Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Kate walked round with her lamp, testing locks. Upstairs, she stopped by Philippa’s door and laid her warm cheek for a moment against it. But there was no sound inside; and after an interval she touched the timber in sombre caress and then left it. Philippa heard her but did not speak, or rise from the windowseat.

  She had been there since Lord Wharton’s messenger had come to tell them that Francis was coming. She had retreated there stage by stage since the first good-humoured reports had come in from Newcastle: did Mistress Somerville know they had caught a French ship, with two Scottish nobles on board her? And then Jerott arriving, grim-faced, with Sybilla: Richard was in Berwick being held to ransom; and Francis had been taken, no one knew where, into England. Then the messages from Richard himself, and the delay while they located Lord Wharton. Then Richard, in person, with the laconic news that Francis had been found, and they were to wait for him.

  ‘Unless matters change, you should not meet,’ Sybilla had said to her son’s wife, reflectively, as if it were a slight affair, and open to contingency.

  The last time she, Philippa, and Francis had met was on the night of a summer thunderstorm, when she had flung the dark curtains across the eight blazing windows at Sevigny.

  How could it begin again: the anguish of touch and withdrawal; of unspoken words and unanswered silences; of absence and sleeplessness and unending suffering?

  Adam knew it: she had seen the look in his eyes when Sybilla came back with that quiet pronouncement: ‘I made him promise to live, and to come back to Scotland.’

  She thought even Jerott knew it; although she had heard what occurred at the Authie, and knew that it was Jerott’s hand which had drawn him from the water, as Sybilla’s from the fire.

  Fire, and water. Where had she heard that before?

  So, he was coming. And if there was a way out for them both, it was for her to find it. And alone: since the night on her voyage to England he had not tried to reach her. But that, of course, would be because of his promise.

  Towards dawn, she left the casement over the gentle garden where the oboe had stood; and lying still on her bed listened, and watched, but heard and saw nothing.

  *

  The next morning she kept to the music room. From there you could see clear down to the gatehouse, and to the moors lifting beyond, bleached under the pallid blue sky of November. On the first rise, a planting of firs, straddled like peacocks, bore under its plumes the pale lilac bloom of new woodsmoke.

  Philippa stared at it. Today a single man would ride over the fall of the moor. She would not be at the gatehouse this time, intent on his betrayal; although perhaps Kate would stand here again, watching, unable to avert what was coming.

  There was a book of music propped on the harpsichord. Her mother had been here, then, with Adam. It was easy to see why, from lending a man’s strength in the manor, Adam had come to linger, and why Kate had found it so grateful to discover beside her, at last, a human being whose hand she could take. With the insight particular to her nature she had moved through each day as it opened for her, and had hidden nothing from Philippa’s eyes. Only, in her hearing, neither Adam or Kate had touched the lute or the spinet or the harpsichord which had belonged to Gideon, and which Francis had made his own, before music, too, had betrayed him.

  Towards noon, the man Richard had posted came riding downhill to tell them that Mr Crawford had been sighted.

  Philippa heard the bustle. A moment later the door of the music room opened.

  It was not Kate, or Adam, but Archie Abernethy. Forbidding; wrinkled; authoritarian as the menagerie keeper he had once been in Saint-Germain, in Rouen, in Stamboul, in Tarnassery, he said, ‘Lord Culter and Mr Blyth are for riding over the moors now to meet him. I’ll take ye, if ye want to go with them.’

  Philippa turned and looked at him. ‘You know him,’ she said.

  The unwinking black eyes looked back at her. ‘There’ll be ae thing in his mind: how ye are faring. If he sees you, he will know. Forbye …

  ‘… Forbye,’ said Archie Abernethy gently, ‘he has been sick and will be low, I dare say; and in need of friends.’

  It was what she had wondered, all through the night. He had said he did not think he could change. But he had been sound then. She said, ‘Yes. Tell them to wait. I will come with you.’

