Checkmate (69 page)

Below this and above it was an interval, as if with each paragraph the writer had intended to end the letter, but had been brought, in the end, to add to it.

He had meant, perhaps to leave it unsigned. But below, briefly, he had put the words.

I am thou thy selfe
.

And below that, had signed his name:
Francis
.

The courier waited for her reply, which was bright and trenchant and matter-of-fact, as once had been her diary to Kate, written in the Sultan’s seraglio; for its purpose, as then, was to strengthen, and not to weaken.

In it she put only her daily news, but with a detail which, unlike his, covered several pages. She found time, as she was writing, to be deeply thankful that love and self-respect together had demanded that her days should be full, so that he should find nothing there to add to his anxiety.

Only at the end did she stop and read again, with painful understanding, the words of his final paragraph, and the appeal which, despite himself, they held in their closing phrases.

So she finished, as he had done, in a brief key which was very different.

I have told you the work of my hands. The place of my thoughts you may know by now. For yours, the door of this kingdom is open by day and by night if you will lend them to me
.

The second seal, the one used by Nicholas Applegarth, was still in the desk. She lifted it out, and heating the wax, imprinted it on the folded paper so that the first thing he would see, when he touched it, was his own crest of Sevigny. Then, having delivered it to the courier, she went to her room and, her head in her empty hands, sought for him.

*

In Paris on the same day, Master John Elder took steps at last to obey his mistress, and sail back to England.

He called at the Palais de Justice for his safe conduct. Next, out of malice as well as necessity, he visited the Hôtel de l’Ange, and inquired for Lord Allendale.

Austin was out, but Lord Culter received him. Dealing briefly with his inquiries, Lord Culter observed curtly that his mother was ill in her chamber, and he thought it exceedingly unlikely that Lord Allendale would want to leave France at present, with or without Master Eider.

Master Elder clicked his teeth, his long raw face full of affliction. ‘The matter of Mr Crawford. That is, I beg your pardon, the comte de … Or no. The Marshal, is it not, of Sevigny? A name whose renown, I am sure, will bring nothing but credit to the Crawford family. But of course, mixed with sorrow.… Mixed, like all great blessings, with sorrow. The young lady, I am told, ran away from him.’

‘Indeed?’ said Lord Culter. ‘Then you have been misinformed. The comtesse de Sevigny is still at her château.’

‘I have it wrong,’ said Master Elder with contrition. ‘It was your brother who renounced all his offices to stay with his bride—a delightful romance: it had all Paris weeping. And then summoned by the King, of course, felt unable to withhold his services. So the Countess expects him to return?’

‘I think,’ said Austin Grey’s voice from the doorway, ‘you should absolve Lord Culter from answering. None of us expects Mr Crawford to return, but it would not be polite to say so. Did you wish to see me?’

Master John Elder was not unused to the knowledge that other people were glad to get rid of him. He climbed with undisturbed aplomb to Lord Allendale’s room, and once there said, ‘I see, since the poor young lady has been deserted, you must feel in honour bound to stay here to help her. I hope you can. I only hope you still can. I hear she is to bear him a child?’

‘That is not true,’ said Austin Grey harshly. ‘Or Lady Culter assures me so.’

‘I hope the poor girl fares well,’ said Elder sententiously. ‘Men of violence are rarely gentle in their dealings with the opposite sex. Children may be denied them. Poor lady. I shall ask Lady Lennox to write to her mother. That is, if you are not to be persuaded to come to England yet? The Commissioners, I am told, are not enjoying the full brightness of the Cardinal’s pleasure at present.’

‘Their privileges, I suppose, could not continue indefinitely,’ Austin said. ‘The war has enforced economies, and the unrest has meant firmer measures to protect the public order. As soon as the English fleet ceases patrolling the Narrow Seas they will be permitted to go. I mean to wait at least until then.’

