Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

So he shook his head, saying nothing; and after a moment chose a chair and sat down, not so far off as usual. An affirmation: I have strength still. Do not be afraid. But Philippa said, ‘I love you so much.’

  All the colour there was left his face. But he only said gently, ‘Then next time, you will remember.’

  So she must give him the protection he needed and so manage herself that nothing about her, her hand, her dress, her shoulder, should ever approach him. And in such a manner that, one vainly hoped, he might be unaware of it.

  For how long can one maintain total vigilance?

  For how long can love last, in isolation, without sinking crushed beneath its own pressure?

  After that she did not go to seek him when he went out, but waited until he was ready to come to her. The fact that he continued to go out told its own story. Some things, then, were now beyond him.

  So it was by accident that, one day in mid-July, she left the gardens of Sevigny and chose the path that he had taken, down to the river.

  All month the heat had persisted, so that the carp gasped in their pond and the Loire shrank in its wide rushing channel, leaving dry sand and straw at its edges.

  It drew Philippa by its coolness. She did not see, until she rounded a bay, that two men she knew stood on the sand, talking. Both were servants of Francis, and she saw, from the look of their horses and the cream-tailed Isabela, loosely hobbled near by, that they had been riding hard with him. Then, far out in the river, she saw a wet yellow head in a stream of silver driving towards them, and realized what they were waiting for.

  She did not want, at that moment, to speak to them. But she stood, obscured by the alders and was lost for a moment in the beauty of the moving force shearing the water; in the light on the waves and the glitter of the arching hand and arm, repeated over and over.

  They were brown. He must have swum many times in the past weeks for the blond skin to take so smooth a tincture on forearm and shoulder and side; on the long line, smooth as a fish, of flank and limbs cleaving the water.

  She might have known that here, unlike the steam baths of Baden, he would not only be stripped to the waist. Powerful as a machine, his arm lifted, driving him nearer and with it in her mind rose another arm, masculine also, but with muscles quilted with fat, and a bush of grey hair in its armpit. An arm joined by straining muscles to a broad, grey-pelted chest, immovable as a lichened boulder; to a sagging diaphragm and thick, plunging legs, big-boned and ashen. And the suffocating smells: of rotted teeth and stale sweat and old age, and of the voidings of a gasping and effortful maleness.

  ‘She is agog to see him swimming, my Sophie,’ one of the servants was saying, ‘but I’m not bringing her. I’d have to flog myself to death all night, the bitch, to make believe I was Monseigneur.’

  Philippa vomited. Retching and choking, she leaned her weight on a birch sapling and then leaving it, took two steps away from the river and was sick again.

  By then, exclaiming and chattering to one another, the two grooms were with her, one of them supporting Madame while the other, on her whispered appeal, brought his horse and held it. She crouched gasping against it, unable to mount, and in the end he jumped into the saddle himself, and taking her up before him, rode off carefully with her back to the château.

  She heard, as she went, her husband’s voice from the water, putting a question; and then the other groom’s, answering, as he picked up a towel to throw to him.

  They would use, to him, the same, jocular reassuring tone in which they had comforted her. ‘It comes to the best of wives, Madam. You will make a fine boy, never doubt it!’

  While he, listening, would enter her mind, and would know what had happened.

  *

  Which makes the sound, the hammer or the anvil? Which feels the concussion?

  Through her had come the hurt she had feared for him; a stroke neither blunt nor diffuse but direct and most cruelly personal. Lying on her high bed in the heat, with her women quietly moving about her, she had a long afternoon and evening to ponder it: to realize what she had done, and wonder in what way she could remedy it.

  For this time, he did not come to her. She knew, only because she had questioned a maidservant, that he was back in the château and that he had asked for news of her as soon as he entered, and hourly afterwards.

  But he did not come nor send any message; for this time, for him, there must be no track left he could follow. Until today, his mind and body, without demands, had existed only to serve her. If even this she could no longer tolerate, then they were both indeed adrift in the wilderness he had spoken of.

  Night fell, and her servants left. The sickness was over. Until the next time, when she might deal another man a blow such as that.

