Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [67]
‘I know. The Piedmont troops will take ten days to march here at the minimum: St Laurent’s Swiss and Colonel Rekrod’s levies will take longer. And the 40,000 loyal French from the provinces will require another four weeks I fancy to muster. So, like me, you cannot sally forth yet and avenge Alec and Fergie.’
So he, too, had been thinking of the two missing officers. Who, if he had not turned them off, would be here in Paris now.
It was not a tenable subject. Jerott, catching himself in the act of draining his wineglass, arrested it and said, ‘I don’t see why you can’t march. Why not, Francis? You leave Paris impregnable, surely, behind you. De Nevers is collecting fresh troops at Laon. And the Picardy garrisons, they say, add up to quite an army.’
‘Saint-Quentin held out fifteen days,’ Lymond said. ‘It gave de Nevers time to work on the frontier and garrisons, certainly. Salignac is at Le Catelet; Sancerre at Guise, de Bourdillon at la Fère, d’Humières at Péronne, Chaulnes at Corbie; Sepois in the Castle of Ham, d’Amboise at St Dizier and Montigny at Chaulny. Soissons and Compiègne are empty. The ground round about has been burned, but there is a limit to the value of that: the harvests in the Low Countries are in, and Philip will have all the bread he has need for. The garrisons have been active too, cutting off Spanish supply lines, robbing wagon trains and taking powder and munitions and money. But the rumour is that Philip is sitting in Saint-Quentin with his eye on those fortresses. He can stay and pick them off one by one, in which case he has lost his one chance of Paris. Or he can march on us now. And, I’m afraid, take us.’
Jerott stared at him through bleared eyes. ‘With an armed garrison of one hundred and seventy-five thousand men, and a battery of eighty guns on the Porte Saint-Denis ramparts?’
‘Yes. Well, in some ways France, like the island of Zanzibar, hath a peculiar monarchy,’ Lymond said. ‘Unsurpassable for culture and courtesans, but somehat confused about fortifications. They did some work in the scare of ’23, and added a few trenches and ditches and bulwarks in ’36, but that long curtain wall by the Bastille has been building for four years and the bastions are God’s gift to a good squadron of German gunners, working for almost anybody.
‘And the University side, of course, is hardly protected at all. The general theme seems to be that it’s all much too difficult, and if things are bad, the rabble will rise against you anyway, so you might as well pack your silk coats and your candlesticks and take horse smartly for Orléans at the first sign of trouble. Half female Paris had evacuated already by the time I got here, and the men would have followed if I hadn’t tripled the watch on the gates and the river and announced I’d hang anyone I caught leaving illicitly.
‘My greatest task has been to prevent the royal family from melting off to the Loire like refined candle wax. They sent the Dauphin away, but after that were persuaded to listen to reason, once they had brought away the Charlemagne Jewel from Saint-Denis and added four hundred archers to the King’s bodyguard. Thereby somewhat diminishing the required atmosphere of superior confidence.’
‘You let them dress in sackcloth and carry out the relics from the Sainte Chapelle,’ Jerott said.
‘Candidly, I doubt if I could have stopped them,’ Lymond said. ‘I should point out, however, that it was not an expression of panic. It was an indication that the Almighty, having observed the bared feet of the entire royal family, must now be on our side. So you think that Paris is strong? I hope King Philip and the Duke of Savoy have that impression too. For apart from digging a few trenches, we haven’t put a spoonful of earth on their inadequate fortifications since I came here. There wasn’t time for it. We had to convey, instantly, the appearance of a well-armed, well-protected stronghold, and we apparently succeeded,