Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  To him, Francis gave no easy farewell, but set his hands lightly on the wiry shoulders and said, ‘How much of it did you see, back in Rouen?’

  ‘Not as much as the auld besom,’ said Archie. ‘She had a grip of me long before that, looking for you. It’s been a fair upgang. It’s a bloody sight easier with …’

  And Lymond laughed, his eyes brilliant. ‘I know. But I can’t offer you a zoo at St Mary’s. Can you make do with what I have?’

  ‘With Hoddim and Guthrie and Blacklock? What you have is a zoo,’ said Archie Abernethy; and shook his hand, and turned his thin leather back on Flaw Valleys.

  Then Sybilla retired, in broad daylight, and Francis said, in the empty upper reaches of the house, ‘It seems that if there is a room set aside for me, no one knows where it is.’

  ‘There is my room,’ Philippa said; and freeing her fingers, laid them on the latch of a door. ‘Here it is.’

  He made a little movement, turning his face into her hair. ‘Asik; Durr-i Bakht; Yunitsa … my dear, my dear …

  ‘I am in love-desire, and unless you take me now, I shall fall in pieces … but I do not think I can be moderate. Forgive me, forgive me …’

  But her breathing was as changed now as his, and all order retreating before the strength of the living force beating about them. She pressed the latch, and set the last door to lie open.

  ‘Khush geldi: welcome: thou art come happily,’ she said gently, and let him come, where he belonged, within her gouvernance.

  And so, incontinently, the striding flame that consumed them, without words, without courtship became, instead of the echo of lust, the cauterizing fire which expelled it for ever. For in the total extremity of need, with the fine mind overturned and subjugated for once by the overwhelming desires of his body, there still remained, drowned and helpless but there, the shadows of grace, and care, and courtesy, caught fast like stars in the deluge.

  It would have been enough, were she still the crippled Philippa of Sevigny, to have swept her with him. But although she marked them, rejoicing, she did not need them, for by then she, too, was part of the torrent.

  *

  He slept half the night through after that, motionless in her arms in the kind of peace he had probably not known since childhood. She wept a little, from happiness and from pity for him, and then herself sank into slumber.

  So that he had the felicity of wakening her; and the first thing she knew was the exquisite drift of his hands, and his voice saying, ‘Qedeshet, Mistress of all the Gods, Eye of Ra, who has none like her.… Come and let us beget all kinds of living things.’

  And then his true courtship of her had its beginning; and to the worship of his body, he joined the fairest garlands from the treasure-house of his mind, and made a bower for her.

  Adored; caressed into delight; conducted by delicate paths into ravishing labyrinths where pleasure, like carillons on glass, played upon pleasure, she leaned on his voice, and sometimes answered it.

  … You mee embraced; in bosom soft you mee

  Cherished, as I your onely chylde had bee …

  … Quhen I wes hungry, ye me fed

  Quhen I was naikit, ye me cled

  Oftymes ye gave me herberye

  And gaif me drynk, quen, I was drye

  And vesyit me with myndis meik

  Quhen I wes presonar, and seik …

  And once, triumphantly, ‘And Harald went with his host out to Jerusalem-land, and sithence up to Jerusalem-town, and wheresoever he fared over Jerusalem-land, all towns and castles were given up to his wielding.’

  And that was when she realized that laughter, which they had lost, had come back to them, and they were whole again.

  *

  Sleep overcame them far into the day and the November light was falling grey through her windows when he woke her to joy again, laughing. ‘Amis, art thou asleep? My lyves loy, myn hertes plesance … The world knows all our affairs. It is tomorrow, and nearly the day after tomorrow, and we have neither eaten, nor dressed, nor gone to visit Sybilla …’

  ‘I have eaten,’ Philippa said.

  And then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. ‘I have begun to eat,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever.’

  *

  Sybilla was in her room when they tapped on the door and stood there, robed like children, with Philippa’s long hair on her son’s shoulder.

  This time, it was Philippa who ran to her, and knelt, and put her head, smiling, on Sybilla’s lap.

