Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  So he, too, had been thinking of the two missing officers. Who, if he had not turned them off, would be here in Paris now.

  It was not a tenable subject. Jerott, catching himself in the act of draining his wineglass, arrested it and said, ‘I don’t see why you can’t march. Why not, Francis? You leave Paris impregnable, surely, behind you. De Nevers is collecting fresh troops at Laon. And the Picardy garrisons, they say, add up to quite an army.’

  ‘Saint-Quentin held out fifteen days,’ Lymond said. ‘It gave de Nevers time to work on the frontier and garrisons, certainly. Salignac is at Le Catelet; Sancerre at Guise, de Bourdillon at la Fère, d’Humières at Péronne, Chaulnes at Corbie; Sepois in the Castle of Ham, d’Amboise at St Dizier and Montigny at Chaulny. Soissons and Compiègne are empty. The ground round about has been burned, but there is a limit to the value of that: the harvests in the Low Countries are in, and Philip will have all the bread he has need for. The garrisons have been active too, cutting off Spanish supply lines, robbing wagon trains and taking powder and munitions and money. But the rumour is that Philip is sitting in Saint-Quentin with his eye on those fortresses. He can stay and pick them off one by one, in which case he has lost his one chance of Paris. Or he can march on us now. And, I’m afraid, take us.’

  Jerott stared at him through bleared eyes. ‘With an armed garrison of one hundred and seventy-five thousand men, and a battery of eighty guns on the Porte Saint-Denis ramparts?’

  ‘Yes. Well, in some ways France, like the island of Zanzibar, hath a peculiar monarchy,’ Lymond said. ‘Unsurpassable for culture and courtesans, but somehat confused about fortifications. They did some work in the scare of ’23, and added a few trenches and ditches and bulwarks in ’36, but that long curtain wall by the Bastille has been building for four years and the bastions are God’s gift to a good squadron of German gunners, working for almost anybody.

  ‘And the University side, of course, is hardly protected at all. The general theme seems to be that it’s all much too difficult, and if things are bad, the rabble will rise against you anyway, so you might as well pack your silk coats and your candlesticks and take horse smartly for Orléans at the first sign of trouble. Half female Paris had evacuated already by the time I got here, and the men would have followed if I hadn’t tripled the watch on the gates and the river and announced I’d hang anyone I caught leaving illicitly.

  ‘My greatest task has been to prevent the royal family from melting off to the Loire like refined candle wax. They sent the Dauphin away, but after that were persuaded to listen to reason, once they had brought away the Charlemagne Jewel from Saint-Denis and added four hundred archers to the King’s bodyguard. Thereby somewhat diminishing the required atmosphere of superior confidence.’

  ‘You let them dress in sackcloth and carry out the relics from the Sainte Chapelle,’ Jerott said.

  ‘Candidly, I doubt if I could have stopped them,’ Lymond said. ‘I should point out, however, that it was not an expression of panic. It was an indication that the Almighty, having observed the bared feet of the entire royal family, must now be on our side. So you think that Paris is strong? I hope King Philip and the Duke of Savoy have that impression too. For apart from digging a few trenches, we haven’t put a spoonful of earth on their inadequate fortifications since I came here. There wasn’t time for it. We had to convey, instantly, the appearance of a well-armed, well-protected stronghold, and we apparently succeeded, because Philip didn’t march on us. He may of course change his mind. In which case, the King will wish he had obeyed his impulse to rush out of Paris. And so, no doubt, shall I.’

  Behind Jerott the man, who drank too much and worried about Marthe and Alex and Fergie, was Jerott the Knight of St John, the officer who had once seemed to be Lymond’s tanist. He said, ‘Christ, Francis. You can’t do that with a city. How much was fake? The guns? Was that why no shot came our way?’

  ‘We have eight pieces of ordnance: that’s all,’ Lymond said. ‘The garrison is also mostly fantasy. We towed seventy thousand artisans upstream in barges and had them enter the city at night, drums beating and pennants flying. The Venetian Ambassador was most impressed.’

  ‘You’re feeding him false reports? Is that why you were telling him tonight about new offers of alliance with Turkey? But living in the city,’ said Jerott, ‘he must know more than you want him to know.’

