by Checkmate
Sybilla looked up. ‘He left the castle,’ she said. ‘He was only a boy. Everyone in Midculter looked for him. Richard had no sleep for two nights. It was Eloise who finally found and brought him back.’
‘His sister?’ Philippa said. The girl who had died in a gunpowder accident in her Scottish convent while still in her teens, during the last English wars. The girl who was also no daughter of Gavin Crawford’s and who, perhaps had known it. Poor Eloise, Lymond had said.
Eloise had brought him back … from what? And now Sybilla wanted her to do the same. But not to remain married to him. She had made that quite plain as well. Philippa wondered how much she knew, or guessed about her son, and what she would say if she were told that Lymond had made his choice, and had turned his back on that also.
Then, looking at Sybilla’s bent, fair-white head, Philippa realized that what she had just heard was such a pronouncement. Sybilla guessed, even if she did not fully comprehend, that Lymond’s feelings were somehow also engaged now. And knowing Francis, saw the barrier better even than she did.
Philippa said, ‘After the annulment, I am going back to England with Austin.’ A shaft of sunlight, entering between the triple arches, lit the enigmatic smile of a green-haired lady emerging from a large cockle shell to one side of her. She added, a little desperately, ‘There are some details Francis doesn’t know, and I haven’t told him. The Hôtel des Sphères is locked up and shuttered: Madame Roset seems to have gone away. So I threw away the key.’
Sybilla looked up. Against the sunlight, Philippa could not read her face. ‘Thank you,’ she said. And then, after a moment, ‘I hear that Leonard Bailey is in France.’
It was a question, although it didn’t sound like one. Philippa said, ‘He made an attempt to have Francis taken by the English at Ham, but that seems to be all. He has probably gone back to England. Even if he does appear, Francis will do nothing to harm him, nor shall I.’
Her voice, stoutly lying, echoed all around the twelve-foot vault. Someone once told her that the mirrors set into the niches had been made as peepholes for a royal observer. It hardly seemed necessary, with all the explicit romping taking place from wall to wall in every room. De Brissac had told her that the bath-house paintings had taken his mind off his gout for the first time since he got home from Italy.
She had lied to Sybilla, and would go on doing so. What good would it do to say, ‘Within four weeks, unless he accepts my bribe or unless I can steal the evidence, Leonard Bailey will have sold all he knows about your extra-marital affairs to the Lennoxes in England’?
If Bailey were going to accept money, she could find or raise as much as Sybilla. If he were not, it was better that Sybilla should know nothing about it. It was for herself, a free agent, to attempt whatever felony was needed to remove the evidence from Bailey’s reach.
So she thought, looking at Sybilla, and Sybilla said, ‘From limbo, you cannot say forgive me, unless you can also say you regret what you have done. I have no regrets. I have nothing to tell you, except what you know already: that love is a powerful master. For his favours do you pay tribute and toll while flesh endures, and no doubt after.’
I have no regrets. Against the sunlight the slender, erect body looked for a moment as it must have looked thirty years before and more, when, careless of any consequences, and herself another man’s wife, Sybilla had followed where love dictated.
‘I shall do what I can,’ said Philippa baldly; and rising, walked out of the grotto and quickly, back to the palace without her.
There, she found in the succeeding days that nothing had changed. The peace overtures continued slowly to cross and recross between Fontainebleau and Brussels, with offers of mediation from the imprisoned St André and the Constable. M. d’Andelot travelled north to arrange for the fitting out of vessels to secure the French coast from possible English invasion. Fifty infantry captains left to raise companies to go to Scotland and Piedmont. An army of 15,000 German infantry and 4,000 cavalry began to collect at Metz, and for several days Lymond was in every room that one happened to enter, from the King’s post in the basse-cour to that of virtually each man holding senior office under the crown, in addition to a number of others lodged in the town outside the gates.
Philippa, mediating in an agonizing war of precedence between Alec Ross and du Boulay, the Lorraine herald-at-arms, during the final draft of the order of procession, was aware of it. The dispute dragged on into the Monday of Holy Week, when a new irritation beset her. Mary, already committed to eight minor engagements to do with her wedding garments and trousseau, was instead removed from her suite and closeted for the entire morning in the Cardinal’s room with the Dauphin, the keeper of Seals and two secretaries.
