Checkmate (19 page)

The porter was an elderly man. The Maréchale could see the gleam of white hair on the other side of the grille, and a bony hand clutching a blanket. Lymond approached until he, also, was close to the grille. He had pulled his cap off. He said, ‘They told me you were still here, mon compére. Have you beaten anyone else for filling your best boots with horse-glue?’

There was a pause. And then the hand left the blanket and gripped the bars of the grille, while an unshaven face peered closer still. ‘The Master of Culter!’ The peering eyes moved in her direction, and then on to Catherine, her long hair round her shoulders. ‘And still my wild young friend, entangled in escapades. Who is after you? The father or the husband?’

‘The friends of the Cardinal of Lorraine, Joseph,’ said Lymond.

The old eyes opened and then steadied. ‘You were at the Calvinist gathering?’

‘They are searching the streets,’ Lymond said. ‘We need refuge until we can reach the river and cross it. But it need not be here.’

‘It was always here before,’ said the man Joseph. ‘Why not now?’ And, unlocking the gate, he pulled it open and held it for herself and the three others to pass through.

They were there for an hour only, and she could not speak to her rescuer because he disappeared almost immediately. She could hear his voice occasionally, and other voices raised in protest or laughter. The porter had not used his proper title. It was to be supposed that they did not know his present station.

Catherine, sitting in her incongruous clothes with her arm around her, was also listening: since they sat down she had not spoken to her mother. A stubborn girl, who had been too well bred to disobey, but who had made it plain from the outset that this marriage was not to her liking. One wondered what rumours might have come north from Lyon, but one did not ask why. The Maréchale de St André, shivering, said ‘You knew we were in danger? How did M. de Sevigny learn Claude and I were there?’

The dark eyes, so like those of Jacques her father, turned and studied her. ‘I told him,’ said Catherine d’Albon. ‘He could do nothing openly. So he broke into the Hôtel de Cluny and stole the Cardinal’s robes, and the livery.’

‘Under the nose of Charles de Guise?’ It was the act of a madman.

‘No,’ said her daughter. ‘That was the point. He said that it could be taken as certain that this evening the Cardinal would be asleep at his other house over the river. And so he must be. There was only his household, either asleep or out Huguenot-baiting. Mr Blyth said they had to tie up three men. When they are discovered, they will perhaps start searching not only the streets, but the houses.’

‘He risks his life,’ said the Maréchale de St André, huskily.

There was a small, impatient silence. ‘I think,’ said Catherine d’Albon, ‘that he permits himself an extravagance after the labours of the last weeks. We were told, if we wished, to serve ourselves from the pot by the fire. Would you like some spiced wine? It would warm you.’

It was true: there was a sharpness in the September night air, and she was cold with anxiety. She said, accepting a rough pewter mug of steaming wine, ‘They will find Claude. And the preacher.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Catherine. ‘They are with the man he calls Jerott Blyth, and the little man with the broken nose. It seems they have friends all round the district, at the Sign of the Elephant, and the Sign of St Sebastien, and the Sign of La Corne de Cerf.’

‘The printers?’ said Madame la Maréchale, and subsided into thought. Of course. This was the quarter of the printers, the first to become disaffected, the most advanced in any new tide of thought.

‘Yes. They will hide them,’ said Catherine, ‘and will see them safely home in the morning. M. de Sevigny cannot remain out of touch with his command overnight. He must return, and he seems sure that he can take us with him.’

‘With the bridges closed, and the streets being searched?’ said her mother. The wine had made her warmer. She rose and refilled her mug from the ladle and then served Catherine and, kindly, her valet. It was not his fault that death by faggot lay before all of them. She thought of it, staring into the red heart of the small fire lit to warm them. She did not think she would be very brave. They said that if they had nothing against you, they were sometimes willing to strangle you before the flames took a proper hold. If one recanted, one would be sure of it. She found, delving with the ladle, that there was at least another cupful in the pot.

She was not, therefore, too severe on M. de Sevigny when he finally returned, his arms full of clothes, and persuaded them all to dress up as peasants. There was no mirror, so she slapped the white gathered cap on her head and pulled at the drawstrings. The valet, whose job it was, helped her out of her silk skirts and into a rough cotton gown with an apron. Catherine, in a gown very like it, soaked a handkerchief and, bringing it to her, helped her to wipe off the careful cosmetics.

