Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett
The Queen of Scotland, learning that the comte de Sevigny had succumbed to the King’s inducements, was torn between pleasure and disillusionment. The Queen of France said very little but was as friendly to Madame Valentinois, it was noticed, as she had been on the occasion of the Duchess de Guise’s parturition. Mademoiselle Catherine d’Albon was extremely silent, and if she spoke at all, was inclined to be sharp for one of such an equable nature. Her father, receiving the news in Flanders, was not entirely pleased.
The Cardinal of Lorraine, entertaining the King in his château de Marchais, took time to write to Paris, ordering a further and more stringent questioning of some of the college personnel engaged in the recent demonstrations. He instructed a number of qualified theologians to pay a protracted call on the charming wife of M. d’Andelot. And he asked that my lord of Seton, Lord Provost of Edinburgh and senior Lord Baron of Scotland, should be prepared to give him some time when next he found it convenient to ride to Paris.
The Marshal de Sevigny, having assigned and dispatched his advance troops, left Pierrepont himself with a small force of gentlemen and pistoliers and, overtaking that led by Guthrie, de Forcés and Jerott, proceeded to move the seventy miles over the Picardy plateau into Amiens, in readiness to prepare camp for the main royal army.
For the sake of speed, the expedition carried no baggage, except for a light horse-drawn field cannon on wheels and a couple of wagons. One of these held gunpowder, lead and cord for the hackbuts, while the other contained pioneers’ material, including ladders and two light broad-beamed shallops. To ensure their self-sufficiency, they also carried with them, on mules and in wagons, their own bread and wine for the journey.
On the way north, the combined force fought two minor actions, in both of which the German levies were subjected to ungentle discipline.
Already, the large proportion of foreign mercenaries had provoked constant trouble on the march north from Luxembourg. The burning of the Duke de Guise’s tent with most of his possessions at Arlon had not been an accident, nor had a similar mishap suffered by camp-marshal Bourdillon. There had been frequent violent clashes between French and Germans off duty, and on one occasion an outbreak of hackbut fire which had come too close to the Duke’s person for comfort.
It was not a situation where reason or soft words had any hope of prevailing. On the first night of the march, after a small but successful encounter with a troop of foraging Flemish cavalry, the footsoldiers from Saxony, elated and hungry for plunder, burst their ranks and made, jumping over the fields, for the village used for the enemy’s ambush.
It needed only ten minutes more for a repetition of the scenes the army had endured ever since Thionville: the firing of the straw stacks and thatches, the hysterical barking of dogs and the screaming of women and children; the spread-eagled boys split by pikes and the other, living figures pinned threshing under their predators.
They were half over the fields when Lymond had his trumpeters blow the recall, and three-quarters when his line of hackbutters dropped to one knee and opened fire on them.
Ten of the Duke of Saxony’s men dropped in their tracks. The rest hesitated, slowed, and then turning, raised their hands in surrender.
Captain de Forcés rounded them up. Those common soldiers who survived were brought back and whipped; the leaders were hanged from the treetops. Then the force was re-formed, fed, watered and set marching till daylight.
Jerott, extremely uneasy at the quality of their silence, followed an old campaign rule and, dismounting, dropped back and marched beside them. Guthrie, de Forcés and Lymond were already there, each keeping pace with an ensign. He found a group of men with whom he could converse in stumbling Spanish, and listened jealously to the eager, competitive note in the voices round Francis.
The Marshal, from his days as a mercenary, spoke mercenaries’ German, as well as dealing out mercenaries’ justice. The army and he, it appeared, understood one another.
At dawn they found a wood to sleep in, the men in the open and the four chief officers under canvas. It was Alec Guthrie who, missing Lymond, found him alone with his back to a tree, at a place further out than his pickets.
He did not move as Guthrie came up, but despite the dearth of welcome, the older man continued until he stood, hands on hips, looking down at him. ‘Remorse?’ Guthrie observed.
‘No,’ Lymond said. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them.
‘You want to prove that even after that you won’t be found with an accidental knife in your back in the morning?’
‘They wouldn’t risk it,’ said Lymond. ‘Not in camp. A shot in the head, perhaps, during the fighting.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. When did you last get a night’s sleep?’ said Guthrie abruptly.
This time, Lymond opened his eyes and looked up at him. ‘When did I last have peace to get one?’
‘You weren’t asleep. You weren’t asleep last night either. Whatever it is,’ Guthrie said, ‘that demands this depth of self-analysis, you would be as well to dismiss it while fighting. Men depend on you. Without a routine, you cannot expect to keep healthy.’
He paused, his bearded lips pursed. ‘There are various traditional methods of relieving tension. Jerott, I understand, is an expert.’
‘If Jerott puts a girl in my tent,’ Lymond said, ‘I shall kill her.’
He had been expecting something, but the suddenness of it caught Guthrie unprepared. For a long time, his mind busy, he said nothing. Lymond, his eyes closed, was breathing with great regularity. Then Alec Guthrie said, ‘I see. And what solution do you propose?’