  Sybilla kissed her, and then taking her by the hand rose herself, and crossed the room to where Francis stood, his eyes grave, his face so changed that it took her breath away. He said, the deep blue eyes smiling at her, ‘They gave me some medicine.’

  Then he held out his hands and, when she came, bent and kissed her.

  She said, ‘I asked you to come when you woke, for I had something to show you.’

  She glanced at his feet and then, quizzically, up at his face. ‘Can I send you on an errand?’

  He flushed, Philippa was delighted to see; and then laughed. ‘Within limits. I am sky-clad like the Digambaras.’

  ‘Then you will simply have to risk upsetting the servants,’ said Sybilla. ‘Lace that garment properly. Then go to the music room and take from the little desk at the wall the letter you will find just inside it. Here is the key.’

  Both Francis and Philippa looked at her. He said, ‘A letter?’

  But Philippa, meeting his eyes, walked forward and taking the key said, ‘Let me get it. I know where the desk is.’

  ‘So do I,’ Francis said; but did not explain. And in a moment Philippa was back, with in her hand a long packet bearing the seal of Jerott Blyth.

  ‘That was found in Marthe’s baggage,’ said Lady Culter. ‘It is addressed to you, Francis, and there seems to be another letter within it. Take it, and read it.’

  He took it from Philippa’s hands, his thoughts still, she saw on something else and not on the letter. Philippa said. ‘You may give me a brooch. A sapphire one.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘But will you take care of it?’

  Her smile was a very private kind of answer. Then he looked down and broke the seal.

  Inside was, as she said, another letter, with this time the wax already ruptured. Then he saw what the crest was, and lifted his eyes.

  Sybilla said, ‘Jerott tells me that Marthe went to Blois. My guess is that she found this document there, and was bringing it to you. Or if not to you, to all of us at Midculter.’ She had seated herself again in her stiff leather chair by the fire. There was just enough light from the window to read by.

  Lymond said quietly, ‘I don’t think I want to read this. You may have it.’

  ‘If it had been addressed to me,’ Sybilla said, ‘I would have withheld it. But we must keep faith with whoever is leading us. It is yours. Read it.’ And so he bent his head, reading.

  At the end, he did not show his face even to Philippa. Instead he walked to the window, the paper still in his hand, and Philippa, who had thought, enchanted back into childhood, that there was an end to all pain heard his breathing and knew that whatever it was, it was not the old story. It was not another confession of petty fault, bought back by shame and by barter. Then he said, ‘Will you tell Philippa?’

  The fire lit only one side of Sybilla’s face. The pretty profile, with its tilted nose and soft lips and large, thick-lashed eyes for a moment looked less than its seventy years: looked perhaps almost as it had looked when she spent such a night as that with a man as beloved; and from which had been born Francis Crawford.

  Sybilla said, ‘What Francis is reading tells him for the first time that the castle Richard lives in, its lands, its estates, its wealth and all its properties belong to him, along with the title of Culter.’

  At the window, Francis did not move. Phili
ppa said, in a dry void of utter bemusement, ‘How? How can it be possible, when Richard’s birth followed your marriage?’

  Sybilla said, ‘Richard’s birth followed my marriage to Gavin. Francis is the son of Gavin’s father, the first Francis Crawford.’

  ‘We know,’ said Philippa quietly. ‘We know, too, that Eloise was his daughter.’

  ‘You know that,’ said Sybilla evenly, ‘because it is as much as Leonard Bailey intended you to know. There was a very good reason why he did not sell my secret to anyone else … the same reason, I suppose, that compelled him to put Isabelle, who knew it, to death.

  ‘Francis and Eloise were the only children born to me and to Francis, Lord Culter.

  They were legitimate. What Francis has in his hand are my marriage lines.’

  Philippa sat down. Then, as no one spoke, ‘Please?’ she said. ‘I can’t understand.’ At the window, Francis had turned.