  ‘Not much,’ said Lymond. ‘But in any case, his dispatches are most carefully edited. The version which falls into Spanish hands is not always, shall we say, the version which his secretary wrote out for him. Don’t worry. I know that a highly trained set of European statesmen and soldiers isn’t going to be deceived in quite the same way as a boatload of Algerian corsairs.

  ‘On the other hand, they have other weaknesses. Double spies, for example, and a willingness to believe any written material they find on dead men or in captured wagon trains. We even managed a few evil portents. You didn’t hear of the screaming devils who floated one midnight over Saint-Quentin and Cambrai? King Philip’s German mercenaries in particular didn’t like them at all, especially as they haven’t been paid for some time. They’ve been pouring in to de Nevers at Laon ever since. I won’t risk them in Paris, but for an instant down payment, they can help protect Amiens, for example, and make themselves as much of a nuisance to their old employers as they like.

  ‘You see, at any rate, that we have one or two ticklish weeks still before us. If they do attack, we can do very little about it, and the monarchy will indeed have to escape south, which is one reason why I have been anxious that Polvilliers shouldn’t be waiting for them in Lyon with an evil smile and six thousand infantry. That’s all. I shouldn’t have kept you from Marthe. I only wished to explain why I should like you to stay in Paris meanwhile.’

  He stopped and then said, ‘I should say, too, since you have been so unnaturally reticent, that everything possible is being done to find out what happened to Guthrie and Hoddim.’

  ‘If I hadn’t married Marthe,’ Jerott said, ‘I should have been there as well, I suppose. Or maybe not. I shouldn’t have stopped you from going to Russia.’

  The subject hung in the air. Lymond stirred. His wine, on the table beside him, was almost untouched. Then, as Adam had done, he answered an unspoken appeal. ‘Why did you marry Marthe?’ he said. And then rephrased it. ‘I know what you feel about her. Why did you insist on marriage?’

  Beneath Jerott’s drawn brows, his splendid dark eyes were stark with misery. ‘She thinks it was to compensate for her birth. I suppose it was. I loved her. I wanted to give her a position.’

  ‘She has a position,’ Lymond said. ‘It is not that of housekeeper, nor of a mother, to you or your children. Marriage has weakened it: she is fighting not to lose it altogether.’

  It hurt. ‘You mean,’ said Jerott, ‘she wants to be like Güzel? A raddled courtesan selling her body round Europe for power?’

  He had meant to wound. But instead Lymond said, smiling faintly, ‘No. Not like Güzel. Kiaya Khátún is above and beyond any man’s criticism, whereas Marthe is aware of shortcomings. She requires to be taught, Jerott; not to be worshipped.’

  ‘I understand,’ Jerott said. ‘I don’t think I am the person to do it.’

  There was a short silence. Then Lymond said, ‘I think you must. There is no one to do it for you.’

  Jerott looked at him. Then he said, ‘No.’ After a while he said, ‘I want to take her out of that house. You heard her. You would think the old woman was still alive.’

  ‘I think you should blame me for that, rather than Marthe,’ Lymond said. ‘The Dame de Doubtance’s interest in my parentage seems to have entangled us all. I am sorry if I have been less explicit than I might have been. It involves, as you might imagine, the closest members of my family.’

  Jerott said, ‘If you believe anything discreditable about the closest members of your family then you’re a fool, Francis; and so are Marthe and Philippa for misleading you. Why don’t yo
u stop them from tampering?’

  Lymond laughed, and lifting his cup, toasted him mockingly. ‘Why don’t I go to Russia?’ he said. ‘In fact, Philippa appears dedicated to whitewashing my antecedents and Marthe to carrying out, with some reluctance, the last behests of the Lady. That, I imagine, concludes her interest, unless she has received further instructions from the hereafter. The two people who led us into the ambush at Lyon were both from her household.’

  Jerott went very red. ‘Marthe didn’t know that,’ he said. ‘Neither did I. Marthe heard the hammering and let the boy out. You didn’t warn her.’ He paused and said shortly, ‘At any rate, you and Philippa dodged them. No real damage was done.’

