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Chapter 4: Soumise

Rubis had her portrait painted while wearing her new vest, not that she was particularly grateful for it. Getting her to sit still long enough was a nightmare. She also ended up getting paint on the poor man who was being paid to paint her!

Time passed. As weeks and months went by, the cardinal had a number of worries.

The king and queen continued to be childless.

The Huguenots continued to be stubborn.

Richelieu's paperwork continued to be extensive.

The cardinal's guards and the king's musketeers continued their rivalry.

Some young country bumpkin named Charles d'Artagnan came to Paris from Gascony and began training to become a musketeer. Ordinarily Richelieu would consider such a boy beneath his notice. Unfortunately, the three insufferable Inseparables, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis seemed to have taken the boy under their wings. The boy had aided them in a fight against Richelieu's guards. The outcome of the fight had been, frankly, embarrassing for the cardinal. Captain Treville had been unable to hide his smugness about the incident. Richelieu needed to have Comte de Rochefort up the guards' training. He feared that under the care of the Inseparables, this d'Artagnan would become at least as troublesome as they were, if not more so.

In between these disappointments, some good things happened too. Richelieu successfully arranged for Marie Madeleine to become a lady in waiting to another Marie, Marie de Medici, the Queen Mother.

Such a position was a great honor for Marie Madeleine. Furthermore, Richelieu wanted someone he trusted to be able to keep an eye on the Queen Mother. Just in case.

Around this time, Marie Madeleine decided the kittens were now big enough that they could each have their own cushion. She sewed a ruby red one for Rubis and a blue one for Jean Baptiste (royal blue so it wouldn't get mixed up with Lucifer's sky-blue cushion). For Jeanne d'Arc, she sewed a dove gray cushion, trimmed with lace, to go with Jeanne's Chartreux silvery gray pelt. Mounard's cushion had a patchwork pattern of four squares, two in red and two in orange. While he praised her work, Richelieu asked Marie why she had done that with Mounard's cushion when all the other cats got cushions in one solid color. Marie responded: "It's because he's capricious and vacillates between different things."

She had a point. Mounard was certainly capricious about food. The kittens had grown old enough to be fully weaned off Ludoviska's milk and eat solid foods. Mounard would sometimes turn up his nose at a perfectly nice plate of herring and refuse to eat until he was presented with chicken instead. He might then be happy to eat chicken for the next two days, but on the third day he would act as if chicken were the most disgusting thing he'd ever seen and would only eat beef. It made extra work for Richelieu and Emil.

Still, Mounard and the other three kittens were growing up beautifully. They still had tiny baby faces, but they now had longer legs and bigger paws. Their tails almost seemed disproportionately long. Their eyes finished turning from blue to other colors, just as Bicarat had predicted. Rubis and Jean Baptiste ended up with coppery orange eyes like their father, Ludovic. Jeanne d'Arc and Mounard ended up with Ludoviska's green eyes.

As they grew older, the kittens became faster, stronger, and more energetic. Jeanne d'Arc seemed to have inherited Ludovic le Cruel's talent as a mouser. Also, like Ludovic, she would bring her kills to Richelieu to show off, and he made sure to compliment and encourage her.

Perhaps as a result of living with a human clergyman, Jean Baptiste formed an interesting habit. When Richelieu knelt at his prie-dieu to say his prayers, the kitten would come over and sit beside him. He would quietly remain in that position until Richelieu finished praying and got up. Richelieu proudly told anyone who would listen that the cat was praying with him. Emil once suggested mildly that perhaps the cat was just curious about what the cardinal was doing. Richelieu scoffed in response and told him not to question Jean Baptiste's piety.

The months went by, and December arrived, bringing with it a good deal of snow.

In Paris, along the Rue Vaugirard, was an alley. In this alley lived a cat.

The cat was simply known as "Kitty," for no one had bothered to give him a proper name. Kitty's fur was black, except for his stomach, paws, the lower part of his face, and the very tip of his tail, all of which were white. His eyes were yellow. He was very skinny.

