Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  That was all. No letters followed that, from Blacklock, or from Philippa or even from Sybilla and Richard. The next news she had was from Adam Blacklock in person, standing on her doorstep with a curious scar on his face, saying, ‘Mistress Somerville? Allendale and I have brought Philippa home.’

  One did not ask questions then of this self-contained, exhausted creature. One installed her in the bedroom she had known from childhood, and entertained, as best one could, the two men who had brought her, with such trouble, all the way from France. Then, when Austin had left for his home, one was able to turn to the man Blacklock and say, more viperishly than perhaps one had intended, ‘All I gathered from that is that Francis Crawford is a raging harlot, and I am only doubtfully adequate to touch the hem of my daughter’s extremely expensive farthingale. I look to you to tell me what has happened.’

  And Adam, confronting the sharp brown eyes of the small, untidy, vivid person he remembered all those years ago from the days of St Mary’s, had answered, ‘I don’t know. All I can tell you is that, superficially, Francis was offered the rank of Marshal of France and took it, leaving Philippa at Sevigny. And that she then left for Paris, and asked Allendale to bring her home.’

  ‘And a little deeper than superficially?’ Kate had said.

  Then he had had to say, ‘I don’t understand what Allendale is implying. He knows something, I think, that Philippa has not told any of us. What I have found out is difficult enough to put into words.’

  ‘Can I guess?’ had said Kate abruptly. ‘She learned her affection was not adequately returned? No? Then, she was deliberately led to believe that it was not adequately returned?’

  ‘I think that was true,’ Adam said. ‘For a long time.’

  ‘But not at Sevigny?’

  ‘No,’ said Adam. ‘I saw them at Sevigny.’ He stopped and then said, without looking at Philippa’s mother, ‘As the pen needs the penknife, they are made for one another. And they know it.’

  He could feel how still she had become. ‘But …?’ said Kate.

  ‘But it is of the spirit only,’ Adam said.

  The width of her surprise, it seemed, filled all the room. ‘Why? Why?’ said Kate. And then, ‘No. Of course, it is not fair of me to ask you. But what then was Austin …? No, you didn’t know that either.’ Staring at him, her sunburned brow was lined in her perplexity. ‘Then why did they part?’

  He had known he was going to be asked that question. He answered it with the truth. ‘Because Francis could not support it,’ he said.

  *

  For more than three weeks Adam Blacklock stayed at Flaw Valleys, and during that time was sometimes the only company Kate had, for Philippa seemed to find the society of others for many days quite beyond her.

  It was strange for Kate, after eight years of widowhood, to have another likeminded human being waiting, quietly, to be talked to and to give advice when she wanted it. In fact, she did not realize how much of the past they shared, until the first morning after his arrival she knocked on his door, and taking in the small offering of food and drink she had prepared for him, had seen his eyes widen at the sight of her companion.

  ‘Ah,’ said Kate, ‘last night, you were too late to meet each other. Master Blacklock, this is Khaireddin Crawford. He prefers to be called Kuzúm.’

  ‘And I prefer to be called Adam,’ Blacklock said. He held out his hand. ‘I know your father.’

  Kuzúm, his yellow hair brushed for the occasion, returned the handshake cordially. ‘He rides horses very well. I expect you ride horses very well too. Were you in Russia?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Adam. ‘He rode on sledges in Russia. He was very good at that as well.’

  ‘We tried to ride on sledges last winter,’ Kuzúm said. ‘But I was only six, so I didn’t get on very well. I’m going to see Fippy. You brought her home, didn’t you? She isn’t my mother, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ said Adam. His throat was aching.

  ‘Aunt Kate says she is going to cry,’ Kuzúm said, gazing at him with those very blue eyes. ‘And I am not to mind, because it is only because she is a girl, and tired after her journey. Men don’t cry.’

  ‘Don’t they?’ said Adam.

  ‘Well, only sometimes. I broke my arm once, in the apple orchard. My father doesn’t cry.’

  ‘No,’ said Adam.

  *

  On the third day when, for once, she had let Kuzúm out of her sight, Philippa said to her mother, ‘What has Adam told you?’

