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Chapter 17

Grantville

Early November 1636


After it occurred to Marc that he should familiarize himself with what a Siamese cat looked like, since he would be searching for one, and the various etchings and engravings that accompanied the newspaper articles often bore a greater resemblance to mythical monsters, he headed to Grantville, kissed his sister Idelette’s cheek, and requested pertinent data.

“Hazel Patton is the Siamese cat breeder,” she said. “She’s old. I can take you to see her.”

Hazel might be over seventy, but she was lively. “You have no idea how much trouble it’s been,” she said. “As far as I know, there wasn’t a single un-neutered purebred Siamese tom in this town. I’ve been breeding my mixed boy back with various white females that I’ve managed to beg and borrow, but it’s unfortunately going to be a very narrow gene pool.”

“Then where did Rebecca Abrabanel get the kitten she took to Cardinal Richelieu?” Idelette asked. “It was a kitten, and that was a year and a half after the Ring of Fire. Everyone says it was Siamese.”

Hazel looked down at the animals rubbing around her ankles. “You know, that could have been one of Alberta O’Donnell’s cats. Bertie didn’t die until right at the end of 1633, but with both of her daughters passing away the year before and poor John long gone, nearly fifty years before the Ring of Fire happened, and being almost ninety herself—well, she wasn’t in good shape there at the end. Probably, either Hank or Marsha took her cats—those are Maude’s kids, you know. Poor Carrie never had any. Anyway, with Hank Jones so busy with the mines and backing up Mike Stearns in everything political, I don’t think he’d have taken Bertie’s cats home with him. But he probably knew about them and could have told Mike. Ask Marsha Jones. She’s still working at the grocery store. Not that she’s in good shape herself, what with Jeffie Garand dying in that epidemic over in the Rhineland last summer. Say what you will about Marsha, and a lot of folks do say that she’s sort of feckless and aimless, she gets out of bed and does her job every day, and she loves her kids crazy much. Jeffie’s death slammed her.”

Idelette set up a meeting with Marsha Jones, at her house that evening, with her twelve-year-old daughter Miranda much involved. Miranda had been following the cat saga as reported by the newspapers with great anxiety.

“Yes, Ma had Pitty Pat and Pitty had three kittens that year. That was her last litter—she was getting old and died before Ma did. Pitty might have been purebred, but she wasn’t pedigreed or anything. Pretty, though, and the kittens she had usually looked more like her than like ordinary cats. Or some of them looked sort of odd, like that orange tabby of Gladys Johnson’s that has a Siamese nose, ears, and tail. Poor Gladys; she passed away last year, too, but not before her time. Liney Linder, that’s her daughter, has the cat now. You might have heard of Liney’s granddaughter Marla. She’s gotten to be a famous singer. Anyway, there were three kittens in that litter and I gave my brother Hank the cutest one when he said that Mike Stearns’ wife needed it for something important.”

“Marsha, what did you do with the other kittens?” Hazel asked.

“Well, Miranda here kept one of them. A girl; I took her to the vet and had her fixed. One cat is enough in any house, if you ask me. I wasn’t going to be trying to find homes for kittens the rest of my life the way Ma did. Let me think. Randi, honey, what did we do with Pitty’s third kitten?”

“I gave him to Kara Washaw. I guess they took him to Magdeburg when they moved. Mrs. Washaw got it fixed, too. She said that no way was she going to live with the smell of tomcat pee in her house.”

“Damn,” Hazel exclaimed. “‘Had I but known,’ like the heroines in all those old romance books were always saying. I sure could have used those kittens for breeding if I’d known you were getting rid of them.”

After emphasizing the need for utmost secrecy (“I won’t say a single word,” Miranda promised) and being furnished with a couple magazine pictures of more or less typical Siamese cats and a precious polaroid photo of the late Bertie O’Donnell with a young Pitty Pat (Marc swore upon his honor to bring it back unharmed) for identification purposes, Marc kissed his sister on her other cheek and set off for Paris.


