Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Then, of course, he lost them. Lord Culter turned and, striding, made for the principal stairs.

  Those, in his turn, Lymond avoided. Vanishing with remarkable speed from his vehicle he had almost reached the door to the Sainte Chapelle when he was fallen upon by an ancient abbot in his cups. To extricate himself without any means which would be unmemorable took him two minutes: running then, he found the locked doorway and then a porter who did not need the velvet and rubies to tell him who this was.

  He was paid for his trouble; and then paid again to provide, as fast as possible, a plain cloak with a hood to cover the gentleman’s finery. Then Lymond passed through the door and crossing the balcony of the Sainte Chapelle’s upper floor, reached the narrow staircase which led down its side to the street.

  He was unaware, as he passed, that he had breathed incense and glimpsed the taper-lit glass vaults of the chapel, or that he was treading the steps which, barefoot, Philippa had trodden eight months before. He only saw before him, swirling outside the gates of the Palais, the immense crowds which filled the streets singing, and waiting to cheer the departing guests from the most celebrated royal wedding ever made.

  He was recognized twice, reaching the river. The first time his hood was dragged back in the crush and he saw, on the unshaven face pressed nearest to him, the first gaping yaw of astonishment. Then he ducked, pulling the cloth over his face and lost himself as fast as he could in the darkness. Behind him, as he went, he could hear voices calling his name and a ragged cheer rising, but they had not been able to follow his movements.

  That and the next time, when a party of wool dyers swept into him near the river, held him up on a journey already fraught with the night-madness of celebration: of bonfires and drinking and dancing, of student songs and acrobats and men who would balance on hemp, and turn somersaults for a penny.

  The wool dyers wanted him to come and drink with them. He refused, clapping them on the back; scanning the opposite bank where the fires danced red and blue over the water, and the sounds of merrymaking rose and rose, tossed as if in a blanket into the redolent air. Scraps of flame. flocking like birds, shot into the night sky and dispersed, swinging and veering over the river. It was as bad over there, if not worse. He said, ‘I need a boat. Who will get me one?’

  And so, in the end, he was rowing alone in an old creaking ferry, for which he had paid with one of the Bechistan rubies cut from his sleeve. (I’d give unto her Indian mole Bokhara town and Samarkand.) And even there, in the brief, heavy journey upriver, he had to have care, with other ill-guided boats jolting drunkenly against him; with floating debris and mills to look out for and another ferryman, who took exception to his amateur status and wanted to fight it out with him.

  But he had had a great deal of practice at rowing, and it was direct, and avoided the crowds. So that, although it felt as sluggish and long as a drug-dream, he had probably saved fifteen minutes by the time he tied up by the Arche Beau-fils by the Célestins.

  Then he had only to run. He knew where the rue de la Cerisaye was and had even walked along it to visit the monastery during his days as commander in Paris. The road ended in a high garden wall, and did not contain many houses. He entered it from the rue St Antoine, his feet in kid and velvet soundless on the thin sunken bricks of the road. The third or fourth house he came to, on the left, had a carving of some kind over its doorway which might be a globe. The moon, warmed by the reflected light of distant fires of joy, traced the thin-branched trees which stood between the gates and the delicate outline of the house. Above him, as he tried the lock, a weeping willow fell in cascades of yellow chenille, and a tall chestnut loomed with clutching fingers of half-open leaves. There was a wall of branched candelabra, which were pear trees.

  The gates were not locked, and he pushed them open and walked through the garden.

  The orchard which lay between himself and the house was of cherry trees, their flowers white as burned ash in the moonlight. And behind them, touched all at once into ghost-life, was the celestial globe over the doorway, with two pensive winged figures guarding it.

  The sphere, joining his past with his present. The words of the tomb; the half-caught echo of old enchantments and vows long forgotten:

  By these same I swear, by Earth, Sea, Sky and the twin brood of Latona and Janus the double-facing, and the might of the nether gods and grim Pluto’s shrine: this let our Father hear, who seals treaties with his thunderbolt. I touch the altars, I take to witness the fires and the gods between us.…

  The house was in darkness, save for a single light in a dormer, high over his head.

