Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [338]
‘Archie, my man,’ said Danny, ‘I’ve changed my mind. You’re all going, but I’m sailing later as well. There is a little errand I want to run before I leave this banquet of delight, this beadroll of glory, this fair and flourishing country of France. Keep Jerott happy.’
‘Aye,’ said Archie. ‘Shall I tell him right away you’re at Blois with his wife, or wait until he sets foot in Scotland?’ And ducked as Danny, cursing, swiped at him.
*
About that time, the last of the heat left the fields, and the days began and ended with mist. Finally the rains came, dissolving the two camps and the scarred land between them into mud. In Spain, far from the great theatre of his victories and his blundering son, at half-past two before dawn on a still day in the third week of September Charles V, once King of Spain and Emperor of Germany, ruler of Sicily and the Low Countries, conquerer of Peru and of Mexico, gave up his soul to his God.
Of the brave party of Scots who had come to France seven months before to represent the realm of their Queen at her wedding, four living men sailed from Dieppe with the herald court and their depleted retinue. With them went a fifth, to his burial. And behind, in Dieppe and in Paris, they left one man in the crypt of St Jacques; and two others dying.
Lord Culter did not travel with them, although his mother was taken on board with the help of Archie Abernethy, who in his time had served all the Crawfords. There sailed also, without leave from their camp, three captains who had not come from Scotland in February. M. de Fors, Lieutenant-Governor of the castle of Dieppe and Admiral of the fleet leaving for Scotland, did not regard it as his business to inform anyone of the circumstance.
At Amiens, two days after they sailed, the Marshal de Sevigny presented himself, with his brother, at the levée hour at the Episcopal Palace.
He had told Alec Guthrie that he was in no danger. Until he saw the manner of his return to Court, Richard would hardly have accepted it. But even on the short walk to the Cathedral they excited attention. Men called to them. The Archers and the gentlemen of the household greeted the comte de Sevigny in ways which conspicuously lapsed from the formal. And in the Audience Chamber the elect, awaiting admission, were openly boisterous.
Watching his brother among them, Culter could pick out the mignons de couchette—the Vidame de Chartres, the Prince of Condé, the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon—whose interest in Francis Crawford over the years had not been impersonal. And those with whom, presumably, he had shared his campaigns: de Nevers, Saxony, Ferrara, and d’Estrée, the gaunt Gascon whose guns never blew up, or needed vinegar. And the brothers de Guise, the Duke, the Cardinal, the Duke d’Aumale and the rest who did not advance upon him as the others did, but waited, smiling, to congratulate him on his recovery and to suggest, with amusement, the means by which he might add substance to the fair vehicle his body, so cherished by many.
But for that, and M. le comte’s extreme delicacy of complexion, one would have said it was a court occasion like any other. And when the doors were thrown open and the King was seen, in his shirt, rising from his prie-Dieu, the open pleasure with which he turned and greeted his returned commander had a significance readily apparent in that court of small, shifting allegiances. ‘Ah, M. Tête de Fer, you have returned to us, fragrant with Tartar musk and peonies, I note, in place of reeking of Egyptiacum. I have been surrounded by invalids—M. de Guise, M. de Ferrara, M. de Bouillon there. You have infected my army.’
He sat down and thrust out a foot. The Duke de Guise, receiving a silken pile from the hands of a gentleman of the chamber, began to draw on the royal hose. The triple tuck of a little tabor, playing a pavane with two recorders in the back of the room, barely disturbed the murmuring quiet.
Belle qui tiens ma vie
Captive dans tes yeulx