Checkmate
Page 47
It sounded innocuous. Late in life, Richard had begun to master the game played so well by his younger brother. But Philippa, who had Lymond for her fencing-master, saw suddenly through it. He had been told of her attachment, and was probing it.
In the seraglio, one learned the trappings, at least, of a golden diplomacy. ‘Not in the least,’ Philippa said. ‘But le mal preveu ne donne pas grand coup, as they say. Perhaps he will mend his manners now that the Bishops are here, and God will come with feet of wool, surprise him asleep, and waken him with an iron arm. Archie won’t like it at all.’ Who had hinted at the state of her feelings for Lymond? Jerott, maybe. She knew Jerott had called on Sybilla.
But it was not Jerott. Lymond had seen what was happening; and softer footed than God, was standing behind Richard Crawford, speaking gently. ‘Everything she says is a lie, and the arm of iron which pushed me into Catherine d’Albon’s embraces did not belong, I would have you know, to the Deity.’
He stared straight at Philippa. ‘I tried to convince my furious friends you had a weakness for me.’
Damn him. Damn him for letting her down—in what drunken access of fury? And damn him for insisting now, belatedly, on redeeming it. Philippa said, ‘If I had, I grew out of it early. Like the Etrurian mule who ate hemlock, any poor ass seduced by a Crawford——’ She broke off abruptly, remembering.
‘… is apt to wake flayed alive,’ Lymond finished. He had himself well in hand. Archie was right as usual. He said blandly, ‘You can’t be expected to recall the fate of each of my mistresses. Even Richard gets muddled up sometimes. Why don’t you call on Austin Grey instead of corresponding with him? You won’t meet me. Like yourself, I seem to be permanently occupied with other people’s errors of judgement.’
He was correct: fear of meeting him was the main reason which had kept her from the Hôtel d’Hercule. But not, as he must suppose, because of the manner of their last meeting. The others had moved away, leaving Lymond and herself for a moment standing together. She said, conscious this time of being under an undiluted and possibly suspicious regard, ‘Tell Austin I haven’t forgotten. I shall call on him presently.’
‘He will be deeply moved, while preserving a gentlemanly fortitude. You could either marry him here,’ Lymond said, ‘or go home with him two days after the Dauphin’s wedding. In any case, leave instructions for Willie Grey’s ransom. Advise the Queen when you are going. And write to Kate. She thinks I am keeping you in Paris instead of vice versa.’
‘There are times,’ said Philippa shortly, ‘when I feel like the entire Russian army.’
‘There are times,” said Lymond equally shortly, ‘when I wish that you were. It would solve the whole Tartar problem and save Ottoman Turkey for Jesus.’
‘My dear Mr Crawford! Caelum, non animos mutant, qui trans mare corrunt. So near dissolution, and still bickering!’
The voice, a sacerdotal one, came from behind her. She recognized it, but would not entertain it. Lymond, on the other hand, not only identified the owner but took steps to deal with him. ‘Why, naturally, my dear Master Elder. Chi Asino va a Roma, Asino se ne torna. Have you not preserved your habitual qualities? And how is your sweet charge, and the Countess of Lennox?’
The Countess of Lennox.
An ambitious and powerful woman, who has been the downfall of more than one comely youth in her day. Such as a fair, haunted child of sixteen, with a French degree and his first major battle behind him.
She had known of the association. She had not known how it began. And looking at the worldly courtier smiling beside her, she wondered if Lymond had forgotten. She turned.
Master John Elder was secretary to Lady Lennox, and her son’s tutor. Philippa knew and disliked him of old. He stood, waxily smiling with a new black cap clapped over his lugubrious ears and a new black robe knocking about his slippered ankles. He said, ‘I come bearing my mistress’s loving greetings to her charming niece, the little Queen so soon to enter matrimony. And my young pupil, I thank you, is well. You know he and the Queen have exchanged verses in Latin?’
‘How delightful,’ said Philippa kindly. ‘And will you stay, Master Elder, for the wedding?’
‘I have been invited,’ he said. ‘Am I not fortunate? The Earl of Lennox is distempered and his dear lady must needs stay and nurse him. But she charged me, did I see you both, to tell you that she trusts you remember her.’
