Checkmate (83 page)

She had always been glorious, with her green-fair hair and regal stature, and in the eighteen months and more since last they met she had ripened, it seemed, in the sun of royal and Catholic favour, her skin sumptuous, her eyes dark and rich as her jewels. Lady Lennox said, ‘There are four men you know of on the other side of the door.’

He had expected her to assail him with words. ‘And Matthew?’ he said.
‘Gai comme un bonnet de nuit?’
He did not intend to walk halting towards the saving heat of the fire, so he stayed where he was.

‘My husband is in Settrington,’ Lady Lennox replied. ‘I might have had you brought into Bridlington Bay, but I preferred to have you dealt with more distantly, and without Matthew being involved.’

‘Also, young Allendale could put the matter on an official footing,’ Lymond said. So they were, as he had guessed, not too far south of Berwick. He added thoughtfully, ‘I came quite to like Willie Grey. If anything happens to me, won’t there be repercussions?’

He saw then, from her eyes, that she knew a little more than he had bargained for. ‘From whom?’ Margaret said. ‘France has no interest in you now. The English Council don’t want a prominent mercenary bought into the anti-Catholic factions in either Scotland or England. I can think of no one who will mourn you, Francis, and a great many who will be
much comforted to learn that God has otherwise disposed of you. Provided it is done with discretion.’

‘Oh, I can see the advantages,’ Lymond said. ‘The Cardinal’s gratitude: the help of the de Guises to get back your lands in Scotland, and perhaps even to work towards better things. Matthew for Regent, and Harry for King. What do you do about Richard?’

‘Show him your grave,’ Margaret said. ‘When finally we agree to allow him to visit you. Unless you have a particular resistance to cold?’

He said, ‘Evading excessive heat so far has been my speciality.’ A plaguing thirst and a growing lightheadedness made him aware that he had lost rather more blood than he could afford to.

Margaret said, ‘So I would gather. I am told that you encouraged an old great-uncle to perform his business of the night with your wife, and that you haven’t bedded her since. It seems a pity. Green wood, they say, makes a hot fire. Can you afford such fastidiousness?’

He had not expected that, either. ‘I don’t suppose I can,’ he said. ‘Now that the field has shrunk so alarmingly.’

‘And I rather doubt,’ Margaret said, ‘if I am in any danger. Don’t move. I want to see how long you can stand there. Allendale tells me your poor child-wife is most unhappy. You have a heavy hand, have you not, for girl children? I remember the young lady who could not see. What was her name? Joleta?’

‘You have my conquests confused,’ Lymond said. ‘I have the same trouble. Joleta was the sister of that charming hypocrite I am sure you remember: Sir Graham Reid Malett of Malta?’

‘I gave myself the pleasure of telling Lord Allendale about her,’ Margaret Lennox said. ‘He knew about Graham Malett. Have you not realized yet that he regards you as a man of that stamp? You are his holy war, Francis.’

‘And yours?’ he said.

He could see, in the swimming heat of the fire, that she was smiling. ‘Just war,’ she said. ‘Come, where is all that insouciant ribaldry? Smile, M. le comte! Is this all the wit you can bring to my salon?’ And derisively, she quoted softly:

‘What is your name, M. le comte de Sevigny?’

‘Patience,’ said Francis Crawford. He had postponed total humiliation, with regret, by backing two paces and leaning his shoulders against a tall cupboard.

‘It is as good, I suppose, as any other,’ Margaret said. ‘And what name
would you have me give your mother? I hired Mr Bailey—did you know?—to trace her mistake and identify it for me.’

‘And did he?’ he said.

‘I didn’t think of trying your methods. If I had that information,’ Margaret said, ‘what would you pay me to keep it secret?’

She had held back, deliberately, until she had nothing to fear from him. He said, the words soft in his dry throat, ‘What do you want?’

‘Beg,’ she said.

He could barely stand upright. But he gave, in spite of himself, a short hoot of laughter, ‘Oh Christ, Margaret,’ he said. ‘That’s old King Henry, my dear. That’s ten whole years out of date.’

She stood up. ‘You won’t?’

‘No. I won’t. I won’t bend my knee, or kiss your charming shoes either. I may possibly fall flat on my face, but that will be quite inadvertent.’

