I AM THE CAT

by William Stafford

  ***

  The Lord Mayor and his retinue crossed the paved courtyard, heading not for the palace but for the old Norman tower in the centre. So, this was a business call rather than merely hobnobbing with His Maj. I trotted alongside them, mingling between the legs and cloaks and keeping low, I gained entry into that grand old building.

  We strode through to a chamber on the ground floor, where doors were opened and chairs were fetched. Greetings were barked. An elderly man in heels ushered the party towards a long table. He was the Lord Chamberlain, it turned out; his gangly limbs made him look like a spider that had escaped dismemberment by a child halfway through the process. The Lord Mayor expressed his displeasure that the King himself was not present. The Lord Chamberlain responded unctuously that His Majesty was far too busy to trouble himself with the organisation of the Lord Mayor’s parade, and questions of His Majesty’s health cast his attendance at the event into doubt.

  After much grumbling and harrumphing, scrolls and ledgers were produced and they began to talk about the nitty-gritty, the facts and figures and the logistics involved and... It was so boring that I was considering curling up in front of the fireplace where logs were crackling and burning, fizzing and popping, even though outside the confines of the cold stone walls, the rest of the city was humming in the summer sun.

  Perhaps The Boy could be one of these clerks, these quill-pushers and groat-counters. It was certainly a step-up from the role he had just taken on. You didn’t have to worry about keeping your clothes clean, for one thing - and you know about me and cleanliness. Having been incorporeal since Time began, now that I had a physical presence I was determined to keep it pristine.

  I’m projecting my obsession onto the Boy, aren’t I? He is human, after all, and judging by the way humans carry on, especially in this city of filth, I could imagine having quite a hard task persuading him that a life of facts and figures was for him. These prissy officials - the younger ones, I mean - may not be on the princely wage of sixpence a day but they looked well-fed and cosseted enough. Or am I being too feline again?

  I left them to their droning and moaning. The gist of it was the Lord Mayor wanted more of this and bigger of that but there was not enough in the coffers to fund his most extravagant ideas. The Lord Mayor took each revision or refusal as a personal slight and had to be soothed and reassured every other minute. Silly, vain man. Why plan a parade at all when there are more pressing and smelly issues within your city?

  I leapt unseen to a windowsill and out onto the clipped grass in the grounds. There must be other opportunities for employment in this place. Something the Boy could do...

  A raucous cry chilled my blood. My first thought was of my brother. Was he laughing at my pretensions? I turned around slowly.

  A black bird as big as me was preening itself on the lawn. Its feathers were gleaming in the sunlight, shining like coal. Another joined it. The pair of ravens strutted around as if they were the resident monarchs rather than His Majesty the King Edward III.

  My rear quarters began to tremble - what was I doing? Readying to pounce? These buggers could have my eyes out. Forget that. I reined in my instincts and skulked across the yard with my ears and tail low and headed towards the palace.

  There a pretty stained glass window was propped open to admit some air - as opposed to the White Tower where they keep a fire lit in the summer to warm the place up. Humans are funny. I launched myself at the windowsill. The tips of my whiskers barely brushed the sides as I squeezed through the gap in the frame and dropped into the stateroom within.

  I slunk under a dark wooden dresser. From this point I could see a child, a human boy, playing with carved toy soldiers on an ornate rug. He was enacting some kind of heated dispute between the tiny figures, and spoke in different voices for each character. Watching him from a high-backed cushioned chair, an old man with a white beard laughed and added commentary as the preamble to an all-out skirmish was played out at his feet.

  “Richard, you toy with history,” the old man said. Despite his shrunken frame, his voice was still deep and powerful. He must have been quite the impressive figure in his younger days.

  The child paused in his play-acting for a moment and met the old man’s gaze. The boy’s red hair almost glittered in the sunlight from the open window.

  “Truly, grandfather, does history toy with us.”

  The old man gasped in astonishment and delight. He clapped his gnarled hands together and then wiped a wet eye with his finger. He looked fondly at the child and muttered something about a resemblance to his late wife. The boy, this other Richard, resumed the battle heedless of his grandfather’s sentimentality.

  “And thus my father crushed the traitorous French!” He smashed two wooden horses into each other before casting one of their riders across the carpet where it was left for dead. “The Black Prince is victorious again!”

  The old man gave a little cheer and the boy rearranged the armies for a rematch. A knock at the door at the far end of the room roused the old man from his contemplations. He straightened himself. The Lord Chamberlain tottered in with a sheaf of documents.

  “Requiring your seal, Majesty,” he bowed his head.

  Majesty! This then was the King! This shrunken man was once the formidable militaristic monarch - I ransacked my memories of human history. This man was not long for this world. Who was to follow?

  The grandson! I was looking at the boy who in a year or two would become Richard the Second.

  Oh.

  Things would not go well for him.

  It was odd how touched I was to see this carefree boy and know his fate. And perhaps because he shared the same name as my Boy, I felt some kind of attachment. But there was nothing to be done to alter the course of events. That was not why I was here, I mean, here on Earth in this form, not just in this room.

  “What is it?” the King blustered, clearly annoyed to be disturbed in his private apartments.