  But no. That was impossible.

  So, in the end, since there was only one thing to do, she rose slowly, and put on the night robe he had seen once before, and brushed her hair over it and walking to the door opened it.

  She did not have to search. She knew from the row of blazing windows where he was, in the naked casket which was his protection: the buttress of his self-command: the place where no unseemly emotion could be exhibited, even when alone. It was one reason, she knew, why he remained there, hour after hour, when she had long since gone to bed. The other she also knew: so that he might be within reach, if she needed him.

  The last time, she had found him by the fireplace. This time there was no fire when she entered, but the stifling heat of the night, and the candles.

  Then she saw him, in a tall chair by one of the windows. His lids were shut, but she could never have thought him sleeping, even had she not seen the arms of his chair, and his hands on them.

  She closed the door; and he said, ‘There is no need to come any further,’ and opened his eyes on her. They were shadowed as if through a long illness, and a golden streak of sweat from the pitiless blaze of the candles ran glinting across his throat and into closed cambric.

  It was a matter of anguish that in this heat he should be both fully and formally habited.

  Then he said, ‘You look so ill. Shall I say it for you? It would be best if I went away, for a short time at least. De Guise is marching north through the duchy of Luxembourg. I could join him, until peace is made,’

  It was the only solution, for his sake as well as hers, and he had taken from her, with generosity, the stigma of proposing it. She said, her body trembling, ‘If I had not gone to the river, this would not have happened.’

  ‘It might have happened in my arms, Philippa,’ he said, and stopped speaking. Then he said, ‘The fault was mine that I had to swim; that I had to force you to treat me like a leper; that I couldn’t, in the end, give you the spirit without the clay. We had all that two people need, and I have failed you. And … I do not know if I can change.’

  ‘It is not you who must change,’ Philippa said. And, terrified by what she saw in his face, cried in desperation. ‘Oh, my dear: why will you not weep? Or am I not who I am?’

  It was the only plea to which he could answer. It forestalled by very little the end of his self-command, and made her witness to something she could neither comfort nor ease, except by the act of releasing it.

  After the first moments, he did not know she was there. Agony and anger alike in her mind, Philippa strode to the windows and flung the heavy curtains over the stark glass and left them there, for now their office was over. Then, as summer lightening swayed in the beeches and the thunderclouds, piled high in the night, gave the first low reverberation of the ugly storm sweeping towards them, she fled from the chamber.

  *

  Later that night the storm travelled north over Paris, playing a long time over the city and sending many of the uninformed into the churches. While at its height, a flash of lightning struck the Tour de Billy behind the Célestins and exploded two hundred casks of cannon powder, flinging the stones of its wreckage as far as St Antoine des Champs and St Victor and the Terrin of Notre-Dame, to the hurt of th
e many in shelter there. The Célestins’ windows were blown out, as were those of St Paul, St Gervais, St Victor, and St Marcel. From bank to bank, fish bellies covered the river.

  All the houses in the lee of the Arsenal suffered, some being shattered to pieces; and every able man helped to quench fires and pull out the wounded.

  It was not until dawn that those digging in the wreckage of the rue de la Cerisaye noticed what appeared to be a shallow grave, partly exposed by the shock of the explosion.

  Within it was a woman’s body which servants, much distressed, identified as that of their housekeeper, Isabelle Roset.

  They notified the authorities in the morning: the same morning on which, before sun-up, Francis Crawford rode from his château of Sevigny.

  Chapter 5

  L’oiseau de proie volant à la semestre,

  Avant conflict faict aux François pareure;

  L’un bon prendra l’un ambigue sinistre,

  La partie foible tiendra par bon augure

  When you have gathering under your sceptre one of the largest armies ever mustered by any monarch of France, and also, you hope, the money to pay for it, there is naturally a strong urge to use it for something.

  To King Henri within the fortress walls of the château of La Ferté-Milon came only good news: of the fall of Thionville; of the taking of Arlon; of a string of successes against the English fleet along the north coast; and finally of an unlooked-for victory: the capture by M. de Thermes of the town of Dunkirk, twenty-five miles east of Calais, together with Bourbourg and Bergues, its small neighbours, with a rich haul of both booty and prisoners.

