Checkmate (27 page)

‘Isabelle Roset?’ said Lymond. It was very hot by the fire. He moved to a low stool and sat there, breathing evenly. It took all his willpower and a good deal of his attention, which was why he was doing it. He said, ‘Who does she keep house for?’

There was a rattle outside. The pigeons, fickle passengers, were departing again from the hayloft. The sightless eyes turned on Francis Crawford. ‘Why, no one,’ said Renée Jourda. ‘Only Mistress Sybilla keeps it, for memory’s sake. The child was too young to be taken away. I said it should not be taken away, but they would have it. A boy. They called it Francis. She would have no other name.’ Fright, for the moment banished, came suddenly back to the empty face once more. ‘Your name! But I didn’t tell anyone!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lymond said gently. He paused and then said, ‘I may not even be the child who was born that day. Did you hear if he lived? You and Isabelle were asked to sign a paper about him.’

She stared in his direction. ‘He was too young to travel. But he must have lived. There was a son named Francis Crawford reared at Midculter. Isabelle told me.’

‘But not Mistress Sybilla’s,’ Lymond said. It seemed as if it had all been going on for a very long time. He kept his voice level, and patient, and drained of all shade of emotion. ‘It seems likely that the baby you saw in Paris died just after birth. I have seen the death certificate. Then she adopted me as her son, and brought me up by the same name. It makes no difference. There is only one thing that none of us knows. We do not know who bought the Paris house for Mistress Sybilla. We do not know the name of the father of the baby son born to her there. But you did, did you not? It was on the paper you signed.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I knew him. He came to see her in the convent. That, you know, was how they met. His house was near by. Ah, pretty, pretty the pair they made!’ She strained towards him. ‘You don’t hold it against her?’

Lymond said slowly, ‘I told you. I was born of a different mother.’

‘But with the same name?’ Her uncomprehending face remained fixed on his, and then slowly cleared. ‘Of course. Then you are Béatris’s child, by the same father.’

And she spoke in the same flat and querulous voice, the name he had
borne in his mind like a slave-brand through most of the long, solitary years of his life.

It was of no importance. Birth did not matter: heredity was merely a hurdle; one was what one made of oneself: that and no other. Ask one more question, and there would be nothing left to ask, ever, that mattered to him.

But he did not ask it. Instead, he became aware that, sitting opposite him, Renée Jourda had been gripped by a sudden excitement. She said, ‘You say you are not a son of Mistress Sybilla’s? Then you did not come here to kill me?’

Because of the headache, or because of the state of his thoughts he did not analyse that as quickly as he should have done. He said, ‘Of course not. Why should you think I would? To keep my parentage secret?’ And then, as his brain took hold, he said, ‘Madame Jourda, did someone tell you this? You knew my name. Were you expecting me?’

She sat very still. And now the fire did not renew the illusion of youth but lit, without pity, the blank face of age and fatigue and helpless futility. Renée Jourda said, ‘They said they would kill me if I warned you.’

‘The Spaniards,’ Lymond said; and she did not contradict him. He bent, and lifted his sword and walking quickly and quietly, made his way to the window. It was not her fault. But he should have remembered that pigeons do not fly for no reason.

The yard was empty, but the bolt of the barn door was not driven home, as he had left it.

He left the window as quietly as he had reached it. ‘I’m sorry. Goodbye, Madame Jourda,’ said Lymond; and unlocking the door, walked out, sword in hand, into the sunshine.

No one rushed on him; no one fired; no one shouted. He continued to move unhurriedly across the strewn yard until he reached the barn door, and if he paused there, it was just for an instant. Then he pulled the door open and walked inside without hesitation.

‘Christ, that was quick,’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘If you needed a woman as much as that, I could have got you a pair at the
Trois Têtes
in Calais. Now we’ve come all this way, are you going to let us all in to see her?’

He was there, grinning as he lolled in his peasant clothes on the rack of dry boughs, Lymond’s discarded hat crammed on his dyed Italian curls. Beside him, less at ease, was Daniel Hislop. And standing about in the sodden straw were half a dozen of Hislop’s men from Péronne.

