by Richard Peck
The moment passed, and now we were back on the path, jostling with the other Yeomice on the way to the parade ground. It was nibbled smooth as green velvet all the way to the lake. Handy latrines were dug beneath the holly bush borders. You can’t match mice for military efficiency, and covering our tracks.
We were formed up now, chins clenched, rank and file. We don’t really have chins, but we clenched what we had. Before us, the lake with Buckingham Palace in the distance.
My tail longed to twitch, even flail, as we waited for the Captain of the Yeomice of the Guard to review us. Being the new boy, I couldn’t see a moment ahead. I often can’t anyway.
Just when I expected our captain to appear in a blinding puff of colored smoke, he came round to the front of us at the gallop—on a chipmunk.
A chipmunk. I’d never seen one. A sleek and stripy chipmunk, imported at who knows what expense from North America. And he must have been deucedly difficult to break to the saddle. As for the saddle, I recognized it at once.
We are not cavalry, we Yeomice. But what a figure our captain cut astride his personal chipmunk. Evidently he kept it as a hunter. You could hardly imagine him anywhere else but mounted, with the reins easy in his hands and all his leather polished. He drew up, and the chipmunk’s eyes rolled. The captain was about to dismount and frighten me out of any growth I had left. But first let us enjoy the moment.
The captain should have been painted and put in a frame just as he was, there atop his skittish chipmunk. He was dazzling in red, glaring in gold. He whose rank descends directly from Sir Walter Raleigh’s personal mouse-de-camp.
He was so noble a figure that I could scarcely look at him full on. Every bit of his bearing was living proof of the grandeur mice can rise to. British mice.
Now he had slipped down from the saddle, managing his sword wonderfully. He did something with his tail to reassure the chipmunk before a lackey led the beast away.
Now the captain turned to review us.
We dressed left. We dressed right. The rigid ruff rasped my neck. Tails too are a problem on parade, and mine had a mind of its own. But I was cheek-by-jowl with Ian, moving when he did, stamping and hup-twoing. I liked to think you couldn’t tell me from the others. I was just a hair shorter and a beat behind.
But that was over all too soon. The captain had halted before us. Now he called out a blood-chilling question. Just over our head he said, “Any new Yeomice among us?”
Doomed, I thought. And about to be found out, so my neck would be for the chop, regardless of ruff.
“Sir! Yes, sir!” shouted our sergeant major, he who’d snipped me out of the trap. “A small one, sir! I don’t know if he’s not yet full-grown or just—”
“One step forward, the new mouse!” the captain commanded. You wouldn’t credit that much lung power to any rodent.
I was hoping to die now. I was that frightened. But beside me, Ian said soundlessly, “Go forth.”
I did. One pace. On tip-claws.
Now I was a pace nearer the captain. He had the shoulders of some bigger species. And beneath the gold fringe of his uniform he was all muscle, like a hummingbird.
Even the tree foliage above sighed their admiration.
“Has anyone thought to administer the Yeomouse Oath of Royal Secrecy to this youngster?” the captain demanded.
“Sir! No, sir!” our sergeant major called back bleakly. “We’ve been stretched thin and short—”
“It is time that runs short,” the captain snapped. “He is either a Yeomouse or our prisoner. What is he to be?”
I felt my sword trying to tangle my feet. Blood drained from my brain and coursed down my wretched body. Only my question mark tail kept me upright.
“A Yeomouse, he!” cried out every squad. Not quite a roar, but very loud.
“Then let him hear the oath,” the captain commanded, “and take it to heart!”
Full-voiced, every Yeomouse recited our oath:
What we see we never say;
What we learn we hide away;
Whom we serve—a secret deep,
A pledge to her we mean to keep!
I tried to memorize this oath. There might be an examination coming, like school. By now it was clear that the Yeomousery was a strictly secret force: See, Don’t Say. That sort of thing, which I’d grasped. But I couldn’t see there was any great secret about Whom we served. It was surely Queen Victoria, who was quite well-known. She was on all the postage stamps and pennies. She was really everywhere you turned.
