by Checkmate
*
On the fourth of October Francis Crawford of Lymond, comte de Sevigny, Chevalier of the Order, left France to return as he had promised to his own country.
Before he sailed he was received by his young Queen in Paris, and laid before her the guerdon she had given him long ago, when he saved her from death. He said, ‘I have to leave, your grace, to look after the affairs of my family. I return you the glove, for my allegiance henceforth is to Scotland.’
Seated before him in her small cap and her stiff, high-necked gown she was not at all pleased. ‘The two countries are the same, M. de Sevigny. It is we and our marriage who have made this possible. We do not understand why you have to leave. Is it to follow Mme la comtesse, who left us so abruptly?’
He did not reply to that. Instead, ‘What causes you to think, madame, that the two countries are one?’ Lymond said. ‘Does it seem so from here? It is not the common impression in Scotland.’
‘Among the heretics, perhaps not,’ Mary said. ‘But my people want union. They begged for it, at Haddington. They have accepted naturalization. They have agreed that my children should rule them. They have made Monseigneur my husband their King. Do the Three Estates count for nothing?’
‘They have agreed,’ Lymond said, ‘that the Dauphin should be King during your lifetime. But after your death, which please God will be long distant, there is no man in Scotland, of the established church or the new one, who would agree to the rule of a Frenchman.’
‘I do not believe it,’ said Mary. ‘Would the faithful suffer a king or a regent who professed heresy? Would they consent to be ruled by a heretic queen from over their borders? These are the alternatives, M. de Sevigny. I am surprised you do not see them.’
‘If a Brazilian dancer came to you in his paint,’ Lymond said, ‘and proved to you that he was a true Catholic, and appointed a judge in his country, would you allow him to condemn and burn your heretic brother?’
‘You are saying,’ Mary said, ‘that the ties of the blood are more important than the state of the soul?’
‘I am saying,’ Lymond said, ‘that the bond of race is a deep one, and of a dimension which gives it nobility. I am saying that the salvation of each man’s soul lies within himself, and is not a matter which concerns even his brother.’
‘So,’ said Mary, ‘you would condemn the human race to hell, for want of enlightenment?’
‘Why not?’ said Francis Crawford. ‘It has nothing to fear, surely, from hell.’
*
He saw that day many people in Paris, from Mary Fleming to Madame de Valentinois; from the King’s sister to Madame la Maréchale de St André. He saw Nicolas de Nicolay and, last of all, the Queen of France, who made him sit by her, the goitrous eyes smiling, and said, ‘You are to leave for Scotland? I hear a curious rumour, that a number of other Scottish gentlemen have also broken camp at Amiens for that purpose. I suppose now our sister of Scotland may expect many stout arms to help her in Edinburgh?’
The blue eyes of M. de Sevigny, turned upon her, were perfectly calm. ‘I return for family reasons,’ he said. ‘With peace now certain, I trust there will be no need for armies.’
‘And if there were?’ Catherine de Médicis said. ‘Perhaps we might tempt you back to France.’
Lymond smiled. ‘I have been told that might be unwise.’
‘By whom? By the King?’ said Queen Catherine. ‘You must not listen to the threats of underlings. I hear my Nostradamus healed you well.’
‘I was grateful,’ Lymond said, ‘for his services.’
‘I see, however, little value from them in other directions. He was unable to save your unlucky compatriots.’
‘There is a saying,’ Lymond said, ‘Mal sur mal ne font pas santé. There is no purpose served in having a few deaths followed by many. But the results of this blow will be felt in France and in Scotland. Sometimes, when there is good warning of the obstacle, the ship may be steered round it.’
‘You are more hopeful, M. de Sevigny, than I should be. I shall watch you,’ said the Queen. ‘You were well thought of by my late cousin … by both my cousins. The Marshal Strozzi in his will left me his library. I have set aside from it three manuscripts I wish you to take to Scotland. Perhaps, if you will not keep the guerdon of the Reine-Dauphine my daughter, you will accept a gift of simple goodwill from me?’
‘I am honoured,’ said Lymond.
‘It is no more than you deserve. We shall miss you. Now you may take your leave. I shall ask Mistress d’Albon to guide you.’
