Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  A sharp rattle made him look round. A wood pigeon high over his head had flown to its hole above the hayloft door of the barn, paused for a moment, and then vanished inside. Now that he stood still, he could hear the muffled throaty rou-couling. It made him walk to the barn and try the door, whose bolt had been driven home recently, before the webs which muffled the windows had had time to form again over it. He drew it aside slowly and stepped over the threshold.

  It smelt of cow. There was no fodder inside but the dung of many weeks, mixed with filthy straw; and in one corner a stack of wood: not the well-mannered cradle of logs one saw outside every yard in Compiègne but boughs hacked and torn and covered still with a shawl of dead columbine. The blunt axe which had cut them stood still against the wall. Outside somewhere, an animal cried out in pain.

  But not, this time a dog. And with a call which he did not need to live in a castle to analyse.

  With a gesture Jerott would have recognized, Francis Crawford drew off his shapeless hat and threw it high to hang on the topmost twig of the thorn boughs. Then, walking over the yard, he wrenched the bucket free of its framework and swinging it, made for the coppice.

  When he came back, the yard was quite silent. Even the pigeons had ceased their low murmur. Above the pond-water a haze of mosquitoes trembled and fussed in the sunshine. Lymond walked to the low windows under the wavering eaves, and laid down the pail. Then, slowly and firmly, he rapped on the worn, sun-bleached shutters.

  ‘Madame,’ he said. ‘I have brought you milk from your cow.’

  Silence. If anyone was there, it must be a woman. A man would be dead, or would have escaped. A man would not have been reduced to cutting that pitiful bundle of firewood, or have tethered the little dun cow where she could graze concealed, and wait for her mistress. If it was Renée Jourda behind those closed shutters, she must be seventy years old, or over.

  But that would be highly unlikely. Out of three farms, Renée Jourda need not belong to this one. She had probably been taken away long ago. Or had died, taking her young secrets with her. He tapped again on the shutters and said, ‘Madame, I come from Compiègne, and not from the Spaniards. I wish to help you. Come to your window, and I shall give you your milk.’

  Nothing stirred. He was talking, it seemed, to himself: to an empty house, in the autumn sunshine, in a land where any soldier could claim a king’s fortune for taking him.

  I have your mind in my palm. I will crush it. A shiver ran through his nerves and his skin tingled, as if fine wires had moved beneath it. The light, familiar throb in his head, paired with his heartbeats, began to come thicker and faster. He took a moment, breathing quietly, to subdue it; then gripping the edge of the shutters with hard and powerful fingers, he wrenched them both open.

  Framed in the lozenged window behind was a face, grey and blurred as if printed on muslin. A face which dwindled, its mouth a dark square as his hands laid their grasp on the windowframe: which emitted, without shape, a long wavering wail as he broke the catch and opened the windows, so low that he knelt to look through them.

  It was a small room inside, bare of comfort and almost bare of furnishing. The used air of old age and sickness came lingering out from the window. Below the sill inside was drawn up a pallet, the linen sheet stained and wrinkled, the coverlet sagged on the floor. The woman who had been lying there stood now, her knotted hands gripped white together; her face, framed with soiled cap and tangled grey hair turned to the window; her eyes round and pearly as frog-spawn.

  It could be no one but Renée Jourda. And Renée Jourda was quite blind.

  Realization withdrew from him the power of movement. He bent his head, and when it returned, and she had fallen silent he said, his hands motionless on the stonework, ‘Madame Jourda, I am not here to harm you. I am alone. If you like, I shall throw my sword at your feet, and you may take it.’

  Renée Jourda said, ‘Give me your sword.’

  He had hoped she would not ask it, but there seemed to be no alternative. So he unbuckled the blade and holding it carefully, cast it through the open window so that it fell beyond the bed, on the broken tiled floor of the chamber. The old woman bent. Her hand, moving straight to the sound, uncoiled like a willow wand and touched, warily, the metal pommel. With both hands she lifted and couched the sword on the only tall chair in the room, standing still with the wall at her back and the point of the blade aimed straight and true at the window. Then she said, ‘You may come in, Mr Francis Crawford.’

