The Tale of Despereaux

24

AGAIN, READER, we must go backward before we can go forward. With that said, here begins a short history of the life and times of Miggery Sow, a girl born into this world many years before the mouse Despereaux and the rat Chiaroscuro, a girl born far from the castle, a girl named for her father’s favorite prize-winning pig.

Miggery Sow was six years old when her mother, holding on to Mig’s hand and staring directly into Mig’s eyes, died.

“Ma?” said Mig. “Ma, couldn’t you stay here with me?”

“Oh,” said her mother. “Who is that? Who is that holding my hand?”

“It’s me, Ma, Miggery Sow.”

“Ah, child, let me go.”

“But I want you to stay here,” said Mig, wiping first at her runny nose and then at her runny eyes.

“You want,” said her mother.

“Yes,” said Mig, “I want.”

“Ah, child, and what does it matter what you are wanting?” said her mother. She squeezed Mig’s hand once, twice, and then she died, leaving Mig alone with her father, who, on a market day in spring soon after his wife’s death, sold his daughter into service for a handful of cigarettes, a red tablecloth, and a hen.

“Papa?” said Mig, when her father was walking away from her with the hen in his arms, a cigarette in his mouth, and the red tablecloth draped across his shoulders like a cape.

“Go on, Mig,” he said. “You belong to that man now.”

“But I don’t want to, Papa,” she said. “I want to go with you.” She took hold of the red tablecloth and tugged on it.

“Lord, child,” her father said, “and who is asking you what you want? Go on now.” He untangled her fingers from the cloth and turned her in the direction of the man who had bought her.

Mig watched her father walk away, the red tablecloth billowing out behind him. He left his daughter. And, reader, as you already know, he did not look back. Not even once.

Can you imagine it? Can you imagine your father selling you for a tablecloth, a hen, and a handful of cigarettes? Close your eyes, please, and consider it for just a moment.

Done?

I hope that the hair on the back of your neck stood up as you thought of Mig’s fate and how it would be if it were your own.

Poor Mig. What will become of her? You must, frightened though you may be, read on and see for yourself.

Reader, it is your duty.

25

MIGGERY SOW called the man who purchased her Uncle, as he said she must. And also, as he said she must, Mig tended Uncle’s sheep and cooked Uncle’s food and scrubbed Uncle’s kettle. She did all of this without a word of thanks or praise from the man himself.

Another unfortunate fact of life with Uncle was that he very much liked giving Mig what he referred to as “a good clout to the ear.” In fairness to Uncle, it must be reported that he did always inquire whether or not Mig was interested in receiving the clout.

Their daily exchanges went something like this:

Uncle: “I thought I told you to clean the kettle.”

Mig: “I cleaned it, Uncle. I cleaned it good.”

Uncle: “Ah, it’s filthy. You’ll have to be punished, won’t ye?”

Mig: “Gor, Uncle, I cleaned the kettle.”

Uncle: “Are ye saying that I’m a liar, girl?”

Mig: “No, Uncle.”

Uncle: “Do ye want a good clout to the ear, then?”

Mig: “No, thank you, Uncle, I don’t.”

Alas, Uncle seemed to be as entirely unconcerned with what Mig wanted as her mother and father had been. The discussed clout to the ear was always delivered . . . delivered, I am afraid, with a great deal of enthusiasm on Uncle’s part and received with absolutely no enthusiasm at all on the part of Mig.

These clouts were alarmingly frequent. And Uncle was scrupulously fair in paying attention to both the right and left side of Miggery Sow. So it was that after a time, the young Mig’s ears came to resemble not so much ears as pieces of cauliflower stuck to either side of her head.

And they became about as useful to her as pieces of cauliflower. That is to say that they all but ceased their functioning as ears. Words, for Mig, lost their sharp edges. And then they lost their edges altogether and became blurry, blankety things that she had a great deal of trouble making any sense out of at all.

The less Mig heard, the less she understood. The less she understood, the more things she did wrong; and the more things she did wrong, the more clouts to the ear she received, and the less she heard. This is what is known as a vicious circle. And Miggery Sow was right in the center of it.

Which is not, reader, where anybody would want to be.

But then, as you know, what Miggery Sow wanted had never been of much concern to anyone.

