TEN

The Seventh Buck

The day’s strong wind, blowing across the garden from the north, completely drowned Magnus’s cries for help. Madeleine for once was not actually thinking about her son, so busy was she fussing around her injured husband.

At the suggestion of ‘that nice Mr Roland’, she had made him up a comfortable bed of hay in the inner sleeping compartment of the hutch, hidden from passers-by. She busied herself carrying him the choicest pieces from the rabbit’s food bowl (Marcus Aurelius particularly fancied the flaked maize).

Roland watched her comings and goings with affection. A lonely old bachelor, he had learned to put up with solitude, and only now did he realize how much he had missed the company of others. He found himself very much drawn to this family of mice, Madeleine with her shrewd country sense, sharp tongue and soft heart, the educated, long-winded Marcus Aurelius, and that extraordinary boy of theirs.

Madeleine paused in her work and made a sort of little bob in front of him.

‘Oh, I don’t know what you must think of me, Mr Roland,’ she said, ‘treating this house of yours as though it was me own, and us eating all your food and I don’t know what!’

‘My dear lady,’ said Roland in his deep tones, ‘I am delighted to have you both. There can be no question of your leaving until your husband is fully restored. As for food, there is plenty. Mind you, it would be a different matter if we were catering for that son of yours! I wonder how he’s getting on?’

‘Oh, he’ll be all right, he can look after hisself,’ said Madeleine, even as the north wind muffled Magnus’s frantic yells.

By nightfall the wind had dropped and the yells had stopped. Because there was nothing else to do, Magnus sat in the trap and waited. He had shouted till his throat was sore, he had bitten at the wire till his mouth was bleeding. He had even asked the potting shed mice for help but they of course could not open the catch that held the trap shut and he could not reach it. At last his rage changed to a sort of resignation, and he settled down to wait and see what morning would bring.

Morning brought Jim the Rat, very early. At the first peep of light, long before anyone was stirring, he slipped through the garden gate and along the edge of the lawn to the potting shed. He had left his van half a mile away. If the trap were empty, he could slip away again unnoticed.

But he did not think it would be empty.

Ordinary mice loved tiny bits of chocolate, he knew – he often used them as bait. So how would this one resist a king-sized Mars Bar? And about one thing Jim the Rat was certain. If he should be the first person – ever – to catch a King Mouse, he wanted no one to know of it. He opened the door.

At the sight of the man Magnus fluffed himself up until he looked even bigger and with one loud shout of ‘Nasty! Bite you!’ reared threateningly upon his hind legs as a hand came towards him. But the hand held a piece of cheese, which it thrust between the wire mesh and into the gaping mouth. With his other hand Jim the Rat grabbed a heavy sack and threw it over the cage; he picked it up and was gone, closing the shed door quietly behind him.

The morning was still, and in the rabbit hutch Magnus’s shout had been plainly heard.

‘Oh, crumbs!’ cried Madeleine. ‘What’s he up to now?’ and she ran to the wire and peered out. Marcus Aurelius limped and Roland lolloped after her.

‘I see a human,’ said Marcus Aurelius. ‘A human, moreover, of a physical type which might reasonably be described as corpulent.’

‘A fat man,’ said Roland softly in Madeleine’s ear.

‘He is moving,’ said Marcus Aurelius, ‘with the utmost prudence –’

‘Carefully,’ whispered Roland.

‘– and carrying an object –’

‘Thing.’

‘– the contents of which are indiscernible.’

‘We don’t know what’s in it.’

‘I can see all that,’ snapped Madeleine. ‘What I wants to know is, is our Magnus in it?’

‘I hardly think so,’ said Roland comfortingly. ‘I can hear nothing.’

At that moment the reason for Magnus’s silence ceased to exist, as he swallowed the last of the cheese, and the early morning air was rent by one great cry.

‘More!!’ yelled Magnus Powermouse from the darkness of the trap.

Then the garden gate clicked, and the footsteps of Jim the Rat died away down the lane.

In the hutch there was a long silence. Roland glanced sideways at the faces of his little friends, faces that suddenly looked pinched and old as they stared blankly out.

All his commonsense (of which he had a great deal) told him that this was the end of Magnus Powermouse. All his kindliness (of which he had a great deal) told him to give no hint of this. He decided to pretend to an ability (of which he had none) to foresee the future. He cleared his throat impressively.

‘Now listen to me, you two,’ he said in his deepest, most authoritative tones. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

‘With all due respect, Mr Roland,’ said Marcus Aurelius heavily, ‘I find that statement difficult to believe. We must be prepared to face facts. Magnus has been kidnapped.’

‘But what for, Markie?’ said Madeleine in a shaking voice. ‘What d’you suppose that human wanted him for?’

‘To eat, I dare say,’ said Marcus gloomily. ‘He likes his food, from the look of him.’ Madeleine gave a little squeak of horror.

‘Now, now!’ said Roland sharply. ‘That’s quite enough of that sort of talk. Humans do not eat mice. They kill them, to be sure, but if that fat man had wished to kill your son, he could presumably easily have done so. He has not done so. Magnus is alive and well, as we heard. And so he will continue to be. You mark my words. I know.’

‘Know?’ cried Madeleine with a return to something like her usual snappiness. ‘How can you know?’

‘I have the gift.’

‘The gift?’

‘Of looking into the future.’

A gleam came into Marcus Aurelius’s dull eyes. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘The gift of divination! How extremely interesting! The ancient Greeks and Romans, you know, made –’

‘Oh, bide quiet, Markie!’ interrupted Madeleine. ‘We don’t want to know about your old ancient folk. Tell us more, Mr Roland, how come you can see into the future then?’

‘Because I,’ said Roland, ‘am the seventh buck of a seventh buck.’

‘Crumbs!’ whispered Madeleine.

‘And I hereby solemnly tell you, Madeleine and Marcus Aurelius, that one day, some day, I cannot tell exactly when, you will see that noble giant of a son of yours again. I can see it all in my mind’s eye – the triumphal reunion of Magnus Powermouse with his pretty little mother and his wise father.’ And his lying old uncle, he thought to himself. Here I am, rabbiting on about second sight when really I haven’t a clue. But it was worth it, for the look on their faces. Let’s just hope I’m right.