Checkmate (16 page)

In the event there was no one there at all but Lymond himself, seated as he had been all morning at his desk in front of the tall latticed windows, the motionless heart of the hurricane. Round him, the scattered benches and stools were now vacant. And against the wall, neatly stacked, were the leather bags, the boxes, the coffers ready strapped for the journey to Paris. His desk was empty, and the extra candles extinguished. Embedded, flinty and pure as a cameo against the dark boards of his chair-back Lymond said, ‘Shut the door. I have four questions to ask you.’

Three of them concerned recent orders and, thank God, he had excellent answers. The fourth stemmed from the impending visit of Catherine, heiress of the captured St André, who would require to return north with her mother.

Five minutes sufficed to dispose of it all. Adam rose. There was nothing more to be said. It was a moment of crisis, and war their métier. He was half-way to the door when Lymond spoke again. ‘By the way. Who brought me home early this morning?’

So there was something more to be said. His voice neutral: ‘Archie,’ he answered. ‘Helped by your friend Macé Bonhomme the printer. There were no spectators. Archie sent a message ahead and Danny and I opened the door to the three of you.’

‘Thank you. Where is Archie?’ said Lymond.

‘He called back ten minutes ago. Do you want to see him?’ asked Adam.

From the square below came all the clatter and cursing and stamping of a body of men saddling up for an expedition. The tolling bells, near and far, slipped through the hubbub. Two of Lymond’s household, tapping, were permitted to enter and began, without wasting time, to carry out all the baggage. Lymond looked at the hour glass. He said, ‘I can give him five minutes.’

Adam went out. By the time he found Archie Abernethy and pushed his way back through the turmoil, the last of Lymond’s luggage was out and Adam saw that the hour glass was empty. In civil warning: ‘Watch out,’ he observed to his colleague, and closing the door, left Archie to Lymond’s cold mercy.

Had he stayed, he would have heard Lymond say nothing.

Instead it was Archie who stood inside the door, lips tight and naked head glaring and said,
‘Ye senseless bluidy tup-heidit madman!’
with venom.

Seated still at his desk, his hands loose on the smooth oak before him, Francis Crawford did not answer; nor did he interrupt the long tirade that followed. Only when it was finished did he say, without lifting his eyes, ‘You make your point. Who else was at Macé Bonhomme’s?’

Archie Abernethy, without looking, sat down on the stool just beside him. ‘Of course. Ye were blind …’

‘Of course. You know how much I drank better than I do. Who else was at Macé Bonhomme’s?’

‘A barber-surgeon,’ said Archie. ‘A short, brosy chiel’ with grey whiskers staying wi’ Macé. They cried him Michel. And Macé himself, that was all. Twa men of by-ordnar’ discretion. If ye expect to ride post to Paris, I expect to ride with ye.’

There was a very long pause. ‘Hence the cuirass and spurs,’ remarked Lymond. ‘I wondered. And what about Mistress Philippa?’

‘I thought you knew,’ said Archie Abernethy. ‘She left Lyon early this morning. To go to Sevigny, I rather fancy. She didna need me, so the Schiatti sent her off with a nice puckle of pikemen, and twa of their weel-pitten-on nephews.’

In the shadow, the Captain-General’s eyes were inimical. He said, ‘You told me you were her man.’

‘I am,’ said Archie Abernethy shortly and got up. He walked to the desk. ‘There’s your riding jacket. And there, if you have some water, is a physic I got for the headache. And that’—and removing a crumpled paper from his pouch, he tossed it between Francis Crawford’s unoccupied hands—‘is what you had in your fist when we found you. I took it away. It’s not what you want every burgher to gab about.’

He did not need to read it again but he did, stretching the blood-stiffened folds, until the writing of thirty years since was quite legible.

The record of death of a human being called Francis Crawford.

‘I told you,’ said the Queen of Scotland, her head bowed, her hands clasped in worship. ‘The carpet is muddy. And Catherine d’Albon does
not
have her feet bare.’

Her voice, although not shrill for her age, was quite distinct enough to vanquish the organs. Catherine d’Albon glanced round. Black sackcloth, there was no doubt, set off brunette hair. It was best of all, naturally, with auburn.

