The Rat Prince (6 page)

“I'm going to the ball tomorrow!” I exclaimed. “Your mother has changed her mind. I can't believe it. In fact, I shouldn't believe it.”

At first I'd been suspicious as to why Wilhemina would suddenly allow me to leave the manor, after all these months of keeping me confined here. However, she'd shown me the king's invitation with my name on it and said she was worried about awkward questions were I not to attend. Her begrudging tone had seemed quite genuine, and I was convinced.

At last—an opportunity to further my family's interests.

Jessamyn bounced up and down on the cushions. “Oh, Sister! Do you mean you have gotten over your reluctance to venture forth from home?”

I flinched at this reminder of Wilhemina's falsehood but decided to let it pass. “I do still mourn my mother, yet I am quite ready to emerge from this long isolation and see people once more,” I assured her. And though it was not the full story, this was true enough.

Jessamyn clapped her hands. “We'll meet the prince together!”

“A dream come true,” I whispered, though it was not romance I was thinking of. If my parents' old friends were at the ball, I would finally be able to explain my father's plight and enlist their aid.

And even if Sir Tompkin and Lord Bluehart proved uninterested, I could still catch the ear of either Prince Geoffrey or Good King Tumtry. Surely, after all the faithful service the Lancastyrs had given the Crown over the centuries, the prince or the king would be willing to find my father a physician and keep my stepmother from plunging us into ruin.

Jessamyn kissed me. “The prince will fall instantly in love with you. How could he not? You are the prettiest girl in the kingdom.”

“Thank you, my little flatterer.” I laughed in spite of myself. “Beauty may inspire interest, but that is not the same as love. And speaking of beauty, did I ever tell you I saw Prince Geoffrey once, long ago? It was when I went to the royal palace for my debut and met Queen Monette.”

“You met Queen Monette before she died?” Jessamyn breathed, her face aglow. “Oh my! Was she nice?”

“Very. But she was aging and looked unwell.”

Jessamyn paused for a moment. But she soon recovered and asked, “What does the prince look like?”

“He doesn't have dark hair like the prince of my dreams, but he's magnificent nonetheless.” I closed my eyes, the better to remember. Then, ignoring my own wise advice about beauty that I had just dispensed to Jessamyn, I said in a swoony voice: “He has golden hair and golden eyes … Perhaps they are evidence of a golden heart.”

I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to dance with such a man. To feel the warmth of his smile dawn upon my face, to be aware of his touch on my back as he guided me through the steps of an allemande or a minuet, swaying to the music of a royal orchestra.

Aloud, I said, “It would be lovely to take to the floor with him.”

“I'm too young to dance, but I do not care,” Jessamyn commented. “I can listen to the music, and I can eat! And I'm to wear a brand-new gown made of sky-blue
peau de soie
, with a necklace of pearls. Mamma got me the dearest kid gloves with pearl buttons, and sweet slippers that match my dress. What will you be wear—”

Abruptly, she stopped speaking when she saw the look of stricken realization on my face.

This whole thing had been just a cruel game of my stepmother's.

My spirits plunged as deep as they had risen only moments before. “I haven't a stitch to my name that isn't made of burlap,” I said. Soon after Wilhemina had moved into Lancastyr Manor, all my beautiful clothing had somehow disappeared.

“But surely you may borrow one of Eustacia's gowns?” Jessamyn said. “She has so many.”

I shook my head. “Can you imagine what she would say to that? Besides, her frocks wouldn't fit me. No, dear one,” I said over a sigh. “I'll stay home. It doesn't matter.”

This was untrue, and we both knew it.

Just then the curtain was pushed aside by a shaky, veined hand, and my father stepped into the nook.

“Hello, little ladies,” he said with a vague smile. He wore no wig today, and his gray hair was spiky, as if he'd been running his fingers through it at random. “How nice to hear such pleasant voices coming from the window seat!”

I stood up. He seemed much like his old self. Perhaps …

“Yes, Papa!” I heard my own desperate eagerness and winced inside. “We're excited about the upcoming ball at the royal palace. May I have a new dress to wear for it?”

