The Tale of Despereaux

16

AS OUR STORY CONTINUES, reader, we must go backward in time to the birth of a rat, a rat named Chiaroscuro and called Roscuro, a rat born into the filth and darkness of the dungeon, several years before the mouse Despereaux was born upstairs, in the light.

Reader, do you know the definition of the word “chiaroscuro”? If you look in your dictionary, you will find that it means the arrangement of light and dark, darkness and light together. Rats do not care for light. Roscuro’s parents were having a bit of fun when they named their son. Rats have a sense of humor. Rats, in fact, think that life is very funny. And they are right, reader. They are right.

In the case of Chiaroscuro, however, the joke had a hint of prophecy to it, for it happened that when Roscuro was a very young rat, he came upon a great length of rope on the dungeon floor.

“Ah, what have we here?” said Roscuro.

Being a rat, he immediately began to nibble at the rope.

“Stop that,” boomed a voice, and a great hand came out of the darkness and picked the rat up by his tail and held him suspended upside down.

“Were you nibbling on Gregory’s rope, rat?”

“Who wants to know?” said Roscuro, for even upside down he was still a rat.

“You smart-alecky rat, you smart-alecky rat nib-nib-nibbling on Gregory’s rope. Gregory will teach you to mess with his rope.”

And keeping Roscuro upside down, Gregory lit a match with the nail of his thumb, ssssssttttttt, and then held the brilliant flame right in Roscuro’s face.

“Ahhh,” said Roscuro. He pulled his head back, away from the light. But, alas, he did not close his eyes, and the flame exploded around him and danced inside him.

“Has no one told you the rules?” said Gregory.

“What rules?”

“Gregory’s rope, rat, is off-limits.”

“So?”

“Apologize for chewing on Gregory’s rope.”

“I will not,” said Roscuro.

“Apologize.”

“No.”

“Filthy rat,” said Gregory. “You black-souled thing. Gregory has had it with you rats.” He held the match closer to Roscuro’s face, and a terrible smell of burnt whiskers rose up around the jailer and the rat. And then the match went out and Gregory released Roscuro’s tail. He flung him back into the darkness.

“Do not ever touch Gregory’s rope again, or you will be sorry.”

Roscuro sat on the dungeon floor. The whiskers on the left side of his face were gone. His heart was beating hard, and though the light from the match had disappeared, it danced, still, before the rat’s eyes, even when he closed them.

“Light,” he said aloud. And then he whispered the word again. “Light.”

From that moment forward, Roscuro showed an abnormal, inordinate interest in illumination of all sorts. He was always, in the darkness of the dungeon, on the lookout for light, the smallest glimmer, the tiniest shimmer. His rat soul longed inexplicably for it; he began to think that light was the only thing that gave life meaning, and he despaired that there was so little of it to be had.

He finally voiced this sentiment to his friend, a very old one-eared rat named Botticelli Remorso.

“I think,” said Roscuro, “that the meaning of life is light.”

“Light,” said Botticelli. “Ha-ha-ha — you kill me. Light has nothing to do with it.”

“What does it all mean then?” asked Roscuro.

“The meaning of life,” said Botticelli, “is suffering, specifically the suffering of others. Prisoners, for instance. Reducing a prisoner to weeping and wailing and begging is a delightful way to invest your existence with meaning.”

As he spoke, Botticelli swung, from the one extraordinarily long nail of his right front paw, a heart-shaped locket. He had taken the locket from a prisoner and hung it on a thin braided rope. Whenever Botticelli spoke, the locket moved. Back and forth, back and forth it swung. “Are you listening?” Botticelli said to Roscuro.

“I am listening.”

“Good,” said Botticelli. “Do as I say and your life will be full of meaning. This is how to torture a prisoner: first, you must convince him that you are a friend. Listen to him. Encourage him to confess his sins. And when the time is right, talk to him. Tell him what he wants to hear. Tell him, for instance, that you will forgive him. This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.”

“Why?” said Roscuro. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, following the locket.

