Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘Christ!’ said Richard under his breath, and rising unobtrusively to his feet, began to make his way, with native persistence, to where Philippa Somerville, he now saw, was seated.

  Danny got up as well.

  Piero Strozzi, a single earring swinging against his dark face, looked up and grinned at him.

  ‘Why are you going? France is a civilized country. The two wives of the comte de Sevigny—does my poor Earl doubt it?—are fond of one another.’

  ‘I know,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘I want to see them being fond of one another. I want to see everybody brazening it out. And then I want to see what your petit François does to you when the party’s over.’

  *

  For her part, Philippa Somerville watched without pleasure her husband’s older brother picking his way purposefully towards her while displaying, to Catherine d’Albon, several eminent noblemen and one or two mesmerized students surrounding her, all the overtures expected of a selfless and hard-working guest, together with evidence that she had never spent a happier evening in her life.

  The moment when Piero Strozzi’s messenger had found her, released from duty, drinking wine and reading poetry and discussing theology in the little house belonging to the mistress of a young medical graduate named Jacques Grevin, had been in itself sufficiently macabre, denoting, it seemed, some royal death or disaster.

  The message he actually brought—that Francis Crawford wished her presence at his reception—was in its way even more worrying.

  Since there was, she was assured, no time to change, she hurried to the Hôtel d’Hercule as she was, in a high-necked gown of unadorned russet velvet, with her unbound hair lying brushed over her cloak. Her mind, occupied furiously with possibilities, first reached the conclusion that some kind of unthinkable climax had occurred between Sybilla and Francis, and that, unable to ask another’s help, he had had to send for her services. Or had Jerott, too fuddled to remember the niceties, said something of Marthe to Lord Culter?

  Or worse than anything else … Had Leonard Bailey left the house in the rue de la Cerisaye and chosen tonight, of all nights, to make public the scandal surrounding the Crawfords?

  Even when her escort pushed his way through the crowds to the brightly-lit house, and she heard the music and laughter drifting from the tall windows, she still thought it possible. It was the dénouement a vengeful man would choose … before an audience of Sybilla’s own countrymen. And with even the Queen, it seemed, there to hear it. Bailey could have made his threat. Lymond might be waiting helplessly, even now, for his arrival.

  So she came quickly into the room, her furred cloak fallen back; and saw him see her at once, and with an apology to the Queen at his side, rise to walk swiftly towards her.

  And from his manner, she knew instantly that there had been no disaster. St Michael killed his dragon, gold and green, on the spotless velvet of a man who was totally at home, and in command both of himself and of every circumstance of his surroundings. And in his eyes was no personal apprehension, but only a faint, well-masked concern whose reason was perfectly obvious.

  He had not expected to see her.

  Philippa did not even speak. Her eyes sought Piero Strozzi and found him grinning, his splendid shoulders raised in expansive expectation of forgiveness.

  Following, speechlessly, all the play upon her face and, turning, on the Florentine’s, Lymond divined, still without words, what had happened.

  Then he smiled, betraying no anger, and said, pleasantly, ‘I see that Piero has been at pains to make fools of us both. There is no need for embarrassment. Come and make your salutations to the Queen and Sybilla and then I shall bestow you on Catherine for companionship.… Take your cloak off. Your gown and your hair require no adornment.’

  It was direct flattery to restore her shaken confidence; but none the less, she was grateful for it. And when Catherine, smiling, came to lead her to a low cushioned hassock beside her, she was grateful, too, that Francis had chosen a bride of sensibility as well as intelligence, and that she had made a friend of her.

  Someone was singing.

  The fruit of all the service that I serve

  Despair doth reap, such hapless hap have I.

  But though he have no power to make me swerve

  Yet, by the fire, for cold I feel I die.

  Richard, coming to question her, was diverted after all: she thought by his mother. Lymond, bending courteously, was talking to d’Andelot’s wife, reclining near her husband on a coffer-seat.

  In paradise, for hunger still I starve;

  And, in the flood, for thirst to death I dry.

  So Tantalus am I, and in worse pain

  Amids my help, and helpless doth remain.

