Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  The golden heads on the ramp of the stair stared at him. ‘I think,’ Austin said, ‘I saw Mademoiselle d’Albon just now, outside her chamber.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Perhaps you should get Philippa to explain matters tomorrow to her as well.’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Lymond said, his voice splitting. ‘So long as she isn’t in my room. I haven’t the address, or indeed …’ he looked down at his sashless, dishevelled doublet ‘… the attire for it. In the battlefield he was a lion wielding a dagger; and in the banquet-hall, a cloud raining pearls. I seem to have combined both activities. Does your arm hurt?’

  ‘No,’ said Austin, lying.

  ‘Call Archie if it does. Her door is closed. What fickleness. Strange birds cry in the air Today! Today! and vanish. I go,’ said Lymond heroically, ‘to take my rest after the manner of the Antabatae. Sleep well.’

  Austin could not remember who the Antabatae were.

  *

  When Archie entered Lymond’s room ten minutes later, he was seated in his shirt sleeves, writing a note at his table. He did not look up as Archie entered, but signed it using, the mahout noted, his first name; and then powdered and folded it and wrote the superscription. Then he held it to Archie.

  ‘That will test your stamina,’ he said. ‘I want you to slip it under Mademoiselle d’Albon’s chamber door. If she opens it and throws an axe at you, come and tell me. If not, you may go back to bed. I don’t require to be coddled, and I promise you I shall be in excellent shape in the morning.’

  Dark and disapproving, Archie Abernethy stood still, the note in his hand. ‘If it’s an assignation,’ he said, ‘ye’ll make a right sumph o’ yourself. Look at your hands.’

  Francois, comte de Sevigny and Chevalier de l’Ordre, spread them out, and watched his rings trembling. ‘It was an apology,’ he said. ‘Not, I must admit, in my best handwriting. I said that I had been overtaken with sickness.’

  He broke off. Archie stood, watching him narrowly. Then without saying anything, he left the room with the note.

  When he returned, the door was locked. He tried it gently, once, and then did as he was bidden and went back to bed.

  I promise, in Lymond’s vocabulary meant exactly that. Violence, Nostradamus said, often resolved the worst of the head-pain. He had left some mild opiates in the room: the boy could use them if need be.

  He lay in bed, worrying.

  Elephants gave you less bother, any day.

  Chapter 3

  Grand ennemy de tout le genre humain

  Que sera pire qu’ayeuls, oncles ne peres.

  Two days passed, reverberant with repercussions.

  On the afternoon of the second day Jerott Blyth’s truant wife Marthe, idly scanning the street from her refuge, witnessed a convoy of servants approaching, escorting two persons. One of them was Daniel Hislop. The other was a small, regal lady, cloaked and hooded in lynx fur. Both were making, beyond possible doubt, for her threshold.

  She was gripped successively with a mind to vanish, and a vindictive anger against the man Hislop. Then dismissing, sharply, her cruder emotions she picked up her bell and, ringing it briefly, walked over, smiling a little, to her mirror.

  To the servant who came: ‘Ask the Dowager Lady Culter and Mr Hislop, when they arrive,’ she said, ‘to wait for me in Master Nostradamus’s parlour.’

  *

  The sensation of being watched from above had already attacked Danny Hislop as he conducted his astonishing companion along the rue de Marie-Egyptienne to the house of the astrologer Michel Nostradamus.

  He had promised Jerott’s wife, having traced her here, not to tell anyone else where she was. He had not promised to refrain from bringing anyone.

  He had promised Lymond’s wife, for whom he had a deep and inconvenient admiration, to enable Lymond’s mother to talk to Marthe, and to be present himself, if humanly possible, throughout the meeting. And that, he couldn’t deny, he was looking forward to.

  The stigma of bastardy, to Daniel Hislop, was of no particular moment. The person and intellect of Lymond’s sister by this date were engaging all his spare attention. And the prospect of watching the Crawford family at grips with itself was something that, blissfully, he wanted very much for his birthday.

