“And we got a bit of a surprise from that, yeah?” said Ken. “Something for our pal Treyzy Weyzy.”
Mice don’t blush, of course, but they sometimes seem to shrink when they’re embarrassed, and now Trey went down by a mouse size or two. It didn’t help that Ken was dancing around in circles on the coffee table, making kissing noises.
“Don’t tell me,” said Susie. “Savannah.”
“Savannah,” mumbled Trey, hiding his face in Megan’s neck.
“C’mon,” said Joey, reaching out to Megan’s shoulder to tickle Trey behind the ears. “You’re among friends now, Treyzy Weyzy.”
“Very funny, very funny,” said Trey, as icily as he knew how. “But after we’d talked to Savannah we actually had a serious conversation with the Big Cheese. Anyone interested in serious conversations? Anyone at all?”
“Of course, Trey,” said Jake. Then he spoiled it by picking up a tapestry cushion and pressing it to his face while his shoulders shook.
Trey waited a moment until his humans came back to earth.
“It was about security,” he said. “You remember? That nice thing we didn’t have, in London?”
And yes, that fixed the giggles. Fast. It pulled the humans back from the world of tapestries and footmen and spotted dogs as Trey passed on his leader’s message. That all was well. They could relax. And a descendant of Coconut Man was definitely due to appear in two or three days’ time.
At last the clock agreed that it was a respectable time for the humans to put their jet lag to bed. Susie came upstairs with Megan to tuck her in. Megan wished her mom could stick around until she fell asleep, as she used to do on the island. Somebody had lit a fire, and its light flickered spookily over the looming figures in the tapestries—here an archer with his bow drawn back, there a snarling wild boar, looking by this dim light as if it might charge oinking out of the tapestry to get her.
This was foolish. It had been at least three years since Megan last felt afraid of the dark, and she so much didn’t want to go whimpering to her mom, particularly if it meant navigating that dimly lit spiral staircase.
“Don’t worry,” said Trey. “We’ll keep watch, me and Julia.”
It was good that he could read her mind sometimes, and the feeling of his warmth against her neck was comforting, but mice against wild boars? Mice against the ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties that Sir Quentin said roamed this island? She decided to close her eyes and count to twenty and if she still felt scared after that…
She never got to twenty. By the time she reached twelve, jet lag took over, and she slept. And Trey and Julia, exhausted, slept too.
The night would probably have been beastie-free had it not been for Megan’s fame among mice. There was no way that the members of the Buckford Hall clan would pass up a chance like this—having the most famous human in the world (among mice) in their midst. Yes, with their human here for three or four days most of them could expect to catch a glimpse of her, but why wait? Left to themselves, almost all the 1,310 mice in the clan would have rushed up through the walls right then, to see Megan sleeping. But as their leaders knew, any mass swarming of mice can be sadly misinterpreted, even by the most enlightened of humans. So the Director of Pastimes set up a roster, with groups of ten mice at a time taking off from Mouse Hall at five-minute intervals, each group to observe Miss Megan for five minutes precisely.
It worked fine for the first six hundred mice, but at two in the morning Megan stirred. She looked around the room by the dim light that still came from the fireplace and she would have drifted back to sleep if one of the tapestries hadn’t moved. It was the scariest of them, one that showed a grinning satyr, half man and half horse, its spear raised in a fierce attack against a terrified stag—frozen in time, until now, when the creature seemed to move in Megan’s direction, its eyes looking straight at her, its spear aimed at her heart.
When Trey had first made Contact last year, he had been afraid that Megan would scream at the sight of a mouse on her pillow. Sometimes he’d imagined what it might have sounded like if she’d really let loose. But never in his imagination was her scream as loud as the one she came out with now. He and Julia both leapt up from their sleeping positions in a wild scramble, ready for battle, peering around for whatever was endangering their human.
Joey came charging in from the next room to save Megan from wild boars or satyrs or anything else. He switched on the light so that now they could both watch as ten mice shuffled out from behind the tapestry, getting a much better view of Miss Megan than the previous groups, a view that actually had Miss Megan sitting up in bed and laughing.