  He paused again, momentarily, before easing himself deliberately through the casement. His headache had begun again. He said, speaking distinctly, ‘You are not well. Keep the sword, but sit in the chair. I shall bring you some milk, if you tell me where I may find a pitcher. When did you last eat?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ I think,’ said the old woman. She hesitated; then after a while lifted the heavy sword tremulously from the chair and supporting herself, moved round and dropped into the worn seat. ‘They brought a piece of seethed fowl the day before, and some ale, and some cut bread. Today they must have forgotten. I have not been well. It was too far to milk Lisa.’

  ‘Don’t they milk her for you?’ said Lymond. He had found a vessel of sorts, and dipping it into the pail, brought it dripping from the window and knelt before her. ‘Keep the sword. I shall hold the cup for you.’

  But after a moment she freed a hand and took the cup from him, drinking greedily but drawing, at the end, a ragged handkerchief from her sleeve to wipe her sunk mouth. A streak of raw colour had come into her cheeks. ‘Without my friends, I cannot keep tidy,’ she said. ‘The men mean well, but they are rough. And of course, I have not told them about Lisa. A cow, to a Spaniard? They would have her to Ham in a minute.’

  ‘The Spaniards are looking after you?’ Lymond said. There was no food in the house. On the other hand, he knew where to find some fat pigeons. He went to the window and lifted in the pail of new milk, drawing the shutters nearly closed once more behind him.

  The sudden dimness made no difference to her. She looked in the direction of his movements, a little snatch of fright on her face and said, ‘Yes. To an old woman, all foreigners are kind, are they not? All I miss is a fire. When they are here, I have a fire, and it warms me. The evenings are cold.’ The sightless eyes fixed on him. ‘Would you light one?’

  The fire was ready laid on her hearth: neatly set, as a soldier would do it. And beside it was a rack of fine logs, their white faces clean-cut by a woodsman. In one respect, the foreigners had looked after her. He said, striking tinder and lighting it, ‘How did you know my name? Because I called you Madame Jourda?’

  ‘That is my nom de jeune fille,’ said the old woman. ‘M. Proyart died twenty years ago. My neighbours were good.’ A stir of merriment, for a second, moved across the seamed face. Forgetful, she loosed her grip on the sword and when it fell, stiffened for a moment. But then, when nothing happened, she smiled again and left it there. ‘I should not be entertaining a young man. You are a young man? If you are Mistress Sybilla’s son, then you must be.’

  The fire was burning well. ‘You remember Mistress Sybilla?’ Lymond said, without turning.

  The thin voice had turned to anxiety again. ‘She didn’t blame me,’ said Renée Jourda. ‘When I said I must leave Scotland, she didn’t blame me. “Renée,” she said, “France is your homeland, and you miss it. We shall see each other again. Perhaps, if I need your help, you will come to me.” … But it was not Scotland I disliked. It was her husband. Gavin Crawford is a name to be loathed. She hated him. And Leonard Bailey, his kinsman. Half the evil in that house came from Bailey. I would not stay at Midculter.’

  ‘So you came back to France,’ Lymond said. ‘And you did help Mistress Sybilla again. Did you not? Ten years later?’

  She smiled. Firelight, blossoming in the worn darkness, gave her face for a moment the thin, pretty shallowness it must once have possessed when she left her home to follow a wilful young mistress back to her wedding in S
cotland; and then homesick, had abandoned her to settle here, with M. Proyart and those good neighbours who had now abandoned her.

  ‘When she had the baby?’ said Renée Jourda. ‘Such a baby! The father had bought her a jewel of a house, there in Paris. It was where they stayed when he was free, and when she could come from Scotland. She was to arrive for the birth of the child. She wrote to ask me to come to Paris. My sister Isabelle who was widowed was already there. She was housekeeper to them both from the start, and kept the house clean and warm, and saw to the bills. She still does it.’

  ‘Isabelle Roset?’ said Lymond. It was very hot by the fire. He moved to a low stool and sat there, breathing evenly. It took all his willpower and a good deal of his attention, which was why he was doing it. He said, ‘Who does she keep house for?’

