Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [204]
Lord Grey said, ‘Friends more important than royalty? It isn’t my place to repeat scandal, but you must know of the Lennox feud with your husband. It dates back to ’42. They have land in the north next to Austin’s. And Lady Lennox is the Queen’s cousin.’
‘But I hear the Queen is failing,’ the girl said. After a moment she added, ‘Also, it isn’t my place to repeat scandal either, but in ’42 Lady Lennox surely was in her late twenties, while … Mr Crawford was a prisoner in London.’ She had lost a little of her poise.
‘He fought at Solway. He would be sixteen. Quite old enough,’ said Lord Grey, ‘for that kind of trouble. The initial fault may not have been his. Lady Lennox is an ambitious and powerful woman, who has been the downfall of more than one comely boy in her day. About his subsequent career, however, there is no ambiguity … I would allow to lead my army, Mistress Philippa, a man who had begun life like that. I would not give him any maiden I respected in marriage. I still do not know how you could so defy your upbringing.’
‘It was done to preserve appearances. The mail from Turkey was rather slow,’ the girl said flatly. She was shocked, Grey saw. The platonic marriage, which he had hardly believed in, suddenly appeared to be very likely a fact. Mistress Philippa, worldly as she appeared, was an innocent. Come to think of it, Austin would have chosen no one else. He wondered, as he had wondered so often, how his good-sister had come to give birth to a saintly fool.
He said, ‘Well. You have been far from home and good guidance, but perhaps your mother’s excellent sense has stood you in better stead than would appear. As you say, large changes are possible which may overturn many who today feel most secure. I hear peace is spoken of. That, too, should make your match more acceptable.’
He knew, when she did not contradict him, that there was some truth in it. He kept his ears open. He knew Calais was already being repopulated from the wreck of Saint-Quentin, and that there seemed no prospect now of his own side recrossing the water to take it. King Philip, lumbered with unpaid troops and overdrawn credit, had no wish either, it seemed, to launch a new venture. The war was in abeyance.
But you couldn’t talk of peace without recalling that the Duke de Guise and his brothers flourished on war. And although they might have retired for the moment, that the armies of France were fresh, and well armed and plenished.
Until the Queen of Scots’ marriage, rumour said, no one would lead those armies into action, and talk of truce no doubt would keep both countries pacified. After April, with Scotland in her purse, there was no knowing what France might rush at. He wondered if he could slip a word of warning in his next letter to London.
He further wondered if the girl’s reference to the Lennoxes had been quite fortuitous, or if she had reason to know how much he disliked them. He supposed his private persuasions were fairly well known by this time, although the Queen, fortunately, took no account of them. He added, since she made no rejoinder, ‘Peace. A dangerous thing. It gives the politicians time to get into mischief.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you were a Deputy in Rouen or Toulouse,’ Philippa said. ‘France is exhausted with taxes.’
‘She’ll be taxed whatever happens,’ said Grey of Wilton. ‘Well fed, vigorous men with nothing to do in the house—if they can’t go to war with someone else, they’ll fight each other. Take this new religion, now. They say it grows. They say it thrives, too, in Scotland.’ He looked at her. There was a gleam in her eye.
‘There are those in Scotland who don’t like French rule,’ Philippa said.
‘There are always, of course, the nationalists and those who want personal power. There are some, too, who have honest beliefs. If there is peace between France and Spain,’ said Lord Grey of Wilton reflectively, ‘and England no longer has a Catholic queen on the throne, I see both France and Spain might think her a tempting morsel. Then