Piero Strozzi said, ‘I know. It is bad enough to have one foolish general flaunting his field-skills like a new-made ensign drummer-boy. We all wish to show the soldiery that we can, if need be, cook better puddings than the cook does. I think, however, if you have finished, we should return to Compiègne. The war will be cooling without us.’

Lymond said, ‘Did you track me here?’

‘Yes,’ said Danny. The hair moved on his scalp at the tone of the question.

‘When did you arrive?’

Piero Strozzi also had stopped grinning. ‘When you took the milk in.’

‘Did you see anyone else?’

‘No one. No one else followed you. Of that you may be sure. And there is no one else round the farm. Why?’ said Piero Strozzi sharply.

‘We are in a Spanish trap,’ Lymond said. ‘Meant for me. But now, of course, they will have you also. I suppose you have all the bloody Calais notes in your jerkin?’

‘I left them at Péronne. The girl betrayed you?’ said Strozzi. He was moving already, his sword drawn, his eyes on the windows.

‘It’s an old woman. I lit a fire for her. Better puddings,’ said Lymond flatly. Danny had never seen him so totally devoid of all that could be called human emotion. ‘Have you horses?’

‘No,’ said Strozzi. ‘And it is too late, in any case. Here they come.’

They were, indeed, Spanish troops: thirty horsemen, under a captain. The Duke of Savoy knew the value of the prize he intended to capture. They combed the trees with their groined shining helmets and took their places in a ring round the buildings, busy as clockwork artefacts of wax and quicksilver. Then the captain rode into the yard and with ten men dismounted beside him, called upon
el conde Criafordo
to surrender.

‘They have left their horses in the trees,’ said Lymond. ‘And they don’t know as yet that there are eight of you. You should be able to do it. You must have got your bloody bâton for something other than scoutcraft.’

Which made Marshal Strozzi’s temper rise, and events happen commensurately quickly. Danny, obeying orders, kept his mouth shut and saw to it that his six soldiers understood that they were in a good deal more danger from their two leaders than they were from the enemy. And that when they were told to catch pigeons, it meant that they had to catch pigeons, and be quick about it.

In the yard, Captain Alferez Carasco was obeying his orders also. The
Herrervelos
had not been entrusted with this work, nor had Count Wittgenstein’s Germans. Only Captain Carasco’s light horse could be depended upon to bring back alive and well the important general who, unlikely though it seemed, was to visit this old peasant in person.

Even after the intelligence reached them, the Duke had refused to believe it. Then they had called on the old woman and found that indeed she knew the name of el conde Criafordo and had been nurse long ago to his mother. She was told what to do if the general visited her. And at the first sight of her smoke he, Captain Carasco, had acted.

When, after three summons, there was no answer from the hidden man, Captain Carasco ordered his hackbutters to fire a volley through the shut door of the farmhouse and then, with men on either side, burst it open and began to search through it. He came out redfaced and addressed his lieutenant. ‘The woman says he left. He guessed we were coming.’

‘Mi capitán
, no one has left the farm,’ the man said. ‘It is not possible.’

Which was precisely when the flutter of wings from the hayloft drew
their attention to the pigeon holes under the barn roof. His good humour restored, Captain Carasco gave the required orders.

They ringed the barn first; and then called for surrender. Next, after firing some shots, six soldiers burst in and gathered on the wet straw under the trapdoor. Above their heads they could hear quite clearly the enemy general’s footsteps in the hayloft. But he must have climbed by rope, and drawn it up after him. There was no ladder.

They reported and returned, their ears burning, with the captain.

It was a very high barn. One of them, upheld by two others, managed to reach the trapdoor and ram it back against no opposition. They saw the top man pull himself up and round, drawing his sword as he entered the hayloft. He rose and moved out of sight. For a moment more there was silence, except for the creak of his steps on the ceiling. Then he howled. Above their heads there broke out a confusion of stamping; the clash of steel; the grunts of two men locked in combat.

Captain Carasco jerked his head. The pyramid reformed. One man and then a second disappeared up through the trapdoor and a moment later, on his orders, a rope came down which allowed the last fortunate three to ascend. ‘Remember!’ roared Captain Carasco. ‘You are to overwhelm him with numbers. He is not to be rendered unusable.’

It was, in fact, the last thing he remembered saying, just before he received an incapacitating blow on the back of his cranium.

