Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [19]
‘Ah,’ said Lymond, ‘I must introduce you to an elephant-keeper I know. And how long have you been in M. Schiatti’s employment?’
The child’s brown eyes shot round the room and, disarming in his smudged visage, returned to the Persian doublet. ‘Three years, monseigneur. My mother is one of his sauce cooks.’
‘I see,’ said Lymond, and lifting Madame la Maréchale’s fan chose a chair and sat down on it, spreading the delicate leaves in his fingers. ‘So you came with M. Schiatti from the Hôtel Schiatti in Amboise?’
‘You are correct, monseigneur,’ said the boy Annibal. A thread of impudence for the first time reached Danny’s critical ears through the nervousness in the child’s answers.
‘But,’ said Lymond looking up, ‘M. Schiatti has no château in Amboise.’
Danny winced. He wondered why his lordship had claimed to be unable to identify the boy on the bridge. Then he recalled something he had heard rumoured. Once, Lymond had questioned a child and lived to regret it. This time, knave that he was, the child had a fraction of Danny’s sympathy.
The boy stared at his tormentor and said shrilly and with confidence, ‘You are mistaken, monseigneur. M. Schiatti possesses a château at Amboise.’
Double bluff. Danny Hislop glanced at Madame la Maréchale and hurriedly away again. Her forbearance, her polite expression declared, was not without boundaries. ‘Indeed,’ said Lymond. ‘I should like to hear where, and of what quality.’
Feet apart, the boy thrust his turbanned head forth like a turkey-cock. ‘If you do not know, monseigneur, I must tell you that I do not believe you to be M. Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny. If you know, then I wish you to tell me by what right you question one of M. Schiatti’s loyal servants? I am the son of a poor kitchen woman, delivering boxes. It does a great gentleman no credit to tease me.’
‘Were you on the bridge this afternoon?’ said Danny Hislop.
The boy turned quickly. ‘No, Monsieur le Bec. I did not make you fall off your horse. Perhaps you should question your harness-maker.’
‘Be quiet!’ Madame la Maréchale had realized what was afoot. She sat up. ‘Were you among those murdering children? Then we shall soon have the truth out of you. Mr Hislop, ring for my steward. Then I should be glad if you would remove the child to the window embrasure. He offends the nostrils.’
The child’s mouth opened. ‘He does, rather,’ said Lymond; and closing the pretty fan, tossed it to the boy before Danny could shift him. ‘Annibal,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You have made Madame unwell. You will oblige me by fanning her.’
The fan was worth a great deal of money. Annibal allowed it to fall within six inches of the floor before he condescended to catch it, watched with well-bred impassivity by Marguerite de St André. Then, one-handed, he flicked the fragile fan open and stood holding it. ‘To me,’ he said, ‘she does not look faint.’
‘Then you may close the fan,’ said Lymond, ‘as skilfully as you have opened it.’
Below the dirt, the young skin of the boy Annibal went scarlet. He pursed his lips, his eyes on the speaker, and then smiling with a flash of small teeth, he lifted his hand and caused the leaves of the fan to pour shut in a brief courtly gesture. ‘Attrapé,’ he said apologetically.
‘Attrape indeed,’ agreed Lymond. ‘With a double e and no proper shame that I can discover. Pull his headgear off, Hislop.’
‘What?’ said Danny; and Madame la Maréchale, rising, made sharply to stop him. But since an order was an order, Danny Hislop did put out one fastidious hand, and grasp the end of the soiled, greasy linen and unseat, with a single rough gesture, the whole of the brazen child’s headgear.
A quantity of matted brown hair, thus released, tumbled down the child’s back and over its jacket where it lay, damp and nastily odoriferous.
‘Attrapée. With two e’s,’ said Danny. His eyes were unfocused.
‘It’s a girl!’ exclaimed Madame la Maréchale.
The boy Annibal and Francis Crawford stood, silently regarding one another. Then Lymond walked softly forward and taking the child’s grimy hand, raised it