Madame de Sevigny dealt herself with the callers, a last-minute injunction by Madame Diane, and a visit from the Queen which lasted an hour. Then, returning limp to her room for some much-needed letter-writing, she found Archie Abernethy standing there, awaiting her.
Célie was there. She sent her out, and shut the door. ‘What?’ she said.
‘Now I need help,’ Archie said.
She could feel all the blood leaving her face. ‘I thought he was out with de Nevers,’ she said.
‘He was. He has just come in. He’ll be out again shortly,’ Archie said.
I have seen him like this before. Philippa said, ‘Is he ill? Archie?’
And Archie said, ‘Ill? He hasna the time tae be ill. He’s thrang as a tick in a tannery.’
‘Too busy?’ Philippa said.
‘Aye,’ said Archie. The black eyes scoured her face, and his voice was quite deliberate. ‘He’s like a man making his will; and in a hurry over it.’
She had kept from Sybilla, to spare her, the knowledge of what had happened in Lyon. But Sybilla, closer far to her own son than she could be, had already seen where lay the danger.
Her throat dry, she said, ‘What has happened?’
Master of camouflage, what had he to fear from marriage to Catherine? His cure lay there, if he wanted it; and the responsibilities he had promised to honour. The path to Russia lay open. All around him now, unlike that evening in Lyon, he had means of escape. He had said so himself.
Archie shrugged. ‘All I know is what’s going to happen.’
Philippa said, ‘What should I do?’
And Archie said, ‘Break him.’
*
That afternoon she was chained to the Queen: there was no one to take her place in all the Holy Week ritual and Mary, normally so full of laughter and invention, was unsympathetic. She saw no reason why Mistress Philippa should visit her husband; and she remained all day obdurate as an unrepentant wine drinker, his head full of fumes from his tankards.
It was early evening before the mood lifted. Released, her heart beating, Philippa ran.
Archie opened the door to the comte de Sevigny’s expensive apartments.
‘You’re late,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m here now,’ said Philippa sharply. ‘Where is he?’
‘Not here,’ Archie said with some bluntness. And as she drew a harsh breath: ‘If he’s had a hard day, Mistress Philippa, then these rooms are the last place he’d come to. You’re the fifth to chap at the door since he shut it.’
‘Then where …?’ Philippa said, and broke off before the stare of the black, gimlet eyes.
‘I gave my word I wouldna let on to a soul, but if you ken my lord count, then perhaps ye ken where he’d find what he wanted,’ Archie said. ‘Or if not, M. de Montdoré could maybe advise you.’
Pierre de Montdoré was a distinguished mathematician. He was also the King’s librorum custodes: the curator of the beautiful library of Charles the Good, housed above the Little Gallery which linked the basse-cour buildings to those of the Oval Court, where lay the royal apartments. From that, it was not hard to guess where Francis had gone to find refuge. To the counsel of dead men. And to solitude.
*
When, presently, Philippa set w
ide the great double doors of the library, the curator was not in the chamber. The night sky, indigo through the thirteen dormer windows, looked down upon the tiered ranks of fretted shelves, twelve on each side, which held the nine hundred manuscripts lovingly collected by Charles, and the five hundred Greek works left by King Henri’s father, along with the others brought him from abroad by his collectors, and looked after for him by Budé. Go tell my wife, that curator had said without looking up from his book, when fire broke out and raged through his lodgings. Go tell my wife. I do not concern myself with domestic matters.
Montdoré was not in his library tonight, but the silver candelabra were lit at the end of the long shining river of parquet, islanded by lecterns and benches and tables of marble and marquetry, and tall chairs, their fringed velvet stamped with the royal cipher. And at the furthest table, his head lightly propped on one hand, a man sat alone, absorbed in reading. From where she stood, Philippa could see the glimmer of scarlet and gold on the vellum spread under his fingers, and the air was so still that the candelight lay without tremor on the still, golden wing of his hair.
