Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  He called the men he had left, and addressed them. ‘We have begun as became us: we have yet held on as duty doth bind us; let us end then as honesty, duty and fame do will us. Neither is there any such extremity of despair but that we may yet dearly enough sell our skins ere we lose them. Let us then either march out under our own ensigns displayed, or else perish here under them.’

  But it was Burgundians he was addressing, not Englishmen. Burgundians did not see, they said, why they should die for Lord Grey’s vainglory. He was to return, and compound. For not one more blow from their hands could he look for.

  Austin Grey did not go with his uncle when he limped back to the gates and the French camp, there to offer his total surrender. Instead he climbed to where the two hostages watched on the ramparts, and spoke, his voice controlled, to Francis Crawford.

  ‘But for your guards, the men below would have killed you just now. How dare you defile this place by your presence?’

  It was true. There had been a scuffle, put down in anger and fright by Grey’s officers. The surety for these two lives were the lives of Arthur Grey and Lew Davie. The seigneur d’Estrée said, ‘You impugn M. Crawford’s honesty? But what he did at Calais and Ham was quite legitimate in times of warfare. Your uncle accepts it.’

  ‘You have just seen,’ said Austin Grey, ‘what my uncle has been forced to accept.’ His cheeks were dry but his eyes, brighter than usual, told of the strain he was carrying. Most assured English even unto the death, Lord Grey had written from Guînes in his last letter to Queen Mary in England; and had taken oath there, on the broken bulwark, to die rather than show weakness or surrender. Whatever befalls, I am determined to die at my post, had written Lord Wentworth, the Calais Lord Deputy. And the defenders of Hâmes, who had sworn to hold out even to the death, had, they said, today mutinied and marched away, scatheless.

  And he … he had killed, and enjoyed it.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Austin Grey, ‘that you are not crowing with joy at the comedy.’

  From the parapet one looked across the bloody ditches choked with dead to the bright banners of the French princes streaming beyond: Piero Strozzi and the three brothers de Guise; d’Andelot and de Thermes, Roche-sur-Yon and Tavannes, Montmorency and de Bouillon, de la Brosse and d’Estrée. Banners which had flown long ago in Scottish air too: whose owners knew no other trade and had been born only for this; nursed amid trumpets; rocked in helmets; fed at the spear blade. As appetite therefore moveth and not as reason persuadeth, men run after vanitas. ‘It will make a good story,’ Lymond said. ‘So did the Constable’s bêtises before Saint-Quentin. It is not advisable to crow. It might be oneself next time.’

  Austin Grey stepped to his side at the parapet. He said, ‘Warfare and trickery. It is your natural element.’

  ‘You despise it?’ Lymond said. ‘Montluc would argue with you. What would a brave and noble soul turn to, if not war? Who would crush the power of the Grand Seigneur? Men would amuse themselves in palaces, and though naturally of good heart, with time become cowards.’ He paused, and then added, without rancour, ‘I began, as you did, by defending my country. Then, disinherited, I had to follow the only profession I knew. There are only two roads to power: the Church, and the army; and there are villains in both. It is a moot point which does the most harm. You didn’t consider the cloister?’

  Austin said, ‘The army was our tradition.’

  ‘And so you sacrificed your principles to Allendale vanity. While I,’ Lymond said, ‘have become ensnared by a lucrative talent for simple organization. We can offer each other some consolation. Without warfare, there would be no chivalry. The weak would be overturned; nations put to the sword; tyrants flourish. I have spent some time, myself, killing Tartars and Turks as well as Englishmen. One may say, If I do not do it, another will. There is a standpoint from which to retire with a farm-book or a breviary seems equally craven.’

  Until he provoked it, Austin had been unaware that this had been what he required: a defence of war, in the mouth of the man best suited to proclaim it. Less well defined, these were the thoughts he had sheltered behind, in the night of his defence of the bulwark.

  It was a strange source from which to receive unwitting comfort. Austin said, ‘And what do you say to men who kill, as they hunt, for a pastime?’ His body, despite itself, was shivering.

