La cité obsesse aux murs hommes et femmes
Ennemis hors le chef prestz à soy rendres
Vent sera fort encontre les gens-darmes:
Chassés seront par chaux, poussiere et cendre.
‘I told you,’ said the Queen of Scotland, her head bowed, her hands clasped in worship. ‘The carpet is muddy. And Catherine d’Albon does not have her feet bare.’
Her voice, although not shrill for her age, was quite distinct enough to vanquish the organs. Catherine d’Albon glanced round. Black sackcloth, there was no doubt, set off brunette hair. It was best of all, naturally, with auburn.
‘Your grace, she has a dispensation from Monseigneur your uncle,’ Mary Fleming said in an undertone. ‘Because of her hurried journey to and from Lyon, and grief for her father.’ The other maids of honour prayed with assiduity.
‘Her father?’ said Mary Queen of Scotland. ‘The Marshal de St André is only a prisoner. He was taken when the Constable was taken. Monseigneur my uncle says that but for the mistakes of the Constable, Saint-Quentin would never have fallen. The King says that those who failed to execute his orders have brought the army low, and in future he will act alone as God inspires him. Until, of course, Monseigneur my other uncle returns from Italy.’
She scowled forbiddingly at the members of her little suite, wrinkling the white skin and picking out particularly the four Scottish maidens called Mary. ‘You are not afraid that the King of Spain will march into Paris? He would never dare. The Queen Regent my mother will send such armies into England that no English troops can be spared to fight for a foreigner. And God is on our side. He looks down on us today. The noblest blood in France walks barefoot in penitence from the Sainte Chapelle to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, bearing the relics of the Passion on their shoulders. How can King Philip, who makes war on the Pope, expect to conquer us?’
No one answered her. A twilight of smoky crimson and violet enclosed them. The tented glass, sixty feet high, soared above them, densely diapered in blue and cramoisy, exotic as tissues from India. The King, the Cardinal, the Bishop had completed their business high in the shining gold tribune and the Reliquary was raised to its place on men’s shoulders. Jewels glowed; silver-gilt sparkled; incense thickened. In a series of angular movements, the noblesse of France dropped to its stiff knees in reverence.
Mary Fleming noted that Madame de Brêne had corns. Her cousin the Queen of Scotland’s narrow arched feet, on the other hand, merely displayed two arcs of dirt, as did the thirteen-year-old feet of her affianced lord the Dauphin, eldest son and heir of King Henri.
If the King of Spain marched from Saint-Quentin to Paris, there were few with as much to lose as Mary of Scotland. Then the wedding, so long planned by messeigneurs her uncles between herself and the Dauphin, would never take place. She would never be Queen of France. Nor would she be sent back to Scotland, to make trouble for Spain. More likely she would be taken to Spain, Mary thought, and married to King Philip’s idiot child. Or to King Philip himself, if his English Queen died. And thus in one stroke he would join Scotland, England and Spain in one monarchy.
Small wonder she would not believe that Paris could be in danger. Mary Fleming looked at the thin, auburn-haired imperious mistress before her and drawing on the lessons of nine years of service realized that, as usual, she had mistaken her courage. Cousin Mary knew of the danger. Cousin Mary was sick with fears for the future. But to display it, or allow her entourage to display it, would be less than royal.
The shrine passed, containing the Crown of Thorns, the Sponge and the Lancehead. The courtiers stood, in a crackle of stretched bones and sackcloth. The procession formed, with the cross borne before it. The twelve stone Apostles watched it pass with blank eyes, smooth and calm in their beauty. Against the tall smoking fires of the stained glass the empty tribune was now hardly tangible. Ultramarine and bistre and viridian, the rose-window hung over the interlaced carvings, the painted pillars and fine fretted arches running with angels; and shone bright and jade green and wholesome as the apple trees of Compiègne.
Compiègne. Where once before, Mary had displayed a passing fretfulness, and for the same reason. Mary Fleming carried her thought down the forty-four steps of the staircase and through the cemetery and out of the Palais and along the narrow streets to the Parvis of Notre-Dame, where no one could talk because all Paris was watching, and even the mills on the bridge stilled their throbbing and clattering.