  At last. Kate sat down, and then got up again because it was a good chair, and she had butter on her skirt. ‘He was very discreet,’ she said. ‘But I think I gathered that you have a fine marriage but not a complete one.’

  ‘That was discreet,’ said Philippa. ‘And what did Austin say?’

  ‘Austin was biased,’ said Kate firmly. ‘You know he has called twice a day?’

  ‘I shall see him tomorrow,’ Philippa said, as she had said for three days. ‘In any case, what did he say, including the bias?’

  ‘It partook,’ said Kate, ‘of the nature of a full-scale cursing against one Crawford of Lymond, but whether for sins of omission or commission is not entirely clear. You wouldn’t like to clear up the point?’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘I do,’ said Kate. ‘I don’t care to have my second-best bedroom looking like the den of a hibernating bear. In fact, I am beginning to feel like the gentleman who killed his sister with his bare hands for weeping on a day of official rejoicing. What is wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Philippa said. ‘I have to know what is happening.’

  ‘And you know what is happening, shut up in this room?’ Kate said. And knew, as soon as the words left her lips that, of course, she had hit on the truth.

  ‘Yes,’ said Philippa. ‘On the ship …’

  ‘Adam told me that you were upset on the ship. You thought that Francis was in trouble?’ said Kate.

  ‘I thought he was dead,’ Philippa said. ‘You see, I released him to do as he wished.’

  ‘I see,’ said Kate slowly. She sat down, the butter forgotten. ‘And this is why you are waiting?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Philippa.

  Kate said, ‘Philippa. What frightened you? Why couldn’t this be a complete marriage?’

  But Philippa’s eyes, the candid brown eyes she would have trusted to tell the truth, however unpalatable, would not look at her, and her daughter turned her head, shaking it. Then Kate said, equally gently, ‘Then why hold to the marriage, my darling? Why not obtain your divorce and release him and yourself in that way?’

  The silence this time continued for a very long time, so that she could hear the new kitchen maid break a bowl, and the puppy bark, and the high, clear piping of Kuzúm’s voice, speaking to Adam. Then Philippa said, ‘Because the grounds for the divorce were to be lack of consummation.’

  And then she turned her face so that her dark circled eyes locked with Kate’s and Kate, pale herself, was wise enough this time not to ask any more.

  After that, the only really unbearable incident happened in the third week, when Philippa had begun to join them, very quietly, in the main part of the house and to stop the habit, so disconcerting both in herself and Adam, of thinking and speaking primarily in an idiomatic French which drove Kate to irritable despair.

  By then, also, she had begun occasionally to entertain Austin, if only, Kate thought, to show some helpless return for the gifts of sweetmeats and flowers, of fruit and music and little, bound books which arrived daily and, it seemed, sometimes hourly from the next valley.

  Only that night he excelled himself, and sent musicians.

  Kate, more than warned by the barking of all the dogs far up the road, had already sent her steward to investigate and then dispatched a swift, conciliatory message round all the servants’ quarters before tapping on her daughter’s door and saying, ‘Philippa? Don’t undress in front of the candles: there’s an oboe in the f
lowerbed.’

  In fact, there were also two recorders, a rebec and a cittern, sadly flattening her marigolds; and something else that made Kate, peering unseen out of the window in company with her daughter, moan with silent apprehension. ‘You remember the hombull bee who handyld the home pype, for ham fyngers wer small? He’s sent a cremorne, darling. The dogs will never stand for it.’

  ‘I think we should send them away,’ Philippa said. Her hand, from the first moment, had detained her mother and had not released her since.

  ‘I think so too,’ said Kate. ‘After the first offering, anyway. Open the casement and lean out, glowing. All they want to do is report to Austin that you listened to them without apparently having a seizure.’ Adam tapped on the door, made an inquiry and, reassured, returned to his room. To a chorus of resonant barking, the instruments proceeded to adjust themselves into tune. A billy-goat, alarmed, aroused his harem, and distantly a muffled lowing broke out.

  Philippa said, ‘Oh dear. It must have cost a fortune. Did Gideon ever do this to you?’

