Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [96]
‘I feel responsible for you. I didn’t think you’d last a month,’ Marshal Strozzi said cheerfully. ‘They may insist on sending you to Scotland, or they may feel they would elicit more reliable service from M. de Thermes. M. de Thermes greatly enjoyed his last spell of duty in Scotland.’
‘And you did not. You had a pike in your thigh, as I remember. In any case, I deserve more confidence, I do protest, than you are showing in me. In performance and in humility I am quite exemplary. The Duke cannot break me.
‘O Lord I am not puft in mynde
I have no scornfull eye;
I do not exercise my selfe
In things that be to hye.
But as a chylde that wayned is
Even from his mother’s brest
So have I Lord behaved my seife
In silence and in rest.’
Marshal Piero Strozzi, a man with a notable sense of humour, grinned, and then gradually ceased to grin. He said, ‘I have another good piece of advice to give you. Have regard to the sources of your quotations. And allow to drop your new friendship with M. d’Andelot. As the Duke de Guise requires credit with the King, so his brother the Cardinal requires credit with Rome. We are all watched. You will be no exception.’
‘Quid,’ Lymond said, ‘melius Roma? Scythio quid frigore peius? Do you have any other advice?’
‘Yes,’ said Piero Strozzi calmly. ‘Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Scotia, nube. Get a child on the d’Albon girl and make them force your marriage through before the gap between King and Pope becomes any wider. Her father counts for something in the kingdom yet. As St André’s son-in-law you would be safe. Or safer.’
‘Splendid!’ said Lymond gratefully. ‘Unless he finds out first that I’ve cuckolded him.’
The bellow of Strozzi’s laughter, rolling back, sang round Archie’s ears as he cantered briskly to catch up with his employer. When he could speak: ‘Tell me,’ said the Marshal, ‘why should the little Stewart want your wife for her lady in waiting?’
‘At a guess.’ said Lymond, ‘to stop me marrying Catherine d’Albon. It would be convenient if, like St Baldred of the Bass, one could be reproduced in triplicate to satisfy every party. What do you think of the project for Calais?’
They had reached the outermost bounds of the camp. ‘Do you need to ask?’ Strozzi said. ‘I wish, not that I had thought of it, but that I were as powerful as de Guise, and could claim to have thought of it. He will agree. He cannot fail. I would break my bâton if I thought otherwise. I see you recommend an immediate reconnoitre.’
‘You are an engineer.’ Lymond said.
Piero Strozzi’s dark, Italian face, eroded with age and weather, pressed itself into a pattern of creases. ‘Ah! Pride is not dead in you yet! Yes, I am an engineer. Duke François will not go: I shall be chosen. And for my companion, I will not have my choice questioned. You shall come in person and see if your unchivalrous scheme will indeed work. You do not hold Douai against me?’ He looked up, smiling.
‘Yes, I hold it against you,’ said Lymond, and he was not smiling at all. ‘But the days are evil: iniquity aboundeth, and charity waxeth cold. I shall not retaliate.’
*
Danny Hislop was absent on a mission to demolish the outlying areas of Péronne, and Jerott with Adam as his lieutenant had two companies skirmishing round Chauny when Piero Strozzi and Francis Crawford left unescorted a few days later to ride the hundred miles north to the enemy seaport of Calais.
The Duke de Guise, having given the venture his sanction, had disappeared to report to King Henry. He had little doubt of his reception although the idea, of course, was revolutionary. One did not, because of cold, disease, boredom, scarce food, bad roads and impossible transport, wage war in winter. Secure in this belief, the unpaid Spanish armies were already beginning to retrench and disperse at a time when, gathered for defence of her heartland, the French army had never been stronger. The shame