Secrets at Sea (10 page)

And there stood . . . Lamont. Johnny-on-the-spot.

We supposed he had come for us, but he cleared his throat importantly and kept his tail well out of sight. “Lord Peter 'Enslowe!” he announced, stepping aside.

And there was the best-looking mouse you ever laid your eyes on, bowing past us to the Duchess.

Wonderfully trimmed whiskers. Very aristocratic ears. A tail that was pure poetry. I try to be sensible, but I was much moved. Louise's eyes bulged out of her head. Beatrice quivered. Who wouldn't?

“Ah, Lord Peter, how good of you to call,” sang out the Duchess, rallying behind us. “Allow me to present the sisters Cranston. Helena.”

I inclined my head in a genteel manner.

“Louise,” said the Duchess.

Louise did the same.

“And Beatrice,” the Duchess concluded.

Beatrice curtsied all the way to the carpet in a froth of flustered skirts. I thought we'd have to help her back up.

Lord Peter, Mouse-in-Waiting—no, that's not the term—Mouse Equerry to the human Lord Peter Henslowe, and even better looking.

But now Lamont was peering around this splendid titled mouse. “You three,” he piped at us. “It's time you 'ightailed it for 'ome.”

A
S THE EVENING of the royal reception approached, the time drew nigh to pay our way. But how should we even
get
to the Royal Suite? We bickered for days—rough days and smooth, under Camilla's bed, and at our end of the yardstick.

“We will have to go on our humans,” Louise said.“After all, they're on the guest list. We aren't. We can't just sashay up there and slip ourselves under the door. We might be seen or stepped on.” How sure Louise was. How annoying.

On the afternoon their invitation arrived, the air was rent by the Upstairs Cranstons' screams, echoing along the corridor and far out to sea. Mostly from Mrs. Cranston.

“A Princess's reception?
A Royal Command?
” she shrieked, dithering. “Whatever shall I wear?”

“What indeed?” Louise remarked under Camilla's bed. “I shudder to think.”

We all did.

“I shall have to infest Camilla and go to the reception on her,” Louise decided.

“I don't mind going on Mrs. Cranston,” Beatrice said, “as long as she doesn't wear her squirrels. I know my way around her.”

And so, for once,
Beatrice
wasn't the problem. Evidently
I
was.

“Louise,” I said, “I'll go with you on Camilla.”

“Indeed you will not,” she sniffed. “It will be hard enough to find a place for one of us to hide on her, let alone two. Besides, if Camilla should notice me somewhere on her person, she wouldn't be alarmed.”

“Ha! Louise,” I retorted, “she couldn't tell me from you at the lifeboat drill. ‘Oh, Mousie!' she cried. She can't tell one mouse from—”

“She would certainly notice if there were two of us,” Louise said. “She can count. Besides, Helena, Camilla is
my
human.”

Oh, that was meant to sting, and it did. I bristled,
this close
to rage.

Then Louise said, “You can go on Olive.” Very offhand.

I blew up. My head nearly hit the bedsprings. “You know perfectly well Olive won't be going. She's still flat on her back in her cabin with her head in a basin and the doctor calling three times a day. You know that, Louise. You have made this whole business about you and Camilla. You always do.”

“But isn't
Olive
the whole business?” Beatrice butted in. We were nose to nose to nose. “Isn't it all about giving Olive Her Chance and husband-hunting for her?”

“Be quiet,” we said. But she had a point.

 

ON THE NIGHT of the royal reception as Olive moaned piteously in the next cabin, Camilla dressed for hours on end. At last she sent the maids away and examined herself in the mirror. And I must say, she looked nice.

Her dress may have been all wrong, but it was a pleasing pink, girlish like herself. Around the waist Camilla was only as big as a minute, in human terms. She was quite dainty, if I can say that about someone seven hundred times my size.

She dabbed toilet water behind her ears and plucked at her cheeks. Her sweet-sixteen pearls nestled in the hollow of her throat. On her shoulder was a corsage of two white orchids sent by her father from the ship's florist. Two white orchids tied up with ribbon. Hanging down from the flowers, gray against pink, was an inch or two of mouse tail.

Louise.

Camilla did not appear to notice that her corsage had a tail. She drew on her long white gloves, fitted each finger, and reached for her evening bag. It was a silver mesh reticule on a chain.

You are thinking that I was inside that evening bag. I tried. But no, I hadn't been able to open the clasp. It was very tight.

Camilla turned to go. I had only this moment and not another. She was just walking out the door when I shot from under the bed and hurled myself at the train of her dress. It was only a short train and flouncy at the hem. I clung to it as it dragged across carpet. It was the best I could do. If she gathered up her train, I didn't know where I'd be. I remembered Plunkett's brim and clung on like death.

In the corridor she hurried to catch up with her mother and father. Her train switched back and forth, back and forth. I could only hope that Beatrice had infested Mrs. Cranston up ahead. I could see nothing but the pink silk of Camilla's train, which was right for my coloring.

Oh, just imagine bumping up those stairs—at sea—on the train of a dress that rippled from step to step. I was knocked six ways from Sunday. It was touch and go all the way to the very doors of the Royal Suite.

Fear like a fog rose from all three Upstairs Cranstons before those mighty doors. They were flanked by two big footmen in powdered wigs and braided coats, satin knee britches and white stockings. Buckle shoes. Guardians of the Royal Gate.

I could only glimpse them from the floor. They were enormous. The doors fell open. A human voice, English, blared and echoed:

MR. AND MRS. FLOYD CRANSTON
MISS CAMILLA CRANSTON

And into the Royal Presence we went, all six of us, and all uncertain of our fates. But there was no time to dawdle.