Still, I would have agreed to anything. And I might still drop over dead from sheer fear, so why worry?
“Back you go,” said the captain, privately to me. And this tone of his voice stirred me too.
I took a careful step back, despite the sword trying to tussle with my feet. And the tail with a mind of its own. And no blood anywhere near my head. Somehow I was back next to Ian, who said, without moving a muscle: “Jolly good show.”
IT WAS TIME to troop the colors. As it happened, they weren’t flags. They were twopenny postage stamps bearing the Queen’s profile, pasted back to back and flown from matchsticks.
Behind them trooped the regimental band. Drums small enough for mouse hands are more thump than thunder. And the trumpets sounded reedy, being actual reeds. Still, they thumped and wheezed a proud accompaniment when we all burst into song. “Land of Hope and Glory,” of course, the British Mouse National Anthem. Humans didn’t get wind of it until years later:
Land of hope and glory,
Mother of the free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who were born of thee?
Very stirring stuff. A lump nearly formed in my throat as our voices rose to echoing cheeps in the branches above. Then something quite unexpected happened.
Through a light lake mist nosed the prow of a boat. Suddenly there it was, just behind our captain. He pivoted on a spurred heel. His hand rose in salute.
It was a toy boat, but a big one—one of those German clockwork tin yachts. Lettered on its bow was The Prince of Battenberg. It had no doubt belonged to one of the little Battenbergs—Prince Maurice, perhaps. Quite a number of unknown mouse hands must have removed the yacht from the toy chest in a royal nursery. Princes have far more toys than they need.
We were just coming to the end of a verse of “Land of Hope and Glory”:
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set,
God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet!
And then the yacht bumped aground. At the wheel the pilot was an old mouse salt, in full nautical gear. It made sense that we mice have our own navy. Humans do.
A pair of mouse roustabouts in striped jerseys swarmed ashore, tied up, and lowered a fine-toothed tortoiseshell comb for a gangplank.
We presented arms. My sword was cold against my nose. My nearly crossed eyes beheld a strange sight.
A greatly overweight mouse came tottering down the comb. His legs were no match for his body. He swayed dangerously. The roustabouts handed him ashore. Otherwise he could have ended up in the drink. He’d begun to buckle.
You rarely see a mouse that size unless he’s fallen into a butter churn. He was tightly packed into a swallowtail coat over striped trousers. His curly-brimmed hat was a Harris tweed with a cockade of grouse feather. Yellow gloves in one hand, a cane in the other. It was enough to make a begonia giggle.
He might have been quite young. He’d tried to raise a beard, but it hadn’t worked. Now he was ashore and waddling his way to our captain. We waited, knees locked, for him to return our captain’s salute. Finally he got around to it. But he was wheezing and damp through from walking all that way from the yacht—two rulers away. I had the feeling his clothes were more English than he was.
His legs were no match for his body. He swayed dangerously.
“Prince Bruno Havarti,” Ian Henslowe breathed into my notchier ear.
Prince? How could that be? Havar
ti made him Danish. And Danish royalty was here in force for the Queen’s jubilee. They would have brought along any number of courtiers, some of them mice: Danish Mice Equerries, Rodents of the Bedchamber, Squeakers of the Chamber Pot—whatever. But rodent royalty, even among the Danes?
I couldn’t grasp it.
“And he’s a younger son,” Ian imparted, “so he’ll be looking for a foreign throne to sit upon.”
The whole thing was preposterous. Besides, if he was royalty, why was he alone? Royal can’t manage on their own. This one had barely made it down the gangplank. And if he didn’t know to travel with his Mouse Equerry, why didn’t we provide him with one?
Echoing my thoughts, Ian murmured, “His English equerry was called away suddenly.”
Which was a shame, because Prince Bruno Havarti looked miserable. A tea tent had risen suddenly, as it was now teatime. From the flaps drifted the scent of hot scone crumbs and fresh strawberries. Prince Bruno looked famished.