‘And, perhaps, take the comtesse de Sevigny back to England with you?’ said John Elder warmly. ‘How that would delight the Countess my mistress! Then, I have to tell you, the coffer entrusted to you by the Palais de Justice is to be transferred to me. You were about to take home at their instance the effects of a deceased English gentleman, so they tell me? Are they here?’

‘In this room. In the corner,’ said Austin Grey, nodding. And stood, displeased and astonished as the secretary, bending over the coffer, read
the label and straightened with a long, slow and unscholarly imprecation.

‘Was this the man who is dead?’ said Master Elder. ‘A man named Leonard Bailey?’

‘Why?’ said Austin coldly. ‘Did he owe you money? He was a scoundrel, I am told, if not a murderer.’

‘What!’ said Elder. Then recovering, he folded the shabby skirts of his black robe about him and sitting said, ‘Tell me all about him.’

It took five minutes, no more. At the end, ‘So that is all you know?’ said Master Elder. ‘He was found dead in the Hôtel des Sphères in the morning, having dismissed the servants the previous night, his habit when hiring a woman. On returning, however, the varlets found no sign of a femme usagère, though a horse was missing and later, several coffers of money were found locked, to the servants’ surprise, in a cellar. Then the mistress of the house, whose guest the gentleman appeared to be, was discovered dead in the yard, instead of on an extended visit, as Bailey had given out. It was thought that the store of money came to his knowledge, and that having murdered her for it, he died naturally from overstrain and excitement. Do you believe that?’

‘Why not?’ said Austin Grey.

‘And the horse?’

‘Someone stole it. The house was empty. There was no one to stop them, and the streets were full. It was the night of the Queen of Scots’ wedding.’

‘It was the night M. le comte de Sevigny, Chevalier de l’Ordre, vanished from the wedding festivities in pursuance of Madame, his charming wife Philippa,’ John Elder said. ‘It was the night an elderly gentleman called at Mistress Philippa’s rooms and was given, by arrangement, a large sum of money in four coffers, which represented all the gold she had then banked in Paris.…

‘Suppose a woman did dispose of her person to Leonard Bailey that night. Suppose that, unwisely indulging his appetites he suddenly perished, leaving her in a state of shock and unable to return to her business. Or ailing: so impaired that her husband, Bailey’s pander, was forced to remove her from Paris?’

‘What are you saying?’ said Austin. He was ashen.

‘I wonder if you remember,’ said Master Elder, ‘when we talked of the charming Marthe, who so resembles her
step brother
the comte de Sevigny? Did it never strike you as strange that such a resemblance should exist between a brownhaired man’s son and his natural daughter, and that both these offspring should have bright yellow hair, while the hair of the eldest, wholly legitimate son should be brown?’

‘No,’ said Austin. ‘I … There are surely several possible explanations.’

‘Several,’ said Master Elder, staring at him. ‘But all of them start with the same premise. If Madame Marthe is a bastard, then the gentleman whose colour she shares is almost certain to share her bastardy. I
believe,’ said John Elder, ‘that our eminent friend is not the son of Gavin Crawford. I heard this belief was shared by a distant relative of Mr Crawford’s, a great-uncle called Leonard Bailey. One of the reasons I am in Paris this season is that Leonard Bailey promised the Countess, my mistress, to do what he could to obtain documentary proof that Francis Crawford was not what he seemed to be. He was being paid a large monthly fee to look for some original evidence, or even a copy of it. I have been waiting ever since March to hear from him.

‘Now I know why I did not hear. He found his originals, did Master Bailey; and he auctioned them. And in return for them, he obtained four coffers of money, a virgin, and a grave in unhallowed ground as a murderer.’

*

When, later, he broke into her room, Sybilla thought that her courteous young Allendale was gripped, fever-wild, with a sickness. Then she began to distinguish what, in his hoarse shaking voice, he was shouting, and exerting her own clear, scarifying force of personality made him sit down, and lower his voice, and then take in his trembling hands the strongest drink she could find him.

Then she heard him through to the end, although much of his story she had to guess from half-heard whispers and once, for a long time, he could not speak at all. During the recital she herself became very white, but she sat, her back straight, her hands tightly clasped on the long robe before her, and neither drank herself, nor interrupted until it was over.

