The Tale of Despereaux Read online

  “What say you, Despereaux Tilling?”

  “I say . . . I say . . . I say . . . no,” whispered Despereaux.

  “What?” said the Head Mouse.

  “No,” said Despereaux. And this time, he did not whisper the word. “I am not sorry. I will not renounce my actions. I love her. I love the princess.”

  There was a bellow of collective outrage. The whole of the mouse community surged toward Despereaux. The mice seemed to become one angry body with hundreds of tails and thousands of whiskers and one huge, hungry mouth opening and closing and opening and closing, saying over and over and over again, “To the dungeon. To the dungeon. To the dungeon.”

  The words pounded through Despereaux’s body with each beat of his heart.

  “Very well,” said the Most Very Honored Head Mouse. “You will die, then, with a black heart. Threadmaster,” he called, “bring out the thread.”

  Despereaux marveled at his own bravery.

  He admired his own defiance.

  And then, reader, he fainted.

  WHEN DESPEREAUX CAME TO, he heard the drum. His father was beating a rhythm that had much more boom and much less tat. Together, Lester and the drum produced an ominous sound that went something like this: Boom-boom-boom-tat. Boom-boom-boom-tat.

  “Make way for the thread!” cried a mouse who was pushing a wooden spool of red thread through the crowd. “Make way for the thread!”

  Boom-boom-boom-tat, went the drum.

  “To the dungeon!” shouted the mice.

  Despereaux lay on his back, blinking his eyes. How, he wondered, had things gone so terribly wrong? Wasn’t it a good thing to love? In the story in the book, love was a very good thing. Because the knight loved the fair maiden, he was able to rescue her. They lived happily ever after. It said so. In the book. They were the last words on the page. Happily ever after. Despereaux was certain that he had read exactly those words time and time again.

  Lying on the floor with the drum beating and the mice shouting and the threadmaster calling out, “Make way, make way,” Despereaux had a sudden, chilling thought: Had some other mouse eaten the words that spoke the truth? Did the knight and the fair maiden really not live happily ever after?

  Reader, do you believe that there is such a thing as happily ever after? Or, like Despereaux, have you, too, begun to question the possibility of happy endings?

  “Happily ever after,” whispered Despereaux. “Happily ever after,” he said again as the spool of thread came to a stop beside him.

  “The thread, the thread, the thread,” murmured the mice.

  “I’m sorry,” said the mouse behind the spool, “but I have to ask you to stand up. I have to do my job.”

  Despereaux got slowly to his feet.

  “On your hind legs, please,” said the threadmaster. “It’s the rules.”

  Despereaux stood on his hind legs.

  “Thank you,” said the mouse. “I appreciate it.”

  While Despereaux watched, the threadmaster unwound a length of red thread from the spool and tied a loop.

  “Just enough for the neck,” muttered the mouse. “No more, no less. That’s what the last threadmaster taught me: enough thread for the neck.” He looked up at Despereaux and then back down at the loop of thread. “And you, my friend, have a small neck.”

  The threadmaster raised his arms and put them around Despereaux’s neck. He leaned in close and Despereaux smelled celery. He could feel the threadmaster’s breath in his ear as he worked at tightening the thread.

  “Is she beautiful?” the threadmaster whispered.

  “What?” said Despereaux.

  “Shhhh. Is the princess beautiful?”

  “The Princess Pea?”

  “Yes.”

  “She is lovely beyond all imagining,” said Despereaux.

  “Just right,” the threadmaster said. He drew back. He nodded his head. “A lovely princess, just so, like a fairy tale. And you love her, as a knight loves a maiden. You love her with a courtly love, a love that is based on bravery and courtesy and honor and devotion. Just so.”

  “How do you know that?” Despereaux said. “How do you know about fairy tales?”

