by Checkmate
Some of them were in the river already. Jerott, his thirst slaked, his bodily vigour still driving him at battle pitch, left the village and strode with the rest shouting and singing to the Luce, unbuckling his straps as he went. His sergeant, his points untied, was fondling a girl with her back to the wall in the darkness: as Jerott passed he was having her, neatly and urgently.
A party of Germans, yelling to one another, lit them up with a dangling lantern and began chanting obscenities. Behind them was Jerott’s page. Jerott, grinning, began to fling him items of armour as he unfastened them until, in shirtsleeves and hose, he stood calf-deep in the red surging water, drenched and laughing among the nude hairy flesh which leaped and vaulted and screamed in the spray all about him.
A lighted brand, tossed high in the sky, lit the cream mane and tail of an Andalusian mare, and the doublet and bared head of the rider, still as a monument, looking at him.
Someone shrilled. ‘Join us, Marshal!’
The Marshal, if he enjoyed the joke, did not answer. But the Isabel flung up her head, as if a goad quite unaccustomed had been used on her. The next moment she had kicked out her heels, and snorting had plunged abruptly into the gathering darkness.
Jerott said to his page, ‘Get my horse, quickly.’
*
A single rider, at dusk, is not so hard to track in open country; the more so if he is quite reckless of pursuit, and of the noise he makes.
Late as he was in the chase, Jerott was saved by the fact that his quarry had no destination. When, discerning the hoofbeats, he first glimpsed mare and horseman streaming like smoke through the meadow-lands, he saw the Isabel virtually riderless, and knew his instinct this time was the right one.
There were hedges coming, and the slate-coloured glimmer of ditches and ponds and behind, black on the indigo sky, the crenellated line of a deep band of forest. Jerott, nursing his mount, turned its head to the trees and, converging, asked it to overtake the other uncontrolled horse, far in front of him.
Forty miles on the march had tired the Isabel but, lashed as she had been, she was far too excited to falter. She took a ditch in her stride, and another, and then, her nostrils wide, soared over the thorn hedge which guarded the woodland.
Behind, instead of firm ground, lay a quagmire. Her legs sank into it buckling, and bone jarred on bone and flesh squeezed into flesh as her smooth chestnut flanks struck the earth, twisting. She threshed once, her ribs crushed, and died, almost before Lymond stirred from the spongy ground where she had flung him.
He had broken no bones. What had gone was his bastion: the mindless violence through which thought could not seize him. Without it he stayed where he was, his hair brushing his knees, his folded arms tight as a man with a spear in him.
And so Jerott found him, and obtaining no answers, had to locate for himself what the damage was. There was none that he could find. Only a constant and uncontrollable shuddering; a visible comber of movement running through and through the arrogant body.
Jerott said. ‘Oh Christ,’ and taking the other man’s shoulders held him as if in a vice; in the obliterating grip that itself can sometimes stop thought, and re-form what is shattered below it.
After a long time, the shivering lessened, and Jerott scrupulously slackened his grip and said, ‘Francis? There’s a tree just behind you.’
And he understood that, for in a little while he pulled himself back and laid his shoulders against it. His lids, in the near-darkness, appeared to be closed, and at no time at all had he spoken.
Stillness descended. Behind them in the wood a bird called and then flew, in a ruffle of wing beats. Something brushed through the grass near the Isabel and then raced away as Jerott shifted. His own horse, its reins knotted, stood heavily, its bridle jangling as its hips altered. Jerott said, ‘It’s Philippa, isn’t it? Philippa herself: not the want of a woman?’
There was the flat silence of extreme exhaustion, both of the mind and of the body. Then Lymond said, ‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Jerott said; and the manner in which he said it was the apology he did not think of making. Then he said, ‘There is no need for you to be here. I can take this convoy to Amiens.’
There was another silence. Then, ‘No,’ Lymond said. ‘No. I shall stay with it.’
‘You can’t stay with it like this,’ Jerott said. And when Lymond made no answer, he said, ‘What does it matter? There will be a truce. In a few weeks you can return to her anyway.’
‘I can’t,’ Lymond said. ‘I can’t. That’s the trouble. I don’t think I can go back at all.’