  He tried the tooled wooden door under the sphere, and it was not locked against him, any more than had been the gates. He thought he heard, for a moment, a whisper over his shoulder; but did not look round.

  Only, quite softly and steadily did he push the door open and enter the house where he had been born.

  Chapter 9

  Les deux malins de Scorpion conioints

  Le grand seigneur meurtri dedans sa salle.

  There was no sound in the Hôtel des Sphères, nor any light in the wainscotted hall, or the parlour which led from it.

  The scent of the small room was pleasing. Moonlight limned in grey the story of Psyche on the finely arched window, and alighting within, touched upon nymphs and garlands and roses, and upon lines of silver, glittering by the chimney-piece:

  I shall harness thee a chariot of lapis-lazuli and gold

  Come into our dwelling, in the perfume of the cedars …

  Míkál … Güzel … Where are the links of the chain, glimmering there: joining us to the past? The perfume was pleasing because it was familiar to him. The other presences, in the silence, were older.

  No one stirred. If there had been servants, there would be candlelight; the door would have been locked: a cresset left on the stair for the mistress or master.

  For the mistress; for this must be the house of Isabelle Roset. The house whose direction her sister had had no chance to give him before dying, blind in a smoke-filled farm kitchen in Fleuvy-le-Martel. Perhaps hers was the voice in his thoughts, saying Climb …

  Dabit Deus his quoque finem. Seek me in the broken hearts and by the crumbling tombs.…

  ‘I do not believe in God,’ Piero Strozzi had said, ‘but I respect His dignity. I shall not visit Him in His house with my presence.’ And so had catarrh …

  Help me to seek.

  One knows, when all one’s life one has walked in dangerous places, when the silence is that of ambush and when the silence is that of emptiness.

  This was emptiness. The little staircase, roundly carved, gave upon a passage, and of all the doors in the passage, only one showed a line of light under it.

  If one believes in God, but has learned not to pray, one offers only, in silence, one’s apologies, and then asks the spirit to do what it can.

  Francis Crawford laid on the door the beautiful hand of his father, and pressed the latch, and opened it. And as he did so the candle within flickered and went out.

  Inside, the quiet and the darkness were absolute. He stood in the doorway listening, and allowing his eyes, like a cat’s, to enlarge again. Slowly, a window opposite grew into his sight, indigo against Indian blackness. And a little flare of light in the sky showed him, glimmering for a moment, the shape of a bed, and tumbled sheets, and a shadow lying upon it.

  He had no weapon, except perhaps surprise. Where the candle had been, there must be a flaxbox. He moved noiselessly into the room, guiding himself by his fingertips. A chest; a tall hutch-press; an iron stand with a laver; a chair; a stool, with a candle upon it. Then he felt the box with the tinder and paper, and lifting it, cupped his hands and made a little flame.

  What had seemed orderly was an ill-kept chamber, its dusty floor strewn with a man’s clothes, rudely discarded. The coverlet drooped to the floor and a pillow, deeply indented, lay there beside it. On the bed, the stained sheets were rammed to the foot of the m
attress, one of them torn in half. And upon the mattress, grotesque and naked in the writhing light of the guttering flame, lay the muscular body of Leonard Bailey, lustily spreadeagled in untimely and partnerless death.

  The flame burned his fingers and vanished. He did not relight it. He did not want to see again that oxlike body of the powerful old man who had hated him: who had hated all the Crawfords; had spurned their generosity and had spent all his years contriving to ruin them. That gross, elderly body, reaped in the excess of its ardour; dead through no human agency, deprived of life by nothing except its own violence.

  He did not want to see that again; or the little kid slippers fallen aside, or the fragile clothes laid on the coffer, with the glint of stiff silver tissue beneath them. The signs, not of a molestation, but of a reckoning formally appointed and now paid to the limit. A tribute to Janus, God of Gates, to prevent that other, deferred payment to Charon.

