Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘He decided against it,’ said Philippa smoothly. ‘Clearly an error.’

  ‘I stand humbled,’ said Marthe. ‘And Renée Jourda?’

  ‘She was a maid at the Abbey of Notre-Dame de la Guiche. She left before you were born,’ Phillipa said. ‘When Sybilla abandoned the Poor Clares, Renée followed her. Leonard Bailey knew I would probably visit the convent. He must have known about Renée Jourda. It was a safe guess that once I had been to la Guiche, I would tell Mr Crawford. And that when he heard, Mr Crawford would want to visit Flavy.’

  There was a little silence. Then Marthe dropped the letter back in Philippa’s lap. ‘I doubt,’ she said, ‘if Francis is going to be cured by the heady knowledge that he was sired by the rude Gavin upon the Dame de Doubtance’s bastard. It was a romantic idea of Mr Blacklock’s, but I know nothing that will help matters, and it is a long time since Volos. What do you suggest? Have you not laid bare some genial morsel of genealogy that will make him whole as Kentigern’s robin?’

  ‘No. I remain receptive to ideas,’ said Philippa. ‘The bladder may be dipped, but never drowned. We have been a sad disappointment to Adam.’

  ‘Ah yes. Mr Blacklock,’ said Marthe. ‘I have always held that sentimentality is the ruin of the amateur artist. I know a good deal about Mr Blacklock: Jerott and he spent a crapulous evening together. Are you aware, for example, that the scar on his face was caused by a whiplash from Francis?’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa. The closed paper between her fingers, she rested in the depths of her chair looking up at the curling smile and the yellow silk hair of her interlocutor. Where Marthe moved, soft as vapour in webs of antique, intangible richness, Philippa sat, still and burnished and clear-eyed, and studied her.

  Marthe said, ‘Is that what repels you? All men on occasion revert to the animal. The Schiatti; the poets; the seigneurs who pay court to you would be no better. What strange Northumberland prudery barred Francis from your bed?’

  (Why ask me? someone said. So that you may ask yourself, someone replied. What a silly question.)

  The brown gaze did not shift, or veil itself. ‘To be accurate,’ Philippa said, ‘it was a strange, Celtic prudery. You forget. He did share my bed.’

  ‘Under duress. You were a child. But now you are a grown woman. Would it not amuse you to make him think of you as one? You are his wife, and it is four months to Easter.’

  ‘… And look at the effect a whipping had on Adam?’ said Philippa. ‘Of course, I am tempted. But, my friends, this is blood, and not the ichor which blest immortals shed. I mentioned before. I am not made for martyrdom. I want to be free to make my choice of husband. And if I share my favours, I forfeit my annulment.’

  Marthe stood looking at her, arrested in puzzlement. ‘He is only ten years older than you are. I was younger by a generation than Gaultier.’

  Philippa played the only card she had left; and the cruellest. ‘He is in love with someone else,’ she said quietly.

  Pride made the next pause a long one; but even pride broke in the end.

  ‘Who is she?’ said Marthe.

  ‘He wouldn’t say,’ Philippa answered. Her gaze unwavering, she drove home her advantage. ‘But when he is freed, you are anxious he should not go back to Russia?’

  Marthe moved. ‘I am averse to waste,’ she said lightly. Smiling again, that perverse, slanting smile, she lifted her hand and stroked the quilled porcupine on the chimney-piece. ‘Perhaps even frustration is better than being split by four horses in Muscovy. If you don’t think so, I am sure Mademoiselle Catherine d’Albon does.’

  Reflectively, Philippa studied Marthe. Jerott had said that on Volos, only Marthe had understood her brother well enough to save him. Philippa suspected it had been achieved through competence, but from no natural sense of affection. ‘Of course, Mr Crawford has made an impression on her but she is, I think, cool. At least,’ said Philippa, considering with equal thoroughness both extra-marital seduction and rapine, ‘she guards her feelings.’

  ‘So should I, if the Maréchale were my mother,’ said Marthe. ‘But he is not cool.’