  ‘I try not to speak to them,’ Lymond said. ‘They generally don’t survive very long, anyway. We should go in. You are tired. You know that, when we leave here, you are to be my prisoner?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Austin Grey.

  ‘And Lord Grey will belong to Piero Strozzi. So that, until your ransom is paid, you can court Mistress Philippa in comfort. I had hoped to find her back in England, but they tell me she is still at Court in Paris.’

  A talent for organization. Toutes serez, êtes ou futes/De fait ou de volonté, putes. He had forgotten, for a moment, the words Crawford had used to him, on the unfinished journey from Ham. ‘You want rid of your whore. So you are content,’ said Austin, ‘that an English poltroon should have her?’

  A moment passed. Then Lymond said, ‘My words at Ham. I apologize. I had a purpose, as I remember, in baiting you. If I thought you required any assurance whatever about her character or her person, you would be dropped from the leet of fiancés. Your uncle may or may not have told you. I owe a long-standing debt to her family.’

  ‘Her mother is rearing your son. But Philippa,’ said Austin Grey, ‘will be greater than Kate.’

  ‘I am glad you think so. It is for you then,’ said Lymond, ‘to provide her with her setting. She has wealth. You have position. Between you, you might make of Allendale one of the great political centres of England. You have only to win her.’

  ‘I thought,’ said Austin, ‘you were doing that for me.’

  ‘Only the groundwork,’ said Francis Crawford with affability. ‘Does he need me who daily walkest and is conversant among women, seest their beauties set forth to the eye, hearest their nice and wanton words, smellest their balm, civet and musk? Therein is fruit, and palms hanging sheathed in clusters, and the grain with its husk and its fragrance—which of these bounties of your Lord will you reject?’

  ‘None that come from the Lord,’ said Austin Grey evenly. ‘From the comte de Sevigny, I have no mind to accept either guidance or favours.’

  *

  That evening, released by a magnanimous enemy, the men of Guînes marched from the citadel. They left bearing their weapons and armour, and every man had a crown in his purse. But they marched in tingling silence, without tuck of drum or music of trumpet, and without the brave dance of their colours, for their flags, like their leaders, had been left captive in French hands behind them.

  For the French, it was the end of a campaign which would take its place in history. ‘The loss of Calais,’ said the Pope, ‘is the only dowry the Queen of England will receive for her marriage to King Philip the Second. Such a conquest is preferable to half the kingdom of England.’

  Silent in their tents, Grey of Wilton, the three cousins and all their captains heard through the night the tumult of the French camp’s celebrations. In the small hours, the sconces were snuffed in the Duke de Guise’s gold and purple pavilion. But the lights under the blazons of Strozzi and of Sevigny continued rather longer than that; and so did the outbursts of music and laughter, of talk and singing and the constant coming and going of men, gay and drunken under the chill ruined hulk of the fortress.

  Archie Abernethy watched it all, reclined cracking a bone by the wine barrel. He saw them all come to the warmth: d’Estrée and Senarpont and Roche-sur-Yon, lingering, who had known Francis Crawford six years before. Tavannes and de Thermes. The Sieur d’Andelot, whose wife the comtesse de Laval had cause to thank Mr Crawford, and who took him aside and talked to him, holding him close, until he became too drunk to enunciate, and laughing, sprawled and drank some more instead. Piero Strozzi who, his arm round Lymond’s shoulders, refought eve
ry battle from Sainte-Agathe to Guînes and kissed him, several times, and offered him a choice from his selection of available women, invitingly detailed which, solemnly, Lymond found it politic to refuse.

  That night Lymond, too, broke free from the prison he had made for himself. He drank of intent, until one by one the barriers crumbled and let run loose all those qualities he possessed, like Alkibaides, of a tarnished and insolent profusion, to set alight in his fellow-men that killing flame of excitement, of passion, of pleasure.

  Jerott, released by wine and dizzy with unstopped emotion, argued with him and sang, forgetful of Lyon and Marthe: Danny Hislop, intoxicated wholly by words, plunged in delirium from lascivious songs to long, explicit, unanswered dissertations; Adam Blacklock, barely tipsy at all, looked at Lymond’s vivid face and carefree movements and open, brilliant eyes and recognized, as Archie had done, that the shadow had lifted.