‘The King’s Cure,’ Lymond said. ‘Le Roy te touche. Dieu te guérisse. The problem is not, unfortunately, amenable to communal management.’
‘There is no shame in the wine flask, now and then,’ Guthrie said. ‘It doesn’t solve problems, but it makes them a little more tolerable.’
‘I have a suggestion in that case,’ said Lymond. ‘You two have the orgy, and I’ll keep the drinker’s headache. Assuming, that is, you mean to spend every hour of the twenty-four haunting me.’
He was not getting anywhere, so Guthrie left him. Recounting the incident later, he was quite taken aback by Jerott’s reaction.
Late the same day, with forty miles still to cover, they passed the village of Flavy-le-Martel with, beyond it, the enemy-occupied fortress of Ham in which the Marshal himself had once been held prisoner.
No one mentioned it, and they gave Ham an extremely wide berth: the more so that the marquis de Villars had also passed that way, on a march somewhat less orderly.
It was as well that they had brought with them their own food supplies, for the villages they did pass were deserted and many of them in ruins, so that the wide flat countryside stretching far to the east beyond the Somme offered little shelter. In the intense heat much of the marshy ground had dried out, but necessity pushed them once or twice from the more convenient tracks into a network of the small streams which fed the Somme, and there the trestles and boats came into use, and the coils of rope they had brought for dragging both cobles and wagons.
They used local guides twice, although these were often double informers, and once hired, were not allowed to leave camp: their news was always checked by Lymond’s own outposts which moved back and forth constantly. He knew, at every point, how far de Villars was ahead of him and also the situation at Amiens where d’Estrée and his commissaires de vivres had already started work. His own relay of couriers also arrived at regular intervals from Pierrepont with news of the main army.
Two further letters had come from his wife, one while he was still at Marchais, and the other which he had opened that morning, just before Guthrie came across him.
Each contained a closely written budget of news. ‘I gather great princes still make peace sword in hand. The rumour is that Spain won’t give in until she has Savoy and Piedmont back; England wants Calais and the King of France wants the Constable.
‘If p
‘Willie Grey is temporarily satisfied in a new-found belief that Onzain communicates with Chaumont under the river by tunnel, and that if he can only find it, he will be a free man, provided he can get out of Chaumont. He says the Duchess d’Uzes has told de La Rochefoucauld who has told de Merguey that Queen Catherine thinks Lord Seton has gone crazy. I have a feeling that you were intended to be at the end of this particular tunnel, so I pass it on for what you can make of it.
The rest of the news is not mine. On the principle of Fluctuat nec Mergitur, which I hope you approve of, I have solicited all your former correspondents, and new reports are now beginning to come in. There are times, it seems to me, when one needs help in deciphering the recondite secrets of God the Creator …’
She had reopened the network which, begun long ago, had kept him apprised before most people of the shifting allegiances of Europe.
The remainder of both letters was occupied with material taken from the incoming dispatches. At the end of each was a paragraph, no more, about her own concerns. The first ended with the words, You are missed.
The second, the one he had read in the wood, had been different. In that she had put only her signature. It was not until he turned it over that he saw that there was a separate page.
‘You will have to burn my letters. Shall I tell you exactly when you realized this? Who would believe that I know to the second? Nostradamus?
‘So I wished to write you something you need not burn.
‘It seemed to me that a circumscribed love was not love; and it was a reflection on whole love to call it so. But against what you have given me, there should be something to write in the ledger.
‘So let me record it. There is nothing of me that does not belong to you. More than your death I fear mine; because you would be left here to mourn for me. More than your love I want peace for you; so better your need of me died, than that it should become unendurable.
‘I want you to know what you have. That is its span. I have no other rod of assize.
‘God grant quiet rest. PHILIPPA.’
He had burned the rest of the letter, as she had suggested, after Alec Guthrie had left him. Then, because sleep was a state more and more foreign to him he had stayed there, unmoving in solitude, so that the channel was open. And a little later, like a coming home, he knew her mind was with him.
Just before it was time to rouse the camp he returned silently to his tent and without wakening Jerott took out paper and standish and wrote a quick, careful note to his brother.
Someone had cooked him cabbage on charcoal for breakfast, and found millet bread, and a little pomade, a drink made from apples. De Forcés said, ‘If they make a peace, I suppose they’ll disband us. Will you go back to Sevigny, mon Maréchal?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Lymond said. ‘But first we have to finish the war.’
They began marching at four, when the worst of the heat should have been over, but the plain still swam with it when they passed Caix four hours after that and their detours were not caused by water, but the need to keep the dry grass, noisy with cicadas, under their feet; rather than the chalky earth which rose funnelling into the air, sharp as desert sand, kicked sparkling into the small fires of evening.
Here and there, adrift in the haze, were small villages, the blue spire of the church set like thorn over the thatched cabins and red and white brick of the houses. Twice, they saw signs of hasty cropping, but mostly rank grass grew in the cornfields, and there were no working horses plodding the meadows, or dappled cows under the fruit trees. Only the birds were the same: a young pheasant, rising underfoot, gave Lymond reason to steady his mare and flocks of short-bodied birds rose and wheeled, as they had on that other journey from Ham. He was concerned, this time, that they should tell no tales to his enemies.
