Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [229]
‘No,’ Lymond said. His back to the wall, he looked up to where Austin was standing, a step or two up the staircase. ‘I am going to marry Catherine d’Albon. If she’ll still have me. She has been waiting for me, by my reckoning, for about three hours this evening.’
Austin’s face whitened and then flushed again. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you had no reason to think of it. If you were told, for example, that Philippa——’
He was interrupted.
‘… if I were told, for example, that Philippa was inflamed with an unlikely love for me, I should still marry Catherine d’Albon,’ said Lymond gently. ‘I shall never, divorced or married, in this country or another, live with Philippa Somerville as my wife. If you want my oath on that, you can have it. No plans you can make will have my shadow on them.’
The golden heads on the ramp of the stair stared at him. ‘I think,’ Austin said, ‘I saw Mademoiselle d’Albon just now, outside her chamber.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Perhaps you should get Philippa to explain matters tomorrow to her as well.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ Lymond said, his voice splitting. ‘So long as she isn’t in my room. I haven’t the address, or indeed …’ he looked down at his sashless, dishevelled doublet ‘… the attire for it. In the battlefield he was a lion wielding a dagger; and in the banquet-hall, a cloud raining pearls. I seem to have combined both activities. Does your arm hurt?’
‘No,’ said Austin, lying.
‘Call Archie if it does. Her door is closed. What fickleness. Strange birds cry in the air Today! Today! and vanish. I go,’ said Lymond heroically, ‘to take my rest after the manner of the Antabatae. Sleep well.’
Austin could not remember who the Antabatae were.
*
When Archie entered Lymond’s room ten minutes later, he was seated in his shirt sleeves, writing a note at his table. He did not look up as Archie entered, but signed it using, the mahout noted, his first name; and then powdered and folded it and wrote the superscription. Then he held it to Archie.
‘That will test your stamina,’ he said. ‘I want you to slip it under Mademoiselle d’Albon’s chamber door. If she opens it and throws an axe at you, come and tell me. If not, you may go back to bed. I don’t require to be coddled, and I promise you I shall be in excellent shape in the morning.’
Dark and disapproving, Archie Abernethy stood still, the note in his hand. ‘If it’s an assignation,’ he said, ‘ye’ll make a right sumph o’ yourself. Look at your hands.’
Francois, comte de Sevigny and Chevalier de l’Ordre, spread them out, and watched his rings trembling. ‘It was an apology,’ he said. ‘Not, I must admit, in my best handwriting. I said that I had been overtaken with sickness.’
He broke off. Archie stood, watching him narrowly. Then without saying anything, he left the room with the note.
When he returned, the door was locked. He tried it gently, once, and then did as he was bidden and went back to bed.
I promise, in Lymond’s vocabulary meant exactly that. Violence, Nostradamus said, often resolved the worst of the head-pain. He had left some mild opiates in the room: the boy could use them if need be.
He lay in bed, worrying.
Elephants gave you less bother, any day.
Chapter 3
Grand ennemy de tout le genre humain
Que sera pire qu’ayeuls, oncles ne peres.
Two days passed, reverberant with repercussions.
On the afternoon of the second day Jerott Blyth’s truant wife Marthe, idly scanning the street from her refuge, witnessed a convoy of servants approaching, escorting two persons. One of them was Daniel Hislop. The other was a small, regal lady, cloaked and hooded in lynx fur. Both were making, beyond possible doubt, for her threshold.
She was gripped successively with a mind to vanish, and a vindictive anger against the man Hislop. Then dismissing, sharply, her cruder emotions she picked up her bell and, ringing it briefly, walked over, smiling a little, to her mirror.
To the servant who came: ‘Ask the Dowager Lady Culter and Mr Hislop, when they arrive,’ she said, ‘to wait for me in Master Nostradamus’s parlour.