  His attitude to Sybilla, naturally, was that of a kindly colleague willing to perform any small service for Philippa. He had heard enough of Lady Culter to form his own opinion: haute à la main et un peu superbe, like her bloody son. The ease with which she attracted large numbers of diverse guests to her chair at Lucullus’s eye-opening reception had been interesting. She had the family charm, it was clear, and did not often stop talking. In fact, on the present short journey, it had been extraordinarily difficult to slide in the questions he wanted to ask, because of a continual kind of placid effervescence which did not halt, even on Marthe’s doorstep.

  ‘How exciting!’ said Sybilla happily. ‘I declare, I can smell the Occult from here: or is it a sniff from the medical side? Hot goat dung for sciatica, Dioscorides always held, but I always felt you would acquire sciatica waiting about for it. Have you met Nostradamus?’

  ‘No,’ Danny said. He had given their names to the porter and they were inside the hall. ‘He was out when I called on Mistress Marthe.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ Sybilla said. She gave up her cloak. ‘I saw his picture, of course, in his Prophecies. I suppose he might have been kissed in the woods like Apollo, when he was very much younger.’

  Darting a glance to either side, Danny Hislop had a sudden feeling that the whites of his eyes were beginning to show.

  ‘Suppose we go upstairs?’ said Sybilla comfortably. ‘I think the steward is waiting to take us. That is, if you really want to hear us talk about our intimate family affairs in your presence. Otherwise I am sure they will make you very welcome elsewhere.’

  She was like her bloody son. And he wasn’t, after all, going to get away with it … Or was he?’

  Upstairs, a door had opened. A moment later, Marthe’s voice, coolly welcoming, floated down the turnpike. ‘Lady Culter? Please allow Mr Hislop to join us. A third opinion—don’t you feel—can often solve many problems?’

  ‘She’s perfectly right,’ Sybilla said. ‘Durant les grandes chaleurs, on recherche les ombres des grandes arbres.’ The blue, innocent eyes dwelled fondly on Danny’s spare form, and Danny’s resemblance to a magnificent tree faded, marginally.

  Sound sense, at this point took over. Danny halted. ‘Lady Culter,’ he said. ‘I deserve it. I beg your pardon. I shall stay downstairs.’

  ‘No,’ Sybilla said slowly. She was looking, not at him, but upstairs where Jerott’s errant wife stood waiting. Marthe was dressed, Danny saw, not in her usual gown but in a loose velvet robe not unlike a man’s night-gear and her yellow hair, capless, was knotted just clear of her shoulders. She had never looked more like her brother.

  Lady Culter brought her gaze back to Danny, and smiled at him. ‘No,’ she repeated lightly. ‘I wasn’t fair. I required to be rapped on the knuckles. If Mistress Marthe has no objection, I have none to your joining us.’ And turning, she climbed up and entered Marthe’s parlour.

  With something astonishingly approaching reluctance, Daniel Hislop followed her, and sat down when so invited and heard Marthe say to the woman she had never met, ‘I assume you asked Mr Hislop to bring you. I shall be glad to do what I can for you if you will tell me your business.’

  ‘That of a mediator,’ Sybilla said calmly. ‘On what terms, Mistress Marthe, would you return to your husband? He will do anything that you wish.’

  ‘You astonish me,’ Marthe said; and Danny saw that she had, indeed, been taken by surprise. She laughed. ‘An unusual mission, Lady Culter. Why should Jerott choose you?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sybilla said, ‘because I have had some success with other members of the family. He is, I know, a most irritating young man with a great deal of emotion and very little self-discipline. On the other hand, you can’t be tired of helping him
, because you don’t appear to have tried. Why not?’

  ‘So the blame is mine?’ Marthe said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Sybilla replied. ‘But you know that perfectly well. Since you are intelligent you also, presumably, know why. There is no point in anyone trying to bring you together without knowing your reasons.’

  ‘I am glad you realize it,’ Marthe said. ‘My reasons are excellent. And private.’

  ‘Then I shall have to guess,’ Sybilla said. ‘It isn’t really very hard. Or perhaps at this point you would be happier if Mr Hislop really did go away?’

  Danny’s mouth, metaphorically speaking, dropped open. He got to his feet.

  ‘No,’ Marthe said. ‘To anyone with Mr Hislop’s thirst for knowledge, the reasons must already be obvious. Each partner in our curious marriage has married the other as a substitute for somebody else.’

  Danny sat down.

