Checkmate (38 page)

Lymond put an egg in her hand. ‘La mer des cronicques et mirouer hystorial de France. For God’s sake don’t squeeze it,’ he said. ‘We’ve passed that bit: we’re into the Masque. What do you want to be, Victory, Virtue or Mnemosyne? It doesn’t matter. Dance! Music! Are you men or sedentary blubbers?’

And it did become a dance, of a kind, with Adam seizing a lute, and Lymond seizing Marthe, and Danny and Jerott seizing each other and Austin, because she pulled him out, laughing, partnering Philippa in a storm of blown eggs filled with scent which should have been thrown at the Masque but which had been appropriated, it was to be supposed, by the Queen’s cousin and the Voevoda of Russia, lying under the table.…

If Lymond had not for once let himself drink, it might not have happened. He might have found means, changing places in a hysterical vuelta, to escape spinning Philippa as the others were doing. But he didn’t avoid it, although he barely touched her. His hands had already left hers when Marthe, cannoning into them, flung Philippa bodily into his arms and then, with her strong, craftsman’s fingers held her locked there. ‘Come. Be merry.
Kiss her
,’ said Marthe.

Lymond burst her grip, dragging her palm through the links of his shoulder-chain. She howled with the pain of it and turned on him like a pole-cat, her hand gushing scarlet.

‘Has she the pox?’ exclaimed Marthe. ‘You’ll seek out strumpets, fumble with courtiers, fornicate with either parent of the heiress you are supposed to be marrying, but to embrace your wife sickens you?’

The music stopped in the room; and the movement.

‘Ah,’ said Lymond. His face had emptied. ‘From a new host and an old harlot, the good Lord deliver us.’ He picked up Philippa’s furs. ‘Adam, will you see Philippa home?’

Arrested in mid-revel Adam left Danny, whose hazel eyes had
abruptly focused. Jerott started forward. And Austin, his skin sallow, made to follow and then stood, his eyes fastened on Philippa.

Marthe moved. Intentionally or not, she now stood fully blocking Philippa’s path from the dusty parlour. ‘You didn’t think Kate or Jerott ever doubted the lady’s chastity?’ she observed sardonically. ‘They were terrified, my gallant friend, in case you or she fell in love with one another.’

‘Then reassure them,’ said Lymond. ‘I am sufficiently served, as you say, with the tag and rag of the streets. Stand aside, please.’

Marthe did not stir. ‘Of course you are guiltless,’ she agreed, smiling at him. ‘But evasion itself can be seductive. Look at her. She is …’

Austin moved and was pulled up, hard, by Danny Hislop.

‘This,’ said Lymond, ‘is by no means a game I will play, or consider playing. Move.’

‘No,’ said Marthe baldly. ‘You can shift me by force. If you do, I shall resist, and you will have to injure me a second time. Philippa. Do you want that to happen?’

The folds of Philippa’s gown were quivering, but her back was flat, and her voice very clear and collected. ‘We have accepted your hospitality. Mr Crawford owes you his life. While I am, here, no one will lay hands on you.’

A spasm like wind on water ran marring over Marthe’s intent face. ‘Oh God in heaven, I hate you!’ she said to her brother.

‘I know,’ said Lymond wearily. ‘I shall stay. Let Philippa go, and the others.’

Austin said, ‘You uncivilized …’ and was shaken quiet, again, by Danny, his eyes on Marthe.

‘It is my wife who is retiring,’ Jerott Blyth said. ‘Marthe, go to your room.’

‘She won’t obey orders, you fool,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘Take her.’

He might have done. But before he could move, Philippa stepped forward and thrust her hands in the tightly clenched hands of Lymond’s sister and spoke to her. ‘It’s too late. It will punish all the wrong people. Come with me. Leave him.’

But Marthe’s fists and Marthe’s eyes rejected her. And Marthe’s voice said, ‘Look at her,’ to her brother. ‘You drunken fool, why do you think she follows you? To be lectured, to take arms, to care for your bastards? She loves you. She’s ripe for you. What have you to lose? Embrace her. Then take her home and see if I am right or not,’ Her voice thickened.
‘Remember me?’
she said.
‘The marriage will stand.’

Philippa dropped her hands and turning, walked to the fireplace. ‘Thank you,’ she said to the wall.

The Marquis of Allendale broke from his captor, was retaken, and this time was silenced by force. Apart from Adam and Danny, no one in the room either watched or listened to him.

Face to face, Francis Crawford and his sister looked at one another.