Kitty had been born in a litter of four kittens. Kitty, his mother, brother, and two sisters had originally lived in a house belonging to a human family. Other humans had come to the house and one by one, Kitty's brother and his two sisters had been adopted and taken away. For some reason, no one wanted to adopt Kitty.

One day one of the humans had picked Kitty up, put him in a basket, carried him far away from that house, then released him and ran off before Kitty could follow. Kitty had been unable to find his way home (which had been the human's intention in taking him so far in the first place).

Kitty had wandered for a long time before ending up in that alley and staying there. Sometimes he was able to catch a rat, a mouse, or some other creature for a meal. Sometimes he was able to find scraps to eat in the rubbish the humans threw out. Often, he went hungry, resulting in his skinniness.

There was another problem which only grew worse. It had been autumn when Kitty first ended up in the alley, but now it was December and growing colder.

Kitty did not fully understand why the humans had turned him out. He knew they had been disappointed when no visitor wanted to take him. He wondered why no one had wanted him. Humans had wanted his brother and sisters. Perhaps there was just something wrong with him.

One day Kitty was chasing a rat along the street of the Rue Vaugirard. He had had little to eat the day before and was desperately hoping he might catch this rat to relieve his hunger. As he was running, he bumped into something.

The thing turned out to be the booted foot of a tall human male with a patch over one eye. Kitty wondered why a human would cover one of its eyes, but didn't have much time to think about it as the human glared down at him with his single uncovered eye.

"Out of my way!" the human snapped, and kicked Kitty with his hard boot.

Kitty was thrown back and hit a nearby wall, which left him bruised. He also lost the rat.

A couple of days later, Kitty found some bits of old fish a human had thrown away. They weren't particularly tasty, but he was hungry enough not to be picky. He ate the scraps then sat down to wash his face.

What Kitty couldn't see was that a human was walking up behind him. It was the human with the eyepatch. The human very intentionally stepped directly on Kitty's tail.

Kitty shrieked and jumped.

"Stop hanging around here, you filthy, ugly beast!" barked the human. "This is a respectable street and no place for the likes of you!"

Kitty ran off and hid in the alley. He licked his sore tail and wondered about the human's words. Was he really an ugly beast? Was that why no human had wanted him?

"What creepy yellow eyes that cat has!" commented a woman, who was walking past Kitty the next day.

The man beside her shrugged. "Well, if it looks creepy, it's only because it's the agent of a witch."

Kitty frowned. He was not an agent of any witch. He didn't even know what a witch was! Was he really ugly and creepy? Perhaps that was why no human wanted him.

A few days later the temperature dropped. It began to snow. It was almost more than Kitty could bear. He huddled in the alley, which gave him a little bit of shelter from the wind, but it was still bitterly cold.

A male human came out of one of the shops. He was bundled in a long, dark cloak.

Kitty shrank back in the alley. It might not be the human with the eyepatch, but he still didn't want to risk getting hurt.

Kitty's attempt to hide didn't work. The human still caught sight of him and came over to the alley. It was not the human with the eyepatch. This human had gray fur on his head, above his upper lip, and a little bit on his chin. Kitty wondered, not for the first time, why humans only grew fur on their heads and, if they were male, parts of their faces.

"Who are you, little one?" asked the human. "What are you doing out here in the cold?" Then, before Kitty could get away, the human had picked him up by the scruff of his neck.

"You're so skinny. No one's been feeding you, have they? Well, come along now." The human then bundled Kitty up in the folds of his cloak. Kitty tried to squirm away, but the human was too strong. He ignored Kitty's attempts to scratch his hands. The fact that he was wearing leather gloves probably made this easier. The human then headed to a carriage and got inside. The carriage started moving and there was nothing Kitty could do about it!

"An eighth cat!"

"Stop looking at me like that, Emil!"

"But,,,,why?"

"You didn't see him when he was outside! He was cold and alone and look how skinny he is! I couldn't just leave him there!"

The human with the gray fur on his face was having some sort of argument with another human. This human was also male, but he was a bit shorter and stockier. His fur was darker and there was more of it on his face.

Kitty ignored them both. He was more interested devouring the codfish on a plate on the floor. It was nothing like the scraps of food from the rubbish heaps that he'd been living off of for so long. He couldn't remember having eaten anything this delicious in his admittedly short life.

