Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [332]
The blows jarred Jerott’s pillowing forearm and thighs. The force of them, sweeping open-handed first on one side of her son’s face and then on the other was shocking because of the lack of resistance. Even the bloodless skin offered no responding colour. Only the bright head turned and the dark-stained closed eyes were no longer tranquil, but lay below clouded brows, awaiting her pleasure.
Sybilla said, ‘Francis. My poltroon son. My sickly son. My poor-spirited runt of a scabbed flock: look at me. If, of course, you have the courage.’ And laying down the candlestick, she rose to her feet.
So, when he opened his eyes he had to look up and up, to a face that none of them had ever seen as they stared at her: Marthe who had known her only as a well-bred, quick-witted enemy; Archie who remembered her as the dignified hostess of Midculter; Richard who had known her treat only two men with such harshness, and both of them because they had threatened the security of this, her younger son.
Jerott, his throat rigid, watched Francis look at her and saw Sybilla lower her cold gaze on him, snaring his attention. She said, ‘I hear you tried to cut your throat—or was it your wrists?—on another occasion. Your childhood is over now, Marshal. Mankind can survive very well without an intimate study of your susceptibilities but not, unfortunately, without your other functions and talents. Do you think I bring any child into the world to live for himself alone?’
‘That is unfair,’ Richard said hoarsely. Marthe said nothing. Nor, his black gaze unwinkingly on his master’s face, did Archie Abernethy. And Jerott, watching Sybilla, saw that the words did not even reach her, even more than they did Francis, his eyes open still on her face.
She said, ‘I am not here to watch you disgrace me. I am here because all the Scots who placed themselves here under your protection are dead or dying. Do you hear me? Robert Reid is dead. Gilbert Cassinis is dead. George Leslie is near his end, and so is James Fleming—of poison, with all their servants. You tossed them a warning, and left them.’
She stood, her pitiless stare raking him. ‘Is that your whole measure? To shirk what is difficult? To escape to safety, like a strawberry-preacher, when your friends are in danger? My gentleman: if you run from me now, I will brand you and your sister in France, in Scotland, in Midculter and out of it for what you were: rotten stock.’
She spat the words at her son. Archie said, on a breath, ‘Careful. Oh, careful, ma’am.’
Jerott said nothing, but regardless of cramp crouched on his heels, the sweat pouring through his dark hair, watching Francis.
The coverlet now would not have been still. His heartbeats ran, light as a watchmaker’s wheel in the shallow pulse in his throat, as faint as the fluttering stir of his breathing. His eyes on Sybilla were large and sculptured: it was difficult to believe that for so many days they had been sealed, or that they had ever been spared both sight and suffering.
Sybilla said, ‘Do you ever keep your bond? You gave me an oath.’
On Jerott’s arm, against his knee there was no movement.
‘You don’t remember?’ Sybilla said. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do. You begged a favour of me, and once it was granted you had no reason to remember your promise. I will remind you. You said, “I will promise anything. I will do anything you wish, to the end of my life, if you will tell me the name of the house that you know of.” ’
What that meant, Jerott did not know. What he saw was total recollection pour, flooding, drowning into the distant face below him, so that Marthe pressed her hand suddenly to her mouth and Richard, stretching forward, took his mother hard by the arm and said, ‘Enough. Oh, enough.’
‘That is what my two younger children said,’ Sybilla said. ‘And ran away.’ And to Francis, from whom her eyes had never moved. ‘Now do you remember?’
His chest lifted, and lifted again with the effort. ‘Yes,’ he said. Across the room, Archie shut his mouth tight.
‘And did you mean to