIKS HAD GONE IT WAS NOT JUST PHART and Flegm who were carousing. There were drunken mice all over the House, bickering over trivial things, being generally foul and obnoxious, and sleeping in the wrong nests. Some mice, it was true, remained sensible and level-headed, while a few – here and there – actually wanted the nudniks back again.

  The latter were not organized into any st
rong body, but formed twos or threes in corners, who spoke critically about the judiciousness of driving out the nudniks. They feared the anarchy that they now saw as its result.

  ‘How could we get them back?’ one mouse said to Astrid, who was naturally the most outspoken of those desiring a return to the old order. ‘We can’t just go out and say we’ve made a mistake and herd them back in again.’

  ‘I don’t know what we can do,’ she replied, ‘but I know that if they do return, we should settle back down to the way we were, and never again try to interfere with the forces of Nature.’

  The forces of Nature. This phrase had a telling effect on the old guard. It encapsulated everything they felt about the situation. The nudniks were meant to own the House and the mice were not. It was as simple as that. Mice were not fashioned in the mould of owners. Nudniks were vermin, but they were necessary pests to a stable household.

  Even Pedlar was beginning to suspect that the freedom the mice had obtained was not being well handled. Out in the distant Hedgerow they were used to freedom and over the centuries of nights, boundaries had been established, order maintained, by certain sensitivities. There was a tolerance, a forebearance, in the Hedgerow which seemed to be missing in the mouse-run House. Nothing so definite as ‘this is my area, that’s yours, and if you cross the line you die’ existed in the Hedgerow. It was more by tacit agreement, unstated but understood, that harmony was regulated.

  Here in the House, where absolutes had ruled and had been wiped out overnight, no new customs and practices had arisen to replace those which had gone.

  Now that the nudniks had been driven out and there was food for all, tribal boundaries had all but disappeared. The kitchen was no longer regarded as the territory of the Savage Tribe, nor the library that of the Bookeaters. Mice were beginning to build nests where they pleased, some of them in the living-room and parlour. It was a free-for-all and there were fights for the best nesting places – in the sofa for instance, in the beds – and no-one quite knew what were his or her rights. There was, it seemed, a general breakdown of order.

  Pedlar saw in this a potentially very dangerous situation, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t think, like Astrid, that the vanquished vermin should be persuaded to return, but he did believe that something should be done about the wilder elements of the house mice.

  ‘Come and see what I’ve found! Come and see what I’ve found!’ cried an excited young mouse.

  The older, mature group of mice were sort of slobbing around the kitchen floor at the time, letting the food digest, allowing the god of lethargy to rule the body for a while. Bellies were propped, skin taut across tummies, their owners feeling bilious and bellicose. The mice were paying a price for overeating. Heads turned towards the unwelcome herald, but clearly they were all far too relaxed to want to move.

  ‘What is it,’ growled a truculent Gorm-the-old.

  ‘Come and see!’ cried the youngster, too excited to notice that the tribal elders were virtually incapacitated.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Pedlar.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Treadlightly said.

  Ferocious added, ‘Me too.’

  No one else seemed inclined to move, so the three of them ambled after the youngster as it led them out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

  Pedlar found it strange, being able to wander throughout the House without fearing attack. He half expected to see Eyeball lurking in the shadows, her grey-blue fur melding with the dimness of dark corners. It was going to be a while before any of the mice would be able to go on walkabout without compulsively looking over their shoulders.

  Certainly there were still dangers present. Merciful still ruled the rafters and the mice could not afford to underestimate her. Only hours ago a young Invisible, his brain dulled by too much food and drink, had disappeared on his way back to his nest. Whispersoft believed that Merciful was responsible: that the youngster had exposed himself at the wrong time.

  There were signs too, that the mighty Kellog was beginning to realize his ambition of being Lord of the House. He swaggered from place to place, bullied anyone he found in his way, and was beginning to attract one or two of the more rebellious youngsters of the 13-K. They saw in Kellog the new master of the universe and, while they were terrified of him, they also recognized in him a chance to make themselves mice to be reckoned with, by becoming his disciples. There were already one or two small gangs beginning to make a nuisance of themselves. One such gang, calling itself the Wreckers, flattered Kellog in his hearing. They jeered at the old and defenceless, seeking his approval.

  And now that the House was empty, what was to prevent feral cats from coming into it at will? At the moment it was all securely locked up, but there would come a time when the windows would be broken, or the door rotted, and then Outsiders would enter. Already the place was very cold and damp, the heating having gone off once the nudniks had left.