‘Your grace, she has a dispensation from Monseigneur your uncle,’ Mary Fleming said in an undertone. ‘Because of her hurried journey to and from Lyon, and grief for her father.’ The other maids of honour prayed with assiduity.

‘Her father?’ said Mary Queen of Scotland. ‘The Marshal de St André is only a prisoner. He was taken when the Constable was taken. Monseigneur my uncle says that but for the mistakes of the Constable, Saint-Quentin would never have fallen. The King says that those who failed to execute his orders have brought the army low, and in future he will act alone as God inspires him. Until, of course, Monseigneur my other uncle returns from Italy.’

She scowled forbiddingly at the members of her little suite, wrinkling the white skin and picking out particularly the four Scottish maidens called Mary. ‘You are not afraid that the King of Spain will march into Paris? He would never dare. The Queen Regent my mother will send such armies into England that no English troops can be spared to fight for a foreigner. And God is on our side. He looks down on us today. The noblest blood in France walks barefoot in penitence from the Sainte Chapelle to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, bearing the relics of the Passion on their shoulders. How can King Philip, who makes war on the Pope, expect to conquer us?’

No one answered her. A twilight of smoky crimson and violet enclosed them. The tented glass, sixty feet high, soared above them, densely diapered in blue and cramoisy, exotic as tissues from India. The King, the Cardinal, the Bishop had completed their business high in the shining gold tribune and the Reliquary was raised to its place on men’s shoulders. Jewels glowed; silver-gilt sparkled; incense thickened. In a series of
angular movements, the noblesse of France dropped to its stiff knees in reverence.

Mary Fleming noted that Madame de Brêne had corns. Her cousin the Queen of Scotland’s narrow arched feet, on the other hand, merely displayed two arcs of dirt, as did the thirteen-year-old feet of her affianced lord the Dauphin, eldest son and heir of King Henri.

If the King of Spain marched from Saint-Quentin to Paris, there were few with as much to lose as Mary of Scotland. Then the wedding, so long planned by messeigneurs her uncles between herself and the Dauphin, would never take place. She would never be Queen of France. Nor would she be sent back to Scotland, to make trouble for Spain. More likely she would be taken to Spain, Mary thought, and married to King Philip’s idiot child. Or to King Philip himself, if his English Queen died. And thus in one stroke he would join Scotland, England and Spain in one monarchy.

Small wonder she would not believe that Paris could be in danger. Mary Fleming looked at the thin, auburn-haired imperious mistress before her and drawing on the lessons of nine years of service realized that, as usual, she had mistaken her courage. Cousin Mary knew of the danger. Cousin Mary was sick with fears for the future. But to display it, or allow her entourage to display it, would be less than royal.

The shrine passed, containing the Crown of Thorns, the Sponge and the Lancehead. The courtiers stood, in a crackle of stretched bones and sackcloth. The procession formed, with the cross borne before it. The twelve stone Apostles watched it pass with blank eyes, smooth and calm in their beauty. Against the tall smoking fires of the stained glass the empty tribune was now hardly tangible. Ultramarine and bistre and viridian, the rose-window hung over the interlaced carvings, the painted pillars and fine fretted arches running with angels; and shone bright and jade green and wholesome as the apple trees of Compiègne.

Compiègne. Where once before, Mary had displayed a passing fretfulness, and for the same reason. Mary Fleming carried her thought down the forty-four steps of the staircase and through the cemetery and out of the Palais and along the narrow streets to the Parvis of Notre-Dame, where no one could talk because all Paris was watching, and even the mills on the bridge stilled their throbbing and clattering.

Because of the weight of the shrine, they moved slowly. The priests sang, and the censer-smells lingered. There on the left was the rue des Marmousets, and the cleared space of the house of the pâtissier, who had made pies from the flesh of those barbered to death by his neighbour. Next door, imagine, to Notre-Dame, rising foursquare, sprigged and buttoned above her, with its band of crowned and gaily conversing stone monarchs.

Which brought her back to Queen Mary at Compiègne, saying, ‘I believe my Scotsman Mr Crawford will show some of these princes how we wage war. How long must it be since last he saw me?’

They had gone into the matter. It had been six years previously, when Mr Crawford of Lymond had served her with some effectiveness, and had accepted her glove as his guerdon.