  ‘And that, I take it, is supposed to shock me?’ Sybilla said. ‘May I take it, instead, a stage further. If either you or he were married to the person of your choice, would you fare any better?’

  ‘Perhaps you would answer that,’ Marthe said. ‘If you have the experience.’

  There was a little silence. Then Danny, paralysed, saw that the blue eyes of Lymond’s mother were actually smiling into the blue eyes of Marthe, her tormentor. ‘I began to wonder,’ Sybilla said, ‘how long it was going to take. Of course I can answer it. My son took many years to learn the simple truth. You cannot love any one person adequately until you have made friends with the rest of the human race also. Adult love demands qualities which cannot be learned living in a vacuum of resentment. Mr Hislop, I am sure, will confirm it.’

  Mr Hislop swallowed. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Don’t drag me into this.’

  Marthe ignored him. Her curious gaze, instead, was wholly bent on the small, erect person opposite her. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘that Francis has come to terms with his birth? In such a short time? I congratulate you. Why so alarmed, Mr Hislop? You knew, surely, that Mr Crawford and I are brother and sister.’

  ‘I thought … I was under the impression,’ said Danny huskily, ‘that you were his step-sister.’

  ‘No,’ Marthe said. ‘Mr Crawford and I, it seems, are both the offspring of Lady Culter’s late husband, and a Frenchwoman. Mr Crawford was fortunate in being adopted and reared as the legitimate son of the late Lord Culter, and has readily overcome his disappointment at learning his true condition. I was brought up in France in the full awareness of my bastardy and have taken longer, I freely admit, to learn to love the human race.’

  ‘You have always known that Béatris was your mother?’ Sybilla asked. No sympathy showed on the fine-coloured face; only a firm and gentle command, expressed also in the tone of her voice.

  ‘No,’ Marthe said. ‘Not until our mutual friend Philippa came investigating in Lyon and la Guiche. Then we found the death certificate of the first Francis Crawford. And the rest your son discovered at Flavy-le-Martel.’

  Danny pricked up his ears. ‘That old woman in the farmhouse? The Spaniards killed her.’

  ‘Renée Jourda, her name was,’ Marthe said. ‘She had followed you, I think, from la Guiche when you left to marry Gavin.’

  The heavy lids had dropped over Sybilla’s pale face. She said, ‘I was told she had died.’

  ‘Francis went back to try and save her,’ Danny said. ‘That was when he was captured and taken to Ham. Some bastard had warned Lord Grey in the citadel and we were nearly all caught. If I ever find out who it was, I’ll have him roasted alive in the pig market.’

  ‘Then go and find him,’ said Marthe briefly. ‘It was a man called Leonard Bailey.’

  There was, for various different reasons, an abrupt silence. A woman’s voice, remote and clear, said, ‘Fool.’ Danny looked about him. Then Sybilla said flatly, ‘How do you know?’

  Marthe raised her fair brows. ‘It was in a letter from Francis to Philippa. She showed it to me. You know, of course, about Philippa’s attempts to discover the three witnesses?’

  It was too much for Danny. ‘Witnesses to what?’ he said.

  ‘That is what Jerott asked,’ Marthe said. ‘But neither Francis nor Philippa, I’m afraid, felt inclined to tell us. That must have been before he learned to trust everybody.’

  Sybilla ignored it. ‘And did she find her witnesses?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Marthe said. ‘I suppose she did. One of them, a priest, was dead. I presume Renée Jourda was another. And perhaps she found the third by means of the key.’

  Leaning back, her golden head gleaming, her eyes half closed like a cat’s, she looked at Sybilla, and Sybilla said peacefully, ‘Well? You are either going to tell me or not going to tell me. What key?’

  ‘The key we found with the death certificate, in my grandmother’s chair,’ Marthe said. ‘If I lack finesse, you must make allowances. I was brought up by the Dame de Doubtance and her minion, not at Midculter Castle. I cannot bring myself to love and tolerate my drunken husband. I am living testimony to the fact that men resemble their age more than they do their fathers. You must not expect me to respond quite in the same way as my brother. What have we in common with each other?’

  Danny jerked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sybilla kindly.

