Checkmate (78 page)

Outside in the courtyard a group of bored noblemen were playing a game of
cheval fondu
. The noise rattled the leaded panes in the windows. Someone spoke in a low voice outside the door.

The King said, ‘What do you lack? I have treated you
en naturel françois
. There is no privilege you have not received from us. Is this to be our recompense?’ He gave no sign that M. Crawford should rise.

Lymond said, ‘You have honoured me far above my deserts. You will appoint a Marshal of France and a Chevalier of the Order without difficulty ten times more worthy. My collar and my bâton are both here in the hands of your officers and I now resign the sash into your keeping.’

He slipped it over his head as he spoke and held it between his hands, the green and gold of the Little Order sparkling on it. The King said, ‘You have misread the rules of this Order. It is one you resign with your life.’

‘Then my life is in your hands,’ Lymond said.

In a slow glimmer of vermilion, the Cardinal of Lorraine moved forward a trifle. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘M. le Maréchal should be permitted to stand. His Majesty will recall that he is speaking to a sick man. And perhaps, sire, you would allow me to ask M. de Sevigny what employment he has in mind, that exceeds in honour and consequence that of a liegeman to the Most Christian King of France?’

If it had been possible to continue kneeling, thought Richard grimly, no doubt Francis would have done so. But instead he rose, his manner a little more studied than usual, and said, ‘M. le Cardinal is thoughtful.’ To the King he said, ‘I go, sire, to no other master. My family affairs call me home to Scotland, and I hope to sail there shortly with Lord Culter and, once there, to live privately on my estate.’

No one, in a matter as crucial as this, risked interfering except the family whom it touched most closely. The Duke de Guise gave an easy laugh. ‘Sire: may I interpret the Marshal’s wishes to you? He desires to command your Majesty’s army in Scotland, and knows no other way to set about it.’

Lymond said, ‘I wish to command neither the King’s army, monseigneur, nor that of the Queen Dowager your sister. My mother, as you have seen, is no longer young, and I have been many years from home. She has asked me to come back and I have agreed.’

‘To do what? To spend a lifetime at your sewing?’ said the Duke of Guise. ‘Your mother already has your excellent brother, M. de Culter
here, to look after her concerns. What career is there for a nobleman and a man of honour except war?’

‘But the war is ending,’ Lymond said. ‘A peace between Spain and France will encompass both England and Scotland, I am sure. And if I am to hunt, saving His Majesty’s incomparable presence, the hunting is as fine in Scotland as in France.’

‘On that score,’ said the Duke de Guise, ‘monsieur, I beg to differ. Perhaps your wish is to return to your wife and son, although I believe both are in England, not Scotland. Even so, I cannot see what loyalty you would place before His Majesty, what comparison you can make between a nation of sixteen million persons and a country which holds in all its lands no more than the population of Paris. Is that to be henceforth your kingdom?’

‘I exchanged Russia for France,’ Lymond said.

‘And for what will you in time abandon Scotland?’ said the Cardinal gently. ‘For Fort Coligny in the new world, perhaps, with M. de Villegagnon?’

‘Enough,’ said the King. His colour, naturally pale, was high above the brushed black beard; under the freshly placed hat with its impeccable tilt. ‘We do not cajole. You have chosen to inform us publicly that you are leaving. I shall therefore dismiss you publicly. As you say, there are many valiant men, lovers of France, who are worthy of the Marshal’s bâton you are laying down. To one of these, it will be given. As to the Royal Order …’

He paused. ‘This is not confined, as you know, to knights of France. Your own King bore it once. I wish you to know that you have not served a mean king, although your service has been ended meanly. The Order you may keep, in token of the victories you have won for France, and in the expectation that one day, realizing what you have cast aside, you will return to her. Replace the sash, M. de Sevigny. It is still yours. Your presence in this palace, however, is no longer required.’

He had moved back, away from his retinue. It was surprising therefore that, at the last moment, he held out his ringed hand and that Francis Crawford, after hesitating for a moment, walked forward and, kneeling again, was permitted to kiss it.

They all saw the King’s lips move. But not even the brothers de Guise, nearest to their master, heard the words that he spoke.

‘Adieu, mon compère. Dieu vous doint bonne vie et longue.’

Then Lymond rose and, retreating slowly, performed in silence the triple obeisance due to royalty before he turned and walked swiftly at last from the room, with Richard moving beside him.

