Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [251]
Where then were the originals? She could try the Hôtel des Sphères, where she had first seen them. Perhaps he had simply replaced them, laughing, in the same desk. Perhaps he had found somewhere to hide them. What he did not know was that she had a key. She would have no trouble in Paris, in finding someone to use it, and to search the whole house for the papers. Someone, that is, who had no skill in reading or writing, but could recognize a seal, and a superscription.
This she could and would do. It was the only thing left. For if the papers were not in the rue de la Cerisaye, there were no means by which she could trace them.
*
The Court moved to Paris. For two hundred years, no heir to the French throne had been married in his own country. Wedding fever and hopes of largesse gripped the populace. On the Tuesday before the marriage, the betrothal ceremony took place in the new Château of the Louvre, at which the Excellente Princesse Madame Marie d’Esteuart, Royne d’Escosse, stated that of her own free will and consent, and by the advice of her lady grandmother the Dowager Duchess of Guise and the Deputies of the Three Estates of Scotland she took the Dauphin Francis for her lord and husband, and promised to espouse him on the following Sunday, April 24th, in the face of Holy Church.
A ball followed, at which the royal hosts, their relatives and the princes and princesses of the blood performed a number of long, correct dances to the sounds made by a hardworking collection of hautbois, flageolets, viols, citterns, and violins, playing as loudly as possible.
Philippa de Sevigny, standing with the other ladies of honour watching her mistress, did not dance, being on duty.
She did not, in any real sense of the word, serve her mistress that evening either. The previous night, true to her plan, she had dispatched to the Hôtel des Sphères the small and inconspicuous thief someone had found for her. And that afternoon, she had walked out to meet him and with sinking heart, had received his report.
As with every other attempt she had made to sidetrack Leonard Bailey this one had quite failed. Her burglar, who had lost a fortune thereby, was almost more upset than she was.
He had looked everywhere, he said. He had looked in places you would never think of. It was amazing where these old gentlemen sometimes kept their private papers. He had searched the rooms of the servants. He had even gone through the clothes and the chests of the men at arms who slept in the house and that, he said, was something the lady forgot to warn him about.
He had tapped the panelling and tried all the usual places in skirtings and floorboards. He had tested the staircase and the pictures and the fireplaces. He had looked in every pot in the kitchen.
There was nowhere, said Philippa’s burglar, where a man could have hidden a paper, and he not know it.
She believed him. He had come to her with the highest reputation. She paid him well, as he deserved, and only thought as he was leaving to ask one final question. ‘The lady housekeeper who lives in the house—Madame Roset. Did you try her chamber?’
‘Took it apart thread by thread,’ said the small man complacently. ‘It wasn’t hard, mind, being empty. I don’t suppose she could have what you’re looking for, could she?’
‘Empty?’ Philippa said. ‘Are you sure it was the housekeeper’s room?’
He was offended. ‘I always ask, before I get into a house. I knew every room in that place before I went near it. The biggest room, apart from the old man’s, it was. And she was away. Had been away a fair time, from the look of it.’
So, she thought all through the handfasting. Leonard Bailey had won. Before she thought to have the house watched, he must have sent Madame Roset away. Perhaps he had told her Lady Culter desired it. But she had gone, where he could find her, no doubt, if the day came when