Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  He was not, Mary Fleming thought, the aesthetic figure one would have thought from his reputation. Beneath the broad black cap his greyed chestnut hair flowed with his beard over the white, faintly creased collar. His nose was long; his eyes grey under marked brows; his complexion fresh and rosy as a man half his age. Mr Crawford said, ‘You are fortunate in your printer. Proof-reading, as Estienne truly said, is to typography what the soul is to the body of man.’

  ‘You are right. I shall convey your compliments to my good friend Macé Bonhomme,’ said Master Nostradamus amiably. ‘Truly, a man may divorce the one from the other at his peril, and even the best are not immune to mistakes. But the wise craftsman learns from his folly.’

  He remained sitting there, rubicund and cheerful, his bright gaze moving inquiringly between the Chevalier and the lady he was divorcing. Mr Crawford sat down. For the first time, Mary Fleming noticed, his eyes returned and locked, momentarily, with those of Mistress Philippa. The Countess turned to Master Nostradamus. ‘You make prophecies, sir? You are, then, a caster of horoscopes?’

  ‘But of course, Madame!’ said the barber-surgeon, smiling.

  ‘Then if you visit your printer in Lyon, you perhaps exchange visits with others of your profession?’

  The barber-surgeon’s beard moved once more as he smiled. ‘Madame, I know everyone in Lyon. I worked there during the plague. There was only one other lady of reputation who also cast horoscopes and she, alas, is now dead. You wished to ask me about her?… I have to visit another case of cocco-lucchia: we might talk about this if you cared to come with me. Disease, they say, is a function of the wrath of God, but in the whooping-cough it seems rather to echo the farmyard … The lady you mean dwelt, I rather think, in the rue Mercière, and had a daughter called Béatris, is that not so? who died in ’26—I remember it well.’

  Mr Crawford did not rise. But the Countess got to her feet, and looking at him said, ‘You are not interested, but I still think these things are worth pursuing. May I accept Master Nostradamus’s offer?’

  Then Mr Crawford did stand. He said, ‘You know you have a free hand. Go with Master Nostradamus. Ask what you wish.’ Across her head, he was looking at the physician. And Master Nostradamus, Mary Fleming noted, was returning the look with a kind of calm reassurance. Mr Crawford added, ‘I may be gone, unfortunately, before you return. I have to be in Compiègne early tomorrow.’

  Brighter than all the salves she had employed that morning, the colour burned in Philippa’s cheeks. She said, ‘I have some news. I had hoped to give it to you. It would save our having to meet again. I know you are busy.’

  They disliked one another. It was painful to watch. Mary Fleming shifted uncomfortably. These two would never remain man and wife. Queen Catherine had been shrewder, when she had joked with M. de Sevigny, and reminded him that while he was fighting the English his sweet wife was bereft of company. Could he not arrange a fine suitor for her? He must not be selfish. He had Catherine.

  And that was true also. This time, received by the Queen and her ladies, Mr Crawford had paid Catherine d’Albon at last the kind of attention she merited, and she had responded, with cool and graceful formality, as a nobleman’s daughter should. But when his company was claimed by others, Mary Fleming had noticed, Mademoiselle d’Albon’s eyes followed him.

  She thought now, for a moment, that he was going to persist in his rebuff. But something of Mistress Philippa’s discomfiture must have reached him; for he said quickly, ‘I beg your pardon. Of course there are matters to discuss. Send for me when you are ready.’

  It was, thought Mary Fleming, watching them leave, a pity they had married, and a greater pity that Mary was bent on tampering with them. She would have to warn her mistress. Queen Catherine wanted Mr Crawford at court, with a French wife. And Queen Catherine, in Mary’s view, was more worldly-wise, in this instance, than Mary of Scotland.

  *

  Returning from her peripatetic interview with Master Michael Nostradamus Philippa was sick, twice, in the privacy of her own room and then, before her courage could fail her, went to find and face again the patient kindness, worse than contempt, to which Lymond had been reduced, in a profound effort to make his position quite clear without hurting her.

  It could not be easy for him, either, to turn aside from the battlefield to deal with a petty family scandal and a case of sudden infatuation. One hoped that he thought of it as infatuation: the burden of withdrawing from it would at least lie on him lightly. When she found him, talking to six other people, he had the look of a man who is trying to forget a crashing headache.

