Jakome's tiny kingdom occupied a strategic

position in a contentious Europe. It was tolerated

as a maverick principality by hulking neighbors,

Spain to the south, France to the north. Largely

independent, though migrating from one sphere

of influence to the other over the course of

centuries, it was peopled by an unruly tribe that

cherished its national identity.

         This was the mountainous territory to which the original Indo-European settlers were driven by wave after wave of subsequent invaders. It had been, over the years, nominally absorbed, the independent principality temporarily disappeared from maps, but the people never considered themselves to be other than proud Haute-Navarrese. (1) Belligerence was in their blood, but active resistance did not suit them. Their revolt consisted of pugnacious inertia. In the end, it was not worth the effort necessary to bludgeon them into submission.

         The region had a stark beauty. A harsh climate and a thin soil provided a poor living; many a field produced nothing but broom. The economy was built on sheep: wool, sheared, spun, and woven into cloth, and on the item for which the region was best known, its ewe’s

milk cheese. The only city, a settlement of five thousand defiantly situated on the side of a precipitous hill, was a warren of cramped, gable-roofed houses and narrow streets. An upper town and a lower town, held together and also separated by a system of walls, housed a crafty populace - you never lost the feeling of being watched from behind every curtain - who greeted you and cheated you with the same show of hearty welcome. They communicated with a great deal of gesticulation, seeming to convey what they would not suffer to be plainly spoken, affording them the opportunity to un-say what had never been clearly articulated. A visitor often gained an impression of approval and agreement, only later to understand that no accord had been achieved. This was a place to be gotten to, and gotten through, unless you had business to conduct. Everything was too close together, except when it was too far apart. There were better places to be than in the wind-battered hills of Haute-Navarre. For the inhabitants, of course, it was all they knew, and all they cared to know. It was home.

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           The idea that it was lusted after by the adjoining giants had a grip on the national soul could not be dispelled with any amount of rational argument. Foreigners were suspected spies (why else would they be there?) and every innkeep tried to sell information to perplexed patrons, while simultaneously badgering them for loose-lipped intelligence. The nobility followed suit, only demanding a vastly higher price. The king himself was above the game but, due to his odd behaviors, was reckoned (by neophyte diplomats, not by old hands) a master at it. His interactions were erratic, composed one minute, shockingly disputatious the next. One ambassador wrote home in frustration: “When I see him engaged against any person whatsoever, I wish myself in Calcutta.” (2) All of this, of course, is no more than an amusing footnote to the more dangerous animosities of the day.

         This fear of being reabsorbed was somewhat validated by recent events. The eastern branch of the predatory house of Hapsburg, based in Austria, controlling Germany, Naples, Sicily, Bohemia, Hungary, Burgundy, Flanders, Sardinia, the Low Countries, and huge tracts of the New World, was always trying to nibble at French territory by means of secret alliances or sudden, petite invasions. The equally greedy Spanish branch had the same policies, to create small sovereignties within nominally French territory which would be in reality fiefs of the Spanish crown. (3) Haute-Navarre was let be, as a haven to which traitors might withdraw while they negotiated a pardon for their latest crime, and as a neutral site in which a risky proposal might be advanced quietly and, if necessary, just as quietly withdrawn. Its independence was supported both north and south. 

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           Sly was subjected to diatribes against his homeland and was forbidden by the king to 

respond to them. Beneath his veneer of sophistication he was pure, insular English. When he could take no more knocks, he would grumble to Jakome, “I have a tongue in my head, I guess, and I guess I know how to use it.”

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         The king would admonish him, “You have a brain in your head also, a good one. It 

cannot but instruct your tongue to lie still!”

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And the Cat,

although spitting mad . . . 

at times, apoplectic . . .

 

would hold his temper . . .

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