  ‘There is no need to make a long story of it,’ Sybilla said. ‘We married in France, secretly, and then he was lost at sea: swept overboard sailing home to Scotland with Albany. I had loved him.… Perhaps you know, or can guess, how I loved him. I had nothing left. I went back to Scotland. And there was the castle he had made, with his books in it, and his clothes and his music, and all the men who had known him … and his son, importuning me to marry him.… If Francis had died yesterday instead of Marthe,’ said Sybilla suddenly to the girl, ‘could you have brought yourself one day to marry Kuzúm?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Philippa. Her mouth was dry.

  ‘I was seven years older than Gavin,’ Sybilla said. ‘Then after illness and imprisonment, Francis—my husband—came back to France. He had forgotten his marriage. He had a child, Marthe, by the Dame de Doubtance’s daughter, whom he had also known before he met me.’

  ‘He also had a son by her earlier,’ Philippa said. ‘Didn’t he? A sick boy who died.’

  ‘A sick boy, and a daughter. So it seemed to the Dame de Doubtance that her great scheme was going to fail: to breed a son from Francis Crawford who would carry his blood and do what the times had been wrong for the first baron to do. Therefore she brought back to him the recollection of our marriage, and he came back to Scotland, and found Gavin in his place, and Richard a young boy of nine.’

  ‘That was when he threw Bailey out,’ Philippa said.

  ‘Yes,’ Sybilla said. The room had become very dark.

  ‘But not Gavin? He didn’t expose your marriage to Gavin as bigamous, and Richard as …’

  ‘Gavin Crawford was a vicious and venomous man,’ Sybilla said. ‘But I had wronged him very deeply. He chose to remain my husband in appearance, and to have Richard reared as his legitimate heir. In return, I received the discretion to visit France when I wished and my children, when they were born, were brought up as Gavin’s.’

  Francis said, ‘Why? Why did you not …?’ and broke off.

  ‘Disown Gavin and make it all public? For Richard’s sake,’ Sybilla said. ‘And when he came back to me, Francis—my Francis—had only four years of life left to him.’

  ‘And all the rest you spent in that castle, tied to his son, putting up with threatened disclosures from Bailey, watching Francis …’ Philippa choked.

  ‘I had given my word,’ Sybilla said, ‘to both men that I would never tell Francis or anyone else what had happened. And I had committed a sin. To marry a man and his son is not permitted.’

  ‘So Francis suffered,’ Philippa said.

  And Lymond said, ‘No. I understand. You had given your word. And it was more than that. Every step of the way, the signs have been laid for us, haven’t they … even yesterday?’

  ‘For much of the way,’ Sybilla said. ‘Camille de Doubtance knew me when I was at la Guiche. Through her I made the journey to Ireland where Richard met Mariotta; and Mariotta had cousins who knew Oonagh O’Dwyer.’

  ‘Every astrologer in France seems to have been her intimate,’ Lymond said. ‘And … Kuzúm?’

  Sybilla returned his look steadily. ‘May be Oonagh’s child,’ she said. ‘Or may be Joleta’s. Marthe knew.’

  ‘And is dead. Poor sister. A pawn more helpless even than …’ He broke off.

  ‘It is as well, you see, that we do not know,’ said Sybilla. ‘And Kuzúm will always have Kate, and of course, Archie.’

  He had forgotten Archie. His brow cleared. ‘And, of course, Archie, everyman’s keeper. Christ,’ he said despairingly. Taire d’une mouche un elephant.’

  Philippa turned her head and saw Sybilla look too, and the lines on her firelit face ease a fraction. What this meant to Francis struck her, suddenly, for the first time. She looked at the paper, still held in his hand.

  As if she had spoken, he looked down as well. Then walking forward, smiling a little, he held it to Philippa. ‘Read,’ he said, ‘so that you will know what your children might have been. Then give it to Sybilla.’

  ‘Might have been?’ Sybilla said.

  He dropped by her side and laid his hand over hers, where it gripped the chair arm. ‘What did you think I would do?’ he said. ‘Rush to Midculter and bastardize all my nieces and nephews? These are yours. Keep them. Burn them, if you wish. It is over.’

  ‘John Dee made a prophecy,’ Philippa said. ‘Do you remember it? He said that now you knew what you wanted. The first thing you would have, but the second you would never have; nor would it be just that you should.’