26

WHEN MIG TURNED SEVEN years old, there was no cake, no celebration, no singing, no present, no acknowledgment of her birthday at all other than Mig saying, “Uncle, today I am seven years old.”

And Uncle saying in return, “Did I ask ye how old you were today? Get out of my face before I give ye a good clout to the ear.”

A few hours after receiving her birthday clout to the ear, Mig was out in the field with Uncle’s sheep when she saw something glittering and glowing on the horizon.

She thought for a moment that it was the sun. But she turned and saw that the sun was in the west, where it should be, sinking to join the earth. This thing that shone so brightly was something else. Mig stood in the field and shaded her eyes with her left hand and watched the brilliant light draw closer and closer and closer until it revealed itself to be King Phillip and his Queen Rosemary and their daughter, the young Princess Pea.

The royal family was surrounded by knights in shining armor and horses in shining armor. And atop each member of the royal family’s head, there was a golden crown, and they were all, the king and the queen and the princess, dressed in robes decorated with jewels and sequins that glittered and glowed and captured the light of the setting sun and reflected it back.

“Gor,” breathed Mig.

The Princess Pea was riding on a white horse that picked up its legs very high and set them down very daintily. The Pea saw Mig standing and staring, and she raised a hand to her.

“Hello,” the Princess Pea called out merrily, “hello.” And she waved her hand again.

Mig did not wave back; instead, she stood and watched, open-mouthed, as the perfect, beautiful family passed her by.

“Papa,” called the princess to the king, “what is wrong with the girl? She will not wave to me.”

“Never mind,” said the king. “It is of no consequence, my dear.”

“But I am a princess. And I waved to her. She should wave back.”

Mig, for her part, continued to stare. Looking at the royal family had awakened some deep and slumbering need in her; it was as if a small candle had been lit in her interior, sparked to life by the brilliance of the king and the queen and the princess.

For the first time in her life, reader, Mig hoped.

And hope is like love . . . a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing.

Mig tried to name this strange emotion; she put a hand up to touch one of her aching ears, and she realized that the feeling she was experiencing, the hope blooming inside of her, felt exactly the opposite of a good clout.

She smiled and took her hand away from her ear. She waved to the princess. “Today is my birthday!” Mig called out.

But the king and the queen and the princess were by now too far away to hear her.

“Today,” shouted Mig, “I am seven years old!”

27

THAT NIGHT, in the small, dark hut that she shared with Uncle and the sheep, Mig tried to speak of what she had seen.

“Uncle?” she said.

“Eh?”

“I saw some human stars today.”

“How’s that?”

“I saw them all glittering and glowing, and there was a little princess wearing her own crown and riding on a little white, tippy-toed horse.”

“What are ye going on about?” said Uncle.

“I saw a king and a queen and a itty-bitty princess,” shouted Mig.

“So?” shouted Uncle back.

“I would like . . .,” said Mig shyly. “I wish to be one of them princesses.”

“Har,” laughed Uncle. “Har. An ugly, dumb thing like you? You ain’t even worth the enormous lot I paid for you. Don’t I wish every night that I had back that good hen and that red tablecloth in place of you?”

He did not wait for Mig to guess the answer to this question. “I do,” he said. “I wish it every night. That tablecloth was the color of blood. That hen could lay eggs like nobody’s business.”

“I want to be a princess,” said Mig. “I want to wear a crown.”

“A crown.” Uncle laughed. “She wants to wear a crown.” He laughed harder. He took the empty kettle and put it atop his head. “Look at me,” he said. “I’m a king. See my crown? I’m a king just like I always wanted to be. I’m a king because I want to be one.”

He danced around the hut with the kettle on his head. He laughed until he cried. And then he stopped dancing and took the kettle from his head and looked at Mig and said, “Do ye want a good clout to the ear for such nonsense?”

“No, thank you, Uncle,” said Mig.

But she got one anyway.

“Look here,” said Uncle after the clout had been delivered. “We will hear no more talk of princesses. Besides, who ever asked you what you wanted in this world, girl?”

The answer to that question, reader, as you well know, was absolutely no one.

28

YEARS PASSED. Mig spent them scrubbing the kettle and tending the sheep and cleaning the hut and collecting innumerable, uncountable, extremely painful clouts to the ear. In the evening, spring or winter, summer or fall, Mig stood in the field as the sun set, hoping that the royal family would pass before her again.

