To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [262]
Robin had left for Bruges the same day, with the regular courier. He was not going to war, but at least he was going to the heart of the Flemish business, where all his master’s dispatches first arrived. Robin already knew Catherine de Charetty. Now he would meet the other step-daughter and Diniz her husband. And nearby, of course, were Katelijne and Anselm Sersanders.
Jordan’s manner became petulant for a while, and Mistress Clémence dealt with it with her own brand of patient remorselessness. She was sorrier for the mother. Scotland might have been alien, but it had provided the lady with a busier, more companiable life than she now led in the isolation of Antwerp. She wondered if Dame Gelis allowed herself to remember, now and then, her castle of Beltrees and her houses in Edinburgh and the Canongate; and whether her husband would have been astonished if she did.
Chapter 35
OUTSIDE BEAUVAIS, the Duke of Burgundy’s summer campaign proceeded to fulfil all its unfortunate promise. The initial impulsive assault might have succeeded, had the attackers possessed a few proper ladders, and a little more ammunition for their guns. The town should certainly have fallen when the Duke himself turned back to invest it, with John le Grant and Jacques d’Orson controlling the artillery. And even though the citizens proved to be positive Tartars, hurling fire-faggots in the faces of the attackers and repairing the breaches almost before they were made, the town would have capitulated soon enough had it not been immediately and extravagantly reinforced from behind, at the one spot Duke Charles had insisted on leaving unguarded.
The air above the Burgundian camp hung thick with agonised oaths. ‘Holy Mother!’ cried Captain Astorre. ‘They were most of them bloody women! Did ye see the one with the hatchet!’
I thought she was looking for you,’ Nicholas remarked.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Julius said. ‘Women getting excited. They don’t want the rude soldiery tramping through their clean parlours.’
‘God’s toenails!’ said Astorre. ‘Where have you been? They’re keeping the Bresle gate on fire with bits of their own houses! I tell you, the women round here are worth more than rich German countesses!’
‘It’s a pucelle tradition,’ said Nicholas soothingly. All the commanders were grumbling, and the Italian captain was speechless; he began to think he might have got Astorre to Scotland after all. There was nothing more he could do. The strategic advice went to the Duke, and the Duke vetoed it. Everyone had heard the shouting from the Grand Bastard Anthony’s tent, when even his powerful half-brother couldn’t shake Charles’s belief in his own perspicacity.
Nicholas had made some attempt at persuasion himself, but his role at this court was that of financial and political adviser; his company was part of the army. He was aware that the sense of frustration was general in the inner administration as well, extending even to the Duke’s most loyal friends: Philippe de Commynes, his Master of Household; the Chancellor Hugonet, who kept day-to-day command of the affairs of the duchy, and of the ever-changing trains of envoys – from France and Milan, from England, Naples and even from Scotland.
Duke Charles had called Nicholas before him after the Scottish embassy. One of the equerries, he was almost sure, had been Andro Wodman. There had been no chance to drop a hint about the Duke’s military tactics, since the tirade merely covered all the usual complaints about Scotland. Nicholas recapitulated, humbly, all that he had already offered in the direction of loans, ships, guns, and long-term Scottish planning.
‘But Iceland!’ the Duke had interrupted. ‘What can you do for us in Iceland, except waste time and resources on a personal business adventure, and force the lord of Cortachy to do the