Then she said, ‘Much of this seems to be based on assumption. Have you any real proof?’

‘All I need,’ said Austin Grey. ‘I have just been to the rue de la Cerisaye along with Elder. We found the servants with the help of the Célestins. We found the girl who let Philippa in, one day she called to see Leonard Bailey.’ He stopped and then said, ‘You see, it explains why your son knew he couldn’t get his divorce; because the grounds were to be …’

He could not finish. After a bit he went on, with courage: ‘And so he had to leave Paris, too, before Madame Roset was found.’

‘I thought you said the authorities accused Bailey of killing Madame Roset?’ Sybilla said. Her hands shook, and she steadied them.

‘Why should he?’ said Austin simply. ‘Whereas Lymond had every reason, if she knew what Bailey did. Lady Culter … you have been ill … and you must forgive me … but no son of yours could have acted like this, nor, if he did, do I believe you would own him.

‘If Lymond is not entitled to the name he bears, then he has married under false pretences, and there are grounds for annulment which never existed before. I beg you, for Philippa’s sake, tell me. Who is he? Who is he, if he is not Francis Crawford?’

‘He is Francis Crawford,’ Sybilla said.

‘You would protect him?’ Austin said. ‘Even yet? Or is it——?’ He stopped.

‘… myself I am protecting?’ Sybilla said. ‘Perhaps. Certainly, I am speaking for Richard, and for all his family. If Francis bought the proof, as you say, then it is surely destroyed, and whatever shame you bring down on our kin, you will still be no closer to an annulment. None of this is Richard’s fault. Need you ruin him also?’ She paused to collect herself and then went on.

‘There is something else I want to say. You assume that this was done with my son’s connivance. I think that you have guessed correctly. I think that Philippa knew Bailey had those particular papers, and I think that she paid the price he demanded. But, Austin, there is no man on earth who will make me believe that Francis knew it beforehand.’

‘But you don’t know your son,’ Austin said. He looked very tired, with all the violence drained from his face with the colour. ‘Then you won’t help me?’

‘I can’t help you,’ Sybilla said. ‘I can only beg you not to take this to Richard. And to remind you that if Philippa did this thing for Francis, it was a deed of heroic devotion.’

‘And so he has left her,’ said Austin.

He could not understand it, but he could feel her pain, filling the chamber. Then she said, ‘For Philippa, if you love her, you should go home to England now, Austin. Forget us and go home. We have brought you nothing but torture.’

‘I shall go home,’ he said, ‘when I can take Philippa with me.’

*

It was not to be expected that Lymond’s mother would help him. Elder had warned him of that, before he left to take ship for England. ‘And remember,’ Elder had said, ‘I know what this hypocrite is, and so does my mistress. Dig deep. Expose him. Defy all who would stop you. And if, in England or in Scotland, you need a strong arm, you have only to call on us.’

Lymond’s mother did not help him, nor did Lymond’s sister, although she received him in the Hôtel du Séjour and listened to all he had to tell her. At the end she said, ‘So honour would be satisfied if you can prove that Philippa’s husband was not worth her sacrifice?’

The black line crossed his brow, which had come to live there in the past week. ‘She is infatuated. He has abandoned her already, for a bâton.’

‘As you say. I don’t suppose,’ Marthe said, ‘you could begin to be as enraged as I am by that development. But I don’t believe Francis killed Madame Roset.’

‘Why should Bailey have killed her?’ It was what he had said to Sybilla.

‘That,’ said Marthe, ‘is exactly what I am asking myself. Why should Bailey have killed her?’

The Queen of Scotland, learning that the comte de Sevigny had succumbed to the King’s inducements, was torn between pleasure and disillusionment. The Queen of France said very little but was as friendly to Madame Valentinois, it was noticed, as she had been on the occasion of the Duchess de Guise’s parturition. Mademoiselle Catherine d’Albon was extremely silent, and if she spoke at all, was inclined to be sharp for one of such an equable nature. Her father, receiving the news in Flanders, was not entirely pleased.