  Philippa looked at her. Was she meant to smile, remembering all the dissolute hosts of his lovers? And yet she was prepared to swear, if Marthe was not, that he had never embarked yet upon a debauch save deliberately, and with coldness.

  Elegans est animal. In some men the intellect governed the body, but the spirit escaped from its censorship. In the bedchamber, Marthe was wrong. In every other way, her careless assumption was all too accurate. It was because he was not cool that Sybilla’s betrayal had harmed him so vilely.

  Marthe was talking again. ‘Will you stay in France and help to encourage the girl? Or do the machinations of the nasty Mr Bailey deter you?’

  Her eyes on the fire, Philippa sat still and thought about it.

  She was free to go if she wished. Whatever had impelled Mary of Scotland to throw herself and Lymond together, it could not apply now, when the Queen of France had taken so forceful a hand in the game. And Catherine d’Albon her protégée was more than a possible bedfellow. She was also a possible instrument to turn Mr Crawford from Russia.

  She was free to go. But if, by staying, she could steer these two towards one another; if there still existed any fragment of history which would reconcile him to his family then nothing, Philippa thought, would make her go home but the demand he had made in his letter.

  She sat still, and let her eyes rest on it. A dismissive letter. A letter which hastened to say that the case was closed, the facts known, the actors due for dispersal. And there, in Bailey’s name, was an excellent reason why she, Philippa, should leave France quickly. Escorted by Adam. For Kate’s sake.

  She believed in the letter from Bailey. She believed there might be a degree of danger. She believed Renée Jourda was dead and had told Lymond little.

  What fretted her about Lymond’s note were its omissions. He had told her he would send for Renée Jourda. From Adam’s face she now knew the suggestion had never been feasible. To stop her plaguing him, Lymond had gone to Flavy himself. And had been captured. And had led false information, Adam said, which had misfired through no fault of his, and which even now might turn against the whole army.

  He had promised to bring her news. He had not promised, in so many words, to send for Renée Jourda. He had at no time intended to send for Renée Jourda.

  He had sent her news. He had not sent her the name of Sybilla’s lover, or made even the smallest comment on the whole worrying subject of Bailey.

  She had wept once because she could not escape, but that was behind her. They had met, she and Lymond, and the skies had not fallen. If she was hurt, she was able to conceal it. If he found matters not to his liking he, too, had the means to avoid her. And meanwhile, there was something at least she could do for him. Perhaps, because of those very omissions, more than she was at present aware of.

  For example, this matter of Bailey. It was true, the old man was vindictive. But it was also true that the old man was greedy. The last person, one would have said, to risk his pension for a moment of malice. Or to risk more than that if Lymond caught him. Some of that had been obvious even to Marthe, but Lymond had said nothing of it. If she wished to know more, she must make her own inquiries.

  Nor had he said anything, either written or verbal, about what might await him in Calais. She could not save him there. If, as Adam said, the plan misfired, there was nothing she could do except be here, under the same benign sky, and hope when his life drew to its end that she would know it.

  Tant que je vive … She could not be here. But from Philippa, poor silly infatuated Philippa, a warmth of some sort might perhaps reach him.

  To Marthe she said, ‘Do you know, I think I might stay in France for a week or two. After all, I want my annulment as well. And I want to prepare Kate for the Schiatti cousins.’

  Chapter 9

  Siege en cité, et de nuict assaillie

  Peu eschapés, non loing de mer c
onflict.

  The news Adam brought was the last to reach court before the vast army of France, coalescing, rolled against the two-hundred-year-old frontier which enclosed all that England still cherished of her years of dominion.

  Silence fell. The Court moved to Paris for the State Entry of the Cardinal Legate and in order that the King might make a public appeal for more money. Adam, bearing what funds the Treasury could supply, had long since returned to his headquarters. The restlessness that presages noble events hung in the air, harassing the attention. In Paris, everyone had seen the workshops working day and night; the covered wagons endlessly blocking the portals; the groups of engineers who would knock up the cook-shops at midnight. The Maréchale de St André, back from the coast, reported that a hundred and twenty ships had left, sailing west and laden with ordnance, and another forty, they said, had arrived at Ambleteuse with corn and wine and bacon and hurdles and ladders and cannon-shot. Then someone asked her the nature of her journey and she became belatedly vague. Her daughter, smiling, turned the conversation.