Outside, awaiting orders, the ring of horsemen kept their patient vigil, and the group of those dismounted stood in the yard, exchanging muted opinions. From there, the course of battle was agreeably palpable. They listened, impressed by the language before, finally, silence prevailed.

It was not clear whether it was Julian or Diego whose jubilant voice finally reported, shouting, that the prisoner was subdued, and they were about to bind and descend with him.

There followed a short wait. Since they had been told to guard the exterior of the barn, Captain Carasco’s loyal men continued to stand and guard the outside of the barn. They were still guarding it when the first of them became aware of a strong stench of burning.

The barn windows had all been close-shuttered, which was why unnoticed the burning boughs in the corner, dry as powder, could become a Catherine wheel which sparked fire into the litter. Once lit, the straw only smouldered. But the smoke it vented, thick as wool, acrid as ammonia, poured through the seams of the timber and when at last they rushed forward and dragged the doors open, rolled over the yard like the white, stifling fall of some fatal, Ionic volcano.

Figures, retching and coughing, burst from the smoke, joining other spluttering figures in the shrouded, darkening air of the yard. Inside the barn, ribbons of flame fluttered, metallic and bright in the darkness. More helmeted figures burst through them; and last of all a man without uniform: a soot-smeared gentleman with yellow hair and a torn, peasant’s shirt, whose two arms were gripped by his captors.

Diego, or perhaps Julian, took time between running to and fro from the pond to congratulate them as they disappeared into the fog. ‘You have him!’

‘Aye, we have him.’

‘Are you sure it’s the general?’

‘Yellow hair. Can you not see?’

‘And a full beard and moustache?’ yelled Diego, or Julian, choking. He threw his last helmetful of green water on the blazing barn and prepared to abandon it.

‘He admitted it.’ Smoke, billowing, closed on the speaker just as Captain Carasco himself, his hand to his head, tottered to the barn door and cried gaspingly, ‘To me! To me! There are men in the barn!’

Of the few men left who could see or hear him, five ran towards him. ‘There are none, mi capitán. All have run out.’

His breath wrestled through the smoke in his throat. ‘I tell you, our men are still upstairs. Can you not hear them? Bring water. A rope. An axe.’

‘There is nothing to hold water, mi capitán,’ said someone thickly. ‘We are using our helmets.’

‘Use them, then! We must break our way through to the hayloft. Rope … A pail … I have seen a pail …’

It had struck Lymond, too, that someone would think of the milk pail. He had run with the rest nearly as far as the horses, and seen Piero Strozzi mount, and Danny, and all the Spanish-garbed company, as well as the soldier passed off as himself. Then, merging into the smoke, he dropped back before they could miss him; for he had one responsibility which he could in fairness ask no one to share with him.

So, twisting, sprinting, avoiding the other blundering figures which came at him, black and blinded from the choking seat of the fire, Francis Crawford raced back to the farmhouse and into the parlour, where, taking a moment, he swung the pail of milk out through the window. Then he groped through the white, stifling haze to where Renée Jourda had been sitting.

She was there still; her sightless eyes looking straight at him. Through it all, behind the crazy torrent of movement, he had been conscious of this. Aware that in this shuttered room a blind woman was sitting, assaulted with questions, shaken by trampling vibrations; unseeing, suffering listener to the explosion of gunfire, the clash of steel, the shouting of men in stress and in anger. And last of all, exposed to a choking alchemy by which the very air became bane in her nostrils.

He looked at her, speaking her name: his voice steady over the private, high-spinning turmoil of extreme exertion.

But she did not answer, although she sat erect and calmly, with the long hair … grey, not black … straggling over her shoulders; and her
eyes open and creamy like milk-glass; and not yellow with straw.

‘She is dead. I speak,’ said Captain Alferez Carasco from the window, a milk-pail in both blackened hands, ‘to el conde Criafordo? There are three men at the door and one at each window: soon there will be thirty.

‘Milord, you are surpassed. You will be pleased to surrender.’

The red and white chequered fortress of Ham was only five miles to the north-west of Flavy and, powerful as a walled city, had for three hundred years commanded the village, the church and the River Somme whose moat encircled it.