Paris

Mid-November 1636


With everything that was going on in Poland and Austria, Soubise was fairly sure that France’s problems were not currently high on Gustavus’ list of concerns. Nor would France be at the top of the concerns of the emperor’s prime minister. Nor those of his generals. Nor even those of his spies. Which was why Gaston was having so close to a free hand. True, the Netherlands, Lorraine, and Burgundy had their eyes fixed on what France’s king was doing, but that was scarcely equivalent to having the Lion of the North looking directly over a man’s shoulder. Things would probably change once Gustavus got a handle on things in the east. If he got a handle on things in the east. If the Ottomans would let him get a handle on things in the east.

Meanwhile, Burgundy equaled not only Bernhard but Rohan, who had let it be known that he was displeased by the—in his view excessive—overtures that Soubise and Anne had been making to King Gaston.

Soubise raised one eyebrow at his sister.

“We need to distract him,” she said.

“How?”

“I have been casting around. Do you remember Robert Traill?”

“That Scotsman who tutored you in English?”

“Yes. His brother is now right here, in Paris, bear leader for a young nobleman. Given Henri’s fixation on finding a suitable Protestant match for his heiress and considering that the young man is Presbyterian . . . Oh, the young man is not a viable choice, really. He’s from a miserably nouveau origin. However, if I arrange things so that he’s right there under Henri’s nose, demanding a maximum amount of attention . . . ”

Soubise nodded. “It could buy us some time and space for negotiations with Gaston, both of which we need.”


France

November 1636


Marc had plenty of time to think about the possibilities as he made his way across France. Here he was, four or five months after the presumed death of Richelieu, or at least since the cardinal’s disappearance if one put any stock in the unlikeliest of the flying rumors. He didn’t have the vaguest idea where to look for the cat. Was the cat in Paris, or in a suburb, or on an estate somewhere out in the country? Or, in the worst case, dead? Would one of the cardinal’s servants have adopted the cat? Could the cat have been removed to the cardinal’s country estate by one of his relatives? Or was the cat, even if it wasn’t probable, in some kind of dire danger and needing to be rescued?

While his boring horse plodded along the road, he started his mental timeline with the summer. Richelieu had been in residence at the Palais-Cardinal last spring.

Presumably, so had the cat.

After the imbroglio in May, Père Joseph, who was rumored to have been named as cardinal in pectore by the pope, had taken charge of the residence.

Presumably, the cat had still been there unless someone had taken him away.

It was now fairly reliably known that in August, Marie de’ Medici, King Gaston’s mother, had thrown Père-Joseph-who-was-maybe-also-Cardinal-Leclerc-du-Tremblay in prison and moved into the Palais herself.

Presumably, the cat had not been sent to the prison with the cardinal.

It was said that the queen mother was not particularly fond of cats. Because of that and given her conflicts with Richelieu . . . 

Presumably, it was unlikely that she had kept his cat.

Sometime after those events, again according to the rumor mill, she and Gaston had quarreled bitterly . . . but that kind of thinking led into an endless loop.

Not a presumption. There were no specific rumors that anyone else had adopted or removed the cat. So—start at the Palais-Cardinal which the queen mother had renamed as the Palais-Royal.

* * *

Sandrart’s art tour went well until the country house at which he encountered the duchess and Candale. Looking down from the musicians’ gallery, he saw them, right there in the main salon, talking to Madame de Boileau. It had to be them. Not news that they had visited this château a few days previously. Not someone remarking that they were expected to arrive in a couple more days’ time. No, they were here. It was impossible to mistake the head full of corkscrew ringlets that was such a mark of the duchesse de Rohan’s appearance. His fingers itched for a paintbrush. Could the great Albrecht Dürer himself have done justice to that hair?

He started to back away slowly from the railing of gallery, reaching behind him to part the curtain that closed it off from the servants’ passageway. As he moved to step through, his heel caught the hem. In the high-ceilinged room, the sound echoed. He thought, off-topic, that he acoustics must be terrible; the instrumentalists who attempted to perform from the gallery would receive his commiseration. It must be like trying to paint with fireworks flashing all over the studio.

Madame de Boileau and her guests looked up. Of course. With a mischievous smile, Candale beckoned him to come down. Sandrart complied at a deliberate pace, allowing himself some time to think. The only ameliorating aspect of the situation was that Candale’s amusement appeared to be genuine.