They were stopped twice in the antechamber: once by the Prince of Condé, waspishly upbraiding, who ended, his face suddenly clearing, with the remark, ‘Well at least, mon cher, if we no longer have your sweet company, I can have Madame Marguerite de St André’s undivided attention.’

The second time it was the comte de La Rochefoucauld who slipped
from the royal chamber and, pausing beside his former colleague in war, placed a thin packet in his hand. ‘Our friend at Onzain wished me to give this to you,’ he said. ‘I would advise you to read it in privacy.’ Then, raising his voice he said, ‘I fear you have disappointed us, M. le comte. Give our greetings to your sour land and all its sour inhabitants.’

Richard’s hand tightened on his belt but Lymond drew him aside and walked on.

Richard said, ‘Of course you knew, when you made that promise to Sybilla, that this was what it would mean?’

‘So did Sybilla,’ said Lymond. ‘Do you think she is a novice in the way of courts? It could have been much worse. There are certain safeguards.’

‘I am glad you think so,’ said Richard, his voice agreeably quiet. ‘Because, my dear comte de Sevigny, I think you are about to require them.’

*

The men at arms who blocked the exit of the former Marshal de Sevigny and his brother from the Episcopal Palace were perfectly polite but quite immune to persuasion. My lord of Culter, with their assistance, was to be escorted to his lodging, there to complete his arrangements to leave Amiens. As for M. de Sevigny, their orders were to convey him elsewhere.

M. de Sevigny, extremely splendid in Shemakha silk and wearing once more the black taffeta cross-sash of the Order showed no sign of alarm. ‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘My time is yours. I have two amendments to make. I go nowhere without my brother. Nor do I move from the palace without an escort supplied by Monseigneur the Cardinal of Lorraine. You may arrange it if you please. If not, I shall do so.’

There was a pause. The sergeant in charge said, ‘My lord … we are carrying out the Cardinal’s orders.’

‘Then where is your livery?’ said Lymond. ‘Find someone of good character who can identify you. Perhaps it would be quickest to ask the Cardinal himself to step into the courtyard?’

It took less than five minutes to have the men at arms publicly established, to Richard’s silent admiration. Then, very soon after that, he found himself in a room he did not know, in a building he did not know, with swift footsteps following along the passage. Then the door opened and Charles de Guise, the second, and cleverest and the most dangerous of all the brilliant princes of Lorraine, entered and closed the door.

‘M. de Culter,’ he said. ‘In this court, as no doubt in that of Scotland, there are many eminent noblemen of opposing views who may yet be of great value to the crown if their views are not openly flouted. For that reason, interviews are sometimes best conducted in privacy. What I have to say concerns M. de Sevigny but may be positively harmful if overheard by a third person. I would therefore ask you to have the
goodness to withdraw. I shall not detain your brother long. You may wait for him below.’

It was not a day on which Richard was to be allowed a great deal of initiative. He opened his mouth.

‘Monseigneur,’ Lymond said, ‘what you wish to say to me may also be said before my brother. I can vouch for his perfect discretion.’

‘I have no doubt,’ the Cardinal said. Unlike his monarch, he met resistance with no more than sweet tranquillity. ‘But this, M. de Sevigny, touches your honour. Do you wish to continue before the head of your house?’

Richard moved. ‘I should take it extremely badly,’ Lymond said, ‘if after that, my brother felt constrained to leave. You have heard the King dismiss me and I am anxious, monseigneur, to set out for Paris.’

‘To pay your last respects, as I suppose, to my niece,’ the Cardinal said. ‘Both she and my master, M. de Sevigny, are over-lenient towards those who please their fancy. This I am sure you have noted in the years you have spent here during the building of your career. It has always been my duty and that of my brother to prevent either the Queen or his grace the King from having their kindness imposed upon. I speak to the point, as you will see. I wonder if you, or your brother, recognize this ring?’

It lay on the table between them, a heavy gold ring Richard had seen many times on his brother’s hand. He kept silent. Lymond said, ‘Where did you find this?’

‘In the possession of a youth,’ the Cardinal said. ‘What would you say, my lord of Culter, should be the penalty for impersonating a prince of the church?’

Richard said, ‘I think, monseigneur, I should require to know the details.’

