Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [161]
The captain turned up his eyes. The town was full of Scotsmen. He couldn’t tell how many each Commissioner had brought with them. And all arriving at different times, some by boat, some by road according to where the weather had landed them.
Yes, he had heard two ships had been wrecked off Boulogne. A fishing boat had brought along the survivors that morning. A man called Rotisse and a man called Rit, he had been told, both Commissioners. The servants had not known how to swim.
He did not know if there had been anyone else in the fishing boat. He had been on duty since dawn, and was only going by hearsay. The principal guests at any rate were in the big house. La Pensée, the house of the late Jean Ango. Monseigneur knew it. Monseigneur had stayed in it before.
He had, in December with d’Andelot. And long, long ago with Tom Erskine, who had married the Fleming girl’s sister, and died also, in Scotland.
‘I shall go there,’ said Lymond. ‘Without escort. They know me.’
He had to push his way through the market place at the Puits Sale and steer his horse through the crowds in the Grand’ Rue. The town was full of Scotsmen. But then, it always was, what with resident merchants and refugees, and fishermen and the ships of both countries carrying wine and hides and letters and practising a little piracy on the side. Speak Scots in Dieppe and anyone could understand you. Knox had been there most of last autumn, and no one had troubled him. At times it was more foreign than French.
Someone in Kennedy livery went by and he almost called to him, and then turned and went on picking his way. After ten hours, one should have patience. And he did not want to accept this, his final loss, in the open market-place.
Then … here, enclosing the great terraces and the riverside gardens, was the wall he had once swung over, masked on a summer night. And there, gleaming through the bare trees, the fountains and statues.
Masterless and directionless after the harsh years of outlawry, he had celebrated his freedom six years ago in ways he preferred not to remember. But it would be reflected in the faces of eight Scottish lords he was about to meet: two earls, two barons; two officers of the Church and two civic leaders, all chosen with care by Mary of Lorraine, Queen Dowager of Scotland, to complete the contracts and attend the wedding of her one living child Mary to the Dauphin of France.
He knew who they were. He also knew their political and spiritual aspirations. Five of them were of the orthodox religion. The rest were not. The Queen Dowager of Scotland had sent to her brothers de Guise three of the foremost sympathizers of the Reformed Religion in Scotland. As wedding guests they might seem incongruous, but there was much that was practical in the idea. It freed the Dowager of their presence for several months, and offered her brothers an opportunity to bribe or convert them. It remained to wonder why Richard, of baronial rank and no fiery beliefs, had been included, and Sybilla his mother along with him.
You might think it a mother’s natural wish to send to her daughter’s marriage a noble and elderly lady who had cared for the child in her infancy. You might also think that the Duke de Guise wished Francis Crawford to leave for Scotland, and had suggested this as a means of encouraging him.
In which case, it was a pity for the Duke de Guise that the crossing had been so stormy. Or, on the other hand, perhaps the plan of monseigneur mon oncle was going to succeed better even than the Duke had cause to hope.
He touched up his horse and rode up to the gates, which stood already ajar, held by two liveried keepers. The outer yard was swarming with people, and through the archway he could see one of the Scottish heralds running forward, struggling into his tabard, and behind him a hurrying gentleman in a good furred coat who looked like the maître d’hôtel.
The captain of the Porte de la Barre had known better than to let a Chevalier