Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [62]
If the King of Spain marched from Saint-Quentin to Paris, there were few with as much to lose as Mary of Scotland. Then the wedding, so long planned by messeigneurs her uncles between herself and the Dauphin, would never take place. She would never be Queen of France. Nor would she be sent back to Scotland, to make trouble for Spain. More likely she would be taken to Spain, Mary thought, and married to King Philip’s idiot child. Or to King Philip himself, if his English Queen died. And thus in one stroke he would join Scotland, England and Spain in one monarchy.
Small wonder she would not believe that Paris could be in danger. Mary Fleming looked at the thin, auburn-haired imperious mistress before her and drawing on the lessons of nine years of service realized that, as usual, she had mistaken her courage. Cousin Mary knew of the danger. Cousin Mary was sick with fears for the future. But to display it, or allow her entourage to display it, would be less than royal.
The shrine passed, containing the Crown of Thorns, the Sponge and the Lancehead. The courtiers stood, in a crackle of stretched bones and sackcloth. The procession formed, with the cross borne before it. The twelve stone Apostles watched it pass with blank eyes, smooth and calm in their beauty. Against the tall smoking fires of the stained glass the empty tribune was now hardly tangible. Ultramarine and bistre and viridian, the rose-window hung over the interlaced carvings, the painted pillars and fine fretted arches running with angels; and shone bright and jade green and wholesome as the apple trees of Compiègne.
Compiègne. Where once before, Mary had displayed a passing fretfulness, and for the same reason. Mary Fleming carried her thought down the forty-four steps of the staircase and through the cemetery and out of the Palais and along the narrow streets to the Parvis of Notre-Dame, where no one could talk because all Paris was watching, and even the mills on the bridge stilled their throbbing and clattering.
Because of the weight of the shrine, they moved slowly. The priests sang, and the censer-smells lingered. There on the left was the rue des Marmousets, and the cleared space of the house of the pâtissier, who had made pies from the flesh of those barbered to death by his neighbour. Next door, imagine, to Notre-Dame, rising foursquare, sprigged and buttoned above her, with its band of crowned and gaily conversing stone monarchs.
Which brought her back to Queen Mary at Compiègne, saying, ‘I believe my Scotsman Mr Crawford will show some of these princes how we wage war. How long must it be since last he saw me?’
They had gone into the matter. It had been six years previously, when Mr Crawford of Lymond had served her with some effectiveness, and had accepted her glove as his guerdon.
‘Then I must have been eight. One changes in six years,’ had said Mary complacently, and had waited. But he had not come to pay his duty. And next, he had been sent to Lyon, and recalled almost immediately.
He had arrived five days ago, and had been lodged in the Hôtel de Rochepôt, a house of the imprisoned Constable’s. The King had brought him out of there. The King had sent him yesterday to the Hôtel St André in the rue d’Orleans, where the Maréchale and her daughter, just back from Lyon, had welcomed him. Mary Fleming waited until they were established inside the Cathedral and the vicissitudes of the Corpus Christi were under way, and then said, testing her theory, ‘Your grace, I don’t see Mr Crawford?’
At the time, a rebuking glance was her answer. But a little later, pacing together: ‘Mr Crawford apparently could not spare the time to be present,’ said Mary of Scotland to Mary Fleming negligently. She paused. ‘I am not wholly in favour of this scheme to unite him to Mademoiselle d’Albon. It mocks the Church. He is married already, to a bright, well-favoured girl. I met her on her way south to Lyon.’
‘They say he wants a divorce,’ Mary Fleming said.