Secrets at Sea (6 page)

He dropped down onto the carpet before us. He was light on his feet for his size. We sat back, upright. We were wearing only our fur, but that's what you travel in. The white mouse wore only his fur, but there was something official about him.

Beatrice, who had clung to me all day long, turned me loose. She gaped at this white mouse, who said, “ ' Ello, 'ello, what 'ave we 'ere?”

He had a funny way of talking. I found my tongue. Who else would? Louise's hand was clapped over her mouth. Beatrice was agape. Lamont was completely useless. I straightened an ear and spoke. “We are the—”

“Cranstons?” the white mouse said. “Party of four? Americans? Mister? Missus? Two young ladies? One pretty, one not-so-much? 'Usband-'unting?”

What? Oh—husband-hunting.

“Well, yes,” I said, “and . . . party of four mice. We too are Cranstons, though ours is the older family. I suppose you are surprised to find mice traveling—”

“Nothing surprises me,” the white mouse said. “I'll be your cabin steward. Call me Nigel.”

We stared. Lamont stroked his missing chin with worry. Nigel was twice his size. The cabin lurched and rolled. We must have been out on the open sea now, the surging sea. But Beatrice didn't notice. All she noticed was Nigel.

“A . . . mouse steward?” I said faintly.

“You lot don't get out much, do you?” Nigel the steward said. “This is a British ship with British service.”

Oh.

He loomed over us. “Whom do I 'ave the honor of addressing?” he inquired of me.

The ... cat had my tongue. “Oh,” I said. “I am Helena, the old—I am Helena. The boy is Lamont.” I pointed him out.

Lamont cringed. Nigel looked down upon him.

“What went wrong with your tail, son?”

Lamont was trying to keep it out of sight since it was unsightly. “Snake got it. Sister sewed it back,” he said, suddenly a man of few words.

“Ah well, these things 'appen,” Nigel remarked. “You're not going to give me any trouble on this voyage, are you, boy?”

“Who, me?” Lamont squeaked, which was the best he could do.

“And this is my sister Louise.” I nudged her.

Her hand jittered down from her mouth. “Pleased to meet you, I'm sure.”

“And this is my sister Beatrice.”

Beatrice was transfixed. “Pleased,” she breathed. “
So
pleased.”

Though nothing surprised Nigel, we seemed to. “ 'Elena, Louise, Beatrice?” he said. “Where's Vicky and Alice, then?”

We liked to leap out of our skins. Even Lamont. Who was this magic mouse? How could he possibly know?

“How could you possibly know?” I said.

“As a matter of fact, I didn't,” Nigel said. “But Vicky, Alice, 'Elena, Louise, and Beatrice are the five daughters of the Queen of England.”

“You mean . . . humans?”

Nigel nodded. “Big ones. They are the daughters of 'Er Majesty, Queen Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India.”

Mother must have read that in a book. She was a reader. Perhaps it was meant to be that we were on this fateful voyage.

“Vicky and Alice are no longer with us.” I spoke in a hushed voice.“Nor Mother, of course.”

“Ah well, for mice, time's always running out,” Nigel said. “'Ooo's for a spot of dinner?”

 

THE WORLD IS a sudden place. How soon we'd fallen into the hands of this perfect stranger. Lamont gazed up at Nigel with hero worship in his eyes. And in Beatrice's eyes—just plain worship. Louise and I exchanged glances. We were at sea indeed.

There was nothing to getting out of Camilla's cabin. Mice can get under the tightest door ever hung. But there is more indoors to a ship than you can picture. The corridor ran to a dot in the distance past an endless line of cabin doors. We set forth, four gray shadows behind the white blur of Nigel's big backside and his commanding tail. We moved on all fours because it's quicker, and expected. From somewhere far off came the sound of a harp, so we were either dead or it was dinner music.

A fog of cigar smoke enveloped us as we passed the gentlemen's smoking room. And would you believe it? A fire burned beneath a marble mantel in there. A log fire snapping in a hearth here on the ocean deep!

As all the gentlemen had repaired to the first-class dining saloon, Nigel swerved inside so we could catch our breath. He drew up before the crackling fire. We followed and lingered by the fender, making a little group of ourselves. The fire felt warm on our ears. Firelight glittered in Beatrice's eyes. She was all eyes, this near Nigel.

There is something very comforting about an open fire. But then Nigel said, “You'll need to watch yourselves, you lot. Every minute, mind.”

As if we wouldn't, thrown in under the very feet of all these hulking humans, ganged together with them within these metal walls. Honestly.

“There's a ship's cat,” Nigel said in a hollow voice. “There always is.”

We quaked. He had us in the palm of his hand.

Lamont ducked. We looked around the gentlemen's smoking room to see if a cat's eyes glowed from under the furniture, behind the damask drapes. You know cats' eyes—that sickening yellow. Louise squeaked.

“Oh, not now,” Nigel said. “Not '
ere
. 'E'll not give you any grief whilst I'm about.” Beatrice looked up at Nigel, rapt. “ 'E won't tangle with
me,
the ship's cat won't. We've tangled before, and I closed one of 'is eyes, permanently. 'E gives me a wide berth. Still, when you're on your own, be on your guard. 'E's kill-crazy.”