“Of course, sweet girl, of course.” He patted my head. “Anything you desire. Did I not already consent to the purchase of several ball gowns? But I suppose you must have something special to dazzle the prince, and have it you shall. Dear me! How extravagant we have become.”

I turned quickly to Jessamyn, who was watching, wide-eyed. “Did you hear that, Sister? Papa says I may have a gown made up! Will you bear witness in front of my stepmother? Why, what is wrong? Why do you look at me so?”

“Rose,” Jessamyn said quietly, “perhaps you are forgetting something.”

“Yes?”

“The ball is tomorrow.”

A ball gown takes months to make up. The fittings, the assembly and stitching, the refittings, the embellishment, the nips and the tucks, the turnings and hems.

I clutched at my stomach, glad for once that it was empty.

“Young lady, are you quite well?” my father asked with courtly politeness. He had forgotten again who I was.

After a brief struggle, I mastered myself. I dropped a kiss on his withered cheek and smoothed his hair. “Oh, yes, yes. I am excellent, thank you, Papa. And Jessamyn, you're quite right. Silly me, thinking to have a dress made up in one day. I apologize. Now, if you will excuse me, Papa, Sister…”

I curtsied to them both, snatched a candle from the window ledge, and ran up to the attic. When I reached my dark room, seared by humiliation and fury and helplessness, I shoved the candle into a crude wooden holder and dropped onto the cot in a hunched position. I felt my shoulders shake, but I would not give my stepmother the victory of making me cry now. I took deep, shuddering breaths, reaching for calm.

Some moments passed before I realized the thin blanket underneath me felt lumpier and somehow softer than usual. I squinted at it curiously in the low glow of the candle.

Then I leapt off the cot, amazed.

Covering the meager bedding was a magnificent gown of costly cloth-of-gold, beside an undergarment of fine white silk, all in the style of the last century. I turned my head and saw there was a fancy farthingale beside the window, and a white neck ruff arranged neatly beside my pillow, as though the long-ago Queen Lizbeth of Nance herself had emerged from the pages of history books, taken off her finery, and left it behind.

What on earth?

I cast a wild glance about, hoping to catch a clue as to what this might possibly mean.

And then I saw them.

There, standing just a few feet away from me in the weak candlelight, were Blackie and Frump-Bum.

“You!” I gasped.

They were not alone. There was another large rat with them, a sleek white one who had a distinctly female, almost regal, air about her, and fifty—no, a hundred—no, what looked like a veritable
host
of mice waiting there, too.

Incomprehension gave way to a strange dread. I groped for the sapphire ring in my bodice, and held it tight as if to ward off evil. My entire body was shaking.

“You—Blackie—” I stammered. “How can this be?”

He stood mute, looking at me.

Wheels and gears turned in my head, spun, caught, spun again. “Am I to understand that you brought this clothing here, as you have brought me food before? But how did you know I needed it? And how did you carry it? You would all have had to work together … It's just not possible.”

Blackie's gaze was dark and locked with mine.

He was only a beast, a lowly beast. How could he have aught to do with a ball gown?

Silence within, silence without. And many little furry animals, watching me as if they expected I would eventually understand.

“What are you?” I blurted, as though they could answer. “What manner of person or power has sent you?” Feeling the first stirrings of terror, I backed away toward the door, step by careful step.

Then Blackie turned to Frump-Bum and made a low series of sounds.

As if on command, Frump-Bum scurried to a corner of the room and began to push a red leather book across the dusty floor with his shoulder and snout. Efficiently, purposefully, he brought it toward me, as though he did this sort of thing every day. Then he dropped back on his haunches and looked up into my astonished face.

Blackie made more commanding noises, this time aimed in my direction. Though I am not a rat, I could recognize the tone of authority when I heard it. I was being told to do something.

Still trembling, clutching my family's ring in my left hand, I moved forward and leaned over. With my right hand, I picked up the book. It was very old, and gave off a slight smell of mildew. I could just make out the words stamped in gold across the cover:
Baron Dominick de Lancastyr, Sherriff of Lancashyrre, Knight of the Sacred Order of the Tyne, Keeper of the Privy Seal and Lord of the Anglander March. His Book
.