Lymond saw nothing of his arrival there. He came to his senses during the night in a hurriedly prepared chamber in the tower; and in the morning was brought to the low-ceilinged room with its seven-foot window embrasures where the Duke de Nevers, for France, had so recently given up tenure to the Duke of Savoy, for Spain and England.

Savoy was not there. Behind the massive, dark desk sat a man taller and older whose groomed, silvery beard still rested on the bosom of his richly sewn doublet in the fashion of ten years ago, when he was England’s general, commanding the wars against Scotland.

‘Ah, M. de Sevigny,’ said Lord Grey of Wilton. ‘Pray sit down. I am sorry that Captain Carasco had to use force. He was ordered to avoid it. The odds being one to thirty I feel you could, with honour, have surrendered your sword.’

‘I was angry,’ said Lymond. He remained standing.

‘Just so,’ said Lord Grey. He rose and stalked slowly round his desk, having reconsidered a tart comment about overplaying one’s hand in pretty Spanish masquerades. This might look like the insolent opponent, half his age, of Hume; of Heriot; of Hexham but it was not; as one knew already from the man’s record. Lord Grey said, ‘I must make plain my regret for the death of Madame Jourda. There was some impression that she, and not your friends, had warned you of your danger. The Captain lost his head.’

It was not all that he had lost. He was in the care of the barber-surgeon at that moment, having had six inches of Mr Crawford’s sword passed through his chest wall. Lymond said, ‘If you will be kind enough to make out a report of the matter for his grace of Savoy, I shall be glad to countersign it.’

Which meant he wanted Carasco broken. It was probable that he would be. The Duke’s orders were to let this man have anything, within reason, that he wanted. Lord Grey said, ‘It shall be done. Of course. An army is only as good as its officers,’ and having got the man seated at
last, clapped his hands for wine, served it, and took a chair this time on the same side of the desk as his prisoner. ‘I am glad to see,’ said Lord Grey, ‘that we have managed to find clothes for you more befitting your rank. I admire your hardihood. Had we not known who you were, you and your friends might have been killed on sight as common soldiers. One hopes they bear you no resentment. They saved their skins, I am told, with remarkable alacrity.’

‘It would interest you to know who they were,’ said Lymond. ‘It would interest me to know who informed you that I might be coming to see Madame Jourda.’

There was a certain relief in doing business with professionals. ‘I have no objection,’ said Grey. He rose to call Myles, his secretary, and returned to his seat to await him. ‘We are unlikely to require his services again. Ah. Here we are. A letter, unsigned, but very circumstantial, as you will see, in its detail. At some time in the next weeks, the Scottish general known as the comte de Sevigny would make a personal visit to a farm near Flavy-le-Martel to settle a family dispute with an old nurse named Renée Jourda. He was likely to come alone, and in private. The writer wished no reward for the information, but would expect half the bounty if M. de Sevigny were secured.’

‘To be paid where?’ said Lymond.

‘At a certain spot in a wood near Chantilly. I have sent a man there. He has orders to stay as long as feasible, in order to see what manner of person comes for it. When he returns, you may question him. There. You may wish to see the letter. You may even perhaps know the handwriting.’

There was a brief silence. ‘Yes,’ said Lymond. ‘I know the handwriting.’

The soul of tact, William Grey, thirteenth Baron, sipped wine and waited. ‘Thank you,’ said Lymond. He laid the letter back on the desk. ‘You wanted to know about my companions. The leader was an officer from my company called Daniel Hislop, and he and the men under him had been in action for several days outside Péronne. I called on them to give me cover when I saw how busy the district was. Hence they were in military dress and I was not.’

‘You give short measure, Mr Crawford,’ said Lord Grey patiently. ‘I am prepared to believe that you made some excuse to visit the home of an old family servant. I do not believe you would have troubled had her home been, say, in Chantilly. You came to study the fortifications here at Ham. And you did not come alone. I am told there was a second man in peasant’s clothing.’

‘I believe there was,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Let me make you another bargain. I shall tell you his name, when you bring me the address of the man who uplifts your blood-money.
Cuando amigo pide, no ay mañana
. Are we not going to discuss the terms on which I change sides?’

‘If you wish,’ said Lord Grey courteously. He disguised, with success, his distaste for being hurried in delicate matters. ‘You are naturally
anxious about your future. His Majesty King Philip must be the final arbiter. But I know that two choices will be laid before you. One of these is to return to Spain with the King.’

