by Checkmate
‘You will believe it when the couriers start arriving,’ said Lymond pleasantly and stood up. ‘All my orders were given before I came here. Then, when your leading burghers have had a chance to confer, I hope they will look for military guidance to Mr Hislop.…’
He made a small, unexpected turn towards Danny who sat up, radiating alertness.
‘… whose nature, unlike the mastiff, is to be tenderly nosed,’ Lymond finished. A little fan had been shaken from table to floor by his movement. The Governor’s wife saw his eyes become aware of it. He paused, and then sinking to one knee collected it between his ringed hands and rose, with infinite slowness, admiring it. Then he looked up and smiled at the Maréchale.
His eyes were a brilliant blue; the disliked chameleon face illuminated with sweetness and warmth and vivid intelligence. His hands, enclosing the fan, were classical in their purity. The Maréchale returned the look, her lips parting.
Lymond said, ‘I wish it were not so, but I fear my deputation is arriving.’
She had hoped that the confusion of sound in the street had escaped his attention. Carrying his eyes with her she rose, and passing Danny Hislop walked to the window, where she unlatched and drew inwards one of the five slender casements. Danny got up and stood, grinning sourly, beside her.
A handcart perched in the street guarded by a group of armed men wearing sleeve badges. On the cobbles beside it, newly unloaded, were lodged half a dozen deep wooden boxes and a group of arguing servants. Some of them, Danny saw, wore the Governor’s livery. The rest showed the same badge as the men at arms: a badge he could not place, although he had seen it quite recently. Madame la Maréchale, looking over her shoulder, said, ‘M. de Sevigny. You bank with the House of Schiatti. Are you expecting document boxes?’
Lymond came and stood beside her. Then, drawing open the neighbouring window, he watched without speaking as the skirmishing voices below came clearly upwards. ‘They seem to be indicating,’ said Madame de St André after a moment, ‘that the coffers are to be delivered to you personally. My staff, naturally, are not accustomed to allow other servants into the house.’
‘I am causing you trouble,’ Lymond said. ‘I apologize. I did ask M. Schiatti to send me some papers. There are rather more of them than I anticipated. Perhaps it would suffice if one of the carriers was allowed to enter and speak to me personally. The child, perhaps. Don’t you think he is charming?’
Danny looked at the child. He was not particularly charming, being bent double with a cloth and a leather harness wrapped round his head, complaining viciously about the size of the box two others were lowering on to his back. But he was certainly the youngest of all the Schiatti servants and the filthy hands were agile enough, and the language sufficiently foul, to suggest why Lymond wanted to see him.
Marguerite de St Andre’s thoughts were in another direction. She said, ‘He is dirty.’
Francis Crawford closed the window and turned, so near that they shared breath between them. Then he smiled, and lifting his hands, took hers lightly in them. ‘But mine are clean, and it pleases me to keep them so,’ said the King’s Captain-General. ‘You will have him sent up for a moment?’
And as she smiled and inclined her head, he dropped one hand and led her with the other to the door.
Danny watched it close, awestruck, behind her. He said. ‘A wool seller kens a wool buyer. You do know what in hell you are doing?’
With some trouble, Lymond stopped laughing. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. He sank into a chair and still smiling, gazed at the flower-painted beams of the ceiling. ‘If they force me to stay in France they will have to put up, won’t they, with the consequences? In any case, you’re the one who likes mature gentlewomen. L’échange de deux fantasies et le contact de deux épidermes. When I’ve trained her, you may put in a bid if you want to.’
‘Was that the boy?’ Danny said, switching subjects. With Lymond in this mood, it was useless. ‘The boy on the bridge?’
The door opened. ‘I told you,’ Lymond said, and rose, taking his time, while the Governor’s wife entered the chamber behind him. ‘I shouldn’t recognize him again.’ And he turned, as the child from the street shot in and halted. Lymond said, ‘You were right. He is really appallingly dirty.’ His voice had not quite recovered.
