Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [261]
‘Wait a bit.’ Adam on his feet was not content to stand by any longer. ‘Francis made those points himself. You can’t have it both ways.’
‘My brother is a devious man,’ Richard said. He had not moved his eyes from Lymond’s face. ‘All the points that he made are valid ones, and all the conclusions he reached would have been reached sooner or later by one or other of the Commissioners. Whatever we do, he will receive credit for trying to stop it.’
Jerott Blyth’s mouth opened. He said, ‘You silly fool, you think Francis wants to bring Scotland to butchery?’
Lymond said, ‘I don’t think we want any testimonials, Jerott, or even any untoward language. Fortunately, it isn’t entirely in Richard’s hands. The Commissioners will decide what to do. Only, I beg you, watch your step. You are carrying gunpowder.’
For whatever reason, Adam saw Culter suddenly flinch; and a moment later Lymond’s hands, unfolded, dropped to his sides. Then he said in his usual voice, ‘Perhaps you can start guarding me after you have paid a call on the Hôtel de l’Ange and conferred with your colleagues. I promise I shan’t leave the house. And this evening a room will be ready for you.’
With some firmness he had drawn to a close a discussion no longer profitable to himself or to his brother. A moment later Culter had taken his leave coolly and gone, the papers folded inside his doublet.
Standing at the glass, his elbows spread high on the casement ledge, his chin upheld by his interlaced knuckles, Lymond watched his brother’s progress through the courtyard. Behind him Adam said softly, ‘It was Danny who brought you those papers?’
‘Danny!’ said Jerott explosively.
Lymond did not even turn. ‘No. It was not Danny,’ he said. ‘And even if Danny tries to suggest it was, I shall deny it, just as I shall deny this conversation took place today.… There he goes. What do you think he will do?’
‘What you want him to do,’ Adam said dryly. ‘Doesn’t he always?’
‘No’, Lymond said. ‘Does anyone—Jerott?—know a nice clean strumpet who doesn’t have the pox and will sleep in my room tonight to discourage Richard? She needn’t stay beyond half an hour, and I don’t want to meet her.’
‘And that’s a bloody waste,’ said Jerott belligerently.
‘And it’s going to stay a bloody waste,’ said Lymond tartly. ‘I want a little privacy, not to work up a joint reputation as Hophni and Phinehas.’
He abandoned the window, and Adam saw his face and let his lips open.
‘Oh, quite,’ Lymond said. ‘Twice in two days. Once it becomes continuous, I suppose we shall have to tell Richard. Or he will be spending twenty-four hours of every day in my bedroom.’
Then Adam remembered the reason for Richard’s vigil: the dragging out into daylight of something of which Lymond had never spoken. And he remembered also, with sudden, raw understanding, a small event of the previous night; when he had heard Francis, his head in his hands, apostrophizing himself mutinously:
‘Plus étroit que la vigne à l’ormeau se marie
Du lien de tes mains, maîtresse, je te prye.
Enlace-moy le corps, maîtresse …
Enlace-moy le corps.
‘… You never married, Adam?’
He had been startled. ‘No.’
‘Then don’t,’ Lymond had said, the words trailing through his muffling hands. ‘It makes for very … long nights.’
So now Adam touched the comte de Sevigny’s arm and said, ‘Come. We shall see if Archie can make a short night for you.’
Chapter 7
De terre faible et pauvre parentele
Par bout et paix parviendra dans l’empire
Longtemps regner une jeune femele,
Qu’oncq en regne n’en survint un si pire.
At dawn on Sunday, April 24th, since no one had told them to the contrary, the Prévôt and magistrates of Paris rose, broke their fast, put on their robes of crimson and yellow satin and left for the Hôtel de Ville, there to muster at seven in the morning to prepare for the wedding of Monseigneur the Dauphin of France with the young Queen of Scotland. There was a tiff about precedence, which petered out