Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [159]
Archie said, ‘They came from the Forth in a fleet of small ships with the other Commissioners. The wind drove the vessels apart: they put into whatever safe harbour they came to. Two of them made for Boulogne, but never got there.’
He stopped. Lymond said, ‘If you go on, you will be finished the sooner.’
Jerott turned his head away. Archie did go on, and his voice, if a little hoarse, was quite level. ‘They went to the bottom, crew, passengers, horses, clothes, gifts for the bride on her wedding. They say two men only were rescued by fishermen, and these two were an Earl and a Bishop. The survivors have gone to Dieppe. The King wants the welcoming party to ride to Dieppe in the morning.’
His voice ceased. Jerott said nothing. For a little while Francis Crawford stood unseeing and dumb in the darkness, the icy rain whipping his doublet. Then he said, ‘I shall set out now. The others can follow.’
Jerott exclaimed, shrewish in his anxiety. ‘Damn that. Four hours’ sleep won’t hurt you—or them, for that matter.’
But Lymond shook his head and moving suddenly, left the steps and then, walking steadily, the shining circle of lamplight.
Jerott leaped to follow. He had taken the first stride after when Archie’s arm, hard as a mattock, barred his stomach, and Archie’s lightless black eyes snapped at him.
‘What d’ye fear? If ever man valued his life now, it’s that one. He has to get to Dieppe. He has to find if there is none left of his name but those fatherless bairns home in Scotland. And he has to decide … man, he has to decide what to do about it.’
Chapter 3
Des deux duelles, l’un percera le fiel:
Hay de lui, bien ayme de sa mere.
In a trance of fatigue, he would have ridden the hundred miles to Dieppe by post-stage as he was, had nothing prevented him. But, moving into the house from the rain, he found the bright lights of Marthe’s empty parlour unbearably dazzling, a familiar phenomenon; and the smell of the spilt scent revolted him.
Neither fact augured well for a journey. He wished to be certain at least of completing it. So he let common sense and Archie prevail, and assumed dry clothes and occupied Adam’s bed for thirty meticulous minutes while Archie packed saddlebags and an escort was arranged, and money, and a warrant for post-horses.
At the end of that time, Archie came back and questioned him curtly. ‘Mr Blyth said ye were sick. How sick?’
‘Very,’ said Lymond. There was a bowl of soup in Archie’s hands.
Archie said, ‘We can leave as soon as you like.’
‘We?’ said Francis Crawford.
‘You and I,’ Archie said.
With a delicacy he had not expected, Jerott and Danny and Adam were not going to ride north, supporting him. Archie waited, and then said, ‘You’ll feel better, a bit, when you’ve a bite taken.’
*
He made the journey to Dieppe without resting, except to change horses. Half-way there, his escort began to fall back, and then as fresh mounts became hard to come by, to slow him down quite considerably. One man came to grief on the highway. There seemed no point in compelling six other people to face the mud, the wet snow, the uneven road and the darkness to no purpose. At the next post-station he sent them all home and continued unaccompanied, with Archie.
And that, since it removed a distraction, was an error. One could not talk, but one could think, during the long thudding canters over invisible plains with a sleety wind scoring the face and freezing the hands in their glove-leather. And when the pace slackened, at once he would be aware of the galling fatigue of the saddle, and the growing strain on his shoulders and fore-arms. The post-houses knew who he was. Every fresh horse was strong, and restive and eager.
On stretches such as these, Archie’s hands on his reins would sometimes check him; and then, in the lee of a chalk quarry or a tangle of weather-torn bushes the little trainer would pull out aquavite, and a handful of raisins. But the aquavite made him sick, and