The human with the gray fur on his face had brought Kitty to a large house and then put the plate of codfish in front of him on the floor. Kitty didn't know what the human wanted, but he knew better than to let food go to waste.

The other human, Emil, sighed. "Madame Marie isn't going to like this."

"What are you talking about? Marie adores the cats."

"She does, your Eminence. But she also told me 'Don't let Uncle Armand get anymore cats. Seven cats are quite enough for a reasonable person.'"

"I will deal with Marie. For now, you fetch a bowl of milk for this poor cat."

Emil left and came back with the milk. "Here you go, little one."

Kitty drank the milk. He felt warm and full in a way he hadn't felt in a very long time.

When he finished the milk, he thought it would be best to try to get away before the humans decided to hurt him, but the door of the room was shut tightly. He kept trying to find a way out of the room, but without success. Eventually he was so exhausted that he gave up, curled up in a ball, and fell asleep. At least it was warm in here.

"What were you thinking?"

Kitty was woken up by loud voices. The human with gray fur was arguing with a female human. She had long, curly, brownish fur.

"I couldn't just leave him out in the cold!"

"You already have seven cats! How many cats does one cardinal need?"

"Keep your voice down, Marie! You're scaring him!"

The human female, Marie, looked down and saw Kitty trying to hide under a chair. She spoke more softly, "It's alright, little one. I'm not mad at you. It's not your fault that Uncle Armand has no sense of self control." Looking back at her uncle, she asked, "What's his name?"

"I haven't decided yet," Looking at Kitty, he said, "How about Henri? After our former king?"

Kitty blinked. He wasn't sure what a king was, but he had heard humans talk about them and they seemed to be important. Many humans seemed to either love them or hate them.

"But you don't really seem like a Henri. What about Euripides?"

Kitty stared up at him with wide eyes. Euripides? What was the human thinking?

"Alright, I guess you don't like it any more than Lucifer did. Well, I'll come up with a suitable name for you eventually."

Marie had called the gray-furred human "Uncle Armand," and many other humans called him "Eminence," but it turned out that his proper name was Richelieu.

Kitty soon found out that he was not the only cat in the house. He met Lucifer, Ludovic le Cruel, Ludovic's mate Ludoviska, and their kittens, Rubis sur l'Ongle, Jean Baptiste, Jeanne d'Arc, and Mounard. They initially treated Kitty with some hostility and suspicion, but softened toward him once they realized he wasn't a threat. Eventually they were even willing to play with him.

Kitty was unable to escape from the building, which frightened him at first. He feared the humans might eventually hurt him in some way. But they never did. He saw that they never hurt the other cats, either. He eventually grew used to living there. It was certainly warmer than it had been in the alley. And for the first time in a long while, he got enough to eat every day. The food the humans gave him was almost always delicious, though his favorite food was fish.

There was a time when it seemed like they were going to hurt him. One day, soon after Kitty's arrival, Richelieu held him down on a table. He'd put on leather gloves so all Kitty's attempts at scratching and biting did no good. Then Emil held up a bristly object. Kitty was firmly convinced this was some sort of torture device they were going to use on him. But it turned out to simply be a brush, which they used to groom his fur. It actually felt rather nice for a while. Of course, Emil then had to find some tangles which he wanted to undo. That had hurt and Kitty let him know it with hissing and growling!

All the same, it was rather nice when, after the brushing, Richelieu and Emil both exclaimed over how soft and shiny his fur was.

That was not the only time Richelieu touched him. He would run his hands along Kitty's head and body. The first time he tried to do this, Kitty was frightened and ran to hide under an armchair. But later Kitty saw Richelieu do the same thing to Lucifer, who he didn't seem to be hurting. In fact, Lucifer seemed to like it if his rumbling purrs were anything to go by.

So eventually, Kitty decided to hold still long enough to let Richelieu pat him. The human had very gentle hands and quickly found just the right place to rub Kitty under his chin.

Kitty couldn't help it. He purred. His purring seemed to only encourage the patting. After that, Kitty looked forward to patting from the human.

