Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘None, your Majesty,’ Philippa said. ‘Marriage requires more than two lutes in counterpoint, felicitous though that may be.’

  The young woman, the Queen had noticed before, had a delightful voice: clear and mellow, and allied to the kind of strong nerves which camouflage any falsehood.

  However, if that was a lie, she had gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure of her husband’s next bedfellow. The Queen of France said, ‘I know the Demoiselle d’Albon has formed a great affection for the young man. I should like to learn if his feelings are engaged?’

  ‘I believe … not yet, Madame,’ said the comtesse de Sevigny.

  ‘Then will he marry her? She is already an heiress.’

  There was a little pause. Then the girl said, ‘He is, I understand, in no great want of money.… At the same time, his friends would be well pleased if he abandoned his present plan to go back to Russia.’

  Catherine de Médicis, Queen of France, settled back on her stool with a certain satisfaction. ‘He has sensible friends. I agree with them. It seems a case, then, of encouraging M. your husband to form an attachment in that quarter. I take it he is capable of doing so. And he is, I am sure, a man of honour.’

  She raised her eyebrows. Philippa, who had put this precise point only a short while before to her sister-in-law, felt a dim sinking within her. She said, ‘Your Majesty knows better than I do, Mademoiselle d’Albon’s undoubted attractions.’

  The Queen smiled. ‘They are considerable,’ said Catherine de Médicis. She leaned forward and picked up two gold buttons which had burst from Charles’s doublet, and then plucked a third one from Henri’s right ear. ‘But it is for the rest of us—and you and I in particular—to create for them the opportunities.’

  *

  The next time she spotted the red-headed man of Applegarth’s following her, she drew her valet into a doorway and stepping out suddenly, caused her pursuer to recoil with a yammer.

  ‘You’re not very good at it are you?’ said Philippa. ‘I thought the idea was not to attract notice.’

  That was what Adam Blacklock had said when she had complained first about the presence of a perpetual bodyguard, and then had tried, soft-heartedly, to have him asked into the kitchen when the weather got cold. It was a point. If the Court knew the Sevignys had been threatened, they would instantly want to know what they were being threatened with. She stared at the man.

  ‘I wasn’t attracting notice,’ said Applegarth’s man rather sulkily. ‘Not until you stopped me, anyway.’

  ‘And how is Mr Blacklock?’ said Philippa.

  ‘I don’t know, milady,’ said her bodyguard. ‘There’s a man in town pays us. Mr Blacklock’s in Artois. So they say.’

  So she had to ask, after all, quite directly. ‘And M. de Sevigny?’

  His face changed, like a cushion with a fat man sitting on it. ‘In Abbeville still, I expect. Did you hear what they did on the ice?’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa.

  ‘Put the cannon on sledges and hurdled over them. Eight broken legs and four arms that first day, and a culverin fell through and had to be drawn out by horses. Signor Strozzi won eight hundred écus.’

  ‘And M. de Sevigny? said Philippa with shaming monotony.

  ‘Oh. He put his cap on a weathervane and bet M. Strozzi he couldn’t knock it off with the cannon. He couldn’t either, so M. de Sevigny got his eight hundred écus back again. Then he took some of them that had been with him in Russia and showed them trick riding. Of course, they’re used to the snow.’

  His face was shining. She had been a bad-tempered harridan. On an impulse, Philippa put an écu in his hand, smiled, and turning to her valet, continued on her original errand.

  It hadn’t become any better: not a bit of it. Every day of the long separation had only sunk the well deeper: printed the long, detailed record of his looks and his words, like the dials of the oak, more inexorably into her being.

  But to bear it, and in silence, was her privilege. She shared it with many others. Nor was she vain.

  *

  He came back on Wednesday, February 16th, and put up for the last time with his suite at the empty Hôtel St André, where he found a message from the Prévôt des Marchands awaiting him. It bade him, as one of the victors of Calais, present himself with his comtesse at four after midday on Thursday, to receive the accolade of the city upon the Duke de Guise’s great triumph.

  With it was a note from the royal maître d’hôtel with the arrangements for the order of ceremony.

  Underneath that, was a note from his current wife Philippa.