“Gor, I would like to see that little princess another time, wouldn’t I? And her little pony, too, with his tippy-toed feet.” This hope, this wish, that she would see the princess again, was lodged deep in Mig’s heart; lodged firmly right next to it was the hope that she, Miggery Sow, could someday become a princess herself.

The first of Mig’s wishes was granted, in a roundabout way, when King Phillip outlawed soup. The king’s men were sent out to deliver the grim news and to collect from the people of the Kingdom of Dor their kettles, their spoons, and their bowls.

Reader, you know exactly how and why this law came to pass, so you would not be as surprised as Uncle was when, one Sunday, a soldier of the king knocked on the door of the hut that Mig and Uncle and the sheep shared and announced that soup was against the law.

“How’s that?” said Uncle.

“By royal order of King Phillip,” repeated the soldier, “I am sent here to tell you that soup has been outlawed in the Kingdom of Dor. You will, by order of the king, never again consume soup. Nor will you think of it or talk about it. And I, as one of the king’s loyal servants, am here to take from you your spoons, your kettle, and your bowls.”

“But that can’t be,” said Uncle.

“Nevertheless. It is.”

“What’ll we eat? And what’ll we eat it with?”

“Cake,” suggested the soldier, “with a fork.”

“And wouldn’t that be lovely,” said Uncle, “if we could afford to eat cake.”

The soldier shrugged. “I am only doing my duty. Please hand over your spoons, your bowls, and your kettle.”

Uncle grabbed hold of his beard. He let go of his beard and grabbed the hair on his head. “Unbelievable!” he shouted. “I suppose next the king will be wanting my sheep and my girl, seeing as those are the only possessions I have left.”

“Do you own a girl?” said the soldier.

“I do,” said Uncle. “A worthless one, but still, she is mine.”

“Ah,” said the soldier, “that, I am afraid, is against the law, too; no human may own another in the Kingdom of Dor.”

“But I paid for her fair and square with a good laying hen and a handful of cigarettes and a blood-red tablecloth.”

“No matter,” said the soldier, “it is against the law to own another. Now, you will hand over to me, if you please, your spoons, your bowls, your kettle, and your girl. Or if you choose not to hand over these things, then you will come with me to be imprisoned in the castle dungeon. Which will it be?”

And that is how Miggery Sow came to be sitting in a wagon full of soup-related items, next to a soldier of the king.

“Do you have parents?” said the soldier. “I will return you to them.”

“Eh?”

“A ma?” shouted the soldier.

“Dead!” said Mig.

“Your pa?” shouted the soldier.

“I ain’t seen him since he sold me.”

“Right. I’ll take you to the castle then.”

“Gor,” said Mig, looking around the wagon in confusion. “You want me to paddle?”

“To the castle!” shouted the soldier. “I’ll take you to the castle.”

“The castle? Where the itty-bitty princess lives?”

“That’s right.”

“Gor,” said Mig, “I aim to be a princess, too, someday.”

“That’s a fine dream,” said the soldier. He clucked to the horse and tapped the reins and they took off.

“I’m happy to be going,” said Mig, putting a hand up and gently touching one of her cauliflower ears.

“Might just as well be happy, seeing as it doesn’t make a difference to anyone but you if you are or not,” said the soldier. “We will take you to the castle and they will set you up fine. You no longer will be a slave. You will be a paid servant.”

“Eh?” said Mig.

“You will be a servant!” shouted the soldier. “Not a slave!”

“Gor!” said Mig, satisfied. “A servant I will be, not a slave.”

She was twelve years old. Her mother was dead. Her father had sold her. Her Uncle, who wasn’t her uncle at all, had clouted her until she was almost deaf. And she wanted, more than anything in the world, to be a little princess wearing a golden crown and riding a high-stepping white horse.

Reader, do you think that it is a terrible thing to hope when there is really no reason to hope at all? Or is it (as the soldier said about happiness) something that you might just as well do, since, in the end, it really makes no difference to anyone but you?

29

MIGGERY SOW’S LUCK CONTINUED. On her first day on the job as a castle servant, she was sent to deliver a spool of red thread to the princess.

“Mind,” said the head of the serving staff, a dour woman named Louise, “she is royalty, so you must make sure you curtsy.”