Danny Hislop stalked to the door, shut it, and held a chair for the Maréchale de St André, well out of blowpipe collimation. The child scowled under its thicket of wadding. Its breeches and sleeveless green livery jacket were several sizes too large for it, but the grimy arms were muscular enough under the rolled-up sleeves and its hands, gripped behind its back, were quite capable of wielding a weapon. He might well have one concealed in the turban-like headdress. He most certainly, thought Danny, had lice. The boy, red-faced under the triple scrutiny, said thinly, ‘De la part de M. Schiatti, huit coffres-forts pour M. de Sevigny,’ and facing Danny, unclasped his hands, bowed sketchily, and gripped his hands once more, defensively.
In tranquil French, Lymond intervened. ‘Unlikely though it may seem, I am François, comte de Sevigny. What is your name?’
The urchin turned quickly and eyed him. ‘Je m’appelle Annibal, monseigneur.’
‘Ah,’ said Lymond, ‘I must introduce you to an elephant-keeper I know. And how long have you been in M. Schiatti’s employment?’
The child’s brown eyes shot round the room and, disarming in his smudged visage, returned to the Persian doublet. ‘Three years, monseigneur. My mother is one of his sauce cooks.’
‘I see,’ said Lymond, and lifting Madame la Maréchale’s fan chose a chair and sat down on it, spreading the delicate leaves in his fingers. ‘So you came with M. Schiatti from the Hôtel Schiatti in Amboise?’
‘You are correct, monseigneur,’ said the boy Annibal. A thread of impudence for the first time reached Danny’s critical ears through the nervousness in the child’s answers.
‘But,’ said Lymond looking up, ‘M. Schiatti has no château in Amboise.’
Danny winced. He wondered why his lordship had claimed to be unable to identify the boy on the bridge. Then he recalled something he had heard rumoured. Once, Lymond had questioned a child and lived to regret it. This time, knave that he was, the child had a fraction of Danny’s sympathy.
The boy stared at his tormentor and said shrilly and with confidence, ‘You are mistaken, monseigneur. M. Schiatti possesses a château at Amboise.’
Double bluff. Danny Hislop glanced at Madame la Maréchale and hurriedly away again. Her forbearance, her polite expression declared, was not without boundaries. ‘Indeed,’ said Lymond. ‘I should like to hear where, and of what quality.’
Feet apart, the boy thrust his turbanned head forth like a turkey-cock. ‘If you do not know, monseigneur, I must tell you that I do not believe you to be M. Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny. If you know, then I wish you to tell me by what right you question one of M. Schiatti’s loyal servants? I am the son of a poor kitchen woman, delivering boxes. It does a great gentleman no credit to tease me.’
‘Were you on the bridge this afternoon?’ said Danny Hislop.
The boy turned quickly. ‘No, Monsieur le Bec. I did not make you fall off your horse. Perhaps you should question your harness-maker.’
‘Be quiet!’ Madame la Maréchale had realized what was afoot. She sat up. ‘Were you among those murdering children? Then we shall soon have the truth out of you. Mr Hislop, ring for my steward. Then I should be glad if you would remove the child to the window embrasure. He offends the nostrils.’
The child’s mouth opened. ‘He does, rather,’ said Lymond; and closing the pretty fan, tossed it to the boy before Danny could shift him. ‘Annibal,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You have made Madame unwell. You will oblige me by fanning her.’
The fan was worth a great deal of money. Annibal allowed it to fall within six inches of the floor before he condescended to catch it, watched with well-bred impassivity by Marguerite de St André. Then, one-handed, he flicke
d the fragile fan open and stood holding it. ‘To me,’ he said, ‘she does not look faint.’
‘Then you may close the fan,’ said Lymond, ‘as skilfully as you have opened it.’
Below the dirt, the young skin of the boy Annibal went scarlet. He pursed his lips, his eyes on the speaker, and then smiling with a flash of small teeth, he lifted his hand and caused the leaves of the fan to pour shut in a brief courtly gesture. ‘Attrapé,’ he said apologetically.
‘Attrape indeed,’ agreed Lymond. ‘With a double e and no proper shame that I can discover. Pull his headgear off, Hislop.’
‘What?’ said Danny; and Madame la Maréchale, rising, made sharply to stop him. But since an order was an order, Danny Hislop did put out one fastidious hand, and grasp the end of the soiled, greasy linen and unseat, with a single rough gesture, the whole of the brazen child’s headgear.
A quantity of matted brown hair, thus released, tumbled down the child’s back and over its jacket where it lay, damp and nastily odoriferous.
