The Tale of Despereaux (13 page)

Nor did they hear the small mouselike noises of disbelief and outrage that issued from the napkin as Roscuro went on unfolding, step by step, his diabolical plan to bring the princess to darkness.

End of the Third Book

READER, you did not forget about our small mouse, did you?

“Back to the light,” that was what Gregory whispered to him when he wrapped Despereaux in his napkin and placed him on the tray. And then Mig, after her conversation with Roscuro, carried the tray into the kitchen, and when she saw Cook, she shouted, “It’s me, Miggery Sow, back from the deep downs.”

“Ah, lovely,” said Cook. “And ain’t we all relieved?”

Mig put the tray on the counter.

“Here, here,” said Cook, “your duties ain’t done. You must clear it.”

“How’s that?” shouted Mig.

“You must clear the tray!” shouted Cook. She reached over and took hold of the napkin and gave it a good shake, and Despereaux tumbled out of the napkin and landed right directly,
plop,
in a measuring cup full of oil.

“Acccck,” said Cook, “a mouse in my kitchen, in my cooking oil, in my measuring cup. You, Mig, kill him directly.”

Mig bent her head and looked at the mouse slowly sinking to the bottom of the glass cup.

“Poor little meecy,” she said. And she stuck her hand into the oil and pulled him out by his tail.

Despereaux, gasping and coughing and blinking at the bright light, could have wept with joy at his rescue. But he was not given time to cry.

“Kill him!” shouted Cook.

“Gor!” said Mig. “All right.” Holding Despereaux by the tail, she went to get the kitchen knife. But the mouse tail, covered as it was in oil, was slick and difficult to hold on to and Mig, in reaching for the knife, loosened her grip, and Despereaux fell to the floor.

Mig looked down at the little bundle of brown fur.

“Gor,” she said, “that killed him for sure.”

“Kill him even if he’s already dead,” shouted Cook. “That’s my philosophy with mice. If they’re alive, kill them. If they’re dead, kill them. That way you can be certain of having yourself a dead mouse, which is the only kind of mouse to have.”

“That’s some good sophosy, that is, kill ’em, even if they’s already dead.”

“Hurry, you cauliflower-eared fool!” shouted Cook. “Hurry!”

Despereaux lifted his head from the floor. The afternoon sun was shining through the large kitchen window. He had time to think how miraculous the light was and then it disappeared and Mig’s face loomed into view. She studied him, breathing through her mouth.

“Little meecy,” she said, “ain’t you going to skedaddle?”

Despereaux looked for a long moment into Mig’s small, concerned eyes and then there came a blinding flash and the sound of metal moving through air as Mig brought the kitchen knife down, down, down.

Despereaux felt a very intense pain in his hindquarters. He leapt up and into action. Reader, he scurried. He scurried like a professional mouse. He zigged to the left. He zagged to the right.

“Gor!” shouted Mig. “Missed him.”

“Ain’t that a surprise?” said Cook just as Despereaux scurried under a crack in the pantry door.

“I got the little meecy’s tail, though,” said Mig. She bent over and picked up Despereaux’s tail and held it up, proudly displaying it to Cook.

“So?” shouted Cook. “What good will that do us when the rest of him has disappeared into the pantry?”

“I don’t know,” said Mig. And she braced herself as Cook advanced upon her, intending to give her a good clout to the ear. “I don’t know.”

DESPEREAUX WAS PONDERING the reverse of that question. He was wondering not what he would do with his tail, but what he would do without it. He was sitting on a bag of flour high atop a shelf in the pantry, crying for what he had lost.

The pain in his hindquarters was intense and he wept because of it. But he also cried because he was happy. He was out of the dungeon; he had been recalled to life. His rescue had happened just in time for him to save the Princess Pea from the terrible fate that the rat had planned for her.

So Despereaux wept with joy and with pain and with gratitude. He wept with exhaustion and despair and hope. He wept with all the emotions a young, small mouse who has been sent to his death and then been delivered from it in time to save his beloved can feel.

Reader, the mouse wept.

And then he lay down on the sack of flour and slept. Outside the castle, the sun set and the stars came out one by one and then they disappeared and gave way to the rising sun and still Despereaux slept. And while he slept, he dreamt.

