Checkmate (42 page)

Philippa jumped. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In fact, it is arranged for two weeks after Easter.’

‘But you have no intention of retiring thereafter, I judge, to a convent for the Mal’Maritate.’ He threw something else on the burner, dragged a bronze tripod into the middle of the room and picking up a metal bowl, carried it over and held it under the fountain. He continued placidly. ‘And for whom burns then, this white fire which lives without fuel? Bring me a lock of his hair and I will make you a poculum amatorium ad venerem so powerful that, once it is placed in the mouth, he will die frenzied if he cannot either spit it out or master you instantly.’

It was better to show amusement than nausea. ‘Would you?’ said Philippa with interest. ‘Come to think of it, I can tell you the eight people at court you’ve already sold it to. What’s that for?’

He did not seem to be offended. ‘The key, suspended by a Carpathian thread, swings over the filled bowl and taps out its answers by touching the twenty-four letters engraved on the rim. Before that, I have to trace my circle of Floram Patere and then change into linen for the Invocation. You have never offended Anäel?’

‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Philippa thinly.

‘I am glad to hear it. You have a somewhat ready tongue. If there is any doubt in the matter, you may turn right when you leave the building and confess yourself in the Chapel of Saint-Marie-Egyptienne. Many do.’

Above her head, the winter light waned from the skylight. Snow. Philippa wondered what Célie was doing. The reeking pan, vaporous blue, hardly illuminated the floor sufficiently to let the elderly doctor
trace his marks on his knees. The black hat travelled over the floor, and the plump hand with the chalk.

Philippa said, ‘Would you like me to light you some candles?’ and proceeded to ignite a spill and carry it round before he could stop her. A half skull, resting on the top of a cupboard, looked back at her in alarm and created a reaction of such amused irritation that she remembered her cold and paused to deal with a resurgence. She did not therefore hear Master Nostradamus return and was suitably shocked when he reappeared, white as a Turkish headstone in the flickering gloom, booted, turbanned and robed in chaste folds of unblemished linen.

He made her kneel on the ground by the brazier while, cross-legged on the tripod, he stared at the bowl and the key hanging over it. He had put saffron this time on the charcoal. Through eyewatering fumes, she could catch parts of the Invocation. He had a strong Provence accent.

‘Venez, Anäel: venez, et que ce soit votre bon plaisir d’être en moi par votre volonté, au nom du Père Tout-Puissant, au nom de Fils très sage, au nom du Saint Ésprit très aimable. Venez, Anäel, par la vertu de l’immortel Elohim. Venez, Anäel, par le bras du tout-puissant Mittatron. Venez à moi, Nostradamus, et commandez à vos sujets qu’avec amour, joie et paix, ils fassent voir à mes yeux les choses qui me sont cachées. Amen.
’

The silence tightened. For one trembling moment, Philippa could not tell whether he was going to intone a psalm or burst out naked and dance like the three crazy daughters of Proetus. He looked up and glared sharply at her and she gazed back, stunned, with glazed features. Then he took a sprig of green stuff like verbena and with it, touched the long silken thread.

The key trembled, stirred, and then shaking itself, began, uncertainly, to drift over its twin in the lissom dark skin of the water. The little clang of the rim when it homed made Philippa’s downy skin start like a hedgehog.

‘
P
,’ said Nostradamus, in a flat voice.

The key swung spelling for fifteen minutes, and produced the same sequence of six letters twice. It was not, as such experiments go, quite without fault, but since in no Mappamundi could they find any village called
PLARIS
, there seemed no ultimate doubt of its message.

‘Marvellous,’ said Philippa at last, who was feeling cold and extremely tired and wanted to rise from her knees. ‘That is, there is a population of five hundred thousand. Do we take the key round them all?’

Which was frivolous, for of course, one simply made the Invocation again, and then asked the key to spell out the street name.

This time, unfortunately, it spelt out CLERASI.

‘There isn’t any such street,’ Philippa finally said, lifting her aching head from the map he had produced and spread out for her. ‘I’ve made a list of the C’s. The Quai des Célestins? The Châtelet? The rue Calandre, the rue du Centier, the rue sans Clef, the rue Chassemidi … de la Chaise … des
Trois Chandelliers … du Cigne … Clopin … Cocqueron.… Hopeless. The nearest is Clopin, and surely even an imbecile like Anäel couldn’t turn that into Clerasi? Let’s try again.’

Master Nostradamus was remarkably amenable. They tried again, and got the same answer. ‘It doesn’t even sound French,’ Philippa said; then lifted her nose of a sudden out of her handkerchief. ‘It isn’t French. It’s Latin. The hopeless creature has latinized it. What’s Clerasus?’

