The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo Read Free Book Online

dirty little rat. I ain’t in such a desperate way that I need to lie to a rat.”
    The man cleared his throat. “I’m here for stealing six cows, two Jerseys and four Guernseys. Cow theft, that’s my crime.” He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. He laughed. He closed his eyes again. “But there’s something else I done, many years ago, another crime, and they don’t even know of it.”
    “Go on,” said Roscuro softly. He crept closer. He allowed one paw to touch the magical red cloth.
    “I traded my girl, my own daughter, for this red tablecloth and for a hen and for a handful of cigarettes.”
    “Tsk,” said Roscuro. He was not alarmed to hear of such a hideous thing. His parents, after all, had not much cared for him, and certainly, if there was any profit in it, they would have sold him. And then, too, Botticelli Remorso, one lazy Sunday afternoon, had recited from memory all the confessions he had heard from prisoners. What humans were capable of came as no surprise to Roscuro.
    “And then . . .,” said the man.
    “And then,” encouraged Roscuro.
    “And then I done the worst thing of all: I walked away from her and she was crying and calling out for me and I did not even look back. I did not. Oh, Lord, I kept walking.” The prisoner cleared his throat. He sniffed.
    “Ah,” said Roscuro. “Yes. I see.” By now, he was standing so that all four of his paws were touching the red cloth.
    “Do you find comfort in this cloth that you sold your child for?”
    “It’s warm,” said the man.
    “Was it worth your child?”
    “I like the color of it.”
    “Does the cloth remind you of what you have done wrong?”
    “It does,” the prisoner said. He sniffed. “It does.”
    “Allow me to ease your burden,” said Roscuro. He stood on his hind legs and bowed at the waist. “I will take this reminder of your sin from you,” he said. The rat took hold of the tablecloth in his strong teeth and pulled it off the shoulders of the man.
    “Hey, see here. I want that back.”
    But Roscuro, reader, was quick. He pulled the tablecloth through the bars of the cell, whoosh, like a magic trick in reverse.
    “Hey!” shouted the prisoner. “Bring that back. It’s all I got.”
    “Yes,” said Roscuro, “and that is exactly why I must have it.”
    “You dirty rat!” shouted the prisoner.
    “Yes,” said Roscuro. “That is right. That is most accurate.”
    And he left the man and dragged the tablecloth back to his nest and considered it.
    What a disappointment it was! Looking at it, Roscuro knew that Botticelli was wrong. What Roscuro wanted, what he needed, was not the cloth, but the light that had shone behind it.
    He wanted to be filled, flooded, blinded again with light.
    And for that, reader, the rat knew that he must go upstairs.

IMAGINE, IF YOU WILL, having spent the whole of your life in a dungeon. Imagine that late one spring day, you step out of the dark and into a world of bright windows and polished floors, winking copper pots, shining suits of armor, and tapestries sewn in gold.
    Imagine. And while you are imagining things, imagine this, too. Imagine that at the same time the rat steps from the dungeon and into the castle, a mouse is being born upstairs, a mouse, reader, who is destined to meet the light-bedazzled rat.
    But that meeting will occur much later, and for now, the rat is nothing but happy, delighted, amazed to find himself standing in so much light.
    “I,” said Roscuro, spinning dizzily from one bright thing to the next, “I will never leave. No, never. I will never go back to the dungeon. Why would I? I will never torture another prisoner. It is here that I belong.”
    The rat waltzed happily from room to room until he found himself at the door to the banquet hall. He looked inside and saw gathered there King Phillip, Queen Rosemary, the Princess Pea, twenty noble people, a juggler, four minstrels, and all the king’s men. This party, reader, was a sight for a