  They left Sybilla at the gatehouse with Adam and Kate to keep her company and cantered up the long rising slopes: Richard and Jerott first, with Philippa and Archie following. The wind on their faces was bright and sharp and the horses’ shoulders worked, polished velours in the shallow sunshine; while Philippa’s cloak scudded like a green sail behind her, with her shining brown hair as its ensign.

  *

  A Marshal of France, the Voevoda of all Muscovy, is never alone.

  It was a long time since he had ridden like this, with no valets, no footmen, no grooms, no harbingers at his heels, and no luggage, and no retinue of gentlemen lances. The last he had had until a moment ago, and had not been sorry to leave them.

  He was tired, but not in distress, for the ride was a hag on the post; a moment to record, as the ride through France had been an act of ritual.… A free and gentle reminder of a familiar book, with the wide skies of Northumberland over him, and the wind, and the moors, yellow and brown, rising to Scotland.

  Tomorrow, he would go there. Today, in Flaw Valleys, he would see Philippa again. He would learn, looking at her, how she had borne the weight of this deadly separation, and would read in her eyes the understanding which no one else living could offer him. And receive so much more: her clear, cool judgement on all that had happened since Sevigny, from the great issues down to those most desperately minor and personal.

  He would see her.

  He would see whether she painted her lashes in the same way; and her brown eyes could encompass the same horrendous range of expression: from freezing superiority through scathing correction to untrustworthy whimsy when she was attacking him, or tormenting him, or holding her own in violent argument.

  He would see whether the sardonic, curling lips seemed as soft, and the high brow as round and sweetly polished and the slender body as lithe, with its budding sweetness now all come to ripen.

  When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall

  And she me caught in her arms, long and small,

  Therewith all sweetly did me kiss

  And softly said, ‘Dear heart …’

  His horse stumbled in the tussocky ground and made him realize, then, how thoughtlessly fast he was riding … how thoughtlessly fast he was thinking.

  Nothing had changed. Every passion was low, every appetite dull except one; and it seemed now that it would never leave him. They had been wise: they had taken care for each other once. How could he burden her again? How could he go to Flaw Valleys?

  His mare was weary. Unlike his mount at Dieppe she obeyed him unquestioningly when he laid his reins against her neck and nudged her into the turn; the slow sweep which would take him away from the pain that could not be borne and towards the emptiness that held only pain that was bearable.

  Someone shouted, then, from a belt of trees on the hill just ahead of him. He had been going to ride on, but it was not a place in his life where he would deny help to any man. So he turned the mare’s head, and putting her into a gentle trot, rode up and over.

  *

  Richard shouted twice, smiling. They had not quite reached the trees when they had seen, far off, the moving horse with its bareheaded rider who turned, hearing his voice, and then after a moment put the horse at the sloping ground which led to the pine grove.

  With Jerott alongside, Culter laughed aloud and kicked his mount into a gallop. Just before the two horses drew abreast of the wood, a man walked out of it.

  A dark young man, too well dressed, one could see even at this remove, to be a cottager. A man with something dark in each hand, who paid no attention to the two horsemen approaching behind him, but looked only in the other dir
ection, where the single rider, slowing a little, was unawares nearing the hilltop.

  And so the amber hair of Francis Crawford’s father, which all his life had marked him out: for hurt, for passion; for treachery; performed its last destined office in the sunshine and fresh winds of England that morning. A single rider, a sober doublet and cloak might have escaped notice. But not the bare, golden head.

  Austin Grey had left Berwick with a longer journey than Lymond to make. He counted on the slowness of the armed escort, and perhaps some weakness in Lymond himself to give him the advantage he needed. And riding faster than he had ever done in his life, he reached before Lymond the point just short of Flaw Valleys where their two paths must intersect.

  Then, it was merely a matter of waiting.

  He knew he was about to act outside the law, as his own executioner. No other man would do it. No other man could see, it seemed, the rottenness under the enchantments; the hypocrisy within that plotting brain, that graceless tongue. The greed, the lust, the careless arrogance that had broken Philippa.

