Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [299]
The Duke de Guise, awaiting the arrival of three thousand more horsemen from Saxony, was lingering in Luxemburg, victualling at the charge of the enemy. Sooner or later he would make his way north, there to join M. de Thermes’s victorious army. Meanwhile the King, warmly congratulatory, egged M. de Thermes on to further derring-do.
M. de Thermes, at the head of eight thousand foot soldiers and two thousand horse, marched to the Spanish-held fortress of Gravelines and, elated and purposeful, settled down preparatory to surrounding it.
He thought it was lightly garrisoned. He did not know that the Spanish commander and Egmont, the Flemish cavalry leader supporting him, had between them three thousand cavalry and three regiments of German soldiers, two of them in King Philip’s service and the other about to embark for England. Seeing this considerable force approaching him, M. de Thermes responded in the only possible way. He mounted his horse and led his army rapidly back across the River Aa on the road leading to Calais.
Unfortunately, the Count of Egmont reached the banks of the Aa just before him, and so did Admiral Malin and twelve ships of the English fleet, standing off at the mouth of the river. Against the shock of Egmont’s cavalry and the roar of the broadsides from the naval cannon M. de Thermes’s horse turned and tried to escape, but were forced almost immediately to surrender.
The infantry stood the assault for two hours before being totally routed, both M. de Thermes and the Governor of Boulogne being wounded and captured. Of the eight thousand foot, most died by drowning; and the German dead numbered over a thousand.
From Calais, from Montreuil and from Boulogne, the survivors sent news of the calamity to Ferté-Milon. The King left quickly for Reims, the Cardinal with him. There, distraught, they awaited the Duke de Guise, the Cardinal’s brother, who must now cease his leisured recovery from Thionville and hurry north, yet again, to the rescue of Artois and Picardy.
They were waiting still when Lymond rode into Reims with the company of horse he had gathered in Paris. The King wept as he embraced him, nor did he let him out of his sight all that evening. Within an hour, the work of retrieval had started.
*
On July 28th the army of the Duke de Guise arrived by forced marches just short of Laon on the Champagne-Picardy border, and set up camp on the plain north of Liesse, at a village called Pierrepont.
Two days later, the King of France left Reims to join his army, bringing with him the Duke of Lorraine, the King of Navarre and Marshal of France François de Sevigny, riding beside the now recovered King-Dauphin of France and Scotland.
Waiting to house them two miles south of Liesse was the Château de Marchais, one of the Cardinal’s magnificent houses. The comte de Sevigny, overruled sharply by the King, was not able to raise his tents with the rest of his company, but had to wait until the following morning to visit them. On his way to the camp, he called upon the Duke de Guise in his town lodgings. From there, followed by a handful only of his own attendants, the Marshal rode through the long ranks of canvas until he found the pavilion which Jerott Blyth occupied.
Warned by the noise, Jerott was already leaning at his tent door in his shirt, his arms folded, his dark, cynical gaze on the standard of Sevigny, and the group of horsemen approaching him. Then Lymond dismounted, threw the reins to one of his men and said, before Jerott could speak, ‘Victories obtained without the master are never complete. Don’t glower, my dear man. God and the Immaculate Imams are with me, and I fear no one. And there is Adam?’
Jerott’s arms were no longer folded, and for a moment even his voice failed him. Then, ‘Dear Christ, Francis …!’ he said; and broke off even before Adam, fully emerging, laid a quick hand on his elbow.
Adam said, ‘A lot can change in three months. The others are inside. Have you time to come in?’
‘Tact,’ Lymond said, ‘is the name you should have upon your tombstone;