Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [61]
‘A barber-surgeon,’ said Archie. ‘A short, brosy chiel’ with grey whiskers staying wi’ Macé. They cried him Michel. And Macé himself, that was all. Twa men of by-ordnar’ discretion. If ye expect to ride post to Paris, I expect to ride with ye.’
There was a very long pause. ‘Hence the cuirass and spurs,’ remarked Lymond. ‘I wondered. And what about Mistress Philippa?’
‘I thought you knew,’ said Archie Abernethy. ‘She left Lyon early this morning. To go to Sevigny, I rather fancy. She didna need me, so the Schiatti sent her off with a nice puckle of pikemen, and twa of their weel-pitten-on nephews.’
In the shadow, the Captain-General’s eyes were inimical. He said, ‘You told me you were her man.’
‘I am,’ said Archie Abernethy shortly and got up. He walked to the desk. ‘There’s your riding jacket. And there, if you have some water, is a physic I got for the headache. And that’—and removing a crumpled paper from his pouch, he tossed it between Francis Crawford’s unoccupied hands—‘is what you had in your fist when we found you. I took it away. It’s not what you want every burgher to gab about.’
He did not need to read it again but he did, stretching the blood-stiffened folds, until the writing of thirty years since was quite legible.
The record of death of a human being called Francis Crawford.
Part II
Sur le milieu du grand monde la rose
Pour nouveaux faits sang public épandu
A dire vray on aura bouche close
Lors au besoin viendra tard l’attendu.
Chapter 1
La cité obsesse aux murs hommes et femmes
Ennemis hors le chef prestz à soy rendres
Vent sera fort encontre les gens-darmes:
Chassés seront par chaux, poussiere et cendre.
‘I told you,’ said the Queen of Scotland, her head bowed, her hands clasped in worship. ‘The carpet is muddy. And Catherine d’Albon does not have her feet bare.’
Her voice, although not shrill for her age, was quite distinct enough to vanquish the organs. Catherine d’Albon glanced round. Black sackcloth, there was no doubt, set off brunette hair. It was best of all, naturally, with auburn.
‘Your grace, she has a dispensation from Monseigneur your uncle,’ Mary Fleming said in an undertone. ‘Because of her hurried journey to and from Lyon, and grief for her father.’ The other maids of honour prayed with assiduity.
‘Her father?’ said Mary Queen of Scotland. ‘The Marshal de St André is only a prisoner. He was taken when the Constable was taken. Monseigneur my uncle says that but for the mistakes of the Constable, Saint-Quentin would never have fallen. The King says that those who failed to execute his orders have brought the army low, and in future he will act alone as God inspires him. Until, of course, Monseigneur my other uncle returns from Italy.’
She scowled forbiddingly at the members of her little suite, wrinkling the white skin and picking out particularly the four Scottish maidens called Mary. ‘You are not afraid that the King of Spain will march into Paris? He would never dare. The Queen Regent my mother will send such armies into England that no English troops can be spared to fight for a foreigner. And God is on our side. He looks down on us today. The noblest blood in France walks barefoot in penitence from the Sainte Chapelle to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, bearing the relics of the Passion on their shoulders. How can King Philip, who makes war on the Pope, expect to conquer us?’
No one answered her. A twilight of smoky crimson and violet enclosed them. The tented glass, sixty feet high, soared above them, densely diapered in blue and cramoisy, exotic as tissues from India. The King, the Cardinal, the Bishop had completed their business high in the shining gold tribune and the Reliquary was raised to its place on men’s shoulders. Jewels glowed; silver-gilt sparkled; incense thickened. In a series of angular movements, the noblesse of France dropped to its stiff knees in reverence.
Mary Fleming noted that Madame de Brêne had corns. Her cousin the Queen of Scotland’s narrow arched feet, on the other hand, merely displayed two arcs