Checkmate (18 page)

‘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.’

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

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

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

Marguerite de St André, standing with the comtesse de Laval at the back of the big, candlelit room, was aware of noise penetrating the thick old walls. Next door was the Church of St Benoît le Bétourné with its twisted High Altar which had once given the whole street its nickname. Opposite was the high, galleried frontage of the double College of Marmoutier and Plessis, and all around, arm in arm with the other tall houses, the rest of the scattered colleges of the University.

One would put down the disturbance perhaps to the students, except that the college streets were mostly barred off at night for this reason.
And in any case, the students were allies: they were aware, as no one else, of the abuses of the old order. They realized, as she had not until Claude had explained it to her, and her friend the Prince of Condé, and, discreetly, so many of those who held high positions at Court, that she could place no reliance on confession and a Catholic penance to save her. To obtain salvation, she must be one of the Elect. And, stricken with humility, the Maréchale de St André was from time to time much aware of her need for salvation. Worried, she moved forward to receive the bread and the wine with Claude, murmuring the incantation:
C’est la communication du corps et du sang du Seigneur;
then returned to her place for the psalms, and the prayers for the King and the Church and the prosperity of the kingdom.

The preacher had contrived a few words with his elders. If no help had arrived by the end of the service, he would put a choice to the congregation. Either they could wait for the law and give themselves up to justice; or the more active among them could force a path into the street, and fight their way through the crowd with their weapons.

He hoped, to the conclusion of the Aaronic benediction, that it would not be necessary to do this, but he was disappointed. Against a steady increase in the quantity of sound filtering through from the rue St Jacques, he asked for the attention of his congregation and told them, his voice calm, what was happening. Then he led them in prayers for guidance.

The children wept, and some of the women. The men talked. As he had expected, all those with swords were willing to attempt an escape, and most of the unarmed volunteered also to go with them. There was no possibility of leading out the women, or the old. In the open, no gallantry would protect them.

Shortly after that, the first group of men, swords drawn, dashed from the doors of the meeting-house.

Outside was cool air and a long, empty street, bathed in the flickering light of two bonfires. Certainly, the windows were thronged with calling people. But it must have looked as if a quick man, turning right or left, could run into a pend or a sidestreet, or through a garden, or across to the cemetery or into the cloisters of St Benoît itself.

They reached the road running and scattered. Before they had taken three steps, a curtain of driving rock swept the street, thudding on flesh and knocking on bone or dashing to shards on the causeway. Three men lay in the road. One, his head broken open, staggered from doorway to doorway. A fourth and fifth, slashed and limping, threw themselves into neighbouring gardens where hands grasped and held them.

The next group standing within the doorway of the Hôtel Bétourné saw it all. They waited only a moment, then in their turn ran out into that storm of rubble.

By the third foray, the stones were finished. They threw pikes for a while, which stuck in a man’s flesh and quivered, like harpoons in a
sharkskin. When these were done, the inhabitants of the rue St Jacques, oblivious to the shouts of the sergeants, seized axes and halberds and swarmed downstairs into the roadway. Tardily, the soldiers at either end of the street began to move round the overturned wains and run towards the seat of the fighting.

There were still between sixty and seventy women and children inside the Hôtel Bétourné including the comtesse de Laval and the Maréchale de St André, when the pastor pulled the doors shut and locked them against the carnage outside. Alight with religious frenzy, with fear, with unreasoning blood-lust, the God-fearing people of Paris set upon the Calvinists trapped in the street, and did not use stones this time to attack them. One man died, kicked to death in the church cloisters. The others, spinning from fist to fist, were lashed with belts and beaten with cart-whips and chopped at with axes. The horses of the Huissiers, plunging amongst them, made little difference, nor did the strong arms of the sergeants and the archers. There were not enough of them. And blocking the light of the bonfires, they rendered Catholic and Calvinist quite indistinguishable.

The crowd swayed against the Hôtel Bétourné and commanded, screaming, that the heretics should come out. The door panels shuddered to the blows of bodies and fists. A torch, flung through the smashed windows, lay ablaze on the cloth of the altar table. The women, weeping, scrambled to smother it.
‘Mon Dieu, donne la main à ta servante,’
prayed Madame la Maréchale de St André.
‘Je te recommande mon âme.’

Then quite simply, a miracle happened. The shattered windows blazed and burned with a flickering and unearthly brilliance. The blows on the door ceased. The screaming altered. And there rang out the voice of their deliverer, in a thunder of arquebus shot that made every other noise puny and caused the uproar outside to falter, to stagger and perish.

‘I command you,’ said that scathing, peremptory voice, ‘to cease Satan’s work and stand back as you look for redemption. Will God rejoice that we send him blackened souls in place of penitent lambs who have seen their unwisdom? Will the strong arms here, who defend you day and night from the enemy, be given fresh heart from your actions tonight, or will the dawn find them sick at heart and weary, in no case to protect you? Be not led astray, men of Paris, by the dark angels who whisper of revenge, of slaughter, of retribution. The church sees your trouble; the law acts upon it. Give your case to the law, who will take these men and women and deal with them justly. Captain!’

‘Your Eminence …’

‘Enter the meeting place. Take these Calvinists with you. Link them with bands and make of your men a living corridor through which they may march to the Petit Châtelet. Save your fellow men from sin, and the souls of these unfortunates for redemption.’

‘Your Eminence.’

Then the doors opened, and the Maréchale saw the speaker.