He had his palms over his face. ‘The marriage is incomplete, Jerott. And there is no way that I can go on with it any longer.’
*
On arrival at Amiens, the Marshal de Sevigny proceeded directly to his business, which was the preparation of a camp in which to receive and lodge, feed and water an army of sixty thousand with its arms, munitions and horses; and to arrange, according to the plan of battle, a suitable disposition for the artillery, the sentries and the various companies and their leaders.
It was decided to bring extra cannon from Paris. Jerott Blyth, extremely grim-faced of late, left to arrange it, and bore with him a note from the Marshal de Sevigny to his brother.
This he took to the Hôtel de l’Ange, avoiding Austin Grey but insisting on being seen by Lord Culter who received him, the letter opened and read, with summary courtesy. ‘You know what this letter contains?’
‘Yes,’ Jerott said. ‘Francis believes the Cardinal may have guessed that you all know the truth about the dowry papers which signed away Scotland. Have you seen any evidence of it?’
‘None,’ said Richard Crawford. ‘Nor does my brother give reasons for thinking so. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps it would merely suit him to speed our departure, now that he has shown his coat to be so unequivocally Gallic.’
Jerott, his face red, clung to his temper. ‘Soldiering is his trade. He merely follows it. In any case, surely common sense alone tells you to leave France. Such things don’t remain secret for ever.’
‘Particularly,’ Richard said, ‘if you have a brother as nimble as I have. I’m told that the impossible has occurred, and the Duke de Guise’s pedestal trembles. Let Francis only bring down the Cardinal, and the power he wanted is here, with Scotland, no doubt, as his colony. Is anything beyond him now, even a princess?… Or no, I forgot. He is, shortsightedly, still legally tied to his present wife.’
Lacking the finesse to reply, and unwilling to knock the man out of the window, Jerott left him. To Marthe, whose interest he could count on, he eventually was able to relieve all his feelings.
She had no comfort to give him but sent him back, at least calmed, to the source of his anxiety at Amiens. Then, having made sure of her privacy, Lymond’s sister prepared her travelling coffers, her mules and her servants and set out for Blois and her house in the street of the Popinjays. From there, she lost no time in calling on Philippa.
*
The comtesse de Sevigny was in the gardens when Marthe sought her, and Applegarth had to lead his surprising guest by marble steps and wide paths through arbors and elm bowers, past knotbeds and box groves and walled orchards and water gardens until at last she was discovered, in a grotto canopied by a vine trellis. Before her was a marble sarcophagus, on which lay a number of papers trapped by pebbles, and she was sitting on a low stone bench beside it, dressed in the loose Andalusian robe which had become all the vogue recently, and writing busily.
Nicholas Applegarth, who had not met Marthe before, was sufficiently instructed by rumour to know that it might be wise to remove her from the house, and relied on Philippa’s good sense to receive her without warning.
Even so, when he called gently, ‘Madame!’ and Philippa looked up, he wondered if he had acted correctly. Then Philippa rose and said, ‘Marthe. I’m glad you have found your way here. Nicholas, would you look after Mistress Blyth’s people, and perhaps send us something c
ool to take while we talk? Come and sit.’
‘I have no one with me. I am staying at the Maison de Doubtance,’ Marthe said. And as Applegarth left she said, erect and quite uncompromising, ‘Since I am sister to Francis, I should like to know why you are killing him?’
The pen she was holding dropped from Philippa’s hand. She knelt after a moment and lifted it. Then, kneeling still, her hair arcading her hands, she said, ‘He is ill?’
‘Don’t you know?’ Marthe said. ‘According to Jerott, he is working, persecuted by headaches, like a being possessed by the devil; and under a self-imposed regimen which is breaking him. Surely that doesn’t surprise you?’
Philippa sat down. She said, ‘I thought the headaches had gone.’
Marthe looked down at her. ‘But here, he was at the beginning of his trial by endurance. Now he is tired, and in a place where all the demands on him are physical and he is surrounded by nothing but violence and vigour and virility. And he is staying, because there is nowhere else for him to go.’