  To Hercules from the Queen of the Amazons. The Cardinal decrees that Monsieur and Madame de Sevigny appear at the Hôtel de Ville banquet together tomorrow. I shall call on you at three of the clock after midday, smiling as doth the crocodile, which hath many rows of teeth but no tongue. I recommend to you Dathan and Abiram, whom the earth swallowed quick.

  He laughed aloud when he read it, but sent no reply. On the other hand, when Philippa arrived at the Hôtel St André next day, he was waiting on the stroke of three in the Maréchale’s parlour to receive her. And behind him was Austin Grey, Marquis of Allendale.

  *

  It was five months since she had seen Francis Crawford. And in spite of her resolution, it was at him only that she looked.

  He met the look, which he had not done in September. All that she remembered was there and something else: a presence bright as a newly sheared diamond. He had about him the hard resilience and the longsighted vision she recalled from other men on hard-fought campaigns, although he was clean and scented and his hair was fresh-cut and shining. Only his hands, taking hers lightly to greet her, were hard across the palm with the grip of the rein and the sword-hilt, and the filbert nails cut closer than she had ever seen them in the salon. It would be some weeks before he could match Catherine d’Albon with the lute, in counterpoint or out of it.

  He looked well. And as if somewhere, lately, he had tasted happiness.

  ‘Devoted obedience at the kissing of your holy feet,’ Lymond said, lifting a silver cup of Hippocras and handing it to her severely, ‘but what do I have to do to induce you to leave France? Stand and pray like St Kevin, until my two outstretched palms both have nests in them? You remember Lord Allendale.’

  Philippa turned her gaze to Lord Allendale, on whose fine-skinned dark face was a clearly read turmoil of feeling. She said, ‘Poor Austin: you should never have let Mr Crawford buy you. The Vidame de Chartres will challenge you out of jealousy.… I am sorry, truly. But you’re well; you’re not wounded. And Lord Grey?’

  ‘He is in Paris also,’ Austin said. ‘A little hurt, but quickly recovering. Arthur is with him. Philippa … why … Kate has been expecting you.’

  ‘Yes. Well, the Queen won’t release me until after the wedding,’ said Philippa with absolute candour. ‘How long are you going to be here?’

  Austin, who had also been handed a cup of wine but was not drinking it, looked at Francis Crawford, who was. Lymond said, ‘We haven’t decided yet. I can’t make up my mind what to ransom him for.’

  Philippa stared at him. ‘Money,’ she said, ‘is the usual thing. What have you done with Lord Grey?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lymond. ‘Lord Grey is half-way up the ladder from grower to buyer, and is remaining in wraps till the market settles. The Crown presented him to Piero Strozzi.’

  ‘And?’ said Philippa Somerville. She sat down. She felt very, very happy.

  Lymond sat himself also. ‘It took two lawyers, a cashier and the Lieutenant-Criminel de Robe-Courte before even Lord Grey could grasp the pattern,’ he remarked cheerfully. ‘Actually, Marshal Strozzi fixed his lordship’s ransom at seven thousand crowns and Lord Grey reduced it by haggling to four thousand and had nearly reached an agreement when the Queen of England was moved to send him a noble message of personal love and encouragement, upon which Strozzi added ten thousand crowns to the asking-price. Willie Grey was still producing
bouillons over that when he found himself being led out of the door. Strozzi had sold him as a going concern to the comte de la Rochefoucauld’s brother, who wanted him to exchange for the comte de la Rochefoucauld, who had been a prisoner of the English since Saint-Quentin. Are you with me, or are you merely nervous in case we are going to be late for our appointment?’

  ‘I am, unfortunately, with you,’ said Philippa.

  ‘I told you it was complicated. Well, the comte de la Rochefoucauld was an unsatisfactory prisoner. He tried to escape. He said he was dying. So to make sure of his money, the Count’s captors didn’t wait for Lord Grey, but sold him back to his own side at once for a ransom of thirty thousand écus. He is here in Paris. Lord Grey is still here as his prisoner. And the family want at least twenty-four thousand écus to go towards the high costs of salvage. Are you ready? It’s raining.’

