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About time, right?

THE CAT EARNED HIS KEEP. He was a friend. He was a trusted advisor. And he had social obligations which were part and parcel of his important position: to show himself, to be admired, to honor his patron by enthralling all who clapped eyes on him with his charismatic personality and his physical magnificence, his feline grace. He took care to present the attitude of a dandy, arranging himself with studied carelessness, crawling up his monarch’s leg as if to gain his attention, but actually to display himself, his performance conveying the message: Am I not a handsome devil?

He had good reason to believe that his remarkable advancement should be accepted. The rigid parameters of the feudal class system were crumbling.¹ Brains and pluck gained even the base-born appointments of honor and influence with expectations of prosperity and privilege.

Sly viewed his unprecedented rise as solid proof of his superiority. He felt himself an example of the survival of the fittest, though he wouldn’t have used those words. It would be two hundred years before the phrase was coined.

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STATUS WAS PARAMOUNT. It was jealously guarded and zealously maintained. Your station in society dictated what length of sleeve you might wear and what fabric it might be cut from, where you sat at table and who was served first. Those of standing had an obligation to affirm their rank with a display that was regulated by a complex protocol.

The wealth of more fortunate courts, Burgundy, for instance, supported unrivaled splendor. In this region, the nobility highly disadvantaged by the standards of Paris or Madrid, dress continued to be policed with a commitment long abandoned elsewhere, lest well-off merchants outshine august bloodlines. A cat indulged to an outrageous degree ought to have been no more than a laughing matter. In Haute-Navarre it was reckoned an infuriating sleight.

When Jakome inhabited the throne, the cat lolloped at his side on a miniature couch. He wore silk collars edged with pearls and sucked on catmint-laced paté. As it went for the king, his food was sampled by an individual selected at random from convened officials, a prudent move, and a sign of the esteem in which he was held. He was addressed Monsieur. The usage, first applied to him by a French diplomat, was in wide use, accompanied by a smirk.

Draped over his shoulder on grand occasions was the blue and gold sash of The King’s Archers, the cadre of household guards which in earlier centuries had performed a vital protective service, but which, after the introduction of firearms, became primarily ornamental. (He’d begged to be an Archer. Robin Hood had been one of his childhood heroes.) Garbed in the uniform of feathered cap, gold-braided tunic, jaunty capelet, and spit-shine boots, the cat cut a remarkable figure.

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THE BOOTS PINCHED. Shod, he could not saunter. He hobbled. Or shambled. He could stand in them, or he could prance a few paces. (He ditched the standard-issue item in favor of the soft-soled suede we see above during taxing drills of his regiment.) When, sporting the regulation footwear, he arrived with the king at a banquet or assembly and had to traverse long galleries acknowledging crowds of well-wishers, he was carried on a litter, like an eastern vizier, through the throng. Lounging at shoulder level on a tufted divan, alternately, seated in a miniature replica of the king’s grand carriage, he was able to wink at a pal or spit straight into the eye of an enemy.

He was forced to use the litter more and more. His critics were bent on doing him harm. The scoundrels stumbled as they passed him in the halls, and, in the effort to recover their balance, booted him in the ribs or the backside. This was invariably followed by frenzied remonstrance: Oaf! You’ve injured Monsieur! Come, small sir! Let me see to your boo-boos! He’d be seized and tormented until he managed to claw free. He traveled solo less and less. It was safer to ride, toted by porter-protectors.

THE HOSTILITY INCREASED until the cat demanded to be guarded round the clock. Jakome appointed two small sons of the Captain of the Guard as junior members of the Archers, and assigned them to trail the animal and protect him.

The trio came to be known as The Three Brats, or The Three Thugs. Or, simply, The Three. The boys flanked him in their miniature uniforms, identical to official Archer issue, except that they bore a patch on the sleeve proclaiming–Special Attendant to the Steward of the Forest Royal. 

