Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘And I have always harmed the friends who have tried to stop me,’ Lymond said. His voice was uninflected. He added, ‘I have tried many times to warn you not to come too close to me.’

  ‘Naturally. Level-headed and constructive to the end,’ Philippa said, ‘in confronting all your personal problems. And now? A trifle of hemlock? You can always evade Archie.’

  He said, ‘You might spare me a little. I did give you the whip of my own accord. In Lyon, I had no other means of escape. Now I have several; and responsibilities which I mean to honour. There is no need to agonize over it.’

  ‘And the blindness?’ Philippa said. ‘What capable plan have you devised to deal with that?’

  ‘Archie knows,’ he said with a weariness she could just hear. ‘And keeps me drunk, or drugged or otherwise insensate at intervals. No one else has discovered. Except, of course, Nostradamus.’

  Her hands, deep in her lap, were clenched bone to bone upon each other. ‘And Nostradamus?’ she said. ‘Your involuntary nurse? What can he do?’

  ‘Inform you, it seems,’ Lymond said. ‘I suppose with some purpose. He might have left me with a little more dignity and you with a little more peace of mind if he hadn’t.’ He halted; and then said, ‘There is no treatment for heterocrania, but it is only intermittent. It seems drink can start it, or emotion. And sudden exertion can sometimes stop it; or a woman. It’s inconvenient. But it’s manageable.’

  You should have let me go to Catherine. ‘I see,’ said Philippa. ‘Your men walk round you when they notice you drunk, drugged or blind on the battlefield?’

  ‘It hasn’t happened as yet,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It’s a pity they don’t know how lucky they are. Do you think Catherine will notice?’ said Philippa.

  He said, ‘Look … I do realize the implications. I shall not allow it to endanger other people. I shall honour my obligation to Catherine, Meanwhile I know very well my own limits. De Thermes has gout. Strozzi has jaundice. I have headaches. We are all capable of adjusting our lives to our defects.’

  ‘You are?’ Philippa said. ‘And you can’t adjust to bastardy?’

  He said evenly, ‘Give me, perhaps, until tomorrow instead of today to achieve it.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘You’ve guessed it for years.’

  ‘All right. I’ve guessed it for years,’ he said. ‘Philippa, that’s enough.’

  ‘And done nothing about it. You sit on trouble, don’t you, until it blows up in your face? You turned on Sybilla. You’ll turn on me soon, once it strikes home that someone has censured you. You are proving, aren’t you,’ said Philippa contemptuously, ‘that to be base-born makes you a fourth-rate son of a fourth-rate little country?’

  She did not see how swiftly he moved. She only felt his hands on her shoulders, twisting her firmly to confront him.

  And then, of course, he saw confirmed what only the fire had heretofore seen: the ceaseless cataract of her tears, pouring and pouring, without hope of concealment down her young face.

  He said, ‘Oh God help me,’ in a voice so low and so tired that she barely heard it. Then dropping his hands he rose and left her.

  She cried after him then. ‘Wait! Wait. Where are you going?’

  He was already far from her, but he halted. He turned to her, and the silver oysters and the jewels and the medallion all showed blindingly how he was breathing, like an escaping hart bayed down by stag-hounds. He said, ‘I’ve upset you. We’re both tired. And I don’t know how I can help matters.’

  He had at some time pushed his hands unseen into his hair. Threads of it spangled the dampness on his brow, and his open eyes were without light. He went on with difficulty, ‘My birth is the least of my troubles. The rest you must allow me to support by myself. I shall try to be what you wish me to be, and do what you wish me to do and if I fail, you must believe that I have tried.… Philippa, it is so late. Let me call Adam to take you home.’ And then suddenly, his voice raw with desperation, ‘Here is non hoom. Here nis but wildernesse.’

  And at last, the pain was more than she could bear.

  ‘It’s Kate. It’s Kate, isn’t it?’ Philippa said. ‘Not Güzel. Not Mariotta and Midculter, whatever Richard may think. It’s Kate, and because of the blindness you never would tell her. You wouldn’t take Gideon’s place. But your music, your verse was for my mother. And when I showed on the steps at Lyon what I felt for you the breakdown came next, and the blindness. How I must sicken you,’ Philippa said; and put both hands over her face, and sat, choking.