He bowed at the doors, and when they were closed, stood until Catherine d’Albon joined him. ‘You are leaving,’ she said.
She had not changed, except perhaps in a firming of the contours of her face, and a little exaggeration in her colouring which had not been there before.
Lymond said, ‘I am riding to Dieppe with my brother. We should be there on Tuesday.’
‘You should take longer,’ she said, ‘They say you have been gravely ill. I can see it.’
‘We go slowly,’ said Lymond. He did not avoid her eyes. ‘If I had come to you that night in the Hôtel d’Hercule, none of this would have happened.’
‘One thinks these things,’ Catherine said. ‘If you had not spoken harshly to your mother, Madame de Sevigny would not have gone to your room. If you had not wanted a divorce, you would not have stayed in France.… Why did you accept your marriage in the end, and then break it? They say you are fickle.’
‘And you are not. You withdrew because of Philippa, am I not right? Then you might like to know that if you made a sacrifice, it was not in vain.’
‘Then you are going to join her?’ Catherine said.
‘No,’ Lymond said. ‘I don’t expect to see her again. But I shall never marry again, nor I think will she. I hope you will find one day what we had. Even if it lasts only an hour, it is worth it.’
‘I am glad then,’ said Catherine, ‘that there was nothing between us, rather than mediocrity.’
And from the homes … of Unicornes …
‘There was kindness,’ he said. ‘And that was a great deal.’ Then he kissed her hand and left, to find his brother.
*
The journey to Dieppe, as he had said, was slow, because he was not strong. He did not speak much as they travelled and in the evenings he retired early to his tavern room, although this was difficult, as everywhere they went he was recognized. He wrote, Richard saw, a great many letters, some of them to familiar addresses: to Lord Grey at Onzain; to Nicholas Applegarth at Sevigny. To Gravelines, on behalf of a man called Harry Palmer, who had died. Nearly every day, also, there was a call to make, or several, upon friends on the way. For a total of many years now, one realized, France had been Lymond’s home.
And the weather was kindly on this last journey north: the trees hardly tinged yet with russet, and meadowsweet and white columbine in the meadows where sun-gilded cattle grazed.
In place of the bitter wildness of winter, the mellow ripeness of autumn moved past them. In the townships there were full blown roses still, and vines on the trellis, and white geese, and sunflowers, and the pallid blue velvet of cabbages. Ploughed fields, and slender stemmed trees with their leaves embroidered sharp on the skyline. The latticed pattern of wood stacks, and the slow stride and swift trot of water. Crows, and hay barns, and a bank of bracken like chiffon against the low sun. A farm with a dovecote, and hens and dogs and hives and sheets on a line; the weeping arrows of willows. An orchard of apples, jade as the rose window of the Sainte Chapelle, past which he had escaped on his way to the Hôtel des Sphères.
The pretty house in the rue de la Cerisaye, now quite gone. The empty, ruined old house in Lyon. The graves of two old women; and a strong and vigorous man; and an old and vicious one. A sister lost, a lover lost, an escutcheon taken from him, and two nations he had made temporarily his own. And Philippa.
At Dieppe, the captain at the gate greeted them, and Richard, his attention attracted at
last by the sheer exhaustion in his brother’s face, was reminded of the last time Francis must have made this identical journey, and wondered if he remembered it.
M. de Fors was still in Scotland, so they were received in his absence by one of his lieutenants, who gave them a bed for the night, and next day saw that their luggage, their servants and their horses were safely loaded on the Réal. Richard stayed on deck to watch the steep white-pleated cliffs sink into the sea, but Francis had gone below, and did not return.
Richard left him alone. By her own curious alchemy Sybilla had obtained what all these years he had desired of his brother. He was on his way home, to fulfil the duties of rank and family; to bring his talents at last back to Scotland. Whatever had caused the quarrel with Sybilla, it seemed to be over. Whatever had made him long to leave Europe and return to Russia had vanished also. He was still married to Philippa, and Philippa was only a ride away, on the English side of the Border. Perhaps that would mend itself also.
