Miranda the Great (8 page)

In her next solo Miranda warned the cats and kittens that they were to live in peace and harmony here, and practice their music, and not to fall into the quarrelsome ways of the cats who were already making a bad name for themselves in the Forum, wrangling all the time. And "Let the lizard cat beware," she sang, "else he be outcast from this Colosseum as he had been from Barcelona and have to resume his wanderings."

For variety, other large cats sang their songs, some fierce, some sad and poignant, but all blended together into one splendid choir, all these individual histories being mingled and intermingled into a great magnificent rising and falling of voices such as one had never heard before. "Wah!" was the one note that Punka was allowed to sing. She sang it during an important pause, and it sounded fine but made her rather nervous, lest she sound it too soon or too late.

Miranda then entered into her third solo, which was one of tender sweetness. In it she promised that she would never leave them, never part from them, that she was their mother, their queen mother, queen cat of the Colosseum, that the kittens must have no fear, be brave as little lions, be brave as she, and lead gentle lives.

"Mew, mew, mew," sang the little kittens' choir in their sweet high voices. One, instead of singing, grinned foolishly. But Miranda did not rebuke him (it was the little tiger cat), though the others were appalled at his disrespect.

The moon shone high over the Colosseum now, and pale stars appeared as Miranda reached her last solo, singing the most tragic part of her role in the opera, singing of her decision, just made, to renounce her life of peace and plenty with Claudia and instead take up the hard, albeit regal and splendid, life here, of caring for the cats of the Colosseum and keeping it safe for them.

She turned her head toward Claudia as she sang, "Farewell, farewell,
carissima,
most dear, Claudia, farewell!" The other cats, made musical and sad by the tragedy being enacted before their very eyes, took up the theme of her farewell song and blended it into a touching chorus that, in nights to come, they would polish and refine, add to and enhance. And finally, in a great burst of lyric beauty Miranda ended the opera with a whispered "woe-woe!"

Then came the cries and howls of acclaim. "
Io! Io!
" cried some. "Bravo!" cried others. "Long live Miranda! Long live Miranda the Great!
Viva! Viva! Viva Miranda Regina!
Long live Miranda the Queen!"

It was awesome, and Claudia and her mother and father were awed. They were also sad, for they realized that the gist of all this great epic was that Miranda and Punka were not going to come home with them. Claudia stretched out her arms. "Miranda, come on. Come on," she implored.

But Miranda shook her head and said, "Woe-oh-woe!" And Punka said, "Wah."

Tears streamed down Claudia's cheeks. She flung her arms around Zag. "Well, anyway, we still have you, Zaggie. We did find you."

"We really found them all," Lavinia said gently. "And Miranda loves you as she always has. But she has adopted all these kittens, promised to be a mother to them, and you know what a good mother she has always been, a marvelous mother. She can't go back on her word."

"I know," said Claudia sadly.

They prepared to leave. It is very hard, when you have finally found your two lost cats that you have raised from kittenhood, to go away and leave them again. Marcus picked up Zaggie, big though she was, not to lose her again. "You weigh a bit more now than you did when I brought you under my tunic from Spain, eh, Zag?" he said.

Silence had descended upon the arena as they turned to leave. Suddenly Miranda came bounding up. She had some tiny thing in her mouth, its little hind legs all scrunched up, its mouth drawn back in a funny little grin. She placed the kitten at Claudia's feet. Then she turned and shot like a comet back into her adopted domain, the domain of the cats of the Colosseum of whom she was queen.

Claudia picked up the little kitten. It was golden, too, just like Miranda, all gold, a miniature Miranda. "It's one of her own new little kittens," Claudia said. "I'll name you
Parva
Miranda, little Miranda, after your mother."

Claudia ran back to thank Miranda. There she lay in the little ticket room with her other three kittens cuddled beside her. Some little orphan kittens were trying to get some milk, too, and Punka made them line up. It was remarkable how well Punka managed kittens. She had a real gift.

