Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [130]
Fighting in sand, you had to storm and take Ruisbank, and under the guns of the city eighty paces away, prepare to ford the river belt-high to the citadel. Because of the mud, you had pitch-plastered hurdles to lie on. On account of the marshes, the ditches, the rivers and runnels of water which afforded the Pale its protection you had brought pioneers protected with stakes woven with willow, who cut the ditches and drained the moat water into the sand dunes.
Then you breached the citadel, firing on it from three quarters with your sixty cannon and culverin; and risked the tide to fight your way into it, knowing that once in, the sea would cut you off from all help. Then, if you mastered the citadel, you commanded the bridge into the town, and on that you would turn all your fire.
If, before you fired a shot, the army of the Duke of Savoy, waiting, did not flood from each strongpoint and destroy you.
Catherine did not know what had happened at Ham. She was spared, perhaps, the worst of the beating foreboding that drove all other feeling from Philippa. She had never seen the kind of response Lymond made, from pride or from instinct, to a professional challenge. She feared his death: one could see that, and in each stolen silence, settled her thoughts on him.
Perhaps he felt it. There were moments when, lost in spirit among the thundering gunfire at Calais, Philippa felt within reach of something familiar. As when, long ago, passing Gideon’s door, she could sense when her father was there: self-contained, occupied, content in his private absorption.
But Lymond knew her feelings for him were not those of a daughter. Catherine was free to knock on that door: to send to him her thoughts and her love, to be with him through his time of danger.
For Philippa, it would be inconceivable so to harass him. So, in a condition of strange, blank-eyed reserve which alternated, unobserved, with the social demands of the festival, Philippa fought her way through the long, grim afternoon as if she were side by side with the army at Calais, and yet forced her stubborn spirit to bend aside from its homing.
The day ground on towards dusk. The King, with sallow gallantry, led the bride in pavanes and galliards. The Schiatti argued suavely over which, next day, would take Philippa hunting. The nobleman behind her, also a suitor, wished to know her exact plans for returning to Scotland, and by what means he might recommend himself to her family. The Queen of Scots, in an interval, demanded to meet Mistress Blyth, who was so amazingly like to her brother.
They did not take to one another. When, presently, the Queen rose to take part in a galliard, Philippa said to her step-sister by marriage, ‘Marthe. Why did you come?’
‘For the revelry,’ Marthe said. ‘Men live, not while they breathe, but while they live well. And to cast an eye, I must admit, on my fellow-women. The girl, Catherine, you can see, adores my splendid Francis. How does he do it?’
‘Alchemy,’ said Philippa shortly. ‘The Maréchale de St André thought he was a shower of gold.’ If you place your cannon on shipboard, for God’s sake watch the steep fall of the tide. At ebb your battery will cease to bear, and you will yourself be under fire from the defenders.
‘I thought you admired the noble Catherine,’ said Marthe. ‘The young Queen certainly wishes him tied to you and to Scotland. A monstrous tiger among the silly flocks. How nice to go through life being male, pretty and wanted.’
You will have to hinder them when they try to repair the citadel breach. Watch out. They will cover the work with fusillades, and they seem to have plenty of light artillery. Philippa said, ‘It rather depends what you are wanted for.’
‘Ah yes. It is a property