Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [265]
Like the gallery erected outside, it was laced with leaves and floored with Turkey carpet and so made pleasant walking except that, in the end, it was discovered that the high chairs to the left of the choir, rightfully those of the Town, had been occupied already by Messieurs of the Counting House and the heads of Justice, leaving only the inferior seats near the door, into which the Town sullenly squeezed itself. The right of the chancel, thick as a poppyfield, was filled with the Court of Parliament in scarlet robes lined with velvet, their furred hats laid on their shoulders. And waiting before them, in a dazzle of massy church gold and painted statuary, was the Reverend Father in God Eustache du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, in his stiffest pontifical habits, flanked by his clergy and awaiting, with grave inclinations of recognition, the arrival of the royal party.
The shuffling footsteps, the long lines of filtering newcomers, the dog-eared flutter of grouped genuflections slowly ceased and the ground-bass of cautious greeting rose to a rumble of titillated self-conceit and excitement. At ten o’clock the noise, suddenly dwindling, allowed to be heard the squeak and the thud of the Swiss Guard with their tambour and fifes, coming to take up their posts by the platform. The Bishop, in a stately glitter of embroidered vestments, glanced about and set off for the porch with his clergy, the Cathedral Cross carried before him, and flanked by two choirboys with lit tapers in silver candlesticks.
The church became rather silent, so that the noise of the crowds in the parvis could be heard, like heavy breathing outside the west door. The sound of trumpets, far away, floated like dandelion quills through the open doors and athwart the south wall of the building. It was eleven o’clock, and the Royal procession had left the Bishop’s Palace and was proceeding along the covered gallery to the Cathedral.
To the people filling the parvis and every window and rooftop about it, the Court appeared as a ruching of gold, slowly drawn through a lattice of greenery. Far ahead of the rest, in cloth of gold to his feet, the Duke de Guise arrived on the platform and cleared it, with a sweep of his arm, of all those who obscured the crowd’s viewpoint. A great arcade of sound burst from the people, and hard on its heels, a striving outcry of music from trumpets, clarions, hautboys, flageolets, viols, violins, cistres and citterns as the musicians came forth, massed in yellow and red and threw every pigeon flock skywards. Then the procession arrived, and moved from the bridge to the balcony, filling it.
The crowd knew everyone. The cheering overlapped, tossed like faggots of spray into an air stinking of garlic and cheap wine and poverty. They knew the princes with their jewelled berets and doublets and breeches slashed and ribboned and pebbled with gems. They knew why Piero Strozzi was missing, with another attack of catarrh. They knew the bishops, archbishops and abbots, the Cardinals and the Papal Legate, the Cross and the Eucharist carried before him. They knew every famous face of the hundred gentlemen: the King’s gentlemen of the chamber, the marshals, the captains, the Chevaliers of the Order, the high officers of State. It pleased them to recognize the war leaders and shout the names of their victories. They did not omit their conspicuous favourite, the angelic Russian for whom the bâton of a Marshal of France was surely waiting.
From the end of the procession, Philippa heard Lymond’s name roared and felt her heart hammering. Before her was a thicket of nervous princesses, with in front of them Madame Marguerite, the Queen of Navarre and the Queen of France, led by the Prince of Condé who, though poor, was a prince of the blood and occasionally had to remember it.
Ahead of them was Mary, with the King on one side and the Duke of Lorraine on the other. Philippa could see her crown blaze in the sunshine as she stepped round and on to the platform: it was made