‘You will stand there and let me refer to Madame la putaine your mother? You will watch while I call my sergeant in to listen while I brand you bastard?’

‘No,’ said Lymond. One could, as he had proved, concentrate the willpower. One could lease five minutes’ strength, or perhaps less, and hold it until now, when she was standing smiling, her beautiful hair aureoled by the fire.

It took three long, silent strides to reach her; and one hand to seize her dress and another her hair.

The gown ripped, as he had meant it to, through the bodice and the embroidered chemise under, until she was bare to the waistline.

The hair came away in his hand, leaving beneath it an unkempt, strong-smelling nest. The head, prematurely grey, of a forty-three year old woman who stood, her painted neck blotched by his hands, too vain to shriek out in protest.

So he summoned help for her, walking erratically to the door and opening it gently, so that the four men leaning outside stood and stared at him, and then at what they saw past his shoulder, as their prisoner stepped aside and encouraged them cordially to enter.

There was a certain satisfaction in it, but that was all, for they did not kill him outright: merely returned him after another crude beating to his tower room. His only conscious thought, as he struck the floor and rolled over, was that this time, ripped though it was, they had left him his shirt.

He was collecting the strength to lift his limbs from the stone when the man with the broken nose entered, grinning, and shot a pailful of icy water over his head and body. Then they left him, and did not come back.

When you die
, Margaret Lennox had said to him once,
When you die—and I shall be there—it will be an experience which no man has savoured
.

Ironic that now, without food, without water, without warmth, one should watch the day give way to night and the night give way to day,
knowing that the gift Philippa had left him, which Sybilla had taken away, might be returned him in the end at this woman’s hands, who wished him nothing but mischief.

He did not want to live. As the condition of life does, so the condition of death should depend on one’s choice. The wise man lives as long as he ought, not as long as he can. Democrites fell on his sword; Aruntius killed himself to fly both the past and the future; Crates said that love would be cured by hunger, if not by time; and whoever disliked these two remedies, by a rope.

All these were barred to him because of the vow he had made to Sybilla. Because of it, he could not resign himself to what, easy or difficult, was coming; but instead had to turn again to his lessons: the long, bitter schooling thrust at him, for no purpose, throughout every twist of his lifespan.

In rebellion he made his preparations; and in rebellion composed himself, as the Shamans do, to reduce the shivering husk of the body to one spark of life, conserving what it has; feeling cold and hunger and thirst no more than a plant does, laid in its sap on an icefield.

It was all he could do; and would extend his life, he supposed, by a day or so. For what came after that, his only regret lay in the Lennoxes’ triumph. And that death should come without grace, instead of the way he had planned in the Authie, in the open air among men, in a moment of verve and of freedom.

What ties the fool to his body?
somebody said.

A promise.

I shall send gems of lapis lazuli: I shall make her fields into vineyards, and the field of her love into orchards
.

Philippa.

*

He did not want to be roused when Wharton’s men broke into the room, and even when they laid him before the warm fire, from which the Countess of Lennox had been removed, crying indignantly, an hour earlier, he tried to avoid them. Then he came to himself, and remembered.

What ties the fool to his body?

A promise.

*

Before he left, Lord Wharton came to see him. ‘You think you can ride? I’ll send my men part of the way with you; then you’ll have no more trouble. Your mother is with the Somervilles at Flaw Valleys. So is Lord Culter. I do not want him, in these difficult times, to appear further south. They’re waiting there for you.’

He had changed less than anyone else: this small, elderly, hardbitten
man who had crossed his path first eleven years before, in the English war, in Annan. Thomas, first Baron Wharton, knew the north and its problems better than any man, even William Grey of Wilton. But he took Grey’s advice on political matters. And Grey, even from far off on the Loire, had advised him.

One knew this was likely. One hoped that Richard, ransomed or somehow released, would get hold of Wharton and force him to take a hand in the affair. What was surprising was that it had all happened so easily. ‘Who will mourn you?’ Margaret Lennox had said. ‘Not France. Not the English Council.’ Yet when he had wakened fully, it was to find Margaret gone, with all her servants, and in their place the doctors and servants of Thomas Wharton, Governor of Berwick and Warden of all the Marches.