The Cardinal of Lorraine, entertaining the King in his château de Marchais, took time to write to Paris, ordering a further and more stringent questioning of some of the college personnel engaged in the recent demonstrations. He instructed a number of qualified theologians to pay a protracted call on the charming wife of M. d’Andelot. And he asked that my lord of Seton, Lord Provost of Edinburgh and senior Lord Baron of Scotland, should be prepared to give him some time when next he found it convenient to ride to Paris.

The Marshal de Sevigny, having assigned and dispatched his advance troops, left Pierrepont himself with a small force of gentlemen and pistoliers and, overtaking that led by Guthrie, de Forcés and Jerott, proceeded to move the seventy miles over the Picardy plateau into Amiens, in readiness to prepare camp for the main royal army.

For the sake of speed, the expedition carried no baggage, except for a light horse-drawn field cannon on wheels and a couple of wagons. One of these held gunpowder, lead and cord for the hackbuts, while the other contained pioneers’ material, including ladders and two light broad-beamed shallops. To ensure their self-sufficiency, they also carried with them, on mules and in wagons, their own bread and wine for the journey.

On the way north, the combined force fought two minor actions, in both of which the German levies were subjected to ungentle discipline.

Already, the large proportion of foreign mercenaries had provoked constant trouble on the march north from Luxembourg. The burning of the Duke de Guise’s tent with most of his possessions at Arlon had not been an accident, nor had a similar mishap suffered by camp-marshal
Bourdillon. There had been frequent violent clashes between French and Germans off duty, and on one occasion an outbreak of hackbut fire which had come too close to the Duke’s person for comfort.

It was not a situation where reason or soft words had any hope of prevailing. On the first night of the march, after a small but successful encounter with a troop of foraging Flemish cavalry, the footsoldiers from Saxony, elated and hungry for plunder, burst their ranks and made, jumping over the fields, for the village used for the enemy’s ambush.

It needed only ten minutes more for a repetition of the scenes the army had endured ever since Thionville: the firing of the straw stacks and thatches, the hysterical barking of dogs and the screaming of women and children; the spread-eagled boys split by pikes and the other, living figures pinned threshing under their predators.

They were half over the fields when Lymond had his trumpeters blow the recall, and three-quarters when his line of hackbutters dropped to one knee and opened fire on them.

Ten of the Duke of Saxony’s men dropped in their tracks. The rest hesitated, slowed, and then turning, raised their hands in surrender.

Captain de Forcés rounded them up. Those common soldiers who survived were brought back and whipped; the leaders were hanged from the treetops. Then the force was re-formed, fed, watered and set marching till daylight.

Jerott, extremely uneasy at the quality of their silence, followed an old campaign rule and, dismounting, dropped back and marched beside them. Guthrie, de Forcés and Lymond were already there, each keeping pace with an ensign. He found a group of men with whom he could converse in stumbling Spanish, and listened jealously to the eager, competitive note in the voices round Francis.

The Marshal, from his days as a mercenary, spoke mercenaries’ German, as well as dealing out mercenaries’ justice. The army and he, it appeared, understood one another.

At dawn they found a wood to sleep in, the men in the open and the four chief officers under canvas. It was Alec Guthrie who, missing Lymond, found him alone with his back to a tree, at a place further out than his pickets.

He did not move as Guthrie came up, but despite the dearth of welcome, the older man continued until he stood, hands on hips, looking down at him. ‘Remorse?’ Guthrie observed.

‘No,’ Lymond said. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them.

‘You want to prove that even after that you won’t be found with an accidental knife in your back in the morning?’

‘They wouldn’t risk it,’ said Lymond. ‘Not in camp. A shot in the head, perhaps, during the fighting.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. When did you last get a night’s sleep?’ said Guthrie abruptly.

This time, Lymond opened his eyes and looked up at him. ‘When did I last have peace to get one?’