He noticed that sometimes Richelieu seemed tense and anxious, particularly when he talked about the following topics: the king, the queen, musketeers, Captain Treville, Huguenots, and Spain. Kitty wasn't sure who or what all these things were, but he realized they were sources of worry for his human.

Richelieu was also sometimes tense and tired after he'd spent a long time reading and writing things on paper. Kitty often wondered why humans thought it necessary to have so many pieces of paper in their lives!

Kitty also observed something important: sometimes when Richelieu seemed irritable and stressed, he would find one of the cats and pat it. As he patted the cat, he seemed to become less tense and would visibly relax. He might even smile.

One day, Richelieu was at his desk. He had been sitting there for quite some time already, reading different pieces of paper. Whatever was on the papers seemed to make him unhappy, yet he continued to read them. Kitty thought Richelieu might cheer up if he patted Kitty, but the problem was getting him to stop reading long enough to start patting Kitty.

Kitty leapt onto the desk, getting right in Richelieu's face!

Richelieu gasped. "What are you doing, mon petit?"

Kitty stared at the human expectantly. Wasn't it obvious he wanted to be patted?

"Alright, petit. I can see you want some attention, but I don't want you getting on my papers. So, you can come over here," he scooped Kitty up and deposited him on his lap. He then began to pat him and Kitty was soon purring happily.

"You really are beautiful," Richelieu remarked.

Kitty's ears perked up. No one had ever called him beautiful before. In fact, he distinctly remembered the human with the eyepatch calling him ugly.

"You're so soft. And with your white feet it looks like you're wearing little boots. The way your tail is black, except for the white tip? It looks like you dipped it in white paint and it is adorable."

Kitty purred more loudly and cuddled closer to Richelieu.

"These financial reports are downright depressing. Did you come to me on purpose to cheer me up?" Richelieu asked teasingly.

Perhaps the human wasn't completely oblivious after all.

"You know, I think I've finally come up with a name for you. I shall call you Soumise, which means 'submissive.' Because you are submissive, sweet, well-behaved, and gentle."

One day Kitty, newly Christened Soumise, was in Richelieu's study. The human wasn't there yet. But another human came into the room. It was the human with the eyepatch. He caught sight of Soumise.

"What are you doing here?" he barked. "How did you get into the cardinal's home?" He stalked toward Soumise threateningly. Soumise ran to hide under the desk.

"There you are, Rochefort." It was Richelieu's voice. "We need to discuss- "he glanced down and saw Soumise crouching fearfully under the desk. "Soumise? What's the matter?" He scooped up the trembling cat and cuddled him to his chest. Then he narrowed his eyes at Rochefort. "Did you do something to upset him?"

Rochefort paled. "No, your Eminence. Um, so you've taken in this stray then along with your other cats?"

Richelieu bristled. "He's not a stray anymore. His name is Soumise. He lives here. You're a guest."

"Of-of course, your Eminence," Rochefort stammered.

Christmas was fast approaching and Richelieu was busy.

As cardinal, he needed to prepare for Christmas mass. He also needed to make sure his staff prepared enough Christmas goose that the cats, as well as the humans of his household, would be able to have some. He also needed to assemble presents for various relatives. He hoped his erudite niece, Marie Madeleine, would like the book he was giving her.

There was one particular important present that needed preparing, and Marie Madeleine agreed to help him with it. Once it was ready, they found Soumise.

"We have a Christmas present for you, mon petit," Richelieu informed the cat.

"I sewed it." Marie Madeleine put the cushion on the ground for the cat. "Although, Uncle Armand reimbursed me for the material. He also chose the color."

"I thought you should have a royal purple cushion," Richelieu told Soumise. "Because purple is the traditional color of Advent in the church, Advent being the time of preparation for Christmas."

Soumise gazed at Richelieu with inquisitive yellow eyes, then began sniffing the cushion.

"I found you in December, during Advent. And you are one of the best Christmas presents I could hope for."

Some days later, it was evening and Richelieu said good night to the cats, who were curled up on their respective cushions. Richelieu then said his prayers and got into his four-poster bed. He'd had a busy day and felt he had earned his rest.

