Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [68]
Behind Jerott the man, who drank too much and worried about Marthe and Alex and Fergie, was Jerott the Knight of St John, the officer who had once seemed to be Lymond’s tanist. He. said, ‘Christ, Francis. You can’t do that with a city. How much was fake? The guns? Was that why no shot came our way?’
‘We have eight pieces of ordnance: that’s all,’ Lymond said. ‘The garrison is also mostly fantasy. We towed seventy thousand artisans upstream in barges and had them enter the city at night, drums beating and pennants flying. The Venetian Ambassador was most impressed.’
‘You’re feeding him false reports? Is that why you were telling him tonight about new offers of alliance with Turkey? But living in the city,’ said Jerott, ‘he must know more than you want him to know.’
‘Not much,’ said Lymond. ‘But in any case, his dispatches are most carefully edited. The version which falls into Spanish hands is not always, shall we say, the version which his secretary wrote out for him. Don’t worry. I know that a highly trained set of European statesmen and soldiers isn’t going to be deceived in quite the same way as a boatload of Algerian corsairs.
‘On the other hand, they have other weaknesses. Double spies, for example, and a willingness to believe any written material they find on dead men or in captured wagon trains. We even managed a few evil portents. You didn’t hear of the screaming devils who floated one midnight over Saint-Quentin and Cambrai? King Philip’s German mercenaries in particular didn’t like them at all, especially as they haven’t been paid for some time. They’ve been pouring in to de Nevers at Laon ever since. I won’t risk them in Paris, but for an instant down payment, they can help protect Amiens, for example, and make themselves as much of a nuisance to their old employers as they like.
‘You see, at any rate, that we have one or two ticklish weeks still before us. If they do attack, we can do very little about it, and the monarchy will indeed have to escape south, which is one reason why I have been anxious that Polvilliers shouldn’t be waiting for them in Lyon with an evil smile and six thousand infantry. That’s all. I shouldn’t have kept you from Marthe. I only wished to explain why I should like you to stay in Paris meanwhile.’
He stopped and then said, ‘I should say, too, since you have been so unnaturally reticent, that everything possible is being done to find out what happened to Guthrie and Hoddim.’
‘If I hadn’t married Marthe,’ Jerott said, ‘I should have been there as well, I suppose. Or maybe not. I shouldn’t have stopped you from going to Russia.’
The subject hung in the air. Lymond stirred. His wine, on the table beside him, was almost untouched. Then, as Adam had done, he answered an unspoken appeal. ‘Why did you marry Marthe?’ he said. And then rephrased it. ‘I know what you feel about her. Why did you insist on marriage?’
Beneath Jerott’s drawn brows, his splendid dark eyes were stark with misery. ‘She thinks it was to compensate for her birth. I suppose it was. I loved her. I wanted to give her a position.’
‘She has a position,’ Lymond said. ‘It is not that of housekeeper, nor of a mother, to you or your children. Marriage has weakened it: she is fighting not to lose it altogether.’
It hurt. ‘You mean,’ said Jerott, ‘she wants to be like Güzel? A raddled courtesan selling her body round Europe for power?’
He had meant to wound. But instead Lymond said, smiling faintly, ‘No. Not like Güzel. Kiaya Khátún is above and beyond any man’s criticism, whereas Marthe is aware of shortcomings. She requires to be taught, Jerott; not to be worshipped.’
‘I understand,’ Jerott said. ‘I don’t think I am the person to do it.’
There was a short silence. Then Lymond said, ‘I think you must. There is no one to do it for you.’
Jerott looked at him. Then he said, ‘No.’ After a while he said, ‘I want to take her out of that house.