Checkmate (8 page)

‘I should think that about sums it up,’ Lymond said. His voice was a trifle unsteady. ‘It doesn’t do my self-esteem much good though, does it?’

‘Your self-esteem has had a lifetime of steady attention,’ said Philippa abstractedly. She studied him a little, soberly. ‘Archie reported that I could look for these records? You have no really deep objection?’

He did not answer at once. But when they had descended the other side of the bridge and, crossing the square of the Lannerie, were preparing to turn right into the long, shadowy canyon of the rue Mercière, he said, ‘Lest of an evil chick comes an evil bird? The time is long past, Philippa, when it mattered to me. I have a campaign to conduct. I should like, candidly, to see you out of Lyon. That is why I am making this visit. I have also, I hope, shortened your investigation in other ways. I have studied the papers held by the house of Schiatti, and they contain nothing of interest.’

He paused, to let his horse pick its way past some unloading carts in the sharp shadows of the busy street. The clatter of six sets of hooves, reverberating between the almost unbroken line of tall, crooked houses, stitched its way through the general heat and the stinks and the clamour, and even the blue and silver pennant and the livery meant little, it was plain, to a street full of Lyonnais intent on making a profit.

The rue Mercière, running across the crowded Presqu’île like the crossbar of a gate, was the main trading thoroughfare between the Saône and the Rhône; which was why the horologist and dealer and usurer who had called himself Marthe’s uncle had chosen to tenant it.

The name
Gaultier
still appeared, freshly repainted, among the signboards ticketing the long block of buildings ahead on their right. It seemed typical of Marthe that the house she shared with her husband should not bear his name or her own, but that of the defunct and unpleasant man whose business she still continued.

Trotting behind, Philippa found that her eminent escort was making better speed than she was; opened her mouth; closed it, and touched up her horse as soon as she could, to jog alongside him. She said peevishly, ‘Do you consider I’m old enough to stop calling you Mr Crawford?’

‘No,’ said Mr Crawford shortly. ‘What alternatives would you suggest? Master? Uncle?’

‘That would certainly unsettle the Maréchale, for one,’ said Philippa
more cheerfully. ‘I shall call you “mon compère”, as the King does the Constable. You haven’t enough artillery, have you?’

‘Against you or the Germans?’ said Lymond. He had relaxed again.

‘If M. Polvilliers’s troops are well armed and have cannon, you are going to be in a little difficulty until the Piedmont troops arrive, or M. de Guise from Italy, aren’t you? That’s why you want me out of Lyon,’ said Philippa. ‘Among other reasons.’

‘Among other reasons,’ Lymond agreed. That she had a nose for illicit information was known to him. He added, ‘You must surely miss the court at London?’

‘They wouldn’t have me back after I sent you to France,’ said Philippa briefly. She thought, and remarked, ‘I miss Austin Grey.’

‘Tristram Trusty?’ The opening of the rue Tupin appeared sunlit ahead on their left. On their right, the sign of the Hôtel Gaultier swung from the second of its five irregular storeys. Below, an ornate door with a wrought-iron fanlight gave on to a spiral staircase which went down as well as up. Next to it was a stone arch with a clock and a crowned turban sculptured in stone set above it. Lymond drew his horse to a halt and dismounted, taking the bridle. ‘You heard he came to meet me at Douai?’

‘Everyone was very anxious to tell me,’ said Philippa. ‘You know what I think about this obsession with Russia. But you were right to trust him, and I’m glad he escaped. Kate always said he was too sensitive for a Somerville, but I think I could do something with him. Don’t you?’

At a glance from Lymond, one of the men at arms came to help her dismount. There was a general vacating of saddles, attended by a number of grooms who emerged from the Gaultier archway. The archway door, opened wide, revealed a cobbled tunnel lit by indifferent wall torches. Leaving the horses, Lymond raised his eyebrows at Philippa and walked towards it. He said, ‘Everyone is too sensitive for the Somervilles: I shouldn’t let that deter you. He’s as nice as a nun’s hen, but you’re right, I think. There is good stuff there. And he’s a chivalrous child.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ said Philippa doubtfully. ‘Do you think my friends will corrupt him?’

‘I don’t know about your friends,’ said Lymond, ‘but you can rest assured that your husband’s behaviour will be impeccable. If you’re going to marry the youth, I shan’t touch him.’