With curses, as she well knew, sending that decorous message. And delivering it, John Elder must be hugging a private pleasure known, he believed, only to himself and to his semi-royal mistress.
For Margaret Lennox was not only the woman who had taken a sixteen-year-old boy and ruined him. She was the woman who, to strike this formidable antagonist and his relatives from the path of her family, had promised Leonard Bailey six thousand pounds for the public proof of Lymond’s base parentage.
Only John Elder did not know, unless Bailey had told him, that she, too, was in the market for the same information. Philippa said, ‘Do you know Paris well, Master Elder?’
He smiled. The lean, Caithness face, untidily bearded, had nothing generous in its lineaments. ‘I know some parts better than others. I visit friends. I was not so fortunate as some, to be educated here. I come of humble parents, Madame de Sevigny. Humble but law abiding. I cannot aspire to the splendid caste of your husband. A lowly priest stands in awe of a descendant of the superb, the stainless, the magnificent Crawfords. I can only draw maps and string some Latin together and nurture my noble young prince, who may surprise you ali one of these days.’
His eyes, bright with malice, flickered from Lymond to herself and back again. He had hoped to hurt. But had he known the real truth, Philippa thought, he would have cut very much deeper. And had he known that she knew it, he could not have resisted the temptation to taunt her.
It meant that Bailey had not betrayed her interest. It probably meant that the existence of the Hôtel des Sphères was still unknown to Elder.
Lymond, his gaze restful, was allowing a pause to develop. The irony could not have escaped him, even if he perceived, as she did, that it was founded on nothing solid. Then he said, ‘He certainly should. With his education and heritage, Harry Darnley will be the only turncoat in England who can practise sodomy in Alcaic stanzas. Now he can’t write any more winsome verse to his cousin, how are you going to impress his charms on the little French princesses? Or would you like me to speak for him?’
Between the strands of his beard, Elder yellowed. It was a cut, you had to allow, of inspired virulence. Darnley was twelve: a suitable age for betrothal. But to flatter his character at the French court Lymond was the last person Lady Lennox could depend upon.
‘You are too kind,’ said the priest at last. ‘Indeed, I shall send word of your offer to her ladyship. And meantime, perhaps I may perform the same office on your behalf with your future wife, Mademoiselle d’Albon?’
‘Why,’ said Lymond, surprised. ‘I should appreciate it if you would. There are some items in my early history which Mademoiselle d’Albon has yet to hear about.’
Fool. After carrying it off, he had allowed Elder to sting him. Philippa, exasperated, marched up to the blaze with a hand-squirt. ‘There are a few episodes in your later history she ought to be warned about as well,’ said Lymond’s wife with acidity. ‘She may be hoping for Lug of the Long Arms but what she has is the family Crawford, qui peut de tous bois faire flèches in order to sit in the butts and shoot hearty rounds at each other.’
The blue gaze had swung round upon her, but Master Elder’s shot arrived in the meantime. ‘And when,’ said the priest, ‘am I to wish Madame la comtesse well of a new marriage?’
‘My good man,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t you know the court has opened a book on it? At the last hearing there were eight separate contenders, and offers still coming in from abroad, like wolves forced out of the forest by famine. I hear the odds at the moment are in favour of a triple union with the Schiatti cousins.’
‘Jesus Christ … And the rules?’ Lymond said. Someone, approaching, blessedly spoke to and led away Master Elder, who bowed and retreated.
‘No rules. Just mincing knives,’ said Philippa aggressively. Common sense told her at any cost to avoid the personal. Deaf to common sense, she said, ‘I gather you are holding a competition as well. We are dazzled by the goguettes and gaudisseries.’
‘Osse sur Olympe et Pelion sur Osse. They call me the darling of the masses,’ Lymond said. ‘Has Richard asked you to visit Sybilla?’
His gaze, full upon hers, was as searching as she had feared it would be. Returning it with unblinking candour, Philippa said, ‘He didn’t require to ask. I am going there in a day or two. I’m glad to note that Catherine is managing all her own marital arrangements. You wouldn’t expect me to make social calls if you had the remotest idea of the work entailed in bringing two unfortunate persons to the altar.’