“Cats are,” I remarked. Lamont turned in a perfect circle, looking in every shadow for a kill-crazy, one-eyed cat.

But now, warmed and warned, we continued our journey along the endless corridors.

Miles we went down the creaking ship, from one deck to another, following Nigel's tall tail. Now we crept past the slick tiles of the Turkish bath. Very dank with clouds of steam. It was a whole world, this ship, and now we were in its very bowels. Surely we were below water level now, though that didn't bear thinking about.

 

THERE CAME THE worrisome smell of English cooking. We were
this close
to the doors of the kitchen—the galley—when they banged open. A line of enormous humans burst through and bore down on us. We skittered on the steel deck. Huge waiters in white coats carried trays of the dessert course, shoulder-high. Flaming puddings. I gave us up for dead. We'd been seen, and you dare never be.

The waiters clattered past us on their ringing heels. We were bunched beside the doors, trying not to gibber. Louise whimpered.

“We're doomed,” I said. “They saw us. They certainly saw you, Nigel. You very nearly glow in the dark.”

“He does,” Beatrice breathed.

“ 'Course they saw me.” Nigel stroked a gorgeous whisker. “But I 'ave me work to do, and they'ave theirs.”

“But—”

“Besides, at sea a steward outranks a waiter.”

We gaped. “But you're a
mouse.
” I was practically wringing my hands.

Nigel waved me away. “You're on British soil now, so to speak,” he said. “Rank matters more than appearance.”

We didn't know what to think, and the galley doors were still swinging. “Dinner is served,” Nigel said. “Step this way, ladies, Lamont.”

 

I MAY HAVE pictured us foraging for crumbs under the ship's stove for our dinner. How wrong I was.

The vast kitchens were a clashing of pans and far too many humans. We skirted it, moving through pantries to a storage room right at the end of the known world. We drew up by a tall pile of crated fruit. There in the shadows another shadow fell across us.

A mouse stood there: tall, gray, gaunt, very upright. Lamont ducked. This mouse before us carried a small towel, hemstitched, over one arm. At his neck was a neatly tied black bow tie. He and Nigel traded glances.

“How many?” The mouse looked far down his long nose at us.

“Four more for dinner, Cecil,” Nigel said.

Four
more?

“I suppose it might be managed,” the gray mouse—Cecil—said.

“At the 'ead table, Cecil, if you please,” said Nigel.

The
head
table?

Cecil looked even farther down his nose. His gaze just grazed us.

How shy we felt. Lamont crouched low.

“Perhaps it could be arranged,” Cecil said. And with a twitch of whisker and a nod of head, he led us around the crate.

On the far side we got the surprise of our lives. There sat easily a hundred and fifty mice, at three or four long tables—yardsticks supported by alphabet blocks. A hundred and fifty mice, at least.

A major infestation.

A
LOW CHEEPING SOUND of dinner conversation ceased. Three hundred eyes looked up at us newcomers. We hung in the glow of their gaze, embarrassed to death. We met so few new mice in our little life.

Cecil, the headwaiter, scanned up and down the yardsticks for somewhere to seat us. Young mice waiters with perky black bow ties bustled among the diners, stepping neatly over their tails, serving the soup course.

I know. I know. I couldn't believe it either.

“A great many mice travel with their 'uman families. The better families,” Nigel explained. “Yank—American mice. British mice 'eading'ome. We 'ave the entire chorus of
The Nutcracker
returning to the London stage. We're traveling full this trip, what with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee coming up.”

Our heads whirled. Before we knew where we were, we'd been seated down at this end of a yardstick. Thimbles of a clear soup were set before us. As it turned out, we kept just a course behind the humans in the dining saloon above.

We must have thought we were the last of the latecomers. But like the crack of doom, the headwaiter's voice rang out: “All be upstanding for Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cheddar Gorge!”

The what?

A hundred and fifty mice pushed back from their yardsticks and rose to their feet. A hundred and fifty-four.

We'd been sitting on small spools. But next to me at the head of the yardstick was a miniature chair of English bone china, white with hand-painted rosebuds. The motto in gold on it read:

Cecil appeared, sweeping back the chair and dusting it off with the hemstitched towel. A mouse of a certain age strode up with the aid of a matchstick cane, gold-topped.

A Duchess? A royal one? How could she be? I never heard of such a thing among mice. But everybody at our yardstick curtsied or bowed. We did our best. She was seated right there at my elbow just a whisker away.

She wasn't as old as Aunt Fannie Fenimore, but she was getting there. A bit of bent wire seemed to be caught in the fur between her ears. A crown?

No, a tiara.

“We rarely dine in public,” she announced in a carrying voice. “But we thought it might be amusing on the first night.” She spoke just over our heads.

My land, she was grand.

She drew herself up, though she was rather bent. “I am Mouse-in-Waiting to Her Royal Highness, the Princess Louise, fourth daughter of the Queen. In the British Empire, Mice-in-Waiting assume a royal rank. It is tradition. Royalty has never made a move without their mice. We came over with William the Conqueror. My mother was a Roquefort. Who might you be?”