  ‘No,’ Lymond agreed, and laid his cup gently down. ‘No real damage was done. Come. Finish your wine and I shall take you downstairs and past the sleeping d’Albons.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Jerott. ‘I had a message from Marthe. She had no success in Lyon in tracing the old woman’s key. She’s sent it to Philippa to try it at Sevigny. You know Philippa has been staying there, and went to see the Dame de Doubtance’s old house in Blois?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lymond said. ‘Nick Applegarth writes to me.’

  ‘You do keep her under surveillance, don’t you?’ said Jerott. ‘Apparently she has made no world-shaking discoveries. She is going to visit the convent at la Guiche and then leave for England. The Schiatti boys brought back a letter for Marthe. Is Philippa safe to wander about the countryside, Francis? I told Adam she had some Culter grooms with her.’

  ‘I have asked Nicholas to make up her entourage,’ Lymond said. He lapsed into thought. Jerott, losing all of his shallow momentum, remained resting and closed his eyes presently. When he opened them the room was quite silent and the fire, burning down, had left the room dim so that all he saw of the King’s commander in Paris was a line of admirable, unmoving limb and a hand finer than Marthe’s, loosely laid on the chair-arm.

  He was not asleep. He was listening, Jerott saw, to the sound of rapid footsteps. A moment later there was a rap on the door and hardly waiting, Archie Abernethy marched in.

  Encumbered with sickening torpor, Jerott assembled his guts and made to stand upright. ‘I beg your pardon. I fell asleep. Marthe must be worried.’

  ‘She was going to bed when I left her,’ said Archie Abernethy. Jerott had never noticed before how the little man studied Francis. The bright black eyes in the lined face covered every inch of his body and face, from his unchanged clothes to his hand by the half-empty wine cup. And Francis, although his words were not addressed to Archie, had his eyes fixed on him in return.

  ‘It’s one o’clock, Jerott,’ said Lymond softly. ‘Marthe will long since have been asleep. Archie?’

  ‘I was sweirt tae interrupt ye,’ said Archie. ‘And it’s a civil mischief forbye, no’ an army matter. But the clash has gone round that the Calvinists are holding a coven at the Hôtel Bétourné and sacrificing live bairns on the altar. The Châtelet’s sent out five hundred foot and archers to block either end of the rue St Jacques, and they’ve got wagons and armed men in the rue du Foin and the rue Poirée and all the other streets thereabout. They say the Calvinists will leave their meeting-house at two in the morning, and God help them when they skaill. The streets are clear, but the houses are buzzing with Papes like a wasp-bike, all gleg-set tae stone them.’

  ‘Five hundred isn’t enough,’ said Lymond. He was at his desk, pulling out writing-paper. ‘Thank you, Archie. I shall want three messages taken at once to the two Prévôts and the Connétablier Prévôt-Général. Will you warn them below?’

  Jerott, on his feet, said, ‘You advised the Prévôt at supper to make his troops unobtrusive, or they would stir up the whole quarter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lymond. As he spoke, he was writing. ‘Either they thought better of it, or they found the quarter thoroughly stirred up already when they got there. The latter, I suspect. There’s been an Evangelical Church in Paris for two years under this man le Maçon, with psalms and hymns and exhortations and prayers and Bible-readings. They were to administer the Lord’s Supper tonight, but they’ve done that before too, without interference. While both Henri and Philip are fighting their wars with Lutheran mercenaries, neither monarch is going to come down very hard on the sect.’

  ‘So what happened tonight?’ Jerott asked.

  ‘A body from the Collège du Plessis reported them for the first time officially. Someone wants trouble,’ said Lymond. He had finished the three notes and was sealing them with a wafer of wax and his signet ring. ‘In times of national danger, nothing simpler. The devout ladies and gentlemen insist on meeting at night, with their families. Night gatherings are associated with orgies, and the presence of children with hideous sacrifices. A few ominous hints in the right quarters, and all the neighbours are ready to believe that unless they clean God’s house, he will transfer his favours to the Imperialists. Martine will have to take these people into protective custody when they begin to emerge from their meeting, and he won’t do it with five hundred gens d’armes.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Jerott, ‘the people will kill them?’

