Without waiting for an answer he was gone. And what answer was possible? Ever since Solignac was burned the whole force of my schooling had been, None dare cross the King's will! It was written in the ashes of my father's house, it was taught by the mouth of the King's friend, it met me at the four gates of the Louvre, the dangling-rope-ends on Tristan's house called it aloud, and even at the altar of God Himself, Mademoiselle caught the echo and bowed in an agony of prayer before its force. Or this order of Monsieur de Commines might be a test, a trap of the King's own devising. It was notorious that Louis loved crooked methods. Stoop that you may rise! Monseigneur's words had hinted as much. Perhaps—but excuses are never hard to find, even for a meanness, when that meanness serves a personal gain very near to the heart.
Though I have said little of him, Jan Meert was never long out of my thoughts. Dead Babette called to me across the smoke, and with both blood and fire to avenge my weakness of poverty could afford no luxury of qualms. It must lean where it could, even upon a foul staff. In a word, what Monsieur de Commines bade me do, I did, nor was the execution difficult.
A menagerie was as much part of a royal palace as were the kitchens. Why, I cannot say. Perhaps it tickled a King's pride to know that even the wild beasts were under his heel. That of Plessis at this time lay to the south-east; cages, stalls, dens, pits, as were required. These the King was continually adding to or enlarging, and behind the planks laid for their repair, slanting against the wall, there was perfect concealment.
Was I ashamed of the situation into which Monsieur de Commines had forced me? Frankly yes; but, also frankly, still more ashamed of the risk of being found out.
The stalls and cages were side by side, bordering both walls of an angle facing me not ten paces distant; nowhere in Plessis was there space to spare, and the poor, free-born beasts suffered from the congestion with their betters. In these were the King's true favourites. Monsieur de Commines might sleep at his feet, Monsieur de Beaujeu minister his affairs, the Chancellor, Rochfort, have his ear and his confidence, but their tenure was no stronger than a loose whim. These others held his love and his interest, and to such an extent that, ailing or well, he visited them almost daily; Barbary lions no larger than great cats, elk-deer, reindeer, a strange medley.
But oftenest of all he would stand opposite the cage that prisoned four great wolves from Auvergne. These he would bait till the savage brutes, bigger than month-old calves, flung themselves howling against the bars, raging but helpless, their fangs bared, their chaps dribbling foam and slaver. He had even names for them.
"Burgundy," he would say, pointing from one to the other, "Spain, The Empire, Rome!" Then, tapping his breast, add significantly, "France! Snarl, my friends, froth, howl, eat your hearts out in hate, France is unafraid," and they, as if they understood his jeer, would fling themselves afresh against the side of the cage, tearing and biting the bars to get at him. So, in jest, this cage came to be known as the cage of The Four Nations.
Presently, as I waited behind my pile of timber, Jehan Flemalle came. In Plessis there were no idlers. Even the four hundred archers of the guard had their duties, and discipline was iron. Jehan Flemalle, therefore, came alone and with no loiterers at his heels to watch the feeding of the animals. In either hand was a great basket of kitchen offal, and at the smell of him a howl arose whose echo rumbled in the confined space like a winter's thunder.
From cage to cage he went, dealing out the day's rations, here a half loaf such as few in France set teeth in from January to December, there a bone such as still fewer in France saw even once a month in their pots, and little by little the howls died down to a grumbling purr of brute contentment. If other days were as this, then Monsieur de Commines need be under no doubt; the King's beasts were not starved, let happen what might to the King's subjects. Then a curious thing struck me, spurring my jaded watchfulness; Jehan Flemalle in his feeding had passed by the cage of the Four Nations, leaving Burgundy and the rest to howl their hungry lamentations unheeded. He even goaded them to louder complaint and stronger protest, for, setting down their dinner in full sight, he gibed them as the King had done.
"Howl, Burgundy, snap your jaws, Spain! Tear at the bars, Rome, tear! tear! Perhaps one day the way will open, and then—eh, my sons? then we shall see, shall we not? That is the one thing needed, an open door, and, Christus! but it is creaking on its hinges if the world but knew it!" It was good Flemish, and not the mumbling jumble of a half-baked Angevin clod! "Here's to make it creak louder," he went on. "Here's to help it open with a crash that will shake all France from the Nivernais to the three seas."