Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [191]
‘What!’ said Leonard Bailey and Philippa looked up, after too long an interval, into those seamed and glistening eyes. ‘You are silent. Can it be … can it possibly be that your husband has not admitted you to his confidence? Do you not know, even yet, the name of the man who betrayed Sybilla’s good husband Gavin? Who enticed her again and again from her marriage vows, and lodged her here till brought to bed of each bastard?
‘Do you not know that Gavin was cuckolded by his own father?’
*
A lie is a broad and spacious and glittering thing, sweeping belief before it from its very grandeur. But the truth fits, like an old man cutting cloth in an attic.
And that, Philippa did not need to be told, was the truth, which Lymond had guessed long before her. The only circumstance in the world which now accounted for Marthe, for Eloise, for the erosion of all that lay between Lymond and Sybilla to the point where, brought face to face without warning, he could not support an encounter. And dear God, who would blame him … who would force him now to come back to Midculter and Scotland?
When, at Flavy, he had learned the true facts for certain he had lied to her. And with every reason.
Your father’s two sons will not meet in this world again, the Dame de Doubtance had said, with cold-blooded accuracy. And Francis, believing her, had stayed in Russia rather than put that prophecy to the test. So the meeting on the sands at Philorth for him had been terrible, indeed.
Francis Crawford had known the truth, and he had continued to fight. It would be a pity if she could not do the same. Sick in every thread of her body, Philippa stared the man direct in his suffused and ponderous face and said, ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Don’t you?’ he said; and smiling, moved to the small inlaid cabinet she had already noticed, set upon a side table. He opened it. ‘Of course, you have only to ask Madame Roset. But you might remember, there is written proof as well. Your husband burned the copies of these. Here—I would prefer that you do not touch them—are the originals. I found them, after a very short search, where you see them. A methodical creature, Sybilla, except in obedience to the laws of her Creator.’
And there they were, displayed in each powerful hand: the two papers written by Sybilla and witnessed by Isabelle Roset and Renée Jourda so long ago. The papers in which she confessed to have borne a son and a daughter, Francis and Eloise, of whom her husband Gavin was not the father.
And there, completed now in her writing, was the name of her lover, and the father of Francis … and Gavin. The name of Francis Crawford of Lymond, first baron Crawford of Culter. The gay, the gaillard, the remarkable man who died when Francis was three, and whom all the world thought his grandfather.
She read the words without speaking. But as he turned to put them away she said, ‘Why have you shown me these, Master Bailey? My woman knows where I am. You must know that if Mr Crawford comes here he will take them, and kill you.’
He finished what he was doing and turned round. His smile this time was pitying. ‘You think me a fool. What do you know of the world, my dear? I have no intention of keeping you. If you wish, you may leave forthwith: I have no objection. As for finding the papers … Do you imagine I mean to store them here? Hardly. Before you have reached the Hôtel de Guise, they will be out of the house also, and on their way to safe keeping. And should anything happen to these, I have made copies and sent them to London. Not as convincing perhaps, as the originals; but enough, if published, to create quite a scandal.’
‘Then you want more money, I take it,’ said Philippa. ‘In that case, why not approach Mr Crawford himself?’
‘Because I wished to give myself the pleasure of entertaining you,’ said Leonard Bailey.
There was a stool by her feet. With surprising smoothness for a heavy, elderly man he seated himself on