Checkmate (44 page)

‘So? You heard him,’ said James.

‘Ah, yes. I heard what he said,’ answered Erskine. ‘But I rather think the interest will lie in what the comte de Sevigny does.’

*

Riding side by side to the castle of Dieppe, Archie Abernethy glanced at his lord and master.

‘Ye’re fit?’

‘For anything. Including another Hôtel de Ville banquet.’

‘You’re riding to Paris with the Commissioners?’

‘And with my mother and brother. Exactly.’

‘I hear ye left Mistress Blyth fair put out,’ Archie continued. ‘And ye ken Master Blyth’s no blessed wi’ discretion.’

‘You are afraid,’ Lymond said, ‘of an almighty clash between my sister and the rest of my family, and you think I should do something about it?’

‘Aye,’ said Archie.

They were in the open space approaching the gatehouse. In a moment they would be inside, receiving the salutes of the liveried guard and the greetings of the Lieutenant-Governor and all his people under the laurel boughs and the dressed flags of France and the banners of Scotland. Francis Crawford turned to his escort.

‘It was as catastrophic as you think,’ he said, ‘if not worse. But I have in mind the difficulty with Marthe. There are other pitfalls, too, which a word in the right quarter may shield them from. They will be here until April. And so shall I.’

The cracked, seasoned face had turned scarlet. ‘All right,’ said Archie. ‘Ye should take to mind-reading and write bloody almanacks. But if I’ve got the night off, there are two addresses yon woman gave me.’

‘Two
addresses!’ said Lymond. ‘You’ll never find strength to climb the hill afterwards. Have you coin for it?’

‘Plenty,’ said Archie.

Lymond looked at him. ‘Well, you’ll need more than coin with that
face. Take the mule with the cloth. They’ll go mad over night-robes in heliotrope satin. They’ll stand on tubs, and parade tail to trunk for you.’

‘Man,’ said Archie crossly. His voice and his stare, as usual, were totally at odds with each other. ‘Man, you’re a right bluidy antic.’

The low, apricot sun of young March lit the rue de la Cerisaye when Philippa first found and explored it. Only in its nearness was there anything startling. It lay, a little closed road among orchards and gardens, on the opposite side of the rue St Antoine from the palaces of les Tourelles and de Guise. Beyond it was the river. Behind it, the cherry trees which gave it its name spread almost to the town wall before being contained by the gates of the Arsenal and the courtyard of the Bastille. And beside it was the great religious house of the Célestins.

One could hardly walk up and down the loveliest street (so they said) in all Paris, and attempt to unlock each front door. Some, in any case, were not on the road, but concealed behind high garden walls and sealed courtyards, as she had seen on her first wary reconnaissance.

That had been while the Crawfords were still at Dieppe, and before the Scottish Commissioners left on their progress to Paris.

News from the north indicated that the scale of festivities at Dieppe castle was quite beyond M. de Fors’s expectations, and that M. de Sevigny had sent for his sledges. All one could conclude from this was that M. de Sevigny had not, in public, promoted a scene with his relatives, whether of estrangement or violence, and that he was fulfilling his rôle as royal deputy.

She would know how matters lay as soon as she saw them in Paris. Meanwhile, freed from her worst apprehension, Philippa took the next step in the long path she was cutting for somebody else: a path which, if she succeeded, would lead him quite out of her keeping. She sent the Dame de Doubtance’s key to the Célestins with four royal lackeys and Célie.

A dear friend, Célie would say, had died, leaving her mistress a key to a house in the rue de la Cerisaye. The house was unnamed. The commission was pressing. Would the Holy Fathers, so wise, so esteemed by their children, find it in their hearts to help the countess.

With the key, she had sent a gift to the funds of the monastery quite enough to make sure that a friar would be out in his sandals at sunup. No one, surely, could object to his door being tried by a Célestin.

After that she had a difficult day, in the course of which her mistress fell out three times with her dressmaker, and had to receive a lecture from
monseigneur her uncle the Cardinal whose effects were felt by everyone, including Mary Fleming, whose charming brother John came, unnecessarily, twice, to talk about it. Half the afternoon was taken up with a council of war about the betrothal ceremonies, over which the Dauphin’s mother and the Duchess de Valentinois politely disagreed, and Philippa herself emerged muttering, to find her way discreetly impeded by Catherine d’Albon, looking beautiful.

She carried a letter in her hand addressed to her mother in a handwriting immediately recognizable, as if indited in letters of sulphur. Led apart, Philippa read it, and soon understood why the girl looked transported.

In it, at last, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny asked leave of Catherine’s parents to seek the hand of their daughter in marriage.

Should they agree, the letter continued, the betrothal contracts might be signed on April 25th, on which day his divorce would become absolute.

