Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [274]
He was paid for his trouble; and then paid again to provide, as fast as possible, a plain cloak with a hood to cover the gentleman’s finery. Then Lymond passed through the door and crossing the balcony of the Sainte Chapelle’s upper floor, reached the narrow staircase which led down its side to the street.
He was unaware, as he passed, that he had breathed incense and glimpsed the taper-lit glass vaults of the chapel, or that he was treading the steps which, barefoot, Philippa had trodden eight months before. He only saw before him, swirling outside the gates of the Palais, the immense crowds which filled the streets singing, and waiting to cheer the departing guests from the most celebrated royal wedding ever made.
He was recognized twice, reaching the river. The first time his hood was dragged back in the crush and he saw, on the unshaven face pressed nearest to him, the first gaping yaw of astonishment. Then he ducked, pulling the cloth over his face and lost himself as fast as he could in the darkness. Behind him, as he went, he could hear voices calling his name and a ragged cheer rising, but they had not been able to follow his movements.
That and the next time, when a party of wool dyers swept into him near the river, held him up on a journey already fraught with the night-madness of celebration: of bonfires and drinking and dancing, of student songs and acrobats and men who would balance on hemp, and turn somersaults for a penny.
The wool dyers wanted him to come and drink with them. He refused, clapping them on the back; scanning the opposite bank where the fires danced red and blue over the water, and the sounds of merrymaking rose and rose, tossed as if in a blanket into the redolent air. Scraps of flame. flocking like birds, shot into the night sky and dispersed, swinging and veering over the river. It was as bad over there, if not worse. He said, ‘I need a boat. Who will get me one?’
And so, in the end, he was rowing alone in an old creaking ferry, for which he had paid with one of the Bechistan rubies cut from his sleeve. (I’d give unto her Indian mole Bokhara town and Samarkand.) And even there, in the brief, heavy journey upriver, he had to have care, with other ill-guided boats jolting drunkenly against him; with floating debris and mills to look out for and another ferryman, who took exception to his amateur status and wanted to fight it out with him.
But he had had a great deal of practice at rowing, and it was direct, and avoided the crowds. So that, although it felt as sluggish and long as a drug-dream, he had probably saved fifteen minutes by the time he tied up by the Arche Beau-fils by the Célestins.
Then he had only to run. He knew where the rue de la Cerisaye was and had even walked along it to visit the monastery during his days as commander in Paris. The road ended in a high garden wall, and did not contain many houses. He entered it from the rue St Antoine, his feet in kid and velvet soundless on the thin sunken bricks of the road. The third or fourth house he came to, on the left, had a carving of some kind over its doorway which might be a globe. The moon, warmed by the reflected light of distant fires of joy, traced the thin-branched trees which stood between the gates and the delicate outline of the house. Above him, as he tried the lock, a weeping willow fell in cascades of yellow chenille, and a tall chestnut loomed with clutching fingers of half-open leaves. There was a wall of branched candelabra, which were pear trees.
The gates were not locked, and he pushed them open and walked through the garden.
The orchard which lay between himself and the house was of cherry trees, their flowers white as burned ash in the moonlight. And behind them, touched all at once into ghost-life, was the celestial globe over the doorway, with two pensive winged figures guarding it.
The sphere, joining his past with his present. The words of the tomb; the half-caught echo of old enchantments and vows long forgotten:
By these