  It was necessary, in any case, to go on. He did, finally, light a candle in order to pass from room to room along the passage. They were all empty. In the silence his own fitful breathing entered his awareness. It was not how he wanted to sound, but if he could hold everything else under his control, that did not matter. He walked downstairs, and through the dark empty chambers and passages, and at last, pushed open the door of the kitchen.

  Inside it was warm. The great fire, sunk in its embers, still burned rosily on the glimmering brass and latten and copper: on the golden scrubbed wood of Madame Roset’s racks and aumbries and table.

  Before the fire, barefoot in her torn shift, Philippa lay, her hair spilled on the tiles, her fingers loose, her face invisible. And protected by her outflung arms were two scrolls of yellowed paper.

  She was breathing. He knelt where his shadow did not fall on her, and laid two fingers on her wrist. Her pulse was fast and shallow: she was, he thought deeply unconscious. So it must all be done now, and quickly.

  It was done then, in a ceaseless flow of quiet movement: the fire made up and water set heating; the shutters closed and the room set in order. He brought a mattress with towels laid upon it and eased it beneath her, touching her as little as possible. Then he drew the ruined shift from her bare body and bathed her, helpless as a young bird, with warm water.

  There was room in him for no living trace of desire. He dried her skin and slipped over her hands the sleeves of his own warm lawn shirt. The towels he spread in front of the fire, and in their place on the mattress he laid his borrowed cloak, drawing her within its folds. Lastly, with his small comb he patiently stroked the damp tangle of her brown hair until it lay as it should, a shining scarf over her shoulders. Towards the end she stirred and he moved back at once, and waited. She opened her eyes.

  She opened them on his face, at first only half conscious. Then memory came; and awareness. She lay without moving, looking at him; and he received the look where he knelt, without speaking.

  Time ceased. At some station within the long, uncounted interval he rose, and bringing a pan poured out some warm milk and gave it to her. He watched her as she drank it, leaning slowly on one elbow and at the end received the cup from her and let her rest, her lids closed, while he remained without moving beside her. From time to time, when she opened her eyes, their gaze blended and held, lightless and still; the surface of the place, fathoms below, of their communication.

  He had put a powder of his own in the milk. Perhaps she knew it. At least she sank into sleep without resistance: when he was sure she did not need him he rose and washed the pan and the cup she had used; put away the dried towels; made up the fire and then, taking a candle, went upstairs to the bedroom where Bailey lay.

  Let every godly man close the mouth of his stomach, lest he be disturbed.

  That night he ruled every organ of his body. He opened the door on the rankness within and set his hand to what had to be done. He cleansed and clothed the thick and stiffening body, restoring the room and replacing foul sheets with fresh ones. He removed every trace of Philippa’s presence from the dark bedroom; brought down and burned the stained cloth and salvaged the clothes she could still wear, laying them by her side for when she wakened. He found and took away an emerald pendant he knew to be hers. Then he searched for the boxes of money.

  They were near the kitchen, in a locked cellar, whose key he found in Bailey’s chamber. They were too heavy to move, so he locked the cellar again and kept the key of it. He also systematically examined the house, until assured that no paper remained which could injure his family. The scrolls from the floor of the kitchen were already in the breast of his doublet together with one other missive: a letter in Philippa’s writing which he had not burned.

  There were mules in the small stable at the back of the orchard, and saddles. Soon the streets would be cleared of the last celebrants, the wedding party dispersed, the bride and groom bedded, if no more than bedded, beneath the glorious emblems, for ever one, of France and of Scotland.

  He returned to the kitchen, and waited; and presently Philippa opened her eyes.

  He spoke, then, the only thought which made words unavoidable.

  ‘Come, my wife,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘We are going to Sevigny.’

  Part V

  Le corps sans ame plus n’estre en sacrifice:

  Jour de la mort mis en nativité:

  L’esprit divin fera l’ame felice

  Voiant le verbe en son eternité.