“Because,” said Botticelli, “you will promise it — ha — but you will not grant it. You gain his trust. And then you deny him. You refuse to offer the very thing he wants. Forgiveness, freedom, friendship, whatever it is that his heart most desires, you withhold.” At this point in his lecture, Botticelli laughed so hard that he had to sit down and catch his breath. The locket swayed slowly back and forth and then stopped altogether.

“Ha,” said Botticelli, “ha-ha-ha! You gain his trust, you refuse him and — ha-ha — you become what he knew you were all along, what you knew you were all along, not a friend, not a confessor, not a forgiver, but — ha-ha! — a rat!” Botticelli wiped his eyes and shook his head and sighed a sigh of great contentment. He set the locket in motion again. “At that point, it is most effective to run back and forth over the prisoner’s feet, inducing physical terror along with the emotional sort. Oh,” he said, “it is such a lovely game, such a lovely game! And it is just absolutely chock-full of meaning.”

“I would like very much to torture a prisoner,” said Roscuro. “I would like to make someone suffer.”

“Your time will come,” said Botticelli. “Currently, all the prisoners are spoken for. But another prisoner will arrive sooner or later. How do I know this to be true? Because, Roscuro, thankfully there is evil in the world. And the presence of evil guarantees the existence of prisoners.”

“So, soon, there will be a prisoner for me?”

“Yes,” said Botticelli Remorso. “Yes.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“Ha-ha-ha! Of course you are looking forward to it. You are looking forward to it because you are a rat, a real rat.”

“Yes,” said Roscuro. “I am a real rat.”

“Concerned not at all with the light,” said Botticelli.

“Concerned not at all with the light,” repeated Roscuro.

Botticelli laughed again and shook his head. The locket, suspended from the long nail on his paw, swung back and forth, back and forth.

“You, my young friend, are a rat. Exactly. Yes. Evil. Prisoners. Rats. Suffering. It all fits together so neatly, so sweetly. Oh, it is a lovely world, a lovely, dark world.”

17

NOT LONG AFTER this conversation between Botticelli and Roscuro, a prisoner did arrive. The dungeon door slammed and the two rats watched a man being led by a king’s soldier down the stairs into the dungeon.

“Excellent,” whispered Botticelli. “This one is yours.”

Roscuro looked at the man closely. “I will make him suffer,” he said.

But as he stared up at the man, the door to the dungeon was suddenly flung open and a thick and brilliant shaft of afternoon light cut into the dark of the dungeon.

“Ugh,” said Botticelli. He covered his eyes with one paw.

Roscuro, however, stared directly into the light.

Reader, this is important: The rat called Chiaroscuro did not look away. He let the light from the upstairs world enter him and fill him. He gasped aloud with the wonder of it.

“Give him his small comforts,” shouted a voice at the top of the stairs, and a red cloth was thrown into the light. The cloth hung suspended for a moment, bright red and glowing, and then the door was slammed shut again and the light disappeared and the cloth fell to the floor. It was Gregory the jailer who bent to pick it up.

“Go on,” said the old man as he held out the cloth to the prisoner, “take it. You’ll need every last bit of warmth down here.”

And so the prisoner took the cloth and draped it around his shoulders as if it were a cloak, and the soldier of the king said, “Right then, Gregory, he’s all yours.” And the soldier turned and went back up the steps and opened the door to the outside world and some small light leaked in before he closed the door behind him.

“Did you see that?” Roscuro said to Botticelli.

“Hideously ugly,” said Botticelli. “Ridiculous. What can they possibly mean by letting all that light in at once. Don’t they know that this is a dungeon?”

“It was beautiful,” said Roscuro.

“No,” said Botticelli. “No.” He looked at Roscuro intently. “Not beautiful. No.”

“I must see more light. I must see all of it,” said Roscuro. “I must go upstairs.”

Botticelli sighed. “Who cares about the light? Your obsession with it is tiresome. Listen. We are rats. Rats. We do not like light. We are about darkness. We are about suffering.”

“But,” said Roscuro, “upstairs.”

“No ‘buts,’ ” said Botticelli. “No ‘buts.’ None. Rats do not go upstairs. Upstairs is the domain of mice.” He took the locket from around his neck.

