Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [298]
It was a matter of anguish that in this heat he should be both fully and formally habited.
Then he said, ‘You look so ill. Shall I say it for you? It would be best if I went away, for a short time at least. De Guise is marching north through the duchy of Luxembourg. I could join him, until peace is made,’
It was the only solution, for his sake as well as hers, and he had taken from her, with generosity, the stigma of proposing it. She said, her body trembling, ‘If I had not gone to the river, this would not have happened.’
‘It might have happened in my arms, Philippa,’ he said, and stopped speaking. Then he said, ‘The fault was mine that I had to swim; that I had to force you to treat me like a leper; that I couldn’t, in the end, give you the spirit without the clay. We had all that two people need, and I have failed you. And … I do not know if I can change.’
‘It is not you who must change,’ Philippa said. And, terrified by what she saw in his face, cried in desperation. ‘Oh, my dear: why will you not weep? Or am I not who I am?’
It was the only plea to which he could answer. It forestalled by very little the end of his self-command, and made her witness to something she could neither comfort nor ease, except by the act of releasing it.
After the first moments, he did not know she was there. Agony and anger alike in her mind, Philippa strode to the windows and flung the heavy curtains over the stark glass and left them there, for now their office was over. Then, as summer lightening swayed in the beeches and the thunderclouds, piled high in the night, gave the first low reverberation of the ugly storm sweeping towards them, she fled from the chamber.
*
Later that night the storm travelled north over Paris, playing a long time over the city and sending many of the uninformed into the churches. While at its height, a flash of lightning struck the Tour de Billy behind the Célestins and exploded two hundred casks of cannon powder, flinging the stones of its wreckage as far as St Antoine des Champs and St Victor and the Terrin of Notre-Dame, to the hurt of the many in shelter there. The Célestins’ windows were blown out, as were those of St Paul, St Gervais, St Victor, and St Marcel. From bank to bank, fish bellies covered the river.
All the houses in the lee of the Arsenal suffered, some being shattered to pieces; and every able man helped to quench fires and pull out the wounded.
It was not until dawn that those digging in the wreckage of the rue de la Cerisaye noticed what appeared to be a shallow grave, partly exposed by the shock of the explosion.
Within it was a woman’s body which servants, much distressed, identified as that of their housekeeper, Isabelle Roset.
They notified the authorities in the morning: the same morning on which, before sun-up, Francis Crawford rode from his château of Sevigny.
Chapter 5
L’oiseau de proie volant à la semestre,
Avant conflict faict aux François pareure;
L’un bon prendra l’un ambigue sinistre,
La partie foible tiendra par bon augure
When you have gathering under your sceptre one of the largest armies ever mustered by any monarch of France, and also, you hope, the money to pay for it, there is naturally a strong urge to use it for something.
To King Henri within the fortress walls of the château of La Ferté-Milon came only good news: of the fall of Thionville; of the taking of Arlon; of a string of successes against the English fleet along the north coast; and finally of an unlooked-for victory: the capture by M. de Thermes of the town of Dunkirk, twenty-five miles east of Calais, together with Bourbourg and Bergues, its small neighbours, with a rich haul of both booty and prisoners.
It confirmed the King in a fond theory: that soon he should take arms in person. They said that King Philip had expressed this wish also, but was held up for want of travelling money. It was a pity that the Dauphin was again unwell,