Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [180]
“Do you believe that?” asked Gideon.
The blue eyes were level. “What do you want to find out? Whether I profess the ‘damnable opinions of the great heretic Luther’?”
“You quoted Ascham. I wondered why.”
“I also quoted the late King James the Fifth. I echo like a mynah, that’s why. Sticking to birds: if I were a wren, I shouldn’t want a crocodile’s egg in my nest.”
“Even to protect you from other crocodiles?”
“On the contrary. We are remarkably pest-free in our part of the world. It’s England, I think, that needs this alliance.”
“Well, of course,” said Gideon impatiently. “Look at the mess at Boulogne. Between the Protector and the Emperor and the King of France, Europe’s become a crocodiles’ convention. I don’t want to become part of the Holy Roman Empire, and it wouldn’t do Scotland any good either. You’re a threat to three million people out of all proportion to your size. You can’t expect us to leave you alone, to watch you siphon up the dregs of Europe and inject them into our backside. Your Government agreed to this miserable marriage, and then broke its word. It announces that it can’t abide anti-Papists and it can’t let down its dear old ally France. But your man Panter has been in Paris all the same, soliciting for a separate peace on behalf of Scotland with the Emperor.”
“Chess,” remarked Lymond. He spoke on equal terms, concisely, with little trace of the dilettante manner. “And France has been to London soliciting for a separate peace with England. All moves in the game. And sometimes the feint turns into genuine play; sometimes not. France may sell us for Boulogne: I don’t think so, but she may. Or she might simply use us as a temporary blind for her real attack. The Lutherans among us think so, and so does the noble faction in need of English money. Religion and cupidity are on your side.
“Against that, you haven’t seen what your late king managed in the way of practical persuasion, with Somerset following. You haven’t seen abbeys brought to the ground, villages annihilated by the hundred, a nobility decimated, a country brought to poverty which thirty years ago was graced above any other in Europe with the arts of living. That has bred hate, and hate is a factor like any other.”
“If hate can be learned, it can be forgotten,” Gideon said. “I know all about chess: I would rather have an honest emotion—even hatred. The Emperor presses us to help his Flemish subjects recover the money you owe them, since the poorer you are, the more easily you will fall to us, and the worse off the French will be. Nothing emotional about that. Or about the Scots Commissioners trying to reopen negotiations for the royal marriage at every threat of danger, while the Queen Dowager perfects her plans to bring the French in and keeps Arran quiet with a promise to marry the Queen to his son.”
He sat forward in his chair.
“What if she succeeds? Where’s your inde—independence then? You’ll be a province of France, under an implacably Catholic King, with French in your key positions and your fortresses. I know all about Henry’s claim to be King of Scotland. I know all about the broken promises on both sides—the reprisals, the sinkings, the Border raids and the rest of it. But will you be any better off under the French? Because you will be under the French. Mary of Guise will marry that child to the King of France if she possibly can. What has France ever done for Scotland? Look at Flodden.”
“Look at Haddington,” said Lymond. “Now you are conjuring up crocodiles. France has too many commitments to spare enough troops to rule Scotland. Good lord, if England can’t do it, then France isn’t likely to. That leaves Scotland under a regent in the Queen’s absence—and if I were the Scottish Government, the Queen would become