  ‘Like the Knights of St John slaughter Osmanlis.’ Three members of his staff arrived, breathing quickly, and received one by one their commissions. The last, departing, collided sharply with someone approaching. The door opened and Catherine d’Albon plunged into the chamber.

  The pen was still in Lymond’s hand. He laid it down and stood, looking at her. The black hair, once so carefully brushed, was now loose and rough as it had lain on the pillow, and under her open robe she wore her night-rail. Her feet were bare, as they had not been in the Sainte Chapelle on a famous occasion. She said, looking at Lymond, ‘Mr Abernethy has told me. He says you want to protect the Calvinists.’

  She looked magnificent. His fatigue forgotten, Jerott stared at her. She has a lover, he thought. A lover or an admirer, trapped in the Hôtel Bétourné.

  Lymond said calmly, ‘This is a matter for the Church and civil authorities. I can’t protect anybody. I have a commission under the Crown, and the Crown cannot support Calvinism publicly.’

  ‘But you have sent out orders?’ said Catherine d’Albon.

  ‘I have proffered advice,’ Lymond said. ‘Which the city will listen to. They will need more men to safeguard the congregation when they come out at the end of the service. Neither the Swiss Cantons nor the German princes will be gratified if there is overmuch bloodshed—why are you asking?’

  Mademoiselle d’Albon looked at him without speaking. Jerott, studying her, forgotten in his corner, saw her tongue run over her lips, wetting them.

  Lymond waited. Then he said, his voice not unkind, ‘I think you may trust me. I am not paid to steady the rocking bark of Peter; only to defend Catholics from other Catholics with bigger artillery. Who are you anxious about?’

  ‘My mother. My mother is there,’ said the daughter of the Maréchale de St André abruptly. ‘In the Hôtel Bétourné with the Calvinists.’

  No one spoke. Then Lymond said briefly, ‘Alone?’

  ‘With the comtesse de Laval, M. d’Andelot’s wife. They have a valet de chambre with them. My mother said … that quite a number of the Queen’s household were also going.’

  ‘We can’t save them all,’ Lymond said. ‘If God wasn’t won over by muddy Catholic feet, he’s going to be propitiated next by a quantity of Protestant martyrs. All right. I’ll do what I can, but not as an officer. You and your staff must be willing to swear that no one left this house tonight. Jerott?’

  Jerott Blyth turned his back on the girl. He said rapidly, ‘Francis. If you are discovered helping a high-ranking noblewoman to escape from a Protestant orgy, they’ll burn you in the Marché aux Porceaux, whatever you’ve done for them. No one could stop this. Except maybe the Cardinal.’

  ‘The soul of the King, and who has so many brave brothers? Exactly,’ said Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, ‘what I was thinking.’

  Cha
pter 2

  De gens d’Église sang sera espanchè

  Comme de l’eau en si grand abondance

  Et d’un long temps ne sera res tranché

  Ve vë au clerc ruine et doleance.

  During the singing of the first table of the Decalogue word reached the pastor in the Hôtel Bétourné that crowds were gathering in the rue St Jacques outside the building. He did not announce it, but allowed the Decalogue to finish, delivered the prayer for forgiveness and during the intoning of the remaining Commandments sent out for the latest report, which was that the road had been cleared by mounted archers and armed men of the City’s militia, who had then formed a block at either end. Behind, the Sorbonne had closed the doors leading into its street and men were guarding these too. The chanting finished, leaving in its wake the trailing voices of tired children in the arms or at the knees of the women who formed tonight the greater part of his congregation.

  Speaking carefully, M. de Morel proceeded to the reading of the Word of God and to his exposition. Tribulations of mind and body, he informed them, were not a sign of Christ’s displeasure. God’s Elect did not refuse to do battle for their faith but sought for their Defender and hence for their final deliverance.

  He hoped they would take to heart what he was saying. He hoped God the Father was listening also and would send a miracle that, whatever he said, would save his congregation from stampeding outside, to be hunted like geese by their enemies. Outside, the windows were crowded, it seemed, with all the men of the quarter. And they had piled wall-stones and paving slabs on their sills to cast down on the heads of the faithful. Whether the archers were there for their arrest or for their protection would hardly matter, He proceeded, his hands trembling, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.