Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [79]
‘Good night,’ said Catherine d’Albon. A single tear, bright in the candlelight, slid down her face and caught her mother’s startled attention. It was followed by another; and then by a stream which bathed her face as she stood there in silence.
The Maréchale said nothing whatever. Only she looked at her weeping daughter and saw her long, glossy hair and pure profile and slender waist, set off by the incongruous garments. Then, retreating silently, Marguerite de St André reached her room and steadily walked to her looking glass.
She was too proud to weep. Instead, she called her daughter’s maid and told her to see to her mistress, for she wanted her in her best looks by morning.
Chapter 3
Jour qui sera par Reyne saluée
Le jour apres le salut, la priere
Le compte fait raison et valuée
Paravant humble oncques ne fut si fiere.
Of the four hundred Calvinists who met to worship that night in the Hôtel Bétourné, half escaped, including the comtesse de Laval and the pastor. Of the rest, five were chosen as an example and condemned to death by burning. Those who remained prisoner, preserved from severe injury by the arrival of M. Martine and his escort, were eventually released, upon the intercession of the Protestant Churches in Switzerland and the Protestant Princes in Germany.
The name of Madame la Maréchale de St André was not connected with the episode, especially as it became known about Paris that the lady was confined to her room with an illness. The comtesse de Laval did not take to her bed but on the contrary entered the public eye for quite another reason: her husband the Seigneur d’Andelot, captain-general of the French infantry, contrived to escape from his captors after Saint-Quentin, and a few days after the Bétourné incident he and his wife were reunited.
In Paris, having been refused permission for the third time to join the army in the field, the comte de Sevigny completed the task of enrolling and conveying to Laon the largest company of troops the crown of France had ever raised since the present reign started. He also devised ways of supplying, regulating and supporting the French-occupied fortresses still scattered round the disaster area of Saint-Quentin. Two of these, Le Catelet and the citadel of Ham, fell to the enemy.
By the time they were taken, it was clear even to the victorious Spanish and English that by choosing to stay in the area, they had forfeited wholly and for ever their chances of attacking Paris. Their infantry, unpaid for months, was deserting, most of it to the French army. Their English components, restive over news of Scottish attacks on their homeland, might well find good reason to leave also. And among the troops who remained, lethal quarrels were breaking out daily.
Against which the French army, already large, was swelling hourly. The Duke de Nevers at Compiègne had ten thousand French infantry gathered, and five thousand cavalry and six thousand Switzers, with a regiment of Germans expected presently. M. de Thermes had come with four thousand more Switzers from Piedmont, leaving eight thousand in Lyon as he marched north, to reinforce the defence M. de Sevigny had already left there. Danny Hislop, released from his watching brief, came north and joined Jerott and his wife in the Hôtel de Séjour.
The Duke de Guise left Rome with d’Aumale his brother and Marshal Strozzi and set sail for France with seven ensigns and all those gentlemen who had been fighting with him in Italy. Behind him the Pope, bereft, drew to a hurried conclusion this war waged, he let it be known, owing to misinformation received by him about King Philip and the Duke of Alva his commander, both of whom he now knew to be his obedient sons and excellently disposed towards him.
He received, with gratitude, the return by King Philip of all the states of the Church seized during the campaign, and the Duke of Alva rode into Rome amid celebrations which only ceased when, through an oversight, possibly, of the Pope’s immediate superior, the river