Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [147]
The door closed behind him. Austin said, ‘After that, what can I say that doesn’t sound illiterate?… Philippa, the French are our enemies and yet … Why take service with the Scots Queen? You wrote that you were coming home.’
‘I am. In April,’ Philippa said. ‘I haven’t forgotten what country I belong to. But I found some business which needs to be finished and, you know, I am married to a Scotsman, even if we are both doing our best to get rid of each other.’
‘I see,’ said Austin. From deeply flushed, he had turned rather pale. He added, ‘So it seems stupid to ask if you need help, especially from me. The Greys have been made to appear very foolish.’
‘I don’t know whether you know the signs,’ Philippa said, ‘but Mr Crawford isn’t totally sober. From what I can gather, the Greys held out with a thousand men against the entire French, Swiss and German forces for eight days and only gave in when the Burgundians made them. You have no small reputation, I can tell you, at the French Court. Your mother will be flying flags from all the battlements.… You look tired. Don’t let him browbeat you.’
Smiling, he shook his head slightly and then dropped his eyes to his hands. They were hard, as Lymond’s had been, with callouses at the base of the fingers. Philippa, taking the bull by the horns, said, ‘And don’t let him embarrass you, either. You know why he left the room, and so do I. You can take it that I don’t intend to have my friendships either spoiled or engineered by Francis Crawford. Does that make you feel better?’
He was laughing when he looked up, the lines of difficult reserve easing already out of his over-bred face. ‘You haven’t changed. But what am I to do? The laws of chivalry are silent.’
Philippa rose and walking over to him, placed her two hands lightly on the padded stuff of his sleeves. ‘Follow your own mind and heart,’ she said. ‘I shall be honest with you. And if my suspicions are right, we shall be given plenty of time.’
*
It was not so easy to remain matriarchal sitting in the Cardinal’s tall, red velvet coach with Francis Crawford keeping himself to himself less than a foot away from the fall of her furs. From the tilt of his head on the padding, she guessed that his eyes were closed. He said unexpectedly, as she was looking at him, ‘Evil the drink and ill the resting place. I am not, unfortunately, asleep.’ It was not difficult to guess how he had spent the ten minutes’ absence.
A little flame of purifying anger ran through Philippa’s veins. She said sharply, ‘I suppose you have heard? Your brother is on his way here with Sybilla.’
That lifted his head, his eyes open, from the velvet. Then he said, ‘I beg your pardon, Philippa. Plures crapula quam ensis.’
‘And you have heard?’ said Philippa. So often, disconcertingly, he answered not her tongue but her intention.
‘Yes. D’Aumale, d’Estrée and I are to take a party to Dieppe to welcome them. We are all moderately good playactors, Richard, Sybilla and I. There will be no unpleasantness.’
‘But that is why you are drinking?’ The last time he had met his mother, Lymond had turned on his heel and walked past her. And Richard, driven to anguished fury by everything about his younger brother: his high-handed neglect; his utter refusal to concern himself with the affairs of his country had at last attacked and might well have killed his cadet.
Lymond said,
‘And can the things that I have do
Be hidden from thee then?
Nay, nay, thou knowest them all (O Lord)
Where they were done, and when.…
‘Why am I drinking? I am celebrating the wresting from you of Calais. Or shall I tell you the truth? The truth is that …’
He had given the words, incongruously, the cadence almost of poetry. Then he broke off vaguely and picked up in a more painstaking tone. ‘The truth is that I must be in a rather worse state than I thought I was. I apologize.’
‘What exactly did you find out in Flavy?’ said Philippa.
‘My letter told