Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [354]
The eyes of Marthe, looking past him, had met the steady look of the silent astrologer, and stayed on him. ‘Allowed?’ said Marthe. ‘I have finished with asking permission for what I do and what I think. I have finished with being dispatched scurrying from errand to errand. I am my own mistress now. I am going to move the pieces. I am going to direct the end of the game.’
Her voice was raised, as if in anger, but the voice of Nostradamus, answering her, was perfectly calm. ‘If you wish to carry this paper from France and deliver it into Lord Culter’s hands,’ he said, ‘I know of no power which would stop you, unless an earthly one.’
‘And that,’ said Daniel Hislop, ‘is the first totally accurate prediction I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Give me that.’
‘No,’ said Marthe. ‘No. You will get hurt. It is none of your business. You fool, if I can deal with Jerott, don’t you imagine I can defend my own …’
He nearly had the paper then; his finger and thumb on her outflung wrist; his other hand hard on her neck. Then she brought out her left hand, with the dagger in it, and struck him once, and twice, and three times, until he fell.
She stood gasping, while in a flutter of black, Nostradamus knelt quickly and touched him. The blood, silvered with dust, jumped and slid over the floorboards. Marthe said, ‘I had to.’
‘A knife for the bloody shoulder-blades,’ said Danny’s voice thinly from beside the astrologer’s knees. ‘You and your brother. You don’t have to be so God-damned thorough.’
Marthe looked down, the hilt gripped hard in her fist. Beneath the floss of fine hair, the freckles overcast Danny’s white face like flotsam; but it was not the face of a man who was dying.
‘He was wearing steel under his shirt,’ said Nostradamus. ‘But he won’t walk for a while, or use his shoulder.’
‘I never trust bastards either,’ Danny said hoarsely. ‘Marthe. You owe me something. Take the advice of a well-wisher. Leave that paper alone.’
‘I had to,’ said Marthe again. She looked at Nostradamus. ‘You could look after him? That is … You are staying?’
‘I am not leaving France,’ said Nostradamus. ‘My part in the prophecy is fulfilled. Yours has still to come. Whatever made you think you were free?’
‘And the end?’ Marthe said. ‘Do you know it?’
‘We all die,’ said Nostradamus. ‘The man you love. The man who loves you. The man you married. But because of you there will be something, I promise you, by which men will know Francis Crawford has been.’
*
She left in an hour, alone, in the plain clothes of a merchant, with a merchant’s safe-conduct in her saddlebags. And in the breast of her shirt was the scroll from the house of Doubtance, freshly packeted, and sealed, in bitter whimsy, with the crest of her husband’s ring.
On the week-long ride to Dieppe no one followed her, and no power of heaven or of earth prevented her sailing, although storms delayed her departure and drove her ship finally from port after port, before stranding her in the roads outside Dover. There her patience ran out, and when they sent a boat to the town for fresh water, she had herself and her bags put ashore by it. She was engaged in buying a horse when two customars, strolling up, asked her to come with them into their office.
Searchers and customars are not always honest men, and she took thought for her saddlebags, but not for the paper she carried. Nor could she have known, unless the Lennoxes had told her, that wherever she had made landfall, one man or two would have stopped her, and thrust her, as now, into an empty cell, and turning the key, made her their prisoner.
*
The storms which delayed the Réal on her journey north were more erratic. After the fourth unexplained sojourn in harbour, Richard Crawford sought out the master and demanded an accounting. He had not known his brother was on deck until halfway through the seaman’s obliging explanations, when Francis said agreeably, ‘When did the wind change?’
The more uncommunicative gentleman, who looked fragile,