  “Final budget for the Lord Mayor’s parade,” the Chamberlain sneered as though sorry to bring it up.

  “Oho!” The King snatched the documents and leafed through them. “Well, where’s the rest?”

  “Majesty?”

  “Call this a parade? This wouldn’t merit the attention of a flea. Pox on it! Give the old boy everything he wants and remind me not to leave you in charge of my funeral.”

  The Chamberlain bristled at this. He began to say something about the treasury.

  “Treasury be hanged!” The King tore the documents in two. “Tell His Worship the Mayor he has carte blanche to do what he likes. Any opposition he meets will have to answer to me.”

  “Majesty, that -”

  “I have made myself clear.” The King sat back in his chair. Young Richard had watched all this intently, his wooden soldiers forgotten in his hands.

  The Chamberlain bowed again and left.

  “What say you to that, Richard? Would you like to see the parade?”

  The boy made no answer. He looked at the effigy of his father and made somewhat sullen giddy-up noises. The war broke out again.

  I decided - or rather, my eyelids decided for me - to have a quick sleep under that dresser. I liked the idea of having Royal accommodation. I suppose every cat believes it’s a monarch. But I couldn’t help wondering how the Boy was getting on. Neither could I stop hoping he would come to his senses and quit.

  ***

  In my sleep, my brother’s voice came to me although whether it was actually him or my subconscious mind, I cannot say. I never used to have a subconscious mind or any need to sleep or to dream; I’m new to all this.

  What the voice said (wherever it came from) was that I had let the Boy down. I had abandoned him to a life of toil in the worst possible conditions. I had left him to hardship and drudgery, to be shunned by his fellow humans,
to a nocturnal existence tackling the evils that men do.

  I scoffed at this, my cat-side telling him that a nocturnal existence was not necessarily a bad thing. I pointed out that the job was crucial to the running of the city. People might not like to think of these matters but someone has to clean up this matter. And, I added significantly, sixpence a day was not to be sniffed at.

  Recalling this dream, or conversation, or whatever it was, I realise I was presenting the Boy’s own argument for taking the job. My conscience was pricked more than a pincushion in a swordfight. Was this then my brother’s function? To be my conscience?

  I dismissed this idea as I gave myself a quick all-over wash on waking. A delicious smell of food before it begins its journey through the human digestive tract and out into the streets was pulling me from beneath the dresser as insistently as any hand around my neck might have done.

  Servants had brought in platters and dishes for the King’s grandson and the boy was absent-mindedly chewing some pheasant while toying with the little effigy of his warrior father.

  The aroma was overpowering. Before I knew what I was doing I was on the tabletop, and padding at the boy’s chin. The boy couldn’t have been more startled if I’d started singing madrigals.

  “A cat!” he exclaimed, dropping the wooden soldier and clapping his hands. Ah, the benefits of education.

  I sniffed at his plate until he lifted it out of reach and complained loudly to an attendant. A man in stiff livery approached and tried to catch me.

  “Don’t hurt it!” the young prince cried out in anguish.

  I cast him a glance and couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. In what, two years? he would be King of England at the age of ten. What kind of life is that? Perhaps, I reflected, my Boy was better off carting human waste out of the city every night.

  I shouldn’t have stopped. I should have had it away on my paws out through the window.

  Suddenly everything went dark as a large silver cloche slammed over me. I was trapped!

  A crack of light appeared as the lid was lifted just enough for the young Royal eye to peer at me.

  “Take him to the kitchen,” the Royal voice commanded. Clearly he was already accustomed to having people do what he told them. “And see he is fed.”

  “Sire.”

  Everything went black again and I felt myself being lifted and carried away.

  Although I was to spend a lot of time over the next week or so, coming and going, being petted and cosseted by the kitchen staff, I never saw the young prince Richard again. Perhaps I should have made more of an effort to befriend him. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been so lonely and things might have turned out differently for him.

  Not my place to say.

  By day I would visit the kitchen staff where for a few purrs and several rubs of my head around several shinbones, I would be rewarded with fresh meat and the warmth of the fireplace. And humans think they are the more intelligent species!

  At night, I would leave the Tower and seek out the Boy and observe him from on high, and upwind if possible, as he pushed cart after cart of filth from public privy to the depot across the bridge in Southwark. Here the cartloads would be transferred to waggons and the waggons would be driven out of the gates and out into the countryside for safe disposal.

  Or so we were led to believe.

  “Kid!” I called to him from the top of the wooden fence as he was about to set off to fetch another cartload.

  “Hello, Puss!” he grinned at me, his teeth like a string of pearls dropped in the muddy puddle of his face.

  “How can you be so cheerful?” I marvelled at his continuing optimism.

  “Sixpence a day!” he laughed. “And I get free lodgings.”

  I trotted along the fence as he pushed his rickety cart. “Kid, you’re better than this. Listen, I’m trying to find you an opening at the Tower. You could turn the spit in the kitchen. You could pluck the geese. You could toss breadcrumbs at the ravens. You could -”

  I could sense he wasn’t listening. We had had the same conversation every night for a week.

