Checkmate (72 page)

Habit on that score died hard, even though he was now alone. Also, even a little thought showed that to take what Philippa had given him and turn it instantly to his own private relief would be a paltry way to repay her. And besides, there was the duty he owed the men under him.

So he continued, through all the degradation and pain, with his routine. He reposed without sleep in his bed for the proper number of hours and ate food patiently which his body would not accept, and at first would take nothing, either of drink or of drugs, which would break the invisible pact he had made with himself.

Only when, with lack of food and sleep, he found his skill in the field less than constant did he let Archie bring him an opiate, and some stronger relief for the headaches.

It was known now that, as de Thermes his gout and St André the pox, the Marshal had his weakness, and when he returned to his tent at the end of his tour, he wished privacy. The Duke de Guise sent his own physician, expressing the deepest solicitude, and Lymond admitted him, smiling, and was examined and given a powder, which he delivered to Archie. About the blindness no one else knew except, now, his four officers, and so far it had only struck on his return, in times of exhaustion.

Only, as his strength grew less predictable, the spells of prostration were lengthening. Now, he could rest between actions. But on the day that one of these two great armies finally lost patience and launched a general attack on the other, he would be committed to a command he could no longer justify.

He had said nothing to anyone of that, but he knew it must be in the minds of Jerott and Alec, Danny and Fergie, who had come from their outposts to join him.

News from beyond Amiens still reached him. Applegarth had taken over the bureau of correspondence left by Philippa, and he knew that
peace was likely unless something went seriously wrong: that these two armies were here as holding-posts: dog eyeing dog while the statesmen discussed terms elsewhere.

He knew, from a scribbled note sent from Gravelines, that Adam had reached Philippa and Austin in time, and had sailed for England with them; but not, as yet, if they had landed.

He knew that Marthe was still in Blois, and that the Scottish Commissioners had left France, taking ship from Dieppe harbour.

So Sybilla was out of the country and Richard with her. The two village girls who had looked after her all those years ago, Renée and Isabelle, were dead because of her, and because of him; and the house was destroyed with the lines of silver over the mantelpiece.

A love of sorts, he supposed, had prompted that once. It mattered not at all now, obliterated by what had happened in that dusty upstairs bedroom, with the candle guttering.

On the day he returned from the encounter with Alva’s forces, he found Lancelot Plummer waiting for him in his tent, with Archie and the other four of his own men with him.

It was a moment before he recognized, behind the elegant beard, the officer he had left behind in Russia; and he saw from Plummer’s face that his own looks clearly had shocked him. He said, ‘I’ll only believe it if you tell me the Russian for
I can get sandstone from Kama at quarter the cost
. Lancelot! What does this mean?’

Never a boisterous man, Lancelot Plummer, engineer, architect and former member of the Scots mercenary force called St Mary’s, stepped forward and shook his hand firmly. ‘It means I’ve left Russia,’ he said. ‘And you’re well out of it. My God, you’ve got to the rank of Voevoda all over again, they tell me. I hope you can think of someone who’s made a lot of money out of this war and is looking for an architect.’

Lymond said, ‘I’m sure I can.
Faux conseils et mauvaises testes, M’ont fait bastir ces fenestres?
Or no. That was a lawyer’s house. In any case, come and tell us your news.
Le corps sauvé, les branches se reconquesteront tousjours.’

Archie and Jerott, who had not been in Russia, fetched the wine and put the pots on the board. The others listened to the story of Lancelot’s misery: the houses the Tsar had had built but had not paid for; the houses he had half built and knocked down in a rage. His violence in council. His brutal punishments. The crazy scheme to attack Lithuania that year, against the advice of his ministers.

‘He’s going mad,’ Lancelot Plummer said. ‘I’m sure of it. You couldn’t hold him now, Voevoda. No one could.’

‘Not even Prince Vishnevetsky,’ said Guthrie dryly.

‘Ah,’ said Plummer uneasily.

Lymond glanced at him. ‘What? We have been placarded as abominable persons on the chancel-rail? We can bear it. We are a long way from Russia now.’

Lancelot Plummer said, ‘Güzel is dead.’

No one spoke. Then Lymond said, ‘How? How did it happen?’