‘And thank you from me,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘You are an expert in love? In morality? In Christian conscience? How? From the stews of a fortune-teller’s in Lyon? From your years as a Muslim, scouring the Levant for money? From your marriage to——’

‘Stop it,’ said Philippa. She had turned.

‘… from your marriage to Jerott?’ Lymond said. ‘Go on. Be our guide. Look about. What other paramours can you find for me,
sister
?’

‘Stop it!’
said Philippa, at the top of her voice this time. She faced them, breathing quickly. ‘None of you knows what you’re doing. Be quiet. If nothing will end it but someone’s pride being broken, then as usual, it had better be mine. Mr Crawford. I am sorry to be lacking a beard, but if you will briefly be Jason, I shall do what I can with Medea. With the utmost distaste, let us embrace one another.’

But the eyes he turned on her were as blank and as inimical as the eyes which had swept round them all, and especially lingered on Austin.

‘God in heaven,’ said Lymond. ‘How many more services am I supposed to perform in payment for Marthe’s attentions on Volos? Marthe? Step aside.’

‘You will have to strike me,’ Marthe said. Blood still ran down her hand. She lifted her golden head, braced for his fist and his shoulder.

‘Strike you?’ said Lymond, and laughed. ‘No. I am going to describe Güzel’s naked body. And call upon you for corroboration.’

A woman sniggered.

Philippa ran for the door. Marthe, her face sallow, must have twisted out of her way for she reached it: a moment later they heard her footsteps flying down the stairs and then crossing the yard. A horse stamped, and there were voices.

For a moment Lymond stared after her. Then he, too, made his way out precipitately. They heard his voice speaking her name; but the sound was overlaid by the rumble of wheels. The noise and splashing receded and dwindled. Lymond did not come back into the room.

Freed at last to move and to speak Austin Grey choked and then, his face yellow, left the room abruptly. No one stopped him.

Marthe also got up and went out.

There was a little silence. Then Danny Hislop heaved a sigh. ‘O beau sire Dieu, what a hell of an evening. Jerott, you either want to have another half-bottle, or vomit three ways what you have, like the Rosault.’ In five months the professionals Hislop and Blyth had reached an understanding.

It was Adam who found another bottle and helped them drink it, the scar bright and pink on his face. It was also Adam who said presently, ‘Listen. It’s pouring.’ Lymond had still not returned.

‘I’ll go,’ said Jerott. ‘It was my bitch of a wife. When Marthe’s about, there’s always someone puking-drunk somewhere.’

Adam and Danny watched him as he walked out of the room and through the house and down the steps into the downpour.

*

Outside, it was darker than the slades of the Comté of Oye and muddy, though less so than the Pas de Calais.
The voices of the men were stilled and all mankind was changed into mud
. All the captains who had worked like dogs for the success of Calais had had to sit at table, Philippa said, and listen to the great Guisard claiming the victory. Including Strozzi. Including Francis, the Voevoda of all Russia, who had allowed his work, without comment, to stay in obscurity.

Standing drunk in the yard, while the rain soaked his hair and spread cold through the cloth of his doublet, Jerott thought of the fine design, firmly executed, of the campaign of Guînes and of Calais. And of his own joy and his liberation, after these huckstering years, to be again under the hand of this man, his arts at their meridian.

It had given him courage last night to come home to Marthe: to say, ‘I have been wrong. Forgive me. I love you: I wish to stay with you; but I have discovered I am a soldier.’

And she had laughed and said, ‘Does the army know? Have some more wine.’

He had not answered because he did not know, as Francis did, how to wound without blows to protect himself.

A fact which Marthe just now should have remembered. She had set out to attack and had been cut down without mercy, and without care for who else besides Marthe might surfer.

He had always known, Jerott supposed, that Marthe had been close, long ago, to Lymond’s mistress. He knew no other man who, in cold blood, would have made that threat, or who would have carried it out as Lymond would, ignoring every instinct of decency.

He shivered. The cold was beginning to penetrate. Against the cressets under the archways the rain spangled the darkness like the wild silver threads of horse-harness: as from the passing of heavy cavalry the wind buffeted his cheeks and his flanks and his sleeve-knots. His senses filled with the hiss of the rain, Jerott walked through the ghostly steam of its impact, and through a passage, and, mechanically, into the chain of large courtyards beyond it.

Because of the rain each was empty even of servants. He had found the locked stables and turned, conscientiously, to explore the arcades which enclosed them when he noticed, not in shelter at all, the pale, shallow cup of the fountain.