  “I’m happy as I am,” he spoke some well-worn words of his own. “It’s honest work. Vital work. I’m getting fitter every night and sixpence richer every day.”

  “There’s more to life than money, kiddo.”

  “That’s true.” He turned his smeared and soiled face to the moonlight that barely filtered through the close-packed rooves. “There’s also Alice.”

  Ah.

  So at last the reasoning behind this odious, odoriferous occupation came to light. He was doing this for Fitzwarren’s daughter. The Boy had seen a chance to make some money and thereby, in his view, better himself, making him a much better prospect for the maiden in question.

  “So you’re not planning on making a career out of muck-raking then?”

  “No!” the Boy laughed. “Although there are less honourable ways to make a living. As soon as I’ve got enough saved for some new clothes and a gift of introduction, I shall present myself to Fitzwarren as both a potential employee and a suitor to his daughter.”

  “You’ve got it all worked out,” I said. “But where do you keep your hard-earned cash? Not back at the lodgings, I hope.”

  “I’m not a complete idiot.” He reached behind his soiled apron and into his leggings. He withdrew a pouch that rattled with coins. “See?”

  I glanced around anxiously. “Better be careful, kid. You don’t know who’s about.”

  He put the purse back where it came from. “That’s the beauty of this job. Everyone gives you a wide berth. Footpads and cutpurses won’t come near me.”

  “Even so, don’t go flashing your cash around, kiddo.” I was keen that he shouldn’t lose it. The sooner he made enough to leave this stinking slog the better. Any misgivings I had about Fitzwarren and his lovely daughter could be tackled at a later date.

  “Wait here,” the Boy instructed. He ducked into his first port of call, the public privy near St Paul’s. A moment later he emerged with his shovel fully loaded. “Pay dirt!” he laughed. He dropped the smelly stuff into his cart and went back in for more. “Need to be especially clean for tomorrow. It’s the Lord Mayor’s parade and that means more people in the city. More bums on seats.”

  The cart was filled from just one privy. The Boy had to visit three more of the city’s dozen or so public facilities. That’s a lot of poo but a mere drop in the bucket compared to what the city’s bottoms were producing on a daily basis.

  He went about his business - or rather, other people’s business - with a song humming on his lips and an efficiency to his movements getting the task done as smoothly and as quickly as possible. The shopkeeper’s daughter was giving light to his eyes and a spring to his step. He seemed to be walking on air, lifting him further above the street-level filth than his wooden overshoes.

  He decided to return to base with this cartload before moving on to the next privy on his schedule. I went with him, keeping as elevated as I could. He offered me the inside of his shirt but it gave me the horrors.

  I would have loved to have the Boy embrace me again and to mingle my scent with his anew, but I couldn’t compete with the pervasive stench of his employment and I didn’t fancy trying to lick that pong out of my fur, thank you very much.

  Back at the depot, a waggon was preparing for the off. Gerald was overseeing this operation. He welcomed the Boy like an old friend when he saw him approach with his booty.

  “Just in time, Dicky-boy,” Gerald gestured towards the waggon. “Tip her up.” He helped the Boy empty his cart into the back of the waggon. “Come along for the ride if you like,” he offered.

  The Boy seemed excited by this prospect. He had never ridden on the waggon before. He looked at the driver, a hooded figure, hunched over the reins. The hood twitched i
ts assent and so Gerald and the Boy climbed on board. The Boy looked to me. I sent him a wink, signifying it was all right, I would see him the next night, and expressing the wave of affection I felt for this human that I couldn’t express in words, even if speech had been an option at that moment.

  I waited and watched as the waggon began its trip towards Aldgate and the countryside beyond. Now, I’m not an expert on the geography of the city but I was surprised to see the waggon take a turn in the opposite direction. I thought I should perhaps run after it and tell them they were going the wrong way. You fools! That’s the way to the river!

  But, far be it from me to meddle in men’s affairs. I chose instead to make my way back to the Tower. The cook would be getting up soon and so would the boy who lit the fires. A few titbits and a bit of affection would be mine for the taking.

  I froze on a wall as I spotted a rat running along the street. I relaxed when I saw it wasn’t my brother. Just an ordinary rat.

  It was joined by another. And a third. Within minutes there was a stream of them all coursing in the same direction and pouring into a hole in a hut. It surprised me to see them behaving in this fashion. Was this normal rat conduct? What were they running from? Or, what were they running to?

  That’s the thing about living in filth, humans. You attract and encourage animals that thrive in such conditions.

  I suppose I could have investigated. Any cat worth its cream would have jumped at the chance. But the pull of the palace breakfast was too strong to resist.

  I left the rats to their mysterious comings and goings and continued on my way to the Tower. One of the sentries saluted my return. The other swatted at him with a gauntlet. I ignored them both and made my way to the kitchen and bliss.

  ***

  I was more than a little interested in seeing the Lord Mayor’s parade and so, after a few pieces of fish and a saucer of milk, I gave the cook and the turnspit a few rubs of my head and, eschewing my customary place near the fire, I left the Tower and headed down to find the Boy. My guess was he would like to see it too.