Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [114]
‘I’ve told you,’ said Danny. His voice was perfectly firm, although the colour had retreated a little, out of temper, from the summer freckles on his undistinguished, snub-nosed face. ‘But if you want further details, I have them. Lymond left the Governor’s house once, in monk’s dress in Lyon. Archie followed him. If I hadn’t noticed him watching the house, I shouldn’t have noticed Lymond either. They both went up the hill. And while they were up the hill, Abernethy tried to kill him.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Adam sharply. ‘You misinterpreted something you saw.’
‘Did I?’ said Danny. ‘When I came upon them, Lymond had Abernethy by the throat and was flinging him over the cliffside. He only stopped because he was persuaded it was all a mistake.’
‘Perhaps it was,’ Jerott said. He looked, troubled, at Archie, who said nothing.
‘Perhaps it was,’ agreed Danny grimly. ‘Then explain this away. Lymond and young Philippa were attacked in the fog that night in Lyon. Afterwards he went off with the Président and one of the merchants to the For Vénus. You know Lymond. There was no secret about what he wanted or where they were going; but Lymond didn’t stay in the house. He came out alone and walked straight through a traboule, where I lost him. I came across him again at the waterside.’
‘You were playing his bodyguard?’ said Jerott.
Danny looked at him. ‘I had begun to be concerned for his safety. I ran down the rue de I’Angelle and saw him through the mist in the rue des Hebergeries, making for the Port St Paul steps down to the river. He turned right, down the steps and out of sight. I was still a good way off when Abernethy came dodging down past the Six-Grillets and over the road to the steps, scooping up a rock from the road as he went.’ He stopped.
‘And?’ said Jerott. Adam, looking at Archie, said nothing.
‘The story ends there,’ said Danny evenly. ‘At that moment I was struck from behind, and when I recovered, Archie and Lymond had gone and I was lying on the road with my purse cut. I searched the streets for a while, and then made my way back to the Hôtel de Gouvernement. What happened next, Adam will remember. Archie brought our revered leader back, helped by a printer friend. He was incapably drunk, and he had a fresh wound in the nape of his neck. The kind of thing made by heaving rocks carelessly. Mr Abernethy will tell you if I’ve been fair to him.’
There was a long silence. Then Archie Abernethy shifted on his hard seat. ‘Aye: You’ve been fair enough,’ he observed. He appeared to be thinking.
‘Well?’ rapped Jerott. ‘What happened? I take it you didn’t assault him. Who did? Who induced him to break all his own hand-written regulations about wine, the mother of all vices?’
‘I did,’ said Archie Abernethy. ‘I wouldna deny it in front of such a number of sharp-eyed solemncholy gentlemen. I flung the stone that dropped Mr Crawford. With the good advice of the printer Bonhomme and yon pisse-pot prophet Nostradamus I filled him with liquor and kept him that way till you got him. Ye complain it took twenty minutes to rouse him. By God, ye were lucky. By God, ye were lucky to be able to rouse him at all.’
Adam said in sudden anger, ‘You are talking in riddles.’ His hands were pressed hard together.
‘No doubt,’ said Archie. His voice, his dark skin were suffused as never before with the signs of a towering passion. ‘You’re friends o’ Francis Crawford, ye tell me, but ye take little heed to what is happening to him. You force him to France, and dust your hands of it. You foul his birthright with witchcraft and devilment and see no harm when he walks away whistling. You saw him at his desk, all of you, that morning in Lyon, and thought nothing ailed him but alcohol.’
Danny’s skin from white had turned a patchy red. He said, ‘He kept still. So would I, if I’d drunk that amount.’
‘He kept still. He was empty of blood,’ Archie said. ‘He kept his hands out of sight, because the cuffs of his sleeves covered bandages. He left the brothel