Miranda looked up at Claudia proudly. Her eyes were deep dark pools, wise and knowing. Claudia stooped down and kissed her on her head. "Sweet Miranda. Brave Miranda," she said. "You are great, Miranda, you are Miranda the Great, aren't you? You want to come with me, don't you? But you can't, because you have to be the mother for all these kittens, and queen besides. But I'll take good care of this little one that you gave me. I'll feed her little drops of goat's milk from a leaf of a mulberry tree, the way I used to feed you when you were little. Remember?"

A tear rolled down Claudia's cheek and fell on Miranda. "But we'll come back and visit you, bring you a little fish, enough for all, something special that you always loved ... we will ... yes, we'll come back and say
'Ave!
Hello!'"

"But now," said Lavinia, "it is time to say 'Vale.'"

"
Vale,
Miranda," said Claudia. And then she was struck with a really happy thought. "Maybe, some day, when these little kittens, your own and the rescued ones, are a little bigger, maybe you will come home and say '
Ave
' to us, pay us a little visit? Maybe you will even stay a little while, will you, Miranda?"

It seemed to Claudia that Miranda smiled and nodded her head, as though she were saying, "Why, yes, I might."

Claudia and her mother and her father, with Zag held in his arms, a huge armful, started to leave. Claudia made her kitten wave to Miranda. "She knows she could come with us, she and Punka. She wants to, but she just can't."' Claudia was still trying to convince herself that this was what Miranda and Punka truly wanted. Before departing, the family turned for one last look at the majestic Colosseum.

There it stood and would stand like this, probably forever. By the light of the moon in some of the broken-down places, they could see the silhouette of a cat. A faint south wind wafted the sound of muted music to them, a rising and falling, crescendos and low moaning tones as of a multitude of cats. Were they really hearing this? Or was it the remembered music? Whether they heard it now or not did not matter. They had heard it and would never forget.

"
Vale,
Miranda," they said. "
Vale.
"

Did Miranda come back home again, ever? The way Claudia hoped she might? She did. She did exactly what Claudia had thought and hoped for. After several weeks had passed, she appeared one morning at the garden gate. The Princess Punka was at her side. Miranda had named the broke-tail lizard cat her prime minister, for he had improved his ways, and she now called him Splendorio. When she took a little holiday, as today, he was in charge, and she felt that she could trust the reformed cat. She and Punka enjoyed the petting, the good food that Claudia gave them, and then they took a little nap in the garden.

"And so the story had really a happy ending, after all, didn't it, Mother?" Claudia said that evening at dusk as they watched the two colossal gold and silver cats and the little golden kitten lolling under the mulberry tree.

"Yes," said her mother. "It did."

Miranda heard the words. She narrowed her eyes, and she looked in her remote and queenly way from Claudia to Lavinia, then rose, stretched, said "woe-woe," and suddenly bolted out of the garden gate to make it to the Colosseum in time for her solo in the great cat cantata entitled "Song of Miranda," about to begin. She had not missed one single performance yet.

"Wall!" said Punka, and she leaped over the garden wall to join her mother, for she had never missed one either.

"Curtain time," said Claudia, laughing happily. "Curtain time for Miranda the Great!
Io!
"

Should you ever journey down the Appian Way, or some other way, to Rome and should you visit the Colosseum there, going in the nighttime and, if possible, by horse and buggy with a cloppa-cloppa over the cobblestones, you may hear the singing there, the singing of the songs of the founding of the dynasty of cats there, the great cantata added to, changed, and embellished from night to night, but the heroic theme always the same, all praising the great and miraculous Queen of the Colosseum, Miranda. Miranda the Great. That is the song that you will hear sung there in the Colosseum, for it has come down through the ages. And perhaps you will say at the right time, in the right places, "
Io!
Io!
Hurrah!"

E
LEANOR
E
STES
(1906–1988) grew up in West Haven, Connecticut, which she renamed Cranbury for her classic stories about the Moffat and Pye families. A children's librarian for many years, she launched her writing career with the publication of
The Moffats
in 1941. Two of her outstanding books about the Moffats—
Rufus M.
and
The Middle Moffat
—were awarded Newbery Honors, as was her short novel
The Hundred Dresses.
She won the Newbery Medal for
Ginger Pye
in 1952.