There was a short silence. ‘I am afraid,’ said Nostradamus, ‘that there exists no such word.’

‘There must be,’ Philippa said; and without warning gave vent to the kind of ignoble whoop which used to ring round the yards of Flaw Valleys. ‘The silly ass has put his mad
L
at the start again. It’s
Cerasi.
’

‘Cherry trees,’ said Master Nostradamus.

‘Cherry trees … Of
course!
The rue de la Cerisaye, the street of the cherry trees, between the Bastille and the Arsenal. Clerasi!’ said Philippa scathingly. ‘He’s met William Baldwyn, and if I’d anything to do with it, I’d make him damned well languish locked in L.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Michel Nostradamus, looking up at the wrong moment. He put down the verbena and moving a step, stood gazing at her in gentle inquiry. ‘Madame? Why are you weeping?’

‘Because,’ said Philippa, ‘I have such an extremely bad cold. The kindest thing you can do is to pay no attention.’ She blew her nose. ‘Now. I don’t suppose Anäel is any good with house-names?’

‘I am afraid not,’ said Master Nostradamus with apparent regret. ‘But I believe it is a very short street. If I were not so hard-pressed with my charts, I might have accompanied you there with my divining rod.’

He was an odd character. He might be a good deal more frightening than he seemed. But he had been generous with both his help and his time. And from beginning to end, he had asked no questions whatever. Perhaps, in an astrologer’s work, that was usual.

She did not want to stay any longer, and it would be less than seemly to ask him to descend the steep stairs in white linen. She held out her hand. ‘I’m sure I shall find it,’ she said. ‘I want to thank you.’

He took her hand, and held it in his two, healthy rounded ones. Then he looked at her.

‘You will not speak of that which is in your mind but I, if you will allow me, would advise you. Here you have a hawk of the lure, not of the fist. He will not come to you. If you would have him, you must lay your heart upon your hawking-glove; and feed it to him.’

Unfair, unfair. She banished fright from her face with an effort, but in his hands, her own started to tremble. Then he said, without waiting for her to speak, ‘You are cold. I must not keep you. What was the question you wished to put about M. your husband?’

Her mind, then, was still open to him. She said austerely, ‘How perceptive. I only wondered why neither of you has ever mentioned your meeting at Lyon?’

The grey, impersonal eyes gave no impression of shiftiness. Then, unexpectedly, he removed them and thought, combing his long grey-brown beard with his fingers. Then he looked up again. ‘Madame, an hour ago I would have told you the bare truth, which is that the gentleman, being incapacitated, had no recollection of that meeting and that it was far from my place to refer to it.’

‘And now?’ Philippa said. She picked up the key and held it, ridiculously, like a buckler in front of her.

‘Now,’ said Nostradamus, ‘I shall give you another piece of advice. When next you meet M. le comte, ask him to tell you, in detail, what occurred on that evening in Lyon. And if he refuses, as he will, tell him that I, Nostradamus, will inform you.’

‘He went to a … I know where he spent the night,’ Philippa said.

‘You think you do,’ Nostradamus said. ‘But I must tell you that I did not find my patient, or treat him, in a bawdy-house. You may remind him of that. I have placed in your basket an excellent remedy for the rheum, and a pot of complexion cream for which, as you may have heard, I have a certain reputation. The inflammation of your skin will require it.’

‘Me fera Hecuba en Hélène,’ said Philippa rather dazedly.
Rendra
, it said on the pot,
une souveraine splendeur naive à la face
. It had a familiar smell.

‘If used from the age of fifteen,’ Master Nostradamus said briskly, ‘it will preserve lifelong beauty and enable the skin at sixty to look as young as that of a twenty-year-old. The contents are quite pure. Sublimate, quicksilver, rose-water, and the saliva of a young person who for three days has eaten onions without vinegar. Boiled, I may assure you, for the length of two Paternosters and two Ave Marias, repeated with reverence.’

‘We used to quote from the Hamasa of Abu Tammam,’ Philippa said. She picked up the basket and lifted her eyes. ‘We made the fertility potion as well, but the bird-catchers used to cheat with the cock-sparrows. Communications between Stamboul and Lyon seem better than one might have imagined. Did you ever have a dog?’

For a long time he looked at her in silence, and in his red cheeks and his fat turban and his long, forked beard of chestnut and grey she saw, at length, nothing that was trivial or comic at all.

She had invoked the world of Arabic poetry. His answer, when it finally came, was also culled from the lore of Mohammed.

