Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [241]
It tired her beyond reason: the more that she observed for the first time the ceaseless, invisible care with which he treated their relationship. He avoided what meetings he could, and made the rest simple. She tried very hard, seeing his glance on her, to seem calm, but knew she did not always succeed. And even on his face sometimes, or in his manner, she caught a shadow of strain, so well disguised that she could not be sure of it, until Archie’s angry black gaze told her that she had guessed correctly.
Once, she saw him leave the room abruptly half-way through a recital of indifferent music. No one else, she thought, observed it: the singer, undeterred, continued hooting mournfully: The fruit of all the service that I serve …
The tone, there was no doubt, was excruciating. The following day he was occupied as usual, she was told; and spent the morning in conclave with the Duke de Nevers and the King’s leading Treasury officials.
The wedding drew nearer. No saving letter arrived from London. No message, no sign came from Leonard Bailey to warn her which way his concupiscence would lead him: towards herself, or to the Countess of Lennox through Elder. For the first time since the evening at the Hôtel d’Hercule, she was thrown together with Sybilla at a formal dinner for the Commissioners and for foreign ambassadors, held in the monumental ballroom with its ten painted window bays and caissoned ceiling, its bronze satyrs and white and gold stucco and statues and swirling frescoes of nymphs and heroes and goddesses.
It put her, as usual, off her food and made her want to escape later on to the gardens. There she found Bishop Reid of Orkney and Lady Culter contemplating the Michelangelo Hercules at the edge of the pond, with the fountain spray unregarded soaking their garments. ‘For an atheist,’ Sybilla said, eyeing it, ‘Signor Strozzi is blessed with quite excessive good taste. You ought to ask him to tell you about his collection of antique books and weaponry. I believe the Queen has her eye on them.’
‘The weapons?’ Philippa said, joining her after a small hesitation.
‘Well of course, perhaps; but I don’t think she’d need them,’ Sybilla said. ‘Stekit to deid on ground lay mony man: she has her own methods. Bishop Reid and I were having a comfortable discussion over how we are ever going to enjoy other people’s gardens if we don’t continue to teach children the classics. Also, we agree that those are Bears’-ears.’
Philippa surveyed the flower plot gravely. ‘And, undoubtedly, Affodyll Daffadilly,’ she said. ‘And do I detect a seedling or two of Love-lies-bleeding?’
The heavy, black-capped head of Robert Reid with its grizzled beard was tilted towards her. ‘Amaranthus caudatus,’ he said loudly. ‘You are an atavist. You are a snivelling follower of those Cambridge lackwits who think Adam spoke English and we can do no better.…’
‘Philippa,’ said Lady Culter blandly, ‘is one of Roger Ascham’s favourite pupils. We all know every onion in Beauly can reel off the Georgics but it can all become a little excessive, as the elephant said when he fell in love with the herb-wench. I hear Lord James has been refused the Earldom of Moray. A second Lombardy.’
‘I didn’t hear you,’ the Bishop said.
‘I thought not. The Queen said it was a secular title, and Lord James is supposed, of course, to be Prior of St Andrews. I hope he received the news meekly.’
‘I suppose James might receive the Second Coming meekly,’ said Bishop Reid, his hearing suddenly recovered, ‘but I doubt it. I have to go indoors.’
‘Then Philippa and I will walk along and see the Atlases in the Pine Grotto,’ Sybilla said. ‘There is no doubt about it: the spectacle of large gentlemen striving to uphold