He looked up at the other man sharply. No flattered blood mantled Lymond’s skin below the cuts and the darkening bruises. They said the lady Elizabeth, sister to Philip’s wife, had taken an interest in him. They did not say, but whispered, that if King Philip’s wife the Queen of England were to die, the King would seek to marry the lady Elizabeth her successor. ‘And the other?’ said Lymond.

‘Your freedom, upon an agreed ransom. To be effected on the conclusion of peace terms.’ Lord Grey smiled. ‘You are too skilful an adversary, Mr Crawford, to be permitted to take the field against us any longer.’

‘And the ransom?’ said Lymond.

Lord Grey of Wilton sipped his wine and put the cup down. He had hoped to defer this. On the other hand, one might as well get the thing over. He said, ‘One million écus of gold, Mr Crawford. To be paid in a single sum, promissory notes being in this case unacceptable.’

‘I see,’ said Lymond.

There was a little silence. It was a round sum, but not a chance one. They had spent an evening working it out, he and Laurence and Arthur. Savoy himself had weighed it up. It represented what they guessed of the total value of all Francis Crawford’s possessions: his land, his treasure, his income from his new offices. It added to that, all that was owned by his wife Philippa Somerville. And to that, the whole estate of his mother and brother in Midculter, Scotland.

All these, together with what he might borrow, might possibly raise such a ransom. It offered him freedom and ruin. It put him barefoot in the market again, sword in hand, with this time his brother beside him.

Lymond said, ‘I take it my brother is causing you trouble. I’m afraid he will continue to cause you trouble. Nothing, I assure you, would induce him to ransom me. And equally, nothing would induce me to accept any favours.’

‘I am sure,’ said Lord Grey, ‘you would face most stoically a lifetime of prison. I am sorry you feel your brother would do nothing to help you. It occurred to us that the rest of your family might feel differently. And if the money is offered to us, we should have no qualms on your behalf in accepting it.’

‘So I go to Spain,’ said Lymond thoughtfully, ‘or you beggar my family?’

‘You claimed once,’ said Lord Grey, ‘it was Russia your mind was set upon.’

The hard blue eyes did not avoid his. ‘Even for me,’ Lymond said, ‘the price is too high.’

They looked at one another. Outside the door, Lord Grey knew Myles was standing, obediently, to prevent any untimely interruption.

‘There is other coin,’ said Lord Grey of Wilton carefully.

A smile, irritatingly understanding, broke upon Francis Crawford’s mobile, discoloured face. He rose to his feet and looked down, still smiling, at his noble enemy. ‘And in the land of Ham for them, Most wondrous woorkes had done? You spoke of two choices only.’

‘There is a third,’ said the thirteenth baron of Wilton. ‘It is my own suggestion but I am prepared, on certain assurances from yourself, to guarantee that King Philip will sanction it.’

‘Assurances?’ said Lymond gently.

‘Indeed. And of a kind which may not be to your liking, unless you have deceived the French as thoroughly as you deceived my unfortunate nephew at Douai. I shall suggest to you the means by which, without money, you may obtain your freedom. In return, I shall require you, enable you, and if necessary compel you, Mr Crawford, to travel to Russia, and stay there.’

‘Dear me,’ said Francis Crawford. His eyes, resting on those of his captor, bore an expression Grey could not identify. Then he said, ‘Was that an inspired guess? I am almost as anxious to leave Europe, my dear Lord Grey, as you seem to be to remove me. Therefore
faisons de fueille cortine et s’aimerons mignotement
. I am prepared to give you your assurance. I promise, once free, to abandon Spain, France and Scotland in favour of Russia. Provided, of course, that the mitigated price of my freedom is still not beyond me. In place of money, what do you wish of me?’

