The Tale of Despereaux

  “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!”

  Reader, this is the very plan that Roscuro presented to Mig when he first met her. It was, of course, a ridiculous plan.

  No one would ever, not for one blind minute, mistake Mig for the princess or the princess for Mig. But Miggery Sow, as I pointed out to you before, was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And, reader, too, she wanted so desperately to become a princess. She wanted, oh, how she wanted. And it was because of this terrible wanting that she was able to believe in Roscuro’s plan with every ounce of her heart.

  The rat’s real plan was, in a way, more simple and more terrible. He intended to take the princess to the deepest, darkest part of the dungeon. He intended to have Mig put chains on the princess’s hands and her feet, and he intended to keep the glittering, glowing, laughing princess there in the dark.

  Forever.

  SHE WAS ASLEEP and dreaming of her mother, the queen, who was holding out a spoon to her and saying, “Taste this, my sweet Pea, taste this, my darling, and tell me what you think.”

  The princess leaned forward and sipped some soup from the spoon her mother held out to her.

  “Oh, Mama,” she said, “it’s wonderful. It’s the best soup I have ever eaten.”

  “Yes,” said the queen. “It is wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “May I have some more?” said the Pea.

  “I gave you a small taste so that you would not forget,” said her mother. “I gave you a small taste so that you would remember.”

  “I want more.”

  But as soon as the princess said this, her mother was gone. She disappeared and the bowl and the soupspoon disappeared along with her.

  “Lost things,” said the Pea, “more lost things.” And then she heard her name. She turned, happy, thinking that her mother had come back. But the voice was not her mother’s. The voice belonged to somebody else and it was coming from someplace far away and it was telling her to wake up, wake up.

  The Pea opened her eyes and saw Miggery Sow standing over her bed, a knife in one hand and a candle in the other.

  “Mig?” she said.

  “Gor,” said Mig softly.

  “Say it,” commanded Roscuro.

  Mig closed her eyes and shouted her piece. “If you does not want to get hurt, Princess, you must come with me.”

  “Whatever for?” said the princess in an annoyed tone. As I have noted before, the princess was not a person who was used to being told what to do. “What are you talking about?”

  Mig opened her eyes and shouted, “You got to come with me so after we take some lessons, you some long lessons and me some short ones, together way down in the deep downs, I can be you and you can be me.”

  “No!” shouted Roscuro from Mig’s pocket. “No! No! You are doing it wrong.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Your Highness,” said Roscuro. And he crawled out of Mig’s pocket and made his way up to her shoulder and situated himself there, laying his tail across her neck to balance himself. “Your Highness,” he said again. And he raised the spoon slowly off his head and smiled, displaying his mouthful of truly hideous teeth. “I think it would be best if you do as Miggery Sow suggests. She is, as you can quite clearly see, in possession of a knife, a large knife. And she will, if pushed, use it.”

  “This is ridiculous,” the princess said. “You can’t threaten me. I’m a princess.”

  “We,” said Roscuro, “are all too aware of the fact of what you are. A knife, however, cares nothing for the fact that you are royalty. And you will bleed, I assume, just like any other human.”

  The Pea looked at Mig. Mig smiled. The knife glinted in the light of the candle. “Mig?” she said, her voice shaking the tiniest bit.

  “I really do not think,” said Roscuro, “that Mig would need much persuasion to use that knife, Princess. She is a dangerous individual, easily led.”

  “But we are friends,” said the Pea, “aren’t we, Mig?”

  “Eh?” said Mig.

  “Trust me,” said Roscuro. “You are not friends. And I think it would be best if you addressed all your communications to me, Princess. I am the one in charge here. Look at me.”

  The Pea looked right directly at the rat and at the spoon on his head. Her heart skipped one beat and then two.

  “Do you know me, Princess?”

  “No,” she said, lowering her head, “I don’t know you.”

  But, reader, she did know him. He was the rat who had fallen in her mother’s soup. And he was wearing her dead mother’s spoon on his head! The princess kept her head down. She concentrated on containing the rage that was leaping up inside of her.

  “Look again, Princess. Or can you not bear to look? Does it pain your royal sensibilities to let your eyes rest on a rat?”

  “I don’t know you,” she said, “and I’m not afraid to look at you.” The Pea raised her head slowly. Her eyes were defiant. She stared at the rat.

  “Very well,” said Roscuro, “have it your way. You do not know me. Nonetheless, you must do as I say, as my friend here has a knife. So get out of bed, Princess. We are going on a little journey. I would like it if you dressed in your loveliest gown, the one that you were wearing at a banquet not so long ago.”

  “And put on your crown,” said Mig. “Put that on your princess head.”

  “Yes,” said Roscuro. “Please, Princess, do not forget your crown.”

  The Pea, still staring at Roscuro, pushed the covers back and got out of bed.