There followed, briefly, the terms of his own fiscal pledges, which were of a kind to please any mother: even one who had slept with the bridegroom. Concentrating heavily on this characteristically piquant aspect of the affair, Philippa looked up, smiling successfully, and said, ‘I’m truly very glad, and so will his family be, when they meet you. Would it seem very odd, do you think, if you came to my room and we celebrated?’

Odd or not, it was what Catherine needed; barred by rank and etiquette from overt excitement. Over the wine Philippa poured she answered, smiling, Philippa’s first, sensible questions and then, bit by bit, the guard came down; and it was Philippa who found herself listening, and later, choosing her answers.

And even then, talking because she could not help it, the other girl kept all the qualities of intelligence and instinctive good manners which made her the right choice for this marriage. And observing, Philippa saw as in a mirror all her own deepest emotions reflected as once, in this many-sided glass, there must have been reflected the feelings of those other women … of Christian Stewart … of Güzel Kiaya Khátún … of Oonagh, the mother of his child.

It reminded her, in humility, that she was less to him than any of them. So that she was glad that this accomplished and lovely woman would be the one to whom, at last, he proposed to tie himself, by a deliberate contract which his own code of conduct made it unlikely that he would ever evade. Which promised some happiness for them both. And which, if it did nothing else, would stop him from going to Russia.

She wondered if Madame la Maréchale de St André had passed on the advice she had given her, and whether with a marriage offer in her hand, Catherine would feel secure enough to ignore it. On the other hand, Mr Crawford himself might feel free now to pay court in earnest. And if he
did it was unlikely, thought Philippa phlegmatically, that Catherine d’Albon would succeed in resisting him.

Before she left, Catherine kissed her for the first time, and holding her hands said, ‘You, too, will be free: whom will you marry? Whoever it may be, you must try not to leave us. We need you, Philippa.’

Which was generous, but one had to be practical. So Philippa said, ‘It’s probably as well, or the Vicar of Rome would re-open hostilities. You know I should like to stay, but it poses certain delicate problems of protocol as M. de Sevigny’s family will be the first, I’m afraid, to point out.’ She smiled. ‘Lord Allendale also has other ideas. I am visiting him at the Hôtel d’Hercule this evening.’

‘When you know what you want, tell me,’ Catherine said. And kissed her a second time.

She returned it with warmth, but no candour. She knew her desire and had just killed it; dispatching it like Ninachetuen upon a scented scaffold of flowers with aromatic fires lit underneath. There was no reason why anyone but herself should burn on them.

*

She spent an hour with Austin, in a small suite of rooms within the vast, marbled mansion over the river that a grateful crown had bestowed on her husband.

She had been there already, with Adam. The rooms were guarded, but not stringently so, and Austin was attended by his own men, and allowed visitors. The negotiations for his ransom and freedom had, it seemed, progressed not at all through Lymond’s absence. Of what had occurred on the night of the banquet Austin had never spoken, nor had Marthe been mentioned.

All that had ever concerned him had been her welfare. Used to the habit of banter, conditioned to the attacking wit of Kate’s carping tongue, she had never drunk at this well: known the peace of a deep and loving solicitude, offered with a delicacy which hardly made itself known.

She had not so far been permitted to visit his uncle Lord Grey, held in La Rochefoucauld’s house elsewhere in Paris. From other sources however she had learned enough of what happened at Guînes to explain Austin’s pallor, and the sleeplessness of which he did not complain. He had watched his country brought low: he had shared his uncle’s despairing surrender: he was the captive of a man whom he had seen in his most outrageous and despicable moments and whose callousness towards Kate and herself she supposed he would never condone.

But he did not discuss Francis Crawford. He brought no slightest form of bias to the long exchanges in which she learned all she had yearned to know; about the harvest and their friends and their neighbours; about the skirmishing on the Border, and what rumour said of the Dowager, and what he knew of Mary Tudor’s wellbeing, and all the circle she had
left in London. He received letters. He knew and told her, today, that his mother had been advised of his capture, and that Kate her mother had ridden to comfort her.

She knew, for Kate had written her too, saying nothing, this time, of the long wait for her daughter’s homecoming; for she would know that Sybilla, in France, would be her ambassadress. Philippa said, ‘You would hear: they are all in Dieppe. Their dispatches came in today. Including one from Mr Crawford himself, asking leave to marry Catherine d’Albon.’

She did not have the energy, at that moment, to soften it; and the sense of it reached him as he bent, serving her himself, to place a glass of sweet wine at her elbow.

His hand, arrested, knocked the glass and tipped it fully over. The wine streamed, stickily golden, over the table and with an exclamation he knelt, his handkerchief out, and tried to collect it. Philippa drew back unharmed and glanced round, concerned, for something with which to help him.