‘But you will be nasty to him,’ said Philippa gloomily. ‘You know you can’t help it.’

‘I shall probably be nasty to him,’ Lymond agreed firmly. ‘But I shan’t touch him.… You were here four years ago, when the Dame de Doubtance was alive?’

‘Yes,’ said Philippa dimly. She remembered then, as now, this dark vault with the cressets flickering, and the grotesques peering down at them from the arched caissons over their heads. She said, ‘You were here too, with Jerott. When she prophesied that your father’s two sons would never meet in this world again.’

‘A depressing encounter,’ Lymond assented. ‘Do you suppose that
Marthe too has discovered that revelation is a participation of the Eternal Divinity? I take it that marriage to Jerott has made her a Christian. What it has made Jerott, of course, is another matter entirely.’

He
had
met his brother again: Philippa knew that. Passing through Scotland on his way home from Russia Lymond had had an encounter with Richard, third baron Crawford of Culter, which had ended in blows because, again, Francis Crawford would have nothing to do with his own bastard son, or his family. Summoning her considerable moral fibre from the wilting reed-beds of apprehension, Philippa Somerville forbore either to twitch or to apply to Lymond’s arm for reassurance. Lymond did not like to be touched: she had found that out a good while ago.

He was, however, reasonably prescient in other directions. He stopped and looked at her, just at that moment. ‘Wrestling with ghosts, after the manner of the Antabatae? It’s a merchant’s house now, not a temple of high Gothic fantasy. All that is going to be required of you, I fancy, is a great deal of social ingenuity for which, as everyone knows, you have a certificate.’

Philippa looked at him, her qualms replaced by another kind of misgiving. ‘If you are going to be malicious, I shall walk out. Jerott and Marthe once saved your wits for you.’

‘Lethaeo perfusa papavera somno. Now you mention it,’ said Lymond, ‘I seem to remember. Nevertheless, I have a feeling that someone is going to be malicious, and we may as well set them a standard. Shall we go in, lewd and rude, and provoke them?’

It was, Philippa supposed with a groan, her punishment for involving him in her private obsessions. She refrained, with no difficulty, from grasping his sleek, grogram arm and marched forward instead, out of the tunnel and into the Gaultier courtyard.

*

So Jerott Blyth, waiting for Lymond, saw a young woman emerge just ahead of him, preceded by a puff of chypre and an aura of extreme self-possession. He priced her gown automatically and then shifted his attention to the tinted face under the ostrich feather. The brown eyes, the decided nose, the curled lips belonged to no one whose parents he knew.

She was smiling at him, and he answered the smile because, indeed, she was exquisite, while at the same time he was aware, his anger rising, of Francis Crawford standing behind her, sardonically watching. He had invited Lymond alone to his home, out of bitter pride, for one purpose. If Lymond then chose to bring with him some empty-headed young nobleman’s daughter, it was quite deliberate, and in tune with his conduct outside the Hôtel de Ville the previous morning.

Lymond had stopped by the orange trees at the entrance. Jerott made no attempt to walk forward. But the girl came straight towards him and, taking his hand, leaned up and kissed his cheek, smiling. Behind him, his
wife Marthe’s voice said, ‘Don’t you recognize her? It’s Philippa Somerville.’

And of course, if you looked into those enlarged, reassuring dark eyes, it was the undersized bride of sixteen you had last seen dispatched home from Volos. So how in God’s name did the girl come to be in Lyon?

Marthe knew. The edge on her voice told him that, and her lack of surprise. And there was more to it than that. Marthe knew, and had invited Philippa to come at the same time as Lymond.

Jerott’s right hand jerked and then remained still, trapped under Philippa’s tranquil fingers. She leaned up and kissed him on the other cheek. ‘We’ve been working on this for days. Did we succeed in surprising you?’

‘You’ve certainly frightenened him silly,’ said Lymond. ‘If you open your fingers, he’ll drop like an egg to the paving.’ He came forward, and as Philippa retreated, took Jerott lightly by the shoulders. ‘You will have to surfer the same from me,’ he said. ‘It is a forfeit we exact from all bridegrooms.’

It had never happened before. Jerott received the swift, insubstantial embrace and then found that Lymond, stepping back, was looking at him with amiable satisfaction. Marthe said, ‘If you will all do it again, the servants will give you a round of applause. The practice is to kiss the bride, Francis. You may come, if you wish, and shake hands with the bridegroom.’

