Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [97]
No interest in the wholesale exploitation of his idea had, so far, been displayed by the comte de Sevigny. Riding north alone with him on his first reconnoitre the Marshal Strozzi, an ebullient man, set himself to plumb the depths of his partner’s precocity.
Lymond bore it without apparent resentment. Having dissected his position on Calais, Piero Strozzi went on to pick his brains methodically on the subject of flat terrain warfare, winter campaigning and the infiltration tactics of Tartars; and listened with concentration to all the younger man could tell him of the Tsar’s armies of hired Cossacks and the Janissaries, brought as children from other lands, who formed the core of the Sultan’s army.
‘You see: formidable!’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘The Turkish captain fights for himself; for his own advancement. He knows his wealth cannot be inherited. Here we buy our fighting-men over the counter, as the Tsar buys his Cossacks, you say. They come, they steal, they quarrel, they eat the countryside bare, they fight whomsoever you may point them at, even their own fellow-countrymen. Then they go home, leaving their masters satisfied or dissatisfied; and the land wasted behind them. You will never do good with a man who fights for money alone. You know that. He must covet rank and power. Or he must fight for his freedom, as your Scotsmen have done against the English. Or for the good of his soul, or the soul of his enemies, as your Russians have done against the Tartar, and the Knights of St John of Malta against the Mussulmen, and the Sultan’s army and fleet against the Christians——’
‘… Excepting the Most Christian King of France,’ Lymond reminded him affably.
‘Excepting, of course, the Most Christian King of France,’ Piero Strozzi accepted with equanimity. ‘Contre les loups, the Constable says, il se faut aider des chiens. And his merchants agree. Where would religion be, M. mon compagnon, without expediency? But he is the best fighting man that I know, he who goes to war for his eternal salvation,’
‘There is another,’ Lymond said. ‘He who goes to war from revenge.’
The dark face did not trouble to turn to him. ‘It is true,’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘Rangoni taught me well. I have fought in Luxemburg and Mirandole and, given the troops, I could have saved Siena … my God, what I could tell you about that! You were at Tripoli. But at Siena they were selling rats at an écu apiece before they surrendered. I have been General of the Galleys of France as my brother Leone was, and for the same reason: to throw out the usurpers who caused my father to die in Florence. And to free Florence, as your nation has striven to free itself from England. You disapprove, Scotsman?’
‘Leone is dead,’ Lymond said. ‘He might have been Grand Master of the Knights of St John and swept the Middle Sea free of Osmanlis, but he chose to put Florence first. The Knights had reason to complain, but if motives count, that must surely weigh on the credit side. There are men, as you say, who fight for rank or power or money. Or even for exercise and amusement, once the hunting season has ended.’
Then the swarthy face with its dark curls did turn. ‘So the fish dislikes water. You have about you a stink of Malta yet, mon petit ami. Do you spit on your grandfather, who fought all his life in France and in Italy for love of war and of Albany? And lost all his beauty for it. I saw him in Italy, with his fine yellow hair parted for him by a battle-axe. When he told you tales of his prowess, did you say, But what were your motives? Or have you forgotten him?’
‘I remember the scar,’ Lymond said. ‘And I remember his funeral. I was three years old at the time.’
‘Devil take you,’ said Piero Strozzi warmly. ‘You are the only man in this country who can make me forget