Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [188]
‘The Dame de Doubtance?’ said Isabelle Roset. She sat down. On her face, still, was nothing but the liveliest interest. ‘I remember. I think I remember. She had a daughter Béatris. I nursed her in childbed. Poor girl. In a convent, Madame, one sees many of such cases.’
‘Béatris died?’ Philippa said.
‘Oh, many years later. She herself gave day to a daughter, and died. Fickle men!’ said Madame Roset without a great deal of censure. ‘And, Madame, Mistress Camille spoke of me?’
The round eyes, staring at her, told Philippa that it was time to say something. She said, ‘Alas, Madame, I was not with the Dame de Doubtance when she died. But she left a legacy, as it happened, to my husband, and with it a keepsake she wished us to bring you. Here it is. It comes, I am sure, with her blessing.’
The brooch she handed over was her own, and so was the small bag of money; but Madame Roset was not to know that. She took them both, her cheeks red, her mouth open, and it was necessary to wait, and be patient, while she told it over, and exclaimed, and put questions.
Then it was simple to encourage her to talk of Mistress Camille and Beatris her daughter, and to express interest in what she could tell her.
‘And,’ said Philippa, ‘how many children did Béatris have? Or perhaps you would not hear.’
‘Oh, yes indeed, I heard,’ Madame Roset said. ‘One has many relatives, Madame, in Coulanges. The girl was brought to bed twice in eight years and died after the daughter was born. Marthe, they called her.’
‘And eight years before, while you were at la Guiche, Béatris had her first child?’ Philippa said. ‘Poor thing. Madame Roset, was it a son? And why was it not on the records?’
‘The father did not wish it,’ said Madame Roset. A small, lopsided severity had descended, not surprisingly, over the nimble features. ‘Madame, if you were a friend of the Lady of Doubtance, did she not tell you of her two grandchildren?’
‘Was it a son?’ Philippa said; and, shaken into subservience, the elderly figure opposite her nodded its head.
‘It is of no matter now, Madame, but it was: a fair enough child, but afflicted. He lived ten years with his grandmother before the grand mal carried him off, and his father saw he wanted for nothing. That will be why——’ She broke off.
‘That will be why the Dame de Doubtance had the key to this house,’ Philippa Somerville finished slowly. ‘Because the father of the ten-year-old boy who died in 1526 in Lyon … and the father of Marthe … and the owner of this house, Madame Roset, are the same?’
It was one point on which she could be contradicted. ‘This house, Madame de Sevigny,’ said the old woman firmly, ‘is owned by a lady.’
He had lied to her. All along, from the beginning, he had lied to her.
‘I know,’ said Philippa. ‘And I am married to her son, who was born here.’
‘How clever of you,’ said Leonard Bailey, from the doorway.
Chapter 7
Au mois troisiesme se levant le soleil
Sanglier, liepard au champ mars pour combatre.
He had changed since last year in England, when he had accepted from his great-nephew Francis Crawford a life-pension to keep Sybilla’s reputation unblemished.
Then, Leonard Bailey had been a great, neglected hulk of a man in stained coat and bonnet, living meanly alone with his servants in the estate his treachery had brought him in England.
Now the heavy jowls were the same, and the great nose, spread like a garlic clove, and the odour of unbathed old age, and of malice. But his ribbed doublet and breeches this time were new and uncreased and stiff, and the sleeveless coat lined with some sort of fur, and his trailing hair trimmed under a new velvet bonnet.
He had done well from his great-nephew’s pension, had Leonard Bailey, who detested herself and Sybilla, and most of all loathed his great-nephew, who had forced his blackmail of Sybilla to finish. It was his doing that Lord Grey’s men had taken Francis at Flavy. It was because