Even in the uncertain darkness, you could not mistake the scarlet robes of the Cardinal of Lorraine, or the coat of arms on the velvet housings of his mule; or the red velvet hoquetons of the twelve men with torches and hackbuts behind him.

No one in Paris had ever been known to ignore Charles de Guise, brother of the Duke, uncle of the child Queen Mary and, next the King—and, some said, before him—the most powerful man in the kingdom.

As he rode forward the crowd withdrew, weapons dropping. At his sweeping signal the soldiers arrived, hurrying, in their place; picking up the injured and dead and ushering the rest, whole or limping, weeping or silent, back into the Hôtel Bétourné. There, with two of the Cardinal’s servants to help, they were tied, two by two, in a column of degradation together.

The preacher was last, and with him, Claude de Laval and the Maréchale de St André with their servants. Dry-eyed, Marguerite de St André had no need to ask why the Cardinal had singled them out for this special attention. The husband of Claude Laval was nephew to the captured Constable of France, the Cardinal’s most inveterate enemy. The disgrace of Claude was a blow at the Constable, as her disgrace would be the ruin of her husband, also a prisoner. And a triumph for Charles de Guise and his brother.

He had come to gloat. Madame la Maréchale watched him pass through the meeting-house in a sweep of red robes, and caught a glimpse of the fair skin and shallow hat with its long swaying strings. His clothes smelt of incense. He stopped, his very bearing a reprimand, beside her.

‘There are two litters outside the door,’ said the pleasant voice of Francis Crawford from under the Cardinal’s shadowy brim. ‘The pastor and Madame la Comtesse will go in the first, and Madame la Maréchale and her chamber valet in the second. If anyone speaks to you, you hold the curtains closed and you do not reply. Geoffrey and Clément will help you.’

Geoffrey and Clément, she realized, were the velvet-clad bodyguard. One of them turned and smiled, wet-eyed into her eyes. It was Catherine, her own daughter.

And then, almost immediately it seemed, she saw Claude’s started face looking at her from between the blazoned curtains of a splendid litter, its poles picked out in gold and the coat of arms of the house of Guise collaring the nodding plumes of its framework.

It moved off, and another took its place, into which she climbed with her servant. Then, drawing the curtains close, she felt it raised on the shoulders of the Cardinal’s bodyguard. As it crossed the street she heard the voice so like the Cardinal’s behind her, conveying to the murmuring people his blessing. And on top of that, the rumble of many horses’ hooves, arriving from the direction of the Petit Pont and the Châtelet.
The procureur du roi and his men, to protect the march of the long train of prisoners.

Jolting, the litter continued. The noise retreated. The running feet of a boy or two and the whine of a beggar pursued them still for a while, and then stopped as one of the bodyguard issued sharp orders. Shortly after that, she and her servant were plunged into darkness as the torches outside were extinguished. The motion continued for a little longer. Then abruptly, the palinquin was set down and the curtains drawn back on cool air and darkness.

‘If any be afflicted,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘let hym praye; and if any be mery, let hym syng Psalmes. We’ve hidden the robes and the doublets at the back door of the Collège du Plessis, and I hope the clyping bursars get hanged for it. Madame, can you walk? Mademoiselle and your man here will help you. Mr Blyth and Archie are looking after the Comtesse and the preacher.’

They were behind the church of St Hilary’s, and Catherine, in a tunic and breech hose of her father’s, was standing beside M. de Sevigny, dressed in riding clothes, waiting for her. Even as she got out of the litter, it was taken away. The other had already gone, and the rest of the spurious bodyguard. Before she could speak, Lymond said, ‘If you please, we must hurry. There’s a Dizainier and some troops coming uphill from the rue St Jacques.’

‘There is another,’ Catherine said; and her mother marvelled at the steadiness of her voice. ‘Coming down from the St Geneviève crossroads. They must be looking for escaped Huguenots.’

‘No doubt,’ said M. de Sevigny. He was standing, his hands on his hips, looking up at an extremely high wall. ‘Do you think they have rebuilt that recently? Ah, well. Faith, without Hope and Charitie Avalit nocht, my Sonne, said he.’

God then performed a series of miracles. M. de Sevigny stepped from her valet’s back straight into the flank of a vertical wall, climbed it in three moves and disappeared over it. From the other side, almost at once, came the noise of many feet, frenziedly running. The Dizainier and his men climbing the slope from the rue St Jacques heard it also. Someone shouted. There was a rattle of arms, and then the slap of more feet as the whole party set off, pursuing. An instant later the troops from St Geneviève could be heard joining them.

M. de Sevigny reappeared, quietly, through a postern. ‘I thought from the smell they still kept goats there,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Now, mesdames, you must run as fast as the goats did.
Va, va te cacher que le chat ne te voie.’

One realized, running, that it was not a miracle: that there had been footholds on that wall, and that he had known about them. One further realized, as he led the way through all the twisting alleys about the Clos Bruneau, that he was not merely avoiding pursuit, but was making for one particular building. It was not until they reached it, in the darkness,
that she recognized the low arcades on the corner of the rue Jean de Beauvais and knew what it was he had been aiming for.

She was familiar with the main entrance with its arched, studded door and wreathed busts of dead poets. He passed these, however, and stopped instead at a plain wooden gate with a grille, across which he drew the hilt of his poniard, gently, in a muted rattle of sound. He repeated it, at deliberate intervals until, without prior warning, a voice on the other side said, ‘This is the Collège de St Barbe, full of those who have stout right arms to protect their Christian sleep on a night such as this. State your business.’