  Chapter 1

  Le dix Kalendes d’Apvril de faict Gotique

  Resuscité encor par gens malins:

  Le feu estainct, assemblée diabolique

  Cherchant les os d’Amant et Pselyn.

  Kings may mourn the death of a favourite, but his disappearance is viewed as an insult.

  By dinnertime on the day appointed for his annulment, it was common knowledge that the comte de Sevigny had left Court without leave or apology, and that Madame his lady had vanished also.

  This followed a night-long search prosecuted by Richard his brother, and another fruitless essay, different in the quality of its concern, by the four men to whom Lymond was closest.

  Called upon in her chamber by Adam, Sybilla Lady Culter took a long time to answer his query and then gave him, steadfastly, the reply which she was to repeat later to Danny Hislop. She knew of no house in the Petit Arsenal district, and had given no address to her son Francis.

  Euphemia, brutally questioned by the stricter member of the Culter family, was rather more garrulous. The protestations of Euphemia together with the puzzled and querulous cries of the Schiatti cousins brought to light one other fragment of information. When the comtesse de Sevigny left, followed later by her husband, she had already withdrawn and sent ahead of her all the wealth she possessed banked in Paris.

  It was agreed, in a harsh, one-sided interview between Sybilla and Richard, that Austin, isolated in his room in the masterless Hôtel d’Hercule, should be told nothing meantime, except that the signing of the annulment papers had been deferred. The King of France, summoning the Earl of Culter to the Louvre during a break in the wedding celebrations, questioned him sharply about the possible reasons for M. de Sevigny’s absence, and on being satisfied of his brother’s total ignorance, remarked tartly that he would be content therefore if M. de Culter would favour the rest of the festivities with his presence, so that the Queen his daughter might not be deprived at one stroke of quite all of her Scottish supporters.

  The King was cross. The attitude of the other courtiers tended to echo that of Piero Strozzi, back at court for his daughter’s wedding: a mixture of irritation, admiration and envy. The Queen of France said nothing; nor did her demoiselle d’honneur Catherine d’Albon, although it could be seen that she had been weeping.

  And the six brothers de Guise said remarkably little either, although the Cardinal was both short and stinging in his rebuke to the Duke of Nemours who in his presence made light of the matter. To place his private affairs before those of the King at such a time was an insult
to France and to Scotland, not to mention an affront to the Cardinal Legate, whose interest to annul this marriage had been solicited with such untiring vigour by M. de Sevigny. He hoped, said the Cardinal of Lorraine, to hear that the gentleman was unwell. It was the only excuse, he believed, which would serve him.

  Strangely enough, after her first astonishment and annoyance, the bride herself, it seemed, had not been wholly displeased. Richard, reprimanded by his hosts and conscious of the requirements of his assignation, returned, finally to the ranks of his fellow Commissioners who received him with sympathy below which lay, he could feel, the flatness of disappointment.

  Archie vanished.

  Servants, returning to a house in the rue de la Cerisaye after a night abroad in celebration of the Dauphin’s wedding, paid for by their mistress’s guest, were alarmed to find the door unlocked and the English gentleman dead in his bed. A physician, called in hastily, pronounced the death to be a natural one. The only disarrangement in the house or purlieus was the bursting open of the lock of the stables and the theft of a horse and saddle. Arrangements were made for the gentleman’s burial and the agent, notified, undertook to do what he could to trace the absent Madame Roset. The matter, of little importance, did not come to the ears of the Court.

  The Countess of Lennox’s secretary, having attended assiduously all the wedding celebrations, composed a great deal of eulogistic verse and made himself as pleasant and as conspicuous as possible in the Queen of Scotland’s circle, grew tired of waiting for a message from an unknown address about a gentleman who had disappeared anyway, and decided that, rather than go home empty-handed, he should attempt a little research on his own account. After waiting therefore for a day on which all the Commissioners and their kinsmen were occupied, Master Elder left the modest lodging he had been allotted and walked through the fine spring weather to the Hôtel d’Hercule, where he asked politely to see the Marquis of Allendale.