Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [103]
It was news, Francis Crawford recognized, to lift Strozzi’s heart. It meant his own intuition was correct in thinking the time had come to plan this push against Calais. It meant that de Guise and Strozzi together could force it to a conclusion. Senarpont, the Governor of Boulogne, was a good man, and would see to the detail. In the long stretches of waiting that morning, when thought like a madman in a quarry had to be manacled, he had seen quite clearly the whole possible sequence of action, down to the last company of Schwartzreiters; the last flamboyant eruption of ambitious noblemen.
And now, so close to his destination, he must think of the business at hand. He must try to find the farm of the woman Renée Jourda, who had once been a village girl of Coulanges and who, ten years before he was born, had left her home to follow to Scotland the lady adored for her wit and her beauty called Sybilla Semple, who had broken short her stay at the nunnery. Who had married Gavin Crawford, the second Baron of Culter. Who had given birth to Richard her heir, who now held the title in Scotland. And who had brought himself up with joy, with laughter, with care, as her second son; although it appeared … it was certain, that he was not. A circumstance with which, not being a child, he would come to terms, no doubt, presently.
There were only three farms round the ruins of Flavy-le-Martel, and two of them were empty, except for a starved dog tied to a ring which cried at him as he freed it, its bones arching through its stretched skin. It ran to a pool of green mud and devoured it, before sliding off into the undergrowth. Francis Crawford watched it, and then moved out and on to the last.
The faded sign said Proyart; but that meant nothing. If Renée Jourda the village girl had a farm, it was because she had married.
Whoever had married the master of this domain had not led an easy life. Once, a fence might have surrounded it. Now it was fenced only by a ring of dark trees, and the steep, tiled roofs which crowded round the unkempt yard and marbled pond were gapped and ribbed like unravelled jersey-cloth. Lymond walked quietly forward.
The trees in the orchard were not ripe yet for robbing. They stood, brooding and ancient above their rotting wickets of poles, upholding their fruit like green lanterns; and behind them, a row of dry spires strung on withies showed where the vines had been. The house itself was closed and shuttered and cold and the well bucket had dust and dead leaves in it.
A sharp rattle made him look round. A wood pigeon high over his head had flown to its hole above the hayloft door of the barn, paused for a moment, and then vanished inside. Now that he stood still, he could hear the muffled throaty rou-couling. It made him walk to the barn and try the door, whose bolt had been driven home recently, before the webs which muffled the windows had had time to form again over it. He drew it aside slowly and stepped over the threshold.
It smelt of cow. There was no fodder inside but the dung of many weeks, mixed with filthy straw; and in one corner a stack of wood: not the well-mannered cradle of logs one saw outside every yard in Compiègne but boughs hacked and torn and covered still with a shawl of dead columbine. The blunt axe which had cut them stood still against the wall. Outside somewhere, an animal cried out in pain.
But not, this time a dog. And with a call which he did not need to live in a castle to analyse.
With a gesture Jerott would have recognized, Francis Crawford drew off his shapeless hat and threw it high to hang on the topmost twig of the thorn boughs. Then, walking over the yard, he wrenched the bucket free of its framework and swinging it, made for the coppice.
When he came back, the yard was quite silent. Even the pigeons had ceased their low murmur. Above the pond-water a haze