Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [305]
‘I can’t help you,’ Sybilla said. ‘I can only beg you not to take this to Richard. And to remind you that if Philippa did this thing for Francis, it was a deed of heroic devotion.’
‘And so he has left her,’ said Austin.
He could not understand it, but he could feel her pain, filling the chamber. Then she said, ‘For Philippa, if you love her, you should go home to England now, Austin. Forget us and go home. We have brought you nothing but torture.’
‘I shall go home,’ he said, ‘when I can take Philippa with me.’
*
It was not to be expected that Lymond’s mother would help him. Elder had warned him of that, before he left to take ship for England. ‘And remember,’ Elder had said, ‘I know what this hypocrite is, and so does my mistress. Dig deep. Expose him. Defy all who would stop you. And if, in England or in Scotland, you need a strong arm, you have only to call on us.’
Lymond’s mother did not help him, nor did Lymond’s sister, although she received him in the Hôtel du Séjour and listened to all he had to tell her. At the end she said, ‘So honour would be satisfied if you can prove that Philippa’s husband was not worth her sacrifice?’
The black line crossed his brow, which had come to live there in the past week. ‘She is infatuated. He has abandoned her already, for a bâton.’
‘As you say. I don’t suppose,’ Marthe said, ‘you could begin to be as enraged as I am by that development. But I don’t believe Francis killed Madame Roset.’
‘Why should Bailey have killed her?’ It was what he had said to Sybilla.
‘That,’ said Marthe, ‘is exactly what I am asking myself. Why should Bailey have killed her?’
Chapter 6
Le grand theatre se viendra se redresser,
Les des jettez et les rets ja tendus:
Trop le premier en glaz viendra lasser,
Par ares prostrais de long temps ja fendus.
The Queen of Scotland, learning that the comte de Sevigny had succumbed to the King’s inducements, was torn between pleasure and disillusionment. The Queen of France said very little but was as friendly to Madame Valentinois, it was noticed, as she had been on the occasion of the Duchess de Guise’s parturition. Mademoiselle Catherine d’Albon was extremely silent, and if she spoke at all, was inclined to be sharp for one of such an equable nature. Her father, receiving the news in Flanders, was not entirely pleased.
The Cardinal of Lorraine, entertaining the King in his château de Marchais, took time to write to Paris, ordering a further and more stringent questioning of some of the college personnel engaged in the recent demonstrations. He instructed a number of qualified theologians to pay a protracted call on the charming wife of M. d’Andelot. And he asked that my lord of Seton, Lord Provost of Edinburgh and senior Lord Baron of Scotland, should be prepared to give him some time when next he found it convenient to ride to Paris.
The Marshal de Sevigny, having assigned and dispatched his advance troops, left Pierrepont himself with a small force of gentlemen and pistoliers and, overtaking that led by Guthrie, de Forcés and Jerott, proceeded to move the seventy miles over the Picardy plateau into Amiens, in readiness to prepare camp for the main royal army.
For the sake of speed, the expedition carried no baggage, except for a light horse-drawn field cannon on wheels and a couple of wagons. One of these held gunpowder, lead and cord for the hackbuts, while the other contained pioneers’ material, including ladders and two light broad-beamed shallops. To ensure their self-sufficiency, they also carried with them, on mules and in wagons, their own bread and wine for the journey.
On the way north, the combined force fought two minor actions, in both of which the German levies were subjected to ungentle discipline.
Already, the large proportion of foreign mercenaries had provoked constant trouble on the march north from Luxembourg. The burning of the Duke de Guise’s tent with most of his possessions at Arlon had not been an accident,