Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘It was unfortunate that he heard and saw what he did, but he knows now where he stands, and he’ll respect you none the less. I imagine he is feeling as concerned for you this morning as you are for him. Needless to say, we are moving him to the Hôtel d’Hercule as soon as possible. If Francis comes back in his right mind, he’ll arrange a nominal ransom and dispatch him home instantly along with you, Philippa.’

  There was no doubt now that he would try, whether he was in his right mind or not. By now, if he rode by post through the night without stopping, as he was quite fool enough to do, he might be in Dieppe. She thought, tramping her way through the frozen mud, of the five enervating things that might happen, and his probable response to them, in the condition he would be in by this time. Adam had begged her to go to Dieppe. To refuse him had been, she supposed, the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.

  Célie called, ‘Madame! You have walked past the turning!’ and she saw, looking round, that she had. She also saw, discreetly strolling behind them, the red-headed bodyguard she had stopped once before. His name, she knew now, was Osias. He shared his duties with another man of Applegarth’s with a scarred cheek. Célie or her serving man took them in occasionally and gave them something hot in a cup if she had kept them out unduly in bad weather. It reminded her, in case she forgot from time to time, that Francis—Mr Crawford—felt that her association with him might bring danger to her.

  But there was danger everywhere in a big city, lawful as well as unlawful. You could be killed by sewer gas from a well, or by crossing the rue Vieille Barbette during crossbow practice. You could be killed by lightning like Célie’s cousin, an Augustine, trapped in his blazing belltower with the molten bell mouths and gutters dropping seething upon him a mantle of vermeil and silver. Or you might hold the wrong opinions and be hung bleeding to death like a sheep before your limbs were cut off; or be maimed and nailed to the door of your house, or burned alive, or have your eyes torn out, living.

  Down there at the Hospital des Quinze-Vingts Aveugles there was a charity stall for the blinded. There they sold what they had made: the woodwork, the mended clocks, the pieces of wicker and lacework. There was a man who, if you gave him a teston, would play for you on the spinet. He was an indifferent performer.

  Célie, waiting for her at the turning into Marie-Egyptienne, said accusingly, “Look at you! You are acquiring a fever! I told you that you were crazy to come out with your cold in this weather!”

  Poor Célie, victim of the Somerville passion for thoroughness: à fin, fin et demi. Philippa smiled to reassure her and crossed to the house she was looking for: one of the many lodgings in the old Hôtel de Flandre on the corner of Egyptienne and Coquillière.

  It was plaster mud here, oozing white round the sliver-stones of the paving. There was more of Montmartre on the white-washed walls of Paris, the saying went, than there was of Paris in Montmartre. On her pattens and cloak hem, she and Célie carried a good deal of it into the porter’s house with them. The last she saw of Osias, as the porter conducted them across a yard and up some steps to their destination, was a face, blotched red and blue, peering through the shut gates and scowling.

  *

  She had not, for some reason, expected the room to be so comfortable. Deprived, by a vanishing servant, of cloak, pattens and Célie, Philippa gazed at the florid little man with the black hat and long beard who came forward to greet her and said, ‘Salut, Maître.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the King’s surgeon-philosopher Michel Nostradamus. ‘The comte de Sevigny’s exquisite lady wife. As was said of Mademoiselle d’Heilly: la plus belle des savantes et la plus savante des belles.’

  One became used to this. ‘But not comely enough,’ Philippa said, ‘or else too wise, to become the King’s mistress. I hope your gout has improved?’

  ‘It is too early in the day to be put in my place,’ the little man said, ‘—pray be seated—but I shall answer you. It is slightly improved. If you consider me a quack and an empirick, why do you visit me? You do not require a love potion. You may require a cure for your sad attack of the rheum.’

  Philippa began to feel brighter. She said, ‘You remember our chat in Saint-Germain?’

  ‘About Béatris, the daughter of Camille de Doubtance. I do. You did not, I hope, take the whooping-cough?’

  ‘Not unless I have it now,’ Philippa said. She laid on the table the little basket Célie had carried from the Hôtel de Guise for her. ‘These are some trifles. It would give me great pleasure if you would accept them.’