One of the mice sheepishly explained in MSL why they were there, but Trey didn’t translate. No point telling Megan about the roster for gazing at her, because she got quite embarrassed sometimes when mice treated her like a superstar.
Instead he said, “It’s the beastie patrol. They take turns all night to make sure you’re safe.”
And with that, Megan could go back to sleep.
Breakfast at Buckford Hall was duke free, but the absence of the duke was more than made up for by the abundance of food, ranging from regular old bacon and eggs to fried tomatoes and kippers, and from kippers to kidneys and something called kedgeree, which seemed to be fishy.
Even without kippers, kidneys or kedgeree, Megan ate far too much for what happened later. While Jake and her mom could enjoy the luxury of a day with nothing they had to do, a day of total vacation before the rain forest experts arrived, Megan and Joey had to face The Ride.
It would not have been so bad if it had been just them and the groom. He was waiting for them in the stable yard, a short man in a tweedy jacket.
“You kids going to be all right then?” he asked, looking at them a bit dubiously because they were wearing jeans and their regular jackets, with one of Megan’s pockets bulging slightly because Julia had come along for the adventure. Megan had invited Trey, but he turned the offer down.
“Oh shoot,” he’d told Megan. “Can’t make it today. What a pity. Another time, okay? Another time when you’re on top of a really stupid mammal who has the power to pitch you off at any moment so that you land on, oh, I don’t know, maybe on the pocket of your jacket?”
“There’s no way I’d squash you!” Megan had said. But Trey did have a real excuse to stay out of danger. The Brigadier had asked all three talking mice to report for duty in Mouse Hall. With only about eight fully qualified talking mice in the world, most clans never get to meet even one. The presence of three was too much for the Brigadier to pass up, so he had arranged for what he called a “conversation.”
Trey would tell the story of The Night when he first made contact with Megan. Sir Quentin would give them a foretaste of his ode for the Megan Day gala, and Ken had a huge repertoire of limericks with rather dirty last lines.
So it was only Julia in Megan’s pocket when the groom introduced her and Joey to a pudgy girl of about nine in just the right sort of jodhpurs, flicking just the right sort of whip against her shiny boots, with blond braids sticking out below just the right sort of hat.
“Miss Olivia’s coming with us,” said the groom. “Miss Olivia Peabody.”
“Oh, is it your dad who…” Megan began, but for a moment couldn’t think of a way to describe what Mr. Peabody did, except to freak out when he found mice in his shoes.
“That’s who she is, all right,” said the groom. “It’s her pa what really runs this place now, so I have to mind my Ps and Qs when Miss Olivia’s around, don’t I, miss?”
He grinned to show he was joking, but the girl didn’t smile. She looked as if she was not happy, not happy at all, to be riding with kids so improperly dressed.
he groom led three ponies one by one to the mounting block in the middle of the yard.
Olivia’s pony was calm and round, and so was Joey’s, in a slightly larger size. But when it came to Megan’s turn, she was alarmed to find that her pony was far more athletic
than the others, and seemed eager to take off without bothering to wait for anyone to mount.
“Easy there, Prince,” said the groom, standing on the other side of the pony to stabilize him. “He’s a bit of a handful, but I’m sure you’ll manage, because that’s the word I got from His Grace. That you’ve ridden a lot.”
Too late, Megan realized that this was one of those moments in life when you should absolutely say something to clear up a misunderstanding before it kills you. At the very least, she should have mentioned that the animal she’d ridden in the past wasn’t 100 percent horse. But she saw Olivia gazing over at her and said nothing. And when Prince stopped tap-dancing just long enough for her to climb on, then scooted straight backward, it did feel familiar for a moment, because backward was Charlie’s favorite direction too. Couldn’t be so different, could it?
Well, yes, actually, it could. Just the difference between an eighteen-wheeler and a sports car. Just the difference between a lawn mower and a jet plane.
