Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [327]
Then he looked up at the young man, his eyes no longer tranquil, but anxious and angry.
‘I go to my God, but my heart is torn at leaving my country. Is Satan loose there? Is it a sin to refrain from striking one’s brother for the good of his soul? I tell you, there is no war worse than the war when each man is fighting for Paradise.’
‘I do not want war,’ Lord James said. ‘There are others like me. Be at rest.’
‘Then you must teach,’ Bishop Reid said. ‘Point to history. Remind your people of themselves. Remind them of the city-states, small as we are, who because of their smallness could know one another, and rule wisely, and flourish. It is not enough,’ Robert Reid said, ‘to offer justice. The laws of men, the laws of God himself are not enough unless you know the heart, the tongue, the brain, the gut of your people.… I once heard a man speak, who had understanding, and the promise of vision. He was called the Master of Culter.’
‘Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny,’ Lord James said. ‘You may be right. We shall never know. I have just heard from Paris today. He is in Amiens, and dying.’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Do you say?’ said Bishop Reid. ‘I will pray for him. There breaks a crutch Scotland never knew it possessed.’
*
The Governor of Dieppe imparted the unfortunate news himself to M. le Maréchal de Sevigny’s mother and brother and, a good man, was surprised and distressed when it was the brother, the Earl of Culter, who suddenly covered his face with his hands, while the mother said nothing, but sat like one of Master Cellini’s goddesses, her face cast in metal.
M. de Fors said, ‘If you desire to go to Amiens, then of course I can have post-horses made available to you whenever you wish it. He lies at the Logis du Roi, and there are friends with him. But you may feel the journey too harrowing.’
Then Sybilla looked at him, and he dropped his eyes, reddening. ‘If M. de Sevigny can suffer it,’ she said, ‘then I suppose we, his family, should not find it beyond us.’
*
They had poured sand on the paving bricks outside the Governor’s Palace in Amiens, and it bore stamped upon it the tracks of the many horses and men who had passed that way or lingered, watching since François de Sevigny had been brought there.
The sight of the sand, and the people, told Francis Crawford’s family only one thing: that he lived as yet. Because they were not expected, they were hindered at the doors of the red and white towered building and it was Jerott Blyth, striding downstairs to silence the disturbance, who stopped in appalled recognition and then, without asking how they came to be in France, gave, sharply, all the necessary orders for the lodging of their retinue and led them without further delay up the turning staircase inside.
Before a doorway on the second floor he stopped and looked at Sybilla and at Richard, his hand supporting her arm. ‘Do you know what to expect?’
‘They told us,’ Sybilla said, ‘that he was wounded, and that they believe the hurt to be mortal. That is all that we know.’
Jerott said, ‘It happened a week ago, but he did not recover consciousness, and now never will, they tell us. In time, his heart will stop.’
‘You look,’ Sybilla said, ‘as if you have had no sleep since it happened.’
‘The King’s physicians are here,’ Jerott said. ‘He has had the finest …’ He broke off.
Sybilla said, ‘What is it, Jerott?’
And Jerott said, ‘He didn’t mean to come back, and I brought him.’
Richard said curtly, ‘You can’t be sure of that. He may live to thank you yet.’
In Jerott’s dark, deep-set eyes there was an emotion too profound to give rise to either concord or rebuttal. He said, ‘You had better see him,’ and opened the door.
The silence of the room flowed out like air from a snowfield.
Not that it was cold. The morning sun filled the wide, pleasant chamber, and through the tall double diamond-paned windows the fretted south wall and spire of the Cathedral stood biscuit-coloured against the blue sky of September. An aproned woman who had been seated in the window embrasure