  Danny Hislop, twining among quilted backs like winter jasmine, arrived and seated himself nonchalantly in her circle. The Queen, and everyone else in the dim, scented room were listening to the singers. And as thought returned, and the flush died at last in her cheeks, Philippa listened to them too.

  Help me to seek, for I lost it there,

  And if that ye have found it, ye that be here

  And seek to convey it secretly.

  Handle it soft and treat it tenderly,

  Or else it will plain and then appear;

  … Help me to seek

  The theme of the music was earthly passion. The songs sprang from every country and age, their story told sometimes by the music and sometimes by the singers and sometimes in mime by the dancers, grave of face and tranquil in manner, and faultlessly clothed, as were all the performers, in pale, clear colours which spoke of spring, and of young lovers and sunlight.

  … I wis it was a thing all too dear

  To be bestowed and wist not where;

  It was my heart. I pray you heartily,

  Help me to seek.

  It was a display of art unmarred by slovenliness. One wept indeed for Jodelle, and for every masque born of Alciati and Giraldi and d’Avrigny, and presented, woodenly fixed to the drawing-board. Skilfully brought to this moment with wine and food and pleasure, with dim candlelight, and the warmth of their own kind, in talk and company, the guests were quite silent, watching and listening.

  As hound that hath his keeper lost,

  Seek I your presence to obtain.

  In which my heart delighteth most

  And shall delight, though I be slain.

  Come cold upon it, Philippa saw it with clear eyes, and was pleased to be critical.

  Cunningly done, O Francis, puissant comte de Sevigny. Nothing crude. Nothing too rich, or sickly, or posturing. Songs like a lost hearth-fire, that one had known from one’s childhood; songs rarely come upon, and the rest like new lovers, moving in their unfamiliarity. Songs which spoke direct to the heart. To the heart, and not to the intellect.

  She looked at Lymond.

  The dark wood of his chair defined his head. His profile, pure as the flowered spurs on his porcelain, was turned from the singers. His lids at first she thought were closed; and then she realized that he was fully occupied. He was watching time, and his guests; and guiding noiselessly through his maîtres d’hôtel the weaving pattern of footmen, pages, sommelier. Tonight he had no hostess and equally needed none. He had done this, somewhere, many times, and it was effortless.

  I fold thy gentleness within my cloak

  Thy flying wit I braid with jewellery,

  I span thy courage with my bravest clasp

  And sip the sweets of thy integrity.

  They think thee fair.

  They see not what I see.

  The guests sat close. The gold in Strozzi’s earring flashed, above the girl’s hair coiled across his breast. The white hand of de La Roche-sur-Yon stroked, down and down, the charming boy who sat beside his feet. Condé watched Catherine, and the Maréchale watched him until, with a soft movement, the demoiselle d’Albon rose and moved to Lymond’s side.

  Then he looked up, and smiled, and watched her as she settled by him: black hair,
white neck, and azure skirts spread all around the floor.

  When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall

  And she me caught in her arms long and small,

  Therewith all sweetly did me kiss

  And softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’

  The music rose again, and his hand moved and stilled, as Catherine leaned her head against the carved chair-arm. Aşk Olsun sang the plaintive, sweet voices to the undulating airs one had heard inside Zante, through Thessalonika, within the gates of Topkapi itself. Askin Cernai Olsun … Let there be love. May thy love be beautiful. May thy beauty be light. The truth is that thy body is free of all shadow./To soul and brain from thy abode comes the perfume of Paradise./O thy beauty!/The brightness of the day and the night/Are made timid by thy hair …

  The words used by the Bektashi in the ceremony of the tekke: how could any group of student singers know these?

  No longer cold: drugged with musk and amber and the dizzy languor of fasting emotion, Philippa looked hazily round her.

  Jerott she could see nowhere, but she caught Adam’s eye, and felt that for some minutes, he had been watching her. Even then, when the next song had started, he did not look away.

  But by then, anyway, she knew who had written those words and set them to music. Once, Francis Crawford had sung with Les Amis de Rabelais.