It was hard to say therefore why he did not go below, and rally his brother, and encourage him to let the past fade, and look forward to what lay before him. Unless, in his heart of hearts he recognized as Lymond did that what lay around him were shut gates; and what lay before him was nothing.
Chapter 11
Coq verra l’Aigle, l’aesle mal accompli
Par Lyon mise sera en extremité
Up the twisting stairs of the house called Doubtance in the rue des Papegaults, Blois, the dusty rooms were little more habitable than they had been a year before when Philippa, helped by Nicholas Applegarth, had searched them.
The sparse furniture Marthe had brought stood untended against the peeled stucco, and the clocks, the instruments, the ancient artefacts of her business lay unopened still in their cases. So it was a simple matter, watched by the short, bearded figure of Nostradamus, for Marthe to push aside the single chair in the room once occupied by her grandmother, and probing with her long fingers along the wainscoting, to press the boss Archie Abernethy had told her of, which opened the way to the treasure house.
At first, it stuck. Marthe had to push with both hands, disregarding the smears on her gown, to force back the thick sliding door in the panelling, and then to stop and take time to light a lamp, before she could step into the small hidden room in which the Dame de Doubtance had kept the cream of her collection and once, Francis Crawford.
So finely had the wood fitted that only a light film of dust dimmed the objects which lay stacked on the shelves, or spilled from the caskets stored in the little dark cabinet. The yellow of ivory smiled at her, delicately wrought on its plinth, and the glint of thick, opaque jewellery, and the gleam of rich tissue, a trifle disturbed from its wrappings. A marble cupid gazed at her over his shoulder, and a visage much older, with arched, spidery brows and bent finger.
It was that face she moved towards, her neck bent and her yellow hair brushing the ceiling; and for a moment knelt before, looking. From the doorway the sonorous Jewish voice said, ‘Was she like that?’
‘Yes,’ said Marthe. ‘She was more beautiful.’ And then, turning, followed the slender, bent finger to its destination.
And there on the floor was a little casket, as old as the ikon and painted like it in deep, vibrant colours in which the blue-shadowed angled heads and long faces followed each other in silence from panel to panel.
The heavy lid was not locked. Inside it, as she had expected, was a thin roll of parchment, bound in blue silk and sealed with the pheon and phoenix of Culter. She lifted it out, and a voice from the doorway said, ‘I doubt, Mistress Marthe, if birth or any other sanction gives you authority to read that particular document. Why not let me have it? I’m a very good friend of the owner.’
It was the little sandy-haired Scotsman who had followed her to the rue de Marie-Egyptienne, and had then brought Lady Culter to plague her. Handing his way courteously past the astrologer, Danny Hislop stood by the door to the treasure chamber.
The parchment cracked in her clenched hand. She could not even stand fully upright. Marthe said, ‘This is no business of yours. Get out of my house.’
‘I’m sorry. A wholly vulgar reaction,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘I’ll give you another, in two syllables, if you press me. It isn’t your house, nor are any of the objects within it. They belong to Lymond.’
‘Then bring him in,’ Marthe said. ‘And I will give them to him.’
The pale, clever eyes turned up. Their owner quoted Surrey at her. ‘And of ech thought a dout doth growe/Now he comes, will he come? alas, no, no!…
‘On the other hand,’ said Danny Hislop, ‘I can take it to him.’
He moved backwards as she advanced and stepped into the daylight, leaving the lamp set behind her. ‘Do you know what it is?’ said Marthe softly. Master Nostradamus, his back to the window, had said nothing.
‘Lyk an aspen leef he quook,’ said Danny defensively. ‘Don’t tell me! A little knock with a wakener? A knife for the shoulderblades?’
‘Oh come, Mr Hislop,’ said Marthe. ‘You knew from the beginning at Lyon that Philippa was hunting for some papers exposing the Crawford family. They came to light in Paris and she and Francis suppressed them. Lord Allendale told me he thought there was another copy, and here it is.’
‘Forgive my lack of surprise,’ Danny said. ‘It is, I assume, a document certifying the poor bastard’s bastardy, if I may so refer to your brother. Since he’s on his way home, there seems little point in flourishing it now. I can either take it to him, or help you burn it.’