  Kate thought. ‘No, but I did it to him. He hadn’t called to see me for a week, so I sent eight bell ringers to serenade him at cock-crow and his mother’s parrot dropped dead, quoting Luther.’

  ‘What did it say?’ Philippa said. Sitting on the sill, with her long brown hair falling over her night robe, she looked, in the darkness, like the daughter who had come back from Turkey: calm and smiling and soignée.

  ‘Music is a fair and lovely gift of God, and deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart,’ said Kate, surprised. The sound of Philippa laughing mingled with the first notes of the consort below, the cremorne snoring manfully among the rest of its brethren:

  Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera

  Pour nulle vivante, tant soit elle bonne ou saige

  Forte et puissante, riche de hault lignaige

  Mon chois est fait, aultre ne se fera.

  ‘No!’ said Philippa. ‘No! No! No! No! No!’

  The casement slammed on the wood, breaking the glass. And Philippa, her hands rammed over her ears, fled gasping from the window and crouched, her sobs rising in pitch against the bed while Kate, her breath stopped, dragged the hangings over the window and finding the bed knelt and hugged her, suppressing the noise with her closeness.

  They were like that when Adam, running, found them and left, without words, to stride downstairs and tell the players, surprised and more than a little displeased, to remove themselves. He gave them all the money he had, and excuses. Then, slowly, he went back into the house and stayed in his room until all was quiet.

  Much later Kate, looking very tired, scratched at his door. ‘She’s sleeping,’ she said.

  He looked at her over the candlelight, and the flame stood in both pairs of eyes. ‘It can’t go on. Poor Austin,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘Thank you, Adam, for what you did.’

  He bowed his head a little. She gave him a small smile and then moved slowly out of his sight, with the light of the candles.

  *

  Upon them, in the first week of October came Sybilla, with Jerott and Archie, on her way home at last to Midculter.

  They were within sight of the tall rose-red chimneys of Flaw Valleys, the short cavalcade bobbing behind them of servants and laden baggage mules in the familiar housings and liveries of azure and silver, when Sybilla put her hand on Jerott’s arm and said, ‘Help me down. I think she is coming.’

  So she was standing, with Jerott beside her on the dusty slope of the hill, when the long-haired girl flying towards them came nearer, and slowing, walked until she was close enough for the travellers to see that this was indeed Philippa. Then Sybilla spread her hands and called, her clear voice spanning the distance between them, ‘He is safe.… He is safe.’ And the next moment, Philippa was there, and she was holding her.

  *

  One phrase upon which, as it turned out, the welcome of three wayfarers could be fuelled until at length, restored and refreshed, Sybilla could sit in Kate’s parlour and looking at the sober faces about her say, ‘You have been forbearing enough. Ask your questions. Jerott will have told you that Mr Guthrie and Mr Hoddim have gone to the keep at St Mary’s. Master Hislop is to sail later. My two sons are also in France.’

  ‘Together?’ said Adam.

  ‘Together,’ said Sybilla. She turned her wise eyes. ‘Philippa. You gave your husband a brevet to absent himself from his responsibilities. I have cancelled it.’

  Adam looked at Jerott and then at Archie but neither, it seemed, was willing to meet his eyes. Philippa said, ‘He was ill.’

  ‘He was dying,’ said Jerott Blyth, his hollow eyes still on his hands. ‘Lady Culter persuaded him not to give up.’

  ‘In September?’ said Philippa. ‘On a Monday? On a Monday in September?’

  Archie was looking at her. ‘Yes,’ said Sybilla. ‘It reached you, then. And you think me wrong, perhaps, as Jerott does. But it seemed to me that he has work to do which was not finished yet. Once, he made me a promise to do anything, to the end of his life, that I asked him. I held him to it.’

  ‘And?’ said Adam. Philippa was staring, her pupils enormous, at Lady Culter.

  ‘I made him promise to live,’ Sybilla said. ‘And to come back to Scotland.’

  ‘I think,’ said Philippa, ‘you have made it very hard for him.’

  Kate said, ‘Philippa, you have been waiting for four weeks with your heart in your eyes, to hear whether he is alive.’

  ‘I know,’ said Philippa. ‘Do you think I want this for myself?’

