Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [366]
Richard said, ‘There could have been no quicker death. And in the open, with friends not far off.’
‘Because of me,’ Philippa said. ‘Austin killed him because of me.’
Richard lifted and held her. His hands were shaking. ‘You heard what Jerott said. No one else could do it for him.’
‘But for me, he would not have needed it done at all,’ Philippa said. Then she added, ‘I think Sybilla is coming.’
That made Richard leave her, to walk back over the hill. After a moment Jerott rose and walked back also, to meet Adam and Kate and say what had to be said to Sybilla. That now she had one son only living. That Francis, the best loved of the three, had now left her.
Philippa stood. Someone sobbed. Someone said, ‘It is finished. Remember me no longer; or my children, or my children’s children.’
But something remained. You have a brain. Use it. He lived in her, his disciple. For her to think, now, as he would have done. And to act always thereafter.
For him, the gateway had opened, and the loss was hers to bear: that at least she could do, and honour his teaching. She could remember what he was and what had died with him: all the virtues and vices of Scorpio: In manners well dignified. In feats of warre and courage invincible. Contentious: challenging all honour to himself Valiant lover of warre, hazarding himself for all Perils. And that other he had: a capacity for human love so great that its denial in Sybilla had changed his life; and its power, once unleashed for herself, had been more than he could manage.
What had he left behind him? Herself, whom he had never touched. Kuzúm, who might not be his. Men throughout Scotland and over the narrow seas who lived different lives because they had known him. To carry his bright legacy into the future, he did not require to have children. No one, once they had met him, could remain the same.
So spoke the brain. The heart cried aloud, to the empty air, ‘Is it for this thou wast created? You were wrong, Jerott, wrong; and Sybilla was right. Every day, every hour he lived mattered. He belonged to life: it should have been granted him.’
‘My dear, look up,’ Archie said.
She could hear, from distant voices, that Sybilla had come. Someone shouted, and there was an answering call from the gatehouse, remote over the folds of the moors. She looked up.
Beyond the last of the trees, a rider was breasting the slight hill towards them. As she watched, he slowed his horse from a trot to a walk and then, after what seemed to be some hesitation, slipped his feet from the stirrups and dismounted altogether.
Behind her, the murmuring voices had stopped.
The world ceased. Only the spirit stayed, watching.
This was not a man with pistols in his hands. He stood, with the wintry boughs swaying and swaying, frail as leaf ghosts behind his fair head, and his person as still as the tree-stems.
And she had crossed, now, the boundary she wanted to cross; for the face was the one which, before God she loved; and the look was the one upon which she had opened her eyes, lying within the folds of his cloak in the desecrated house where he had been born.
Then he said, ‘Philippa?’ in the key she had come to learn at Sevigny; which was not the light, charming voice which had drawn her from her warm home here at Flaw Valleys, and had taken her through deeper seas and over crests more steep than her spirit alone would ever have striven to conquer.
And if they were on the same side of the boundary, it must be real; for Sybilla was standing beside her, and Kate and Jerott and Richard … all of them, silent as she was, and gazing. So she began to walk forward.
He stayed where he was; and after a little it became clear that she was going to reach him, and touch him.
Then she started to run.
He did not move even then until the last second, when her hands reached his shoulders and he flung his own hands out from his sides, and kept them there. Then those left behind saw Philippa lift her palm and turn her cheek over