But even he had a duty to perform first. Out of nowhere lackeys appeared, bearing floral tributes. Our captain took up an enormous wreath of dogtooth violets and handed it ceremoniously to the great Dane.
This left the captain with a smaller bouquet of pale violets in his hand.
We Yeomice had formed an honor guard by now. The captain and the Prince walked between us, back to the mouse graveyard, where Prince Bruno laid the wreath on the grave of the Unknown Mouse.
It was quite moving, though the Prince did not bend well. Then we saw our captain was laying his handful of flowers on another grave. It was the grave where Ian and I had lingered.
It was mournful and mysterious, but just for that moment. Now we Yeomice formed up again to flank the tent entrance. How well we do that sort of thing. Knees locked, ears pointed, ruffs perked. We are all spit and polish, all see and no say. We smelled the fresh strawberries and scone crumbs and our whiskers vibrated. But we were as statues.
How proud I was to be a Yeomouse of the Guard. Little did I know my career was to last no longer than this day now ending. Even now a setting sun struck fire at the windows of the distant Buckingham Palace.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Snatched and Dispatched
EVENING DREW ON, and the tea tent was struck. As darkness climbed the trees, their cheeping grew louder, and a silky sighing came from on high.
The roustabouts had long since wound up the clockwork yacht. Now it had sailed away through the mysterious mist, low in the water, as Prince Bruno Havarti was filled to the brim with scone crumbs and fresh strawberries.
I was myself more than ready for dinner.
The Yeomice mess hall was deep down among the roots of a tree that had undermined the ruined potting shed. And so it was rather low-ceilinged and noisy. I was hungry as a Havarti, but the meal hadn’t been up to much, though long. A shred of underdone venison, then foot of rabbit. The pudding was a beetle flambé with a flaming sauce that looked like butterscotch, but wasn’t.
Still, it was very well served by mice orderlies in paper hats, back and forth to the kitchens. I’d never been served before and quite liked it.
Following the cheese and biscuit crumbs, we were all upstanding to toast Queen Victoria on this, the eve of her Diamond Jubilee.
“To Her Human Majesty,” we squeaked, whole-hearted and full-throated.
As the orderlies cleared our crumbs, I wondered when I’d eaten last.
Back in the Mews, it must have been, in the manger, scarfing up the oats and carrot bits from Peg’s breakfast. How long ago. How far away. It made me think.
“I ought really to be getting back to the Mews and my horse,” I remarked to Ian. “It will be parade time in the morning before we know it.” They were serving the coffee now, in scooped-out acorns. “I’m quite determined to have a word with Queen Victoria about who I might be. I’ll be very grateful for any insights Her Majesty cares to share.”
I don’t know how much I myself believed in this scheme. It was a ramshackle plan with more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. But you know how you are at that age. And it helped to say it aloud, to Ian. It made it more real.
“Really?” he said, watching me over his steaming acorn. “Are you under the impression that you can communicate with a human?”
“She isn’t human.” Didn’t Ian know that? “Her powers are magical and unexplained. And…a touch of her hand will cure warts.”
“My dear chap,” Ian said, “I thought that old warts nonsense went out with Queen Ann. Queen Victoria is quite human, all too human, and nothing whatever to do with you.”
I thought this a bit harsh on both the Queen and me. But Ian wasn’t finished. “Besides, you are not free to scamper off to the Mews or anywhere else. You have hardly been a Yeomouse long enough to earn leave. In any case, you and I are on sentry duty tonight. We have a stretch of garden wall to walk. Our names are on the roster.”
The roster? Really? I didn’t see a roster. Still, if Ian said so, it must be true.
He and I were among the Yeomice standing around outside under the foliage, resplendent in our red and gold. A few carried their acorns into the open air. Very convivial, Yeomice. You don’t wear your sword to dinner. It isn’t done. Dueling could break out between the courses. So now we were strapping on our scabbards. Time drew nigh to relieve the Yeomice finishing their watch on our stretch of the wall.