  ‘Look outside,’ Philippa said, ‘and you will see that the Cardinal of Lorraine has sent his second-string coach for the survivor of Calais to ride in. You don’t look very festive, except for that vulgar affair on your shoulders. Tartar barter, I take it? And under it?’

  Lying on the rich, sober cloth of his doublet was the exquisite thing she had referred to: a golden chain of linked plaques, each one thick with eastern jewels and enamel. And under it was the black cross-sash, she realized, of his Order: the St Michael, the most coveted of all French distinctions.

  ‘The wages,’ said Lymond, ‘of insufferable irregularities. The other is my obsidional crown of grass. The clothes are my own. Tant de payis, tant’ de Guises. I chose a tactful feuille-morte because the Duke will almost certainly be attired in white and gold velvet and diamonds. Like North Rona: scant of ony religone, but abundant of corne. Who in God’s name do these rubies belong to?’

  ‘You. But you wouldn’t suit them,’ said Philippa. ‘Ffarewell Carboncle chosen chief. It’s my husband-hunting equipment. What about you?’

  ‘I don’t hunt husbands,’ said Lymond, getting up. ‘It’s the other way about.’ He stood for a moment, looking at her. ‘Has it been very bad?’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Calais ought to be French. Someone was bound to take it, sooner or later. But you shouldn’t have had to watch the rejoicing. I’m sorry.’

  He was the only person who had thought of it. Philippa, her eyes very bright, said, ‘I didn’t enjoy it. But at least there wasn’t much slaughter.’

  ‘No,’ said Austin Grey bitterly. ‘We all surrendered.’

  Lymond turned. ‘There may be some issues worth being martyred for, but I doubt if the Staple at Calais is one of them. However. Suppose, Philippa my child, you bring Lord Allendale a little English comfort while I see somebody? Then we must leave, or we shall have no food but of thorns, which will neither fatten nor avail against hunger.’

  The door closed behind him. Austin said, ‘After that, what can I say that doesn’t sound illiterate?… Philippa, the French are our enemies and yet … Why take service with the Scots Queen? You wrote that you were coming home.’

  ‘I am. In April,’ Philippa said. ‘I haven’t forgotten what country I belong to. But I found some business which needs to be finished and, you know, I am married to a Scotsman, even if we are both doing our best to get rid of each other.’

  ‘I see,’ said Austin. From deeply flushed, he had turned rather pale. He added, ‘So it seems stupid to ask if you need help, especially from me. The Greys have been made to appear very foolish.’

  ‘I don’t know whether you know the signs,’ Philippa said, ‘but Mr Crawford isn’t totally sober. From what I can gather, the Greys held out with a thousand men against the entire French, Swiss and German forces for eight days and only gave in when the Burgundians made them. You have no small reputation, I can tell you, at the French Court. Your mother will be flying flags from all the battlements.… You look tired. Don’t let him browbeat you.’

  Smiling, he shook his head slightly and then dropped his eyes to his hands. They were hard, as Lymond’s had been, with callouses at the base of the fingers. Philippa, taking the bull by the horns, said, ‘And don’t let him embarrass you, either. You know why he left the room, and so do I. You can take it that I don’t intend to have my friendships either spoiled or engineered by Francis Crawford. Does that make you feel better?’

  He was laughing when he looked up, the lines of difficult reserve easing already out of his over-bred face. ‘You haven’t changed. But what am I to do? The laws of chivalry are silent.’

  Philippa rose and walking over to him, placed her two hands lightly on the padded stuff of his sleeves. ‘Follow your own mind and heart,’ she said. ‘I shall be honest with you. And if my suspicions are right, we shall be given plenty of time.’

  *

  It was not so easy to remain matriarchal sitting in the Cardinal’s tall, red velvet coach with Francis Crawford keeping himself to himself less than a foot away from the fall of her furs. From the tilt of his head on the padding, she guessed that his eyes were closed. He said unexpectedly, as she was looking at him, ‘Evil the drink and ill the resting place. I am not, unfortunately, asleep.’ It was not difficult to guess how he had spent the ten minutes’ absence.

  A little flame of purifying anger ran through Philippa’s veins. She said sharply, ‘I suppose you have heard? Your brother is on his way here with Sybilla.’

