Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [319]
ON THE FIRST SATURDAY of the New Year, Charles of Burgundy broke his camp before Nancy and, leaving a holding force to maintain the siege, personally led the residue of his troops to a position just south of Nancy. Before and behind the chosen site were small streams. To the left was a river, the Meurthe. To the right was the forest of Saurupt. The army was then split into three, with the Duke’s corps of three thousand in the centre, and those of Galeotto and Lalaing on his left and right. The artillery stood before them all, on the edge of the deep little brook of the Jarville, and facing the way to the pilgrimage town of St Nicholas-de-Port, René’s base.
The mercenary company of the Count of Campobasso was not there. That same fourth of January, having been turned down by France, Campobasso cast off his cross of St Andrew and deposited his two sons and three hundred cavalry into the opposite camp of Duke René, where he assumed the double white cross of Lorraine.
Above René’s encampment that night, a beacon of assembly glimmered pink in the flake-spattered darkness, and candied his white-humped pavilions. In the Burgundian camp, edged by snow-burdened forest and treacherous swamps, the Duke of Burgundy repeated what he had already said of the Count. He had heard the news. In the right time and place, he would deal with it.
‘Well?’ said Astorre. The ill-chosen site, the inflexible disposition of the artillery, the lack of good scouts had been a subject of recrimination since dawn, and no one had been able to prevail upon the Duke to amend any of it. Those in the central block, such as themselves, were understandably jumpy.
‘Well?’ Nicholas said. ‘He probably will deal with it, once he’s sent for an astrologer. Meanwhile, we know what the chances are. We do what we can. There isn’t much option: the bastard has left us nowhere to run to.’
‘We’ve got Metz to run to,’ said Thomas. ‘Except that we can’t cross them damned little tributaries. And Nancy’s in the way.’
‘We noticed that,’ Julius said. With danger, he had come to life for the first time since Ghent. ‘Of course, they’d do it better in Poland …’
Groans.
‘Or Russia,’ Nicholas offered. ‘Remember, Julius? You trap and saddle a bear, and it carries you right through the swamps, and catches and cooks your fish for you in the evenings.’
‘Those were the white bears,’ Julius said. ‘The black ones did your washing as well.’
‘And as for the pink ones …’ began Robin, carried away. But Nicholas, keeping the grin on his face, had ceased to listen. Bears. Besse, in Iceland. To do something without leave was to do something with permission of Besse. In Russia, the Besy were evil spirits. Until he went to Russia, he had not known how close to Iceland it was.
Anyway, it was time to break up the talk and get everyone working. Tomorrow, he knew — they all knew — the confrontation with René must come. It was a Sunday: Mass would be said before dawn by the Duke’s chaplain. That was all right, but Nicholas wished it had been someone else. Godscalc, for example. What would he have made of all this? What would he have made of all Nicholas had done, all he had become, perhaps, over these years? There was not very much, he supposed, to approve of, except that he had begun to stop and confront certain things, instead of escaping from them. He had begun to listen in order to learn, instead of to turn the knowledge back for his own advantage.
Going about his business that evening; lying through the short, wakeful hours of the night, Nicholas continued to follow the thread of that thought. It led him to dwell on his tutors: all those men and women who had believed him worth moulding and guiding. Godscalc, of course. But before that — before everyone