Checkmate (49 page)

It meant that Bailey had not betrayed her interest. It probably meant that the existence of the Hôtel des Sphères was still unknown to Elder.

Lymond, his gaze restful, was allowing a pause to develop. The irony could not have escaped him, even if he perceived, as she did, that it was founded on nothing solid. Then he said, ‘He certainly should. With his education and heritage, Harry Darnley will be the only turncoat in England who can practise sodomy in Alcaic stanzas. Now he can’t write any more winsome verse to his cousin, how are you going to impress his charms on the little French princesses? Or would you like me to speak for him?’

Between the strands of his beard, Elder yellowed. It was a cut, you had to allow, of inspired virulence. Darnley was twelve: a suitable age for betrothal. But to flatter his character at the French court Lymond was the last person Lady Lennox could depend upon.

‘You are too kind,’ said the priest at last. ‘Indeed, I shall send word of your offer to her ladyship. And meantime, perhaps I may perform the same office on your behalf with your future wife, Mademoiselle d’Albon?’

‘Why,’ said Lymond, surprised. ‘I should appreciate it if you would. There are some items in my early history which Mademoiselle d’Albon has yet to hear about.’

Fool. After carrying it off, he had allowed Elder to sting him. Philippa, exasperated, marched up to the blaze with a hand-squirt. ‘There are a few episodes in your later history she ought to be warned about as well,’ said Lymond’s wife with acidity. ‘She may be hoping for Lug of the Long Arms but what she has is the family Crawford,
qui peut de tous bois faire flèches
in order to sit in the butts and shoot hearty rounds at each other.’

The blue gaze had swung round upon her, but Master Elder’s shot arrived in the meantime. ‘And when,’ said the priest, ‘am I to wish Madame la comtesse well of a new marriage?’

‘My good man,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t you know the court has opened a book on it? At the last hearing there were eight separate contenders, and offers still coming in from abroad, like wolves forced out of the forest
by famine. I hear the odds at the moment are in favour of a triple union with the Schiatti cousins.’

So he knew about that. ‘I am making no secret of the truth. The incumbent will be properly selected by open competition,’ Philippa said.

‘Jesus Christ … And the rules?’ Lymond said. Someone, approaching, blessedly spoke to and led away Master Elder, who bowed and retreated.

‘No rules. Just mincing knives,’ said Philippa aggressively. Common sense told her at any cost to avoid the personal. Deaf to common sense, she said, ‘I gather you are holding a competition as well. We are dazzled by the goguettes and gaudisseries.’

‘Osse sur Olympe et Pelion sur Osse
. They call me the darling of the masses,’ Lymond said. ‘Has Richard asked you to visit Sybilla?’

His gaze, full upon hers, was as searching as she had feared it would be. Returning it with unblinking candour, Philippa said, ‘He didn’t require to ask. I am going there in a day or two. I’m glad to note that Catherine is managing all her own marital arrangements. You wouldn’t expect me to make social calls if you had the remotest idea of the work entailed in bringing two unfortunate persons to the altar.’

Careless words. ‘It takes ten minutes, in my experience,’ Lymond said. He glanced round. ‘I must go look after my lordlings. We shall meet on the happy day of our annulment. I should be glad, by the way, if you would kindly refrain from escaping Osias. Your excursion the other day, wherever it took you, cost him a whipping.’

‘I shall allow Osias to follow me to my private engagements,’ Philippa said, ‘if you will allow Célie to follow you to yours.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You haven’t heard any more from, or about Grand-Uncle Bailey?’

‘No. Platfut he bobbit up with bendis and then went home. Or so it would appear. My men can’t trace him. It doesn’t alter the fact. I still require you to——’

‘… In all my doings to offend none but to please the godly. And the brightness of the light of the sun of our Justice and Equity hath caused the darkness of Injuries and Molestations to vanish away. I am sure,’ said Philippa with that particular acerbity called forth by the deceived from the deceiver, ‘that there must be a psalm to fit the occasion?’

There was; but not of the kind she had expected. He recited it, staring at her:

‘Are you implying,’ said Philippa coldly, ‘that I enjoyed being brought up surrounded by eunuchs?’

‘No,’ said Lymond. ‘But I expect you enjoyed it more than the eunuchs did.’ He hesitated, and she waited.

To be condemned eternally to choose his words in her company must be as irritating to him as it was painful to herself to suffer it. She knew she would hear nothing of Dieppe, or of Catherine, or even of Marthe’s disappearance, since it related to another of the disasters in their relationship. He had made no effort to excuse himself for that either, although she thought the faintly febrile nature of his conversation today owed something to his awareness of it.

He said, ‘I remember Gideon, your father. Austin is like him. He dislikes war. But he fought a fine battle at Guînes.’

