Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [121]
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Piero Strozzi with undoubted cheerfulness. ‘It would pay me, would it not, for Douai? On the other hand you would not have come to me and told me this. Nor, of course, would you be prepared to risk your skin with the army at Calais. You are prepared to risk your skin with the army at Calais?’
‘If I must,’ said Lymond gravely. ‘There is also the matter of my divorce. I plan to acquire it before I betray you.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Strozzi. ‘This marriage to Catherine d’Albon. I advised it.’
‘You did not, strictly speaking, advise marriage,’ Lymond said. ‘And what you did advise had nothing to do with Russia. But don’t hesitate to continue.’
‘The King agrees,’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘His grace was impressed by our joint venture as apple-sellers. He has therefore decreed—he will tell you himself—that if Calais is taken, your marriage to St André’s daughter may, if you wish, be contracted at Easter.’
‘Preceded by my divorce?’ said the comte de Sevigny guardedly. His face had changed, Strozzi noticed with interest. The wench was handsome, and wealthy and, in spite of everything, rumour said, still a virgin.
‘Preceded,’ agreed Piero Strozzi, ‘by your God-damned divorce, four months early. And not before time. I’m told every man at court is after your wife as it is. If I weren’t so busy I’d be one of them. It’s time that charming girl had a wholesome, kind-hearted young man to be husband to her.’
‘That’s what Austin Grey thinks, but he’s busy as well. Really,’ said Lymond, ‘the only person to be lucky in all this is Cathin d’Albon.’
*
It was the opinion expressed, and indeed held, by Catherine d’Albon’s mother when the Queen summoned her to discuss her daughter’s future. ‘Not,’ said Queen Catherine, the wide, shallow eyes filled with intelligent sensibility, ‘that plans could be made known until our gallant lords return from the battlefield. But messages might be passed when next you write to your husband the Marshal. We miss him, as we miss our old friend the Constable. God grant that they will both soon be freed, and peace sent us.’
It was the Duke de Guise’s great fear. The news which seeped back to Paris and Saint-Germain and Poissy indicated that before any of France’s distinguished prisoners found freedom, the Guisard’s troops would mark the autumn, willy-nilly, with a string of successful engagements.
The nature of these was less easy to distinguish. The Duke de Nevers, for example, appeared to have moved out to the frontiers of Champagne, while the Duke de Guise with the rest of the army was hovering between the Spanish fortresses of Ham, Saint-Quentin and le Catelet, intercepting supplies and planning, they said, either to attack them or to advance to protect Doullens.
The King of France’s war horses travelled to Senlis; and all the young horses from the Duke de Guise’s stud moved suddenly from Champagne to Nanteuil. The Channel ports in Brittany, Normandy and Picardy became unusually busy. In the middle of November the story went about that the Duke de Guise had assembled twenty thousand horse and foot to take and fortify Chauny, between Compiègne and Ham. Having done that, he intended to garrison all his fortresses for the winter and dismiss the rest, reducing the troops beside Lyon from six thousand to two thousand as well.
Heartened no doubt by these tidings, the lieutenant-general of the Spanish army marched out of Ham, now strongly fortified, and retired briskly to Brussels, burning all he could find as he travelled. The Spanish army, unpaid for several weeks began, as was its habit, to leave for the winter. A rumour spread that the King of France, who still had his troops and an untoward payroll, planned to justify both with a small foray in or near Luxembourg. They said Marshal Strozzi had been there on reconnaissance.
December came. They said the Duke de Guise was stuck at Compiègne with his men dying off daily. He had, however, sent on his artillery so that if