After that harried encounter, he reported to Soubise that the objects of his scrutiny were well aware that he was an agent who had been sent to watch them. Not to mention that the duchess had made advances to him.

“She would not have been genuinely trying to seduce you,” Soubise assured him with a shrug. “She must have been teasing that evening because they caught you in the middle of your supposedly discreet observation of their activities. My sister-in-law, as appalling as her morals may be, selects her lovers only from the highest levels of the French aristocracy.”

“As to that,” Sandrart replied, “she and Candale are sharing a chamber, making no effort to disguise it.”

Soubise shrugged again.


Laubach, Solms-Laubach

November 1636


Someone had poisoned the grand hetman of Lithuania this month.

What had she accomplished? Käthe crossed her arms over her chest. “Nothing anywhere near that dramatic,” she could assure anyone who might ask.

She picked up the newspaper again and turned the page to the fine arts section. Opera, ballet, mural competitions. Everything was happening in Magdeburg, it seemed. Amalie Elisabeth, because of her political obligations, had not observed the obligatory year of mourning strictly in any case. Now she was out of mourning. She could take advantage of any of those.

I wish I was in Magdeburg, she thought. Magdeburg, where they have, or so I have read, efficient heating systems. I wish I wasn’t in this freezing cold, far from modern, horseshoe-shaped, wretched, fortified castle where the “new” wing is a hundred years old and the drafts coming from under the doors dance with the drafts that rattle the windows.

She shivered and ordered a footman to check whether or not there was plenty of firewood on hand for the hearths in the nursery and, if not, to have someone haul more upstairs. Turning to her desk, she started a letter to her oldest sister, the unmarried Charlotte Louise.


I was delighted to receive your letter; it seemed as if it had been a long time since I heard from you. It would be so wonderful if we could arrange a visit, but with winter coming on I know it would be too difficult. Our brothers hardly ever write me; I haven’t heard from any of them for three months. Philipp Moritz has his own household and concerns now. The other two lack that excuse, but of course they are men and have more important things to do than write to their sister.


Especially, she thought, they are too busy to write to a sister who is marooned out on the fringes of the political world, with no political connections to bring them advancement in their careers. One who did not manage to poison the hetman of Lithuania this month.


Paris

November 1636


On a day blessed with bright sunshine and a temperature not too far below freezing, Marc sat on a low stone wall bordering the gardens (unfinished) at the rear of the now-Palais-Royal (also unfinished) and thought about the nature of the universe, or at least the immediately adjacent small part of it. The building was still, to a considerable extent, a construction site. The front facade, the major ceremonial rooms behind it, and the rooms Richelieu had used as his personal residence were complete.

Back here, though, it was a work in progress: both skilled artisans and common laborers all over the place, carts and wagons of supplies constantly coming in and going out, the gardens-to-be blocked out but unfinished, with gardeners and other workmen with tools and small wheelbarrows there, too. All of which meant that it was not going to be much of a challenge to infiltrate the place. He continued to sit on the wall, goggling his eyes like a tourist, swinging his feet and absently-minded chewing on a baguette he bought from a street vendor.

The boy who shortly thereafter, baguette in hand, sat down next to him was probably coming to the end of his apprenticeship—maybe even a very young journeyman.

After all the bonjour bits, it came down to, “I’m Denis Lemercier.”

“You have the luck to be working on this building?”

“Ah, oui. It’s a great deal. I’m a stonemason aiming to become an architect in the long run. I’m one of those Lemerciers, which is how I got this chance. It’s Jacques who is the architect for the whole thing. It’s been in process since I was a kid, a big coup for our whole family, which is huge. Jacques is a some-kind-of-a cousin to my father. Close enough that we can call him kin, but not close enough that we visit one another’s families unless it’s something big, like a funeral.”

“Do you have a lot of problems with vermin? I know that construction sites always attract them, and since there are so many food carts . . . ”

“And the gardens!” Lemercier rolled his eyes to the sky. “But at least, the place has cats, too.” He waved cheerfully as he went back to work.

Marc watched lazily for a while longer and then wandered idly off, to cast touristy glances at some other of Paris’ famous attractions. In his room that evening, he pulled off his boots and sat down to once more take a careful look at the pictures and photo he had brought along from Grantville.