To no one else, probably, would that sound like an apology for interference; and a question. Philippa said, ‘If … When he asks me, I propose to accept him.’

‘Lord Grey will be relieved to hear it,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid of the Lennoxes. They are out of favour in France.’

If that was all he had observed, she was safe. ‘The smylere with the knyf under the cloke? I’m not afraid of John Elder,’ she said. ‘But I’d be both i-hangyd and to-drawe before I’d turn my back on Margaret Lennox.’

‘Or on anybody,’ Lymond said pointedly. ‘Instead you prefer to sit in the butts, de tous bois faisant flèches, letting fly at them. In a day or two, with unusual economy, I shall be giving a banquet for the Commissioners which will also serve as a betrothal supper for Catherine. Do you wish to be present?’

Philippa allowed polite regret to inform every muscle. ‘Whatever day it occurs,’ she said, ‘I feel I have a previous engagement.’

‘May I congratulate you,’ he said agreeably, ‘on your evident popularity.’

‘Anything I can do,’ Philippa said, ‘to save you from the exhaustions of pluralism.’

She watched him go, in a running flash of costly minerals.

He had seen no special threat in Elder’s presence. He had had three or four instructions to give her, and that was all that concerned him. He had gone as soon as he could. He had no way of knowing that the Lennoxes were tracing his parentage. Or that, until she intervened, Leonard Bailey had been on the point of selling them all he knew.

It was to pull down Francis Crawford and not merely to attend the royal wedding that John Elder was in Paris. And it was for her, with all the skills she possessed, to deny him that extravagant pleasure.

Very soon after that, M. le comte de Sevigny, Chevalier de l’Ordre, gave his promised banquet for the Scottish Commissioners to Queen Mary’s wedding, combining it, as indicated, with a supper for his future bride, Catherine. The economy also indicated did not leap to the eye.

Nearly thirty years before, a boy at the Sorbonne, Richard Crawford had hurled river-pebbles over the decorated wall of the Hôtel d’Hercule at the corner of the rue des Augustins. It was then already fifty years old and one of the finest houses in Paris, owned by the Prévôt of the town and his family. When the last du Prat died, it became the palace in which the Crown housed the foreign visitors it most wished to honour. He little thought then, that one day he would ride through its gatehouse arch with the flower of Scottish nobility at his side, to pay court to his young brother Francis.

The yard was arcaded, as he expected it, with majolica Roman medallions inset below the frescoes which gave the Hôtel its name. The stable officers, the grooms, the footmen and the ushers who waited there were all in livery, but not in azure and argent with the pheon and phoenix of Culter; nor did the achievement over the doors display the invected bordure denoting a younger son of that house. Instead: ‘The chaplet proper of Sevigny,’ said the Lyon King of Arms beside him. ‘A French coat of arms, of course, and perfectly correct, although it only tells half the story. The two achievements to which he is entitled should be conjoined paleways. I should be happy to advise him.’

The Earl of Culter did not answer, nor did his mother, to whom he gave his hand as, alighting, they made their way in procession through the square hall and up the wide caissoned staircase to the first floor of the mansion.

The entrance to the first of the Hercule’s sequence of galleries was enclosed in a porch of white wrought Gothic marble, in which the form of the hero arched and strove in the exercise of his classic talents. Sybilla shivered. ‘If he shows you any shadow of discourtesy,’ Richard said, ‘I shall leave, and take the Commissioners with me.’

For some reason the strain left her face and she smiled at him. He did not understand her. He wished she had not insisted on accepting the invitation. Braced for anything, he led her from the porch and into the delicate warmth of a long, exquisite room lit by sunlight through which moved, smiling, the faces of friends: Scottish friends. Men he had known long ago, before they left Scotland to teach and to study in France; to go fighting or merchanting; to join the French King’s royal guard of Scottish Archers; to serve the court or take up an inheritance. Important men like young Arran, whose company had fought at Saint-Quentin and who, after the Queen, was in direct line to the Scottish throne. And important men who were not Scottish at all, but had spent much of their lives fighting for Scotland in Scotland: the Sieur d’Estrée, M. de Thermes, the bonhomme M. de la Brosse … Pierro Strozzi, whom he and Sybilla had cause to remember best of all.

It was Strozzi, catching his eye, who gave a halloo and bounded towards him and Sybilla who, touching Richard’s arm, reminded him of the man at his side, waiting to receive him.

It was not Francis, but his master of household; an elegant, elderly gentleman who, smiling, delivered to all the Commissioners a perfect Court bow. ‘His lordship bids me give you his particular welcome. His home is yours; his servants are here to be treated as you would your own. He will give himself the happiness of joining you in this salon shortly.’

‘Your brother,’ said Lord James Stewart, drawling, ‘keeps regal style.’