He dreamt of the stained-glass windows and the dark of the dungeon. In Despereaux’s dream, the light came to life, brilliant and glorious, in the shape of a knight swinging a sword. The knight fought the dark.

And the dark took many shapes. First the dark was his mother, uttering phrases in French. And then the dark became his father beating the drum. The dark was Furlough wearing a black hood and shaking his head no. And the dark became a huge rat smiling a smile that was evil and sharp.

“The dark,” Despereaux cried, turning his head to the left.

“The light,” he murmured, turning his head to the right.

He called out to the knight. He shouted, “Who are you? Will you save me?”

But the knight did not answer him.

“Tell me who you are!” Despereaux shouted.

The knight stopped swinging his sword. He looked at Despereaux. “You know me,” he said.

“No,” said Despereaux, “I don’t.”

“You do,” said the knight. He slowly took the armor off his head and revealed . . . nothing, no one. The suit of armor was empty.

“No, oh no,” said Despereaux. “There is no knight in shining armor; it’s all just make-believe, like happily ever after.”

And in his sleep, reader, the small mouse began to cry.

AND WHILE THE MOUSE SLEPT, Roscuro put his terrible plan into effect. Would you like to hear, reader, how it all unfolded? The story is not a pretty one. There is violence in it. And cruelty. But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose. Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannot always be sweetness and light.

Listen. This is how it happened. First, the rat finished, once and for all, the job he had started long ago: He chewed through Gregory’s rope, all the way through it, so that the jailer became lost in the maze of the dungeon. Late at night, when the castle was dark, the serving girl Miggery Sow climbed the stairs to the princess’s room.

In her hand, she carried a candle. And in the pockets of her apron were two very ominous things. In the right pocket, hidden in case they should encounter anyone on the stairs, was a rat with a spoon on his head and a cloak of red around his shoulders. In the left pocket was a kitchen knife, the same knife that Miggery Sow had used to cut off the tail of a certain mouse. These were the things, a rat and a knife and a candle, that Mig carried with her as she climbed up, up, up the stairs.

“Gor!” she shouted to the rat. “It’s dark, ain’t it?”

“Yes, yes,” whispered Roscuro from her pocket. “It is quite dark, my dear.”

“When I’m princess . . .,” began Mig.

“Shhhh,” said Roscuro, “may I suggest that you keep your glorious plans for the future to yourself? And may I further suggest that you keep your voice down to a whisper? We are, after all, on a covert mission. Do you know how to whisper, my dear?”

“I do!” shouted Mig.

“Then, please,” said Roscuro, “please institute this knowledge immediately.”

“Gor,” whispered Mig, “all right.”

“Thank you,” said Roscuro. “Do I need to review with you again our plan of action?”

“I got it all straight right here in my head,” whispered Mig. And she tapped the side of her head with one finger.

“How comforting,” said Roscuro. “Perhaps, my dear, we should go over it again. One more time, just to be sure.”

“Well,” said Mig, “we go into the princess’s room and she will be sleeping and snoozing and snoring, and I will wake her up and show her the knife and say, ‘If you does not want to get hurt, Princess, you must come with me.’”

“And you will not hurt her,” said Roscuro.

“No, I won’t. Because I want her to live so that she can be my lady in waiting when I become the princess.”

“Exactly,” said Roscuro. “That will be her divine comeuppance.”

“Gor,” whispered Mig. “Yes. Her divine comeuppance.”

Mig had, of course, no idea what the phrase “divine comeuppance” meant, but she very much liked the sound of it, and she repeated it over and over to herself until Roscuro said, “And then?”

“And then,” continued Mig, “I tells her to get out of her princess bed and come with me on a little journey.”

“Ha,” said Roscuro, “a little journey. That is right. Ha. I love the understatement of that phrase. A little journey. Oh, it will be a little journey. Indeed, it will.”

“And then,” said Mig, who was now coming to her favorite part of the plan, “we take her to the deep downs and we gives her some long lessons in how to be a serving girl and we gives me some short lessons in how to be a princess and when we is all done studying up, we switch places. I gets to be the princess and she gets to be the maid. Gor!”