  He had learned, at Guînes, to kill his man to save others. When his quarry, unsuspecting, had moved within range Austin Grey walked steadily forward and lifting the first of his pistols, took aim.

  Riding flat out, Richard might have reached him in time. It was Jerott, his face white as ghost coal, who seized his sword-arm and reins and hindered him, the horses stamping and plunging. And it was Jerott who cried out as, amazed and distracted, Richard fought him, ‘No. Oh Christ, no. It should have happened long ago. Don’t stop it. No one else could do it for him.’

  While he was speaking, the pistol in the trees fired, and then its neighbour; and in a screaming rush, the birds left the woodland.

  At pointblank range, there was no possibility of missing. He aimed into the fair, weary, rancourless face, and then at the heart, and both balls found their mark and brought death in the end, not with the sweet ambiguity of an arrow but with the finality which frees the earth at once of body and soul, and all that was good or bad in either.

  Either ball would have killed. The second struck through to the horse, which fell, dying. Archie Abernethy cried thickly, ‘Don’t look!’ as Philippa slid to the ground; and kneeling, cradled her there on the grass, her eyes muffled against his rough jerkin. Then Jerott dragged out the pistol he, too, carried, and dismounting, walked towards Austin.

  The young Marquis of Allendale made no effort to evade him. It was an execution. Allendale was not afraid to answer for it to Lymond’s rotten cohorts. Only the smile on his lips wavered when he saw Philippa: and he was not sorry to die when Jerott, weeping, lifted his weapon and fired it.

  After that, Archie could not hold her; but by then the horse was still, and Richard had flung his cloak and Jerott’s over the carnage. She lifted only a corner; and after a long while unclasped her own cloak and laid it, green as young turf, over the others.

  Richard said, ‘There could have been no quicker death. And in the open, with friends not far off.’

  ‘Because of me,’ Philippa said. ‘Austin killed him because of me.’

  Richard lifted and held her. His hands were shaking. ‘You heard what Jerott said. No one else could do it for him.’

  ‘But for me, he would not have needed it done at all,’ Philippa said. Then she added, ‘I think Sybilla is coming.’

  That made Richard leave her, to walk back over the hill. After a moment Jerott rose and walked back also, to meet Adam and Kate and say what had to be said to Sybilla. That now she had one son only living. That Francis, the best loved of the three, had now left her.

  Philippa stood. Someone sobbed. Someone said, ‘It is finished. Remember me no longer; or my children, or my children’s children.’

  But something remained. You have a brain. Use it. He lived in her, his disciple. For her to think, now, as he would have done. And to act always thereafter.

  For him, the gateway had opened, and the loss was hers to bear: that at least she could do, and honour his teaching. She could remember what he was and what had died with him: all the virtues and vices of Scorpio: In manners well dignified. In feats of warre and courage invincible. Contentious: challenging all honour to himself Valiant lover of warre, hazarding himself for all Perils. And that other he had: a capacity for human love so great that its denial in Sybilla had changed his life; and its power, once unleashed for herself, had been more than he could manage.

  What had he left behind him? Herself, whom he had never touched. Kuzúm, who might not be his. Men throughout Scotland and over the narrow seas who lived different lives because they had known him. To carry his bright legacy into the future, he did not require to have children. No one, once they had met him, could remain the same.

  So spoke the brain. The heart cried aloud, to the empty air, ‘Is it for this thou wast created? You were wrong, Jerott, wrong; and Sybilla was right. Every day, every hour he lived mattered. He belonged to life: it should have been granted him.’

  ‘My dear, look up,’ Archie said.

  She could hear, from distant voices, that Sybilla had come. Someone shouted, and there was an answering call from the gatehouse, remote over the folds of the moors. She looked up.

  Beyond the last of the trees, a rider was breasting the slight hill towards them. As she watched, he slowed his horse from a trot to a walk and then, after what seemed to be some hesitation, slipped his feet from the stirrups and dismounted altogether.