‘She was killed. In April. By Vishnevetsky,’ Plummer said. ‘You knew

‘I knew they were together. Yes,’ said Francis Crawford. For two years, before he had left Russia, he and she had lived together, a Queen and her consort. It had been Güzel who had enabled Philippa and himself and the child to escape from Turkey safely. It had been Güzel who had sent him on the visit to England from which he had never returned.

‘They quarrelled,’ Plummer was saying, conscious of awkwardness. ‘They were not really suited to one another. No one even knows where she is buried.’

‘That seems a pity,’ Lymond said.

One of the things he liked least about his present situation was that the others always seemed to know when he was dealing with an attack, and also when he was nearing the limits of his endurance. His later recollection of the next five minutes was somewhat dim, but he knew that at the end of that time his tent was empty, Plummer having been thoughtfully taken off to dine on some special delicacy of Jerott’s. Then Alec Guthrie, reappearing like a sentinel in the doorway said, ‘Archie is coming in a moment. I’m sorry about the Mistress. She was foolish to trust Baida.’

‘She didn’t,’ said Lymond. He was still sitting, his hand shading his eyes. ‘She thought she was following a course laid down long before, with each of us under some sort of injunction. I think she was convinced all along that her life and mine were going to lie apart. I think when she took Vishnevetsky, she knew he was going to kill her.’

‘It may be you are right,’ Guthrie said. ‘But we also perhaps saw a little that you didn’t see. She may have thought she was guided by fate, but in the end, I think she rebelled against the decree. In which case … she is likely better dead.’

After that, the loss of vision lasted all night, and the pain and the retching. Also, although he did not lose consciousness he could hear himself speaking, or raving, or discoursing in some fashion.

He tried to stop and succeeded, in the end, in making sensible human contact with Archie, who seemed to be bending over him, which meant his sight must be coming back. He was shivering violently and wringing wet with perspiration, as was the sheet under him. He said, ‘It can’t go on like this. Archie?’

‘No,’ said Archie. ‘It can’t go on. If you’re going to survive, you’ll have to buy peace. But you know the price of that kind already.’

For a long time Lymond was silent. Then he said, ‘You advise it? Will it work?’

‘For long enough,’ Archie said. ‘For a long time, if you’re careful. If we can lift the strain, your sight should come back completely.’

‘It sounds,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘as if we have nothing to lose.’

Archie left him. Lymond sat up. The first light of dawn was tingeing the cloth over his head and in the distance a bird was singing loudly, to be joined by another. In a moment the whole tissue of dawn song enclosed him. He shivered and, lifting his arms, peeled off the wet shirt and pulled round his shoulders the towel Archie had left by his bedside.

The tent looked and smelt like a hospital. Distaste wrinkled his nose. He got up, his head swimming and walked to the table where he had left his maps, and the orders for next day already written. Archie came in.

The smell of what he carried reached Lymond from where he stood: the pungent, desirable, terrible smell of the drug that had come near to killing him at Volos: from which, with the help of Jerott and Marthe, he had barely emerged with his reason.

Jerott’s voice, low and angry from the doorway, said, ‘
What are you giving him?
’

Archie’s hand closed over what he carried.

Lymond said, ‘Something to make me sleep. It’s all right, Jerott. What wakened you?’

‘The sound of Archie opening the drug cabinet,’ Jerott said. ‘And I saw what he took out from it.’ To Archie he said, ‘Open your hand.’

Archie looked at Lymond. Lymond said, ‘Open it.’

The streaked saffron cake of raw opium lay on his palm; enough for sleep, and sweet dreams and tranquillity for many nights. Jerott struck it; and when it fell to the floor, ground it under his heel in the carpet. ‘You bloody fool. You bloody fool, Francis. This is what started it all: don’t you remember? Archie didn’t hear you screaming at Volos. Archie simply let you have as much as you wanted, whenever …’

‘Don’t lose your head, Jerott,’ said Lymond wearily. ‘Archie only gave me what would keep me alive till we got out. He’s doing the same now. I shall fight a better battle full of opium than I should without it, I promise you.’

Jerott said, ‘Why should you fight a battle at all? A sick commander is excused the field. Go back to Sevigny.’

Lymond looked at him and Jerott paled, and then slowly coloured. He said, ‘There must be something else.’

Lymond straightened. He rubbed the towel round his shoulders and then tossing it at a hook walked back and stood before Jerott. Redder still, Jerott held his eyes angrily. Then Lymond smiled.