  If you thought about it, there was no magic in it. War had given Francis his respite, and success had brought him his final reward: the freedom he wished from his marriage. The licence, if he desired it, to go back to Russia. The knowledge, one supposed, that, severed from Philippa, he could allow the past to lie in peace, and cease troubling him.

  So, in the end, Adam watched them all leave and himself departed, smiling through the tent doorway at Archie, as he exchanged hazy farewells with his master.

  Francis Crawford let him go and then, walking slowly inside, put his hand on the tent pole and surveyed, in his turn, the small mahout.

  ‘Archie?’ said Lymond. ‘It is half past four o’clock in the morning, and I am exceedingly drunk. Do you suppose these two statements have anything to do with each other?’

  ‘No,’ said Archie tolerantly. ‘And neither will you, come the morning.’

  *

  Some time after that, the last lights in Guînes were extinguished; the last random shot fired; the last catcall uttered; and only the feet of the sentries could be heard, treading round the encampment.

  In an open tent with a Florentine banner Lord Grey of Wilton kept his private vigil, gazing out upon the indigo sky and the fresh-dug graves and the marshes which for over two hundred years had been England’s care, and for nearly thirty years, off and on, in his keeping.

  And in another tent at the same moment Archie Abernethy began a well-earned night’s rest in good conscience, for Francis Crawford was sleeping already beyond him, his guard relaxed, his breathing quiet, his scarred wrists lying free in the blankets.

  He was sleeping still when far to the north, dawn arrived in an east Scottish estuary; and with it, a fleet of small ships, come to bear her noble Commissioners to Queen Mary’s wedding in Paris.

  Part III

  Soubs le terroir du rond globe lunaire

  Lors que sera dominateur Mercure

  L’isle d’Escosse fera un luminaire

  Qui les Anglais mettra à décomfiture.

  Chapter 1

  Proye à Barbares trop tost seront hastifs.

  Cupide de voir plaindre au vent la plume.

  On an elevating cloud of Eleatica the French Army for four weeks continued its triumphs and indeed consolidated them, although for the whole of that period none of its officers was perfectly sober.

  The fortresses of Guînes and of Hâmes were razed to the ground, thereby releasing three hundred cannon of brass alloy, three hundred of iron and a prodigious quantity of munitions, much to everyone’s retrospective alarm. The fortified châteaux of d’Herbemont, Jamoigne, Chigny, Rossignol and Villemont were attacked and captured. The king of France, in company with the Dauphin, the Cardinals of Lorraine and de Guise and all the non-combatant nobility of the French Court, made a Triumphal Entry into his new town of Calais and handed out money, preferment and property to all his brave generals. The Duke de Guise was given the great house of the Staple in Calais. Marshal Strozzi received the gift of Lord Grey, a tract of crown lands worth fifteen thousand crowns’ rental, a favourable marriage for an unremarkable daughter, and an appointment to the Privy Council, which was worth all the rest put together.

  The comte de Sevigny was also given land, notably a stretch adjoining the property of the Marshal de St André outside Lyon. There accompanied it an undertaking by the Cardinal Legate that the bill of divorce already placed before the Pontiff should be approved and ready for its final ratification by my lord count and his wife on the day following the Queen of Scotland’s forthcoming marriage. To enable him to entertain as was now fitting, the crown was pleased to give him also possession of the Hôtel d’Hercule on the corner of the rue des Augustins, Paris.

  It was one of the great royal mansions of France, and once housed the Queen of Scotland’s young father, twenty years before also a bridegroom. The comte de Sevigny’s friends were not overawed. ‘It’s known as Plumbago Corner,’ said Jerott in a lofty welter of consonants. ‘You have to produce a ticket of entry that says you’ve fought all the statues.’ Jerott was drunk as a Templar and happy. Neither he nor Danny nor Adam had had a care in their heads for a fortnight, other than prosecuting with uninterrupted efficiency all the affairs of their companies and ensuring, under the unwinking supervision of Archie Abernethy, that Lymond was never alone.