Prince behaved well enough for the first mile or so as the ponies walked behind the groom, though Megan could feel the jittery power that was bottled up beneath her. The trail took them through deep beech woods, most of the leaves now lying soft and spongy on the ground, their sweet autumn scent mingling deliciously with the smell of horse. It was the sort of forest where you could expect Robin Hood to swing down from a branch, or antlers to appear around tree trunks, or boars to come charging at you.
As they headed deeper into the wood, Megan began to relax. She even had time to plan how she’d tell Uncle Fred about this ride, because Prince felt calmer now, as if he was appreciating the stillness of the trees, the muffled clip-clop of hooves on the soft path, the smell of the damp ground. Megan even reached out to pat his neck. Nice pony. Good pony.
Was that her mistake, that little pat? The groom had just reached a fork in the path and turned left, with Olivia right behind him. But something seemed to flip a switch in Prince, to pitch him into a full gallop as he veered away from the group and headed down the other path, the one to the right.
Megan tried pulling on the reins to apply the brakes, but that didn’t seem to work, and anyway she soon needed both hands to cling to the saddle, bending low in case Prince found a branch to duck under so he could scrape the load off his back.
The only good thing was the sound of hoofbeats behind her. That must be the groom, right? Ready to get to the front somehow and grab the reins? But when Megan dared to glance behind her she saw it was Joey, his fat pony gasping for air but still determined to keep up with Prince. Joey, like Megan, was holding tight to the saddle, his eyes wide with the same look that he’d get when he maneuvered his skateboard into an impossible position.
He was enjoying this? When Prince was doing his best to kill them both?
No one killed anyone, as it turned out. The forest path came out into the open where an outcropping of smooth rocks guarded a small cliff above a little river, and beyond it, across a narrow bridge, the grounds of Buckford Hall.
Prince paused as if to weigh the choice between a steep slide down to the river and a U-turn back to the woods. That moment of indecision gave Megan time to slide off, holding tight to the reins.
Joey’s pony lumbered up beside her.
“That was so cool,” he said.
Megan felt shaky all over as she stood in front of Prince, looking him in the eyes as if she could read his mind. If mice were so brilliant, wouldn’t it make sense that other mammals had at least a fraction of their intelligence? That somewhere inside this beast there was a brain that could be reasoned with?
But Prince just bared his teeth and tossed his head, his ears laid back in the sign that in mules, at least, means, “Human—you’re going DOWN.”
There was a wriggling against Megan’s side as Julia climbed out of her pocket and up onto her shoulder and made signs to the pony that Megan knew to be very rude. Understandable from a mouse who’d been pitched from a gently swaying ride into a headlong rush that felt as if it could only end in disaster—the disaster of being in the wrong pocket at the wrong time.
Joey was still on top of his pony, so he had a great view of the Buckford Hall grounds laid out beneath them.
“Look,” he said. “That maze.”
Megan peered between two rocks and saw that a dense square of neatly clipped evergreens was indeed a maze. And now they watched Jake and Susie emerging from it, their arms around each other. Megan wanted to call out—maybe pretend they’d ridden to this bluff on purpose, for the view. But at that moment the groom thundered up on his massive horse, a very unhappy Olivia behind him whining, “Why do we have to go back? It’s not fair. Why can’t we go to Potts Hill? You promised!”
His back to her, the groom rolled his eyes as he fished a leading rein out of his saddlebag and clipped it to Prince’s bridle for the long, slow walk back to the stables.
Megan and Joey came back into the huge house through a door that must be close to the kitchen, because they could hear the clanking of pots and pans. A man in jeans was sauntering in their direction.
“’Ello there, guys!” he said.
“Er?” said Joey.
“Don’t recognize me without me fancy clothes? I’m John, the footman what grabbed your mouse last night. Sir Crispin, was it? How’s he doin’? Not too traumatized, I hope.”
“It’s Sir Quentin,” said Megan. She brought Julia out of her pocket, glad that it was so hard to see the difference between male and female mice. “He’s just fine. Look.”
