The Tale of Despereaux

“Never mind her name. Did you allow her to touch you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Despereaux. “I let her touch me. It felt good.”

A gasp arose from the assembled mice.

Despereaux heard his mother’s voice. “Mon Dieu, it is not the end of the world. It was a touch, what of it?”

“It is simply not done!” came Aunt Florence’s voice from the crowd.

“To the dungeon,” said a mouse in the front row.

“Silence!” roared the Most Very Honored Head Mouse. “Silence.” He looked down at Despereaux.

“Do you, Despereaux Tilling, understand the sacred, never-to-be-broken rules of conduct for being a mouse?”

“Yes, sir,” said Despereaux, “I guess so. But . . .”

“Did you break them?”

“Yes, sir,” said Despereaux. He raised his voice. “But . . . I broke the rules for good reasons. Because of music. And because of love.”

“Love!” said the Head Mouse.

“Oh, cripes,” said Furlough, “here we go.”

“I love her, sir,” said Despereaux.

“We are not here to talk about love. This trial is not about love. This trial is about you being a mouse,” shouted the Most Very Honored Head Mouse from high atop the bricks, “and not acting like one!!!”

“Yes, sir,” said Despereaux. “I know.”

“No, I don’t think that you do know. And because you do not deny the charges, you must be punished. You are to be sent, as ancient castle-mouse law decrees, to the dungeon. You are being sent to the rats.”

“That’s right!” shouted a mouse in the crowd. “That’s the ticket.”

The dungeon! The rats! Despereaux’s small heart sank all the way to the tip of his tail. There would be no light in the dungeon. No stained-glass windows. No library and no books. There would be no Princess Pea.

“But first,” said the Most Very Honored Head Mouse, “we will give you the chance to renounce your actions. We will allow you to go to the dungeon with a pure heart.”

“Renounce?”

“Repent. Say that you are sorry you sat at the foot of the human king. Say that you are sorry you allowed the human princess to touch you. Say that you regret these actions.”

Despereaux felt hot and then cold and then hot again. Renounce her? Renounce the princess?

“Mon Dieu!” shouted his mother. “Son, do not act the fool. Renounce! Repent!”

“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.

11

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