The water was refreshing. It was like a masquerade. Madame la Maréchale remembered an occasion when she had dressed up at court as a milkmaid, although her dress was of satin, and she had had little slippers sewn with cabochon rubies instead of these difficult wooden clogs M. de Sevigny had brought her. She stumbled, trying to walk in
them, but her valet had a good grasp of her arm, and M. de Sevigny would doubtless come to help him.

She had remembered the milkmaid dress because it had brought her such good fortune. The present King, masked, had commanded her to be his partner that evening, and not only at the dance. She watched for her newest conquest to reappear and smiled at him when he did, dressed in a shapeless felt hat and a frayed shirt and hose with a jacket.

She did not know when she smiled that Catherine was watching her, or that, unconstricted by buckram, her opulent flesh billowed within the cheap garments. Or that her face, yellowed and pitted under its pigments, might yet have retained a kind of lined nobility, except that without its wired superstructure of headgear, the tight skull and big jaw were ludicrous.

Catherine saw her mother, mildly tipsy, produce that assured and brilliant smile; and saw Lymond return it charmingly, with all the easy deference of which, up to now, she had been so scornful. He took her mother’s free hand and spoke to her.

‘Will you forgive me? It cannot be comfortable. But we must cross the river, and the College has a boat beside the Augustins. Joseph has found us a guide. We are four humble workers who had leave from our bakehouse to cross the bridge and bait the Huguenots, but the bridge is closed, and we have had a little too much cheap wine, and unless we return to our master before the morning batch is put in the ovens, we shall be beaten and turned out to starve in the gutter. Can you act in such a way, when we meet people?’

The Maréchale was pleased to say that she could and Catherine her daughter thought that with the aid of the spiced wine so thoughtfully provided she was probably right. Then they were at the postern by which they had entered and the grey-haired porter was unlocking it for them, and grinning, and wishing them good fortune as they passed through. Catherine wondered how much M. de Sevigny had paid him. Then she saw that they had been joined by a big-handed young man in sweaty clothes, also grinning, whose likeness to Joseph told all that was necessary. His name, said M. de Sevigny, was Moses,
cum duplicantur lateres qui venit
.

Whether or not his name was Moses, it described his function exactly. Since they had entered the rue St Jean de Beauvais an hour previously the barriers had been put up, which in college time prevented the carts and wagons of the millers and the vinegar-merchants from rumbling through and spoiling the lessons.

Moses had a key to the barrier. He also knew just where the corps de garde were working in the roads leading back to the rue St Jacques: with the Maréchale de St André’s elbow tucked under his arm he led them from one safe alleyway to another, pausing from time to time to hail groups of homecoming artisans as the crowds, having seen the Calvinists safely in prison, began coming away from the Petit Châtelet.

Everyone seemed in cheerful mood. Justice had been done, which wa:
satisfactory; and a good many personal blows had been struck, which was more satisfactory still. In the main street, the shutters were still open and a tavern had lit its serving-window and was handing out pots of liquor, to the trill of a flute in the background. Half a dozen customers, with drunken gravity, were measuring a dance among the litter of bloodstained paving stones.

They were singing in the rue Coupe-gorge cul de sac and for through-way to the rue des Maçons demanded a wayfarer’s fee of a ditty. Surprisingly, Madame la Maréchale’s valet, opening his mouth for virtually the first time that evening, produced a magnificent tenor and a sentimental vaudeville which made a group of ancient filles publiques in a condemned cellar burst into weeping: invitations followed them into the top of the rue de la Harpe where there was another party in active sport round the fountain. Someone tried to duck M. de Sevigny, who retaliated with the abandon of a man who has been throwing other men into water for the greater part of his life. He then intoned a brief duet with Madame la Maréchale’s valet, and catching Madame de St André and Moses round the waist, surged with them down into the rue de la Hachette, where the sign of the hunting-horn blazed in the light of twenty roasting spits turning. There he bought a little capon from Mans fresh off the charcoal, and they tore it to pieces and ate it between them, all five of them quoting Italian:
Veramente, queste Rotisserie sono cosa stupenda!
—while the Corps de Garde moved off down the rue du Chat qui Pesche and along the quayside.

