Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [183]
‘Man,’ said Archie crossly. His voice and his stare, as usual, were totally at odds with each other. ‘Man, you’re a right bluidy antic.’
Chapter 6
Coeur de l’amant ouvert d’amour furtive
Dans le ruisseau fera ravir la Dame.
The low, apricot sun of young March lit the rue de la Cerisaye when Philippa first found and explored it. Only in its nearness was there anything startling. It lay, a little closed road among orchards and gardens, on the opposite side of the rue St Antoine from the palaces of les Tourelles and de Guise. Beyond it was the river. Behind it, the cherry trees which gave it its name spread almost to the town wall before being contained by the gates of the Arsenal and the courtyard of the Bastille. And beside it was the great religious house of the Célestins.
One could hardly walk up and down the loveliest street (so they said) in all Paris, and attempt to unlock each front door. Some, in any case, were not on the road, but concealed behind high garden walls and sealed courtyards, as she had seen on her first wary reconnaissance.
That had been while the Crawfords were still at Dieppe, and before the Scottish Commissioners left on their progress to Paris.
News from the north indicated that the scale of festivities at Dieppe castle was quite beyond M. de Fors’s expectations, and that M. de Sevigny had sent for his sledges. All one could conclude from this was that M. de Sevigny had not, in public, promoted a scene with his relatives, whether of estrangement or violence, and that he was fulfilling his rôle as royal deputy.
She would know how matters lay as soon as she saw them in Paris. Meanwhile, freed from her worst apprehension, Philippa took the next step in the long path she was cutting for somebody else: a path which, if she succeeded, would lead him quite out of her keeping. She sent the Dame de Doubtance’s key to the Célestins with four royal lackeys and Célie.
A dear friend, Célie would say, had died, leaving her mistress a key to a house in the rue de la Cerisaye. The house was unnamed. The commission was pressing. Would the Holy Fathers, so wise, so esteemed by their children, find it in their hearts to help the countess.
With the key, she had sent a gift to the funds of the monastery quite enough to make sure that a friar would be out in his sandals at sunup. No one, surely, could object to his door being tried by a Célestin.
After that she had a difficult day, in the course of which her mistress fell out three times with her dressmaker, and had to receive a lecture from monseigneur her uncle the Cardinal whose effects were felt by everyone, including Mary Fleming, whose charming brother John came, unnecessarily, twice, to talk about it. Half the afternoon was taken up with a council of war about the betrothal ceremonies, over which the Dauphin’s mother and the Duchess de Valentinois politely disagreed, and Philippa herself emerged muttering, to find her way discreetly impeded by Catherine d’Albon, looking beautiful.
She carried a letter in her hand addressed to her mother in a handwriting immediately recognizable, as if indited in letters of sulphur. Led apart, Philippa read it, and soon understood why the girl looked transported.
In it, at last, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny asked leave of Catherine’s parents to seek the hand of their daughter in marriage.
Should they agree, the letter continued, the betrothal contracts might be signed on April 25th, on which day his divorce would become absolute.
There followed, briefly, the terms of his own fiscal pledges, which were of a kind to please any mother: even one who had slept with the bridegroom. Concentrating heavily on this characteristically piquant aspect of the affair, Philippa looked up, smiling successfully, and said, ‘I’m truly very glad, and so will his family be, when they meet you. Would it seem very odd, do you think, if you came to my room and we celebrated?’
Odd or not, it was what Catherine needed; barred by rank and etiquette from overt excitement. Over the