Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [8]
‘I find your arguments irresistible,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You didn’t think to introduce them before? You might have saved four soldiers’ dead pay.’
‘Christ,’ said Piero Strozzi, relieving him prudently of his sword, ‘I didn’t think, to tell you the truth, that marriage weighed so heavily on you. You surprise me. Does she bore you, or have you met a rich heiress?’
‘I am abandoning,’ said Lymond, ‘the foul yoke of sensual bondage. You’d better hurry. I sent Austin Grey for the eswardeurs.’
They did not know whether, on the last point, to believe him, but it encouraged Marshal Strozzi to vacate the Tournai quickly. And certainly Austin Grey, hurriedly searched for, was nowhere to be found on the premises.
It hardly mattered. Of the two men he had hoped to appropriate, Piero Strozzi was bringing the jewel.
He whistled, leaving the tavern, and on his way to the gates blithely slit, one by one, all the hooked row of hanging white cock bags.
Before he had stepped on to the quay the serpent necks, stretching and twisting, were out of the canvas.
Before he had sculled up the small river or the rest had reached, in their various ways, the Porte d’Arras, the Porte d’Equerchin, the Porte d’Ocre, the fighting-cocks had flounced to the earth two by two in the wide, empty yard of the Tournai; and tearing, gouging and stabbing, with dogged courage were killing each other.
*
Like the Duke of Arschot, Austin Grey made his escape in the pipe of a privy. How he got there he did not remember, but he awoke to find he was free and that his enemies, thwarted, had left Douai without him.
Lord Grey’s fury over the matter, when he reported it, exceeded even his own, but seemed to derive less from the deceit than from the consequent waste of Lord Grey’s time and energy. When, some weeks later, the English army in France received notice of other consequences rather more telling, he made a point of informing his nephew.
‘Your man Crawford of Lymond has left Court to go south to Lyon,’ said the Governor of the English fortress at Guînes. ‘On a French mission, naturally. It really is damned inconvenient that you didn’t kill him at Douai. It was a trap. They were out to catch you. You were quite entitled to.’
With Lord Grey, one did not make excuses. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Austin woodenly.
‘He’s gone to Lyon,’ said his uncle, irritably repeating himself. ‘Ostensibly to raise money, but it won’t be. The last place I want a senior French command to interest itself in. Those Spanish tacticians want their great donkey mouths pasted shut for them. First, the French find out we’re using Lyon as a mail-box. Next, they’ll hear about the German levies at Ferette. They’ve probably heard of them already. Two thousand horse and ten thousand cavalry preparing to attack Lyon once we’ve taken Saint-Quentin. And with Lyon and Paris in our hands, the war’ll be over.’
‘Paris, sir?’ said Austin Grey, his eyes on his uncle. Obstinate, old-fashioned, over-meticulous to a degree, Lord Grey was a figure of melancholy fun to his valet, his secretary and all those between wars who served him.
In battle, it was a different matter. He had a flair for it: a military instinct revered by the English high command and also by their allies the Spaniards, to whom he was now seconded.
‘Naturally, Paris,’ said Lord Grey of Wilton. ‘After Picardy is overrun, who is there to stop us? The Constable, in his dotage? The princes of the blood, St André and the rest of their decadent chivalry? Who is there? Even Piero Strozzi is on his way back to Italy.’
‘And Mr Crawford to Lyon,’ said Austin. ‘Is that such a bad thing for us, sir? It must have weakened the Constable’s forces.’
‘It might have,’ said Lord Grey testily, ‘if he had taken any troops to Lyon with him. All he has are some officers of the Bureau of Finance and a group of his own captains. They’ll be mustering Switzers on the spot, I shouldn’t wonder, and withdrawing Piedmont troops into the bargain.