  But he did not mention it, and neither did she, when they were walking together out of the château and through the disarranged grounds to the new buildings laid on the terracing. He had been once prone to headaches, and she had inquired about them, she remembered, in Lyon. He had dismissed the subject. And now, entrenched grimly in the impersonal, she could not ask him.

  There were workmen everywhere, painting, plastering, wheeling barrows and carrying ladders. An incessant hammering, coming from inside the raw, glistening walls, made her nerves jump. Below, among the galleried steps which led down to the river, they had been excavating the grottos. Some were already mortared into place, with the machinery draped in tarred cloth, silently waiting for some engineer to test its hydraulics. Within the arch of one romantic cavern, half planted with foliage and fitted with descending pool beds, Lymond bent and lifted a corner of canvas. ‘What the hell do you suppose that is going to be?’

  ‘I think,’ said Philippa, ‘that it’s a dragon. There’s another one here with a full-blown organ in it. Would you like to play? I’ll pump the air for you.’

  ‘No,’ said Lymond. He turned and walked to the half-made balustrade and stood looking down on the deserted flights of steps. ‘What did Nostradamus tell you?’

  Her throat hurt. Walking to the balustrade, a safe distance away from him, Philippa said, ‘He did know the Dame de Doubtance. I think he knew her better than he wants us to know, just at present. I asked him if he knew where all her horoscopes were, and he said one never asked such questions of an astrologer.’

  ‘So he has them,’ said Lymond.

  ‘I think he has. He knew a great deal about us. He says that the Lady’s sister and her family were of no consequence. And although the Dame de Doubtance herself never married, she did have one daughter, Béatris, who died unmarried also, aged thirty-one.’

  ‘In 1526,’ Lymond said. ‘And, one supposes, in childbirth. If she looked anything like the Dame de Doubtance it was, probably, all for the best. She was, I take it, my mother?’ He spoke as if it was of no possible consequence.

  ‘Master Nostradamus didn’t know,’ Philippa said. ‘He didn’t know anything more. Or if he did, he wouldn’t tell me. But I have found out something else. The Dame de Doubtance’s daughter Béatris was Marthe’s mother. The records were there at the Abbey of Notre-Dame de la Guiche, where Marthe was born and stayed to be educated. In 1524, of father unknown.’

  Lymond turned and looked at her. Philippa saw, steadfastly returning his gaze, that because he was thinking, the barricade between them was for the moment forgotten. He said, ‘Then Marthe and I are probably full brother and sister. Was the Abbess in Scotland quite right? Is everyone right? Does Gavin, second Lord Crawford, proceed to sire brother Richard in his lawful connubial couch, and then move off smartly to lecher in Sevigny with the Dame de Doubtance’s daughter Béatris while Sybilla, piqued, makes her own accommodation elsewhere? Marthe is born, daughter of Gavin and Béatris, and left to the Poor Clares to bring up at la Guiche under the eye of the Dame de Doubtance, her grandmother. Two years later I am born, of the same parents, just as Sybilla, by coincidence, has also produced a bastard son, who unhappily dies. In his place, forced upon her by a vengeful husband Gavin, I am substituted. Three years later, in retaliation, Sybilla has Eloise, of whom Gavin is not the father, but blackmails her husband into receiving her as such. It fits.
’

  It fitted. It fitted so neatly, if you did not know all the people involved in it. She said, ‘You assume it was Sybilla’s love-child who died. But what if Gavin’s son was also named Francis Crawford?’

  ‘You feel,’ said Lymond, ‘that it would be convenient if I could be discovered to be the son of Sybilla, even if on the wrong side of the French blanket. But if Marthe is born of Béatris and Gavin, and I of Sybilla, how do we come to be so alike in appearance? And Beatris, you say, is Marthe’s mother. I wonder if it would be wise to tell her.’

  Philippa was not, at that moment, thinking of Marthe. She said suddenly, ‘You said Gavin would come to disport himself at Sevigny. But there was no Sevigny in the family until you bought it. There was no reason for him to be …’ She broke off.

  He had remembered who and what she was. Philippa, cold to her fingertips, saw Lymond’s face change. ‘Go on,’ said Francis Crawford evenly.

