Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [74]
They were behind the church of St Hilary’s, and Catherine, in a tunic and breech hose of her father’s, was standing beside M. de Sevigny, dressed in riding clothes, waiting for her. Even as she got out of the litter, it was taken away. The other had already gone, and the rest of the spurious bodyguard. Before she could speak, Lymond said, ‘If you please, we must hurry. There’s a Dizainier and some troops coming uphill from the rue St Jacques.’
‘There is another,’ Catherine said; and her mother marvelled at the steadiness of her voice. ‘Coming down from the St Geneviève crossroads. They must be looking for escaped Huguenots.’
‘No doubt,’ said M. de Sevigny. He was standing, his hands on his hips, looking up at an extremely high wall. ‘Do you think they have rebuilt that recently? Ah, well. Faith, without Hope and Charitie Avalit nocht, my Sonne, said he.’
God then performed a series of miracles. M. de Sevigny stepped from her valet’s back straight into the flank of a vertical wall, climbed it in three moves and disappeared over it. From the other side, almost at once, came the noise of many feet, frenziedly running. The Dizainier and his men climbing the slope from the rue St Jacques heard it also. Someone shouted. There was a rattle of arms, and then the slap of more feet as the whole party set off, pursuing. An instant later the troops from St Geneviève could be heard joining them.
M. de Sevigny reappeared, quietly, through a postern. ‘I thought from the smell they still kept goats there,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Now, mesdames, you must run as fast as the goats did. Va, va te cacher que le chat ne te voie.’
One realized, running, that it was not a miracle: that there had been footholds on that wall, and that he had known about them. One further realized, as he led the way through all the twisting alleys about the Clos Bruneau, that he was not merely avoiding pursuit, but was making for one particular building. It was not until they reached it, in the darkness, that she recognized the low arcades on the corner of the rue Jean de Beauvais and knew what it was he had been aiming for.
She was familiar with the main entrance with its arched, studded door and wreathed busts of dead poets. He passed these, however, and stopped instead at a plain wooden gate with a grille, across which he drew the hilt of his poniard, gently, in a muted rattle of sound. He repeated it, at deliberate intervals until, without prior warning, a voice on the other side said, ‘This is the Collège de St Barbe, full of those who have stout right arms to protect their Christian sleep on a night such as this. State your business.’
The porter was an elderly man. The Maréchale could see the gleam of white hair on the other side of the grille, and a bony hand clutching a blanket. Lymond approached until he, also, was close to the grille. He had pulled his cap off. He said, ‘They told me you were still here, mon compére. Have you beaten anyone else for filling your best boots with horse-glue?’
There was a pause. And then the hand left the blanket and gripped the bars of the grille, while an unshaven face peered closer still. ‘The Master of Culter!’ The peering eyes moved in her direction, and then on to Catherine, her long hair round her shoulders. ‘And still my wild young friend, entangled in escapades. Who is after you? The father or the husband?’
‘The friends of the Cardinal of Lorraine, Joseph,’ said Lymond.
The old eyes opened and then steadied. ‘You were at the Calvinist gathering?’
‘They are searching the streets,’ Lymond said. ‘We need refuge until we can reach the river and cross it. But it need not be here.’
‘It was always here before,’ said the man Joseph. ‘Why not now?’ And, unlocking the gate, he pulled it open and held it for