Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [320]
The smell of the ruined opium filled all the tent. Jerott had gone. Archie said, ‘Oh Jesus, lad. Are you sure, are you sure this is how you want it?’
And Lymond said, ‘I only know that I want it.’ And then, ‘It is best done with what one has of pride.’
Lastly, he said, ‘I have leave to go.’
‘I know,’ said Archie.
*
They left camp at sunset: seven men to fight, and four soldiers with crossbows to hide with their horses in a quarry just short of the Spanish encampment. In the same quarry they stripped off half their armour, and in full darkness set out on the exploit which from Picard farmer to farmer received the name of the affair of the corn mills of Authie.
Burdened like a pioneer with shears and mattock, with rope and slow fuse and matches, with a knife and a cavalry bow and a few doctored arrows and last but not, feelingly, least, by a budget of gunpowder wrapped in silk and then canvas, Jerott Blyth said, ‘You devil, Francis. I haven’t been so bloody frightened since Mdina. Do you remember? There were seven of us then.’
‘I prefer, all sutty, blakk and unclene, the present draft,’ Lymond said. Because the arrangements had been his, he had not slept during the day as the others had, but like theirs, his face was stained with the dye of the Reiters, and neither his thoughts nor his condition were discernible. Jerott said, ‘What is that prayer of Montluc’s?’
He had not expected Lymond to answer him but he did, without mimicking, as he could so easily do, the little man’s Gascon accent.
‘Mon Dieu qui m’as créé, je te supplie, garde-moy l’entendement affin qu’aujourd’huy je ne le perde, car tu le m’as donne, et ne le tiens que de toy. Que si tu as aujourd’huy déterminé ma mort, fais que je meure en réputation d’ung homme de bien, laquelle je cherche avec tant de périls. Je ne te demande poinct la vie, car je veux tout ce qu’il te plaist; ta volonté soit faicte, je remets le tout à ta divine bonté … It is a fine prayer, if you believe in such things.’
‘And do you?’ said Jerott Blyth, former Knight of St John.
‘Sometimes,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘I spread my favours. Tonight I look to Janus the Patron of Portals.’
Soon after that, they were speeding through darkness; sometimes running, sometimes crawling, sometimes lying in ditches until they came within reach of Dourlans and then, to its west, the river on whose upper reaches the town and citadel stood. The River Authie, which skirted the north wall of the fortress and then took its pleasant course north and west all the way to the sea. The river which King Philip would have to cross if, tiring of facing the French, he decided instead to strike north to Montreuil, or to Boulogne or to Calais itself.
The bridge at Dourlans was under the surveillance of the town and citadel, strongly held by the French. But the next bridge fit to take regiments of marching troops and their artillery was only five miles further down the Authie. And it was held at either end, by two companies of Spanish soldiers.
Danny, his voice rather high, had made that abundantly clear at their conference. ‘It’s a splendid idea. Domine salve nos qui perimus. I’m too young to die on a bridge. Why don’t we take all the Germans? Or no. They would all blow their noses on their very large handkerchiefs, and that would bring Philip’s whole camp down on us. What’s your idea?’
‘We don’t go near the bridge,’ said Lymond peacefully.
‘Excuse me,’ said Fergie Hoddim. ‘How can you wreck a fine bridge without going near it?’
‘By sending something else near it instead,’ Lymond said. ‘An ox to Jupiter, a dog to Hecate, a dove to Venus, a sow to Ceres, a fish to Neptune. What, instead of Fergie Hoddim, shall we sacrifice?’
‘Boats won’t do,’ Guthrie said. ‘Even if you put stones in them, they wouldn’t inflict enough damage.’
‘You could put gunpowder in them,’ Jerott said. ‘But could you be sure of finding boats?’
Fergie Hoddim said, ‘But see. You couldna take that amount of gunpowder over the country