  “Move quickly,” said Roscuro. “We must take our little journey while it is still dark and while the rest of the castle sleeps on — ignorant, oh so ignorant, I am afraid, of your fate.”

  The princess took a gown from her closet.

  “Yes,” said Roscuro to himself, “that is the one. The very one. Look at how it sparkles in the light. Lovely.”

  “I will need someone to do my buttons,” said the princess as she stepped into the dress. “Mig, you must help me.”

  “Little princess,” said Roscuro, “do you think that you can outsmart a rat? Our dear Miggery Sow will not lay down her knife. Not even for a moment. Will you, Miggery Sow? Because that might ruin your chances of becoming a princess, isn’t that right?”

  “Gor,” said Mig, “that’s right.”

  And so while Mig held the knife pointed in the direction of the princess, the Pea sat and let the rat crawl over her back, doing her buttons up for her, one by one.

  The princess held very still. The only movement she allowed herself was this: She licked her lips, over and over again, because she thought that she could taste there the sweet saltiness of the soup that
her mother had fed her in her dream.

  “I have not forgotten, Mama,” she whispered. “I have not forgotten you. I have not forgotten soup.”

  THE STRANGE THREESOME made their way down the golden stairs of the castle. The princess and Mig walked side by side and Roscuro hid himself again in the pocket of Mig’s apron and Mig pointed the sharp tip of the knife at the princess’s back and together they went down, down, down.

  The princess was led to her fate as around her, everyone slept. The king slept in his giant bed with his crown on his head and his hands crossed on his chest, dreaming that his wife, the queen, was a bird with green and gold feathers who called his name, Phillip, Phillip, Phillip, without ceasing.

  Cook slept in a too-small bed off the kitchen, dreaming of a recipe for soup that she could not find. “Where did I put that?” she mumbled in her sleep. “Where did that recipe go? It was for the queen’s favorite soup. I must find it.”

  And not far from Cook, in the pantry, atop a bag of flour, slept the mouse Despereaux, dreaming, as you know, reader, of knights in shining armor, of darkness, and of light.

  And in the whole of the darkened, sleeping castle, there was only the light of the candle in the hand of Miggery Sow. The candle shone on the princess’s dress and made it sparkle, and the princess walked tall in the light and tried not to be afraid.

  In this story, reader, we have talked about the heart of the mouse and the heart of the rat and the heart of the serving girl Miggery Sow, but we have not talked about the heart of the princess. Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light. The dark things in the princess’s heart were these: a very small, very hot, burning coal of hatred for the rat who was responsible for her mother’s death. And the other darkness was a tremendous sorrow, a deep sadness that her mother was dead and that the princess could, now, only talk to her in her dreams.

  And what of the light in the princess’s heart? Reader, I am pleased to tell you that the Pea was a kind person, and perhaps more important, she was empathetic. Do you know what it means to be empathetic?

  I will tell you: It means that when you are being forcibly taken to a dungeon, when you have a large knife pointed at your back, when you are trying to be brave, you are able, still, to think for a moment of the person who is holding that knife.

  You are able to think: “Oh, poor Mig, she wants to be a princess so badly and she thinks that this is the way. Poor, poor Mig. What must it be like to want something that desperately?”

  That, reader, is empathy.

  And now you have a small map of the princess’s heart (hatred, sorrow, kindness, empathy), the heart that she carried inside her as she went down the golden stairs and through the kitchen and, finally, just as the sky outside the castle began to lighten, down into the dark of the dungeon with the rat and the serving girl.

  THE SUN ROSE AND SHED LIGHT on what Roscuro and Miggery Sow had done.

  And finally, Despereaux awoke. But, alas, he awoke too late.

  “I haven’t see her,” Louise was shouting, “and I tell you, I wash my hands of her. If she’s missing, I say good riddance! Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  Despereaux sat up. He looked behind him. Oh, his tail! Gone! Given over to the knife and where the tail should be . . . nothing but a bloody stub.

  “And more foul play. Gregory dead!” shouted Cook. “Poor old man, that rope of his broken by who knows what and him lost in the dark and frightened to death because of it. It’s too much.”

  “Oh no,” whispered Despereaux. “Oh no, Gregory is dead.” The mouse got to his feet and began the long climb down from the shelf. Once he was on the floor, he stuck his head around the door of the pantry and saw Cook standing in the center of the kitchen, wringing her fat hands. Beside her stood a tall woman jangling a ring of keys.

  “That’s right,” said Louise. “All the king’s men was down there searching for her in the dungeon and when they come back up, who do they have with them? They have the old man. Dead! And now you tell me that Mig is missing and I say who cares?”

  Despereaux made a small noise of despair. He had slept too long. The rat had already acted. The princess was gone.

  “What kind of world is it, Miss Louise, where princesses are taken from right under our noses and queens drop dead and we cannot even take comfort in soup?” And with this, Cook started to cry.

  “Shhhh,” said Louise, “I beg you. Do not say that word.”