  It confirmed the King in a fond theory: that soon he should take arms in person. They said that King Philip had expressed this wish also, but was held up for want of travelling money. It was a pity that the Dauphin was again unwell, in the care of his Dauphine.

  The Duke de Guise, awaiting the arrival of three thousand more horsemen from Saxony, was lingering in Luxemburg, victualling at the charge of the enemy. Sooner or later he would make his way north, there to join M. de Thermes’s victorious army. Meanwhile the King, warmly congratulatory, egged M. de Thermes on to further derring-do.

  M. de Thermes, at the head of eight thousand foot soldiers and two thousand horse, marched to the Spanish-held fortress of Gravelines and, elated and purposeful, settled down preparatory to surrounding it.

  He thought it was lightly garrisoned. He did not know that the Spanish commander and Egmont, the Flemish cavalry leader supporting him, had between them three thousand cavalry and three regiments of German soldiers, two of them in King Philip’s service and the other about to embark for England. Seeing this considerable force approaching him, M. de Thermes responded in the only possible way. He mounted his horse and led his army rapidly back across the River Aa on the road leading to Calais.

  Unfortunately, the Count of Egmont reached the banks of the Aa just before him, and so did Admiral Malin and twelve ships of the English fleet, standing off at the mouth of the river. Against the shock of Egmont’s cavalry and the roar of the broadsides from the naval cannon M. de Thermes’s horse turned and tried to escape, but were forced almost immediately to surrender.

  The infantry stood the assault for two hours before being totally routed, both M. de Thermes and the Governor of Boulogne being wounded and captured. Of the eight thousand foot, most died by drowning; and the German dead numbered over a thousand.

  From Calais, from Montreuil and from Boulogne, the survivors sent news of the calamity to Ferté-Milon. The King left quickly for Reims, the Cardinal with him. There, distraught, they awaited the Duke de Guise, the Cardinal’s brother, who must now cease his leisured recovery from Thionville and hurry north, yet again, to the rescue of Artois and Picardy.

  They were waiting still when Lymond rode into Reims with the company of horse he had gathered in Paris. The King wept as he embraced him, nor did he let him out of his sight all that evening. Within an hour, the work of retrieval had started.

  *

  On July 28th the army of the Duke de Guise arrived by forced marches just short of Laon on the Champagne-Picardy border, and set up camp on the plain north of Liesse, at a village called Pierrepont.

  Two days later, the King of France left Reims to join his army, bringing with him the Duke of Lorraine, the King of Navarre and Marshal of France François de Sevigny, riding beside the now recovered King-Dauphin of France and Scotland.

  Waiting to house them two miles south of Liesse was the Château de Marchais, one of the Cardinal’s magnificent houses. The comte de Sevigny, overruled sharply by the King, was not able to raise his tents with the rest of his company, but had to wait until the following morning to visit them. On his way to the camp, he called upon the Duke de Guise in his town lodgings. From there, followed by a handful only of his own attendants, the Marshal rode through the long ranks of canvas until he found the pavilion which Jerott Blyth occupied.

  Warned by the noise, Jerott was already leaning at his tent door in his shirt, his arms folded, his dark, cynical gaze on the standard of Sevigny, and the group of horsemen approaching him. Then Lymond dismounted, threw the reins to one of his men and said, before Jerott could speak, ‘Victories obtained without the master are never complete. Don’t glower, my dear man. God and the Immaculate Imams are with me, and I fear no one. And there is Adam?’

  Jerott’s arms were no longer folded, and for a moment even his voice failed him. Then, ‘Dear Christ, Francis …!’ he said; and broke off even before Adam, fully emerging, laid a quick hand on his elbow.

  Adam said, ‘A lot can change in three months. The others are inside. Have you time to come in?’

