Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [129]
It was a wedding attended by young boys, by old men and by women. Kneeling jewelled at the nuptial Mass in the stiff, scented folds of their Court gowns: rose and verdet, orange, azure and cinnabar there prayed, smiling and aching, the brides and daughters and mistresses of all the young and well-born men who today were absent on the shores of the English Sea, where blood and flesh was their portion; steel their cincture; and gunsmoke, not incense, their mystery.
Unaccountably, Marthe had attended. Enigmatic patron of all the arts, she took little account of her place on the fringe of the court, in spite of the persuasions of those she patronized. As Marthe, she was not invited: as Jerott Blyth’s wife, she would have none of it. So, at first, Philippa was disturbed and startled to see the smooth jewelled head held high in that uneasy company. Marthe’s escorts she knew because they were acquaintances of her own. Men of song; men of vision; men of ideas were those with whom Philippa also was at home. She knew already, from their talk, how many frequented Marthe’s lodging. At court, they were not slow to question her about her husband’s step-sister.
That she could deal with. It was foolish also to ignore the obvious. Mirrored in Marthe were some of her brother’s most telling characteristics. It was not surprising that Marthe and she should be drawn to the same people.
What troubled her was that Marthe should be here now, at wedding, at banquet and during all the persevering festivities through which, on the edge of the abyss, noblesse meticulously obliged. Since their friends were mutual, Philippa found Marthe beside her, coolly amusing, through most of the long afternoon. The Schiatti nephews, whom good manners restrained to begin with, soon found there was no need to avoid the subject of the comtesse de Sevigny’s promised annulment, and returned to exchanging barbed witticisms with those other gallants, rather youthful or excessively elderly, who also wished to appropriate Philippa’s attention. With a certain sardonic good humour, Lymond’s sister gave them friendly encouragement.
It was not a kindness. Courts English, Oriental and French had instructed Philippa in the peerless art of disguising her feelings, but it was not easy to have Marthe compliment her on her witty composure, or to smile at Marthe’s account of the reason.
The Schiatti cousins approved of Marthe. ‘She is right. Either Calais is won and your marriage is ended, or it is lost and M. your husband snatched up to heaven. Be merry. We are merry for you.’
Then they looked remorseful, a little; because they had recalled, as they occasionally did, that she was English. That Calais to England was her other frontier; the place where her armies could land, her merchants bring their ships safely to enter the Continent for trade or for war, asking no other ruler his leave. The open gate at the other end of a thirty-mile drawbridge without which no easy exit was left. Then they forgot again, and were cheerful.
Not so, Catherine d’Albon. Watching her as she sat through the banquet, Philippa sensed the strain which for other reasons oppressed her. If Calais fell, Lymond was Catherine’s. But first, he had to live through it.
Philippa wondered if, like herself, Cathin had cajoled the plan of attack from a flattered gentleman of the secretariat. She wondered if, between one mouthful of food and the next, Catherine with twelve thousand horse and foot was also occupying all the marshy passages between Calais and France and attacking their strongholds: Sandygate, Frethun and Nielles, St Agathe, Coquelles and St Tricat. And after that, opening fire at the Newnham Bridge turnpike and charging it with eighty horses, so that the planks of the bridge thudded and splintered, and armour clashed and cannon exploded, and cries of France! France! Charge! Charge! twinned and soared with the cries of her countrymen.
She wondered if, when talk lapsed before music, Catherine dwelt as she did on that freezing hour before