Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [10]
To his left, darkly curving, was the rue Mercière, the richest street in the city, in which stood his great house of Gaultier, which had come to him with his wife.
There were some, he knew, who believed he had married Marthe for the house, or for her inheritance from the two people, now dead, who had lived in it. She had never troubled to conceal her illegitimacy. It still angered him that, set against her looks, her quick wits, her business acumen, it should be held to matter.
The connection with Lymond she had never publicized. Until last week, when the letter to Jerott from Francis himself had referred to it. ‘Your former service with me is no doubt common knowledge. Since the resemblance between Marthe and myself will cause comment, you might refer to her now as my step-sister. Any antecedents you care to invent on this score, I shall be happy to substantiate.’
It had, in fact, been difficult to persuade Marthe to agree to this, but he had succeeded and the reaction among their neighbours had varied, as he had expected, from austere disbelief to jocularity.
There was no doubt that Lymond would never have dreamed of advertising the link except from necessity. The resemblance between himself and Jerott’s wife could have been no greater if they had been of one birth, brother and sister.
As it chanced, neither Lymond nor Marthe knew the reason, and neither cared. One assumed that Lymond’s late father, a foot-loose nobleman, had sired Marthe and left her in France, where four years ago, Francis had come across her, on his way to Turkey.
At the end of that voyage he, Jerott, had married her. But Francis had not seen her since, nor had he corresponded with her. Whatever its antecedents the link, so lately formed, had proved a tenuous one. Once, to be sure, he had got the impression they hated one another.
Then the man on his left said, ‘There they are!’ and Jerott saw the flashing of halberds and morions and the flutter of flags between the tall houses on either side of the bridge. The Delegation had spent the previous night outside the walls of Saint-Just and had come fresh this morning down the steep path of the Gourguillon, where a Pope had once lost his tiara, and along the crowded right bank of the Saône.
Escorting it would be the twelve members of Lyon’s Consulat but not the Governor, the Marshal de St André. The Marshal was on campaign in Picardy. The Governor’s lodging, in an elegant square on the other side of this bridge, was where Lymond would henceforth be staying.
Jerott Blyth had been relieved to hear it. Any visit Lymond paid to the Hôtel Gaultier would consequently be a brief one. A young priest standing beside him said, ‘I’m told you fought, sir, under his lordship of Sevigny. In Scotland, is he of good family?’
The usual question. ‘He is the second son of a very old Scottish house,’ Jerott said, watching the bridge. ‘He has a Scottish property at Lymond and a French estate at Sevigny, on the Loire. His brother, Crawford of Culter, has the title.’
‘Ah!’ said the monk. He looked impressed. ‘I have heard of Lord Crawford of Culter.’
And the usual answer. ‘You will have heard of the first baron,’ Jerott said. ‘This is three generations away. This Mr Crawford has only fought occasionally in France and has just spent two years in Russia.’
Which in some degree, he supposed, must have altered him. On that point, Adam’s letters had not been informative. The mounted procession, feathered caps bobbing, was coming closer. He had not far off a hundred men at arms with him, Jerott calculated; and God knew how many servants, as well as a jogging group in black skirts: the finance officers. Then the Consulat and the chief burghers. Then Adam Blacklock, lean and unexpectedly scarred, riding next to a small, fresh-faced person unknown to him. Then …
Then Francis Crawford of Lymond, comte de Sevigny. At Douai, before he killed Strozzi’s men, he had played the part, Adam said, of a red-headed student counter-tenor.
Now he was not playing