  ‘He is one of many good men,’ Sybilla said. ‘Would you put him first? Or if he has work to do, should he not do it? He is not blind: they say because of a blow on the head. But I think that, for some reason, he no longer needs his headaches.’

  ‘Or doesn’t care enough,’ Philippa said, without timbre. ‘Lady Culter, why can’t he stay in France?’

  Jerott said, ‘The de Guises can’t afford to keep him in France. He went out of his way to become a popular idol. You saw him.’

  ‘He had, I think, a reason,’ Sybilla said. ‘And then when the reason no longer mattered, it was too late. The effect stands. He cannot stay in France. And Russia is closed to him. The Tsar has changed to other favourites and the woman he lived with is dead.’

  ‘Güzel?’ said Philippa. After a moment she said, ‘Does he know?’

  ‘My God, he knows,’ said Jerott Blyth. ‘It drove him to …’

  ‘… I don’t think,’ said the soft voice of Archie, cutting across, ‘that yon incident has any bearing. Mr Blacklock won’t have heard about the Commissioners.’

  ‘They’re landing in Montrose,’ said Adam. ‘Aren’t they?’

  ‘Some of them,’ Jerott said. ‘Four of them won’t land anywhere any more. Someone, somewhere must have got to know that Queen Mary’s secret bond had become known to us. They tried to poison all the Commissioners at Dieppe, as they were sailing.’

  ‘Who? Not Richard?’ said Kate.

  ‘No. Francis is keeping Richard with him, for safety. Orkney and Cassillis are dead; Rothes and Fleming probably dying. And most of their servants. Nothing can be proved and no one accused, but four men have gone who won’t trouble France any longer.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Kate said. ‘Were they so dangerous that France had to poison them?’

  Adam said, ‘The fewer leaders we have, the better France will be suited. But there is a second reason. Will you add yet another state secret to all those with which Francis must have entrusted you? The Queen of Scotland has signed three bonds, arranged with her uncles of Guise, by which Scotland is to belong to France if she dies childless. The Commissioners were told of it by Francis. To make it public would have meant civil war, or an annihilating struggle with France. So they took Lymond’s advice, which was to do nothing meantime. He also warned them to hold their tongues, for their lives.’

 
‘I had a warning through Willie Grey,’ Philippa said. ‘I passed it to Francis, but I didn’t know what it was. I think Lord Seton perhaps was indiscreet.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sybilla. ‘A friend of England, and a friend of the Lennoxes. It isn’t unlikely. Do you agree, Philippa, that the world has need of her men of judgement? We cannot belong to ourselves, or to one person only.’

  Adam said, ‘When is Francis coming?’

  ‘He and Richard should sail in a few days.’

  ‘And ride to Midculter?’ said Philippa.

  ‘To his own house of St Mary’s,’ Sybilla said. ‘I need not tell you. Unless matters change, you should not meet.’

  She left with Jerott next day, leaving Archie, as so often before, at Flaw Valleys, and carrying with her Kuzúm, her cherished grandson. To Philippa, and to Kate, it was as if the windows had darkened.

  Before they left, Philippa found Jerott alone and asked him for news of his wife.

  ‘I thought you knew,’ Jerott said. ‘She’s gone to her house in Blois. We are tied, I suppose, but the marriage is over. It should never have happened. She drove you out of Sevigny. But for that …’

  ‘What would it have changed?’ Philippa said. ‘And she didn’t drive me, Jerott. I left to save Francis from trying to join me. She came to Sevigny to persuade me to take him back.’

  Jerott said, ‘He chose you, and it seems you are not made as other women. He was true to you—do you know that? Everything he did, good or bad, was for your sake only.’

  ‘I know,’ said Philippa. ‘I know. I gave him his release and his mother has snapped shut the fetters again. What am I to do? I cannot even go myself without leaving him to bear the burden of it.’

  There were no tears in her empty face. All the rage in Jerott died, and the contempt, and the bitter anxiety.

  You don’t know what love is, either of you. And God help us and you, if you ever find out.

  He said, ‘I believe it is out of our hands, and his as well. I think we must wait till he comes. Then perhaps we shall be shown what to do.’