Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [244]
Archie shrugged. ‘All I know is what’s going to happen.’
Philippa said, ‘What should I do?’
And Archie said, ‘Break him.’
*
That afternoon she was chained to the Queen: there was no one to take her place in all the Holy Week ritual and Mary, normally so full of laughter and invention, was unsympathetic. She saw no reason why Mistress Philippa should visit her husband; and she remained all day obdurate as an unrepentant wine drinker, his head full of fumes from his tankards.
It was early evening before the mood lifted. Released, her heart beating, Philippa ran.
Archie opened the door to the comte de Sevigny’s expensive apartments.
‘You’re late,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m here now,’ said Philippa sharply. ‘Where is he?’
‘Not here,’ Archie said with some bluntness. And as she drew a harsh breath: ‘If he’s had a hard day, Mistress Philippa, then these rooms are the last place he’d come to. You’re the fifth to chap at the door since he shut it.’
‘Then where …?’ Philippa said, and broke off before the stare of the black, gimlet eyes.
‘I gave my word I wouldna let on to a soul, but if you ken my lord count, then perhaps ye ken where he’d find what he wanted,’ Archie said. ‘Or if not, M. de Montdoré could maybe advise you.’
Pierre de Montdoré was a distinguished mathematician. He was also the King’s librorum custodes: the curator of the beautiful library of Charles the Good, housed above the Little Gallery which linked the basse-cour buildings to those of the Oval Court, where lay the royal apartments. From that, it was not hard to guess where Francis had gone to find refuge. To the counsel of dead men. And to solitude.
*
When, presently, Philippa set wide the great double doors of the library, the curator was not in the chamber. The night sky, indigo through the thirteen dormer windows, looked down upon the tiered ranks of fretted shelves, twelve on each side, which held the nine hundred manuscripts lovingly collected by Charles, and the five hundred Greek works left by King Henri’s father, along with the others brought him from abroad by his collectors, and looked after for him by Budé. Go tell my wife, that curator had said without looking up from his book, when fire broke out and raged through his lodgings. Go tell my wife. I do not concern myself with domestic matters.
Montdoré was not in his library tonight, but the silver candelabra were lit at the end of the long shining river of parquet, islanded by lecterns and benches and tables of marble and marquetry, and tall chairs, their fringed velvet stamped with the royal cipher. And at the furthest table, his head lightly propped on one hand, a man sat alone, absorbed in reading. From where she stood, Philippa could see the glimmer of scarlet and gold on the vellum spread under his fingers, and the air was so still that the candelight lay without tremor on the still, golden wing of his hair.
Philippa closed the door, and Francis looked up, and saw her.
Afterwards, Philippa thought he guessed in that moment why she had come to him. As it was, he dropped his eyes after an interval and laying one hand on the vellum, eased the front board of the book slowly over it and closed both its hasps. A carved ivory boss formed the hub of the thick gilded cover and a band of ouched jewels framed the boards in a coloured rectangle. His fingers still resting on the embossed calf, Lymond rose, and then moving it a little aside, as if to safety, he pushed his chair back and stood where he was, awaiting her.
‘Certain comfortable places of the Epistles, namely the Romans,’ he said. ‘You have brought no one with you?’
‘No,’ Philippa said. She stopped just short of the table and saw, by the motionless light of the candles, how he had changed in face and manner into something fine-drawn and deliberate, it seemed, in its lack of involvement. She drew a breath and said, ‘I have