  ‘I was thinking of it,’ said Lymond. ‘The first thing was you, my Lady bricht … The second, it seems, was my heritage.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’ said Sybilla. ‘I would have kept it for you if I could. I did not know, you see, what you were to be.’

  He lifted her fingers, and looking at her, kissed them. ‘With the Dame de Doubtance to blame,’ her son said, ‘you are absolved of all responsibility.… My dear, there is no blame, where there lives a passion like that: do we not know it? Rest at peace. We are your children; and we love you.’

  *

  Much later, when they had left her, she sat in her room and saw beneath her door the lights blazing from the wide oaken porch to the music room.

  She did not know when they found their way there; and at first the music she heard was only tentative. A harp sang, and then someone picked out a low, gentle tune on the harpsichord. And through it all their voices murmured, talking and talking.

  Then, at some point, what they learned must have been put behind them. She heard her son’s voice lilting in some mimicry, and Philippa’s laughing, and then more laughter, and their voices declaiming together. Then the harpsichord found its major habit and suddenly spoke, firmly and well, and a lute joined in, and was discarded for the guitar, cleanly executed. Then the music mounted, and altered.

  Sitting still in the dark, Sybilla listened to the condition of love, transmuted into brilliant sound, rolling, surging, ringing through all the quiet house. And then her son’s voice, formally speaking:

  ‘So cler and so light hit wes, that joye ther was ynough. Treon ther were, ful of frut, wel thikke on everich bough. Hit was evere more dai, hi ne fonde nevere nyght; Hi ne wende fynde in no stede so moch cler light …’

  In the bright room, had she seen him, he was sitting, his arms leaning on the harpsichord, looking at Philippa. He got up.

  ‘He wald upon his tais stand

  And tak the sternis downe with his hand

  And set them in a gold garland

  Above his wyfis hair …

  ‘I love you. I love you …’

  There was a broad praying stool at his side. He saw it, and smiling knelt, and held his palms up to Philippa. And she, kneeling opposite, closed them, palm to palm, with her own.

  ‘Camille de Doubtance, and whoever may be your master …

  ‘We are here. We will work together for what purpose seems to us right. We will work with calm, and with tolerance and, please God, with saving laughter.

  ‘We know something of men. We know of evil, and of sloth, and of self-
seeking ambition. We accept it, and will use what we have of wit and good faith to overcome it.

  ‘And if we do not overcome it, still we are the road; we are the bridge; we are the conduit. For something have we been born. For something have we been brought here. And if we hold firm, the men who peopled our earth need not be ashamed, when the reckoning comes, to say, we worked with all we had been given; and for one another.’

  He closed her hands with his own and spoke to her, holding them.

  ‘We have reached the open sea, with some charts; and the firmament.’

  28 February 1974

  EDINBURGH

  THE LYMOND CHRONICLES

  BY DOROTHY DUNNETT

  “The finest living writer of historical fiction.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  THE GAME OF KINGS

  Dorothy Dunnett introduces her irresistible hero Francis Crawford of Lymond, a nobleman of elastic morals and dangerous talents whose tongue is as sharp as his rapier. In 1547 Lymond returns to defend his native Scotland from the English, despite accusations of treason against him. Hunted by friend and enemy alike, he leads a company of outlaws in a desperate race to redeem his reputation.

  Fiction/0-679-77743-1

  QUEENS’ PLAY

  Once an accused traitor, now a valued agent of Scottish diplomacy, Lymond is sent to France, where a very young Queen Mary Stuart is sorely in need of his protection. Disguised as a disreputable Irish scholar, Lymond insinuates himself into the glittering labyrinth of the French court, where every courtier is a conspirator and the art of assassination is paramount.

  Fiction/0-679-77744-X

  THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS

  Through machinations in England and abroad, Lymond is dispatched to Malta, to assist the Knights Hospitallers in the island’s defense against Turkish corsairs. But he shortly discovers that the greatest threat to the knights lies within their own ranks. In a narrative that sweeps from the besieged fortress of Tripoli to the steps of Edinburgh’s St. Giles Cathedral, Lymond matches wits and swords against an elusive villain.