‘You weren’t asleep. You weren’t asleep last night either. Whatever it is,’ Guthrie said, ‘that demands this depth of self-analysis, you would be as well to dismiss it while fighting. Men depend on you. Without a routine, you cannot expect to keep healthy.’

He paused, his bearded lips pursed. ‘There are various traditional methods of relieving tension. Jerott, I understand, is an expert.’

‘If Jerott puts a girl in my tent,’ Lymond said, ‘I shall kill her.’

He had been expecting something, but the suddenness of it caught Guthrie unprepared. For a long time, his mind busy, he said nothing. Lymond, his eyes closed, was breathing with great regularity. Then Alec Guthrie said, ‘I see. And what solution do you propose?’

‘The King’s Cure,’ Lymond said. ‘Le Roy te touche. Dieu te guérisse. The problem is not, unfortunately, amenable to communal management.’

‘There is no shame in the wine flask, now and then,’ Guthrie said. ‘It doesn’t solve problems, but it makes them a little more tolerable.’

‘I have a suggestion in that case,’ said Lymond. ‘You two have the orgy, and I’ll keep the drinker’s headache. Assuming, that is, you mean to spend every hour of the twenty-four haunting me.’

He was not getting anywhere, so Guthrie left him. Recounting the incident later, he was quite taken aback by Jerott’s reaction.

Late the same day, with forty miles still to cover, they passed the village of Flavy-le-Martel with, beyond it, the enemy-occupied fortress of Ham in which the Marshal himself had once been held prisoner.

No one mentioned it, and they gave Ham an extremely wide berth: the more so that the marquis de Villars had also passed that way, on a march somewhat less orderly.

It was as well that they had brought with them their own food supplies, for the villages they did pass were deserted and many of them in ruins, so that the wide flat countryside stretching far to the east beyond the Somme offered little shelter. In the intense heat much of the marshy ground had dried out, but necessity pushed them once or twice from the more convenient tracks into a network of the small streams which fed the Somme, and there the trestles and boats came into use, and the coils of rope they had brought for dragging both cobles and wagons.

They used local guides twice, although these were often double informers, and once hired, were not allowed to leave camp: their news was always checked by Lymond’s own outposts which moved back and forth constantly. He knew, at every point, how far de Villars was ahead of him and also the situation at Amiens where d’Estrée and his commissaires de vivres had already started work. His own relay of couriers also arrived at regular intervals from Pierrepont with news of the main army.

Two further letters had come from his wife, one while he was still at Marchais, and the other which he had opened that morning, just before Guthrie came across him.

Each contained a closely written budget of news. ‘I gather great
princes still make peace sword in hand. The rumour is that Spain won’t give in until she has Savoy and Piedmont back; England wants Calais and the King of France wants the Constable.

‘If peace is made, the Germans will be paid off and the Cardinal, it is thought, will be able to act fairly freely against the Calvinists. Master Knox, in Geneva, has just printed a tract against women monarchs which has made him the de Guises’ special favourite. I’m told the church have been investigating the meeting of drapers in the rue Marie-Egyptienne, and hope our mystical friend has not been attending them: he is meanwhile providently predicting nothing but quotable victories.

‘Willie Grey is temporarily satisfied in a new-found belief that Onzain communicates with Chaumont under the river by tunnel, and that if he can only find it, he will be a free man, provided he can get out of Chaumont. He says the Duchess d’Uzes has told de La Rochefoucauld who has told de Merguey that Queen Catherine thinks Lord Seton has gone crazy. I have a feeling that you were intended to be at the end of this particular tunnel, so I pass it on for what you can make of it.

The rest of the news is not mine. On the principle of Fluctuat nec Mergitur, which I hope you approve of, I have solicited all your former correspondents, and new reports are now beginning to come in. There are times, it seems to me, when one needs help in deciphering the recondite secrets of God the Creator …’

She had reopened the network which, begun long ago, had kept him apprised before most people of the shifting allegiances of Europe.