It was less symmetrical, in the sheen of the rain, than he remembered it. Then he saw that a man rested there on its steps, his head turned on the rim. One coatless arm, lying loose, pillowed it. The arcade lanterns,
dimly exploring, found the darkened blond of soaked hair; the fixed flame of strung jewels and the line of wide brow and closed lid and turned cheekbone whose twin he saw, night after night, on his pillow.

The rain fell. For a moment Jerott stood petrified. Then he ran for his life over the courtyard.

Francis Crawford opened his eyes. ‘It’s all right,’ he said without moving. ‘The crucifix marque-vin. I’ve been as sick as a dog. I deserve to be, don’t you think? Poor, bloody Jerott, caught between bastards.’

He gave a sudden, violent shiver and, lifting his head from the stone, pulled himself up to sit forward. His hands covered his face. He was so close that Jerott could see the vibration in him: a steady trembling, subdued as the purr of a tomcat.

The effects, unpleasant but normal enough, of anger, and cold, and intemperance. For which Francis Crawford had himself only to blame. Himself and Marthe.

The rain beat Lymond’s darkened hair into his hands and the
barmi
produced Russian arpeggios of emerald fire, keyed to all the irregular gusts of his breathing. Beneath his hands, his lips were parted.

Jerott’s anger vanished. He placed his palm on the other man’s shoulder. The sleeve and the flesh under it were both badly chilled. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘You can use Adam’s rooms.’ His hand, moving upwards, drew the fair, tangled hair clear of Lymond’s eyes and checked, at the shudder that ran jarring through from his fingertips.

Lymond dropped his hands. He made no protest. He did not look up. But unimpeded at last, Jerott could see the look on his face and give it, sickeningly, its correct interpretation.

‘Oh God in heaven,’ said Jerott Blyth. ‘You bloody, arrogant fool …’ He sat back suddenly. His own arm, supporting him, was unsteady. ‘Why didn’t you accept Piero’s offer?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lymond said. It was not easy to hear him.

‘You ought to know!’ said Jerott wildly. ‘You’re not a priest. You fight. You live on your nerves as we all do. Then you can’t touch a girl, in case you leave your senses and take her. Is that what happened?’

‘I suppose so,’ Lymond said. ‘It might have bound me to her for life. It was what Marthe wanted. No light fame shalt thou carry to thy father’s ghosts …’

‘What?’ said Jerott.

‘… to have fallen under the weapon of Camilla.’

He didn’t explain. His lids were fringed like a girl’s. His tapering fingers, without defences, lay within touching distance. Jerott Blyth, rising to his knees and then to his feet, said, ‘Come quickly. I can get you a woman.’

‘If you know of a woman,’ Lymond said, ‘then go to her. What I want I can find for myself. You might perhaps, when you go, send for Archie.’

‘Sir?’ said a voice, uncannily apt, in the darkness. Jerott turned.

‘My lord count? Mr Crawford? M. de Sevigny?’

‘All of these,’ said Lymond dryly. He was shivering still. But he was also trying, Jerott saw, to collect himself. Jerott Blyth hesitated. Then he offered, leaning, an arm, and Lymond took it and stood, as the moving figure neared in the darkness.

It was Archie Abernethy, cloaked and half-dressed as when he had been roused at the Hôtel St André. He said, ‘What’s amiss?’ sharply.

‘Drink,’ said Lymond impartially. ‘The cutthroat of so many men’s lives, and the robber of purses. I have been compelled to render my gorge. I have recovered. What is
your
difficulty?’

Archie said, ‘Is that true?’ and Jerott answered his thought.

‘Yes. Nothing else happened. How did you know we were here?’

‘Mr Blacklock. He was worried,’ said Archie uncompromisingly. And to Lymond: ‘I’ve ill news. Are ye fit for it?’

‘A death,’ said Francis Crawford. He had thrown off Jerott’s arm.

You could see, in the darkness, the pity in the little man’s eyes.

‘Aye. It’s death,’ he said.

‘Then tell me,’ said Lymond. ‘Now, and quickly.’ The trembling had wholly stopped.

The black eyes of Archie fixed themselves on him in return. ‘Your mother and brother,’ he said. ‘Their ship has foundered.’

There was a little silence, during which Lymond made no movement. Then he said again, ‘Tell me.’ The amber hair, like the hair of the new born, streaked and coiled round his temples.

Archie said, ‘They came from the Forth in a fleet of small ships with the other Commissioners. The wind drove the vessels apart: they put into whatever safe harbour they came to. Two of them made for Boulogne, but never got there.’