An argument developed between a rôtisseur and a man in an apron over which purveyor was losing most through the adjectival decree that food prices had to stay where they were, on pain of whipping; not to mention the order that wine for the bastion workmen was to cost no more than two liards—two
liards!
—a pint. The man in the apron pointed out, thickly, that bloody cook-shops supplying bloody food to bloody pioneers at their workings could claim exemption from their whole bloody tribute, while the scare lasted.

The rôtisseur drew to his attention, coldly, the fact that some bloody
crocheteurs
didn’t ever pay tribute anyway.

Words passed. M. de Sevigny supported the rôtisseur and won the argument, since he turned out to have a better acquaintance than anybody with the chapter and verse of the regulations. Which was not surprising, since he had devised them himself, with the penalties.

After cordial leave-taking the party moved on, but not very quickly. There were men-at-arms still by the river. Dazed, half drunk with spiced wine and fatigue and tension at four o’clock on a September morning, Catherine d’Albon found herself and her mother seated on stools in a bakehouse, watching three arguing men compare methods of kneading. With drunken indignation, M. de Sevigny had refused to produce loaves for a rival. On the block, however, stood three wrought lumps of dough in the happy likeness of M. le Prévôt des Marchands, M. le Prévôt-Général
de la Connétablie, and Monseigneur the Cardinal of Lorraine, with his hat on. M. de Sevigny supervised their consignment to the ovens, was embraced by all present and drifted off after Moses, who was making discreet signs from the doorway.

The quay was empty, and at the foot of the steps was the Collège de St Barbe’s green and white boat, with the oars mysteriously already in situ. Moses said, ‘Can you manage, sir?’

‘This night,’ said Lymond, ‘how can we fail? Wonderfully enriched with shining miracles in confusion of heresy and error. It seems difficult to thank you adequately. I can only say that you have done more than you know. Your father has something to give you. And I want you to take this. If on account of what you have done tonight you or your father are troubled by the authorities, show them the ring and ask them to find me. My name is Francis Crawford, and my brother and I studied at St Barbe.’

‘I know that,’ said Moses. He took the ring, and stood, the broad grin stamped on his features. ‘It is true what you did to all the Professors’ boots?’

Lymond stared at him. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. I’m afraid it is.’

‘Is it true about the mathematical proposition you placed before Orontius Finnaeus that spelt …’

‘I don’t know how you heard about it,’ said M. de Sevigny. ‘Perhaps you had better not tell me what else you know about my misspent youth.’

Moses said, ‘When the ladies of the rue Glatigny were invited …?’

‘That,’ said M. de Sevigny, ‘is what I meant. We have to go. A thousand thanks, Moses.’

They had rowed half-way over the Seine before Moses stopped waving from behind the flood wall and went off, presumably home. Lymond steered them past the Mint watermill and up to the steps at the Tour du Coin, where they had to face an interrogation from the special guard Lymond himself had put on the waterway. The Maréchale’s valet de chambre, primed on the way over, told the tale about returning late to the bakehouse, and they were allowed to land and tie the boat to a bollard. Then, without event, they traversed the emptying streets to the Hôtel St André.

By then the Maréchale de St André was almost sober. Standing in her own hall, she spoke to her valet de chambre: a word of commendation, a word of future rewards. Then, with her daughter, she entered the warmth and the light of her parlour.

Francis Crawford, his hat pulled off, and one hand easing over his brow, was listening to one of his own men reporting. There was an exchange of words, and then he turned and crossed to his hostess. ‘There have been no alarms. Someone called, but went away when told we were sleeping. And there is good news from the battlefront. King Philip is staying in Saint-Quentin. It looks, mesdames, as if you will not have to learn either Spanish or English.’

‘I know English,’ said Catherine. Her mother, on first entering the light, had whipped off the tight cap and patting her hair, had begun to loosen the strings of her apron. Catherine stood as she was, face to face with François, comte de Sevigny, and looked at him.