Now, within the ranks, hardship imposed its own discipline. The men marched grimly, eyes bloodshot and seared with the lancing glitter of helm and greaves and cuirass; lips cracked and brown skins opened raw with the sun and napped with clinging dirt. Half the mules had gone, turned back to Laon with their panniers empty, and two vacant wine wagons with them. The field gun, hot enough to flay skin, had been covered, and so too had the wagon of powder: it would be a pity, the Marshal remarked, to reach Amiens vertically.
The horses pulling the wagons were in need of water. Jerott’s mind was on that as they neared Caix and saw ahead the reeded banks of the Luce. He noticed the grove of tall chestnuts, hot and gold as syrup in the low light, and thought also how welcome their shade would be for ten minutes. Under his cuirass his buckskin jerkin was stiff with perspiration and, below that, he could feel his shirt oozing water. Beside him, in the outer file of marching men, a soldier fainted, and his companions broke ranks to help him.
Then Jerott saw that he had not fainted, and spurring his horse, sent his stentorian voice ringing along the line of march, bringing all the ensigns to a halt. Before they had stopped, Lymond was with him, looking down at the man in the dust.
‘Killed by a crossbolt,’ Jerott said. ‘From the trees, I think.’ Behind him, his lieutenant was pulling the vanguard back out of range. One or two hackbutters, loading quickly in the front line, turned and shot into the thick dusty felting of leaves. A crossbolt struck the ground at their heels as they ran. Lymond backed his horse, still watching the trees, and then turned and trotted with Jerott back to the rest of the company.
‘Why draw our attention?’ he said. ‘Alec?’
‘There’s a village beyond,’ Guthrie said. ‘It looked deserted. But while our friends stay in the trees, you couldn’t get near enough to tell either way.’
‘We don’t need to cross near the trees,’ Captain de Forcés said. ‘We can water the horses downstream just as well.’
‘If there’s a force in that village,’ Jerott said, ‘it can’t be a very big one.’
Lymond said, ‘Big enough to slow us down if it follows us. Big enough to hold us here for a little time if we attack it. I think that is why it is here. To send a scout to Philip’s army and hold us until a regiment gets here. A good idea. They’ve only made one mistake.’
‘What?’ said Jerott. A pistolier, irritated by the lack of action, walked over the flowering grass and raising his weapon released an explosion in the direction of the chestnut trees. With a brief thud, two returning bolts arrived, one in the grass and the other full on his cuirass, making a white dent the size of a balled fist. He fell, and two comrades scuttled out and hauled him back, gasping.
‘Good God,’ Lymond said. ‘How would you propose to get them out of those trees? Wait till they drop out from famine? We have the field gun, had you forgotten?’
They had the field gun and shot and matches and powder, and they did not need to come within crossbow range to align the cannon on the summer grove, heavy with the langours of August.
Two of the enemy shouted, parting the leaves just before the gun fired and were allowed to climb down and surrender, to be bundled off, their wrists bound up with hackbut cord. Then the gunners touched off the cannon, and reloaded and fired it again, until the grove was a mountainous graveyard of split boughs and dead birds and greenery. Two men were thrown clear, in fragments. For a while they could hear the voice of a third, under the wreckage. Then it faded to silence.
Smoke, rising white into the air, thinned and wandered, flushed rose in the sunset. ‘And now, mes amis,’ said the Marshal to the men, bright-eyed and alert crowded round him, ‘let us see what we have in those houses.’
In the houses were two companies o
Jerott had once had that done to him, and knew how in a small space it deadened thought and sowed panic.
The Spaniards were brave. They stayed where they were and forced men to come in and fight hand to hand in the passages. The Germans escaped into the street and over the roofs, where the hackbutters picked them off, merry as fowlers. Like hot water thrown on an anthill, the fighting seethed, short and sharp for forty minutes. Then it was over; and the only enemy still alive were bound in the wagons.
This time, Lymond had promised his men all the booty they could discover.
The villagers in their flight had overlooked only some hens, some wine, and some onions; and below the rubble in the patched earth were a few vegetables.
Only the Spaniards were better provided. In the blacksmith’s house they found flour and biscuit and lard; on the dead bodies fine arms and shirts, money and jewellery; and in a weaver’s loft a dozen camp followers, huddled together, who lost no time making themselves pleasant to the conquerors.
The jubilation rose, hurled from building to building, as the evening sky dimmed to turquoise and the cressets flared, bright as animals’ eyes in the dusk, leaping from building to black splintered building. De Forcés, before a brilliant fire, collected the booty piled before him ready to apportion in Amiens. Food was distributed. Alec Guthrie, before a locked door, supervised the amount of wine claimed for each ensign.
They had posted sentries and outposts. But the mere fact that they were to be detained there meant a reasonable margin of safety. They fought well, Lymond had said. Give them an hour. Then let’s get them over the river.