  There was no response. After a long while she dropped her hands, and opened her eyes.

  He was standing quite still, his eyes resting on her. All the violence that had driven him from her side seemed to have left him. His hands were steady and his voice, when he spoke, was clear also, although not at all loud.

  ‘Music, the knife without a hilt,’ he said. ‘But for Piero, I suppose none of this would have happened. Since it has …

  He hesitated for the last time, his voice dying away. Then he said, ‘Do you know, Philippa, what an unsuitable match is? It isn’t the kind I shall have with Catherine d’Albon, or even the kind you will make with young Allendale. When one human being is trapped in the net of another’s grand passion: then it comes about; and it is tragedy. It happened to Gavin and Sybilla. It is happening to Jerott and Marthe …’

  ‘I had no expectations,’ Philippa said. The tears stood still on her face. ‘This is one lesson I know by heart already.’

  ‘You are young,’ said Lymond gently. ‘You will change. I don’t take lightly what you feel for me, but it wasn’t the kind of passion I was speaking of. You asked me a question, and I think we have come to the place where I must answer it. For one thing, you are being hurt. And for another … as you see … I seem to be losing the knack of concealing things from you.’

  She said, ‘I was wrong. Don’t tell me.’

  ‘No. You were right,’ he said. And as the chill spread through her nerves and her flesh, he said, ‘Tant que je vive … I said too much that evening, didn’t I? It was not, of course, Güzel. Or Mariotta.’

  ‘Kate loves you,’ Philippa said. ‘It’s all right. She has always …’

  ‘Philippa, no,’ he said. He stood in an island of space, as isolated as he must have been, directing his forces in Guînes or in Calais. ‘You were right to ask, and wrong only in your conjecture. Kate is my friend. That is true. But the songs were for her daughter. And the passion, for ever. That is why we are parting.’

  The words reached her, without bringing the sense any nearer. He would think her very slow: even in the middle of the night; even with undried tears bloating her eyes and her cheeks. She appeared to be on her feet, facing him. ‘But I am her daughter,’ Philippa said.

  Like some obscure and difficult text, the look in his eyes was too complex to read at a distance. She said, ‘You can’t mean …?’ and then, as he did not speak, answered herself. ‘No.’

  He was as pale as the sheened marble masks on the chimney-piece, but a ghost of the old self-derision pulled his mouth, as she saw, at the corner. ‘No? Then let us leave things as they are,’ he said; and moved to the table. There, he poured two glasses of wine. One he laid where she could and did take it. Bearing the other he turned and dropped into the chair he had once already occupied. He lifted the goblet. ‘To marriage,’ he said.

  She stood where he had left her, the wine disregarded in her cramped fist. Kate is my friend, but the songs were for her daughter. And the passion, for ever.

  This was not true. So why should he say it?

  She scanned him as he leaned back, the wine in his ringed hand, watching her. He looked nearly prostrate with tiredness, but with no trace of malice about him. Yet he was trained to dissemble. He had spent an evening acting, downstairs.

  ‘Think, Yunitsa,’ he said abruptly.

  He had called her that once before, back in London. Her legs were trembling. There was a chair just behind her
. She sat in it, and tried to see where, through the years, had grown the cruelty which would inflict this upon her; or the signs which would stand witness to what he was trying to tell her.

  For of course, she had begun by detesting him. Loathing the arrogant horseman, discussing a corpse in a ditch outside Boghall; the enemy who had defeated her father; who had forced his way into her mother’s house, where, a child of ten, she had baulked and betrayed him.

  And he knew it, and had not retaliated. Lying drenched by the whipping-post at St Mary’s he had said, ‘You had good reason to hate me. Don’t build up another false image.’ He had not been acting, then.

  That was when, discovering his quality, she had set out to redeem all the damage she had done. When, blundering, she had helped him retrieve Kuzúm, the child who now lived with her mother. At Algiers it had been her fault when, losing his temper, he had knocked her proffered cup into the ocean. She had been sixteen. He had sent her home then, or had tried to.