‘Then I must have been eight. One changes in six years,’ had said Mary complacently, and had waited. But he had not come to pay his duty. And next, he had been sent to Lyon, and recalled almost immediately.

He had arrived five days ago, and had been lodged in the Hôtel de Rochepôt, a house of the imprisoned Constable’s. The King had brought him out of there. The King had sent him yesterday to the Hôtel St André in the rue d’Orleans, where the Maréchale and her daughter, just back from Lyon, had welcomed him. Mary Fleming waited until they were established inside the Cathedral and the vicissitudes of the Corpus Christi were under way, and then said, testing her theory, ‘Your grace, I don’t see Mr Crawford?’

At the time, a rebuking glance was her answer. But a little later, pacing together: ‘Mr Crawford apparently could not spare the time to be present,’ said Mary of Scotland to Mary Fleming negligently. She paused. ‘I am not wholly in favour of this scheme to unite him to Mademoiselle d’Albon. It mocks the Church. He is married already, to a bright, well-favoured girl. I met her on her way south to Lyon.’

‘They say he wants a divorce,’ Mary Fleming said. ‘They say his wife will leave for England soon, and won’t oppose it.’

The Queen turned. ‘Do you think he will want to marry Catherine d’Albon?’ said Mary.

‘I think it would be politic to hope for it,’ said Fleming cautiously. ‘If he is so fine a commander, the King will wish to keep him beside him.’

‘I see you think he should marry her,’ said her mistress. ‘I do not. I think it unsuitable. She has manners, breeding, education I grant you, but he will marry her not for these but her fortune. His present wife has no flaw. I say that the situation may quite equally be met by Mr Crawford remaining attached to his wife, and resident here, where he may continue to serve His Majesty. These things are not hard to arrange.’

There was a guarded silence. Then, ‘Your grace …’ began Fleming warningly.

Queen Mary smiled: an illuminating, mischievous smile which dispatched, for the moment, the strain and discontent from her features. ‘You need have no fear. These matters can be brought about with perfect discretion.

‘What are you afraid of? He will enjoy our favour, his wife can surely have no objection, and he will be married, and therefore free of the intrigue which surrounds a divorced man. Nothing could be more suitable.’

So she had thought of that. There were some people at court, notably of the Constable’s party, who would be happy to see the Queen of Scotland tied to one of her own noblemen, instead of to the Dauphin of
France. Mary Fleming looked up. Ahead, Queen Catherine, sackcloth raised, was stepping with care into her litter. Holding back her black curtain was Catherine, the Maréchale’s daughter, who was not auburn-haired but who had, none the less, a great many fine gifts to offer.

Mary Fleming said, ‘They say that he has not … That the charms of his wife do not interest him.’

‘Respect,’ said Mary of Scotland, ‘is all one requires, surely, in wedlock. Do you suggest that he might find a fondness for Catherine d’Albon?’

It was the question which had launched the discussion, and was harder to sidestep a second time. From the wisdom of fourteen years old: ‘Perhaps,’ said Mary Fleming sanctimoniously, ‘he is married to his profession?’

‘Then,’ said Queen Mary of Scotland, ‘it is time he was shown better ways of spending his leisure. After, that is, our city of Paris has been made safe for our people. Remind me to send for him.’

Mary Fleming, with gravity, dropped a curtsey.

*

Five days after that, on a Saturday at the start of September, Jerott Blyth and his wife entered Paris. They were met by Archie Abernethy, and led to the Porte Montmartre where part of the old Séjour du Roi had been made habitable for them. Then, briefly refreshed, the one-time merchant of Lyon set out, together with Archie, to find Francis Crawford and report to him.

It was a week now since Saint-Quentin had surrendered, and as yet no combined army from England and Spain threatened Paris.

One understood their hesitation. Even as far south as Orléans, word had filtered through of the reception the King’s new commander in Paris had prepared for the enemy. Of the 70,000 armed troops who had entered the city; the cannon brought in by river; the new fortifications; the stores of food and weapons and powder; the novel traps and ingenious devices built for him.