“How’s that?” shouted Mig.

“You must curtsy!” shouted Louise.

“Gor,” said Mig, “yes’m.”

She took the spool of thread from Louise and made her way up the golden stairs to the princess’s room, talking to herself as she went.

“Here I am, off to see the princess. Me, Miggery Sow, seeing the princess up close and personal-like. And first off, I must cursy because she is the royalty.”

At the door to the princess’s room, Mig had a sudden crisis of confidence. She stood a moment, clutching the spool of thread and muttering to herself.

“Now, how did that go?” she said. “Give the princess the thread and then give her a cursy? No, no, first the cursy and then the thread. That’s it. Gor, that’s right, that’s the order. Start with the cursy and finish with the thread.”

She knocked at the princess’s door.

“Enter,” said the Pea.

Mig, hearing nothing, knocked again.

“Enter,” said the Pea.

And Mig, still hearing nothing, knocked yet again. “Maybe,” she said to herself, “the princess ain’t to home.”

But then the door was flung wide and there was the princess herself, staring right at Miggery Sow.

“Gor,” said Mig, her mouth hanging open.

“Hello,” said the Pea. “Are you the new serving maid? Have you brought me my thread?”

“Cursy I must!” shouted Mig.

She gathered her skirts, dropped the spool of thread, stuck a foot out, and stepped on the spool, rocked back and forth for what seemed like quite a long time (both to the watching princess and the rocking Mig), and finally fell to the floor with a Miggish thud.

“Whoopsie,” said Miggery Sow.

The Pea could not help it — she laughed. “That’s all right,” she said to Mig, shaking her head. “It’s the spirit of the thing that counts.”

“How’s that?” shouted Mig.

“It’s the spirit of the thing that counts!” shouted Pea.

“Thank you, miss,” said Mig. She got slowly to her feet. She looked at the princess. She looked down at the floor. “First the cursy and then the thread,” Mig muttered.

“Pardon?” said the Pea.

“Gor!” said Mig. “The thread!” She dropped to her hands and knees to locate the spool of thread; when she found it, she stood back up and offered it to Pea. “I brought you yer thread, didn’t I?”

“Lovely,” said the princess as she took the thread from Mig. “Thank you so much. I cannot seem to hold on to a spool of red thread. Every one I have disappears somehow.”

“Are you making a thing?” asked Mig, squinting at the cloth in the Pea’s hand.

“I am making a history of the world, my world,” said the Pea, “in tapestry. See? Here is my father, the king. And he is playing the guitar because that is something he loves to do and does quite well. And here is my mother, the queen, and she is eating soup because she loved soup.”

“Soup! Gor! That’s against the law.”

“Yes,” said the princess, “my father outlawed it because my mother died while she was eating it.”

“Your ma’s dead?”

“Yes,” said the Pea. “She died just last month.” She bit her bottom lip to stop it from trembling.

“Ain’t that the thing?” said Mig. “My ma is dead, too.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Bold was I?” said Mig, taking a step back, away from the princess. “I’m sorry, then.”

“No, no, how old. How old were you?” shouted the Pea.

“Not but six,” said Mig.

“I’m sorry,” said the princess. She gave Mig a quick, deep look of sympathy. “How old are you now?”

“Twelve years.”

“So am I,” said the princess. “We’re the same age. What is your name?” she shouted.

“Miggery. Miggery Sow, but most just calls me Mig. And I saw you once before, Princess. You passed me by on a little white horse. On my birthday, it was, and I was in the field with Uncle’s sheep and it was sunset time.”

“Did I wave to you?” asked the princess.

“Eh?”

“Did I wave?” shouted the Pea.

“Yes,” nodded Mig.

“But you didn’t wave back,” said the princess.

“I did,” said Mig. “Only you didn’t see. Someday, I will sit on a little white horse and wear a crown and wave. Someday,” said Mig, and she put up a hand to touch her left ear, “I will be a princess, too.”

“Really?” said the Pea. And she gave Mig another quick, deep look, but said nothing else.

When Mig finally made her way back down the golden stairs, Louise was waiting for her.

“How long,” she roared, “did it take you to deliver a spool of thread to the princess?”

“Too long?” guessed Mig.

“That’s right,” said Louise. And she gave Mig a good clout to the ear. “You are not destined to be one of our star servants. That is already abundantly clear.”