  He had not been acting in Stamboul, when, expecting to die, he had said, ‘I am offering you my name. Then, as you choose, you may divorce me.’

  That was after he had slept, drugged with opium, sharing the same great crystal bed in Topkapi, and in his nightmare had cried out the words she did not follow then, but all too clearly understood now. Poor Eloise. Tell me. I can’t understand. Why did you do it?

  But Sybilla had not told him yet.

  Sybilla. Struck by a sudden thought, she looked at him. He was still watching her. ‘Go on,’ he said; as if she had been speaking, not thinking of him.

  As she had thought of him so often, when he was absent. As, sleeping, she had dreamed of him making just such an avowal, only to wake to desolation and anger, that the cruel impossible should so have taunted her.

  And still it was both cruel and impossible. What evidence was there to suggest otherwise? Think … Of what? The time in London, for instance, when he had upbraided her for meddling once again in the history of his origins? This matter is mine, and not yours or Kate’s, do you hear me?

  That had been the voice of fear and of pride, not of love. Love did not make for the long absences, the abrupt avoidals, the lack of all physical contact, except where wine, or excitement, or gaiety made him forget … the Hall of the Revels at Blackfriars Monastery; the flight through the fog in Lyons; the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville and after …

  The truth is …

  That was where she had heard him quote those words, without realizing then what they were. The truth is that thy body is free of all shadow. To soul and brain from thy abode comes the perfume of Paradise …

  He had spoken them to her, and broken off when he remembered. And after, when Marthe had tried to force him to embrace her, he had used, in his need, the only weapon which would both stop Marthe and send herself, quickly, out of danger.

  Love did not require to act like that.

  But hunger did. Hunger, decently denied, accounted for everything. Looking back, her eyes unsealed and open, she saw proved over and over what she should have observed long before but for her dazzlement. He wanted her. And as he had just said, had determined to spare her the net.

  He did not know, but could be told, that to her, his reasons for abstaining were baseless. That nothing mattered but this: that the moon was here, in her fingers.

  Through the jolting in her ribs and the agony in her throat Philippa said, ‘I am not crying, I would have you understand, because I am sad; but because I believe you. I also have a little … sermon of my own to deliver.’

  His wine glass was empty. He set it down carefully, its foot between two slender fingers. A little colour had come to mark his cheekbones, but his eyes remained on the goblet. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You are not either Sybilla or Marthe; and you know better than they do. But I am Gavin in everything but name.… Indeed, I am his brother.’ He looked up.

  ‘How long did Marthe’s love last, I wonder? A few months; a year or two at the most. Perhaps it would take you a little longer to find out you wanted a different husband, nearer your own age and interests. But since you have loyalties, unlike Marthe, the conflict then would be unsupportable. It might do you great harm: it is certainly more than I could contemplate.… And there are other factors against me, that you know of.’

  She would have spoken; and then felt, rather than saw, that he did not want her to.

  He said, ‘I opened this door so that, understanding each other, we might shut it together. There are many men who feel about you as I do. When there is time and distance enough between us you will choose one, or be chosen, and have a life as good as Kate’s was with Gideon. Meanwhile … we have very few meetings left, and those all in public. It should not be too impossible. And at least you know … that it is not Kate; and that you do not sicken me.’

  He paused to breathe, and to smile; and ended with the same persistent steadiness. ‘And we shall manage very well, as long as we are sensible. Restraint is the remedy. Restraint, and not exaggerated gestures of self-abnegation.’

  ‘And that, I see, disposes of my future,’ said Philippa. Her chest was heaving. ‘So let’s take yours, and see what we can do for it. The blinding headaches, for example?’

  He said, still steadily, ‘Perhaps marriage to Catherine will cure them.’

  ‘Until April, you are married to me,’ Philippa said. ‘Perhaps four weeks of matrimony would cure us both.’

  She saw his breath leave him silently. There was a space. Then he said, ‘We should simply lose our annulment. I have had eleven months to think of all this. There is no basis for marriage between us. And that is quite final, Philippa.’