‘Attrapée. With two e’s,’ said Danny. His eyes were unfocused.
‘It’s a girl!’ exclaimed Madame la Maréchale.
The boy Annibal and Francis Crawford stood, silently regarding one another. Then Lymond walked softly forward and taking the child’s grimy hand, raised it to his lips in formal salutation. ‘It is a gentlewoman,’ he said, ‘of the title of Philippa Crawford of Lymond, comtesse de Sevigny. Madame la Maréchale de St André, may I beg leave to present to you the lady I am divorcing?’
Danny choked. Madame la Maréchale, to do credit to her breeding and initiative, walked forwards, not back, and stood gazing at the long-haired child in the green jacket two sizes too big for it whose liquid brown eyes, one now saw, bore wiped-off traces of fine cosmetics, and whose straggling hair still held a pin with a diamond in it.
The Governor’s wife drew a breath, but how she meant to deal with an unprecedented situation was never to be recorded. Francis Crawford’s lady removed her hand, wiped it, and said to him bluntly, ‘And what do you expect Madame la Maréchale to say to that? There’s no occasion for both of us to be childish.’
When he could speak: ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Lymond. ‘I had some idea it would spare you a flogging. Madame la Maréchale——’
‘I think,’ said his wife, interrupting him, ‘I had better make my own apology. Mr Hislop, how are you?’
Danny jumped. ‘Excessively happy to see you,’ he said, with truth. He altered rapidly the nature of his expression.
The Governor’s wife said, ‘I see, of course, that you have been playing some sort of game with M. de Sevigny. There is no need for an apology. Why don’t we all seat ourselves, and I shall ring for refreshments?’
‘You see?’ said Lymond to his wife. ‘There is no difficulty. You may even sit down, if Mr Hislop will spread his cleaner handkerchief over that chair. I do not think you want any refreshments.’
‘You are so kind, Madame la Maréchale,’ said Philippa gratefully. ‘But of course, we must not impose on you. I didn’t mean to intrude. I had no idea my husband would recognize me. Mr Crawford didn’t even know I was in Lyon.’ She paused, and adding, ‘My breeches are quite clean,’ sat down with a great deal of aplomb on a coffer-seat.
After a moment, Madame la Maréchale followed her example. Only Lymond remained standing, looking down on her, and Danny, watching rapt from the door. Lymond said, ‘No. I didn’t know you were here. Not after you gave the slip at Dieppe to my man who was following you.’
Dirty hands folded primly in her breeches lap, his wife gazed serenely up at him. ‘I didn’t know it was your man,’ she said. ‘Archie said we had better get rid of him.’
Lymond said, ‘I called him off in any case when I heard Archie was with you.’ He looked down at the fan, which he had taken from her fingers, and Danny thought, he doesn’t want an audience. On the other hand, he isn’t going to dislodge the Maréchale. He wondered why in heaven’s name Philippa had come to Lyon in the first place.
Lymond looked up and said, ‘Did you want to speak to me? Or merely have a look at the papers from the Hôtel Gaultier?’
His wife gazed winsomely at him. ‘I thought perhaps I could slip in with the boxes and then sit and go through them at leisure. While M. Schiatti had them, he wouldn’t unlock them for me.’
‘And you didn’t want to risk asking me for permission?’ Lymond said. ‘After what happened in London, you were extremely wise.’
She looked up, found him watching her, and looked away again, smiling nervously for the Maréchale’s benefit. She said, ‘You don’t need to remind me. I stopped you from going to Russia.’
‘Temporarily,’ Lymond said. ‘However, so did Guthrie and Hoddim and Blacklock and Hislop here. Danny will confirm. They survived the experience.’
‘Just,’ said Danny. He didn’t see why he should have to connive at a falsehood. Philippa looked at him. ‘Mr Crawford has dispensed with our services,’ said Danny. ‘Alec and Fergie are fighting for the Constable. Adam and I are with him only until we can be found posts in other companies.’ He could feel, in front of him, Lymond’s unspoken rancour.
The bedraggled child on the coffer turned slowly to look at her husband. Then she said, ‘I wouldn’t call that a very balanced reaction. What will you do to me? I interfered with your freedom of movement a good deal more than that.’
