Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [64]
The unpaved streets which were drains, and the lanes, fenced at either end, which had become refuse-dumps. The plaques, the shrines, the fountains. The holy statues, Huguenot-broken, encased in iron grilles with flowers wilting before them. The gardens, with vine-arbours and pear trees and strawberries; the taverns and the private houses with their bright painted sign-boards; the bridges over the Seine, three joining the right wing and two joining the left with their mills and tradesmen and houses. Beneath which, they said, few men dared to look after dark, for under the piles lived all the evil women and cut-throats in Paris.
Marthe had not been interested. Without her presence, Lymond was not prepared to accept her husband back as an officer. That she knew, and freely used as a weapon against Jerrott. But she had left Lyon, to Jerott’s guarded astonishment. She had come to Paris, and he did not believe this time, after that foul masquerade, that it could be to follow her step-brother. Her business was trading, and the finest sight for a man-at-arms or a dealer has always been a city abandoned.
Everyone was ready to tell them where Lymond was. They found him in the end at the Arsenal, between the Bastille and the river. He came out of the Tour de Billy with the Master of the Artillery and two échevins and, it turned out, was on his way to a converted wine store in the rue de la Vannerie, and thence to a stable-yard near the Tournelles, to supervise some unpredictable experiment.
No one explained. Archie, it seemed of intent, had told Jerott nothing.
There was about it all an air of orderly, intensive creation which was acutely familiar. From Lymond, Jerrott Blyth received no kind of boisterous welcome: the exchange, and the introductions, resembled those due to a captain just back from furlough. Then the King’s commander in Paris continued with his round of appointments, with Jerott and Archie striding after.
In due course, they shed the Master of the Artillery and one of the échevins; picked up first the Maître des Arlbalétriers and then the Prévôt Général des Monnaies et Maréchaussées and finally dropped them all to have supper at the home of the Prévôt of Paris, who had to leave half-way through, to deal with rumours of an impending clash in the University quarter.
From there, surprisingly, they called at the lodging of the Venetian Ambassador, where Jerott was ceremonially introduced and offered a glass of very good Candian wine, which he accepted with silent gratitude. He had been travelling since soon after daybreak. He gathered from Archie that Francis, exchanging pleasantries with Signor Soranzo, had been up and about even earlier. He thought Archie, whose seamed and sun-darkened face rarely altered, was for the first time showing all the weight of his years. But it was better, said Abernethy philosophically, than the first three or four days back in Paris, when they worked day and night like a coo-clink.
The chair was comfortable and he was sorry they had to leave, which they did shortly, exchanging greetings on the way with various sergeants, Cinquanteniers and Dixeniers who seemed to know Francis by sight. It struck Jerott that, rare in blue-blooded campaigns, Francis was taking particular trouble to involve the City. Men and money the burghers had already agreed to provide: he knew the Queen had gone herself to the Parliament of Paris and had obtained from them three hundred thousand francs for King Henri, and a promise