“But don’t look too close,” she thought, then almost cracked up because even though Julia couldn’t do human expressions she’d managed to look just like Sir Quentin, with the half-closed eyes, the particular angle of the nose, the slow twitch of the whiskers.
“Cute little fella,” said John, reaching over to tickle Julia behind the ears. “Never knew they could be pets, regular old house mice like him. Course, this place is crawling with them, like His Grace said. But he don’t seem to mind.”
“My sort of duke,” said Joey, but it was lost in a roar as Mr. Peabody came around the corner.
“John!” he said. “Why aren’t you ready? How many times have I told you that we must make a good first impression! They will be here in ten minutes!”
He bustled off toward the front of the house, and John glared at his back.
“We must make a good first impression,” he mouthed silently, then out loud, “If you will forgive me, Master Joey and Miss Megan, I will repair to my quarters in order to”—he looked in the direction of Mr. Peabody to make sure he was out of earshot—“to put on that ridiculous outfit so I can help a bunch of women with their luggage. I mean, hello? What bleeding century is this? But a job’s a job, right? See you around.”
And he sprinted off down the passage.
The door to the sitting room in the South Tower was open. Jake and Susie were standing at the window gazing out over the parkland at the front of the house.
Susie turned around and reached out her arms toward Megan, holding her at a slight distance for a moment so she could check her over.
“No bruises?” she said. “No broken bones?”
“We thought you’d both be covered with mud and dead leaves,” said Jake. “Bits of forest. Or did you just walk around in a paddock?”
“You kidding?” asked Joey. “We galloped almost the whole time.”
“Through the forest,” said Megan. “We ended up on that cliff. See it? The other side of that river?”
Susie and Jake looked at each other, impressed. But mice, of course, can’t tolerate any bending of the truth, unless they have permission to bend it themselves for the good of their Nation or the planet. Julia leapt to the back of a couch and said something urgent to Trey, who’d just got back from his performance in Mouse Hall.
He ran up Megan’s arm to whisper in her ear, “She says, you want to come clean?”
So Megan and Joey told their parents (as they would have done
anyway, eventually) about the danger of being on a super-fast pony when you can’t find the brakes, or on a slower pony who won’t let that fast pony out of his sight. About the indignity of being led back to the stable.
“Hey, it was your first try,” said Jake. “If you ride every day, by the time we’re finished here, you could, like, learn?”
“And if I jump out of this tower every day I could, like, fly?” said Joey.
“No way, huh?” said Jake.
“No way,” said Joey.
And “No way,” echoed Megan.
Not on a pony that knew best. Not under the scornful eye of Miss Olivia Peabody.
“The guys downstairs warned us about that twist an’ twirl,” said Ken. “That girl. One of them heard her dad tellin’ her that them American kids had some rough edges, and she could show them how to behave like a proper lady and gentleman.”
Which felt about as likely as learning to fly, or letting Prince have another shot at killing you.
It was then that Jake noticed the bus, way off in the distance, wending its way up from the parking lot four miles away where all visitors had to leave their cars. They watched as the bus stopped near the row of footmen beside the front door and unloaded a group of women.
“Quilters,” guessed Jake.
“You ever seen a quilter?” asked Susie.
“No, but that’s what they must look like, right?”
Yes, middle-aged women, not too worried about their appearance, not exactly fashionably dressed. As often happened, the sight of a group of mammals that she knew little about pushed a button in Susie’s scientific brain.
“What sort of women take up quilting?” she wondered. “What is the appeal? Is it making something out of nothing? Or is it the spirit of competition, wanting to do it better than the next person? Or mainly an excuse for social interaction?”
Jake grinned. “I think you should find out,” he said. “I think the world needs a report on quilter habitat and nutrition and motivation. And aren’t you lucky, a whole herd of quilters right here, ready to be studied. You could take Megan along to keep track of the data. Just like in the old days on your island.”
Mouse Mission Page 9