Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [122]
They said that the Duke de Guise was really staying close to Compiègne with the intention of retaking Ham, and then Arras.
They said that the Duke de Nevers and his troops were in Metz, on their way to do battle in Luxembourg, but had been held up where they were by the weather. There was a sardonic joke travelling round, about the Duke de Guise’s real hope being to conquer the English in Calais. Lord Grey, who had gone back to his fortress of Guînes, was not in the way of hearing it. The Duke de Guise finally moved out of Compiègne and towards Guise which, they said, he was going to inspect. The army in Compiègne also showed signs at last of striking camp and marching somewhere.
A report came that the Duke de Nevers and twenty thousand foot had been seen marching towards Picardy. A further report credited the Duke de Guise with having sent five thousand German troops by water to Pontoise and a further twenty thousand towards Amiens, Abbeville and Montreuil. Four days later, it was known that the whole French army was marching north in two divisions, and that in the vanguard was an immense body of cavalry, led by Piero Strozzi in conjunction with Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny.
It was the first concrete news for two months of either man, and it reached the young Queen of Scotland just before Christmas. On Christmas Day, Philippa Somerville handed over her duties to Fleming, and attaching herself to a Paris-bound party, took herself unannounced to speak to Francis Crawford’s step-sister in Paris.
*
But for its servants, the collection of buildings known as the Séjour du Roi was empty.
Since Jerott’s single crass visit home, he had not returned to his wife Marthe. And since they had joined him in Compiègne, the rooms allotted to Hislop and Blacklock had been empty.
Clever; self-sufficient; occupied with her own business of antiques and the merchanting of less ponderable beauty, Marthe did not miss them. Only on Christmas day, when her courtier friends were long gone to Poissy and her poets and painters and writers were, for once, at home with their children did she find time, for a space, hang spitefully dull on her hands. She worked alone on a spinet someone had brought in disorder, and then having set it to rights, put on cloak and pattens and went out through the town gate to walk through the grass by the river.
The sharp air cleared her mind and settled her emotions. Satisfied, she returned to the Séjour du Roi and found Adam Blacklock waiting for her on the threshold.
She showed no surprise. She said, ‘When I am out, the door-keeper grows rather deaf. I apologize. Have you come to break news to me about Jerott? Or has someone found Francis too inconvenient?’
And that took some courage, thought Adam. Or perhaps sheer, bloody, unfeeling arrogance. With Francis, you couldn’t tell, either, to begin with.
He said, ‘They are both alive and unwounded. I only wanted to talk to you. I have business at the Bureau de l’Epargne and thought I might pass the night in my rooms.’
‘Come in,’ said Marthe. And inside, when they were both settled in her parlour: ‘I take it, then, that you are here on Jerott’s behalf. I hope he is sober occasionally?’
On Adam Blacklock’s lean, observing face were the marks of two months of intensely hard work in the saddle. But although he had ridden a long way that day, with one leg which would never be as strong as the other, he was in better training than Jerott to face the bladed tongue, the language sweet and thick as cinnamon quills of the Crawford family. He said, ‘I did come on your husband’s behalf to see you, and also Philippa. Since your brother came back to Compiègne, Jerott has been wholly abstemious.’
She surveyed him, the dense blue eyes smiling. ‘He has found another paramour to chastise him? No. I imagine not. Whatever else poor Jerott lacks, he is loyal. Therefore his sense of responsibility has