Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [211]
It was Strozzi, catching his eye, who gave a halloo and bounded towards him and Sybilla who, touching Richard’s arm, reminded him of the man at his side, waiting to receive him.
It was not Francis, but his master of household; an elegant, elderly gentleman who, smiling, delivered to all the Commissioners a perfect Court bow. ‘His lordship bids me give you his particular welcome. His home is yours; his servants are here to be treated as you would your own. He will give himself the happiness of joining you in this salon shortly.’
‘Your brother,’ said Lord James Stewart, drawling, ‘keeps regal style.’
‘He’s kept you waiting as well, has he?’ said Piero Strozzi, arriving definitively and in a single movement bowing to all the Commissioners present and saluting Sybilla twice on either cheek. ‘You are the most beautiful Scotswoman in the world, and I adore your son’s effrontery. But see the pleasures he has in store for us all. Lord Cassillis, there is your old tutor, Master Buchanan, locked fast in disputation with Nicolas de Nicolay over the Ptolemaic concept of the heavens. Do you think a poet and Latinist can persuade France’s leading cartographer that the Earth is the immovable centre of the Universe …? Lord Fleming, your good-brother the comte d’Arran stands beside Daniel in the Lion’s Den without flinching; and my lord Orkney will see a few scholarly faces he recognizes by the statue of a gentleman—or is it a lady?—with the head of a hawk.’
‘God in heaven,’ said Richard Crawford, gazing at the gentleman with the head of a hawk. Moving with pleasure to their appointed encounters, the other Commissioners and those who followed them stepped past and were accepted into the gathering. Wine was being handed. From the calm of the statuary, Richard gazed at the long tables of marble and bronze and the burden of treasure upon them; to the gold and coral Chia Ching porcelain and the jewelled silver-gilt Venetian mirrors and candelabra tall as two men, upon which the symbols were none that the Christian church would recognize.
‘… You are looking,’ said Jerott Blyth, appearing vaguely in front of him, ‘at the spoils of nine cultures. The more threatening objects came from the Dame de Doubtance’s house in Lyon. Lord Culter will remember the chair.’
Lord Culter did remember the chair, a tall spired object in which the old witch had seated herself while claiming to tell him his fortune. To his knowledge, Sybilla had never heard of the Dame de Doubtance. It did not prevent her from giving the chair all her attention. She had become rather pale again. ‘You’re a merchant now. Did you collect these for my brother?’ Richard said. He had a very clear recollection of Jerott Blyth who was at present, he saw, slightly intoxicated.
‘He doesn’t need my help,’ Jerott said. ‘Every piece in harmony with the room and its neighbour: nothing on display for reasons of ostentation alone. Unlike my bitch of a wife.’
‘I think,’ Sybilla said, ‘I see Adam Blacklock. How very nice. You are well? I thought you intended to stay with the Muscovy Company.’
Lean, brown and diffident, with the remembered halt in his walk, the artist bent over her hand. ‘Hullo, Lady Culter. I did. Just as Jerott here meant to remain a Knight of St John, and then thought he would become a merchant. We all finish by working for Francis. Which reminds me. Jerott, come and settle an argument. George Seton says all the Knights of St John have turned Lutheran.’
‘It’s Sandilands,’ said Jerott Blyth, changing colour. ‘Just because one man in Scotland turns his coat in order to fill his own pockets …’
‘Yes. Well, come and tell George Seton,’ Adam said, drawing him gently off. Sybilla watched him go.
‘The Blyth boy?’ said