Careless words. ‘It takes ten minutes, in my experience,’ Lymond said. He glanced round. ‘I must go look after my lordlings. We shall meet on the happy day of our annulment. I should be glad, by the way, if you would kindly refrain from escaping Osias. Your excursion the other day, wherever it took you, cost him a whipping.’
‘I shall allow Osias to follow me to my private engagements,’ Philippa said, ‘if you will allow Célie to follow you to yours.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You haven’t heard any more from, or about Grand-Uncle Bailey?’
‘No. Platfut he bobbit up with bendis and then went home. Or so it would appear. My men can’t trace him. It doesn’t alter the fact. I still require you to——’
‘… In all my doings to offend none but to please the godly. And the brightness of the light of the sun of our Justice and Equity hath caused the darkness of Injuries and Molestations to vanish away. I am sure,’ said Philippa with that particular acerbity called forth by the deceived from the deceiver, ‘that there must be a psalm to fit the occasion?’
There was; but not of the kind she had expected. He recited it, staring at her:
‘And with a blast doth puffe against
Such as would her correct.
Tush, tush (sayth she) I have no dread
Least myne estate should change.
And why? for all adversity
To her is very straunge.’
‘Are you implying,’ said Philippa coldly, ‘that I enjoyed being brought up surrounded by eunuchs?’
‘No,’ said Lymond. ‘But I expect you enjoyed it more than the eunuchs did.’ He hesitated, and she waited.
To be condemned eternally to choose his words in her company must be as irritating to him as it was painful to herself to suffer it. She knew she would hear nothing of Dieppe, or of Catherine, or even of Marthe’s disappearance, since it related to another of the disasters in their relationship. He had made no effort to excuse himself for that either, although she thought the faintly febrile nature of his conversation today owed something to his awareness of it.
He said, ‘I remember Gideon, your father. Austin is like him. He dislikes war. But he fought a fine battle at Guînes.’
To no one else, probably, would that sound like an apology for interference; and a question. Philippa said, ‘If … When he asks me, I propose to accept him.’
‘Lord Grey will be relieved to hear it,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid of the Lennoxes. They are out of favour in France.’
If that was all he had observed, she was safe. ‘The smylere with the knyf under the cloke? I’m not afraid of John Elder,’ she said. ‘But I’d be both i-hangyd and to-drawe before I’d turn my back on Margaret Lennox.’
‘Or on anybody,’ Lymond said pointedly. ‘Instead you prefer to sit in the butts, de tous bois faisant flèches, letting fly at them. In a day or two, with unusual economy, I shall be giving a banquet for the Commissioners which will also serve as a betrothal supper for Catherine. Do you wish to be present?’
Philippa allowed polite regret to inform every muscle. ‘Whatever day it occurs,’ she said, ‘I feel I have a previous engagement.’
‘May I congratulate you,’ he said agreeably, ‘on your evident popularity.’
‘Anything I can do,’ Philippa said, ‘to save you from the exhaustions of pluralism.’
She watched him go, in a running flash of costly minerals.
He had seen no special threat in Elder’s presence. He had had three or four instructions to give her, and that was all that concerned him. He had gone as soon as he could. He had no way of knowing that the Lennoxes were tracing his parentage. Or that, until she intervened, Leonard Bailey had been on the point of selling them all he knew.
It was to pull down Francis Crawford and not merely to attend the royal wedding that John Elder was in Paris. And it was for her, with all the skills she possessed, to deny him that extravagant pleasure.
Part IV
En bref seront de retour
sacrifices.
Chapter 1
Second et tiers qui font prime musique
Sera par Roy en honneur sublimé
Par grace et maigre presque demi eticque
Rapport de venus faux rendra deprimée.
Very soon after that, M. le comte de Sevigny, Chevalier de l’Ordre, gave his promised banquet for the Scottish Commissioners to Queen Mary’s wedding, combining it, as indicated, with a supper for his future bride, Catherine. The economy also indicated did not leap to the eye.