Philippa closed the door, and Francis looked up, and saw her.
Afterwards, Philippa thought he guessed in that moment why she had come to him. As it was, he dropped his eyes after an interval and laying one hand on the vellum, eased the front board of the book slowly over it and closed both its hasps. A carved ivory boss formed the hub of the thick gilded cover and a band of ouched jewels framed the boards in a coloured rectangle. His fingers still resting on the embossed calf, Lymond rose, and then moving it a little aside, as if to safety, he pushed his chair back and stood where he was, awaiting her.
‘Certain comfortable places of the Epistles, namely the Romans,’ he said. ‘You have brought no one with you?’
‘No,’ Philippa said. She stopped just short of the table and saw, by the motionless light of the candles, how he had changed in face and manner into something fine-drawn and deliberate, it seemed, in its lack of involvement. She drew a breath and said, ‘I have come alone and broken all the rules. The door is locked and Archie is waiting outside to turn any callers away.’
She paused and waited, judging her moment. Lymond said, ‘I see. Then, since nothing has changed, it must be for a very good reason.’
‘If nothing had changed,’ Philippa said, ‘I shouldn’t be here.’
‘Ah,’ Lymond said. He added dryly, ‘It would sometimes help if Archie’s nervous system were less directly attuned to the elephant world.’
Philippa said, ‘Perhaps. Sybilla also has asked that you should be taken to see a doctor.’
‘So many setters,’ he said. ‘I thought we understood one another. I thought it was agreed we go our separate ways.’
He had not asked her to sit. She chose one of the velvet chairs and watched herself in his eyes as she seated herself in it. Her skirts, dove-grey for Lent, lay ruched and arrowed about her, and her hair was dressed high and tight-caught with ribbons, save where it lay coiled on her cheek. Pleated cambric covered her shoulders and rose to a high buttoned collar, against which her earrings caught and drifted and swung. She said, ‘In the Hôtel d’Hercule, you asked me to make a sacrifice. I am not prepared to see it thrown in the gutter.’
She studied him. Slowly, prudently, one must mount this attack. The world was full of men and women who had tried to bring down Francis Crawford, but none with the advantage she had. And he was tired: more tired, she thought, than on the night she had gone to his room; and his nerves must be bruised, as hers were, with the interminable stress of their meetings.
But as yet, his voice answering her was quite composed. ‘For a Somerville, that sounds a little dramatic. Absence is absence, whatever causes it. It is no more or less an affront to you. I did say, as I remember, that I would try to do what you wished me to do. And that you must forgive me if I failed.’
He remained standing. Like herself, he was still in court dress: elegant, close-fitting, impeccable in every detail; and crossed by the black sash of his Order which Austin Grey had torn to the ground.
Philippa said, ‘And are you failing? Why?’
He said, ‘Because an encounter like this, Philippa, doesn’t make it easy to do anything else.’ Then he paused and said a little flatly, ‘Also, I have been watching you.… I did not mean to hurt you so much.’
‘I know,’ she said. Sitting perfectly still, her hands laid together in her silk lap, she let her eyes speak for her and saw his darken, waiting. She said, ‘I thought, too, that it would be kinder to let you think me afflicted with calf-love, or an adolescent devotion, but of course this is not so.’ She heard her own voice tremble and stilled it, smiling with her lips only. ‘Before God, you are my soul; and till death and beyond, will remain so.’
She saw him catch his breath. One second passed; then two; then three. Then he leaned back his hand and, touching the chair, let himself smoothly into it. He said, ‘Then you don’t know, Philippa, what I am.’
‘I know what you think you are,’ Philippa said.
‘But not what I am. Will you let me tell you?’ he said. And when she nodded, laid his flawless hands on the table and, turning over and over the silk marker lying there, began to speak levelly.
Told in a measured voice, hesitating sometimes; resuming always undemonstratively, it was the story, without colour and virtually without explanation, of all that was ugly in his past. Much of it, as she had said, Philippa already knew. Now she heard also the rest. She heard what happened on his last visit to France; what happened in Scotland; in Djerba; in Russia. She learned the truth about Oonagh O’Dwyer, and Joleta Malett, and of the great courtesan called Güzel. She learned—and did not know she was the first person to be told of it—of the sweet summer’s dell north of Hexham where, sick of tragedy and despairing of all the future, he had tried to taunt Richard into knifing him.
