Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [314]
By the third week in August, when Archie entered the town of Amiens and sought a guide to take him to the French camp, the King and his court had been established for ten days in the Episcopal Palace and all its encircling buildings to the south and west of the Cathedral, spilling down into the low town beside the church of St Germaine and the belfry. With the King was the Dauphin, the King of Navarre, the Duke of Lorraine and the Duke of Montpensier, newly ransomed from Spanish captivity, as well as two children, the sons of the Duke de Guise and his brother, with their governors and gentlemen.
The rest of the court together with all the King’s principal commanders was outside Amiens, in the camp now spread for many miles along the banks of the Somme. And facing it, with fifteen miles of flat ground between them, was the camp of Philip of Spain, with the King’s standard flying over the royal pavilion, and sixty thousand soldiers entrenched there under Savoy, Alva and Egmont, the last fresh from his triumph at Gravelines.
In size and quality, there was little to choose between the two armies. Both were well armed and supplied with munitions. Both were plagued with immense numbers of mercenaries, who had been known, on occasion, to refuse to fight one another. France had the better leadership, but Spain had the support of the English fleet, still harrying the coasts and immobilizing valuable men in the French coastal fortresses.
On the other hand, the Spanish army lay within the French frontiers, and on land which had been laid waste for miles to deny them food and forage. Up to the moment of Archie’s arrival, every clash between the two forces had been occasioned by the Spaniards’ hunger. Dourlans, which was well stocked, was saved by the extra thousand men raced there beforehand by Danny Hislop. But an attack threatened on Montreuil on the Boulogne road, where Hoddim had placed reinforcements. It was clear that the worse his condition, the sooner King Philip’s army would be inclined to turn a foraging feint into a true assault in one direction or another. So, day and night, the French camp was held to the alert, with a reconnoitring routine which continued, irrespective of the alarms and counter-attacks which sent them out, in numbers up to six thousand during most nights and often in daytime.
When the sun was at its zenith, however, most leaders lay under their stifling canvas and slept, while the heat haze veiled the blackened Picardy plains and only the great infrastructure of the two vast concourses of men continued to throb with activity.
There was nothing wrong, all the same, with the defence system. Archie counted four challenges before he found himself ranging the tents, identifying them as he passed from the standards and escutcheons, and the livery of those busy about them.
The pavilion of the Duke de Guise and that of his brother d’Aumale were empty, the sides looped up to allow air to enter. Inside both there were carpets and furnishings which would not have disgraced any palace.
Each of the cluster of tents about the flowered chaplet of Sevigny was closed and quiet, evidence of a dawn foray or a night expedition. Archie, dismounting, saw around him grooms and bodyservants he knew belonging to Jerott Blyth and Hislop, and then a patched saddle he recognized from a great deal further back, owned by Alec Guthrie.
His grooved face softened for the first time since he had left the Loire, and he hesitated. Then someone said, ‘Monsieur?’ and it was a page in Lymond’s livery scrambling up from a patch of shadow. Beside him was the silent central pavilion, its silken fringes and swags hanging heavy and still in the noon-heat.
Archie said, ‘I have personal business with the Marshal. Will you tell him Abernethy is here to see him, from Sevigny?’
They were refusing him in whispers when Francis Crawford’s voice from within said sharply, ‘Amiel! Let him in, please!’ And Archie, passing inside, found himself in the suffocating