“No, ma’am,” said Mig. “That’s all right, though, because I aim to be a princess.”

“You? A princess? Don’t make me laugh.”

This, reader, was a little joke on Louise’s part, as she was not a person who laughed. Ever. Not even at a notion as ridiculous as Miggery Sow becoming a princess.

30

AT THE CASTLE, for the first time in her young life, Mig had enough to eat. And eat she did. She quickly became plump and then plumper still. She grew rounder and rounder and bigger and bigger. Only her head stayed small.

Reader, as the teller of this tale, it is my duty from time to time to utter some hard and rather disagreeable truths. In the spirit of honesty, then, I must inform you that Mig was the tiniest bit lazy. And, too, she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. That is, she was a bit slow-witted.

Because of these shortcomings, Louise was hard-pressed to find a job that Miggery Sow could effectively perform. In quick succession, Mig failed as a lady in waiting (she was caught trying on the gown of a visiting duchess), a seamstress (she sewed the cloak of the riding master to her own frock and ruined both), and as a chambermaid (sent to clean a room, she stood, open-mouthed and delighted, admiring the gold walls and floors and tapestries, exclaiming over and over again, “Gor, ain’t it pretty? Gor, ain’t it something, then?” and did no cleaning at all).

And while Mig was trying and failing at these many domestic chores, other important things were happening in the castle: The rat, in the dungeon below, was pacing and muttering in the darkness, waiting to take his revenge on the princess. And upstairs in the castle, the princess had met a mouse. And the mouse had fallen in love with her.

Will there be consequences? You bet.

Just as Mig’s inability to perform any job well had its consequences. For, finally, as a last resort, Louise sent Mig to the kitchen, where Cook had a reputation for dealing effectively with difficult help. In Cook’s kitchen, Mig dropped eggshells in the pound cake batter; she scrubbed the kitchen floor with cooking oil instead of cleanser; she sneezed directly on the king’s pork chop moments before it was to be served to him.

“Of all the good-for-nothings I have encountered,” shouted Cook, “surely you are the worst, the most cauliflower-eared, the good-for-nothing-est. There’s only one place left for you. The dungeon.”

“Eh?” said Mig, cupping a hand around her ear.

“You are being sent to the dungeon. You are to take the jailer his noonday meal. That will be your duty from now on.”

Reader, you know that the mice of the castle feared the dungeon. Must I tell you that the humans feared it, too? Certainly it was never far from their thoughts. In the warm months, a foul odor rose out of its dark depths and permeated the whole of the castle. And in the still, cold nights of winter, terrible howls issued from the dark place, as if the castle itself were weeping and moaning.

“It’s only the wind,” the people of the castle assured each other, “nothing but the wind.”

Many a serving girl had been sent to the dungeon bearing the jailer’s meal only to return white-faced and weeping, hands trembling, teeth chattering, insisting that they would never go back. And worse, there were whispered stories of those servant girls who had been given the job of feeding the jailer, who had gone down the stairs and into the dungeon, and who had never been seen or heard from again.

Do you believe that this will be Mig’s fate?

Gor! I hope not. What kind of a story would this be without Mig?

“Listen, you cauliflower-eared fool!” shouted Cook. “This is what you do. You take the tray of food down to the dungeon and you wait for the old man to eat the food and then you bring the tray back up. Do you think that you can manage that?”

“Aye, I reckon so,” said Mig. “I take the old man the tray and he eats what’s on it and then I bring the tray back up. Empty it would be, then. I bring the empty tray back up from the deep downs.”

“That’s right,” said Cook. “Seems simple, don’t it? But I’m sure you’ll find a way to bungle it.”

“Eh?” said Mig.

“Nothing,” said Cook. “Good luck to you. You’ll be needing it.”

She watched as Mig descended the dungeon stairs. They were the very same stairs, reader, that the mouse Despereaux had been pushed down the day before. Unlike the mouse, however, Mig had a light: on the tray with the food, there was a single, flickering candle to show her the way. She turned on the stairs and looked back at Cook and smiled.

“That cauliflower-eared, good-for-nothing fool,” said Cook, shaking her head. “What’s to become of someone who goes into the dungeon smiling, I ask you?”

Reader, for the answer to Cook’s question, you must read on.

