Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [264]
The beacons flared, and King James, cheated, betrayed, torn from his assurance of pious security, fell into a rage that even de Fleury could not pacify. The King was left with his priests and a doctor, and his fleet took to the water.
This time, it was a different fleet, with different tactics. ‘Your bloody fault, Nicol,’ had said John le Grant, when they planned it. ‘If you hadn’t had your small fishy joke, there would be no need to cater for Howard: there’d be no sense in his coming back. As it is, he’ll probably come for revenge.’
‘It would be an extravagant form of revenge,’ Argyll had said. ‘If he comes, it will be because it suits Edward’s strategy. A second attack like the last would be worthless. Howard would either come along with a land force, or to prepare for it.’ Colin, Earl of Argyll, had come back from the fighting, having quelled the rebellion and arranged to abstract and imprison his own grandson Donald, aged three. One of his daughters was wife to Angus Og, son of the rebel Lord of the Isles.
Much though he esteemed MacChalein Mor, Nicholas understood that it would not matter to Argyll whether his daughter wept for her small son or not: if necessary for the greater good, the boy would spend all his life in captivity, until he was grey. It was not the same as stealing your son from your wife. It was the same, in some ways.
Nicholas had said, ‘So this time we confront Howard, if he comes.’
‘Dìreach air a shùil, just so,’ Argyll had said. ‘Andrew Wood will draw up the plans. You and Crackbene and the men of Leith will help him. And it is sorry I am, but trade stops from this moment. We accept incoming ships, but none may leave during the season. We may need them all.’
He had been right. Of all the threats they had discussed, Jack Howard’s fleet was the one to materialise. They sailed into the Water of Forth, and there found Sir Andrew Wood, with the full Scottish squadron around him.
It was a short fight. The hope of the English, it seemed, had been to establish themselves on Inchkeith, the mid-estuary island which lay between Leith and Kinghorn. Balked of that, they tried nothing further, but turned picturesquely and left, sustaining a brisk rear engagement until well down the coast. After a while, the Scots let them go. No ships had been lost. They had been evenly matched, and Howard’s personal animus had not altered the odds. By mid-August, he and his fleet were back in Sandwich.
At the ensuing council in Avandale’s house, the Chancellor had an announcement to make. ‘Word has just come. The army which threatened Rhodes has withdrawn. The Sultan of Turkey, its leader, has died.’
His voice was grave, rather than triumphant, and it was a moment before anyone spoke. Struck down before fifty, Mehmet the poet, the drinker, the visionary, the amalgam of cruelty and tolerance: the man who, aged twenty-one, had won the legendary Constantinople from Byzantium, and had developed the fleets which had made him the most intimidating magnate of his time.
The driving power behind advancing Islam had gone, leaving a vacuum. Mehmet’s eldest son had died before him, strangled on his own father’s orders. The other two lived, and would already be vying for power. King Edward of England might well be emboldened to break the peace, and risk papal displeasure. The Turkish war had lost its urgency, for this year at least.
So Edward of England might now feel morally free to attack—but would he do it this year? The verdict, among those debating round Avandale’s table that day, was that he would not. Howard’s venture had failed. Edward had sent no army to support it, or to reinforce Gloucester, waiting in vain on the Border. There might be—there would be—trouble still on the Marches,