“What,” he said, swinging it back and forth, “is this rope made of?”

“Whiskers.”

“The whiskers of whom?”

“Mice.”

“Exactly. And who lives upstairs?”

“Mice.”

“Exactly. Mice.” Botticelli turned his head and spat on the floor. “Mice are nothing but little packages of blood and bones, afraid of everything. They are despicable, laughable, the opposite of everything we strive to be. Do you want to live in their world?”

Roscuro looked up, past Botticelli to the delicious sliver of light that shone out from underneath the door. He said nothing.

“Listen,” said Botticelli, “this is what you should do: Go and torture the prisoner. Go and take the red cloth from him. The cloth will satisfy your cravings for something from that world. But do not go up into the light. You will regret it.” As he spoke, the locket swung back and forth, back and forth. “You do not belong in that world. You are a rat. A rat. Say it with me.”

“A rat,” said Roscuro.

“Ah, but you are cheating. You must say, ‘I am a rat,’ ” said Botticelli, smiling his slow smile at Roscuro.

“I am a rat,” said Roscuro.

“Again,” said Botticelli, swinging his locket.

“I am a rat.”

“Exactly,” said Botticelli. “A rat is a rat is a rat. End of story. World without end. Amen.”

“Yes,” said Roscuro. “Amen, I am a rat.” He closed his eyes. He saw, again, the red cloth spinning against the backdrop of gold.

And he told himself, reader, that it was the cloth that he desired and not the light.

18

ROSCURO WENT, as Botticelli told him he must, to torment the new prisoner and to take the red cloth from him.

The man was sitting with his legs stretched out straight in front of him, chained to the floor. The red cloth was still draped over his shoulders.

Roscuro squeezed through the bars and crept slowly over the damp, weeping stones of the cell floor.

When he was close to the man, he said, “Ah, welcome, welcome. We are delighted to have you.”

The man lit a match and looked at Roscuro.

Roscuro stared longingly into the light.

“Go on,” said the prisoner. He waved a hand in the direction of Roscuro and the match went out. “Yer nothing but a rat.”

“I am,” said Roscuro, “exactly that. A rat. Allow me to congratulate you on your very astute powers of observation.”

“What do ye want, rat?”

“What do I want? Nothing. Nothing for my sake, that is. I have come for you. I have come to keep you company here in the dark.” He crawled closer to the man.

“I don’t need the company of a rat.”

“What about the solace a sympathetic ear can provide? Do you need that?”

“Huh?”

“Would you like to confess your sins?”

“To a rat? You’re kidding, you are.”

“Come now,” said Roscuro. “Close your eyes. Pretend that I am not a rat. Pretend that I am nothing but a voice in the darkness. A voice that cares.”

The prisoner closed his eyes. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. But I’m telling you because there ain’t no point in not telling you, no point in keeping secrets from a dirty little rat. I ain’t in such a desperate way that I need to lie to a rat.”

The man cleared his throat. “I’m here for stealing six cows, two Jerseys and four Guernseys. Cow theft, that’s my crime.” He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. He laughed. He closed his eyes again. “But there’s something else I done, many years ago, another crime, and they don’t even know of it.”

“Go on,” said Roscuro softly. He crept closer. He allowed one paw to touch the magical red cloth.

“I traded my girl, my own daughter, for this red tablecloth and for a hen and for a handful of cigarettes.”

“Tsk,” said Roscuro. He was not alarmed to hear of such a hideous thing. His parents, after all, had not much cared for him, and certainly, if there was any profit in it, they would have sold him. And then, too, Botticelli Remorso, one lazy Sunday afternoon, had recited from memory all the confessions he had heard from prisoners. What humans were capable of came as no surprise to Roscuro.

“And then . . .,” said the man.

“And then,” encouraged Roscuro.

“And then I done the worst thing of all: I walked away from her and she was crying and calling out for me and I did not even look back. I did not. Oh, Lord, I kept walking.” The prisoner cleared his throat. He sniffed.