When she looked back he was kneeling still, with one hand closed, gripping the table. The other spanned his averted face lightly, thumb and fingertip closing his eyelids. With a pang of pure distress verging on horror, she saw there were tears shining under his lashes.

One could not degrade him by touching him. Her heart hammering, Philippa dragged a square of dry linen from her sleeve and paused with that half-offered also.

But she had forgotten he was not a coward. The breakdown lasted only a moment. Then he turned, his eyes inescapably bright, and said, facing her, ‘I seem to be drenching you in two ways at once. I am sorry. I was taken aback.’ He looked down and releasing the wine-sodden kerchief said, ‘I shall send someone in to take care of this. Will you excuse me, Philippa?’

Another man had wept, long ago, all through a cold Turkish night; but not for her sake.

Her eyes stretched open, Philippa Somerville sat and watched the wine drip from the table-edge.

There were, sensibly, two courses open to her. She could leave before he came back, which with another man would be kind, but in his case would only prove her mistrust of his savoir-faire.

Or she could stay and watch him sacrifice his pride in order to restore the situation. In helping him, she would almost certainly provoke an offer of marriage. It was what, if you looked at it squarely, she probably wished to produce when, just now, she made that flat announcement. But she had not, of course, taken the trouble to examine her motives. She had acted … very probably acted … out of jealousy.

Which was not fair to Austin. She was going to have to leave France as soon as her bill of divorcement was final. Austin, if she guessed aright, would be freed in time to go home with her. Then, perhaps, she could
make up her mind whether, by marrying Austin, she would be able to give him sufficient return for all the singular, selfless love he could offer her.

By the time he returned, she had made up her mind; and when the table had been dried and the servant withdrawn, she laid down the fresh glass he had poured for her and said, ‘What happened just now was my fault. Saving each other’s feelings is all very well, but it might be better to be frank. About what happened in the Séjour du Roi, for example. You may have guessed by now that Marthe Blyth is Lymond’s base-born sister. It is not spoken of, as Lord Culter is not aware of it. But that explains her outburst, a little.’

‘I see,’ said Austin Grey. His skin was still very pale against his dark hair but his eyes met hers directly. ‘She is jealous, perhaps, of her brother? Or of you?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Philippa said. ‘What does matter is that she accused me before you all of being enamoured of Francis Crawford.’

She paused. ‘You may not have believed her. I don’t think the others did. But you ought to be told that she was right.’

Distress; disbelief; alarm; anger … all these she had been braced to receive and to deal with. But—‘Oh, my dear,’ he said only, and Philippa’s own eyes pricked at the understanding, the compassion of it. She stopped, and then began again, for to break off now would be unthinkable.

‘As you know, it … isn’t reciprocated. There was never any question of completing our marriage. Next month he will make Catherine his wife, and we are unlikely ever to meet. He is already at some pains to avoid me.’ She looked up, smiling.

‘Do you think I am surprised?’ Austin said. ‘He would charm the fish from the sea, and one needs more years than you have to see what lies underneath. It was a fever. It will one day be over. But you are telling me that, until it is, I must wait.’

‘No,’ Philippa said. ‘I am telling you, my dear, that I have met, unsuitably, hopelessly, and too young the only human being I wish to belong to; that I never will belong to him; but that anyone wishing to marry me should know of the fact. It is a lifelong fever, Austin; and leaves no passion to spare. Only mild love, and kindness, and friendship.’

His eyes had darkened and his hands were clasped, she saw, to still them. He said, ‘You know, I am bound to say, you may be mistaken.’

‘I know you are bound to say it,’ was all she answered.

Nor did she break the silence that followed, although she guessed what was coming, and wished, painfully, that she could help him.

Then he said, his head bent, his eyes on his hands, ‘Philippa, my love is not mild.’

‘I know that too,’ said Philippa gently. ‘I am not asking anyone to marry me and become to me less than a husband should. I am only saying that … what I have to offer is flawed. You must recognize that and think about it, before this matter goes any further.’

‘Must I?’ he said; and looking up, let her see for the first time what she had inflicted on him. ‘Philippa,’ said Austin Grey, ‘why did you have to tell me?’

The wine at her side lay still, deep and bright in its goblet. ‘Because, of all those who have offered me love, you would have noticed,’ she said.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I was being selfish.’ He waited, schooling his voice, and then said, ‘But feeling like this, you can have no wish for marriage.’

‘Perhaps I need it more than anybody,’ Philippa said. ‘I can live alone, but it is better to have someone else to concern oneself with; to help and be helped by. There is nothing so strong as a family.’

Sitting opposite her, without approaching or moving or making any attempt to touch her: ‘Will you then marry me?’ said Austin Grey.