Because of the weight of the shrine, they moved slowly. The priests sang, and the censer-smells lingered. There on the left was the rue des Marmousets, and the cleared space of the house of the pâtissier, who had made pies from the flesh of those barbered to death by his neighbour. Next door, imagine, to Notre-Dame, rising foursquare, sprigged and buttoned above her, with its band of crowned and gaily conversing stone monarchs.
Which brought her back to Queen Mary at Compiègne, saying, ‘I believe my Scotsman Mr Crawford will show some of these princes how we wage war. How long must it be since last he saw me?’
They had gone into the matter. It had been six years previously, when Mr Crawford of Lymond had served her with some effectiveness, and had accepted her glove as his guerdon.
‘Then I must have been eight. One changes in six years,’ had said Mary complacently, and had waited. But he had not come to pay his duty. And next, he had been sent to Lyon, and recalled almost immediately.
He had arrived five days ago, and had been lodged in the Hôtel de Rochepôt, a house of the imprisoned Constable’s. The King had brought him out of there. The King had sent him yesterday to the Hôtel St André in the rue d’Orleans, where the Maréchale and her daughter, just back from Lyon, had welcomed him. Mary Fleming waited until they were established inside the Cathedral and the vicissitudes of the Corpus Christi were under way, and then said, testing her theory, ‘Your grace, I don’t see Mr Crawford?’
At the time, a rebuking glance was her answer. But a little later, pacing together: ‘Mr Crawford apparently could not spare the time to be present,’ said Mary of Scotland to Mary Fleming negligently. She paused. ‘I am not wholly in favour of this scheme to unite him to Mademoiselle d’Albon. It mocks the Church. He is married already, to a bright, well-favoured girl. I met her on her way south to Lyon.’
‘They say he wants a divorce,’ Mary Fleming said. ‘They say his wife will leave for England soon, and won’t oppose it.’
The Queen turned. ‘Do you think he will want to marry Catherine d’Albon?’ said Mary.
‘I think it would be politic to hope for it,’ said Fleming cautiously. ‘If he is so fine a commander, the King will wish to keep him beside him.’
‘I see you think he should marry her,’ said her mistress. ‘I do not. I think it unsuitable. She has manners, breeding, education I grant you, but he will marry her not for these but her fortune. His present wife has no flaw. I say that the situation may quite equally be met by Mr Crawford remaining attached to his wife, and resident here, where he may continue to serve His Majesty. These things are not hard to arrange.’
There was a guarded silence. Then, ‘Your grace …’ began Fleming warningly.
Queen Mary smiled: an illuminating, mischievous smile which dispatched, for the moment, the strain and discontent from her features. ‘You need have no fear. These matters can be brought about with perfect discretion.
‘What are you afraid of? He will enjoy our favour, his wife can surely have no objection, and he will be married, and therefore free of the intrigue which surrounds a divorced man. Nothing could be more suitable.’
So she had thought of that. There were some people at court, notably of the Constable’s party, who would be happy to see the Queen of Scotland tied to one of her own noblemen, instead of to the Dauphin of France. Mary Fleming looked up. Ahead, Queen Catherine, sackcloth raised, was stepping with care into her litter. Holding back her black curtain was Catherine, the Maréchale’s daughter, who was not auburn-haired but who had, none the less, a great many fine gifts to offer.
Mary Fleming said, ‘They say that he has not … That the charms of his wife do not interest him.’
‘Respect,’ said Mary of Scotland, ‘is all one requires, surely, in wedlock. Do you suggest that he might find a fondness for Catherine d’Albon?’
It was the question which had launched the discussion, and was harder to sidestep a second time. From the wisdom of fourteen years old: ‘Perhaps,’ said Mary Fleming sanctimoniously, ‘he is married to his profession?’
‘Then,’ said Queen Mary of Scotland, ‘it is time he was shown better ways of spending his leisure. After, that is, our city of Paris has been made safe for our people. Remind me to send for him.’
Mary Fleming, with gravity, dropped a curtsey.