‘A dejective flag of truce. There
is
something else,’ he said. ‘Forget the opium. I think it is time that the French were reminded of what St Mary’s used to be, and what St Mary’s still is, and what St Mary’s can do that the lanzknechts can’t. Would you forgo another night’s sleep, if I asked you to?’

‘Yes,’ said Jerott. He looked a little dazed.

‘Good,’ said Lymond. ‘Then, if you would bring Alec and Danny and
Fergie to my tent at midday, we shall plan ourselves a small expedition.’

‘And Lancelot?’ said Jerott cautiously.

Lymond grinned. ‘If you think,’ he said, ‘that Lancelot is up to it. Off you go. You’ll need all the sleep you can manage.’

The smell of the ruined opium filled all the tent. Jerott had gone. Archie said, ‘Oh Jesus, lad. Are you sure, are you sure this is how you want it?’

And Lymond said, ‘I only know that I want it.’ And then, ‘It is best done with what one has of pride.’

Lastly, he said, ‘I have leave to go.’

‘I know,’ said Archie.

*

They left camp at sunset: seven men to fight, and four soldiers with crossbows to hide with their horses in a quarry just short of the Spanish encampment. In the same quarry they stripped off half their armour, and in full darkness set out on the exploit which from Picard farmer to farmer received the name of the
affair of the corn mills of Authie
.

Burdened like a pioneer with shears and mattock, with rope and slow fuse and matches, with a knife and a cavalry bow and a few doctored arrows and last but not, feelingly, least, by a budget of gunpowder wrapped in silk and then canvas, Jerott Blyth said, ‘You devil, Francis. I haven’t been so bloody frightened since Mdina. Do you remember? There were seven of us then.’

‘I prefer, all sutty, blakk and unclene, the present draft,’ Lymond said. Because the arrangements had been his, he had not slept during the day as the others had, but like theirs, his face was stained with the dye of the Reiters, and neither his thoughts nor his condition were discernible. Jerott said, ‘What is that prayer of Montluc’s?’

He had not expected Lymond to answer him but he did, without mimicking, as he could so easily do, the little man’s Gascon accent.

‘Mon Dieu qui m’as créé, je te supplie, garde-moy l’entendement affin qu’aujourd’huy je ne le perde, car tu le m’as donne, et ne le tiens que de toy. Que si tu as aujourd’huy déterminé ma mort, fais que je meure en réputation d’ung homme de bien, laquelle je cherche avec tant de périls. Je ne te demande poinct la vie, car je veux tout ce qu’il te plaist; ta volonté soit faicte, je remets le tout à ta divine bonté
 … It is a fine prayer, if you believe in such things.’

‘And do you?’ said Jerott Blyth, former Knight of St John.

‘Sometimes,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘I spread my favours. Tonight I look to Janus the Patron of Portals.’

Soon after that, they were speeding through darkness; sometimes running, sometimes crawling, sometimes lying in ditches until they came within reach of Dourlans and then, to its west, the river on whose upper reaches the town and citadel stood. The River Authie, which skirted the
north wall of the fortress and then took its pleasant course north and west all the way to the sea. The river which King Philip would have to cross if, tiring of facing the French, he decided instead to strike north to Montreuil, or to Boulogne or to Calais itself.

The bridge at Dourlans was under the surveillance of the town and citadel, strongly held by the French. But the next bridge fit to take regiments of marching troops and their artillery was only five miles further down the Authie. And it was held at either end, by two companies of Spanish soldiers.

Danny, his voice rather high, had made that abundantly clear at their conference. ‘It’s a splendid idea. Domine salve nos qui perimus. I’m too young to die on a bridge. Why don’t we take all the Germans? Or no. They would all blow their noses on their very large handkerchiefs, and that would bring Philip’s whole camp down on us. What’s your idea?’

‘We don’t go near the bridge,’ said Lymond peacefully.

‘Excuse me,’ said Fergie Hoddim. ‘How can you wreck a fine bridge without going near it?’

‘By sending something else near it instead,’ Lymond said. ‘An ox to Jupiter, a dog to Hecate, a dove to Venus, a sow to Ceres, a fish to Neptune. What, instead of Fergie Hoddim, shall we sacrifice?’