‘He’s kept you waiting as well, has he?’ said Piero Strozzi, arriving definitively and in a single movement bowing to all the Commissioners present and saluting Sybilla twice on either cheek. ‘You are the most beautiful Scotswoman in the world, and I adore your son’s effrontery. But see the pleasures he has in store for us all. Lord Cassillis, there is your old tutor, Master Buchanan, locked fast in disputation with Nicolas de Nicolay over the Ptolemaic concept of the heavens. Do you think a poet and Latinist can persuade France’s leading cartographer that the Earth is the immovable centre of the Universe …? Lord Fleming, your good-brother the comte d’Arran stands beside Daniel in the Lion’s Den without flinching; and my lord Orkney will see a few scholarly faces he recognizes by the statue of a gentleman—or is it a lady?—with the head of a hawk.’

‘God in heaven,’ said Richard Crawford, gazing at the gentleman with the head of a hawk. Moving with pleasure to their appointed encounters, the other Commissioners and those who followed them stepped past and were accepted into the gathering. Wine was being handed. From the calm of the statuary, Richard gazed at the long tables of marble and bronze and the burden of treasure upon them; to the gold and coral Chia Ching porcelain and the jewelled silver-gilt Venetian mirrors and candelabra tall as two men, upon which the symbols were none that the Christian church would recognize.

‘… You are looking,’ said Jerott Blyth, appearing vaguely in front of him, ‘at the spoils of nine cultures. The more threatening objects came from the Dame de Doubtance’s house in Lyon. Lord Culter will remember the chair.’

Lord Culter did remember the chair, a tall spired object in which the old witch had seated herself while claiming to tell him his fortune. To his knowledge, Sybilla had never heard of the Dame de Doubtance. It did not prevent her from giving the chair all her attention. She had become rather pale again. ‘You’re a merchant now. Did you collect these for my brother?’ Richard said. He had a very clear recollection of Jerott Blyth who was at present, he saw, slightly intoxicated.

‘He doesn’t need my help,’ Jerott said. ‘Every piece in harmony with the room and its neighbour: nothing on display for reasons of ostentation alone. Unlike my bitch of a wife.’

‘I think,’ Sybilla said, ‘I see Adam Blacklock. How very nice. You are well? I thought you intended to stay with the Muscovy Company.’

Lean, brown and diffident, with the remembered halt in his walk, the artist bent over her hand. ‘Hullo, Lady Culter. I did. Just as Jerott here meant to remain a Knight of St John, and then thought he would become a merchant. We all finish by working for Francis. Which reminds me. Jerott, come and settle an argument. George Seton says all the Knights of St John have turned Lutheran.’

‘It’s Sandilands,’ said Jerott Blyth, changing colour. ‘Just because one man in Scotland turns his coat in order to fill his own pockets …’

‘Yes. Well, come and tell George Seton,’ Adam said, drawing him gently off. Sybilla watched him go.

‘The Blyth boy?’ said a high-pitched voice in her ear. Bishop Reid of Orkney had returned to chat. ‘I remember the family well, before they left for France. He was a well-set-up youngster. I had a word with Daniel Hislop. He has turned out remarkably well. A cynic, but a cynic with a head on his shoulders. I knew his father.’

‘The Bishop?’ Sybilla said, with composure.

He caught it, despite his deafness and the noise in the room, and laughed. ‘The Bishop? Yes, it is not a mishap so uncommon that the Church can afford to ignore it. Our friend Beaton’s uncle had … how many? Nine children? And Bishop Hepburn had ten, all, I am assured, by different mothers. Hislop has no need to feel shame. But I came to congratulate you on the skill of our host. He has assembled here not only the full number of those Scottish students I know best, but a cousin of my dear Will Lubias, all the way from Dieppe. We have been speaking of Honey Plums, and Arbroath Oslins, and wallflowers, yellow and bloody. As I remember, you at Midculter are also conducting a romance with horticulture?’

‘We are not so prolific as you with our Bon-Chréstiens,’ Sybilla said. ‘I’m glad you think Francis efficient, but I shouldn’t read too much into it. He was also proficient with Russians in London. The conducted tours of King Arthur’s Round Table, I am told, were a sensation.’

‘He is a man of energy,’ Bishop Reid said. ‘And will use that energy, for good or ill as we know, wherever he may be. Do I please you with the moderation of my language? A gentle bedewing instead of a glutting rain?’

Many years had passed since, as President of the Court of Session, the Bishop of Orkney had arraigned her son Francis for treason, and his language then had not been moderate. He had only been pursuing his duty, and she had come to understand and to be reconciled to it, as he had come in the end to respect, she thought, the man he had tried.

Sybilla said, ‘Yes, you please me. The more modest your expectations, the less often you will court disappointment. Richard, I think you should write that down while we all understand it. Tell me, what has stopped?’

‘The music,’ said Richard Crawford. ‘There was some music in the next gallery. It seems to have halted.’

