Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [334]
It was clear that he was not going to speak first so, approaching the end of the bed, Sybilla lifted her hand to touch the garlanded pillar and said, ‘You did not have me shown from the door.’
He did not answer. It was, after all, self-evident. Sybilla said, ‘I thought perhaps you might remember what happened here five days ago.’
‘I do remember,’ said Francis Crawford.
The wooden acanthus leaves cut into the palm of her hand. She said, harshly, ‘How much do you remember?’
‘I remember swearing your oath,’ Lymond said. ‘I shall repeat it, if you like.’
Bodily, the shell was all that was there. But within it a collected mind stood, facing her. Sybilla said, her voice grating again, ‘I know, of course, you would rather be dead.’
He gave it a little thought. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you want to be here in this room either.’
She could not speak. After a moment he added, ‘You called us both rotten stock. Afterwards, I thought perhaps you didn’t mean it.’
Her fingers slid from the pillar and sought, with her other hand, the support of the bed. She said, ‘I have no proof of goodwill. I came so that you could attack me, if you wanted.’
‘But you loved my father,’ he said. ‘And Eloise’s, of course. What was he like?’
‘Like you,’ Sybilla said.
‘And worth all this?’ Lymond said.
‘Yes,’ said Sybilla. ‘Don’t you, of all people, know what love can do?’
He did not want to pursue that. The silence lasted a long time. Then Sybilla said, ‘Whatever touched your honour, four days ago, has been set right with those who heard it. I wanted you to know that, at least.’
‘Including my unwillingness to accept responsibility?’ Lymond said.
‘Your right to die? They accept that already. It is I,’ said Sybilla, ‘who do not.’
There was another long silence. Then Lymond said, ‘That night … It must have been hard for you. Almost as hard as it was for Philippa. You know about that?’
Of all things, she had not expected that. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I sometimes wonder,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘if I only exist to be sacrificed to.’
Her heart beating strongly, she watched him. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But if you accept sacrifices, you must respond with acts of reparation.’
‘I see,’ he said. He looked very tired, but not so implacably distant as when she had first seen him. ‘In Scotland, for my father’s sake?’
‘In Scotland,’ she agreed. She said, daringly, ‘Marthe thinks that the attacks of blindness may be cured.’
‘It seems,’ said Lymond, ‘that concussion may have effected that already. If so, I can fight again.’
‘Do you want to?’ she said.
A faint surprise lingered for a moment on his face. ‘Don’t you want me to?’ he said, without realizing, apparently, that he had not answered her question.
Sybilla said, ‘If there are swords, then I suppose you must wear yours. But it is you we need.’
‘We?’ he said.
‘Five hundred thousand people,’ said Sybilla.
‘You have a high opinion of my swordsmanship,’ Lymond said. His lips, in the odd hazy light, curled for a moment, it almost seemed, in the way any one of his friends would have recognized, and she most of all. Then she saw that he was indeed smiling a little.
He said, ‘It seems we are not meant to be estranged,’ and lifting the weight of his arm, held out his hand.
Then she left the carved wood, and drawn by his fingers, bent to receive his light, firm kiss on her cheek.
She was still close when he said, ‘I expect Jerott also is wrestling with his conscience. Tell him, from me, that I assume that Archie has already chastised him sufficiently.’
So, although it was more than she ever dared hope for, it was not the same; and never would be.
*
The others, not without misgivings, called to see him next day, and were shown the same self-contained will behind the weakness, or the detachment, that kept him immobile. To his own men he spoke entirely of the future.