  She was breathing almost as quickly as he was. But she kept her voice calm. ‘As you say, I’m inexperienced. On the other hand, you are not always right. Please listen. Please think. Are you sure, when it matters so much, that you know my feelings better than I do?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not infallible. You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and for ever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.’

  She couldn’t speak. Her breath wheezed in and out. With extreme deliberation, and indeed restraint and moderation as well, Philippa raised her glass and dashed it on the parquet. Crystals frosted the carpet between them, and the wine lay like blood.

  Speech came back. ‘God in heaven,’ Philippa said. ‘Do you think that I care?’

  He looked up from the mess. ‘I know you don’t,’ Lymond said. His eyes were black, not blue; and there were red splashes on the white velvet. ‘But you must excuse the hunchback, who does.’

  *

  The crash of broken glass was heard in three rooms and brought the Englishman, Austin Grey, to his door.

  He saw Adam Blacklock walk to his host’s door and tap on it. It opened on de Sevigny himself, standing in a blaze of silver and white, his face like hammered quartzite. And on a tearstained girl behind him, her gown sparkling with glass, who bent suddenly, snatching a cloak, and ran past him into the passage.

  It was Philippa. Disbelieving he saw Blacklock speak, and then hurrying after, catch the girl’s arm and begin to guide her downstairs. When they were out of sight, de Sevigny turned and Austin confronted him.

  His eyes on Lymond’s face, the Marquis of Allendale stretched out the velvet sleeve of his night robe and stroked the black taffeta cross-sash with its fine jewel on the other man’s doublet.

  ‘So what do they give you this Order for?’ said Austin Grey. ‘Fornication?’ And hooking his fingers beneath it, he ripped the sash from Lymond’s shoulder. The little glove also pinned there fell with it.

  ‘With my wife?’ said Francis Crawford without moving; and Austin, lifting his hand, struck him over the face.

  Or intended to. Just before the blow reached him, Lymond caught his wrist. Nor was he gentle. The grip on his wristbone made Austin gasp, before pride and anger shut his lips and drove him to bring all his strength to bear on M. le com
te de Sevigny.

  They were better matched than they had ever been before, because the more experienced of them had his reactions deadened by drink and by weariness. So it took Austin longer to lose, as the struggle took them back and forth on the stone steps and in the end, half over the low wooden coil of the balustrade, so that for a moment death stood, unattended, on the squabble.

  Then Lymond made a sudden, violent move and Austin, his arm limp, released him, and staggered, and sat on the steps.

  His assailant, breathing very hard, stood and surveyed him.

  ‘That was a pity,’ Lymond said. ‘You always seem to come upon me doing the wrong thing, in the wrong place, with the wrong person. I goaded you quite unnecessarily, and I accept total responsibility. I was only having a somewhat dissident discussion with Philippa. She will tell you tomorrow. I have made no attempt to enforce my dwindling conjugal rights.’

  He was, Austin saw, shivering from the exertion.

  If Philippa was to corroborate, then he spoke the truth. Giddily, Austin Grey rose to his feet and tried also to control his heavy breathing. ‘Then it seems,’ he said, ‘that I should apologize.’ He waited, and then said, because his breeding and nature against all his desires demanded it: ‘You are married to her. Have you no wish to cancel the annulment? Have you never thought of taking her to live with you as your wife?’

  ‘No,’ Lymond said. His back to the wall, he looked up to where Austin was standing, a step or two up the staircase. ‘I am going to marry Catherine d’Albon. If she’ll still have me. She has been waiting for me, by my reckoning, for about three hours this evening.’

  Austin’s face whitened and then flushed again. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you had no reason to think of it. If you were told, for example, that Philippa——’

  He was interrupted.

  ‘… if I were told, for example, that Philippa was inflamed with an unlikely love for me, I should still marry Catherine d’Albon,’ said Lymond gently. ‘I shall never, divorced or married, in this country or another, live with Philippa Somerville as my wife. If you want my oath on that, you can have it. No plans you can make will have my shadow on them.’