  ‘I was going to say, there was no reason for Gavin to be in the neighbourhood,’ said Philippa slowly. ‘But of course there was. I don’t suppose you know what it is. But the records at Notre-Dame de la Guiche show more than the birth and upbringing of Marthe. They show that Sybilla was at la Guiche also with the Poor Clares until 1515: her family must have placed her as well as her sister with a religious order. There’s no one there now who remembers the Clarisses of forty years ago, but the register says that she applied at the beginning of 1515 to return to secular life. Six months later she left, followed by a peasant girl called Renée Jourda from Coulanges who had served her in the convent and had become apparently attached to her. From la Guiche of course she returned directly to Scotland, where she married Gavin, and ten months later became the mother of her eldest child Richard.’

  ‘The third Lord Crawford and, as it turns out, the only legitimate offspring. A poor record, even for Scotland,’ Lymond said, his voice amused. But he was not amused, or he would not have missed the vital, the incredible point in all Philippa had told him.

  Philippa said, ‘You’ve forgotten the two papers, the ones Sybilla signed, confessing that the two children known as Francis and Eloise Crawford were hers, but not fathered by Gavin. They were countersigned by three different people. One was a priest, whom we now know is dead. The second was a woman called Isabelle Roset. The third was Renée Jourda.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lymond. He turned, and lifting a fragment of broken marble from the balustrade weighed it in his hand. Then, leaning over, he tossed it over the handrail and watched it bound, exploding, from surface to surface. ‘And Renée Jourda still lives with her people at Coulanges?’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa. ‘She’s a widow. She lives alone in a farmhouse near Flavy-le-Martel beside Ham, the town King Philip is staying in. If she still lives, that is. Chaulny was sacked.’

  ‘And if she still lives,’ said Lymond, ‘she could tell me who Sybilla’s lover was. But do I want to know? I am Gavin’s son.’

  There was a pause. Then Philippa said, staring at him stoically, ‘I think you want to know. I don’t think it matters to you what your parentage was. But I think you need to know the truth about Sybilla.’

  Francis Crawford laughed. ‘Perhaps I do,’ he said. ‘But it is an amusement I shall have to deny myself. Even the most Christian King, in time of battle, has to forgo his hunting. I may do it at leisure, when horns are in season. Or I might decide—would you ever forgive me?—that Sybilla’s small eccentricities are really of no importance at all. Except, of course, that they prompted you to take so much trouble to put it all right. You love Sybilla. She is fortunate.’

  Because she could not speak, Philippa said nothing.

  He pushed himself from the staircase and without taking her arm, began to rove back uphill to the courtyards. ‘As her foster-son, perhaps I feel differently. At any rate, I find I object quite strongly to being involved in the past any further. Will you therefore, of your kindness, take my vanity into account and let matters lie? We know most of the truth, if not all of it. The rest is better left buried. I shall go on to Compiègne, and you could leave, I suppose, for Dieppe as soon as Queen Mary allows you. It may be sooner than you expected. I think she had a fancy to try her hand at matchmaking, and she is not of the temperament to take kindly to failure.’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa. She heard what he said, but over a furious undercurrent of thought of her own. If indeed she had not been so agitated she might have realized that it was unwise to let him sense it.

  ‘Philippa?’ said Francis Crawford, and halted.

  She could not pass him. She stood, her head up, and said, ‘You may be quite sure I shall not stay a moment longer than I have to. I have written Kate that I am coming.’

  He didn’t evade her eyes this time, or turn aside, or employ any of the graceful, defensive tricks she dreaded. He said, ‘You once held me, for a term, to a promise, and I honoured it. Will you do the same for me? The time has come for you to think about your own life, and not mine or Sybilla’s. I want you to promise to do nothing more about this. In particular, I want your promise that you will do nothing to try and reach this woman at Flavy-le-Martel. She lives in a battlefield. If you had an army at your back, you could hardly reach her. For all you know, she may be dead already. Let her secrets go with her.’

  It was unfortunate. There were some people she could successfully lie to, but Lymond was not one of them. On the other hand, if there was to be no bond between them, there was no ground either for promises. ‘Am I accountable to you?’ said Philippa stubbornly.