  Looking at him, she saw that Catherine, smiling a little, was still sitting below him. And that his absent fingers, their movement almost imperceptible, were caressing the smooth, creamy skin between her neck and her shoulder.

  Andreas was singing alone. Philippa looked away, her face drawn, and watched him. ‘Wyatt,’ Danny murmured beside her.

  It was Wyatt’s verse. It was also the bitter outburst of a wronged and unforgiving mind much nearer than that of Wyatt:

  The piller pearisht is whearto I lent

  The strongest staye of myne unquyet mynde;

  The lyke of it no man agayne can fynde,

  Ffrom East to West, still seking thoughe he went,

  To myne unhappe! for happe away hath rent

  Of all my joye the vearye bark and rynde.

  It was a safe scourge to use. No one beyond himself and Sybilla should have been present to know its significance.

  Sybilla was weeping, the tears running so fast that she placed both hands over her face. Richard, astonished, leaned to put his hands on her shoulders. And Lymond …

  Lymond, his golden head bent, listened smiling to something Queen Mary was saying while his hand, with that hardly visible movement, told over promises on Catherine d’Albon’s beautiful neck.

  Soon after that, the Queen left, her host escorting her. The doors closed. The company rose from its various obeisances. The atmosphere brightened.

  Piero Strozzi, disentangling himself from his girl friend, seized a lute from the consort, drained his wine and uplifted his voice in the first verse of an interminable Court lampoon aimed at Condé. His audience, still on their feet, faintly dazed, took a moment or two to revive. Many trays appeared, laden with goblets. Concupiscence gave way to satisfaction, and the first chorus had a commendable complement, if one not quite so melodious as that of the professionals:

  Ce petit homme tant jolly

  Tousjours cause et tousjours ry

  Et tousjours baise sa mignonne.

  Dieu gard’ de mal le petit homme!

  Madame de St André was laughing. So, fortunately, was the little man himself. Philippa Somerville said to the other little man standing behind her, ‘Where is Jerott Blyth?’

  Danny jumped. ‘Asleep under a piece of paper saying La musique recrée l’homme et lui donne volupté, signed Calvin. I laid him to rest under the gryphons. He can’t sing a note; he can’t really.’

  ‘Your nerves are weak, aren’t they?’ Philippa said. ‘So tell me. Where is Marthe? Or haven’t you dug her out yet?’

  He was reluctant to talk. Four of the sixteen verses about Louis de Bourbon were achieved before she told him what she wanted, and eight more before he had agreed to it. They were still roaring the chorus when she made her way across to Sybilla.

  ‘How do you stop them?’ said Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney, when Lymond, free of his royal guest, returned to the midst of the gallery.

  ‘I distribute large sweetmeats,’ Lymond said. ‘As you see my footmen are doing. And I ask the wittiest and most senior statesman present if he would honour us with a short closing speech.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Reid of Orkney. ‘You know what you are about. Not a long, sodden aftermath exchanging coarse epigrams about one’s betters? I have heard the one about de Brissac three times already.’

  ‘No. Let us save everyone’s faces,’ Lymond said, ‘while we can. And before Master Buchanan is hurled to the floor by either Nicolas or a thunderbolt from the late Copernicus.’

  And so, smiling, in English and in Latin, the Lord President of the Court of Session thanked his former prisoner, in elegant terms, for the quality of his hospitality; and the comte de Sevigny, also in English and in Latin, turned in a graceful speech which brought three graded roars of laughter and a howl at the end when he sang, quickly and lightly, four lines from Ce petit homme’s chorus, neatly warped to malign Piero Strozzi.

  Strozzi himself leaped over a bench to reach him, as they all began to make their farewells. ‘You are mollified! I knew it! To Scotland, arse of the world, I bring many well-endowed patrons, and allow you to impress them. Par le mort bien, many a gentleman would embrace me.’

  ‘I shall let you know,’ Lymond said, ‘when I am ready to embrace you, and with what. In the meantime should you seek a favour, ask elsewhere.’