  Behind her, the murmuring voices had stopped.

  The world ceased. Only the spirit stayed, watching.

  This was not a man with pistols in his hands. He stood, with the wintry boughs swaying and swaying, frail as leaf ghosts behind his fair head, and his person as still as the tree-stems.

  And she had crossed, now, the boundary she wanted to cross; for the face was the one which, before God she loved; and the look was the one upon which she had opened her eyes, lying within the folds of his cloak in the desecrated house where he had been born.

  Then he said, ‘Philippa?’ in the key she had come to learn at Sevigny; which was not the light, charming voice which had drawn her from her warm home here at Flaw Valleys, and had taken her through deeper seas and over crests more steep than her spirit alone would ever have striven to conquer.

  And if they were on the same side of the boundary, it must be real; for Sybilla was standing beside her, and Kate and Jerott and Richard … all of them, silent as she was, and gazing. So she began to walk forward.

  He stayed where he was; and after a little it became clear that she was going to reach him, and touch him.

  Then she started to run.

  He did not move even then until the last second, when her hands reached his shoulders and he flung his own hands out from his sides, and kept them there. Then those left behind saw Philippa lift her palm and turn her cheek over and over against his, like someone blinded.

  On that his hands locked, imprisoning them both. He held back one moment longer. Then he slid his fingers into her hair and bending his head, sought her mouth as a man withered by sun might seek water.

  They are made for one another, and they know it, his wise friend had said. Kate turned from watching, to Adam.

  Jerott Blyth also turned; and walking slowly, knelt by the green cloak; and after a moment, dropped his face in his hands.

  My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.

  My beloved is dead.

  Chapter 13

  L’arbre qu’estoit par long temps mort seché

  Dans un nuict viendra à reverdir.

  They set off that evening to take Marthe Crawford to the home of her fathers, which she had never known. And behind them, in care of Flaw Valleys, left Philippa, and Sybilla and her younger son, who could not easily travel.

  To Jerott’s question of ‘Why? Why?’ Sybilla could only say, ‘She was coming, perhaps to find you. Jerott, what will you do?’

  ‘Bury her at Midculter, if you will allow m
e,’ he said. ‘And then leave.’

  ‘For France?’

  ‘For Malta, I think,’ Jerott said. ‘It is different, now. I should rather fight than be a merchant. Danny Hislop, perhaps, would come with me.’

  Only Richard, as they were preparing to move off, said to his mother. ‘She couldn’t have been coming to Jerott.’

  ‘No,’ said Sybilla. ‘But it will do him no harm to think, in years to come, that he was in love with her and she with him.’

  ‘Why, then?’ said Richard.

  ‘I think,’ said Sybilla, ‘to follow Francis. Someone took her for him on the way and delayed her: there is a note of indemnity in her saddlebag. Also a letter for Francis. I shall give it to him in the morning. Today is his.’

  Today had been his, and nothing could touch him. They had arranged, without him, the decent bier which would carry Austin to his home, and the account they would give there of the chance enemy shot that had killed him. He had stood for a long time beside the closed coffin that held the broken bones and golden hair of his sister; and then had closed the door on it to find Philippa waiting, as he used to wait outside her room, to join with him her hands and her warmth and her comfort.

  In one stride indeed, the wall had been scaled and the boundary crossed. Death had sprung the trap; shock brought the release; desire, broken now from all bondage, had excavated clean with its torrent all the poisoned gulf which had lain between them. To be apart, in those hours, was more than they could bear; and to touch a thing of sweetness and anguish. She moved all day, lightly, in the shelter of his arm.

  Then, standing at the gatehouse with Francis, she kissed Kate, who was weeping, and watched Jerott and Adam take their leave also.

  Richard said, ‘You will come soon? We need you.’ And Francis said, ‘We shall both come.’

  Archie Abernethy was the last to go from Flaw Valleys.