Of course, further help would be coming. Eight thousand workmen, Jerott had been told, had dug the trenches outside the walls to hold the 22,000 new German and Swiss levies. The Duke de Guise and his Italian troops were approaching; M. de Thermes was expected daily from Piedmont. He listened, and wondered indeed why more help was needed. In ten days, it seemed to him, Paris had become a defensible city.

It had never been that before. To Marthe, new to the town, he had talked of it, as it might be a honey-bee straddling the river, its body an island, with the Cathedral of Notre-Dame at its tail and as its head the Sainte Chapelle and the old Palais and gardens.

Outspread on either bank, you would say, were the wings, outlined with walls and with river-filled fosses. On the left, the University quarter
flowed over its confines and into the Pré aux Clercs, where the religious houses lay in their vineyards, and students wandered, and cows plodded out to their grazing. And on the right stood the Town, with its streets of artisans, its quays, its markets, its churches, its mansions. With its tiltyards and Town House and prisons and palaces: the Louvre, rebuilding; the royal Hôtel des Tourelles and the other great houses in the St Anthony quarter belonging to the Constable, to the King’s mistress en titre, to the de Guise family with whom the Scottish Queen their niece was living.

The unpaved streets which were drains, and the lanes, fenced at either end, which had become refuse-dumps. The plaques, the shrines, the fountains. The holy statues, Huguenot-broken, encased in iron grilles with flowers wilting before them. The gardens, with vine-arbours and pear trees and strawberries; the taverns and the private houses with their bright painted sign-boards; the bridges over the Seine, three joining the right wing and two joining the left with their mills and tradesmen and houses. Beneath which, they said, few men dared to look after dark, for under the piles lived all the evil women and cut-throats in Paris.

Marthe had not been interested. Without her presence, Lymond was not prepared to accept her husband back as an officer. That she knew, and freely used as a weapon against Jerrott. But she had left Lyon, to Jerott’s guarded astonishment. She had come to Paris, and he did not believe this time, after that foul masquerade, that it could be to follow her step-brother. Her business was trading, and the finest sight for a man-at-arms or a dealer has always been a city abandoned.

Everyone was ready to tell them where Lymond was. They found him in the end at the Arsenal, between the Bastille and the river. He came out of the Tour de Billy with the Master of the Artillery and two échevins and, it turned out, was on his way to a converted wine store in the rue de la Vannerie, and thence to a stable-yard near the Tournelles, to supervise some unpredictable experiment.

No one explained. Archie, it seemed of intent, had told Jerott nothing.

There was about it all an air of orderly, intensive creation which was acutely familiar. From Lymond, Jerrott Blyth received no kind of boisterous welcome: the exchange, and the introductions, resembled those due to a captain just back from furlough. Then the King’s commander in Paris continued with his round of appointments, with Jerott and Archie striding after.

In due course, they shed the Master of the Artillery and one of the échevins; picked up first the Maître des Arlbalétriers and then the Prévôt Général des Monnaies et Maréchaussées and finally dropped them all to have supper at the home of the Prévôt of Paris, who had to leave half-way through, to deal with rumours of an impending clash in the University quarter.

From there, surprisingly, they called at the lodging of the Venetian Ambassador, where Jerott was ceremonially introduced and offered a glass of very good Candian wine, which he accepted with silent
gratitude. He had been travelling since soon after daybreak. He gathered from Archie that Francis, exchanging pleasantries with Signor Soranzo, had been up and about even earlier. He thought Archie, whose seamed and sun-darkened face rarely altered, was for the first time showing all the weight of his years. But it was better, said Abernethy philosophically, than the first three or four days back in Paris, when they worked day and night like a coo-clink.

The chair was comfortable and he was sorry they had to leave, which they did shortly, exchanging greetings on the way with various sergeants, Cinquanteniers and Dixeniers who seemed to know Francis by sight. It struck Jerott that, rare in blue-blooded campaigns, Francis was taking particular trouble to involve the City. Men and money the burghers had already agreed to provide: he knew the Queen had gone herself to the Parliament of Paris and had obtained from them three hundred thousand francs for King Henri, and a promise to pay twenty-five thousand infantry for two months, and raise a defence garrison of seventy-four thousand. Since then, nursed by Lymond, it seemed that the City had continued to offer co-operation instead of the customary uneasy alliance, soon perverted, withdrawn, or transformed on three rousing speeches into revolt.