Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [30]
Two of the wide arches giving on to the yard led to stables and their horses had already been led there. On the side opposing the entrance, there stood yet another dark archway, still more handsome, with a spire and some sort of entablature. Jerott, who had been watching her, said, ‘It leads to the quay. You know about the traboules?’
The Schiatti had told her about the traboules. With rare intersections, the houses of Lyon ran in unbroken ranks parallel, as a rule, to the river. To give access from one street to the other, public passageways or traboules passed through the tall houses. Since the habit began, gardens and yards had been filled with more buildings and now such a tunnel might lead you through three or more different homes and across as many courtyards before you emerged in the road at the end of it.
‘Anyone who has visited Edinburgh knows about traboules. Don’t be parochial, Jerott,’ said Lymond. ‘So you trade from the quayside block? Puissant, proud, mighty, cruel and bloody; the natural savour, taste and quality corrupted by th’ infection of the pomp and other filthiness of your ships? What merchandise do you handle?’
‘Sad irons,’ said Marthe, before Jerott could answer. ‘Ribbons, fringes, and little drums for bairns. He will show you them, I am sure, presently. My rooms are here.’
‘And what do you trade in, Marthe?’ Lymond asked, as she turned to lead them up the wide turning stairs. They had neither embraced nor touched hands, Philippa was aware.
‘Bodily and ghostly comfort. And objects of antiquity,’ Marthe said. And added, before he could speak, ‘You appear to have profited by the first two. And of course, I have been well rewarded. Shall we see now what service we can perform for your wife? There are papers below she will wish to investigate. And after that, you may search the Dame de Doubtance’s chambers.’
‘Philippa can do both,’ Lymond said. ‘It is her self-appointed vocation.’
‘Have you remembered nothing of the terms of your inheritance? None of these papers was to be read without your consent and your presence. And the first to enter her rooms after her death on pain of cursing had to be Francis Crawford.’
They had resumed climbing again. On the first gallery, looking down between the pillars at the heads of Philippa and Jerott, ascending below: ‘You invoked all this research?’ Lymond said. ‘It doesn’t trouble you?’
‘I have nothing to lose,’ Marthe said. ‘So nothing can harm me.’
Below, Philippa had asked a question and Jerott had paused to detail an answer. Lymond said, ‘Why did you want me to stay in France? You know that Prince Vishnevetsky has taken my place in Vorobievo?’
With slow charm, Marthe gave him a smile. ‘And I have Jerott,’ she said. ‘How cheaply you rate me. You will not go to Russia because your fate is here. Or do you not know it?’
*
In the event, Philippa plodded alone through the papers, which were in the vaulted basement room once employed by the man Gaultier as his store room and workshop, which had once contained a horological spinet of some small notoriety. Lymond, having fulfilled his obligations to the extent of entering the room and wincing at the dust and the dampness, had retreated upstairs again to the modified conviviality of Marthe’s chamber.
Panelled in handsome oak and clad in paintings and fine pieces of plate and stonework and statuary it bore, as did all Gaultier’s rooms they had seen, the lustreless chill of a complex house maintained by masterless servants. Each of the objects Philippa had asked to handle, exclaiming over its beauty, had left its trace of dust on her fingers. Even the Venetian goblets from which they drank were clouded, although