*
Five days after that, on a Saturday at the start of September, Jerott Blyth and his wife entered Paris. They were met by Archie Abernethy, and led to the Porte Montmartre where part of the old Séjour du Roi had been made habitable for them. Then, briefly refreshed, the one-time merchant of Lyon set out, together with Archie, to find Francis Crawford and report to him.
It was a week now since Saint-Quentin had surrendered, and as yet no combined army from England and Spain threatened Paris.
One understood their hesitation. Even as far south as Orléans, word had filtered through of the reception the King’s new commander in Paris had prepared for the enemy. Of the 70,000 armed troops who had entered the city; the cannon brought in by river; the new fortifications; the stores of food and weapons and powder; the novel traps and ingenious devices built for him.
Of course, further help would be coming. Eight thousand workmen, Jerott had been told, had dug the trenches outside the walls to hold the 22,000 new German and Swiss levies. The Duke de Guise and his Italian troops were approaching; M. de Thermes was expected daily from Piedmont. He listened, and wondered indeed why more help was needed. In ten days, it seemed to him, Paris had become a defensible city.
It had never been that before. To Marthe, new to the town, he had talked of it, as it might be a honey-bee straddling the river, its body an island, with the Cathedral of Notre-Dame at its tail and as its head the Sainte Chapelle and the old Palais and gardens.
Outspread on either bank, you would say, were the wings, outlined with walls and with river-filled fosses. On the left, the University quarter flowed over its confines and into the Pré aux Clercs, where the religious houses lay in their vineyards, and students wandered, and cows plodded out to their grazing. And on the right stood the Town, with its streets of artisans, its quays, its markets, its churches, its mansions. With its tiltyards and Town House and prisons and palaces: the Louvre, rebuilding; the royal Hôtel des Tourelles and the other great houses in the St Anthony quarter belonging to the Constable, to the King’s mistress en titre, to the de Guise family with whom the Scottish Queen their niece was living.
The unpaved streets which were drains, and the lanes, fenced at either end, which had become refuse-dumps. The plaques, the shrines, the fountains. The holy statues, Huguenot-broken, encased in iron grilles with flowers wilting before them. The gardens, with vine-arbours and pear trees and strawberries; the taverns and the private houses with their bright painted sign-boards; the bridges over the Seine, three joining the right wing and two joining the left with their mills and tradesmen and houses. Beneath which, they said, few men dared to look after dark, for under the piles lived all the evil women and cut-throats in Paris.
Marthe had not been interested. Without her presence, Lymond was not prepared to accept her husband back as an officer. That she knew, and freely used as a weapon against Jerrott. But she had left Lyon, to Jerott’s guarded astonishment. She had come to Paris, and he did not believe this time, after that foul masquerade, that it could be to follow her step-brother. Her business was trading, and the finest sight for a man-at-arms or a dealer has always been a city abandoned.
Everyone was ready to tell them where Lymond was. They found him in the end at the Arsenal, between the Bastille and the river. He came out of the Tour de Billy with the Master of the Artillery and two échevins and, it turned out, was on his way to a converted wine store in the rue de la Vannerie, and thence to a stable-yard near the Tournelles, to supervise some unpredictable experiment.
No one explained. Archie, it seemed of intent, had told Jerott nothing.
There was about it all an air of orderly, intensive creation which was acutely familiar. From Lymond, Jerrott Blyth received no kind of boisterous welcome: the exchange, and the introductions, resembled those due to a captain just back from furlough. Then the King’s commander in Paris continued with his round of appointments, with Jerott and Archie striding after.
In due course, they shed the Master of the Artillery and one of the échevins; picked up first the Maître des Arlbalétriers and then the Prévôt Général des Monnaies et Maréchaussées and finally dropped them all to have supper at the home of the Prévôt of Paris, who had to leave half-way through, to deal with rumours of an impending clash in the University quarter.
From there, surprisingly, they called at the lodging of the Venetian Ambassador, where Jerott was ceremonially introduced and offered a glass of very good Candian wine, which he accepted with silent gratitude. He had been travelling since soon after daybreak. He gathered from Archie that Francis, exchanging pleasantries with Signor Soranzo, had been up and about even earlier. He thought Archie, whose seamed and sun-darkened face rarely altered, was for the first time showing all the weight of his years. But it was better, said Abernethy philosophically, than the first three or four days back in Paris, when they worked day and night like a coo-clink.
