Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [263]
At the Séjour du Roi, Jerott, Adam and Danny, expensively dressed, prepared to leave and take their places in the Cathedral. Danny, who had spent a number of exhausting days attending to his work, analysing a lady called Marthe and baulking every fitful step taken by the Dowager Lady Culter in the direction of the Petit Arsenal, looked, as usual, like a spindle of bobbles and fringe from the fripperer’s.
Jerott, with the physique of a Knight of St John and a shrewder eye than most for a good length of tanné velvet, looked little short of magnificent. Under the constant, brutal demands of Lymond’s sovereignty, he was learning to forget Marthe and the bottle. Adam, soberly dressed, had not had the heart for Jerott’s bitter exuberance. He, like the others, had been present when the Commissioners had come to question Lymond; had heard Lymond obstruct every effort to discover the source of the copy, and had then heard the subsequent debate, chaired with incision by Orkney, in which the conclusion that Lymond urged was finally reached: to do nothing: to allow the marriage to proceed, and to act thereafter as the climate of the French court and their own diplomacy would dictate.
It was, as Lymond’s exposition had been, a triumph of common sense over emotion, but it was not reached without the airing of harshly opposing views; a venting of small sudden flares which betrayed to the onlooker how uncertain was the ground on which they walked, and how hot the fires beneath. By the Treaty of Haddington ten years before, the Three Estates which comprised the Scottish Parliament had promised that their Sovereign lady should be married with the Dauphin at her perfect age, so that the King of France kept, maintained and defended that realm, the lieges of the same and the liberties and law thereof as he did his own realm of France.
This for ten years France had done. The marriage was due, and Scotland was bound to it. In black and white they had also the agreement of the King of France to the Estates’ stipulation: should the Queen of Scotland die without heirs, the righteous blood of the crown of Scotland should succeed without impediment; aided, fortified and supported by the King’s majesty and his successors.
This agreement Mary had signed, and rebutted secretly. In addition, the Crown Matrimonial had been demanded: the crown which in common usage meant that for his lifetime, the consort would share the powers of the Queen. The crown which, in unscrupulous hands, might be taken to mean that on the Queen’s death, the rights to the throne should pass to the blood of her husband.
Orkney had questioned Lymond about the crown. ‘I believe,’ he had said with his deaf ear cupped, because they were speaking softly, ‘that you warned Lord Culter about this. Did you then have prior knowledge of what the French were likely to do? How is it, in fact, that this information came to be passed to you, M. de Sevigny, and not to one of the Commission?’
‘In an army, one hears a great deal of gossip,’ Lymond had said. ‘And as to the papers, perhaps it was thought that I was a likely spearhead of any revolution against the de Guises. I have not been told.’
‘And have you decided to enter the lists against the de Guise family?’ Bishop Reid asked. ‘You have not, I noticed, allowed your gifts in these past weeks to flourish unrecognized. Someone may decide to cure la piquure du scorpion par le scorpion mesme.’
‘He would be a fool,’ Lymond said, ‘who would cross the de Guise brothers at this moment. You will take the oath of fidelity to the Dauphin?’
‘Yes,’ said Lord James Stewart thoughtfully. ‘We have the consent of the Three Estates to do so. We accept the sweets of this marriage: and the specific. Let time ahead show whether or not we may digest them.’
It was then that Jerott, starting up said, ‘How can a country prosper under a Queen who has betrayed it?’
And the Queen’s half brother had turned on