Sly had been made supervisor of a property, and he would eventually receive a title, which is the prerogative of a King and no cause for fits among your courtiers. The man had rewarded a cat, rather than a romantic affiliation, as many a king saw fit to do. In the grand scheme of things, to grant a beloved animal an honorary post was a supportable affliction.

The trouble was, the cat did not see the office as an honorary one. He disapproved of the way the parcel had been managed. The Forest Royal was not a forest, it was a hunting park, a concept offensive to the critter despite his own blood lust. It was a different order of magnitude, mounted men with advanced technology killing for sport in a restricted area the prey could not escape verses an elemental urge.

When Jakome created him ‘Grand Duke of the Forest Royal’, ceding the hunting park to his friend as the foundation of his fortune, ending the ‘Grace and Favor’ tradition of free use by his nobles, the mood among the hereditary peers turned black indeed.

Alarmed, Sly demanded to be allowed to withdraw from court, arguing that a show of level-headedness on Jakome’s part, in the form of a staged epiphany, resulting in an explosive banishment, would salvage the situation. He proposed a jaunt to the collection of small states we call Italy, to visit an old friend. Jakome nixed that idea. Way too far.

“Across the border,” countered the cat. “Into France. Great food. Vineyard snails in butter. Heaven.”

“You’ll never come back,” shrieked the king. On that basis, he rejected a number of excursions that the animal would have enjoyed to take.

Watching Jak worry his rosary, he fingered it frantically in times of stress, an idea birthed itself. “Send me to San Fermin,”² urged the cat.

Not far, wretched food, it would surely do. Bittor was known to dump his culinary failures on the uncomplaining monks, who looked upon its consumption as a penance. Rather than to offer it to the needy–the prestige of the item must be maintained–substandard batches of product were unloaded on the uncomplaining religious community.

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JAKOME was pleased with the idea. Away from the bawdy atmosphere of the court, surrounded by godly companions, the snot might rethink his disturbing stance. The king still hoped to have the critter baptized. Now, animals are not baptized. But they are often blessed. Same thing almost, right?

Uh, oh. Cause for excommunication, I’m reading. Animals were not created in the Almighty’s image. They have not the intellect, able to receive and to understand and, above all, to choose to obey, or not, the teachings of the church.

Jakome rejected that dogma. Sly had as much brain as anyone. Therefore, he could and should be given the opportunity to weasel his way into heaven if ever he found faith. What if the scamp, shyster, a sinner, but of good heart, knowing right from wrong and able to articulate his views better than most, what if he perished without having been sprinkled with the holy water, condemned to hellfire on a technicality?

The king’s determination to have the cat anointed can be attributed to the fact that Sly had never been given even an inferior Anglican ceremony. Spiritually, he was as vulnerable as a newborn. Jakome considered wrapping the critter in swaddling, a shaved forehead exposed, and passing him off as a babe in arms to a priest with poor eyesight. A tight wrap would prevent a clawing, but eyes shooting daggers and, instead of gurgles, hisses, might result in a scheduled baptism being replaced by an impromptu exorcism.

The sacrament would have to be administered with the critter unaware of the ritual splash. The baptismal font would be a dead giveaway. A presiding cleric, same deal. If a lay person dared do the job, would it be valid?

It occurred to the king that he might pass an edict naming himself the head of a nationalized church, as Henry Tudor had done, awarding himself the authority to perform certain offices in the bargain. He dismissed that incendiary idea.

He’d consult a professional, the particulars as vague as possible. The term cat could not figure in the conversation. Jakome sent a runner to the Cathedral of the Holy Shepard with a note:

My dear Zag,

I shall visit you this evening. I am in the mood for your jovial company, and badly in need of your counsel.

                                                                                                          J.

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Chapter Notes

1. More so in Britain than on the continent, but having been born and raised in England, Sly expected the same open-mindedness wherever he went.
2. San Fermin: The first Bishop of Pamplona. It is said that he met his death by being dragged through the streets by bulls.

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