The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo [24]
Reader, as the teller of this tale, it is my duty from time to time to utter some hard and rather disagreeable truths. In the spirit of honesty, then, I must inform you that Mig was the tiniest bit lazy. And, too, she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. That is, she was a bit slow-witted.
Because of these shortcomings, Louise was hard-pressed to find a job that Miggery Sow could effectively perform. In quick succession, Mig failed as a lady in waiting (she was caught trying on the gown of a visiting duchess), a seamstress (she sewed the cloak of the riding master to her own frock and ruined both), and as a chambermaid (sent to clean a room, she stood, open-mouthed and delighted, admiring the gold walls and floors and tapestries, exclaiming over and over again, “Gor, ain’t it pretty? Gor, ain’t it something, then?” and did no cleaning at all).
And while Mig was trying and failing at these many domestic chores, other important things were happening in the castle: The rat, in the dungeon below, was pacing and muttering in the darkness, waiting to take his revenge on the princess. And upstairs in the castle, the princess had met a mouse. And the mouse had fallen in love with her.
Will there be consequences? You bet.
Just as Mig’s inability to perform any job well had its consequences. For, finally, as a last resort, Louise sent Mig to the kitchen, where Cook had a reputation for dealing effectively with difficult help. In Cook’s kitchen, Mig dropped eggshells in the pound cake batter; she scrubbed the kitchen floor with cooking oil instead of cleanser; she sneezed directly on the king’s pork chop moments before it was to be served to him.
“Of all the good-for-nothings I have encountered,” shouted Cook, “surely you are the worst, the most cauliflower-eared, the good-for-nothing-est. There’s only one place left for you. The dungeon.”
“Eh?” said Mig, cupping a hand around her ear.
“You are being sent to the dungeon. You are to take the jailer his noonday meal. That will be your duty from now on.”
Reader, you know that the mice of the castle feared the dungeon. Must I tell you that the humans feared it, too? Certainly it was never far from their thoughts. In the warm months, a foul odor rose out of its dark depths and permeated the whole of the castle. And in the still, cold nights of winter, terrible howls issued from the dark place, as if the castle itself were weeping and moaning.
“It’s only the wind,” the people of the castle assured each other, “nothing but the wind.”
Many a serving girl had been sent to the dungeon bearing the jailer’s meal only to return white-faced and weeping, hands trembling, teeth chattering, insisting that they would never go back. And worse, there were whispered stories of those servant girls who had been given the job of feeding the jailer, who had gone down the stairs and into the dungeon, and who had never been seen or heard from again.
Do you believe that this will be Mig’s fate?
Gor! I hope not. What kind of a story would this be without Mig?
“Listen, you cauliflower-eared fool!” shouted Cook. “This is what you do. You take the tray of food down to the dungeon and you wait for the old man to eat the food and then you bring the tray back up. Do you think that you can manage that?”
“Aye, I reckon so,” said Mig. “I take the old man the tray and he eats what’s on it and then I bring the tray back up. Empty it would be, then. I bring the empty tray back up from the deep downs.”
“That’s right,” said Cook. “Seems simple, don’t it? But I’m sure you’ll find a way to bungle it.”
“Eh?” said Mig.
“Nothing,” said Cook. “Good luck to you. You’ll be needing it.”
She watched as Mig descended the dungeon stairs. They were the very same stairs, reader, that the mouse Despereaux had been pushed down the day before. Unlike the mouse, however, Mig had a light: on the tray with the food, there was a single, flickering candle to show her the way. She turned on the stairs and looked back at Cook and smiled.