“Ah,” said Roscuro. “Yes. I see.” By now, he was standing so that all four of his paws were touching the red cloth.

“Do you find comfort in this cloth that you sold your child for?”

“It’s warm,” said the man.

“Was it worth your child?”

“I like the color of it.”

“Does the cloth remind you of what you have done wrong?”

“It does,” the prisoner said. He sniffed. “It does.”

“Allow me to ease your burden,” said Roscuro. He stood on his hind legs and bowed at the waist. “I will take this reminder of your sin from you,” he said. The rat took hold of the tablecloth in his strong teeth and pulled it off the shoulders of the man.

“Hey, see here. I want that back.”

But Roscuro, reader, was quick. He pulled the tablecloth through the bars of the cell, whoosh, like a magic trick in reverse.

“Hey!” shouted the prisoner. “Bring that back. It’s all I got.”

“Yes,” said Roscuro, “and that is exactly why I must have it.”

“You dirty rat!” shouted the prisoner.

“Yes,” said Roscuro. “That is right. That is most accurate.”

And he left the man and dragged the tablecloth back to his nest and considered it.

What a disappointment it was! Looking at it, Roscuro knew that Botticelli was wrong. What Roscuro wanted, what he needed, was not the cloth, but the light that had shone behind it.

He wanted to be filled, flooded, blinded again with light.

And for that, reader, the rat knew that he must go upstairs.

19

IMAGINE, IF YOU WILL, having spent the whole of your life in a dungeon. Imagine that late one spring day, you step out of the dark and into a world of bright windows and polished floors, winking copper pots, shining suits of armor, and tapestries sewn in gold.

Imagine. And while you are imagining things, imagine this, too. Imagine that at the same time the rat steps from the dungeon and into the castle, a mouse is being born upstairs, a mouse, reader, who is destined to meet the light-bedazzled rat.

But that meeting will occur much later, and for now, the rat is nothing but happy, delighted, amazed to find himself standing in so much light.

“I,” said Roscuro, spinning dizzily from one bright thing to the next, “I will never leave. No, never. I will never go back to the dungeon. Why would I? I will never torture another prisoner. It is here that I belong.”

The rat waltzed happily from room to room until he found himself at the door to the banquet hall. He looked inside and saw gathered there King Phillip, Queen Rosemary, the Princess Pea, twenty noble people, a juggler, four minstrels, and all the king’s men. This party, reader, was a sight for a rat’s eyes. Roscuro had never seen happy people. He had known only the miserable ones. Gregory the jailer and those who were consigned to his domain did not laugh or smile or clink glasses with the person sitting next to them.

Roscuro was enchanted. Everything glittered. Everything. The gold spoons on the table and the jingle bells on the juggler’s cap, the strings on the minstrels’ guitars and the crowns on the king’s and the queen’s heads.

And the little princess! How lovely she was! How much like light itself. Her gown was covered in sequins that winked and glimmered at the rat. And when she laughed, and she laughed often, everything around her seemed to glow brighter.

“Oh, really,” said Roscuro, “this is too extraordinary. This is too wonderful. I must tell Botticelli that he was wrong. Suffering is not the answer. Light is the answer.”

And he made his way into the banquet hall. He lifted his tail off the ground and held it at an angle and marched in time to the music the minstrels were playing on their guitars.

The rat, reader, invited himself to the party.

20

THERE WAS, in the banquet hall, a most beautiful and ornate chandelier. The crystals that hung from it caught the light of the candles on the table and the light from the face of the laughing princess. They danced to the rhythm of the minstrels’ music, swaying back and forth, twinkling and beckoning. What better place to view all this glory, all this beauty?

There was so much laughing and singing and juggling that no one noticed as Roscuro crawled up a table leg and onto the table, and from there flung himself onto the lowest branch of the chandelier.

Hanging by one paw, he swung back and forth, admiring the spectacle below him: the smells of the food, the sound of the music, and the light, the light, the light. Amazing. Unbelievable. Roscuro smiled and shook his head.

Unfortunately, a rat can hang from a chandelier for only so long before he is discovered. This would be true at even the loudest party.

