Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [220]
‘Richard my dear: so universal a boiling and bubbling: one cannot talk here. Call on me in the morning. My lady mother is waiting to leave. Mr Erskine, you see Marshal Strozzi provided you with even more congenial company than I had thought of. All the same, I should not advise you yet to throw your black stockings out of the window. Mademoiselle d’Albon, as you see, is prettier than Sir John Knox.’
Lord Culter left, with his mother.
‘I know which guests were not of your inviting,’ John Erskine of Dun observed quietly. ‘You have taken infinite trouble to pleasure us. It is no small thing to bring a nation together on foreign soil and send its members from your doorway arm in arm.’
‘But with its eyes set firmly, I fear, on material values.’ It was surprising what, deaf as a bell-founder, the Bishop of Orkney could follow. ‘Did they aspire to spiritual perfection, Mr Crawford, in such a degree as you have shown them the other kind, we should be a nation of souls fit for Paradise. But there was no passion but the passion of the human senses. I looked for a rallying-call, such as I heard once in Edinburgh.’
‘I am sorry you were disappointed,’ Lymond said, ‘but I notice that a merry man is seldom disposed to give thought to the higher issues. You have to catch him feeling low. You quote an example in point.’
‘When you were an outlaw and an excommunicate you were a Scot, and now you are a Frenchman? Perhaps you are right. At least I see,’ said Bishop Reid, glancing at the girl on M. de Sevigny’s arm, ‘that you are a happy man.’
Lymond bowed and glanced, smiling, at the dark head beside him as the Commissioners passed. The number of guests waiting now was only a handful. They stood side by side, he and Catherine, and she curtseyed and smiled as they said, over and over, the same things. Her mother, placing a ringed hand on Lymond’s shoulder, had already announced her departure to bed, and hinted that Catherine, her duty done, should do the same. ‘In a very few weeks you will be contracted. The child must not lose her looks!’
Her colour higher than usual, Catherine smiled at her mother and did not wince, as she might have done. Tonight, they were to sleep in the Hôtel d’Hercule. Tonight, she thought, her head full of his love songs, she might not sleep alone; or at all.
The last guest left, and they looked at one another. ‘Pleasant communications and merie conceits, and in everie mans countenance a loving jocundnesse. And on every woman’s also, I trust,’ Lymond said. ‘A last cup of wine? And then I have to wait a moment for de La Rochefoucauld. He called upstairs to reassure Allendale. They are taking his uncle to Onzain, and the old man seems to think he’ll be dropped in an oubliette.’
He had signed to a servant, one of the many who now moved softly about, opening windows and clearing the debris. But when the tray came, Catherine refused the offered goblet. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I shall go upstairs. I shall be in the way, and they are occupied. Perhaps someone could bring me wine later.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. A trace of colour showed itself, also, on his pale skin. He emptied the cup he had been given and lifting another, took her hand and led her to the door. ‘I might bring it myself.’
‘And your lute?’ Catherine said. ‘I should like you to play to me.’
‘I was not,’ said Lymond, ‘proposing to waste time with a lute.’
He watched her go and then, turning back, proceeded automatically with the last duties of such an evening. He spoke to the Count of La Rochefoucauld, to his maîtres d’hôtel and to his ushers and then, descending to the kitchens, to the principal staff. The singers were still there because he had asked them to stay. There was nothing new to talk over, except by way of post mortem, because, God knew, he had rehearsed them enough in the preceding days; but they were loath to go, and he did not wish to hurry them. He drank while he was with them a great deal, but was still able to guide, control, and even help half-carry them, high as tilers, to the courtyard, where his groom harnessed