Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [12]
As she approached, he stood up and said something in idiomatic French with a strong Scottish accent, handing the piece of wood as he did so to one of the children. It seemed to be a puppet of some sort. They ran off, laughing and shouting, and the man turned and came towards her.
Close to, his face was not prepossessing: the grizzled beard more grey than black, and the skin seamed with scars and stiffened with suns hotter than those in Scotland or France. Marthe said, ‘You keep your word, Mr Abernethy. Is Mr Crawford’s wife coming to Lyon?’
Archie Abernethy, a veteran of more skirmishes than Marthe could have imagined, stopped, cocked his mahogany cranium and said, ‘Aye so, Mistress Blyth; and good day to ye. But ye didna tell me Mr Crawford would be here at the same time, now. Or is that a coincidence?’
The long-lashed blue eyes held his, peacefully. ‘Does it matter? I told your mistress that a visit would be rewarding. When she died, the Dame de Doubtance left many papers. Mr Crawford may have no interest in his family history, but his wife, I am told, is a tireless investigator. She shall have free access to all the documents. Whether Mr Crawford is here or not, surely, will make no difference.’
Through a gate in the wall was the small churchyard of Saint-Pierre, with shade under the trees, and some white marble benches. Jerott Blyth’s wife, turning, entered and seated herself. ‘Unless, of course, Mistress Philippa is still afraid of him?’
Arms folded, the little man stood and considered her. ‘You could say she doesna relish the notion of meeting him. He would be in Russia now but for his wife handing him over to the French ship that captured him.’
‘Why? I didn’t know that!’ said Marthe sharply.
In a liquid gesture, Mr Abernethy expressed helpless ignorance. ‘She didna want him to go back to Russia.’
‘I wonder why?’ Marthe said. ‘She hasn’t changed her mind about the divorce?’
‘Fegs, no,’ said Archie. ‘Ye havena seen her since the English court got hold of her. She’s had suitors like a pierhead has wulks ever since she left home, and since she came here we’re fair palsified with them.’
‘So Philippa is already in Lyon?’ said Marthe softly.
He stared back at her owlishly. ‘Aye. At Mr Crawford’s bankers, the Schiatti,’ he said. ‘We had lodgings, but they took a fancy to her, and invited us to stay. We came properly escorted, with a safe conduct.’
‘The Schiatti,’ said Marthe thoughtfully. There were two middle-aged brothers, both with sons.
‘Aye,’ said Archie Abernethy. He cleared his throat. ‘You have no objection, then, to this hunt through the Doubtance papers?’
‘I?’ said Jerott’s wife, and raised her arched eyebrows at him in a stare which recalled, unpleasantly, her masculine counterpart. ‘The facts of my birth are beyond either redemption or further embarrassment, Mr Abernethy. If Mistress Philippa finds satisfaction in laying bare the truth about her husband’s origins, it is not for me to dissuade her.… Do you know, I wonder, his purpose in coming here?’
‘To raise a loan for the King. So the bankers say.’
‘The bankers know more than they say,’ Marthe said. ‘And Mr Crawford—or should we call him the comte de Sevigny?—knows more than most of them. The greater the general, the greater his grasp of the manifold uses of espionage. Through all his months in Russia and after, he required my husband to write to him. And obviously, he has other correspondents.’
‘In Lyon?’ said the man Abernethy. He was listening intently.
‘Some of them,’ Marthe said. ‘One can guess perhaps where. For a long time, M. le comte has had cronies among printers. He has been a paid soldier, a courtier, a galley-slave. He knows his Paris, his Algiers, his Geneva. He must have a friend in every whore-house in Germany.