  Philippa helped. Attending functions with her own regal mistress she made a point of seeking out Catherine d’Albon. It needed forethought. The Maréchale had found it amusing that the comte de Sevigny’s wife should interest herself in her husband’s next marriage. Her daughter was more reserved. But because she was more perceptive, in time she saw more than the Maréchale.

  Madame de Sevigny’s interest was not crude or childish but simply friendly. Married only in name, she had no quarrel to pick with her husband. She did not even refer to him. She was merely there when one most needed kindness. When the great military confrontation that rumour talked about suddenly took to itself a designation. When through all the alleys of Paris the thickening whispers turned and clicked like the wheels of the watermills. Calais … Calais … They go to throw the English from Calais.

  If Calais fell, she was to have Francis Crawford—if he asked for her. One did not speak of it. In this campaign, the Duke de Guise was supreme commander. On that the King and court staunchly insisted. But the cognoscenti in Paris knew differently. Among these, one heard only two names: those of Strozzi and Sevigny.

  It was during this time that Philippa, watching the Queen’s lady of honour, learned her stature and learned also, with pity, her secret.

  So, rashly, Catherine had given her heart before she was asked for it. The daughter of a noble house, trained to court, skilled in all the liberal arts, she was a fitting wife for Lymond and Sevigny. She might enjoy a better fortune than that. She might prove to be one of the most private and exclusive circle of persons to whom Francis Crawford gave, without mocking, his friendship.

  If Calais fell. If the Duke of Savoy, less experienced than anyone thought, did not take a piece of suspect information at its face value and prepare for the Duke de Guise’s splendid army a reception they would never survive. If, whatever happened, the spearhead of that army lived to see it happen.

  Philippa talked to Catherine d’Albon, and played music with her, and read aloud and was read to, and did some fine and useless embroidery and attended all the sacerdotal celebrations graced by the Cardinal Legate, at which the King of France’s smile, also, was a little less than spontaneous, and the Cardinal of Lorraine was seen to be thoughtful.

  The last of these, with the feeblest of timing, was a Sunday wedding on a cold day in January between the second daughter of the Duchess of Bouillon and the second son of the Duke de Nevers, who was not there to witness it, and might never be.

  It was a wedding attended by young boys, by old men and by women. Kneeling jewelled at the nuptial Mass in the stiff, scented folds of their Court gowns: rose and verdet, orange, azure and cinnabar there prayed, smiling and aching, the brides and daughters and mistresses of all the young and well-born men who today were absent on the shores of the English Sea, where blood and flesh was their portion; steel their cincture; and gunsmoke, not incense, their mystery.

  Unaccountably, Marthe had attended. Enigmatic patron of all the arts, she took little account of her place on the fringe of the court, in spite of the persuasions of those she patronized. As Marthe, she was not invited: as Jerott Blyth’s wife, she would have none of it. So, at first, Philippa was disturbed and startled to see the smooth jewelled head held high in that uneasy company. Marthe’s escorts she knew because they were acquaintances of her own. Men of song; men of vision; men of ideas were those with whom Philippa also was at home. She knew already, from their talk, how many frequented Marthe’s lodging. At court, they were not slow to question her about her husband’s step-sister.

  That she could deal with. It was foolish also to ignore the obvious. Mirrored in Marthe were some of her brother’s most telling characteristics. It was not surprising that Marthe and she should be drawn to the same people.

  What troubled her was that Marthe should be here now, at wedding, at banquet and during all the persevering festivities through which, on the edge of the abyss, noblesse meticulously obliged. Since their friends were mutual, Philippa found Marthe beside her, coolly amusing, through most of the long afternoon. The Schiatti nephews, whom good manners restrained to begin with, soon found there was no need to avoid the subject of the comtesse de Sevigny’s promised annulment, and returned to exchanging barbed witticisms with those other gallants, rather youthful or excessively elderly, who also wished to appropriate Philippa’s attention. With a certain sardonic good humour, Lymond’s sister gave them friendly encouragement.