  That lifted his head, his eyes open, from the velvet. Then he said, ‘I beg your pardon, Philippa. Plures crapula quam ensis.’

  ‘And you have heard?’ said Philippa. So often, disconcertingly, he answered not her tongue but her intention.

  ‘Yes. D’Aumale, d’Estrée and I are to take a party to Dieppe to welcome them. We are all moderately good playactors, Richard, Sybilla and I. There will be no unpleasantness.’

  ‘But that is why you are drinking?’ The last time he had met his mother, Lymond had turned on his heel and walked past her. And Richard, driven to anguished fury by everything about his younger brother: his high-handed neglect; his utter refusal to concern himself with the affairs of his country had at last attacked and might well have killed his cadet.

  Lymond said,

  ‘And can the things that I have do

  Be hidden from thee then?

  Nay, nay, thou knowest them all (O Lord)

  Where they were done, and when.…

  ‘Why am I drinking? I am celebrating the wresting from you of Calais. Or shall I tell you the truth? The truth is that …’

  He had given the words, incongruously, the cadence almost of poetry. Then he broke off vaguely and picked up in a more painstaking tone. ‘The truth is that I must be in a rather worse state than I thought I was. I apologize.’

  ‘What exactly did you find out in Flavy?’ said Philippa.

  ‘My letter told you,’ said Lymond. The rain, renewing its force, thundered upon the roof and one side of the carriage. The crowds outside saluted the Cardinal’s coach from their windows, or pressed to the sides of the streets under the galleries. Lymond said, ‘The old lady is dead. I had hoped to find out where Bailey is living, but Lord Grey’s men failed to discover.’

  Philippa said, ‘Why should Bailey come to France? You left him content with his pension in England. Is he hoping to wring more money from Sybilla than you are paying him? Or could he possibly mean to hint something of all this to Richard?’

  ‘Not if he wants to live,’ Lymond said. ‘I don’t imagine he knew for a moment that Richard and Sybilla were coming here. In any case, neither one of them could afford what I pay to him. No … I think he is here by chance, and thought he saw some way to harm me. If Grey hadn’t shown me the letter, he would have been quite secure. I expect he has left France by now. But I think you should continue to take precautions. Why are you still here?’

  He had not, unfortunately, lost sufficient hold of his faculties. Philippa said, ‘The Queen wants me to stay until April. I’m going to have to meet Sybilla. I wish you would tell me the truth. For example, you have said nothing to me about headaches.�
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  She withstood, for what seemed a long time, an unforeseen scrutiny. At length, ‘Who told you?’ said Lymond.

  ‘Adam. When he came to the Séjour du Roi.’ Marthe was not going to be at the Hôtel de Ville this afternoon. She had not seen or spoken to Marthe since the day the news of Calais arrived, and she had betrayed herself. But then, neither had Lymond.

  ‘I see,’ said Lymond. ‘I regret I didn’t edify you with an account of them, but they seemed to have vanished. Apart, that is, from the normal rewards of intemperance.’

  ‘And at Flavy?’ Philippa said. Don’t let him browbeat you, she had said to Austin.

  He drew an impolite long suffering breath, she saw, to do exactly that. Then he said crisply, ‘I learned only one other thing at Flavy, and that is of no possible consequence. Isabelle Roset was Renée Jourda’s widowed sister, and she kept house for Sybilla and her master somewhere in Paris. The child Francis Crawford was born there. And so far as I am concerned and you are concerned, Philippa, that ends the matter.’

  They had nearly arrived at the end of their unproductive journey. Philippa thought, Poor Austin. And said, drawing a long breath herself, ‘And who was the master? The father of Sybilla’s baby?’

  ‘She died before she could say. A beneficent occurrence for everybody. Here we are,’ Lymond said. And looking at him, and not at the Place de la Grève, Philippa knew that she could expect him to say nothing further.

  What he had told her up to a point, she had no doubt was the literal truth. What he had not told her, but everything else about him made very obvious was that where once he had been uncertain, now he knew the name of Sybilla’s lover.

  Chapter 2

  Le trop bon temps, trop de bonté royale

  Fais et deffais, prompt, subit, negligence.

  She was afterwards to remember it as the most disoriented day, from moment to moment, that she had ever passed in her life.