‘If I told you all I know
, said the Prophet,
you would flog me with thongs of leather
. Time, Le Boiteux, the Lame One, will release you both. I pray for you.’

‘Not to Anäel, I beg you,’ said Philippa tremulously. ‘He would send us to Plurgatory, and even Elohim might find it troublesome to extract us. Maître Nostradame, I am grateful.’ And she left him.

She called, too, at the Chapel of Marie-Egyptienne, with the frozen Osias and a disgruntled Célie behind her; but it was full of companionable souls celebrating the religious rites of the local confrèrie
and she came away, unable to concentrate. Once back in the Hôtel de Guise she went to bed, swallowed the potion for the rheum and slept for sixteen hours, at the end of which she awoke to find her cold vanished, and a gift from Austin Grey at her bedside.

She sent for the pot of complexion cream. If one had to turn back the clock, one might as well begin systematically.

The yard which saw Francis Crawford’s distinctive collapse in Dieppe belonged to the house of a draper’s widow. On the other side of the building, shutters revealed a counter over which, at certain times, the Bouchard employees sold stockings, bonnets, breech-hose, jackets and lengths of velvet, damask and saye from the stacked shelves which ran round the stockroom.

There was cloth also in the room where they carried him. The mellow, powdery smell of it was the first he knew of his surroundings when he opened his eyes: that, and the fact that there was a feather mattress beneath him, and that his travel-stained outer clothing had been drawn off. Then a voice spoke: that of Martine, the beautiful ageing woman who had once governed the high-bred squadron of the old King’s permanent mistresses, and whose acquaintance with himself over the years had always been one less of commerce than of friendship.

Martine said, ‘I thought when I saw you, mon fils, that the saddle would not contain you much longer. This is Hélène Bouchard, in whose house you are resting. Your Scottish friends have many times been guests under her roof. You may remain here as long as you wish. Master Abernethy is on his way here from the Castle.’

He had already closed his eyes. Archie was not here. Who were his ‘Scottish friends’? Memory, fitfully returning, reminded him of Lord James Stewart, who had intercepted him. Then he remembered what had happened before that. There was a movement above him and the firm voice of another woman said, ‘This is not good. I will send for the barber-surgeon.’

It was the last thing he wanted. He was saved from saying so by the bustle of a new arrival and a hubbub of voices among which could be distinguished the uncompromising cadences of Archie’s. Then, almost immediately, there was no sound in the room but a door closing, and then Archie’s voice again, saying sourly, ‘I gave ye an hour more nor that to stay on your feet: ye must be getting soft as saip-sapples. Ye can open your een.’ Then after a moment he said, ‘Put your hands back, if it helps. You’ve a bit to go yet. I’ll mix ye something.’

He had, as it turned out, a long way to go yet; but in the end it was
over, and all that was left was the familiar tenderness at his brows and his temples, and a little numbness in one hand, which would soon vanish. It was by then, he knew, late at night; and he had insisted already on Archie fetching a truckle bed for himself for just this moment. Then, as always, the pain was replaced by a stupor of drowsiness which deepened and deepened until, at last, he relapsed into slumber.

He slept until wakened by the rumble of iron wheels and the sharp clap of hooves underscored by the tinkle of harness bells, as the fish wagons set off again under his windows. He lay for a long time watching the amber glare of each passing lantern, and the patterned light traverse the roof-beams.

Some day, he supposed, the faculties by which he lived would not all return to him. It would put a convenient term on many things, and in the meantime he saw no reason to dwell on it. In two months the royal wedding would be over, and with it, the Commissioners’ stay and his own contracted duties in France.

Lethargy both mental and physical sent him to sleep again presently, and next time he awoke in broad daylight, with a savoury smell of hot food in the air and Martine seated picturesquely on a stool by the blazing hearth, smiling at him.

She was wearing the pearls he had once given her. He smiled back, and held out his hand to her; and when she came deftly to his side, gathered her scented hair in his palm during the long interval of her embrace.

Her lips were warm and flexible, and her skin smelt of lilywater and not of the heavy, dizzying aromatics of the East. He avoided responding, because that was his intention, but he did not disengage first. It was Martine who, withdrawing her knowledgeable, courteous hands, placed them one on each side of his uncovered throat and, studying him, said, ‘What you cannot say to your confessor, you can tell to me. What is it you want?’

He had not deceived her. But then, he had not expected to. He lifted his own hands and interlaced the fingers smoothly with hers. ‘Nothing you can give me this time,’ he said. ‘Except perhaps your general sympathy.
Par temperance ay acquis grand renom; Cyncinnatus Quintus est mon vray nom.
’

She moved away and sat still, her eyes thoughtful, one hand still in his. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘it is a woman. And at last, at last the right woman,
mon fils
?’