  Inside the basket were three flasks of wine, a packet of sugar, some cloves, some pepper, some nutmeg and a silk knitted purse with ten pounds in it in double ducats. She sat down while he unpacked it, tucking his beard out of the way. At the end he took out one of the wine flasks and filling from it one of a pair of handsome glass goblets gave her one, observing, ‘I am deeply flattered. And for what, Madame la comtesse, am I being bribed?’

  Philippa opened her satchel and laid on the same table the heaviest object within it. ‘To find,’ she said, ‘the house in France of which that is the doorkey.’

  *

  She had been right in thinking the parlour too decorous a room for Master Nostradamus’s purposes. The chamber in which she found herself ten minutes later, having climbed a winding wooden stair of no great solidity, was sufficiently like the workrooms of both John Dee in London and the Dame de Doubtance in Lyon to leave no doubts about what it was used for. Running her congested eye over the scales, spheres, astrolabes, flagons, books, crucible, athanor, alambic, altar, fountain, skull and perfuming pan, Philippa said finally, ‘I thought they burned that forty years ago. That’s the Idol of Isis from the church of Saint-Germain.’

  ‘Allez a l’idole de St Germain et vous trouverez ce qu’avez perdu. I acquired it from the person who rescued it,’ the astrologer said. ‘Why should it worry you more than the sweat of St Anne, or the crystal pipe with the milk of the Virgin, or the leg of one of the holy innocents murdered by Herod, or the bones of the eleven thousand virgins? Isis and Ammon are wise. There is much we can learn from the Egyptians.’

  The room reeked of castor-oil, mint pastilles and onions, the symbol sacred to Isis. Philippa, her eyes brimming, thought of a certain Egyptian sarcophagus she had seen in the house of the English astrologer she had once befriended and had her thought divined, disconcertingly, by the little man.

  ‘… Or because I do not have so many mirrors, do you consider me less potent than Master Dee? I do not draw up charts of navigation, it is true, but he in turn cannot claim the prophetic gifts of a child of the lost tribe of Issachar. These are Hebrew inscriptions on the walls and floor but you need not be afraid: my family have long since become Christian. And do you still desire a divorce?’

  Philippa jumped. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In fact, it is arranged for two weeks after Easter.’

  ‘But you have no intention of retiring thereafter, I judge, to a convent for the Mal’Maritate.’ He threw something else on the burner, dragged a bronze tripod into the middle of the room and picking up a metal bowl, carried it over and held it under the fountain. He continued placidly. ‘And for whom burns then, this white fire which lives without fuel? Bring me a lock of his hair and I will make you a poculum amatorium ad venerem so powerful that, once it is placed in the mouth, he will die frenzied if he cannot either spit it out or master you instantly.’

  It was better to show amusement than nausea. ‘Would you?’ said Philippa with interest. ‘Come to think of it, I can tell you the eight people at court you’ve already sold it to. What’s that for?’

  He did not seem to be offended. ‘The key, suspended by a Carpathian thread, swings over the filled bowl and taps out its answers by touching the twenty-four letters engraved on the rim. Before that, I have to trace my circle of Floram Patere and then change into linen for the Invocation. You have never offended Anäel?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Philippa thinly.

  �
�I am glad to hear it. You have a somewhat ready tongue. If there is any doubt in the matter, you may turn right when you leave the building and confess yourself in the Chapel of Saint-Marie-Egyptienne. Many do.’

  Above her head, the winter light waned from the skylight. Snow. Philippa wondered what Célie was doing. The reeking pan, vaporous blue, hardly illuminated the floor sufficiently to let the elderly doctor trace his marks on his knees. The black hat travelled over the floor, and the plump hand with the chalk.

  Philippa said, ‘Would you like me to light you some candles?’ and proceeded to ignite a spill and carry it round before he could stop her. A half skull, resting on the top of a cupboard, looked back at her in alarm and created a reaction of such amused irritation that she remembered her cold and paused to deal with a resurgence. She did not therefore hear Master Nostradamus return and was suitably shocked when he reappeared, white as a Turkish headstone in the flickering gloom, booted, turbanned and robed in chaste folds of unblemished linen.

  He made her kneel on the ground by the brazier while, cross-legged on the tripod, he stared at the bowl and the key hanging over it. He had put saffron this time on the charcoal. Through eyewatering fumes, she could catch parts of the Invocation. He had a strong Provence accent.