‘Did he tell Jerott that?’ Philippa said.
‘He told Jerott,’ said Marthe deliberately, ‘that yours is a platonic marriage, and because of that, he could never return to you. That is all Jerott knows. On the other hand, I know the truth.’
The flowerbeds by the fountains were full of clove pinks. The thick, hot scent of them was stifling, and the sun, reflected from the white marble, dazzled Philippa’s sight, so that she closed her eyes and drew a long breath before opening them. Then she said, ‘How can you know it? It belongs to me, and to Francis.’
‘And to Austin Grey,’ Marthe said. ‘And to John Elder, and to Sybilla. It will stop there, I imagine, although the Lennoxes are likely to be edified by it. I shall not bore you with the details, but Madame Roset’s body was found, apparently murdered by a great-uncle of your husband’s. Elder deduced most of the rest from what he already knew, and made sure Austin heard of it. The Marquis, of course, is waiting anxiously in Paris for you to see the light of reason and fly from the arms of your pimping seducer. Are you with child by the old man?’ said Marthe.
That took a little while to answer. Then Philippa lifted her head and said, ‘No. Marthe, if there is a way out of this, will you leave me to find it?’
‘After what you have done?’ Marthe said. ‘What did you think you were achieving when you marched into that house like Joan of Arc going to the faggots? Saving his honour? The world could learn tomorrow he was the illegitimate son of Gavin Crawford and do no more than crack its jaw yawning. Saving his life? He won’t go to Russia, he won’t turn his own hand against himself now, that is certain. He will merely die, starved and strangled like a dog on a chain, unable to live with you or away from you. Could you not see it? With all your vaunted care for his life and his name, did you not visualize what would happen?’
‘No,’ Philippa said; and her voice, even to herself, was unrecognizable. ‘I didn’t see it. Whatever punishment you think that merits, I am suffering it.’ Then after a long moment she said, ‘He is not the child of Gavin Crawford, and neither are you. Your father is Gavin’s father, the first Francis Crawford. Your mother was Béatris and his was Sybilla. He is a child of incest.’
Marthe said, ‘Look at me.’
Long accustomed to bastardy, she should have found nothing of great moment in that news. But her eyes, when Philippa looked at her, were open and black as she had sometimes seen those of Francis in great pain, although she was smiling. She said, ‘So he is not my full brother. How obstinate … how obstinate can an old woman get? So the world would not have yawned. But even so, do you think now that he would not have preferred a quick death to this?’
Then as Philippa did not answer, Marthe said, ‘A raped woman should go on her knees if her husband will accept her. You talk of suffering. None of this is Bailey’s fault, or Sybilla’s, or the chiding hand of the One. It is yours. There is no schoolgirl since the spheres were created who has made such a drama out of losing her chastity. You claim to love him. After all he has done for you, can you not grit your teeth and take him, even if you loathe his sex, and all he stands for?’
Philippa, her head high, did not flinch from the angry face above her. She said, ‘Do you not think he would prefer a quick death to that?’
‘Dissemble then,’ Marthe said. ‘Kiaya Khatún must have taught you something. Give him what you would have brought to please Suleiman, had he called you.’
Philippa said, ‘There is no artifice of Güzel’s that Francis does not know. What do you think it would mean to him, to find me using them?’
‘Then kill him as you are doing,’ Marthe said. ‘But it is not a quick death you are offering. Have you not learned from your sensitive swain, there in Paris? Such scruples seldom injure the owner. It is the men like Francis who will allow themselves to be dragged through the market-place before they will relinquish the code they have chosen to live by.’
She said softly, ‘If I owed what you owed to Francis I should go to bed with my farm manager, with Austin Grey, with any functioning male animal of my acquaintance until I knew I could give my husband a love so well simulated he would never question it. I would do it, because I am of his blood. And I tell you, he would do it for you.’
‘No,’ Philippa said. ‘The voice that suggests that is not to be listened to.… The Dame de Doubtance was more than an obstinate old woman, wasn’t she, Marthe? She ordained that a man of destiny should be born; and when her daughter Béatris produced only a sickly boy, turned her eyes elsewhere for the perfect match for the first Francis Crawford. She found it in Sybilla. But when Sybilla’s son came, the stars told her he was not for her grand-daughter.’