And that, in turn, had been after the death of Christian Stewart, who was blind and who for his sake had ridden to her death over the great Roman ditch by Flaw Valleys, driven to it by Margaret Lennox.
Philippa remembered, far off in her childhood, a red-haired girl being carried, dust-covered and bloody, into Flaw Valleys and laid in the bed with the yellow silk curtains. She remembered Kate’s face as Lymond stood by the bed. As the girl died, he had made music for her.
‘That was when …’ Philippa said. There were unshed tears, swelling and pricking under her lashes. But she did not let them fall. In this circus, she was not the victim.
‘That was when you were ten years old,’ Lymond said. ‘And I was an outlaw and an excommunicate, a mercenary and a vagabond already. She died because of me. If I lose my sight, it will only be a kind of rude justice. By releasing you from the net, I pay my debt to her, and to Oonagh and to all the others who died.’
He stopped. His eyes saw the marker, twisted and wrung in his hands, and opening them, he laid it gently down on the marble. Then he lifted his head for the first time and looked at her.
‘And I, then, am the son of Abraham?’ Philippa said. ‘To pay your debts; to salve your pride; to protect your honour, I am to be sacrificed?’
The lash caught him disarmed. He swept his fists from the table and then was still. Then he said, ‘Did you not hear?’
‘I heard you. It makes no difference.’
‘And if it becomes known who my father is?’ He could not keep the bitterness, this time, from his voice.
‘What is Kuzúm?’ Philippa said. ‘He is himself. You told me that, once. Embrace whatever stigma you like. My life and birth are both blameless and I am being punished because of your scruples.’
He said, ‘Would you rather I had none?’
‘No,’ Philippa said. ‘But I think you must find the grace to forgo them. Otherwise I pay for your sins and you escape, as always.’ She looked at him, her brown eyes very open and level. ‘I will give you to Catherine. I will not give you to a hole in the ground. I am going to hold you, Francis, to your
marriage.’
It was the first time in all the months since Lyon that she had called him by his name. A flame showed, sudden and blue in the depths of his eyes, and then died. The pulse, beating above his drawn brows, told her all at once that he had a headache. ‘There is no way you could hold me,’ he said.
The wind sighed a little, softly wailing, in the roof windows. The candles burned, repeated over and over in the glazed grilles. The long, empty room filled with the scents of cypress wood and leather and ink harboured them without taking sides, without intrusion, as had the meadow grass on that other occasion when, out of anger, not love, his brother had set out to smash his defences.
‘Of course: never against your will,’ Philippa said. She rose. Her robe rustled. She moved round the chair and spread her skirts on the arm of it, a little nearer than before to the table. She said, ‘Then tell me that what you feel for me is an infatuation. That you object to being tied. That, like poor Jane Shore’s lover, you find yourself more amorous of my body than curious of my soul? Then I should agree with you. That I should want to be spared.’
A trickle of wax, occasioned by the draught of her movement, ran like an escaping spirit down the stem of a candle and there stiffened, extinguished as an unwanted emotion. Lymond drew an uneven breath. ‘What is temptation, if not that?’
‘Then tell me,’ Philippa said. ‘And make me believe it.’
It was a moment before he replied. Then the shut mouth curled, in something not quite a smile. ‘Gould bydeth ever bright … It would be a pity to cloud it,’ he said. ‘That is one blasphemy I cannot bring myself to commit. I love you, Philippa, in every way known to man.’
She kept her hands still, and her head; and her buttoned collar hid her throat when she swallowed. She said, ‘But you love your vanity more.’
It stung him to his feet; and it seemed a long interval before he removed his gaze and walking across to the bookshelves turned in their shadow, his head gilt against the lustrous bindings. He said, ‘Choose your darts better. That means Put me first, Philippa. And I don’t believe you would ask it.’