31

THE TERRIBLE FOUL ODOR of the dungeon did not bother Mig. Perhaps that is because, sometimes, when Uncle was giving her a good clout to the ear, he missed his mark and delivered a good clout to Mig’s nose instead. This happened often enough that it interrupted the proper workings of Mig’s olfactory senses. And so it was that the overwhelming stench of despair and hopelessness and evil was not at all discernible to her, and she went happily down the twisting and turning stairs.

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

“Yes, it is Mig,” she answered herself, “but if I was a princess, I would be so glittery lightlike, there wouldn’t be a place in the world that was dark to me.”

At this point, Miggery Sow broke into a little song that went something like this:

Mig, as you can imagine, wasn’t much of a singer, more of a bellower, really. But in her little song, there was, to the rightly tuned ear, a certain kind of music. And as Mig went singing down the stairs of the dungeon, there appeared from the shadows a rat wrapped in a cloak of red and wearing a spoon on his head.

“Yes, yes,” whispered the rat, “a lovely song. Just the song I have been waiting to hear.”

And Roscuro quietly fell in step beside Miggery Sow.

At the bottom of the stairs, Mig shouted out into the darkness, “Gor, it’s me, Miggery Sow, most calls me Mig, delivering your food! Come and get it, Mr. Deep Downs!”

There was no response.

The dungeon was quiet, but it was not quiet in a good way. It was quiet in an ominous way; it was quiet in the way of small, frightening sounds. There was the snail-like slither of water oozing down the walls and from around a darkened corner there came the low moan of someone in pain. And then, too, there was the noise of the rats going about their business, their sharp nails hitting the stones of the dungeon and their long tails dragging behind them, through the blood and muck.

Reader, if you were standing in the dungeon, you would certainly hear all of these disturbing and ominous sounds.

If I were standing in the dungeon, I would hear these sounds.

If we were standing together in the dungeon, we would hear these sounds and we would be very frightened; we would cling to each other in our fear.

But what did Miggery Sow hear?

That’s right.

Absolutely nothing.

And so she was not afraid at all, not in the least.

She held the tray up higher, and the candle shed its weak light on the towering pile of spoons and bowls and kettles. “Gor,” said Mig, “look at them things. I ain’t never imagined there could be so many spoons in the whole wide world.”

“There is more to this world than anyone could imagine,” said a booming voice from the darkness.

“True, true,” whispered Roscuro. “The old jailer speaks true.”

“Gor,” said Mig. “Who said that?” And she turned in the direction of the jailer’s voice.

32

THE CANDLELIGHT on Mig’s tray revealed Gregory limping toward her, the thick rope tied around his ankle, his hands outstretched.

“You, Gregory presumes, have brought food for the jailer.”

“Gor,” said Mig. She took a step backward.

“Give it here,” said Gregory, and he took the tray from Mig and sat down on an overturned kettle that had rolled free from the tower. He balanced the tray on his knees and stared at the covered plate.

“Gregory assumes that today, again, there is no soup.”

“Eh?” said Mig.

“Soup!” shouted Gregory.

“Illegal!” shouted Mig back.

“Most foolish,” muttered Gregory as he lifted the cover off the plate, “too foolish to be borne, a world without soup.” He picked up a drumstick and put the whole of it in his mouth and chewed and swallowed.

“Here,” said Mig, staring hard at him, “you forgot the bones.”

“Not forgotten. Chewed.”

“Gor,” said Mig, staring at Gregory with respect. “You eats the bones. You are most ferocious.”

Gregory ate another piece of chicken, a wing, bones and all. And then another. Mig watched him admiringly.

“Someday,” she said, moved suddenly to tell this man her deepest wish, “I will be a princess.”

At this pronouncement, Chiaroscuro, who was still at Mig’s side, did a small, deliberate jig of joy; in the light of the one candle, his dancing shadow was large and fearsome indeed.

“Gregory sees you,” Gregory said to the rat’s shadow.

Roscuro ceased his dance. He moved to hide beneath Mig’s skirts.

“Eh?” shouted Mig. “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” said Gregory. “So you aim to be a princess. Well, everyone has a foolish dream. Gregory, for instance, dreams of a world where soup is legal. And that rat, Gregory is sure, has some foolish dream, too.”

