Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [249]
It was agreed that the bride’s eldest son should be King of France and Scotland, and that her eldest daughter, if she had no sons, should be Queen of Scots only. If the Dauphin were to die, it was settled, his Queen could either stay in France or return to Scotland as a widow, her jointure continuing to be paid whatever happened.
The Seven Planets and the Nine Muses both decided at the last moment to demand new bolts of cloth and different dressmakers, and Mercury’s staff disappeared and turned up, to much recrimination, in pawn with the silver snake missing. The Paris Master of Works came three times to consult with the Duke de Guise about the wooden gallery which was to carry the bridal procession to the Church of Notre-Dame, and the staging on which the wedding was to be carried out on the church threshold. The third time he went off and got drunk in a tavern at Fontainebleau and had to be found and carried away by Adam Blacklock, who with Danny and Jerott began to make an appearance, suddenly, in the vicinity, along with a number of other experienced captains.
A firm arrangement was made whereby, at the imprisoned Constable’s instigation, emissaries for peace from both the Spanish and French factions would hold a secret meeting almost at once between Péronne and Cambrai. It was decided with reluctance to omit jousting in fancy costume from the wedding programme, at a time when every provident man needed the money for weapons.
The dishes and entertainment for the wedding breakfast in the Bishop of Paris’s palace were decided on, and the same for the evening supper and ball in the Palais de Justice, the details being worked out by the Duke de Guise with the help of the Prince of Condé, whose brother, the Cardinal de Bourbon, was to conduct the marriage. It was decreed by his grace of Guise that all Scotsmen of rank, whoever they were, should have entrance to the evening banquet.
It was later decreed, after some tactful prodding, that all Scotsmen of rank should be admitted to the evening banquet, provided they were acquainted with the watchword Brede and Ale. The price of the watchword, starting at two sols, had got to ten by the middle of April.
The largest army so far recruited in the King of France’s reign began to draw together, paid for by gold newly raised by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and building towards an eventual muster at Verdun, on the Metz road so recently travelled by the comte de Sevigny and his fellow-leaders. The organizing of it, because of the partial preoccupation of the Duke de Guise, fell on the shoulders of M. de Nevers, M. d’Estrée, M. de Sipierre and other veterans of the Calais war, who each in turn found that the bulk of it had already been dealt with by Mr Crawford.
For twenty-four hours following the destructive confrontation in the Library Lymond had not been well enough to go out, but this only Archie knew, and Philippa at a remove, through Archie. After that, he was completely and methodically occupied and much away to the east, in the company of armourers, sappers, masters of camp, harbingers, master gunners and an assortment of experts not usually required for a wedding.
There was a rumour, borne out by the Maréchale de St André’s unusual benignity, that she had confronted the comte de Sevigny with a coy remonstrance over his lack of warmth towards his fiancée, and he had been politely savage in his rejoinder.
That took place, Philippa suspected, as an after-effect of the Library. There was a further rumour that Catherine, running from the room, had cried that she wasn’t proposing to marry