Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [150]
Steering purposefully, Philippa found two vacated places just below the Sieur d’Andelot, the Duke de Nevers and Seigneur d’Estrée for the former Voevoda of Russia and King’s Lieutenant-General in Paris, who was showing a maddening preference for simply standing stock-still, looking virtuous.
Unfortunately, Piero Strozzi elected to come and sit on her other side. He caught Lymond’s eye, which was not hard to do. Philippa Somerville turned to the Marshal and addressed him in succinct Italian. ‘If you laugh, I shall kick you.’
‘Signora,’ said Piero Strozzi, ‘if you care to continue in this field of discussion after dinner, we should have much to say to one another. That is——’
He broke off, his eye arrested by something on her other side, and then resumed, injured, ‘… that is, if you had not brought your Russian retinue with you. In bocca serrata mai non entrò mosca. I give you a friendly warning. You think M. de Sevigny is drunk. He is not.’
‘You might not think so,’ said Lymond amiably. ‘But in ten minutes or so, I am going to slip under the table and lie there.’ On his other side, the comtesse de Laval put her hands over her ears and pulled a face at him. The noise, ringing back from the beams, was quite dizzying, and so were the fumes of sweat and scent and wet clothes and incoming food. The doors, which had been with difficulty shut, burst open again to admit a group of noisy, wet people. They closed, and then opened again. There were not enough places at the table. The benches jostled with incomers. The narrow space between the long trestles was filled with parties looking for seats, parties standing or kneeling on seats or parties simply meeting other parties and exchanging various witty ripostes.
They were all, Philippa saw, minor members of the Court, who had had no invitations in the first place. Perrot, speaking to the King, looked extremely flustered. The Maître d’Hôtel was sweating. More people began to pour in. The superfluity of blue blood, it was clear, was more than thirty Archers without benefit of password knew how to control. The reeking air, pushed by the heat from the two raging fires, moved and swung and swirled up to the rafters where the municipal chandeliers, specially made in black and white, the King’s colours, tossed and swayed from their herbaceous pinnings.
The comte de Sevigny looked up, his hair, and the priceless collar he wore neat and spiteful and glittering in the candlelight. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Piero. What are you going to do when the candelabra fall down?’
Piero Strozzi leaped to his feet. ‘Messeigneurs!’ The roar of it cut across even that febrile cacophony. ‘Messeigneurs nearest the door! The candelabra are about to fall on you!’
That got rid of twenty-five people. By a miracle of sinuous movement, Lymond was by the outer doors as the last of them backed out, exclaiming. The outer doors shut, then the inner doors. Marshal Strozzi, leaping to his feet, roared, ‘Messeigneurs! All has been made safe! The Prévôt begs you all to sit and be welcome!’
Everyone subsided. Opposite her, Philippa noticed, she had the god Janus with a key in his hand, and a verse beginning QUI BIFRONS FUERAM, GALLIS SUM GALLICUS UNA FRONTE DEUS, indicating, she took it, that he was prepared to be two-faced for everyone except Frenchmen. It reminded her of something. Lymond, sliding back, said, ‘I’ve told Jacob if his Archers let another soul in, I’ll shout Fire. They’ll all jump through the windows.’ A braying noise, creeping into the room while he was speaking, broadened, intensified, and began to permeate the clangorous gases.
Strozzi screamed. Lymond, not