“If only you knew,” whispered Roscuro.

“What?” shouted Mig.

Gregory said nothing more. Instead, he reached into his pocket and then held his napkin up to his face and sneezed into it, once, twice, three times.

“Bless you!” shouted Mig. “Bless you, bless you.”

“Back to the world of light,” Gregory whispered. And then he balled the napkin up and placed it on the tray.

“Gregory is done,” he said. And he held the tray out to Mig.

“Done are you? Then the tray goes back upstairs. Cook says it must. You take the tray to the deep downs, you wait for the old man to eat, and then you bring the tray back. Them’s my instructions.”

“Did they instruct you, too, to beware of the rats?”

“The what?”

“The rats.”

“What about ’em?”

“Beware of them,” shouted Gregory.

“Right,” said Mig. “Beware the rats.”

Roscuro, hidden beneath Mig’s skirts, rubbed his front paws together. “Warn her all you like, old man,” he whispered. “My hour has arrived. The time is now and your rope must break. No nib-nib-nibbling this time, rather a serious chew that will break it in two. Yes, it is all coming clear. Revenge is at hand.”

33

MIG HAD CLIMBED the dungeon stairs and was preparing to open the door to the kitchen, when the rat spoke to her.

“May I detain you for a moment?”

Mig looked to her left and then to her right.

“Down here,” said Roscuro.

Mig looked at the floor.

“Gor,” she said, “but you’re a rat, ain’t you? And didn’t the old man just warn me of such? ‘Beware the rats,’ he said.” She held the tray up higher so that the light from the candle shone directly on Roscuro and the golden spoon on his head and the blood-red cloak around his neck.

“There is no need to panic, none at all,” said Roscuro. As he talked, he reached behind his back and, using the handle, he raised the soupspoon off his head, much in the manner of a man lifting his hat to a lady.

“Gor,” said Mig, “a rat with manners.”

“Yes,” said Roscuro. “How do you do?”

“My papa had him some cloth much like yours, Mr. Rat,” said Mig. “Red like that. He traded me for it.”

“Ah,” said Roscuro, and he smiled a large, knowing smile. “Ah, did he really? That is a terrible story, a tragic story.”

Reader, if you will pardon me, we must pause for a moment to consider a great and unusual thing, a portentous thing. That great, unusual, portentous thing is this: Roscuro’s voice was pitched perfectly to make its way through the tortuous path of Mig’s broken-down, cauliflower ears. That is to say, dear reader, Miggery Sow heard, perfect and true, every single word the rat Roscuro uttered.

“You have known your share of tragedy,” said Roscuro to Mig. “Perhaps it is time for you to make the acquaintance of triumph and glory.”

“Triumph?” said Mig. “Glory?”

“Allow me to introduce myself,” said Roscuro. “I am Chiaroscuro. Friends call me Roscuro. And your name is Miggery Sow. And it is true, is it not, that most people call you simply Mig?”

“Ain’t that the thing?” shouted Mig. “A rat who knows my name!”

“Miss Miggery, my dear, I do not want to appear too forward so early in our acquaintance, but may I inquire, am I right in ascertaining that you have aspirations?”

“What do ye mean ‘aspirations’?” shouted Mig.

“Miss Miggery, there is no need to shout. None at all. As you can hear me, so I can hear you. We two are perfectly suited, each to the other.” Roscuro smiled again, displaying a mouthful of sharp yellow teeth. “ ‘Aspirations,’ my dear, are those things that would make a serving girl wish to be a princess.”

“Gor,” agreed Mig, “a princess is exactly what I want to be.”

“There is, my dear, a way to make that happen. I believe that there is a way to make that dream come true.”

“You mean that I could be the Princess Pea?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” said Roscuro. And he swept the spoon off his head and bowed deeply at the waist. “Yes, your most royal Princess Pea.”

“Gor!” said Mig.

“May I tell you my plan? May I illustrate for you how we can make your dream of becoming a princess a reality?”

“Yes,” said Mig, “yes.”

“It begins,” said Roscuro, “with yours truly, and the chewing of a rope.”

Mig held the tray with the one small candle burning bright, and she listened as the rat went on, speaking directly to the wish in her heart. So passionately did Roscuro speak and so intently did the serving girl listen that neither noticed as the napkin on the tray moved.

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.