The English voice was announcing the next guests behind us:

THE EARL AND COUNTESS
OF CLOVELLY

Oh, how hard it is to make sense of a social occasion from the train of a dress. I dragged through a thicket of black trouser legs and satin knee britches and billowing skirts. In all this milling about somebody was apt to step on Camilla's train. I ducked and dodged till my head throbbed. I bobbed and wove for what seemed hours.

Camilla's moment seemed to come. She moved forward, wobbling. A shadow fell over me. Camilla was curtsying . . . to the Princess. She trembled all the way down her train.

You do not speak to royalty first. Royalty speaks first.

But a blatting voice butted in, and it was not royalty.

“My stars and garters, Princess, what grand quarters you have here. I'd hate to think what you're paying.” The thundering voice went on, regardless. “If only my Olive could be present. We were hoping to give Olive Her Chance. But, poor girl, she's sicker than a poisoned pup. I don't know where it's all coming from!”

Mrs. Cranston.

Silence fell. You could hear the distant throb of the ship's engines. The fire crackled at the top of its lungs. We were doomed.

I chanced a wan peek out of the flounce. A figure in gunmetal gray skirts spoke in a hushed but blaring tone to the room in general.

“Who on earth is that extraordinary woman?” It was a very grand tone. Very scary. “That woman with the voice like the cawing of a crow and those shoulders like sides of beef?”

Oh no, Mrs. Cranston was showing her shoulders.

Camilla quaked. The voice went on. “She cannot possibly be on the guest list. Now, where
is
that guest list?”

The gunmetal skirts whipped away. It had to be Lady Augusta Drear, Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess. Who else?

Camilla sagged. “Oh, Mama,” she murmured so low that only I heard. Well, Louise and I.

Clearly, we were all to be rounded up and thrown out. Maybe even overboard. Camilla too. It wouldn't take Lady Augusta forever to nail her as a Cranston.

But in that moment another voice rang out, a royal one. “Let there be music!”

Relief rose in the room. Violins tuned. Chairs shuffled. Would they throw us out of the Royal Presence in the midst of a musical selection? I cowered in the train, one uncertain hand drawn up. Here again, I couldn't see a moment ahead. The room was settling. Gloved hands eased a gilt chair beneath Camilla.

In a quick and girlish gesture, she gathered her skirts to sit. I grabbed for pink silk a second too late. She gave her train a quick twitch, and I flew out of it as from a slingshot. I arched through the air in the candlelit room, whiskers over teacup. The string quartet struck up Johann Strauss . . .
Die Fledermaus.

I was in the air only a moment. But long enough to recall that I'd spent the whole of my life keeping my distance from humans. Now, every time I went near one, I was launched like a rocket. It was so unfair.

I was heading for the ancient Marquess of Tilbury, a large target. He lolled in his wheelchair. I landed on the claret-red velvet of his bulging evening coat. Just above the pocket handkerchief, a paisley foulard. It could have been worse. I could have cleared his slumping shoulder entirely and lit in the fire. Lit indeed. I dropped into the Marquess's pocket behind the handkerchief. My heart raced. I rose and fell with his labored breathing.

When I could pull myself together, I parted two points of the pocket handkerchief and beheld the sumptuous room.

My breath caught at its magnificence. Pale ladies on gilt chairs, their skirts arranged, the candle flame playing across their jewels. The gentlemen standing, studies in black and white with wing collars and kid gloves.

There just across from the Marquess and me sat Camilla. Her pretty face was pinched in fear. Her hands worked in her pink lap. I could just about read her mind. She was wondering if she should make a run for it before she was thrown out by a couple of big footmen.

As I watched, she glanced up. Standing very near to her was Lord Peter Henslowe. His gloved hands were clasped behind him above the tails of his coat. His wing collar flared below his chiseled chin. Lord Peter Henslowe, twenty-four and good-looking and hard to catch. He glanced down at Camilla, far down, bowing slightly. Camilla just inclined her head. The fire found the lights in her naturally wavy hair, fixed by a small jewel. She was too young to have her hair up. It flowed down her back.

The music played on while at the other end of the room, Lady Augusta Drear, tall as a crane, ransacked the Chippendale desk for the guest list. Before her on a cut-velvet divan sat . . . Princess Louise, fourth daughter of the Queen of England.

I looked my first upon human royalty and beheld her grandeur. She was not a young woman, but handsome in a sharp-featured way. You wouldn't want to cross her or speak out of turn. She sat at her ease in cascading black net sprayed with diamonds. But her spine did not touch the back of the divan. No lady's should. No princess's does. Behind her, Lady Augusta shuffled all the papers on the desk to the strains of Johann Strauss.

It was warm in here: the crackling fire, the blazing candles. The Marquess of Tilbury's doddering hand rose to his pocket handkerchief. He pulled it out of his breast pocket and me with it. He didn't notice that his pocket handkerchief had a tail. Then he mopped his perspiring brow with me. I was all over his forehead and the dome of his pate. It was disgusting. I was damp through. Then I was thrust back with the handkerchief into his pocket, nose and whiskers first. I liked to never get turned around.

When I could see out again, there at the far end of the room, Lady Augusta Drear held up a page of cream-laid paper in awful triumph. Had she detected a forgery even by candlelight? Was that evidence in her hand? The music began to wind down.

Time wasn't just running out; it was galloping like a mad horse. Camilla's gaze met Lord Peter Henslowe's. And in that very moment before Lord Peter looked away, Louise sprang up out of the orchid corsage and onto Camilla's shoulder. Light on her feet and quicker than thought, Louise darted around to the back of Camilla's neck. Camilla felt something, but her gaze was all tangled with Lord Peter's.

And then what do you suppose happened?