  “Shhhhh.” The mouse leaned in close, and Despereaux smelled celery again, green and alive. “Be brave, friend,” whispered the threadmaster. “Be brave for the princess.” And then he stepped back and turned and shouted, “Fellow mice, the thread has been tied. The thread has been knotted.”

  A roar of approval went up from the crowd.

  Despereaux squared his shoulders. He had made a decision. He would do as the threadmaster had suggested. He would be brave for the princess.

  Even if (reader, could it be true?) there was no such thing as happily ever after.

  THE SOUND OF THE DRUM changed again. The final tat disappeared and it became nothing but boom.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  Lester used only his tail, bringing it down with great force and seriousness upon the drum.

  The threadmaster retreated.

  The room full of mice fell silent, expectant, waiting.

  And as Despereaux stood before them with the red thread around his neck and the fourteen members of the Mouse Council perched on the bricks above him, two burly mice came forward. Black pieces of cloth covered their heads. There were slits for their eyes.

  “We,” said the bigger of the two mice, “will escort you to the dungeon.”

  “Despereaux,” Antoinette called out. “Ah, my Despereaux!”

  Despereaux looked out into the crowd of mice and saw his mother. She was easy to spot. In honor of her youngest mouse being sent to the dungeon, she had put on a tremendous amount of makeup.

  Each of the hooded mice put a paw on Despereaux’s shoulder.

  “It’s time,” said the one on the left, the first hood.

  Antoinette pushed her way through the crowd. “He is my son,” she said. “I want to have a last word with my son.”

  Despereaux looked at his mother. He concentrated on standing before her without trembling. He concentrated on not being a disappointment.

  “Please,” said Antoinette, “what will happen to him? What will happen to my baby?”

  “Ma’am,” said the first hood. His voice was deep and slow. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I want to know. I want to know. He is my child. The child of my heart. The last of my mice babies.”

  The hooded mice said nothing.

  “Tell me,” said Antoinette.

  “The rats,” said the first.

  “The rats,” said the second.

  “Yes. Yes. Oui. The rats. What of them?”

  “The rats will eat him,” said the second hood.

  “Ah,” said Antoinette. “Mon Dieu!”

  At the thought of being eaten by rats, Despereaux forgot about being brave. He forgot about not being a disappointment. He felt himself heading into another faint. But his mother, who had an excellent sense of dramatic timing, beat him to it; she executed a beautiful, flawless swoon, landing right at Despereaux’s feet.

  “Now you’ve done it,” said the first hood.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the second. “Step over her. We have a job to do. Nobody’s mother is going to stop us. To the dungeon.”

  “To the dungeon,” repeated the first hood, but his voice, so deep and certain a moment ago, now shook a tiny bit. He put a paw on Despereaux and tugged him forward, and the two hoods and Despereaux stepped over Antoinette.

  The crowd parted.

  The mice began again to chant: “To the dungeon. To the dungeon. To the dungeon.”

  The drumbeat continued.

  Boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom.

  And Despereaux was led away.

  At the last moment, Antoinette came out of her faint and shouted one word to her child.

  That word, reader, was adieu.

  Do you know the definition of adieu? Don’t bother with your dictio
nary. I will tell you.

  Adieu is the French word for farewell.

  “Farewell” is not the word that you would like to hear from your mother as you are being led to the dungeon by two oversize mice in black hoods.

  Words that you would like to hear are “Take me instead. I will go to the dungeon in my son’s place.” There is a great deal of comfort in those words.

  But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell,” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.

  TOGETHER, THE THREE MICE traveled down, down, down.

  The thread around Despereaux’s neck was tight. He felt as if it was choking him. He tugged at it with one paw.

  “Don’t touch the thread,” barked the second hood.

  “Yeah,” echoed the first hood, “don’t touch the thread.”

  They moved quickly. And whenever Despereaux slowed, one of the two hoods poked him in the shoulder and told him to keep moving. They went through holes in the wall and down golden stairs. They went past rooms with doors that were closed and doors that were flung wide. The three mice traveled across marble floors and under heavy velvet drapes. They moved through warm patches of sunlight and dark pools of shade.

