Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [164]
‘You still would not come back?’ Sybilla said. Her voice was no longer quite so low. ‘Can you tell me why? If Mariotta needed you, you would return. But not if I were dead or exiled?’
She was the only person … almost the only person who could manipulate him like this. He said, ‘You can’t imagine I … wish for your death. Or your exile. Midculter is your home. Not mine.’
Sybilla said, ‘I didn’t ask for an emotive answer. You can’t imagine, either, that I shall live for ever. What then could keep you away? There can be no personal reasons, except vanity. Or does Russia mean more to you?’
‘No,’ he said.
It was all he said; but a smile illumined her face as if he, a child again, had brought her some great achievement: the end of a long task embarked upon, beyond his strength and full of dangers, so that the tears spilled over, as now, while she was smiling. Then she said, ‘I was not sure. Will you come to the table?’
He hesitated; then obeyed her. It was closer than he had yet approached her. And it brought the grey daylight full on his own face. The wind drove against the thick panes. On the other side of the room, the door-latch snapped suddenly open.
Sybilla said, ‘Midculter is mine. But Scotland is yours, and you are needed there. I am prepared to go into exile if you will come back. Whether Mariotta sends for you or not.’
Once, at Midculter, a kitchen-girl had stolen some salt; and walking out when questions were asked, had picked up the cropping shears and plunged the point from one side of her neck to the other. He looked down at the cards on the table and in time, they became clear, and he could see the game she had been playing. It had not, he saw, been a very coherent one.
To leave Midculter, for her, meant leaving grandchildren and friends, servants, dependants; her home and possessions upon which she had lavished such care; the interlocking circles, social, political, scholarly, in which she had passed all her life; the soil of Scotland itself, from which she drew all her worldly and spiritual nourishment.
He said, his voice sounding very strange, ‘It would be a sacrifice to no purpose. No one in your circle would let you go, or fail to resent me if I came in your place.’
A line had come between her thin brows; of pain, or of severity. ‘If I choose to live in France,’ Sybilla said, ‘I wonder who could prevent me? As for the rest, you have made your way against worse opposition than a few friends of the Culter family.’ She, too, could place her darts.
He shook his head, very slightly because it was painful, and also because he wished to say and do nothing vehement. ‘There are other reasons. I meant what I said. Your presence or absence makes little difference. You must believe that—except for Mariotta and Midculter—I do not mean to come back.’
Little difference. Not no difference. He saw her note the change of words, the thin, elegant bones sharpening a little. But her eyes searched his, and this time did not let them go. She said, ‘If that is so, can you bring yourself to tell me your reasons? Your other reasons? If I were not there, what could still stand between you and Scotland?’
She had offered him the remaining years of her life. In return he owed her nothing but, perhaps, an act of generosity. A glimpse, if nothing more, of the other, private motives behind his refusal. She read his face, who knew him better than anyone and rose, a little colour tingeing her cheeks; and he looked across the table, and drew breath to answer her.
A man’s voice, coldly deliberate, said from the door, ‘My sword and my right arm will keep him from Scotland. And both, if need be, will preserve you from leaving it. What ill luck, brother. If I hadn’t left table early, you would have had Midculter, wouldn’t you?’
The cards showered from the table. ‘God in heaven … Richard!’ said Sybilla Crawford; and stood there,