Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [190]
Put together, his interviews with Louis might appear like a growing romance, but in fact he had been sent for only occasionally since his separation from Sandy in Paris. Welcomed by proxy and handsomely installed with his suite at the Sign of the Cock, rue Saint-Martin, Sandy had immediately collapsed into his bed, and had hardly noticed when the King had sent for the sire de Fleury to ride south to his travelling household. In any case, he had William Monypenny to look after him.
On joining the royal party, Nicholas, a long-time admirer of Louis’s acumen, contented himself with playing the simpleton, leaving Louis to guess whether he was Albany’s promoter or King James’s spy. Louis studied the problem, then, rather than waste time on it, threw open the bidding with a blatancy which was an attraction in itself. Indeed, the chance to observe Louis held, for Nicholas, far more fascination than the prospect of wealth and advancement.
He did not say so, however; and when, the weather increasing in heat, the King remarked on his plans to take his Savoyard niece Louise to Dijon, Nicholas refrained likewise from comment. They moved from Vitry to Méry to Nemours, just south of Fontainebleau. There the King sent for M. de Fleury once more, and honoured him with a discourse on France’s great future: the submission of Franche-Comté and Brittany, the conquest of Picardy, the harrying into compliance of the Duke of the Tyrol, assuming that the young Duke of Lorraine would let his troops pass, as he had done for the late, tragic Duke Charles. And, lastly, there was hope of a pact that would usher in peace for a century with England.
After which, wiping his hands (he had been feeding his dogs), the King observed that there was a rumour of plague in Dijon, and he would be grateful if the sire de Fleury would travel ahead and investigate. It was near his grandfather’s comté, was it not?
It had been a lesser honour, a vicomté. It no longer existed. He had been given another lure. Another chance. Another option.
He went.
DIJON HADN’T CHANGED its name since its conquest, like Arras, but a third of its population had gone. Some of them had been replaced by Louis’s nominees, and a number of Burgundian officers had actually stayed to serve under France—they had known Louis, after all, when he was the Dauphin. There had been a popular rising against them, and some had been killed, but the rising had failed. You could see the battering the town had sustained: the capital of all Burgundy was at present too small for its walls, which enclosed great patches of rubble and weeds, rustling with wild and tame animals. It was also very quiet, with an air of artificial orderliness about the areas where town life still carried on. There was no plague.
When he had seen all he wanted to see, Nicholas produced some coins which no one knew that he had, and endeared himself to his escort by procuring for them the unlimited hospitality of a tavern for the night while he went to pay a visit to an old mistress at Damparis. In four days the young equerry, his two soldiers and Nicholas had discovered a great deal in common: the men-at-arms still could not quite understand how his French came to be as normal as their own.
He did not explain that he was not an expatriate Scot, but an expatriate Dijonnais, whose mother had married a Scot, who had disowned her. He had lied about seeing a mistress, but not about going to Damparis, which was thirty miles south of Dijon, and just outside Dole. The manor he meant to visit had belonged to the seigneur of Damparis and his wife, who had nursed his own first wife when she died. Eight years ago, the same couple had been actively kind to the child of his next marriage, but he did not know whether