I almost dropped it.

“Baron Dominick was the first Lancastyr!” I said, looking at Blackie. “My ancestor. Why, this book must be over two hundred years old!”

The black rat—a pet to me, a menace to most—held my astonished gaze and ever so slowly, ever so deliberately, nodded his smooth head.

Too much.

I fainted, crumpling into a heap on the bare boards of the floor.

*   *   *

An agitated chorus of twitters and
ack ack ack
sounds awakened me. Something was swarming across my body. With a cry, I brushed at my torso, making frantic, sweeping slaps. My hands met tiny warm balls of fur and sent them flying in every direction as they emitted squeaks of distress.

Mice! They'd been crawling all over me! Good Lord's hooks, what were they doing? Were they going to eat me alive?

When I shot up to a sitting position, I saw fat wax candles positioned in each corner of the room, making it as bright as day. And … o' Lord, o' Lord … I was wearing the Queen Lizbeth gown.

The mice now huddled in a corner at a safe distance, chattering faintly, watching my every move as if in fear. In their tiny paws I saw the gleam of silvery needles, trailing golden thread.

I felt that I had lost my reason. I would be carted off to the madhouse, and the Lancastyrs would be no more.

But before I could give way to utter panic, I felt a warm, comforting weight curl up in my lap. Catching my breath, I looked down and saw Blackie. I hugged him to me and buried my face against his fur. He smelled clean and sweet, like lavender and lemon water. Do rats bathe? This rat must have.

“Oh, Blackie!” I exclaimed.

He poked his snout into my cheek and nuzzled me a bit, until my head cleared and the worst of my fears subsided.

“Did you and the mice dress me in this gown?” I inquired at last in a whisper, as if someone might overhear. “Did you somehow find out about the ball, and you gave me this … this marvelous gift, just as you gave me the ring before?”

He nodded again. I felt the nod, rather than saw it, because his face was still against mine. “Do you understand me?” I asked.

Another nod. I was not mad; my tame rat understood human speech.

“Blackie, how can this be?”

He nimbly hopped from my lap and went to the red book my ancestor had written. He ruffled through the pages until he came to a particular one and pointed to it. Then he looked at me as if to say,
Well, come on, then.

I snatched up the book and focused on the passage Blackie had indicated. It was difficult to make out the quaint old language and the odd spelling of my ancestor, yet I was able to understand it after some moments' struggle.

Kin of our kin,
this captaine of the shippe upon which our ancestors arrived at this lande, Captaine Ulum by name, when he was given to understande that by the effort of the rats alone was his vessel saved from sinking, for, lowly creetures tho' they be, they had filled the breeche in the hold with sackes of grain, thusly preventing the seas from rushing in to overwhelme the shippe … When Ulum, then, understoode this miracle, then swore he, ne'er shall there be strife between rat and any descendant of mine, as long as there be sun in skye and man on terra firma; yea, said he, tho' rats be the most despised of creatures, ne'er shall my son nor my son's sons so despise them; and none shall slaye them in shippe or house, unto the sun's darkeninge at the breaking of the Seventh Seal at the end of days.

 

P
RINCE
C
HAR

I could see Rose's mind working.

“No one in my family has knowledge of this book,” she said, her eyes bigger and rounder than ever.

“Because in order to protect it from one of your brainless great-grandfathers, who remodeled the library and let his decorators burn thousands of precious volumes, we stole it and hoarded it in our treasure chamber for about one hundred years,” I replied in my own language. “Though it was forgotten by the Lancastyrs, that book is our charter. It gives the details of a pact between an ancient goddess, your family, and my people. This agreement is what gave the rats on Captain Ulum's ship—and their descendants—long life and intelligence far above that of ordinary rat-folk. The book tells us that if the line of the Lancastyrs should ever come to an end, we rats will return to what we once were.”

She didn't need to understand me. She could fill in the blanks for herself. At last, we had broken the long silence between humans and rats, and the charter had been shared with the Lancastyrs once more. I had done it.