One might not wish to answer but one did not, with Martine, commit the solecism of avoiding her gaze. He said, ‘It is a good thing to have friends, says the proverb, but they are unfortunate who are compelled to make use of them. It is best,
ma belle
, if you know nothing about it. Forgive me.’

Martine said, ‘You may have had temperance once. You do not have it now.’

She looked at him soberly. ‘I shall not kiss you like that again. And I
shall not ask you her name. But tell her, from me, not to make you wait any longer. Last night, you were ill.’

‘Honest woman,’ he said, and lifting her hand, kissed the fingers and held them briefly, smiling. ‘There is no need to blame anyone. I had saddled myself, like the callowest law-clerk, with an impossible ride. My blisters will mend with my vanity … Tell me about Hélène Bouchard.’

‘What do you wish to know?’ Martine said. ‘She is a draper’s widow who likes to entertain Scotsmen. Her last guest was a writer. You can see, if you look, some of his work on that table. And Lord James and Master Erskine, the Scots Commissioners who had you brought here yesterday, are awaiting politely below to talk to you.’

‘Qui maudit soit les pieds d’escot, Et les pieds d’escots qui les suivent
 … They are friends of yours?’ Lymond said.

‘They are; but they need be none of yours unless you want it. I saw you in trouble, and I knew this house was near and they could bring you here. The Governor has been told you are being entertained for a single night privately. Should we have said you were indisposed?’

‘Would he have believed you?’ Lymond said.

She smiled, her handsome eyes watching him. ‘Perhaps not. Your reputation has preceded you. You had perhaps better express an interest in cloth.’

‘Perhaps I had. But what cloth?’

‘Madame Bouchard stocks every kind. I have told you. You are free to choose,’ Martine said. ‘I am happy to see,
mon cher
, that you have lost none of your wits on this ride.’

‘And Lord James and Master Erskine? Are they devoted to cloth, that they also remained all night at Madame Bouchard’s? Or have they merely paid a second visit to inquire after my health?’

‘They came back this morning. You are an emissary of the Most Christian King. Naturally, they wish you to think well of them.’

‘While bearing in mind that
principibus placuisse viris non ultima laus est
. Naturally. I think,’ he said, ‘that I should dress and relieve Madame Bouchard of her unexpected guest … You are too superb today to help me?’

‘I am too wise to help you. I shall send Mr Abernethy.’ She rose, and on her way to the door paused by a row of bale-laden shelves, her forefinger touching the velvets. ‘I shall have a dress-length of that for my parting-gift.’

‘You shall have two,’ Lymond said. ‘Take them downstairs and make James Stewart jealous. I have a fancy he considers me a sober and well-disposed citizen. I should like to see him lose that impression.’

‘I shall tell him the truth,’ Martine said. ‘That you want ghostly strength and are of a light humour that trifles with women’s affections.’

‘You have it. Remind him,’ he said, ‘of Julio Rosso. The only way he would hide in the canon’s house was stuffed between two plaster walls, with a stock of hams and a flask and the cooking-wench. You may choose a third length of velvet.’

‘I have,’ said Martine, smiling; and closed the door gently behind her.

He took time, before he left the room, to glance at the table where, as indicated by Martine, the last incumbent had left lying his writings.

The top page of it, lacking a signature, was headed: THE FIRST BLAST, TO AWAKE WOMEN DEGENERATE. It went on:

To promote a Woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion, or empire above any Realme, Nation or Citie, is repugnant to Nature; contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reveled will and approved ordinance; and finallie, it is the subversion of good Order, of all equitie and justice
.

There was little among what followed to flatter Martine and still less, one imagined, the writer’s hostess. He read it through to the end before, thoughtfully, he crossed to the shelves and then, collectedly, made his way down the winding oak stairs to where Lord James Stewart and Master John Erskine awaited him.

*

‘Here he is,’ said the Queen’s brother as the fellow de Sevigny’s step sounded coming downstairs, and John Erskine of Dun, seated quietly beside that impatient and brilliant young prince half his age, watched the door for this other young man who promised, they said, to be no less difficult.

In fifty scholarly years, with wealth and pedigree both to support him, John Erskine, laird of Dun and Constable of Montrose, had laid a wise hand on the reins of many a headstrong sprig of nobility, and by his steady intellect and habit of moderation had soothed their elders and steered the throne itself out of shoals in the early, ebullient days of religious upheaval.