In only a couple of hours, at mid-day, watching the gardens behind the Palais-Royal, he had seen at least a half-dozen cats that looked suspiciously Siamese-ish. He pulled a piece of paper and pencil out of one of his saddle bags, propped his feet up on the table, and began to calculate. Given that the kitten was a male . . . given that such a kitten might well be mature and capable of procreation within six months of its arrival . . . given that it was likely that to some extent Richelieu had deliberately bred it . . . given that there was no indication that the cat had been regularly confined and prevented from promiscuous unions with random females . . . then in the course of three years, during which its descendants would themselves have produced several probably-inbred generations, whether by the cardinal’s deliberate choice or by random mating . . . it might be quite possible that there weren’t just a half-dozen suspiciously Siamese-ish cats around the Palais-Royal. There could be hundreds. Even thousands.

Calvinist doctrine, unlike Catholic, maintained that the age of direct divine intervention was over. It wasn’t going to be a problem to get a cat, but he could use Susanna’s approach to prayer right now. Unless someone had really taken special charge of the Grantville-born feline, it would be a modern miracle if he got the right cat.

The next day he went back to the gardens. With fish. When a half-grown kitten crept near enough to him, he dropped a bit of it. The kitten was a perfectly ordinary tabby in its coloration, but a person had to start somewhere.

Denis plopped down next to him on the wall. “You’re crazy to feed them. You’ll never get rid of them, and after you finish your business here and go back to where you came from, they’ll be hassling other people for food for days and days before they give up.”

Marc repeated the process for several days, by which time he had collected quite a crowd of adoring feline fans, a few of which showed points. He also felt confident enough that he showed one of the magazine photos to Denis.

“Yeah, some of them do sort of look like that. I’ve seen the USE papers, too. People bring them into France, even if the king has made a proclamation against it.” He pointed at one of the half-grown kittens with the hand that was not holding his baguette up in the air, out of the way of over-interested feline observers. “Over in the right wing, on the other side, there are more cats like that. Most of them with white fur, a little dirty-looking, sort of gray-blue dirt, like sculptor’s clay. Mostly dark gray on the noses and paws, but not all.” He waved his other hand at a sleek mature tom. “Like him. Now, that is a cat of a different color. Like chocolate.”

Marc was not going to be able to leave on the horse he came in on. It wasn’t trained to harness and he was going to need . . . cages for cats. Something to feed cats. If he didn’t want to be driving an intolerable cart across France, something to use for kitty litter. If the cats were not to freeze to death, as no inn would possibly agree to take them, he would need a covered cart.

He confided these needs to Denis, giving his intentions as mercenary: inspired by the newspaper furor, which apparently meant that the up-timers considered these cats valuable and everyone knew that up-timers were all rich, he was here to catch as many as possible of the prettiest ferals and take them to the fabled Grantville to sell.

Denis came on board. He was a journeyman, after all. It would certainly broaden his horizons if he went and studied the architecture and building techniques of the town from the future. Which he could fund, at least in part, he stated with enthusiasm, by helping in the cat project and sharing in its anticipated proceeds.

On balance, Marc thought, Denis’ help would be worth it. Plus, if he took enough cats—maybe, with two of them to drive, got a freight wagon instead of a cart—they could sell the extras to the benefit of Denis’ budget.

Everything went pretty smoothly until they got overconfident. In the evening dusk, a few days later, one of Marie de’ Medici’s servants spotted them in the back garden holding up a polaroid photo to compare it to a hissing, spitting, cat that they had trapped under a loosely woven basket. They made a hurried emergency departure from the Palais grounds, managing, because of considerable recent practice in the maneuver, to tip the basket up, fling the lid on, and take the cat as they went.

As they ran off toward the wagon yard where they had the rest of their loot stockpiled, a shrewd tom with a dark nose and tail, dark paws, and light body, who had evaded being seen each time the evil beings who were trapping his clowder appeared at the Palais, watched them go from his sanctuary under a pile of lumber. A traumatic encounter earlier in the fall, in the form of several hostile servants chasing him away from his favorite perch in his favorite room in the Palais, waving brooms and dusters, one of them even hitting him in the side, had thoroughly spooked him about unfamiliar humans.


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