‘I am sure,’ said Michel Nostradamus, ‘that Mistress Marthe does not mean to dismiss any course of action that seems reasonable. But it might be sensible to discover first what you are burning.’
The silk had already been slipped from the scroll and Marthe, her long fingers parting the fold, was about to break open the seal. She was smiling at Danny as she did so. ‘At least,’ she said, ‘my authority is greater than yours. What did your Scottish king say? Marry never a priest’s get?’
‘I never heard of anyone worth the name who got the chance,’ Danny said. ‘I give you instead Daniel Hislop, who said that bastards should only marry each other. Can you make it out, or do you want me to read it to you?’
‘I can make it out,’ Marthe said. She was looking at the astrologer.
‘And what are you going to do with it?’ said Danny Hislop.
‘Publish it where it will hurt most,’ said Lymond’s sister. ‘I am going to show it to Richard Crawford, and watch him thrust it in front of his mother. Did you not know that the stately Sybilla has committed incest?’
‘No,’ said Danny.
‘Or that our eminent Marshal is the child, as I am, of the first Lord Culter, Richard’s grandfather? Perhaps,’ said Marthe, ‘if I hold the paper like this, both you and Master Nostradamus may read it and satisfy yourselves about the true nature of this little family. Don’t you think, Master Hislop, that I shall enjoy Lord Culter’s next visit to Paris? I don’t think on that occasion I shall be expected to skulk in an attic.’
Danny had reached the bottom of the parchment. He said, ‘Christ in heaven,’ and then started again from the top. At the end he looked up and met the chilly blue eyes of Marthe. He was not smiling.
‘And this is your revenge for bastardy?’ said Danny Hislop. ‘How long, in this world, can a woman remain a bloody juvenile? You’ve knelt in the dirt, and so have I before the Bastard of France and the Bastard of Scotland … my God, we all watched Jenny Fleming produce one. You and I can’t hand on our money—openly; we can’t hold some kinds of high office—openly; but the rest of it doesn’t matter a damn, least of all to you. You’re as hard as cooled steel, Madame Marthe, except in one direction. You resent what Lymond’s family did to him, and you want to watch them suffer for it. What you don’t see, you stupid bitch, is that what hurts Culter and his mother hurts Francis.’
‘Even after your spirited dismissal of the stigma of bastardy?’ Marthe said. She h
ad rolled the parchment and replaced the silk on it. Nostradamus, who had not accepted her invitation to read, remained standing where he was by the window.
Danny said, ‘I didn’t tell you the other side, because you know it. You and I don’t have a family. They have. They were brought up together. They need each other, and support each other. It’s too late to change any of that. Whether he ever marries again or not, Francis has that; and if anything happens to him, the rest of the family have each other. You won’t get him now, Marthe,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘Now that you want him. He belongs to them. It’s too late. And I don’t think you would be allowed to try it.’
The eyes of Marthe, looking past him, had met the steady look of the silent astrologer, and stayed on him. ‘Allowed?’ said Marthe. ‘I have finished with asking permission for what I do and what I think. I have finished with being dispatched scurrying from errand to errand. I am my own mistress now. I am going to move the pieces. I am going to direct the end of the game.’
Her voice was raised, as if in anger, but the voice of Nostradamus, answering her, was perfectly calm. ‘If you wish to carry this paper from France and deliver it into Lord Culter’s hands,’ he said, ‘I know of no power which would stop you, unless an earthly one.’
‘And that,’ said Daniel Hislop, ‘is the first totally accurate prediction I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Give me that.’
‘No,’ said Marthe. ‘No. You will get hurt. It is none of your business. You fool, if I can deal with Jerott, don’t you imagine I can defend my own …’
He nearly had the paper then; his finger and thumb on her outflung wrist; his other hand hard on her neck. Then she brought out her left hand, with the dagger in it, and struck him once, and twice, and three times, until he fell.
She stood gasping, while in a flutter of black, Nostradamus knelt quickly and touched him. The blood, silvered with dust, jumped and slid over the floorboards. Marthe said, ‘I had to.’
‘A knife for the bloody shoulder-blades,’ said Danny’s voice thinly from beside the astrologer’s knees. ‘You and your brother. You don’t have to be so God-damned thorough.’