  There was a rattle outside. The pigeons, fickle passengers, were departing again from the hayloft. The sightless eyes turned on Francis Crawford. ‘Why, no one,’ said Renée Jourda. ‘Only Mistress Sybilla keeps it, for memory’s sake. The child was too young to be taken away. I said it should not be taken away, but they would have it. A boy. They called it Francis. She would have no other name.’ Fright, for the moment banished, came suddenly back to the empty face once more. ‘Your name! But I didn’t tell anyone!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lymond said gently. He paused and then said, ‘I may not even be the child who was born that day. Did you hear if he lived? You and Isabelle were asked to sign a paper about him.’

  She stared in his direction. ‘He was too young to travel. But he must have lived. There was a son named Francis Crawford reared at Midculter. Isabelle told me.’

  ‘But not Mistress Sybilla’s,’ Lymond said. It seemed as if it had all been going on for a very long time. He kept his voice level, and patient, and drained of all shade of emotion. ‘It seems likely that the baby you saw in Paris died just after birth. I have seen the death certificate. Then she adopted me as her son, and brought me up by the same name. It makes no difference. There is only one thing that none of us knows. We do not know who bought the Paris house for Mistress Sybilla. We do not know the name of the father of the baby son born to her there. But you did, did you not? It was on the paper you signed.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I knew him. He came to see her in the convent. That, you know, was how they met. His house was near by. Ah, pretty, pretty the pair they made!’ She strained towards him. ‘You don’t hold it against her?’

  Lymond said slowly, ‘I told you. I was born of a different mother.’

  ‘But with the same name?’ Her uncomprehending face remained fixed on his, and then slowly cleared. ‘Of course. Then you are Béatris’s child, by the same father.’

  And she spoke in the same flat and querulous voice, the name he had borne in his mind like a slave-brand through most of the long, solitary years of his life.

  It was of no importance. Birth did not matter: heredity was merely a hurdle; one was what one made of oneself: that and no other. Ask one more question, and there would be nothing left to ask, ever, that mattered to him.

  But he did not ask it. Instead, he became aware that, sitting opposite him, Renée Jourda had been gripped by a sudden excitement. She said, ‘You say you are not a son of Mistress Sybilla’s? Then you did not come here to kill me?’

  Because of the headache, or because of the state of his thoughts he did not analyse that as quickly as he should have done. He said, ‘Of course not. Why should you think I would? To keep my parentage secret?’ And then, as his brain took hold, he said, ‘Madame Jourda, did someone tell you this? You knew my name. Were you expecting me?’

  She sat very still. And now the fire did not renew the illusion of youth but lit, without pity, the blank face of age and fatigue and helpless futility. Renée Jourda said, ‘They said they would kill me if I warned you.’

  ‘The Spaniards,’ Lymond said; and she did not contradict him. He bent, and lifted his sword and walking quickly and quietly, made his way to the window. It was not her fault. But he should have remembered that pigeons do not fly for no reason.

  The yard was empty, but the bolt of the barn door was not driven home, as he had left it.

  He left the window as quietly as he had reached it. ‘I’m sorry. Goodbye, Madame Jourda,’ said Lymond; and unlocking the door, walked out, sword in hand, into the sunshine.

  No one rushed on him; no one fired; no one shouted. He continued to move unhurriedly across the strewn yard until he reached the barn door, and if he paused there, it was just for an instant. Then he pulled the door open and walked inside without hesitation.

  ‘Christ, that was quick,’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘If you needed a woman as much as that, I could have got you a pair at the Trois Têtes in Calais. Now we’ve come all this way, are you going to let us all in to see her?’

  He was there, grinning as he lolled in his peasant clothes on the rack of dry boughs, Lymond’s discarded hat crammed on his dyed Italian curls. Beside him, less at ease, was Daniel Hislop. And standing about in the sodden straw were half a dozen of Hislop’s men from Péronne.

  Piero Strozzi said, ‘I know. It is bad enough to have one foolish general flaunting his field-skills like a new-made ensign drummer-boy. We all wish to show the soldiery that we can, if need be, cook better puddings than the cook does. I think, however, if you have finished, we should return to Compiègne. The war will be cooling without us.’

