Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [242]
Philippa ceased walking. ‘I know he isn’t well,’ she said. ‘But I doubt if a doctor can help him. He has already been told the cause of it. They say he has a chronic inability to suffer reverses.’
It was not very kind. It was better than saying, Go and see Nostradamus. Get him to tell you what he treated your son for.
Sybilla, who had halted also, began walking again. ‘You cannot possibly take anyone’s part in this but his,’ she said. ‘I spoke to Marthe: perhaps Mr Hislop has told you. The wisest advice anyone could give Francis now is to turn his back on us all, and marry Catherine d’Albon. Do you think he will?’
‘I think so,’ Philippa said. They had reached the blockish ranks of grey sandstone giants and stepping inside the vault of the grotto she sank down on the marble beside one of the two little fountains whose trapped light, released in fine spray, illuminated the crystalline walls and the frescoes embedded within them. He slept in the château, and not in Catherine d’Albon’s bed, where once it had seemed so desirable to direct him. Nor, she knew very well, would he bring himself to go there now, before the obligations of marriage made it necessary. She said aloud, ‘He finds the time of waiting troublesome, I think. We all do. But it will soon be over.’
‘I asked,’ Sybilla said, ‘because I have seen him like this before … once; when he elected to take everyone else’s business in hand and return it to them correctly aligned, like an artist with a child’s drawing.’
She stopped talking. Standing by the murmuring spray, her eyes downcast, her hands clasped together under her cloak she said nothing more for a long time and Philippa, waiting, finally said gently, ‘What happened?’
Sybilla looked up. ‘He left the castle,’ she said. ‘He was only a boy. Everyone in Midculter looked for him. Richard had no sleep for two nights. It was Eloise who finally found and brought him back.’
‘His sister?’ Philippa said. The girl who had died in a gunpowder accident in her Scottish convent while still in her teens, during the last English wars. The girl who was also no daughter of Gavin Crawford’s and who, perhaps had known it. Poor Eloise, Lymond had said.
Eloise had brought him back … from what? And now Sybilla wanted her to do the same. But not to remain married to him. She had made that quite plain as well. Philippa wondered how much she knew, or guessed about her son, and what she would say if she were told that Lymond had made his choice, and had turned his back on that also.
Then, looking at Sybilla’s bent, fair-white head, Philippa realized that what she had just heard was such a pronouncement. Sybilla guessed, even if she did not fully comprehend, that Lymond’s feelings were somehow also engaged now. And knowing Francis, saw the barrier better even than she did.
Philippa said, ‘After the annulment, I am going back to England with Austin.’ A shaft of sunlight, entering between the triple arches, lit the enigmatic smile of a green-haired lady emerging from a large cockle shell to one side of her. She added, a little desperately, ‘There are some details Francis doesn’t know, and I haven’t told him. The Hôtel des Sphères is locked up and shuttered: Madame Roset seems to have gone away. So I threw away the key.’
Sybilla looked up. Against the sunlight, Philippa could not read her face. ‘Thank you,’ she said. And then, after a moment, ‘I hear that Leonard Bailey is in France.’
It was a question, although it didn’t sound like one. Philippa said, ‘He made an attempt to have Francis taken by the English at Ham, but that seems to be all. He has probably gone back to England. Even if he does appear, Francis will do nothing to harm him, nor shall I.’
Her voice, stoutly lying, echoed all around the twelve-foot