Lymond turned to the woman he now called his step-sister and Philippa, her skin chilled to goose-flesh, watched them together.

They were so alike: pretty as jonquils with their white skin and blue eyes and pale perfumed heads, gilding the gloom of the courtyard. From the archaic stone lips of a wall-fountain a ceaseless jet fell to its basin. The trill of water braided the silence. Then Lymond, his eyes on the other identical eyes, turned out the palms of his hands, yielding and empty. ‘I have no more than you have,’ he said to his sister.

Marthe said, ‘My dear, you have all the Dame de Doubtance’s fortune,’ and Jerott turned on her sharply.

‘He offered you it all, and you refused it.’

Marthe laughed, and Philippa’s hands curled inside their elaborate gloves. Whatever Lymond and his sibling were talking about, it was not money. Perhaps Marthe had saved him once from the degradation of his own addiction, but there was something different in her eyes now: contempt; defensiveness. And what Lymond had just divined: a subtle envy. Philippa said, looking round her, ‘The house hasn’t changed.’

It was bigger, indeed, than she remembered it. Gabled buildings with strange angled roofs totally enclosed the courtyard in which they were standing. Above Marthe rose four tiers of open arched galleries upheld on red columns with writhing forms, half beast and half human, carved on the capitals, and there were more figures on the painted beams roofing each gallery. Across the courtyard, a tower enclosed a second spiralling
staircase and a roofed bridge, held on wrought brackets, joined one wall to its neighbour above it.

Two of the wide arches giving on to the yard led to stables and their horses had already been led there. On the side opposing the entrance, there stood yet another dark archway, still more handsome, with a spire and some sort of entablature. Jerott, who had been watching her, said, ‘It leads to the quay. You know about the traboules?’

The Schiatti had told her about the traboules. With rare intersections, the houses of Lyon ran in unbroken ranks parallel, as a rule, to the river. To give access from one street to the other, public passageways or traboules passed through the tall houses. Since the habit began, gardens and yards had been filled with more buildings and now such a tunnel might lead you through three or more different homes and across as many courtyards before you emerged in the road at the end of it.

‘Anyone who has visited Edinburgh knows about traboules. Don’t be parochial, Jerott,’ said Lymond. ‘So you trade from the quayside block? Puissant, proud, mighty, cruel and bloody; the natural savour, taste and quality corrupted by th’ infection of the pomp and other filthiness of your ships? What merchandise do you handle?’

‘Sad irons,’ said Marthe, before Jerott could answer. ‘Ribbons, fringes, and little drums for bairns. He will show you them, I am sure, presently. My rooms are here.’

‘And what do you trade in, Marthe?’ Lymond asked, as she turned to lead them up the wide turning stairs. They had neither embraced nor touched hands, Philippa was aware.

‘Bodily and ghostly comfort. And objects of antiquity,’ Marthe said. And added, before he could speak, ‘You appear to have profited by the first two. And of course, I have been well rewarded. Shall we see now what service we can perform for your wife? There are papers below she will wish to investigate. And after that, you may search the Dame de Doubtance’s chambers.’

‘Philippa can do both,’ Lymond said. ‘It is her self-appointed vocation.’

‘Have you remembered nothing of the terms of your inheritance? None of these papers was to be read without your consent and your presence. And the first to enter her rooms after her death on pain of cursing had to be Francis Crawford.’

They had resumed climbing again. On the first gallery, looking down between the pillars at the heads of Philippa and Jerott, ascending below: ‘You invoked all this research?’ Lymond said. ‘It doesn’t trouble you?’

‘I have nothing to lose,’ Marthe said. ‘So nothing can harm me.’

Below, Philippa had asked a question and Jerott had paused to detail an answer. Lymond said, ‘Why did you want me to stay in France? You know that Prince Vishnevetsky has taken my place in Vorobievo?’

With slow charm, Marthe gave him a smile. ‘And I have Jerott,’ she
said. ‘How cheaply you rate me. You will not go to Russia because your fate is here. Or do you not know it?’

*

In the event, Philippa plodded alone through the papers, which were in the vaulted basement room once employed by the man Gaultier as his store room and workshop, which had once contained a horological spinet of some small notoriety. Lymond, having fulfilled his obligations to the extent of entering the room and wincing at the dust and the dampness, had retreated upstairs again to the modified conviviality of Marthe’s chamber.