‘No,’ Marthe said. ‘It was you he was to marry. She told me. When he lay in Blois after the fire she spoke the name over and over so that his mind would remember it.’ She paused. ‘She said he was my brother.’
There was sweat on the fair skin. You should have died with the dog, the harsh voice had said, speaking through her lips in Lyon.
‘But is your half brother. Marthe, he would never have been for you,’ Philippa said. ‘Gaultier was a nonentity. She took him, and used him, and let him destroy himself. But you are her grand-daughter. Why did she tie you to us? Why did she make you her messenger? It has brought you nothing but misery.’
‘Perhaps,’ Marthe said, ‘so that there will be someone here when you have gone.’
*
She left soon after that, and Nicholas’s servant, returning with refreshments for the Countess’s guest, found the grotto empty, and the light of Jupiter’s fountain playing on empty marble, denuded of pen and of papers.
Back in the château Philippa had already locked her letters away and after calling her servants and delivering to them, quietly, a series of long and explicit orders, went to find Nicholas Applegarth in his cabinet.
To him she said, ‘I have decided to go home to England. I have some correspondence to entrust to you, which I shall explain to you shortly, and I shall also ask you to send me the money which Francis has told you about. I shall need an escort to Paris. After that, I hope to have Lord Allendale’s company.’
The kind face of Nicholas Applegarth had become very stern. ‘And Francis?’ he said.
‘It is Francis I am thinking of,’ Philippa said.
Since Bailey’s death no man had been set to guard her, for the enemy was now within, and not outside the gates of Sevigny.
The day she left, she wrote the letter that had to be written, and sent it this time with Archie as her courier. Then she set out north for Austin, and England.
Chapter 7
Trop tard, tous deux les fleurs seront perdues …
La pitié grande sera sans loing tarder
Ceux qui donoient seront contraints de prendre.
Between Sevigny and Amiens lay the better part of two hundred miles, and since he had been told not to hurry, and had besides a call to make on the way, Archie Abernethy took a week to cover it, d
uring which time no letters bearing his own seal reached François de Sevigny.
By the third week in August, when Archie entered the town of Amiens and sought a guide to take him to the French camp, the King and his court had been established for ten days in the Episcopal Palace and all its encircling buildings to the south and west of the Cathedral, spilling down into the low town beside the church of St Germaine and the belfry. With the King was the Dauphin, the King of Navarre, the Duke of Lorraine and the Duke of Montpensier, newly ransomed from Spanish captivity, as well as two children, the sons of the Duke de Guise and his brother, with their governors and gentlemen.
The rest of the court together with all the King’s principal commanders was outside Amiens, in the camp now spread for many miles along the banks of the Somme. And facing it, with fifteen miles of flat ground between them, was the camp of Philip of Spain, with the King’s standard flying over the royal pavilion, and sixty thousand soldiers entrenched there under Savoy, Alva and Egmont, the last fresh from his triumph at Gravelines.
In size and quality, there was little to choose between the two armies. Both were well armed and supplied with munitions. Both were plagued with immense numbers of mercenaries, who had been known, on occasion, to refuse to fight one another. France had the better leadership, but Spain had the support of the English fleet, still harrying the coasts and immobilizing valuable men in the French coastal fortresses.
On the other hand, the Spanish army lay within the French frontiers, and on land which had been laid waste for miles to deny them food and forage. Up to the moment of Archie’s arrival, every clash between the two forces had been occasioned by the Spaniards’ hunger. Dourlans, which was well stocked, was saved by the extra thousand men raced there beforehand by Danny Hislop. But an attack threatened on Montreuil on the Boulogne road, where Hoddim had placed reinforcements. It was clear that the worse his condition, the sooner King Philip’s army would be inclined to turn a foraging feint into a true assault in one direction or another. So, day and night, the French camp was held to the alert, with a reconnoitring routine which continued, irrespective of the alarms and counter-attacks which sent them out, in numbers up to six thousand during most nights and often in daytime.