  These thoughts ran through Pedlar’s mind as the youngster scampered along the landing to the Headhunter’s bedroom.

  All the adult mice paused before entering the dreaded room. This place had been a death chamber for so long it still had the ambient stink of a slaughterhouse. Mice had been tortured, maimed and abused in this room, before being murdered and their remains fed to Little Prince. Their yawning skulls still decorated the shelves. Their bleached bones remained scattered over the dressing-table top. Some impaled pelts still decked the cork display board. It was not easy to go boldly marching into a place which still retained an atmosphere of death.

  The youngster, who was barely old enough to know what it was all about, scampered inside without hesitation.

  Pedlar followed once he had subdued his terror of the place and the others were close on his tail.

  They stared at what the youngster had found.

  On the floor was the cage of Little Prince, the door left open, with Little Prince still inside. It seemed that the Headhunter had left his pet behind, abandoned him to the tribes, although he had allowed Little Prince a means of escape.

  ‘They left you behind,’ said Pedlar, going up to the open cage door. ‘They left you to die.’

  Little Prince cowered in the back of his cage, not looking at his visitors, but talking to the bars instead.

  ‘No, well, you see, it’s best not to go out there. I haven’t had my nails clipped for one thing and I look such a sight tonight. Oh dear, how fat I’ve grown lately – look at my big fat turn. I can’t seem to get enough sleep these hours, not since I ate all those horrid things that master gave me. Dear, dear, dear, what a dreadful state to get in…’

  It was pitiful and immediately Pedlar’s natural compassion became stronger than his desire for revenge.

  ‘Little Prince?’ he said.

  ‘Of course, if master had brushed my pure and lovely white coat with that toothbrush before he left, I would look my best, wouldn’t I, and then mice would have to say “Hello, Little Prince, you look nicely groomed tonight. You look as white and clean as cherry-plum blossom. You look as chaste as the first fall of snow.” But he didn’t, did he?’

  Little Prince had perpetrated some terrible acts and Pedlar couldn’t deny that, but there was something about the white mouse which fortified Pedlar’s inherent empathy for all creatures, great and small. It wasn’t something which Pedlar could put a name to – possibly just a spark of a feeling – but he sensed something more in the pathetic animal than just cruelty and a barbaric lust for mouse flesh. As much as Little Prince had abused, he had also been abused, reflected the sensitive yellow-neck.

  ‘You’ve done some bad things, Little Prince,’ said Pedlar. ‘Some very bad things. You look so virtuous and innocent, yet you’ve been a perfect monster in this House.’

  The white mouse stared at him. His gaze was long and steady. His face was devoid of expression.

  ‘I did what I did then,’ said Little Prince, suddenly rational. ‘There’s nothing more to be said, is there?’


  With a strong feeling that more than Little Prince’s fate was resting on his decision, Pedlar quickly turned to the other two, glad that he was accompanied by Treadlightly and Ferocious.

  ‘What are we going to do with him? We can’t hand him over to the tribes. They’ll tear him to pieces. It won’t be good for them either. Things are already getting way out of hand, without allowing blood-lust to run wild. It might trigger off all sorts of revenge killings. Mice settling old scores and feuds – there’ll be things done that mice will regret later.’

  ‘We should tell Gorm about this,’ stated the young mouse who had found Little Prince. ‘Gorm will know what to do with him.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ cried Little Prince, reverting to his little-mouse-lost demeanour. ‘I’m sure my whiskers are not in the best condition. Shall I be executed, do you think, for not keeping my whiskers neat and silky? Oh dear, oh dear! Shall I lick them, to make them pretty? What if it were to rain tonight? My poor whiskers would get wet.’

  ‘You’re more likely to have them pulled out by the roots,’ said the youngster.

  Treadlightly, picking up on Pedlar’s attitude, went to the youngster and said, ‘I don’t think we should tell Gorm about this – or anyone else either.’

  The youngster blinked and stared up at this doe with the kindly face. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you want to see a mouse torn to shreds before your eyes?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said the youngster. ‘He’s killed lots of mice. He’s eaten them. He deserves it!’

  ‘Well, in the first place, I don’t think Little Prince has killed a single mouse, though as you say, he’s eaten their flesh because he doesn’t know any better. It was his master who killed and fed the mice to him. It’s possible the Headhunter starved Little Prince in the beginning, so that he would have to eat whatever was offered him.’

  She pointed to Little Prince, who was still chattering to the bars of his cage, very softly.

  She said, ‘What I asked you, however, is whether you actually want to see a mouse ripped apart before your eyes.’