Reader, do you know who it was that spotted him?

You’re right.

The sharp-eyed Princess Pea.

“A rat!” she shouted. “A rat is hanging from the chandelier!”

The party, as I have noted, was loud. The minstrels were strumming and singing. The people were laughing and eating. The man with the jingle cap was juggling and jingling.

No one, in the midst of all this merriment, heard the Pea. No one except for Roscuro.

Rat.

He had never before been aware of what an ugly word it was.

Rat.

In the middle of all that beauty, it immediately became clear that it was an extremely distasteful syllable.

Rat.

A curse, an insult, a word totally without light. And not until he heard it from the mouth of the princess did Roscuro realize that he did not like being a rat, that he did not want to be a rat. This revelation hit Roscuro with such force, that it made him lose his grip on the chandelier.

The rat, reader, fell.

And, alas, he fell right, directly, into the queen’s bowl of soup.

21

THE QUEEN LOVED SOUP. She loved soup more than anything in the world except for the Princess Pea and the king. And because the queen loved it, soup was served in the castle for every banquet, every lunch, and every dinner.

And what soup it was! Cook’s love and admiration for the queen and her palate moved the broth that she concocted from the level of mere food to a high art.

On this particular day, for this particular banquet, Cook had outdone herself. The soup was a masterwork, a delicate mingling of chicken, watercress, and garlic. Roscuro, as he surfaced from the bottom of the queen’s capacious bowl, could not help taking a few appreciative sips.

“Lovely,” he said, distracted for a moment from the misery of his existence, “delightful.”

“See?” shouted the Pea. “See!” She stood. She pointed her finger right at Roscuro. “It is a rat. I told you that it was a rat. He was hanging from the chandelier, and now he is in Mama’s soup!”

The musicians stopped playing their guitars. The juggler stopped juggling. The noble people stopped eating.

The queen looked at Roscuro.

Roscuro looked at the queen.

Reader, in the spirit of honesty, I must utter a difficult and unsavory truth: Rats are not beautiful creatures. They are not even cute. They are, really, rather nasty beasts, particularly if one happens to appear in your bowl of soup with pieces of watercress clinging to his whiskers.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Roscuro said to the queen, “I beg your pardon.”

In response, the queen flung her spoon in the air and made an incredible noise, a noise that was in no way worthy of a queen, a noise somewhere between the neigh of a horse and the squeal of a pig, a noise that sounded something like this: neiggghhhhiiiinnnnkkkkkk.

And then she said, “There is a rat in my soup.”

The queen was really a simple soul and always, her whole life, had done nothing except state the overly obvious.

She died as she lived.

“There is a rat in my soup” were the last words she uttered. She clutched her chest and fell over backward. Her royal chair hit the floor with a thump, and the banquet hall exploded. Spoons were dropped. Chairs were flung back.

“Save her!” thundered the king. “You must save her!”

All the king’s men ran to try and rescue the queen.

Roscuro climbed out of the bowl of soup. He felt that, under the circumstances, it would be best if he left. As he crawled across the tablecloth, he remembered the words of the prisoner in the dungeon, his regret that he did not look back at his daughter as he left her. And so, Roscuro turned.

He looked back.

And he saw that the princess was glaring at him. Her eyes were filled with disgust and anger.

“Go back to the dungeon” was what the look she gave him said. “Go back into the darkness where you belong.”

This look, reader, broke Roscuro’s heart.

Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.

If the rat had not looked over his shoulder, perhaps his heart would not have broken. And it is possible, then, that I would not have a story to tell.

But, reader, he did look.

22

ROSCURO HURRIED from the banquet hall.

“A rat,” he said. He put a paw over his heart. “I am a rat. And there is no light for rats. There will be no light for me.”

The king’s men were still bent over the queen. The king was still shouting, “Save her! Save her!” And the queen was still dead, of course, when Roscuro encountered the queen’s royal soupspoon lying on the floor.

“I will have something beautiful,” he said aloud. “I am a rat, but I will have something beautiful. I will have a crown of my own.” He picked up the spoon. He put it on his head.