  It was not a kindness. Courts English, Oriental and French had instructed Philippa in the peerless art of disguising her feelings, but it was not easy to have Marthe compliment her on her witty composure, or to smile at Marthe’s account of the reason.

  The Schiatti cousins approved of Marthe. ‘She is right. Either Calais is won and your marriage is ended, or it is lost and M. your husband snatched up to heaven. Be merry. We are merry for you.’

  Then they looked remorseful, a little; because they had recalled, as they occasionally did, that she was English. That Calais to England was her other frontier; the place where her armies could land, her merchants bring their ships safely to enter the Continent for trade or for war, asking no other ruler his leave. The open gate at the other end of a thirty-mile drawbridge without which no easy exit was left. Then they forgot again, and were cheerful.

  Not so, Catherine d’Albon. Watching her as she sat through the banquet, Philippa sensed the strain which for other reasons oppressed her. If Calais fell, Lymond was Catherine’s. But first, he had to live through it.

  Philippa wondered if, like herself, Cathin had cajoled the plan of attack from a flattered gentleman of the secretariat. She wondered if, between one mouthful of food and the next, Catherine with twelve thousand horse and foot was also occupying all the marshy passages between Calais and France and attacking their strongholds: Sandygate, Frethun and Nielles, St Agathe, Coquelles and St Tricat. And after that, opening fire at the Newnham Bridge turnpike and charging it with eighty horses, so that the planks of the bridge thudded and splintered, and armour clashed and cannon exploded, and cries of France! France! Charge! Charge! twinned and soared with the cries of her countrymen.

  She wondered if, when talk lapsed before music, Catherine dwelt as she did on that freezing hour before dawn, when the French great cannon, sailed to Boulogne, opened up on the two key positions: the fort of Nieullay commanding the causeway, and Ruisbank, commanding the harbour. While the army, thirty-five thousand strong, lay between St Peter’s heath and the dunes, and the wagons of food and machines and munitions rolled in precisely to order.

  Fighting in sand, you had to storm and take Ruisbank, and under the guns of the city eighty paces away, prepare to ford the river belt-high to the citadel. Because of the mud, you had pitch-plastered hurdles to lie on. On account of the marshes, the ditches, the rivers and runnels of water which afforded the Pale its protection you had brought pioneers protected with stakes woven with willow, who cut the ditches and draine
d the moat water into the sand dunes.

  Then you breached the citadel, firing on it from three quarters with your sixty cannon and culverin; and risked the tide to fight your way into it, knowing that once in, the sea would cut you off from all help. Then, if you mastered the citadel, you commanded the bridge into the town, and on that you would turn all your fire.

  If, before you fired a shot, the army of the Duke of Savoy, waiting, did not flood from each strongpoint and destroy you.

  Catherine did not know what had happened at Ham. She was spared, perhaps, the worst of the beating foreboding that drove all other feeling from Philippa. She had never seen the kind of response Lymond made, from pride or from instinct, to a professional challenge. She feared his death: one could see that, and in each stolen silence, settled her thoughts on him.

  Perhaps he felt it. There were moments when, lost in spirit among the thundering gunfire at Calais, Philippa felt within reach of something familiar. As when, long ago, passing Gideon’s door, she could sense when her father was there: self-contained, occupied, content in his private absorption.

  But Lymond knew her feelings for him were not those of a daughter. Catherine was free to knock on that door: to send to him her thoughts and her love, to be with him through his time of danger.

  For Philippa, it would be inconceivable so to harass him. So, in a condition of strange, blank-eyed reserve which alternated, unobserved, with the social demands of the festival, Philippa fought her way through the long, grim afternoon as if she were side by side with the army at Calais, and yet forced her stubborn spirit to bend aside from its homing.

  The day ground on towards dusk. The King, with sallow gallantry, led the bride in pavanes and galliards. The Schiatti argued suavely over which, next day, would take Philippa hunting. The nobleman behind her, also a suitor, wished to know her exact plans for returning to Scotland, and by what means he might recommend himself to her family. The Queen of Scots, in an interval, demanded to meet Mistress Blyth, who was so amazingly like to her brother.