The remainder of both letters was occupied with material taken from the incoming dispatches. At the end of each was a paragraph, no more, about her own concerns. The first ended with the words,
You are missed
.

The second, the one he had read in the wood, had been different. In that she had put only her signature. It was not until he turned it over that he saw that there was a separate page.

‘You will have to burn my letters. Shall I tell you exactly when you realized this? Who would believe that I know to the second? Nostradamus?

‘So I wished to write you something you need not burn
.

‘It seemed to me that a circumscribed love was not love; and it was a reflection on whole love to call it so. But against what you have given me, there should be something to write in the ledger
.

‘So let me record it. There is nothing of me that does not belong to you. More than your death I fear mine; because you would be left here to mourn for me. More than your love I want peace for you; so better your need of me died, than that it should become unendurable
.

‘I want you to know what you have. That is its span. I have no other rod of assize
.

‘God grant quiet rest
.
PHILIPPA.
’

He had burned the rest of the letter, as she had suggested, after Alec Guthrie had left him. Then, because sleep was a state more and more
foreign to him he had stayed there, unmoving in solitude, so that the channel was open. And a little later, like a coming home, he knew her mind was with him.

Just before it was time to rouse the camp he returned silently to his tent and without wakening Jerott took out paper and standish and wrote a quick, careful note to his brother.

Someone had cooked him cabbage on charcoal for breakfast, and found millet bread, and a little pomade, a drink made from apples. De Forcés said, ‘If they make a peace, I suppose they’ll disband us. Will you go back to Sevigny, mon Maréchal?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Lymond said. ‘But first we have to finish the war.’

They began marching at four, when the worst of the heat should have been over, but the plain still swam with it when they passed Caix four hours after that and their detours were not caused by water, but the need to keep the dry grass, noisy with cicadas, under their feet; rather than the chalky earth which rose funnelling into the air, sharp as desert sand, kicked sparkling into the small fires of evening.

Here and there, adrift in the haze, were small villages, the blue spire of the church set like thorn over the thatched cabins and red and white brick of the houses. Twice, they saw signs of hasty cropping, but mostly rank grass grew in the cornfields, and there were no working horses plodding the meadows, or dappled cows under the fruit trees. Only the birds were the same: a young pheasant, rising underfoot, gave Lymond reason to steady his mare and flocks of short-bodied birds rose and wheeled, as they had on that other journey from Ham. He was concerned, this time, that they should tell no tales to his enemies.

Now, within the ranks, hardship imposed its own discipline. The men marched grimly, eyes bloodshot and seared with the lancing glitter of helm and greaves and cuirass; lips cracked and brown skins opened raw with the sun and napped with clinging dirt. Half the mules had gone, turned back to Laon with their panniers empty, and two vacant wine wagons with them. The field gun, hot enough to flay skin, had been covered, and so too had the wagon of powder: it would be a pity, the Marshal remarked, to reach Amiens vertically.

The horses pulling the wagons were in need of water. Jerott’s mind was on that as they neared Caix and saw ahead the reeded banks of the Luce. He noticed the grove of tall chestnuts, hot and gold as syrup in the low light, and thought also how welcome their shade would be for ten minutes. Under his cuirass his buckskin jerkin was stiff with perspiration and, below that, he could feel his shirt oozing water. Beside him, in the outer file of marching men, a soldier fainted, and his companions broke ranks to help him.

Then Jerott saw that he had not fainted, and spurring his horse, sent his stentorian voice ringing along the line of march, bringing all the ensigns to a halt. Before they had stopped, Lymond was with him, looking down at the man in the dust.

‘Killed by a crossbolt,’ Jerott said. ‘From the trees, I think.’ Behind him, his lieutenant was pulling the vanguard back out of range. One or two hackbutters, loading quickly in the front line, turned and shot into the thick dusty felting of leaves. A crossbolt struck the ground at their heels as they ran. Lymond backed his horse, still watching the trees, and then turned and trotted with Jerott back to the rest of the company.