Nearly thirty years before, a boy at the Sorbonne, Richard Crawford had hurled river-pebbles over the decorated wall of the Hôtel d’Hercule at the corner of the rue des Augustins. It was then already fifty years old and one of the finest houses in Paris, owned by the Prévôt of the town and his family. When the last du Prat died, it became the palace in which the Crown housed the foreign visitors it most wished to honour. He little thought then, that one day he would ride through its gatehouse arch with the flower of Scottish nobility at his side, to pay court to his young brother Francis.
The yard was arcaded, as he expected it, with majolica Roman medallions inset below the frescoes which gave the Hôtel its name. The stable officers, the grooms, the footmen and the ushers who waited there were all in livery, but not in azure and argent with the pheon and phoenix of Culter; nor did the achievement over the doors display the invected bordure denoting a younger son of that house. Instead: ‘The chaplet proper of Sevigny,’ said the Lyon King of Arms beside him. ‘A French coat of arms, of course, and perfectly correct, although it only tells half the story. The two achievements to which he is entitled should be conjoined paleways. I should be happy to advise him.’
The Earl of Culter did not answer, nor did his mother, to whom he gave his hand as, alighting, they made their way in procession through the square hall and up the wide caissoned staircase to the first floor of the mansion.
The entrance to the first of the Hercule’s sequence of galleries was enclosed in a porch of white wrought Gothic marble, in which the form of the hero arched and strove in the exercise of his classic talents. Sybilla shivered. ‘If he shows you any shadow of discourtesy,’ Richard said, ‘I shall leave, and take the Commissioners with me.’
For some reason the strain left her face and she smiled at him. He did not understand her. He wished she had not insisted on accepting the invitation. Braced for anything, he led her from the porch and into the delicate warmth of a long, exquisite room lit by sunlight through which moved, smiling, the faces of friends: Scottish friends. Men he had known long ago, before they left Scotland to teach and to study in France; to go fighting or merchanting; to join the French King’s royal guard of Scottish Archers; to serve the court or take up an inheritance. Important men like young Arran, whose company had fought at Saint-Quentin and who, after the Queen, was in direct line to the Scottish throne. And important men who were not Scottish at all, but had spent m
uch of their lives fighting for Scotland in Scotland: the Sieur d’Estrée, M. de Thermes, the bonhomme M. de la Brosse … Pierro Strozzi, whom he and Sybilla had cause to remember best of all.
It was Strozzi, catching his eye, who gave a halloo and bounded towards him and Sybilla who, touching Richard’s arm, reminded him of the man at his side, waiting to receive him.
It was not Francis, but his master of household; an elegant, elderly gentleman who, smiling, delivered to all the Commissioners a perfect Court bow. ‘His lordship bids me give you his particular welcome. His home is yours; his servants are here to be treated as you would your own. He will give himself the happiness of joining you in this salon shortly.’
‘Your brother,’ said Lord James Stewart, drawling, ‘keeps regal style.’
‘He’s kept you waiting as well, has he?’ said Piero Strozzi, arriving definitively and in a single movement bowing to all the Commissioners present and saluting Sybilla twice on either cheek. ‘You are the most beautiful Scotswoman in the world, and I adore your son’s effrontery. But see the pleasures he has in store for us all. Lord Cassillis, there is your old tutor, Master Buchanan, locked fast in disputation with Nicolas de Nicolay over the Ptolemaic concept of the heavens. Do you think a poet and Latinist can persuade France’s leading cartographer that the Earth is the immovable centre of the Universe …? Lord Fleming, your good-brother the comte d’Arran stands beside Daniel in the Lion’s Den without flinching; and my lord Orkney will see a few scholarly faces he recognizes by the statue of a gentleman—or is it a lady?—with the head of a hawk.’
‘God in heaven,’ said Richard Crawford, gazing at the gentleman with the head of a hawk. Moving with pleasure to their appointed encounters, the other Commissioners and those who followed them stepped past and were accepted into the gathering. Wine was being handed. From the calm of the statuary, Richard gazed at the long tables of marble and bronze and the burden of treasure upon them; to the gold and coral Chia Ching porcelain and the jewelled silver-gilt Venetian mirrors and candelabra tall as two men, upon which the symbols were none that the Christian church would recognize.