‘Information,’ said Grey. He had risen too, and stood by the desk, his patrician fingers lightly clasped at his back, the gold of his chain glinting over the paned yoke of his jerkin. ‘But of a most exhaustive nature. What money the French king has raised. What troops he has, and where they are stationed. His intentions in Italy. His intentions in Lyon. His intentions in Lorraine. And finally, of course, his fullest plans for his present campaign in Champagne and Picardy. Whether he intends to disband his troops or place them in winter quarters. Whether he means to try and retake these forts or strike elsewhere, and when and how. His plans for Calais and Gravelines and Guînes. Tell us these things,’ said Lord Grey. ‘Convince us that what you tell us is truthful, and you shall have funds, baggage, servants, safeconducts and conveyances which will see you in Moscow by springtime.’

‘And so,’ said Lymond unexpectedly, ‘the knot has got to the teeth of the comb.’ His eyes were on the tiled floor where, here and there, the pattern had worn down to the terracotta.

‘You hesitate?’ said Lord Grey mildly. ‘With a kingdom awaiting you?’

‘I might,’ said Lymond, ‘make my kingdom Hispania. I wonder if you have thought of that?’

Lord Grey smiled. ‘Under Ruy Gomez? Under Alva? Under Arras? You would be dead of a draught, or a stabbing, before the year was well out. Mr Crawford, I have no fear that you will follow the monarch to
Spain. I think your prospects in France are less golden than perhaps once you were led to believe. Give me the information which will allow King Philip to finish this war, and I shall convey you to Russia, and your ransom with you. It is an offer well worth considering.’ He rang the bell on his desk. ‘When you have your reply, ask your guard to inform me.’

‘Why wait?’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You may have my answer now, if you wish.’

‘So hastily?’ said Lord Grey of Wilton.

‘Why,’ said the other man, and surveyed him from boots to crown with those derisive, chilly blue eyes. ‘I have my eye on a piece of ground called Aceldama. You have found the right coin. I accept it.’

*

He had been taken back to his chamber and they were locking him in when a man in half-armour arrived and came up the stairs running, the guards saluting his passage.

Arrived at Lymond’s threshold he took off and gave to a man at arms his gloves and his helmet, revealing fine dark hair flattened by sweat, and a steep-boned self-contained face shadowed, but not yet coarsened by war. Then he stepped inside and motioned to them to lock the door after him.

‘Mr Crawford,’ said Austin Grey. ‘I wish the favour of your attention.’

Lymond turned, smiling. ‘My lord of Allendale. Come then, South Wind, and perfect my garden.’

*

The King of France, riding in cavalcade to Compiègne with half the Court, was shown and approved the Duke de Guise’s magnificent plan for the recovery of Calais. He commanded that there should be no secret made among the soldiery of the great booty to be obtained there; and he took aside the Marshal Piero Strozzi and placed round his neck a collar worth eight hundred écus in recognition of the work of espial he had engaged in, at such cost and such risk to himself.

‘Nor, when he is returned to us, shall we show ourselves less generous towards M. de Sevigny,’ said his Majesty. ‘We grieve that France has lost, however temporarily, such a servant. A trumpet will be sent to inquire the terms of his ransom. We have even considered an attack on the fortress, but M. de Guise informs me that it would cost the lives of many brave men, with no assurance of rescue. We are happy at least to have Marshal Strozzi beside us.’

‘It was unfortunate,’ said Marshal Strozzi. ‘Whatever ransom is agreed, your grace will lose the Chevalier’s services until the war ends. If the Duke is willing to reconsider, I am prepared to mount an attack against Ham.’

‘And risk your life again? We should not allow it,’ said Henri. ‘In any
case, our object at present is Calais. That taken, the war will not be long in ending. M. de Sevigny will return. You will see. And he will be welcome.’

*

In a room in another wing of the fortified château of Compiègne, four men sat round a table and discussed, from another viewpoint, the same subject.

‘Daddy Cloots says that Ham is impregnable,’ said Archie Abernethy. ‘But Daddy Cloots doesna want Mr Crawford back again. The Spanish got into Ham.’

‘Ham surrendered,’ said Jerott Blyth shortly. ‘And if you mean the Duke de Guise, I wish you’d say so. Mr Blacklock and I are waiting to hear what Mr Hislop has to say.’

Danny Hislop, newly back from his interrupted duty at Péronne, was aware that he had reached his moment of reckoning. He looked round the table. At the noble, high-coloured face of the merchant of Lyon, the former Knight of St John who had not gone to Russia: who had married Lymond’s step-sister and had had to be manhandled by Lymond himself into sobriety.