  ‘Venez, Anäel: venez, et que ce soit votre bon plaisir d’être en moi par votre volonté, au nom du Père Tout-Puissant, au nom de Fils très sage, au nom du Saint Ésprit très aimable. Venez, Anäel, par la vertu de l’immortel Elohim. Venez, Anäel, par le bras du tout-puissant Mittatron. Venez à moi, Nostradamus, et commandez à vos sujets qu’avec amour, joie et paix, ils fassent voir à mes yeux les choses qui me sont cachées. Amen.’

  The silence tightened. For one trembling moment, Philippa could not tell whether he was going to intone a psalm or burst out naked and dance like the three crazy daughters of Proetus. He looked up and glared sharply at her and she gazed back, stunned, with glazed features. Then he took a sprig of green stuff like verbena and with it, touched the long silken thread.

  The key trembled, stirred, and then shaking itself, began, uncertainly, to drift over its twin in the lissom dark skin of the water. The little clang of the rim when it homed made Philippa’s downy skin start like a hedgehog.

  ‘P,’ said Nostradamus, in a flat voice.

  The key swung spelling for fifteen minutes, and produced the same sequence of six letters twice. It was not, as such experiments go, quite without fault, but since in no Mappamundi could they find any village called PLARIS, there seemed no ultimate doubt of its message.

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Philippa at last, who was feeling cold and extremely tired and wanted to rise from her knees. ‘That is, there is a population of five hundred thousand. Do we take the key round them all?’

  Which was frivolous, for of course, one simply made the Invocation again, and then asked the key to spell out the street name.

  This time, unfortunately, it spelt out CLERASI.

  ‘There isn’t any such street,’ Philippa finally said, lifting her aching head from the map he had produced and spread out for her. ‘I’ve made a list of the C’s. The Quai des Célestins? The Châtelet? The rue Calandre, the rue du Centier, the rue sans Clef, the rue Chassemidi … de la Chaise … des Trois Chandelliers … du Cigne … Clopin … Cocqueron.… Hopeless. The nearest is Clopin, and surely even an imbecile like Anäel couldn’t turn that into Clerasi? Let’s try again.’

  Master Nostradamus was remarkably amenable. They tried again, and got the same answer. ‘It doesn’t even sound French,’ Philippa said; then lifted her nose of a sudden out of her handkerchief. ‘It isn’t French. It’s Latin. The hopeless creature has latinized it. What’s Clerasus?’

  There was a short silence. ‘I am afraid,’ said Nostradamus, ‘that there exists no such word.’

  ‘There must be,’ Philippa said; and without warning gave vent to the kind of ignoble whoop which used to ring round the yards of Flaw Valleys. ‘The silly ass has put his mad L at the start again. It’s Cerasi.’

  ‘Cherry trees,’ said Master Nostradamus.

  ‘Cherry trees … Of course! The rue de la Cerisaye, the street of the cherry trees, between the Bastille and the Arsenal. Clerasi!’ said Philippa scathingly. ‘He’s met William Baldwyn, and if I’d anything to do with it, I’d make him damned well languish locked in L.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Michel Nostradamus, looking up at the wrong moment. He put down the verbena and moving a step, stood gazing at her in gentle inquiry. ‘Madame? Why are you weeping?’

  ‘Because,’ said Philippa, ‘I have such an extremely bad cold. The kindest thing you can do is to pay no attention.’ She blew her nose. ‘Now. I don’t suppose Anäel is any good with house-names?’

  ‘I am afraid not,’ said Master Nostradamus with apparent regret. ‘But I believe it is a very short street. If I were not so hard-pressed with my charts, I might have accompanied you there with my divining rod.’

  He was an odd character. He might be a good deal more frightening than he seemed. But he had been generous with both his help and his time. And from beginning to end, he had asked no questions whatever. Perhaps, in an astrologer’s work, that was usual.

  She did not want to stay any longer, and it would be less than seemly to ask him to descend the steep stairs in white linen. She held out her hand. ‘I’m sure I shall find it,’ she said. ‘I want to thank you.’

  He took her hand, and held it in his two, healthy rounded ones. Then he looked at her.