Not a moonbeam winked in the inky night. But in the distance Buckingham Palace was lit up like a birthday cake. Gas flames flared at every window. Music wafted over the rippling lake.
A grand state dinner at the palace seemed to be ending. The royal guests were spilling out onto the terrace, around the urns. Queen Victoria would have dined more quietly and was no doubt tucked up in her bed by now. Being on her last legs, she could hardly attend a party that spilled out onto the terrace. It took a block and tackle to get her into her carriage, as we know, and an act of Parliament to get her out again.
All these royal thoughts crowded my head, and so my mind wandered, unwisely.
How smooth and manicured the park between the far-off palace and here. Smooth and new-mown and deadly. Being out in the open even on a moonless night is no place for a mouse. Owls, you see. Owls with their awful wingspan and flat yellow cats’ eyes, their beaks like guillotines. I’d never seen an owl, but we are born knowing, we mice. Besides, many a mouse has been devoured to his toenails by an owl he never saw. They are that quick. That heartless.
Under the overhang of a holly bush, Ian spoke into my ear. “I must just drop by the latrine before we go on duty. Carry on, and I’ll meet you by the wall.” How offhand Ian was. “Cut across that bit of open country. It wouldn’t do to get tangled up in a net again when you can’t see where you step. You fall over, you know. Mind how you go.”
Then Ian went. And I started across that open bit of park between the holly bush and the wall. I dropped down on all fours for quick and easy movement, though my sword dragged the grass.
I was no sooner in the open when a thought gave me pause. Ian had said my name was on the duty roster. But how could that be when I didn’t have a name? How?
I WAS THIS CLOSE to the wall when I was seized in steely grips beneath both arms and jerked rudely up into the night. I kept running for a moment, paddling in the air. But then my feet and hands hung helpless, and the wind rushed between my toes. I don’t know why my heart didn’t give out. I don’t know how I’ve lived to tell it.
It was all far worse than being snared in that butterfly net. I squealed. Now I was higher than the wall, higher than the treetops. I squealed like anything for Ian. But had he been the one to lead me into this terrible mousenapping? Was he part of some great plot?
And was I hanging from an owl? Oh, don’t let it be an owl. But I’d never before been hung by the armpits from an owl, so how could I know?
We were over the lake now. I saw ripples silvered by the palace lights and stopped struggling. If I was dropped now, I’d be drowned like a rat.
&nb
sp; We wheeled high in endless sky over London, over everything earthly. And we were turning now toward the palace. Snatched and dispatched! Were these my final moments? But somehow I didn’t think owl. An owl would have had my head off by now. And I didn’t think beak. Somehow I thought of teeth instead, rows and rows of chattering teeth.
And I seemed suspended from not one creature, but two, flying in close formation. Two heads seemed to flank mine, two heads too close to see. Four ears, nowhere near as big as mine, cocked against the night.
They were winged creatures, or we wouldn’t be up here. I sensed the throb of wings beating with a silken sound, susurrating like the treetops.
As we swooped, eyes seemed to glow on either side: red as rubies, paired and peering, pointing our way through all this rushing sky.
Yes, there were two of them. I felt the beat of their separate hearts beneath the beating of their wings. My heart was in my mouth.
They had an odd smell too, and oddly familiar. Mildew and undigested bugs. I gathered they weren’t going to eat me in flight. They were saving me for later.
Time was running out, as it does with mice. But quicker. We swooped nearer the palace now, slanting in above the terrace. The cheeping of my captors bounced off the palace walls. My scabbard came loose. My sword fell away. I felt it go, so now I was unarmed, on top of everything else.
The palace party lit the night from below. A babble of human voices rose to join the rush of wings, the steady cheep.
We were making straight for those blank attic windows that frame a deeper darkness than the night. The attics dead ahead. The terrace below, candlelit and ablaze with diamonds. And far too many humans.
A fall from this height would do me in. But we were about to land on an attic windowsill. I peered into the moments ahead: two winged and webbed creatures hunched high in the attic rafters, picking over my bones in perfect privacy.
No! I wouldn’t have it!