Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [289]
By moving at once, M. de Vieilleville afterwards calculated, he could have been inside Thionville in two hours, and in Luxembourg directly afterwards. As it was, in the three weeks it took the Duke to march towards him, Luxembourg fortified itself quite adequately against any assault he might have been planning; and the force inside Thionville under Jean de Caderebbe their Flemish commander aspired to three thousand picked men—twice the number the town would normally contain. The ensigns waiting for M. de Guise greeted him with grim jollity: Let us go, monsieur, and die before Thionville—we have been waiting for you for a long time. And M. d’Estrée the Grand Master of Artillery, supervising the arrival of the thirty-five boats containing the four companies of pioneers, the eighteen cannoneers, the six commissioners of artillery, the guns and the munitions for fifteen thousand shots, summoned the Duke in sonorous tones to come and see the fine present M. de Vieilleville was making him, while adding in less sonorous tones to his companions that it was very easy for M. de Guise to swallow, when everything else had already been chewed for him.
Danny Hislop, jogging about in his cuirass collecting gems of impolitic vituperation, was consistently busy and happy: so was Blaise de Montluc, who had d’Andelot’s command of the infantry. Jerott Blyth, less tolerant of caprice, walked about glowering and being nasty to Adam, who in any case was feeling mildly sorry for himself after all the riding he had undertaken in the past seven days.
When the news came that, after prolonged argument, M. de Vieilleville’s battle plan had been entirely changed and the assault was to be made at a different place, Adam experienced no shock of surprise. If Thionville was going to be a glorious victory, then the battle plan would have to be the Duke de Guise’s, not that of the Governor of Metz. He moved away from all the bright, lilting voices of the courtiers in the Duke de Guise’s train, and heard beside him another voice strongly accented in Italian and belonging to a dark and splendid nobleman in silver-engraved armour with bronze kid buttoned under it.
‘Must you look so disapproving?’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘You Scotsmen: you wish to be like the elephant, hacked to pieces for refusing to bow. You should follow my rule: here am I, supple and amenable as a goatskin glove of Vendôme and pleasant to all, Duke and dotard alike. You did not, I trust, persuade your eminent friend to forsake his bower in favour of these noisome marshes? That would indeed be a case of the punishment being born at the same time as the sin.’
‘No. He isn’t coming,’ said Adam.
‘Splendid,’ said Piero Strozzi heartily. ‘I love him, but I have brethren enough who are trying to climb with a foot on my neck. Do you see that tower over the river?’
‘The Tour aux Puces?’ said Adam.
‘The Tower of Fleas. An adorable fancy. Yes. That is where we are to fire to make our breach, and we have to take the town in seven days: M. de Guise has promised His Majesty so. Once M. d’Estrée has his cannon set up, there is going to be sound enough to make a goat dance. Perhaps, after all, mon petit François has the best of it.’
‘He thought,’ Adam said, ‘that this would be a pioneers’ victory, unless M. de Vieilleville could take it by a surprise assault.’
‘So does M. d’Estrée,’ said Marshal Strozzi. ‘But then, they are his pioneers, and all tall old men are hungry for credit. Do you know what Thionville means?’
‘No,’ said Adam. Jerott had come out of their common tent and was glaring at him.
‘It is Villa Theon, the town of God,’ said Marshal Strozzi. ‘You know the saying, Ce que Dieu garde est bien gardé? Fortunately, Master Nostradamus has suggested to His Majesty that good news is on the way, so M. de Vieilleville will be comforted. But of course, you are also a good Christian?’
‘Isn’t everybody,’ said Adam dryly, ‘on the eve of battle?’ And as Strozzi, laughing, clapped him on the back, he turned and joined the others in his tent.
*
The town of God fell not seven but seventeen