He was of those who believed Calvin’s teachings, and who wished to hasten the reform of the established Catholic church, but still he enjoyed the Queen Dowager’s confidence, he believed, and while she practised tolerance throughout Scotland, he supported her.

In this he knew he had James’s agreement—James, who would have been on the throne if his kingly father had not begot him on a married woman, and an Erskine, though not of his family. He was not sure how strong James’s personal ambition would grow. He had been left wealthy by his father, and possessed revenues from church offices in Macon as well as in Scotland: he had no claim to the throne, and his belief in the Reformed faith was without question.

Also without question was his liking for power and his ability, it must be said, to wield it. Older men, up to the present, had been able to guide him. It remained to be seen how long he would brook guidance, or require it. For example, how he would handle young Crawford, a rising star of his own generation.

The door opened and in flapped three writhing cloth lengths of loud patterned fabric, loosely furled round a fair, graceful gentleman whose
look of simple cogitation gave way, at the sight of Lord James, to a smile of open delight even simpler.

‘My dear lord,’ said the Crawford boy heartily. ‘How can I thank you for your charity yesterday? You have brought me to the best draper in Dieppe.’ He lifted his arms, from which cataracts of crude tissues tumbled, and pinched a fold of heliotrope satin between finger and thumb. ‘They have seen nothing like it in Russia. Lord James, you must allow me to express my thanks with a bolt of it. Or …’ He looked doubtfully at the royal robes of black velvet and the black bonnet which barely concealed the royal auburn hair.

‘… or perhaps it is not quite your lordship’s tint. They used to say silk degrades a man and reveals an effeminate trait. But’—unwrapping himself with a slither ‘—I don’t think you’ll find any pretty playfellow of mine who couldn’t show you a calendar … no, by God, an hour glass—to disprove it. You know Martine? Of course: she was the means of our meeting here. You were too kind, my lord; and if you prefer a new pair of stockings, I shall see that they are sent to you. I can tell you, I was never so glad to get out of public view. And this is …?’

‘The Laird of Dun,’ said Lord James, drawling the words. John Erskine of Dun, who knew him well, was aware by his reticence that he was taken aback, and was beginning to become angry. Erskine said to the yellow-haired, smiling young man who had possessed himself of his hand and was shaking it, ‘We met once when you were a boy, at Midculter.’ He paused. ‘You are not like your brother.’

‘No,’ Crawford said. He gave his hand another shake and then loosed it with apparent reluctance. ‘Richard will never be whipped at a cart-arse for bawdry. I don’t know whether you notice, but he wears nothing but mockado and fustian. The graveyard at Culter is full of pauperized mercers.’

‘Then all the more credit to you,’ said Erskine, seating himself, ‘for entertaining such strong family feelings. We heard of your ride. I trust you are now quite rested after it.’

The young man’s mouth opened. ‘The ride!’ He sat down. ‘My dear sir, the ride was nothing but the cathartic. It was the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville that did for me. Abernethy will tell you. I suppose I spewed four gallons of claret in Paris before I took to the road, but it proved there was another hogshead to get rid of yet. Ah!’ The blue eyes turned from Lord James’s expressionless, freckled face to his own. ‘I have disappointed you. But if I hadn’t been drunk, I should have seen that there was really no cause for hurry. Richard’s brats are heir to the title, not I, and they were all safe as it happened, at Midculter. Thank God,’ he added piously.

‘Do you?’ said Lord James Stewart sharply.

In his turn, the Earl of Culter’s younger brother looked startled. ‘It’s a manner of speaking,’ he said. ‘That is, I don’t mind one way or the other. After Easter, I’m going back to Russia. That’s where the money is, and the power. And, of course, the ladies.’

‘I thought,’ James Stewart said, ‘that the French crown would offer you an irresistible sum for your talents. Was there not a rumour that the Tsar had found another Voevoda for his army?’

The young man smiled, and leaning forward, he picked up a length of taffeta and draping it elegantly over his knee, leaned back and admired it. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘shopkeepers listen to rumours. What if Ivan has chosen another favourite? He only exists to be superseded.’

He released the fabric and leaned back, still smiling. ‘I know what you are afraid of! You imagine I shall set out for Leith with three regiments, all ready to take de Rublay’s place as Vice-Chancellor of Scotland. I shan’t deny that there have been strong hints about it. I did consider it. Do you think I should make a gallant figure, armed like Pallas … Marte, arte et frugibus … to safeguard the Old Faith in Scotland?’ He paused. ‘That is, Pallas, I believe, was a woman.
Me suis de ton Ecosse faite la prêtresse, Par ton Père, qui seul me rende Ecossaise?
’