‘They’ve come to the end of the pieces they know,’ offered Danny Hislop, mystically appearing in the Bishops company again. ‘Good evening, Lady Culter. We met in Edinburgh. If you say
Favouzat, cavouzat
, they may start playing again.’

Beneath Danny Hislop’s sparse sandy curls operated one of the brightest brains to grace Lymond’s company; but all the same, Sybilla had not reared three children for nothing.
‘Favouzat, cavouzat,’
she repeated promptly, her blue, limpid gaze on the little man.

The door opened.

‘Hercules?’ said Danny tremulously. ‘Isosceles? The Triangle? The Angel Apostate?’

‘On the contrary,’ said Richard Crawford dryly, and dropped to one knee. The rest of the company, ceasing to talk, turned variously and then sank likewise into obeisance.

In the doorway to the next gallery stood his young brother, fair and quiet in nacré velvet, with the black sash of St Michael knotted slanting from shoulder to waist and the Little Order glinting upon it. Beyond him glimmered the arched and gemmed headgear of his house-guests: the profile of the Maréchale de St André, and the lovely, composed face of a young woman: Catherine, Richard supposed. The heiress. And a beauty.

But although she was to marry Francis Crawford, Catherine d’Albon entered behind him. For by Lymond’s side as he moved into the long, scented gallery was his monarch, the fifteen-year-old Queen of Scotland.

‘… My mother, the Dowager Lady Culter,’ Lymond said. ‘And my elder brother, the Earl. Her grace honours us for a short time only.’ Below the sash and pinned by another decoration he was wearing a small doeskin glove, its cuff covered with jewels.

‘We met my lord Culter the other day,’ the Queen said. ‘You have recovered, Lady Culter, from your mishap? Our mother writes lovingly of all your family, and we remember well your kindness in Scotland. There was a riddle you taught us, but it does not translate well into French.’

‘I am glad to hear it. I believe it was my son,’ said Sybilla, ‘who was responsible. But it was long ago.’

‘Indeed. You see my glove, how it is small. But still,’ said the Queen, ‘your son defends us. It is gentle of you to spare us his presence.’

‘It is my privilege, your grace,’ said Sybilla steadily; and sank in a perfect curtsey as the Queen, with Lymond escorting her, moved to the next group of her countrymen.

Then—‘We meet at last,’ said the handsome, scented lady who had entered the room behind Francis. ‘We know the requirements of royalty: Francis is unable to divide his attention, so I shall take it upon myself to introduce myself and my daughter. I am Marguerite de St André, Lady Culter, and this is my only child Catherine.’

Her lustrous eye, as she spoke, was upon Richard, and Richard, approaching after his mother, decorously kissed the Maréchale’s hand and then, gravely, her cheek.

Catherine d’Albon offered, guardedly, only her hand, but was drawn by Sybilla into a little embrace, as loving as it was gentle. ‘You are used, of course,’ Sybilla said, ‘to being told that you are beautiful, and I knew, if Francis had chosen you, that you must be so. I also know, if he has chosen you, that you are clever and honest and kind.… Richard and I wish to thank you for accepting him.’

The Maréchale, a student only by hearsay of Scottish sentimentality, was shocked to see in her daughter’s composed face the signs of undoubted emotion. She said, affably, ‘He is a gallant creature: all France knows of it, and I believe they will make a famous couple. Of course, we are all very fond of the little wife. It is not always that a first contract can be broken so easily.’

‘Philippa isn’t here?’ said Sybilla, a little distractedly. Behind the young Queen, she noticed, had entered the four young attendants called Mary and virtually all of her suite who were Scottish.

‘No. It would not have been discreet. She has engaged herself elsewhere, I understand, for the evening. You know that the Queen herself was not invited? It is an escapade. The maids of honour wished so much to go, since their relatives are among the Commissioners. I am told that she simply sent word to M. le comte this afternoon that he was to fetch her. Even the rest of the Court is not aware.’

‘Christ,’ said Danny Hislop, behind Richard, but not very loudly. And when Richard, by no means a stupid man, turned and glanced at him he added, brightly, ‘It’s going to play merry hell with his table plan.’

But, it seemed, the matter was taken care of; and when, her slow progress ended, the Queen of Scots reached the end of the gallery, the double doors opened before her on another room, a vision of paintings and delicate, open-work plaster in which supper was laid, quite differently from any supper she had seen before, on garlanded damask, with confections spun glistening high among the candles. And creams and curds and sugared flowers and sherbets and little birds and thin, woven
bread rolls, and before every plate a stem of green crystal, with a pink salted rose in its sheath.

In the middle of the long principal board stood the chair of state, and to this her host directly led her. ‘This evening, Madam, you are at home with your countrymen. Pray do them and me the honour of presiding over us.’