To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [273]
‘See!’ said King Louis. ‘See, mon brave! What do we call you? The Scots have made you a baron now, have they not? See, my lord of Fleury, what other fish have leaped into our pool from the Burgundian sea! Since M. de Commynes has joined us, we know all our poor cousin’s secrets: ah, what trouble they are making for themselves in the Pas de Calais! Roving hither and thither in such anger, while all the time our captains ride ahead of them, laughing! There is nothing you can tell us that we do not already know, save only what you have done for us in Scotland. So come. Let us step aside. M. de Commynes will forgive us. Tell us – how sad it seems – why after all, our dear nephew of Scotland has found it impossible to send us an army, even though you persuaded us – you emptied our pockets – on the pretext that he would?’
They were out of earshot. At a sign, all the others drew back. Louis sat, leaving Nicholas standing.
Nicholas said, ‘Monseigneur knows that the Scottish Parliament forbade it.’
‘As you knew they would,’ Louis remarked.
‘As I was afraid that they might, so long as the King remained childless. I had private word, monseigneur, just before I left Beauvais. The Queen has hopes of a child.’
It was a gamble. The word had been no more than a whisper, and might be contradicted. But for sure, Louis would not have heard it yet.
He had not. His eyes, black as ferrets, examined him. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It is early,’ said Nicholas. ‘But it means an army may come. Also marriage alliances. It is to be hoped that the King will take the best advice about that.’
‘Yours?’ said Louis. ‘Why were you given your barony?’
‘I have made myself useful,’ Nicholas said. ‘My lord “your royal nephew was pleased to thank me for the wealth I brought him from Iceland.’
‘We heard,’ Louis said. ‘Wealth which makes it unnecessary for him to sue us for a pension.’
‘Wealth which persuaded him to invest in a ship,’ Nicholas said. ‘He has bought from me the great vessel The Lion, which will eventually bring you his army. He has nothing left. If monseigneur wishes to bind him with a pension, then I can promise the opportunity is about to arise.’
‘So!’ said Louis. ‘How subtle we are, serving three rulers and lining our purses. But we think perhaps that now, like Paris, you must approach your final decision. You cannot surely deceive your poor Duke for very much longer. And what has the Duke to offer compared with ourselves? You have seen our young friend de Commynes, who has just acquired land, wealth and the promise of an heiress to marry. The finest officers of our late brother of Guienne have chosen to join us, and not for a pittance. And Brittany! Why do you think we are here and not with our army in Brittany? Because the lord of Lescun, the ablest man at the side of our nephew and cousin the Duke, has just joined us, for a pension of six thousand francs, half of Guienne, two seneschalships, the command of a castle in Bordeaux and two in Bayonne, twenty-four thousand crowns in ready money, and – if we remember it all – our order of St Michael, with a comté.
‘You see,’ said Louis, ‘what we are willing to offer to those who serve us, and in the cause, naturally, of peace? The war in Brittany, for all practical purposes, has ceased.’
‘Monseigneur! I am amazed!’ Nicholas said.
‘Indeed. So the long-awaited English will certainly not arrive, and our unfortunate cousin of Burgundy may as well load his flux-ridden army into carts and carry them back home to Artois. The war is over,’ said Louis. ‘There is no more work for your company to do, and you are paid – poorly paid – by a self-willed man with no more wits in his head than a goose. Bring your army and join us.’
‘In what capacity?’ Nicholas said.
‘Ah,’ said the King. There was a table, with a small stool beyond it. He waved Nicholas to the