  ‘Tact,’ Lymond said, ‘is the name you should have upon your tombstone; and I shall see you are excused the Kirk Cow and the Upmost Cloth on the strength of it. I have time to come in. I was hoping to see …’

  But behind Danny Hislop as he entered, Alec Guthrie, grey-bearded and unchanged, was already rising to his feet, with the long face of Hoddim the lawyer beside him, his moustache bracketing the woeful pleats of his smile.

  ‘… I hope,’ Lymond said, ‘you are not expecting your wages. If every candidate for mort-pay turned up eleven months after his demise you would ruin the Kingdom, if the Cardinal hadn’t thought of it first. We thought we had lost you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Guthrie. After a moment he freed Lymond’s hands, and holding him by the shoulders surveyed him up to his face. ‘You have something to answer for as well, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not at this court,’ Lymond said. ‘Fergie … are you going to raise an action against anyone?’

  ‘Well, no,’ said Fergie Hoddim. ‘We were captured while pursuing our profession: there’s no case for wrangful detention. Forbye, we jouked out of the prison-house anyway, but Alex had a musket ball in his leg, and I had another in a place I’d have to lowse my breeches to show you; and that’s why we were slow getting back again.… Is it right they’ve made you a Marshal?’

  ‘Why else do you suppose I’ve come back?’ Lymond said, and sat down on Jerott’s campaign bed. ‘The Lorde was with Joseph and he was a luckie felowe; unlike my unfortunate Piero, qui Fortunam vincit, vincit et invideat. I hear he is being blamed for all that went wrong at Thionville.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Jerott grimly. ‘He was as yellow as his shirt with jaundice. It wasn’t Strozzi’s fault de Vieilleville had to wait three weeks for troops and advice he’d no need for. And he was dead, poor bastard, by the time Montluc took Arlon and the whole town got burned down, including the booty, so the Germans bickered and grumbled all the rest of the marching-time. It wasn’t his fault that when we did get word about de Thermes’s disaster at Gravelines there was such a panic that we broke the army: sent the bloody German foot and horse off with three months’ pay and little gold medals, and then crept along north ourselves with the same troops we’d taken to Thionville with us.

  ‘Forced marches! I tell you, our Guisard friend wants to lis
ten to Montluc: O mes compagnons, when the King tells you to hurry, don’t lose a quarter of an hour. If we’d made better time north in the first place, Egmont would never have dared keep so many good men at Gravelines. As it was, someone had to send to Metz and get de Vieilleville to throw twelve companies of legionnaires after us.’

  ‘For that, you can thank me,’ said Lymond. ‘With de Thermes, we’ve lost all the best men from Ardres and Boulogne and Montreuil as well as Calais. There are only two ensigns each in Corbie and Amiens and Dourlans. If Egmont had had enough foot soldiers to support his cavalry, we should have had Saint-Quentin all over again in the last fortnight.’

  ‘Christ!’ Jerott said. ‘What’s it like now?’

  ‘Better, marginally. De Sipierre and d’Amville and de Lansac and all the courtiers I could get hold of have gone to Boulogne and Calais. D’Aumale is on his way to Abbeville, and I’ve sent d’Urfé to Montreuil.’

  ‘Accompanied by Madame Gout?’ said Danny. ‘But not by overmuch experience.’

  ‘One of us will have to relieve him. I should also like to see somebody useful in Corbie and in Dourlans, with seven ensigns at least; and then the rest into Amiens. We shall probably make camp there, once I can get the rest of the army mustered and moving. Philip is marching as well.’

  ‘So you are staying?’ Adam said. For good or for evil, the imperious ‘I had returned. What else had been restored to him was not immediately obvious.

  ‘For long enough, I hope, to have this nonsense settled one way or another. All you’ve said, Jerott, has been echoed in one way or another by Henri. The de Guise family are having a little trouble maintaining their foothold, and that means that the peace talks may prosper. And once a truce is called, the Commissioners can take ship for Scotland.’

  Guthrie said, ‘That sounds as if you’ve been busy. You were the King’s only senior commander at Reims, then? Which makes you, since St André has gone back to Flanders, and de Brissac is in Italy, one of only two active Marshals in charge here.’ His gaze was momentarily searching. ‘Why did you take the brevet?’