The chair was comfortable and he was sorry they had to leave, which they did shortly, exchanging greetings on the way with various sergeants, Cinquanteniers and Dixeniers who seemed to know Francis by sight. It struck Jerott that, rare in blue-blooded campaigns, Francis was taking particular trouble to involve the City. Men and money the burghers had already agreed to provide: he knew the Queen had gone herself to the Parliament of Paris and had obtained from them three hundred thousand francs for King Henri, and a promise to pay twenty-five thousand infantry for two months, and raise a defence garrison of seventy-four thousand. Since then, nursed by Lymond, it seemed that the City had continued to offer co-operation instead of the customary uneasy alliance, soon perverted, withdrawn, or transformed on three rousing speeches into revolt.
Their last call, in darkness, was to the ramparts. Accompanied this time by a group of officials from the Arsenal, a pair of gunners and an Italian engineer called Batiste, they walked out through the Porte Saint-Denis and, crossing the water by torchlight, took up a position by the Priory of Saint-Lazarus.
They were to see an artillery demonstration, Jerott was told, about which the citizens had been warned before couvre-feu. Against the last pale staining of sunset he could see pricks of light in the tall, turreted portals of the gate, Porte de deuil, Porte de joie, and its heroic St George and the dragon. Men, small and black, moved along the ramparts on either side among the angular barrels of the artillery.
Jerott felt unsafe, on the flat ground below. It was an unusual position from which to judge the success of a bombardment. He felt even more unsafe when abruptly, a marigold of bright fire blossomed high in the firmament and was followed by the flat clap of sound from a cannon.
Since no one else ran, he remained where he was, controlling a wince as a second, third and fourth explosion followed almost at once, and then a string of others on either side of him. The night filled with spangled grey smoke, and with whorls of flame which burst in the air, and lay and shuddered below in the ditch water.
He counted eighty cannon, and then eighty more salvoes as they were recharged and fired almost immediately. Wheeling birds filled the sky, and every child, dog, goose, sheep, goat and chicken in Paris and out of it gave tongue, but unlike the proving of Jean Maugué’s bombard, no bloody cloud of arms, legs and heads had risen to heaven: Priés pour l’âme de Jean Maugué, qui nouvellement est allé de vie à trespas entre le Ciel et la terre, au service du Roi notre Sire.
Lymond appeared to be pleased. The voices of his companions, thin in the deafening silence, were raised in praise and ejaculation. There was more talk, and people began to disperse. Lymond, appearing, said, ‘Having achieved the condition of una miseria di speranza piena, I think we may consider the day’s business concluded. Has thow, Foly, ane wyfe at hame? If Archie calls to tell her you are well, will you spare me a moment at the Hôtel St André? I shall entertain you with a gloss on my cannon.’
It was the invitation, seven hours too late, that Jerott had been waiting for. If he sat down now to talk about anything, he would most likely fall asleep. He hesitated. A set of fingers closed on his elbow and a voice he recognized as Archie’s said, ‘Go and hae your clack. I’ll tell Mistress Marthe you’ll come later.’
One of Archie’s more powerful hints. Removing his arm and rubbing it, Jerott said, ‘All right. Thank you. Did you say the Hôtel St André?’
Undisturbed, Lymond answered him. ‘The home of the Maréchale and her nubile daughter. It’s quite near you, on the other side of the Porte de Montmartre. As in the poem. C’est du vin de Montmartre Qui en boit pinte, en pisse quarte.’
They were on their way there already, with the Watch walking beside them. Archie had vanished. Since the atmosphere seemed fairly emancipated Jerott said, ‘And the Marshal is still a prisoner? Doesn’t that present certain interesting problems?’
‘I don’t know about problems,’ Lymond said. ‘It certainly presents certain interesting opportunities: the air is heady with alacritas. But recalling our rank, we are behaving ourselves with unimpeachable purity.
‘In any case, the d’Albon girl is at odds with her mother. She will court whom she must; she will marry where she has to; but none of the arts taught to young girls by duchesses can conceal the fact that she despises us. You, too. Archie mentioned you were coming. She thinks you have broken Catholic faith with your Order, le bouclier de la foy, le fort de la Chrestienté et le fleau des infideles, to serve Mammon in drapery. Here we are.’