  ‘You will not speak of that which is in your mind but I, if you will allow me, would advise you. Here you have a hawk of the lure, not of the fist. He will not come to you. If you would have him, you must lay your heart upon your hawking-glove; and feed it to him.’

  Unfair, unfair. She banished fright from her face with an effort, but in his hands, her own started to tremble. Then he said, without waiting for her to speak, ‘You are cold. I must not keep you. What was the question you wished to put about M. your husband?’

  Her mind, then, was still open to him. She said austerely, ‘How perceptive. I only wondered why neither of you has ever mentioned your meeting at Lyon?’

  The grey, impersonal eyes gave no impression of shiftiness. Then, unexpectedly, he removed them and thought, combing his long grey-brown beard with his fingers. Then he looked up again. ‘Madame, an hour ago I would have told you the bare truth, which is that the gentleman, being incapacitated, had no recollection of that meeting and that it was far from my place to refer to it.’

  ‘And now?’ Philippa said. She picked up the key and held it, ridiculously, like a buckler in front of her.

  ‘Now,’ said Nostradamus, ‘I shall give you another piece of advice. When next you meet M. le comte, ask him to tell you, in detail, what occurred on that evening in Lyon. And if he refuses, as he will, tell him that I, Nostradamus, will inform you.’

  ‘He went to a … I know where he spent the night,’ Philippa said.

  ‘You think you do,’ Nostradamus said. ‘But I must tell you that I did not find my patient, or treat him, in a bawdy-house. You may remind him of that. I have placed in your basket an excellent remedy for the rheum, and a pot of complexion cream for which, as you may have heard, I have a certain reputation. The inflammation of your skin will require it.’

  ‘Me fera Hecuba en Hélène,’ said Philippa rather dazedly. Rendra, it said on the pot, une souveraine splendeur naive à la face. It had a familiar smell.

  ‘If used from the age of fifteen,’ Master Nostradamus said briskly, ‘it will preserve lifelong beauty and enable the skin at sixty to look as young as that of a twenty-year-old. The contents are quite pure. Sublimate, quicksilver, rose-water, and the saliva of a young person who for three days has eaten onions without vinegar. Boiled, I may assure you, for the length of two Paternosters and two Ave Marias, repeated with reverence.’

  ‘We used to quote from the Hamasa of Abu Tammam,’ Philippa said. She picked up the basket and lifted her eyes. �
�We made the fertility potion as well, but the bird-catchers used to cheat with the cock-sparrows. Communications between Stamboul and Lyon seem better than one might have imagined. Did you ever have a dog?’

  For a long time he looked at her in silence, and in his red cheeks and his fat turban and his long, forked beard of chestnut and grey she saw, at length, nothing that was trivial or comic at all.

  She had invoked the world of Arabic poetry. His answer, when it finally came, was also culled from the lore of Mohammed.

  ‘If I told you all I know, said the Prophet, you would flog me with thongs of leather. Time, Le Boiteux, the Lame One, will release you both. I pray for you.’

  ‘Not to Anäel, I beg you,’ said Philippa tremulously. ‘He would send us to Plurgatory, and even Elohim might find it troublesome to extract us. Maître Nostradame, I am grateful.’ And she left him.

  She called, too, at the Chapel of Marie-Egyptienne, with the frozen Osias and a disgruntled Célie behind her; but it was full of companionable souls celebrating the religious rites of the local confrèrie and she came away, unable to concentrate. Once back in the Hôtel de Guise she went to bed, swallowed the potion for the rheum and slept for sixteen hours, at the end of which she awoke to find her cold vanished, and a gift from Austin Grey at her bedside.

  She sent for the pot of complexion cream. If one had to turn back the clock, one might as well begin systematically.

  Chapter 5

  D’humain tropeau neuf serone mis à part

  De jugement, et conseil separez.

  Leur sort sera divisé en départ.

  The yard which saw Francis Crawford’s distinctive collapse in Dieppe belonged to the house of a draper’s widow. On the other side of the building, shutters revealed a counter over which, at certain times, the Bouchard employees sold stockings, bonnets, breech-hose, jackets and lengths of velvet, damask and saye from the stacked shelves which ran round the stockroom.