Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [336]
‘To pack,’ Lymond said. ‘But not to come with me. It seems best … I have asked my brother to do that.’
*
Later on the same day he was visited by Lord James Stewart and Mr John Erskine of Dun. To them he said simply that he was returning in due course to Scotland, and that meanwhile his men and his mother would travel home, by their leave, with the Commissioners.
Lord James said, ‘You believe you are next on the list for assassination? Or have you been converted by danger to Calvinism?’
‘Does it have to be either?’ said Lymond.
‘No,’ said Erskine of Dun. ‘Come naked of creed or of kind or even of purpose, but bring with you what Orkney saw, all those years ago. We are too small a nation to be able to spare saints to Rome or Geneva, or any other refugees seeking to glorify either the flesh or the spirit. There is no one to understand us, except ourselves.’
‘That I know,’ said Francis Crawford.
*
Marthe was the last to see him, when he was not in a bed at all but gorgeously robed in a chair near the window, his crossed heels on a cushion, and his eyes dwelling unthinking on the cathedral.
Marthe said, ‘You have chosen Richard to escort you home, and he has agreed. What can possibly have reconciled you to one another?’
‘Remorse,’ said Lymond. ‘Give me lilies in full hands: these gifts at least let me lavish on my descendant’s soul. You know that Jerott is leaving you?’ He turned his head.
‘He has, I suppose, a place in the pattern,’ Marthe said. ‘If an inadvertent one, like the asp who, in order not to hear enchantments, stops up its ears with its tail. He wept tears of knightly rage when he heard what had happened at Sevigny. It was hardly worth explaining that Philippa’s departure was quite accidental. I gave her some good advice, but that was not included in it.’
‘So that if there is a pattern, you are not entrusted with it,’ Lymond said. ‘It might be as well to remember that.’
‘It moves from vessel to vessel,’ Marthe said. ‘You know that very well.’ She paused and then said, ‘Your mother lied to me. She let me think that you and I were the children of Gavin Crawford and the Dame de Doubtance’s daughter. We are only half-related.’
Lymond said, ‘We do each other nothing but harm. You know that.’
And Marthe cried at him, suddenly, ‘Did I do you harm at Volos?’
He did not need to answer. She bore his level gaze for a short time and then said, with a change of direction equally unexpected, ‘You know where she is, don’t you? All the time. She does not write, but Adam does.’
‘You know so much,’ Lymond said, ‘that it hardly seems worth continuing the conversation.’
She had been sitting, still wearing her cloak, in a chair not far from his own. Now she rose, and kneeling quickly by the chimney-piece said, ‘What is this? A bouillon? Shall I bring it?’
‘I can control both you and the discussion, Marthe, without bouillon,’ Lymond said. ‘When Jerott has gone, what will you do?’
She stood up, the bowl in her hands, and looked at him. ‘What have you brought back from Dourlans? Something your uncouth family won’t know how to handle.’
‘You hate them, don’t you?’ Lymond said. ‘How uncouth do you think you appeared to Güzel? Don’t crack the bowl. That would be very childish of you.’
And when, her eyes cold, she returned the soup with a thud to the fireplace he added, dryly, ‘Peut-il naître de cette Agar autres enfants que des Ismaëlites et bâtards?’
‘But for Sybilla …’ said Marthe harshly.
‘… I should not be here. I asked you. Where are you going?’
She returned, and stood by her chair. ‘To Blois, with Master Nostradamus. He says your convalescence does not now require him. Do you remember the night of the fire?’
‘I prefer not to remember it,’ Lymond said. In his voice, pleasantly concealed, was a warning.
She ignored it. ‘Archie told us what you had described to him of the fire in the Hôtel Moûtier. Nostradamus gave us the drugs for the candles. But when you woke, you were not speaking to Oonagh, were you? You were speaking in French.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Lymond said.