Mesmerized, the Governor’s wife gazed at M. le comte de Sevigny, who was gazing in turn at the speaker. He stirred, laid the fan on a table, and then addressed his wife concisely. ‘They were under my orders, and they disobeyed my orders. For what you do I have no redress, nor do I require any. If any circumstance of my life displeases me, I am more than capable of setting it right without outside interference. In the meantime, you wish to look at the papers bequeathed me. You may do so. I have no objection.’
Danny, who had been holding his breath, promptly released it. Madame la Maréchale, who had felt little but contempt for the creature’s escapade, experienced for the first time a shadow of pity. She stood up and so, tardily, did the comtesse de Sevigny.
Philippa said, ‘The trouble is, you would say all that anyway.’ She gazed at her husband, her grimy brow wrinkled sadly. ‘If only we could get Güzel here for you!’
Danny made a loud, painful noise with his nose. Lymond, who had not been prepared for it either, just avoided vocalizing his reaction. He said, his skin flushed to the roots of his hair, ‘She might not be prepared to emigrate.’
‘No,’ said Philippa. She paused. ‘It has all been rather … adolescent. I hope you will overlook it. You do mean I may see the papers? There are more, you know, at Marthe’s house. She was going to help me. I was to call on her at six tomorrow.’
Moving to the door, he stood, arrested in the moment of opening it. ‘What a coincidence. So was I, at Jerott’s insistence.’
They looked at one another. Then Lymond added, ‘Suppose we share the Kittasoles of State and go together? Where are you staying? Or wait. I should be able to guess. As a guest of the Hôtel Schiatti, with the family sworn not to tell me?’
She nodded, and Lymond’s grim mouth relaxed. ‘Don’t brood over it,’ he said. ‘Madame Marguerite knows the English are crazy. I shall call for you at half-past five.’ And with Danny saluted her briefly as, escorted by the Governor’s wife, the girl in servant’s livery descended the stairs to the courtyard.
They did not hear Philippa repeat, handsomely, her apologies to her hostess. Or hear her add, cheerfully, that she had met the Maréchale’s daughter in Paris.
Madame, smiling, was not forthcoming. ‘She enjoys her work. Catherine, you will know, is one of the Queen’s demoiselles of honour.’
‘Well, she’s on her way to Lyon,’ said Philippa cheerfully. ‘At Queen Catherine’s warm insistence. I think there’s a very good chance that M. le comte will take to her. Next after dark night, the mirthful morrow, you know.’
Not for the first time that evening, Madam
e la Maréchale de St André gazed at the wife of her guest with an astonishment edging on horror. Within her desk upstairs at this moment was a letter. In it her husband the Marshal begged her to humour this whim of the Queen’s: to bind the comte de Sevigny closer to the French crown by the gift of the richest heiress in France, their only daughter.
Marguerite de St André had been less than beguiled by the prospect. Knowing what she now knew of the Count’s style and his person, she was reluctant for other reasons altogether. But at no time had she expected the man’s wife to know of the plan, far less support it.
She said, ‘My daughter, Madame de Sevigny, has a sizeable fortune. Do you imagine that your husband is a suitable spouse for her?’
Philippa pondered. ‘I haven’t heard of any complaints,’ she said with honesty.
Complaints.…
‘More than most men,’ said the Governor’s wife carefully, ‘my lord of Sevigny seems to have led a life of some … irregularity. You do not resent this?’
‘Well: not, of course, the Rose-tree of the Garden of Fidelity,’ said the comtesse de Sevigny, ‘but there would be very little point, I should say, in resenting it. You know. Zyf you know or you knyt, you mayst you Abate: And yf you knyt er you knowe, Than yt ys to late. He has a wonderful——’
‘What?’ said Madame la Maréchale. She was beginning to feel the faintest fondness for Philippa Crawford.
‘… mistress,’ said Philippa apologetically. ‘That’s why he wants to get back to Russia. None of us would mind his having Güzel with him, but we do think he ought to stay in France. Perhaps Catherine is the very person to keep him.’
‘Perhaps she is,’ said the Governor’s wife, and saw, with some disappointment, that her footmen had arrived to take the young lady home to her lodging.
‘Catherine, or someone else suitable.’
*
Lymond was still up when Adam returned, very late, from his evening’s freedom. He saw the light under the door, and, after flinging his cloak on the bed beside Danny, returned to the master suite to tap for admission.