  Antoine de Navarre, smiling, held out his hand. ‘Feu contre feu. It is becoming a legend: Sevigny and Strozzi. How did you cease to fight each other long enough to conquer Calais?’

  ‘I cannot quite recollect,’ said Piero Strozzi, his face contorted in thought. ‘The Duke de Guise could tell us. This Sevigny, you observe, works only to become one of the four Marshals of France, and then he must say bon soir et bonne nuit to Fortune, for there is nowhere to progress but downwards.’ He sighed.

  ‘I have your example,’ Lymond said. ‘Madame Marguerite?’

  ‘You have become too eminent to sing?’ said the King’s sister. ‘Or might one invite you to perform in private? I should like to have the musician and poet who wrote and arranged this entertainment to visit me with you.’

  ‘We are all honoured,’ Lymond said. ‘The only obstacle is our natural modesty. Mademoiselle d’Albon and I wish to thank you for joining us.’

  Richard caught the words, waiting with other Commissioners to take his leave, Sybilla beside him. The inexplicable storm of tears had ceased without trace: the tensions of evening, he supposed, had over-tired her. There had been no exchanges with Lymond. He was glad that Philippa had come, at last, to spend some time at Sybilla’s side. He had left them to talk quietly together and on returning, had found the girl gone, so that he did not require to offer his escort back to the Hôtel de Guise. One supposed there were plenty of gallants who had leaped at the opportunity.

  He moved forward with Sybilla, hearing Lord James’s slow voice ahead, making all the proper remarks to his brother. The girl Catherine stood at Lymond’s shoulder and his hand had come to rest lightly on her waist. The mother, creaking with jewels just behind them, looked positively hilarious. ‘He had heard about Marguerite de St André. It was not surprising, he supposed, if she clung to her youth. St André, they said, was a harquebuzier de ponant. It was the rottenness at the French court which had ruined Francis.

  Then it was his turn and he bowed, without approaching for an embrace; while his brother returned the gesture with practised, careless courtesy to them both. The decoration pinning the Queen’s glove, he now saw, was the gold Medal of Calais. He wondered if the Queen knew he had another glove donated last year by Madame Elizabeth of England. Neither Francis nor Sybilla avoided the other’s eyes, he noticed,
although neither was smiling. The two delicate skins even yet could look identical: milky-fair in the dazzle of ruff-gauze. There were oyster shells made from silver spools, a pretty conceit, half concealed by the seaming and arm-hoops of Lymond’s nacré velvet and within each a white pearl, tastefully glimmering. The St Michael, they said, was the most privileged Order in France, and opened the only sure doorway to power.

  Sybilla said, so quietly that none but he and Francis could hear it, ‘You brought me here, it seems, for one purpose. If it pleases you to ask me again, you must not be surprised if I refuse you.’

  Richard felt the heat rise through his face. Erskine of Dun, damn his eyes, was just behind him. He said harshly, ‘What? What did he do?’

  ‘Richard my dear: so universal a boiling and bubbling: one cannot talk here. Call on me in the morning. My lady mother is waiting to leave. Mr Erskine, you see Marshal Strozzi provided you with even more congenial company than I had thought of. All the same, I should not advise you yet to throw your black stockings out of the window. Mademoiselle d’Albon, as you see, is prettier than Sir John Knox.’

  Lord Culter left, with his mother.

  ‘I know which guests were not of your inviting,’ John Erskine of Dun observed quietly. ‘You have taken infinite trouble to pleasure us. It is no small thing to bring a nation together on foreign soil and send its members from your doorway arm in arm.’

  ‘But with its eyes set firmly, I fear, on material values.’ It was surprising what, deaf as a bell-founder, the Bishop of Orkney could follow. ‘Did they aspire to spiritual perfection, Mr Crawford, in such a degree as you have shown them the other kind, we should be a nation of souls fit for Paradise. But there was no passion but the passion of the human senses. I looked for a rallying-call, such as I heard once in Edinburgh.’

  ‘I am sorry you were disappointed,’ Lymond said, ‘but I notice that a merry man is seldom disposed to give thought to the higher issues. You have to catch him feeling low. You quote an example in point.’