  This, thought Despereaux, was the world he was leaving behind, the world that he knew and loved. And somewhere in it, the Princess Pea was laughing and smiling and clapping her hands to music, unaware of Despereaux’s fate. That he would not be able to let the princess know what had become of him seemed suddenly unbearable to the mouse.

  “Would it be possible for me to have a last word with the princess?” Despereaux asked.

  “A word,” said the second hood. “You want a word with a human?”

  “I want to tell her what has happened to me.”

  “Geez,” said the first hood. He stopped and stamped a paw on the floor in frustration. “Cripes. You can’t learn, can you?”

  The voice was terribly familiar to Despereaux.

  “Furlough?” he said.

  “What?” said the first hood irritably.

  Despereaux shuddered. His own brother was delivering him to the dungeon. His heart stopped beating and shrunk to a small, cold, disbelieving pebble. But then, just as quickly, it leapt alive again, beating with hope.

  “Furlough,” Despereaux said, and he took one of his brother’s paws in his own. “Please, let me go. Please. I’m your brother.”

  Furlough rolled his eyes. He took his paw out of Despereaux’s. “No,” he said. “No way.”

  “Please,” said Despereaux.

  “No,” said Furlough. “Rules are rules.”

  Reader, do you recall the word “perfidy”? As our story progresses, “perfidy” becomes an ever more appropriate word, doesn’t it?

  “Perfidy” was certainly the word that was in Despereaux’s mind as the mice finally approached the narrow, steep stairs that led to the black hole of the dungeon.

  They stood, the three mice, two with hoods and one without, and contemplated the abyss before them.

  And then Furlough stood up on his hind legs and placed his right paw over his heart. “For the good of the castle mice,” he announced to the darkness, “we deliver this day to the dungeon, a mouse in need of punishment. He is, according to the laws we have established, wearing the red thread of death.”

  “The red thread of death?” repeated Despereaux in a small voice. “Wearing the red thread of death” was a terrible phrase, but the mouse didn’t have long to consider its implications, because he was suddenly pushed from behind by the hooded mice.

  The push was a strong one, and it sent Despereaux flying down the stairs into the dungeon. As he tumbled, whisker over tail, through the darkness, there were only two words in his mind. One was “perfidy.” And the other word that he clung to was “Pea.”

  Perfidy. Pea. Perfidy. Pea. These were the words that pinwheeled through Despereaux’s mind as his body descended into the darkness.

  DESPEREAUX LAY ON HIS BACK at the bottom of the steps and touched the bones in his body one by one. They were all there. And, amazingly, they were unbroken. He got to his feet and became aware of a terrible, foul, extremely insulting smell.

  The dungeon, reader, stank. It stank of despair and suffering and hopelessness. Which is to say that the dungeon smelled of rats.

  And it was so dark. Despereaux had never before encountered darkness so awful, so all-encompassing. The darkness had a physical presence as if it were a being all its own. The mouse held one small paw up in front of his whiskers. He could not see it, and he had the truly alarming thought that perhaps he, Despereaux Tilling, did not even exist.

  “Oh my!” he said out loud.

  His voice echoed in the smelly darkness.

  “Perfidy,” said Despereaux, just to hear his voice again, just to assure himself that he did exist.

  “Pea,” said Despereaux, and the name of his beloved was immediately swallowed up by the darkness.

  He shivered. He shook. He sneezed. His teeth chattered. He longed for his handkerchief. He grabbed hold of his tail (it took him a long, frightening moment to even locate his tail, so absolute was the darkness) to have something, anything, to hold on to. He considered fainting. He deemed it the only reasonable response to the situation in which he found himself, but then he remembered the words of the threadmaster: honor, courtesy, devotion, and bravery.

  “I will be brave,” thought Despereaux. “I will try to be brave like a knight in shining armor. I will be brave for the Princess Pea.”