Unfortunately, even after tossing, turning, shifting, and wriggling to try to find the most comfortable position, he found he could not fall asleep. He should have been able to fall asleep. His blankets were warm. His eiderdown mattress and massive pillows were soft. It was late enough. And he was certainly tired enough. He should have been able to fall asleep, but he found himself unable to do so because he could not stop thinking of everything he would have to do tomorrow.

He had been productive with his paperwork today, but he knew even more of it would soon be delivered to him. There would be a meeting of the Royal Council tomorrow. The Queen Mother, Marie de Medici, would be there and Richelieu could only hope that she would refrain from quarreling with King Louis. He did try to keep the peace between mother and son, he had after all been the one to reconcile them with the Treaty of Angouleme several years ago. But even nowadays they were still liable to bicker. Marie de Medici had a temper and her son had inherited it. After the meeting of the Royal Council, Richelieu had a meeting scheduled with a particularly stubborn marquis. He just knew that meeting was going to take at least two hours! As if that wasn't bad enough, the man always smelled of elderberries (he probably drank far more elderberry wine than was good for him) and Richelieu would have to spend the whole interview pretending not to notice. He would have to remember to discreetly open a window during the meeting.

With all these thoughts weighing on him, Richelieu could not get to sleep. This inability to sleep worried him even more, because he knew that he needed to be well rested if he was going to be alert during his meetings tomorrow. It would not do to nod off and start snoring while the king was speaking, regardless of how foolish some of his ideas were. Richelieu was so absorbed in these worries that he didn't realize what was happening until he felt two tiny points of pressure on his middle. Soumise had climbed up onto the bed and was now resting his little front paws on his stomach!

Soumise climbed onto his stomach, walked up a bit further, and sat down right on top of his chest. He had never done this before. Richelieu reached up and began to pat him. In response, he let out a surprisingly deep purr for such a small creature. Richelieu continued to pat him and he continued to purr soothingly. He became so distracted by Soumise's purring and so focused on patting him that he forgot about his worries for the next day. Eventually the cat's purring worked like a lullaby and lulled him to sleep.

Soumise had not simply jumped on Richelieu's bed on a whim. He was very fond of the cushion Marie Madeleine had made for him. But he had also seen how restless Richelieu seemed to be, all alone in his big bed. So, he had very deliberately decided to come over and see if his human might benefit from some extra warmth and snuggling. Humans are good at giving us food and a warm place to stay, he thought. But they need us too. They need us to comfort them and remind them to relax. Just as they take care of us, we take care of them.

Notes:

In Alexandre Dumas's original writing, Rochefort lives until 1648, when he dies in Twenty Years After, the sequel to The Three Musketeers. In the 1993 film, the 2011 film, and the BBC TV series, he dies rather earlier. I believe, in this story, Rochefort may live rather longer than he did in the film versions. This is not because I like him, but because it amuses me to imagine him being disgruntled by the cats' presence. To any readers who are Rochefort fans, who think I am unkind to depict him thus and torment him with cats, you have my apologies.

Historically, Marie Madeleine did become a lady in waiting to Marie de Medici.

When Soumise meets Marie Madeleine in the story, he thinks she has "long, curly, brownish fur." Since Soumise is a cat, he thinks of human hair as fur. Furthermore, in the images I've googled of paintings of Marie Madeleine, she does have curly hair.

According to my research, Cardinal Richelieu did have a cat named Soumise, and word really does mean "submissive."

Funny story: I couldn't find any information on what kind of cat the historical Soumise might have been. However, a couple of months ago, I was riding in a car and thinking about plans for my writing, when a black and white cat with yellow eyes ran across the road. I thought, "This is a sign. I'm putting this cat in the story."

I'm not sure I'm quite as happy with this chapter as I am with the preceding ones. It was around Christmas when I was writing it, and I suppose the Christmas mood made me want to write a warm, fuzzy chapter, and this was the result. I also wanted to try something different by writing part of the chapter from a cat's point of view. Now I'm not sure if I want to do that again or not. If anyone would like more writing from feline perspectives or would prefer I stick to writing from a human's perceptive, feel free to say so in the comments and I will take it into consideration.