‘I suppose I have,’ Jerott said. They were speaking in English. A pair of oak doors made their appearance in the lamplight whose panels, beneath the coat of arms of the d’Albon family, gave a stirring account of the siege of Troy, at which the Marshal de St André would no doubt have been present, had the event not occurred prematurely. They opened on Lymond’s approach.
‘Not at all,’ said Francis Crawford, leading the way across a magnificent tiled courtyard, past a fountain and up a flight of steps to a door which also opened before he could touch it. ‘Your troubles arise from the tenets you insist on adhering to, not the ones you depart from. If we cross to this staircase we should avoid … I beg your pardon.’
A tall young woman with unbound black hair who had been standing turning the pages of a book in the room they were traversing turned fully round and remarked in French, ‘Please do not apologize. My mother the Maréchale is out, but you may still avoid me should you wish simply to pass through the door. Unless I can offer you and your friend some refreshments?’
She despised him, Francis had said; and that much was clear. What he had not said of Catherine d’Albon was that she was beautiful. Strong-limbed and slender with a clear, high colour, she had slate-grey eyes pure as ice-water under level black brows, and the long, straight fall of her hair on the loose brocade robe she was wearing was hazed like boiled silk in the candlelight.
At the end of such a day’s work as Lymond had devised and carried out, he was immune, understandably, to any possible impact from either her looks or her anger. Jerott heard himself being introduced; heard the damning grace with which, giving it just enough attention, Lymond refused the offer of food and asked after the health of the Maréchale.
‘She will come back later this evening. She asked me, should you return, to beg you to excuse her. Since it seems M. de Sevigny requires neither food nor entertainment at her hands, the constant presence of his hostess may not be entirely necessary.’
‘You see?’ said M. de Sevigny, opening his unfortunately metal-soiled hands. ‘I am like Time, Li tens, qui s’en vait nuit et jor, Senz repos prendre, et senz sejor. How can I expect my friends to forgive me?’
‘I shouldn’t worry. You haven’t got any,’ said Jerott, and smiled hazily at Mademoiselle d’Albon who smiled reluctantly back. Lymond made no effort to continue the conversation, but bowed and stood aside to let Jerott mount the circular staircase which led to his apartments.
Their luxury was what one might have expected, given the scale of the rest of the building. Recalling the girl’s eyes following them both up the stair Jerott said suddenly, his hands in scented water, ‘What did you mean? That she would court whom she must?’
‘Don’t let’s go into all that: it’s too tedious,’ said Lymond, and dropping his towel on a tray, walked across to where the table of wines glowed by the fireplace. ‘I am not going to marry Catherine d’Albon, and that is all that need concern anyone. Are you, do you think, of sober habit on this trying campaign of non-aggression?’
He looked up and Jerott, meeting his inquiry, felt the colour rising under his skin. He said shortly, ‘Have you ever known me drunk in the field?’
‘Sometimes the bedchamber is the field,’ Lymond said. ‘I am offering you one glass, out of moral parsimony. As a skin bottel in the smoke So are you parcht and dride. Yet will you not out of your hart Let my commandement slide. What news of Lyon?’ He sat down, a cup of Pedro Ximénès in his palm.
Jerott sat down too, in a tapestry chair with cord fringes, and a lugged back which held his head between the ears like a pillow. He said, ‘The troops from Piedmont should be coming into Lyon about now. Danny means to come north as soon as they settle. Adam will wait until the Duke de Guise and Strozzi arrive. By the way … there seems to be a prevalent idea that the Italian army is about to march in to help Paris any day now. When I was in Lyon, de Guise and Strozzi were in Rome still. They won’t be here for a month.’
‘I know. The Piedmont troops will take ten days to march here at the minimum: St Laurent’s Swiss and Colonel Rekrod’s levies will take longer. And the 40,000 loyal French from the provinces will require another four weeks I fancy to muster. So, like me, you cannot sally forth yet and avenge Alec and Fergie.’
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 you 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.’