  How best for him to be brave?

  He cleared his throat. He let go of his tail. He stood up straighter. “Once upon a time,” he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.

  “Once upon a time,” he said again, feeling a tiny bit braver. “There was a knight and he wore, always, an armor of shining silver.”

  “Once upon a time?” boomed a voice from the darkness. “A knight in shining armor? What does a mouse know of such things?”

  That voice, the loudest voice that Despereaux had ever heard, could only, he assumed, belong to the world’s largest rat.

  Despereaux’s small, overworked heart stopped beating.

  And for the second time that day, the mouse fainted.

  WHEN DESPEREAUX AWOKE, he was cupped in the large, callused hand of a human and he was staring into the fire of one match and beyond the match there was a large, dark eye looking directly at him.

  “A mouse with red thread,” boomed the voice. “Oh, yes, Gregory knows the way of mice and rats. Gregory knows. And Gregory has his own thread, marking him. See here, mouse.” And the match was held to a candle and the candle sputtered to life and Despereaux saw that there was a rope tied around the man’s ankle. “Here is the difference between us: Gregory’s rope saves him. And your thread will be the death of you.” The man blew the candle out and the darkness descended and the man’s hand closed more tightly around Despereaux and Despereaux felt his beleaguered heart start up a crazy rhythm of fear.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  “The answer to that question, mouse, is Gregory. You are talking to Gregory the jailer, who has been buried here, keeping watch over this dungeon for decades, for centuries, for eons. For eternities. You are talking to Gregory the jailer, who, in the richest of ironies, is nothing but a prisoner here himself.”

  “Oh,” said Despereaux. “Um, may I get down, Gregory?”

  “The mouse wants to know if Gregory the jailer will let him go. Listen to Gregory, mouse. You do not want to be let go. Here, in this dungeon, you are in the treacherous dark heart of the world. And if Gregory was to release you, the twistings and turnings and dead ends and false doorways of this place would swallow you for all eternity.

  “Only Gregory and the rats can find their way through this maze. The rats because t
hey know, because the way of it mirrors their own dark hearts. And Gregory because the rope is forever tied to his ankle to guide him back to the beginning. Gregory would let you go, but you would only beg him to take you up again. The rats are coming for you, you see.”

  “They are?”

  “Listen,” said Gregory. “You can hear their tails dragging through the muck and filth. You can hear them filing their nails and teeth. They are coming for you. They are coming to take you apart piece by piece.”

  Despereaux listened and he was quite certain that he heard the nails and teeth of the rats, the sound of sharp things being made sharper still.

  “They will strip all the fur from your flesh and all the flesh from your bones. When they are done with you, there will be nothing left except red thread. Red thread and bones. Gregory has seen it many times, the tragic end of a mouse.”

  “But I need to live,” said Despereaux. “I can’t die.”

  “You cannot die. Ah, that is lovely. He says he cannot die!” Gregory closed his hand more tightly around Despereaux. “And why would that be, mouse? Why is it that you cannot die?”

  “Because I’m in love. I love somebody and it is my duty to serve her.”

  “Love,” said Gregory. “Love. Hark you, I will show you the twisted results of love.” Another match was struck; the candle was lit again, and Gregory held it up so that its flame illuminated a massive, towering, teetering pile of spoons and kettles and soup bowls.

  “Look on that, mouse,” said Gregory. “That is a monument to the foolishness of love.”

  “What is it?” asked Despereaux. He stared at the great tower that reached up, up, up into the blackness.

  “What it looks like. Spoons. Bowls. Kettles. All of them gathered here as hard evidence of the pain of loving a living thing. The king loved the queen and the queen died; this monstrosity, this junk heap is the result of love.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Despereaux.

  “And you will not understand until you lose what you love. But enough about love,” said Gregory. He blew out the candle. “We will talk instead about your life. And how Gregory will save it, if you so desire.”