  “Soup!” shouted Cook. “I will say it. No one can stop me. Soup, soup, soup!” And then she began to cry in earnest, wailing and sobbing.

  “There,” said Louise. She put a hand out to touch Cook, and Cook slapped it away.

  “It will be all right,” said Louise.

  Cook brought the hem of her apron up to wipe at her tears. “It won’t,” she said. “It won’t be all right ever again. They’ve taken our little darling away. There ain’t nothing left to live for without the princess.”

  Despereaux was amazed to have exactly what was in his heart spoken aloud by such a ferocious, mouse-hating woman as Cook.

  Louise again reached out to touch Cook, and this time Cook allowed her to put an arm around her shoulder. “What will we do? What will we do?” wailed Cook.

  And Louise said, “Shhh. There, there.”

  Alas, there was no one to comfort Despereaux. And there was no time, anyway, for him to cry. He knew what he had to do. He had to find the king.

  For, having heard Roscuro’s plan, reader, Despereaux knew that the princess was hidden in the dungeon. And being somewhat smarter than Miggery Sow, he sensed the terrible unspoken truth behind Roscuro’s words. He knew that Mig could never be a princess. And he knew that the rat, once he captured the Pea, would never let her go.

  And so, the small mouse who had been dipped in oil, covered in flour, and relieved of his tail slipped out of the pantry and past the weeping ladies.

  He went to find the king.

  HE WENT FIRST to the throne room, but the king was not there. And so, Despereaux slipped through a hole in the molding and was making his way to the princess’s room when he came upon the Mouse Council, thirteen mice and one Most Very Honored Head Mouse, sitting around their piece of wood debating important mouse matters.

  Despereaux stopped and stood very still.

  “Fellow honored mice,” said the Most Very Honored Head Mouse, and then he looked up from the makeshift table and saw Despereaux. “Despereaux,” he whispered.

  The other mice of the council leaned forward, straining to make some sense of the word that the Head Mouse had just uttered.

  “Pardon?” one said.

  “Excuse me?” said another.

  “I didn’t hear right,” said a third. “I thought you said ‘Despereaux.’ ”

  The Head Mouse gathered himself. He tried speaking again. “Fellow members,” he said, “a ghost. A ghost!” And he raised a shaking paw and pointed it at Despereaux.

  The other mice turned and looked.

  And there was Despereaux Tilling, covered in flour, looking back at them, the telltale red thread still around his neck like a thin trail of blood.

  “Despereaux,” said Lester. “Son. You have come back!”

  Despereaux looked at his father and saw an old mouse whose fur was shot through with gray. How could that be? Despereaux had been gone only a few days, but his father seemed to have aged many years in his absence.

  “Son, ghost of my son,” said Lester, his whiskers trembling, “I dream about you every night. I dream about beating the drum that sent you to your death. I was wrong. What I did was wrong.”

  “No!” called the Most Very Honored Head Mouse. “No!”

  “I’ve destroyed it,” said Lester. “I’ve destroyed the drum. Will you forgive me?” He clasped his front paws together and looked at his son.

  “No!” shouted the Head Mouse again. “No. Do not ask the ghost to forgive you, Lester. You did as you should. You did what was best for the mouse commun
ity.”

  Lester ignored the Head Mouse. “Son,” he said, “please.”

  Despereaux looked at his father, at his gray-streaked fur and trembling whiskers and his front paws clasped together in front of his heart, and he felt suddenly as if his own heart would break in two. His father looked so small, so sad.

  “Forgive me,” said Lester again.

  Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love, a powerful, wonderful thing.

  And a ridiculous thing, too.

  Isn’t it ridiculous, after all, to think that a son could forgive his father for beating the drum that sent him to his death? Isn’t it ridiculous to think that a mouse could ever forgive anyone for such perfidy?

  But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, “I forgive you, Pa.”

  And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.

  And then he turned from his father and spoke to the whole Mouse Council. “You were wrong,” he said. “All of you. You asked me to renounce my sins; I ask you to renounce yours. You wronged me. Repent.”

  “Never,” said the Head Mouse.

  Despereaux stood before the Mouse Council, and he realized that he was a different mouse than he had been the last time he faced them. He had been to the dungeon and back up out of it. He knew things that they would never know; what they thought of him, he realized, did not matter, not at all.

  And so, without saying another word, Despereaux turned and left the room.

  After he was gone, the Head Mouse slapped his trembling paw on the table. “Mice of the Council,” he said, “we have been paid a visit by a ghost who has told us to repent. We will now take a vote. All in favor of saying that this visit did not occur, vote ‘aye.’ ”

  And from the members of the Mouse Council, there came a tiny but emphatic chorus of “ayes.”

  Only one mouse said nothing. That mouse was Despereaux’s father. Lester Tilling had turned his head away from the other members of the Mouse Council; he was trying to hide his tears.