“Yes,” said Roscuro. “I will have something beautiful. And I will have revenge. Both things. Somehow.”

There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

“Where is the rat?” shouted the king. “Find that rat!”

“If you want me,” muttered Roscuro as he left the banquet hall, “I will be in the dungeon, in the darkness.”

23

THERE WERE, OF COURSE, dire consequences of Roscuro’s behavior. Every action, reader, no matter how small, has a consequence. For instance, the young Roscuro gnawed on Gregory the jailer’s rope, and because he gnawed on the rope, a match was lit in his face, and because a match was lit in his face, his soul was set afire.

The rat’s soul was set afire, and because of this, he journeyed upstairs, seeking the light. Upstairs, in the banquet hall, the Princess Pea spotted him and called out the word “rat,” and because of this Roscuro fell into the queen’s soup. And because the rat fell into the queen’s soup, the queen died. You can see, can’t you, how everything is related to everything else? You can see, quite clearly, how every action has a consequence.

For instance (if, reader, you will indulge me, and allow me to continue this meditation on consequences), because the queen died while eating soup, the heartbroken king outlawed soup; and because soup was outlawed, so were all the instruments involved in the making and eating of soup: spoons and bowls and kettles. These things were collected from all the people of the Kingdom of Dor, and they were piled in the dungeon.

And because Roscuro was dazzled by the light of one match and journeyed upstairs and fell into the queen’s soup and the queen died, the king ordered the death of every rat in the land.

The king’s men went bravely into the dungeon to kill the rats. But the thing about killing a rat is that you must first find a rat. And if a rat does not want to be found, reader, he will not be found.

The king’s men succeeded only in getting lost in the dungeon’s tortuous mazes. Some of them, in fact, did not ever find their way out again and died there in the dark heart of the castle. And so, the killing of all rats was not successful. And in desperation, King Phillip declared that rats were illegal. He declared them outlaws.

This, of course, was a ridiculous law, as rats are outlaws to begin with. How can you outlaw an outlaw? It is a waste of time and energy. But still, the king officially decreed that all rats in the Kingdom of Dor were outlaws and should be treated as such. When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about.

But, reader, we must not forget that King Phillip loved the queen and that without her, he was lost. This is the danger of loving: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how many kingdoms you rule, you cannot stop those you love from dying. Making soup illegal, outlawing rats, these things soothed the poor king’s heart. And so we must forgive him.

And what of the outlawed rats? What of one outlawed rat in particular?

What of Chiaroscuro?

In the darkness of the dungeon, he sat in his nest with the spoon atop his head. He set to work fashioning for himself a kingly cape made out of a scrap of the red tablecloth. And as he worked, old one-eared Botticelli Remorso sat next to him swinging his locket back and forth, back and forth, saying, “You see what comes from a rat going upstairs? I hope that you have learned your lesson. Your job in this world is to make others suffer.”

“Yes,” muttered Roscuro. “Yes. That is exactly what I intend to do. I will make the princess suffer for how she looked at me.”

And as Roscuro worked and planned, the jailer Gregory held tight to his rope and made his own way through the darkness, and in a dank cell, the prisoner who had once had a red tablecloth and now had nothing, spent his days and nights weeping quietly.

High above the dungeon, upstairs, in the castle, a small mouse stood alone one evening as his brothers and sisters sniffed for crumbs. He stood with his head cocked to one side, listening to a sweet sound he did not yet have a name for. There would be consequences of the mouse’s love for music. You, reader, know already some of those consequences. Because of the music, the mouse would find his way to a princess. He would fall in love.

And speaking of consequences, the same evening that Despereaux stood inside the castle hearing music for the first time, outside the castle, in the gloom of dusk, more consequences drew near. A wagon driven by a king’s soldier and piled high with spoons and bowls and kettles was making its way to the castle. And beside the soldier there sat a young girl with ears that looked like nothing so much as pieces of cauliflower stuck on either side of her head.

The girl’s name, reader, was Miggery Sow. And though she did not yet know it, she would be instrumental in helping the rat work his revenge.