  Lymond said, ‘Did you track me here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Danny. The hair moved on his scalp at the tone of the question.

  ‘When did you arrive?’

  Piero Strozzi also had stopped grinning. ‘When you took the milk in.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else?’

  ‘No one. No one else followed you. Of that you may be sure. And there is no one else round the farm. Why?’ said Piero Strozzi sharply.

  ‘We are in a Spanish trap,’ Lymond said. ‘Meant for me. But now, of course, they will have you also. I suppose you have all the bloody Calais notes in your jerkin?’

  ‘I left them at Péronne. The girl betrayed you?’ said Strozzi. He was moving already, his sword drawn, his eyes on the windows.

  ‘It’s an old woman. I lit a fire for her. Better puddings,’ said Lymond flatly. Danny had never seen him so totally devoid of all that could be called human emotion. ‘Have you horses?’

  ‘No,’ said Strozzi. ‘And it is too late, in any case. Here they come.’

  They were, indeed, Spanish troops: thirty horsemen, under a captain. The Duke of Savoy knew the value of the prize he intended to capture. They combed the trees with their groined shining helmets and took their places in a ring round the buildings, busy as clockwork artefacts of wax and quicksilver. Then the captain rode into the yard and with ten men dismounted beside him, called upon el conde Criafordo to surrender.

  ‘They have left their horses in the trees,’ said Lymond. ‘And they don’t know as yet that there are eight of you. You should be able to do it. You must have got your bloody bâton for something other than scoutcraft.’

  Which made Marshal Strozzi’s temper rise, and events happen commensurately quickly. Danny, obeying orders, kept his mouth shut and saw to it that his six soldiers understood that they were in a good deal more danger from their two leaders than they were from the enemy. And that when they were told to catch pigeons, it meant that they had to catch pigeons, and be quick about it.

  In the yard, Captain Alferez Carasco was obeying his orders also. The Herrervelos had not been entrusted with this work, nor had Count Wittgenstein’s Germans. Only Captain Carasco’s light horse could be depended upon to bring back alive and well the important general who, unlikely though it seemed, was to visit this old peasant in person.

  Even after the intelligence reached them, the Duke had refused to believe it. Then they had called on the old woman and found that indeed she knew the name of el conde Criafordo and had been nurse long ago to his mother. She was told what to do if the gener
al visited her. And at the first sight of her smoke he, Captain Carasco, had acted.

  When, after three summons, there was no answer from the hidden man, Captain Carasco ordered his hackbutters to fire a volley through the shut door of the farmhouse and then, with men on either side, burst it open and began to search through it. He came out redfaced and addressed his lieutenant. ‘The woman says he left. He guessed we were coming.’

  ‘Mi capitán, no one has left the farm,’ the man said. ‘It is not possible.’

  Which was precisely when the flutter of wings from the hayloft drew their attention to the pigeon holes under the barn roof. His good humour restored, Captain Carasco gave the required orders.

  They ringed the barn first; and then called for surrender. Next, after firing some shots, six soldiers burst in and gathered on the wet straw under the trapdoor. Above their heads they could hear quite clearly the enemy general’s footsteps in the hayloft. But he must have climbed by rope, and drawn it up after him. There was no ladder.

  They reported and returned, their ears burning, with the captain.

  It was a very high barn. One of them, upheld by two others, managed to reach the trapdoor and ram it back against no opposition. They saw the top man pull himself up and round, drawing his sword as he entered the hayloft. He rose and moved out of sight. For a moment more there was silence, except for the creak of his steps on the ceiling. Then he howled. Above their heads there broke out a confusion of stamping; the clash of steel; the grunts of two men locked in combat.

  Captain Carasco jerked his head. The pyramid reformed. One man and then a second disappeared up through the trapdoor and a moment later, on his orders, a rope came down which allowed the last fortunate three to ascend. ‘Remember!’ roared Captain Carasco. ‘You are to overwhelm him with numbers. He is not to be rendered unusable.’