So now he said, ‘I have to thank you, sir, for my life. How did it come about?’

The scarred, uncompromising soldier’s face stared at him. ‘You had a key. Did you not recollect? Your brother did.’ And when Lymond shook his head, Thomas Wharton pulled forward the pocket of his cloak and drew from it something he threw on the table.

It was a glove: a gauntlet of padded silk embroidered over and over with colours and fine gold, and in the centre, where the wrist would lie, an elaborate initial, enclosed in a cartouche.

‘You collect them, I believe,’ said Thomas Wharton. ‘It was in your baggage. Lord Culter brought it to me.’

‘Then——’ Lymond said.

‘Mary Tudor is dead. Her sister Elizabeth is Queen of England. The house of Lennox has fallen,’ said Lord Wharton abruptly. ‘And Francis Crawford of Lymond, who has Elizabeth’s guerdon, as he once had that of a child, is not a man who can be held prisoner with impunity by anyone, far less a Catholic with a claim to the thrones of England and Scotland. Lady Lennox has gone back to Settrington, and you are free.’

‘The term is relative,’ Lymond said. He looked up into the weatherbeaten face. ‘You love your country?’

‘I have served it a long time,’ Wharton said. He waited, curious.

‘Then,’ said Lymond, ‘you will remember the autumn of ’42, when the eldest son of every Scottish nobleman worth the name was in London, compounding for his freedom, promising Henry of England to further his church, his son’s marriage to Mary, his claims to the overlordship of my country. Is it not going to happen again?’

‘Because there is a Protestant monarch?’ Wharton said. ‘Perhaps. Is it a bad thing? Then, your noblemen bargained, as they fought, out of self-interest or devilment. Now they do it from conviction. If you met Grey, he has told you how the Reformed church is growing in England. I don’t need to tell you it has happened in Scotland as well. The ties with France are going to slacken, and when they do, don’t you think it is time Scotland looked to the ally over her Borders who has the same faith, and the same language and the same blood in her veins?’

‘So Lord Grey thinks,’ Lymond said.

‘And you?’

‘England or France?’ Lymond got up suddenly from the seat where he had been resting. ‘Of course, England is the old enemy. Eleven years ago the English occupied our forts and we hated them, whereas the French, from whatever self-interest, have sent us their gold and their generals: French ships have foundered for us; Frenchmen died on our ramparts. But we’re small; we are a cockpit; sooner or later every ally turns into an overlord. Today the French are in Dumbarton and Leith instead of the English and tomorrow, instead of being grateful, we may with reason have to throw them out, or be swallowed.’

‘Then you must choose,’ Wharton said, ‘the nation with the greatest affinity; the ally which will serve you best. Does the Church count for nothing?’

Francis Crawford did not look at the English warden. Instead he wandered to the high window and, gazing down on the mild English countryside, said soberly, ‘Affinity? French blood runs in both England and Scotland; their tongue is no barrier. As for religion … Identity of faith is small recommendation. Freedom of faith, surely, is what must be sought for: tolerance between every sect and its neighbour; clemency from every government. Otherwise you have men fighting from conviction who might as well be fighting from devilment: the thing has no more sense in it than your young Allendale’s cocks, slashing each other to death only because one will not give way to the other. And if there is to be tolerance, where do you think we may look for it? To England? Or to France, rather?’

‘I recommend you my nation,’ said Wharton. ‘I tell you also to look about you as you make and unmake alliances. The board is clearing. The old game is almost played, and the pieces broken. The Emperor is dead and Suleiman ageing. Russia, which you nearly saved, is being dashed to pieces in the madness of her Tsar. Mary Tudor has gone, and her church with her. Philip, free of his English bondage, may well abandon the sad Flemish morass he has floundered in, and France is sinking: all Italy lost; all her conquests squandered in a silly peace, made for the return of an old man to his monarch.’

‘Except for Calais,’ Lymond said.

‘Except for Calais,’ Wharton agreed. ‘The King of France won’t give up Calais. But he has given up Thionville, they tell me.’

Lymond did not speak. Wharton said, ‘You were young at Annan.’