  But then, it transpired that he had no particular desire to be alone, being occupied in congenial company in various activities which happened to satisfy him. The golden optimism, the dreaming absence of stress that followed the campaign of Calais communicated itself to those at Court also. To Philippa it drifted like a temporizing incense above all she did in the four weeks before Lymond came back to Paris.

  She made no attempt to obtain her release and go home as he had asked her. To Kate, inquiring guardedly about her non-return, Philippa replied that she saw no reason to miss the momentous spectacle of the Dowager Lady Culter embracing the entire bewildered court of France, if not her difficult son.

  In this she spoke the truth. However able, however superb the elements of the family Crawford undoubtedly were, individually they were going to require someone’s help before this prospective visit to France was completed. She had promised herself to stay with the Queen until she saw some hope of rapprochement between Catherine d’Albon and Francis Crawford. She had hoped to find, before now, a thread of history, however spurious, which might reconcile him to Sybilla his mother.

  In this she had been unsuccessful. If Lymond had been right, and his betrayal at Ham had been at the hands of Leonard Bailey, Mr Bailey had made no other baneful appearances. The only unhappy accident occurred at Court in the first weeks of February when, kept indoors by the snow, the Dauphin shot out the eye of M. de Bouccard his equerry in the course of an afternoon’s games, and the King had to ask M. de Bouccard’s pardon. His royal bride-to-be watched in smiling commiseration, her jewelled hands hardened together. The most excellent princess Mary, Queen of Scotland, had forgotten her concern for M. de Sevigny’s marriage.

  The Cardinal of Lorraine, as it happened, had not. Shortly after his return from the faintly delirious celebration at Calais he had a long, flattering talk with the comtesse de Sevigny about her talented husband and received, with baffled admiration, the same artistic degree of response which Mistress Philippa had learned to allot the Head Eunuch. Considering that nothing but compliments were extended on both sides, it was hard to say how she also made him aware of the fact.

  She was not short of employment. The two cousins Schiatti were in Paris still, and the Duke of Lorraine et Bar, and young Paliano, and Arthur Erskine, and a handful of others ready when she might have a free moment to throw snowballs from the town walls, or skate on the ditch, white as tables of Phrygian marble.

  Indoors, she indulged the cast of mind she now knew was her own. She listened to Thevet, the Queen’s almoner, talk of his travels. She spoke of the Far East to Postel of the Collège Royal; she sat elbows cocked at a table, watching Nicolas de Nicolay design a new map. She listened to Jean Bodin, not yet thirty, talk of politics and astronomy, philosophy, magic,
the Talmud.

  The answers she carried to Catherine. Already agreeably trained in all the gentle and scholarly arts, Catherine d’Albon received in this interim a new and specialized education in all those areas of the mind in which her prospective husband had chosen to roam.

  The daughter of a Marshal of France, destined from birth for highest station, did not admit newcomers to easy friendship. But sitting murmuring over her sewing with this slender girl with the clear skin and brown eyes and coiled chestnut hair Catherine d’Albon found herself moved to converse not as to another girl, but to a tutor. A tutor who brought her not only news and opinion and discoveries but songs and poetry and books, dearly bought and freely given for her to study; so that for part of the day at least her mind was turned from its treadmill. When would he come back? Would he speak? Or would he allow the divorce to take place before he would approach her?

  But of that, and the person who filled both their minds, neither of them ever said anything.

  The Queen of France was less discreet, or had less need to be tactful. With unerring swiftness she had discerned what Philippa preferred to pass unnoticed: her gift with children. The Princesses Claude and Elisabeth, aged ten and twelve, were brought to her notice; and then Charles and Henri, aged seven and six, and Marguerite, four. Attending her mistress in the Royal Audience Chamber in les Tournelles, Philippa found she spent a large part of her time on the floor with her lute, entertaining and wiping the noses of small royal children. The King’s sister Marguerite often joined her. And once, when the Queen of Scots had been called unexpectedly from the room, Queen Catherine crossed from her chair of state and seating herself on a stool said, ‘But you play as charmingly as your husband. You have no regrets about dissolving this marriage?’