  He stood without moving, considering his answer. Then he lifted his eyes once more to her face: ‘No. But in the eyes of the world, I shall be responsible if you come to harm through performing a service for me. Even a service I have not asked for.’ He paused and said, ‘I take it that I am not to have your promise. Or that if you give it, you may feel absolved from keeping it?’

  ‘If I give a promise, I keep it,’ said Philippa sharply.

  He drew a breath equally sharp, and let it go. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘Then in this instance——’

  ‘In this instance, I don’t accept your right to demand any promises, in spite of what you say,’ Philippa said.

  ‘Did I demand? I tried not to,’ he said. ‘In any case, promises won’t be necessary, or any valiant excursions on your part. Since you think it important, I shall send for the lady.’

  ‘Send for her?’ Philippa said. ‘To Flavy-le-Martel?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Lymond. ‘On my roll of expenses is an impressive number of entries against intelligencers. If I can’t extract one old lady from a Picardy farmhouse and have her brought to me, then I have been wasting my money. You will be content if I promise to send you the results of the inquiry? Like you, if I give a promise, I keep it.’

  She let it pass, reddening, and followed him uphill through the rubble without demurring further, or noticing that the promise by which he had bound himself concerned the passing to her of Renée Jourda’s information, and not the means by which he might acquire it.

  She did not then know, nor did she find out in time, that to dispatch such a mission to Picardy was at that moment out of the question, as it would have been certain death for her had she gone there.

  And that, if he had promised her news, there remained only one way for him to obtain it.

  *

  He left Saint-Germain later that evening, to the displeasure of a great many people. Archie Abernethy, entering while his packing was being completed, was among the more outspoken. ‘The French King’s no’ very flattered that you’re leaving. The Fleming lassie says the young Queen o’ Scots is fleein’. And I passed Mistress Philippa. She was all painted ower, but she’d been greetin’.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lymond. He continued to recline with his feet propped up on the window seat. ‘It’s a general blight of disorientation. I don’t know the time, either.’

  The boy strapping up the standards opened his mouth to tell him, but Arch
ie got in first, snapping. ‘Too late to set out for Compiègne. Tell the loons to unpack your baggage.’

  ‘We’re not going to Compiègne,’ Lymond said. ‘We’re going to spend the night at Saint-Cloud. The house is empty, but we have royal permission to stay there. If you don’t like it, you can stay on and follow me later.’

  ‘And how,’ demanded Archie, ‘do you propose to get to Saint-Cloud? Sir?’

  One of the servants, grinning where it wouldn’t show, left the room with his burden. Lymond said, ‘Stop making matters worse. There’s a wagon leaving for Paris which will drop us there. If you would help carry down the baggage I should have rather less explaining to do. Or maybe you aren’t feeling quite up to it.’

  ‘I’m not. And ye havena taken a civil farewell of Master Nostradamus,’ said Archie.

  ‘And I’m not going to,’ said Lymond.

  There was a pregnant silence. Then Archie raised his voice. ‘Chops me!’ he said bitterly. ‘But ye’re a thrawn, bloody, rackle-tongued limmer. I’ll come with ye to Saint-Cloud. I’ll cut your meat at Compiègne. But there’s a limit. I tell you now, there’s a limit to what I’ll do for you.’

  Chapter 5

  Dans cité entrer exercit desniée

  Duc entrera par persuasion.

  It was, perhaps, a mark of Francis Crawford’s singular authority that he returned to Compiègne after five days’ absence to find his forces well quartered, in good heart and active in harassing the enemy. Nothing untoward indeed had happened, save that Jerott Blyth, returning from a brief Paris leave, had ordered the sommelier to give him the keys of the wine cellars, and had not left his room since he used them.

  Danny Hislop, irritated and envious, had made a few attempts through the keyhole to bring him to his senses, aided latterly by Adam Blacklock, newly returned from his duties in Lyon. Neither of them was present when Lymond kicked the door down, although the roar of the preceding musket shot brought them to their feet. What happened after that was mainly inaudible but Archie, questioned afterwards, conjectured that Mr Blyth had lifted his hand to his lordship, and Mr Crawford had knocked him down and kept on knocking him down until Mr Blyth was so beside himself with rage that he was nearly sober. Then Mr Crawford had thrown a bucket of water over him and told him to sit down while he told him a few things the Order forgot to mention.