  ‘I said, The face of a hoore and the tongue of a serpent,’ said Mr Hislop mutinously. ‘Ask her why, if she resents Mr Crawford so much, she’s dead set on his staying married to Mistress Philippa.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Sybilla thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think I shall? Or is it unfair to spare Francis and Philippa and place poor Jerott on the bill of fare for View and Search Day? I thought Austin Grey and Philippa were fond of one another and Francis was satisfactorily betrothed to the Maréchal de St André’s daughter? C’est tout de même que de manger la poule et puis son poulet?’

  ‘You know about that?’ said Danny, fascinated.

  ‘And approves, I am sure,’ Marthe said. ‘His wife, who adores him, cannot compete with the St André wealth and the St André prospects.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ the Dowager said calmly and Danny, intoxicated with horrified pleasure, wriggled back in his seat. She continued, with equal austerity, ‘Philippa, as you well know, is worth two of Catherine d’Albon with her mother thrown in for good measure, but Catherine will do Francis very well. They know the world, and they will conduct their own lives with perfect discretion, and no one will get hurt. I am not having anyone tied to Francis who is as vulnerable as Philippa is.’

  ‘You mean,’ Marthe said, ‘that she might take to the bottle or the bordello, as Jerott does? And yet you suggest Jerott and I should remain tied together?’

  ‘I mean,’ Sybilla said, ‘that a marriage between Francis and Philippa was highly unsuitable in the first place, and they are both intelligent enough to know it. Whereas your marriage to Jerott, so far as I can see, has been based mainly on undisciplined emotion and prejudice, and has had no kind of proper test at all. I am willing, on your behalf, to give Jerott a talking-to. He has had a severe fright, and is ready to be taught a lesson.’

  ‘And what,’ Marthe said, ‘do you suppose you can do about my prejudices?’

  ‘I can answer a question you have not asked me,’ Sybilla said.

  Marthe laughed. ‘You are going to tell me about Gavin,’ she said. ‘The bold, brown, loud-mouthed Scotsman who made himself so disliked about la Guiche, and yet persuaded the Dame de Doubtance’s daughter to go to bed with him?’

  Sybilla rose. Thoughtfully, she moved over the indifferent parquet of Master Nostradamus’s hired house and seated herself gently at the other end of the heavy, cushioned settle Marthe had occupied. ‘What do you know of the Dame de Doubtance?’ she said.

  ‘That she was my grandmother,’ Marthe said baldly. A strand of the yellow hair, too quickly pinned up, had come coiling like silk over her shoulder. ‘That she believed herself to be an astrologer. And that I am grateful for on
ly one thing in our relationship: that at least I was not her daughter.’

  ‘You know then how she directed her daughter’s life,’ Sybilla said. ‘Perhaps it would not even surprise you to know that it was she who arranged for your father and Béatris to become lovers. Then when you were born, she took and reared you. I went to her and asked her to let me have you, but she refused. And since Béatris was her daughter, I could not insist. Then, two years later, Francis was born and Béatris died.’

  ‘And this time, you had no trouble in obtaining her permission?’ Marthe said. Derision glittered in her blue eyes.

  ‘None. It was what she wanted. But, although I asked her again, she still would not release you nor, until she died, would she let me come and see you. I wonder,’ Sybilla said, ‘if you can tell whether I am speaking the truth? You must have some of her skills.’

  ‘No!’ said Marthe sharply; and then, with an abrupt change of manner, gave a harsh laugh. After a moment she added, ‘How can I possibly tell? All I know is that for thirty years you lied to your own son.’

  ‘I was held by a promise,’ Sybilla said very quietly. ‘It has not turned out, as you will notice, to my advantage.’

  ‘It has not turned out to his,’ Marthe said. ‘Do you think I envy him? At least I was reared without tenderness and without expectation of it. During all that time, you were breeding a hothouse love based on deception. You suffer now because he has withdrawn it, you imagine. He has not even done that. When the news came that you were lost at sea he set off to ride all night to Dieppe, although he had been so sick he could barely walk over the courtyard.’

  ‘I can’t remember why,’ Danny said.

  The look Marthe gave him would have caused a less brazen spirit to recoil. Undeterred, he went on blandly. ‘I take it, if I may interrupt all this competitive planning on Mr Crawford’s behalf, that neither of you has heard what happened after the Hôtel d’Hercule reception the other night? The town is agog with it.’