‘Would you?’ said the Cardinal. ‘Then you will require to ask your brother. What then, would you say should be the punishment for the concealment of lewd and heretical meetings, and the abetting of those attempting to escape justice after such orgies?’

‘I should say,’ said Richard, ‘that it first requires to be proven.’

‘Ah,’ said the Cardinal. ‘But the proof is not in doubt. And the punishment, one would say, should not be less than the punishment which has already attended those malefactors who have already been brought to justice, despite the impassioned appeal on their behalf put forward by this impudent Scotsman.… What is his name, M. de Sevigny? You stayed together in Dieppe, I am told. You even approved the manuscript of the blasphemous articles he has just published against the name and rank of your Queen. Knox, is it not?’

‘You have the name correctly,’ Lymond said. Richard, staring at him transfixed, saw that there was no surprise on his face; nor indeed any expression other than a hardness about the eyes which matched the
Cardinal’s own. Lymond added, ‘We have never met. I have read his writings, but have not given sanction to them.’

‘You have never met? But he claims to be your admirer,’ the Cardinal said. ‘Certainly, you stayed with the widow Bouchard, his staunch hostess in Dieppe, where you had your first secret meetings with the Protestant lords who came over so boldly as emissaries to my niece’s wedding. You may well have attended further meetings of the sect in the rue Marie-Egyptienne in Paris. Certainly, your wife was there. And both of you, with a daring unparalleled, entertained the dregs of the Reformers and their adherents at an occasion in which you took care to involve your innocent Queen.

‘You were not a participant in the Protestant processions, M. de Sevigny, but your brother here was. You were on campaign, and it has been clear which of our court has found most favour with you: M. d’Estrée, M. d’Andelot, M. de Fors, the Prince of Condé, the King of Navarre.… Do those names surprise you, my lord of Culter? Or have you been able sufficiently to develop your Calvinist sympathies to identify those in this country of France who are about to bring her to ruin? I am told that one-third of the people of this country think as you do. It is my task to uproot these poisoned shoots, to raze the temples and make sweet the sewers of heresy. It is also my task to remove from the land any who may set themselves at the head of this devilish army, and lead it further to flout the Lord.’

He picked up the trinket from the desk and turned to Lymond. ‘You are such a man. That is your ring. These are your deeds. You have accepted the King’s bounty and spat in the face of the Evangile.’

‘You surprise my brother,’ said Lymond quietly. ‘Most of the occurrences you mention came about, as you must know, by pure chance.’

‘Was the gathering of Reformers in the presence of your Queen in the Hôtel d’Hercule by pure chance?’ the Cardinal asked.

‘Yes,’ said Lymond. ‘In so far as most of them, including my wife, had been invited by Marshal Strozzi.’

‘Marshal Strozzi! Why should he trouble to do such a thing?’ the Cardinal asked. ‘And of course, alas, he is not present to vouch for you.’

‘Alas, as you say,’ Lymond said. ‘His purpose, I am sorry to say, was probably to discredit me.’

‘To discredit you! His friend?’ said the Cardinal of Lorraine. ‘But the quibble is of no importance, so much exists in evidence against you. I have all these papers, M. de Sevigny. They lie locked in my cabinet: evidence against a foreigner who came here and travailed to solicit the love of a King, while working to wrest a people from their salvation.

‘Do you know the worst punishment that can befall a man who would take from another his body? I see you do. What, then, would you recommend for a man who purloins the soul of a nation?’

‘A hearing,’ said Lymond. ‘Otherwise you make a martyr of him.’

A trace of colour this time had risen in the Cardinal’s pale-skinned face. For a long moment he met the other’s gaze, grey to blue; then slowly, he shifted his eyes to the older man. To Richard he said, ‘You are fortunate to leave France with your life. Quit this country as soon as you can and do not return. Till your fields and care for your tenants and leave the cultivation of the soul to those who are skilled in the arts. Above all, I suggest that you constrain your brother to do likewise.’

To Lymond he said, ‘The King has told you to leave France. It is not for me to darken his mind with the truth of this sojourn of yours, which seemed at the beginning so felicitous. Nor will I dismay those who fought and risked their lives for you. I shall merely add a promise to what his grace the King has already said. You will leave this country of France, not to return. If ever you cross the frontier, you will be brought to me, and I shall place before the ecclesiastical courts the papers I have prepared about you. They will condemn you. And your punishment, I promise you, will do justice to the nature of your error.’