Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [367]
On that his hands locked, imprisoning them both. He held back one moment longer. Then he slid his fingers into her hair and bending his head, sought her mouth as a man withered by sun might seek water.
They are made for one another, and they know it, his wise friend had said. Kate turned from watching, to Adam.
Jerott Blyth also turned; and walking slowly, knelt by the green cloak; and after a moment, dropped his face in his hands.
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.
My beloved is dead.
Chapter 13
L’arbre qu’estoit par long temps mort seché
Dans un nuict viendra à reverdir.
They set off that evening to take Marthe Crawford to the home of her fathers, which she had never known. And behind them, in care of Flaw Valleys, left Philippa, and Sybilla and her younger son, who could not easily travel.
To Jerott’s question of ‘Why? Why?’ Sybilla could only say, ‘She was coming, perhaps to find you. Jerott, what will you do?’
‘Bury her at Midculter, if you will allow me,’ he said. ‘And then leave.’
‘For France?’
‘For Malta, I think,’ Jerott said. ‘It is different, now. I should rather fight than be a merchant. Danny Hislop, perhaps, would come with me.’
Only Richard, as they were preparing to move off, said to his mother. ‘She couldn’t have been coming to Jerott.’
‘No,’ said Sybilla. ‘But it will do him no harm to think, in years to come, that he was in love with her and she with him.’
‘Why, then?’ said Richard.
‘I think,’ said Sybilla, ‘to follow Francis. Someone took her for him on the way and delayed her: there is a note of indemnity in her saddlebag. Also a letter for Francis. I shall give it to him in the morning. Today is his.’
Today had been his, and nothing could touch him. They had arranged, without him, the decent bier which would carry Austin to his home, and the account they would give there of the chance enemy shot that had killed him. He had stood for a long time beside the closed coffin that held the broken bones and golden hair of his sister; and then had closed the door on it to find Philippa waiting, as he used to wait outside her room, to join with him her hands and her warmth and her comfort.
In one stride indeed, the wall had been scaled and the boundary crossed. Death had sprung the trap; shock brought the release; desire, broken now from all bondage, had excavated clean with its torrent all the poisoned gulf which had lain between them. To be apart, in those hours, was more than they could bear; and to touch a thing of sweetness and anguish. She moved all day, lightly, in the shelter of his arm.
Then, standing at the gatehouse with Francis, she kissed Kate, who was weeping, and watched Jerott and Adam take their leave also.
Richard said, ‘You will come soon? We need you.’ And Francis said, ‘We shall both come.’
Archie Abernethy was the last to go from Flaw Valleys.
To him, Francis gave no easy farewell, but set his hands lightly on the wiry shoulders and said, ‘How much of it did you see, back in Rouen?’
‘Not as much as the auld besom,’ said Archie. ‘She had a grip of me long before that, looking for you. It’s been a fair upgang. It’s a bloody sight easier with …’
And Lymond laughed, his eyes brilliant. ‘I know. But I can’t offer you a zoo at St Mary’s. Can you make do with what I have?’
‘With Hoddim and Guthrie and Blacklock? What you have is a zoo,’ said Archie Abernethy; and shook his hand, and turned his thin leather back on Flaw Valleys.
Then Sybilla retired, in broad daylight, and Francis said, in the empty upper reaches of the house, ‘It seems that if there is a room set aside for me, no one knows where it is.’
‘There is my room,’ Philippa said; and freeing her fingers, laid them on the latch of a door. ‘Here it is.’
He made a little movement, turning his face into her hair. ‘Asik; Durr-i Bakht; Yunitsa … my dear, my dear …
‘I am in love-desire, and unless you take me now, I shall fall in pieces … but I do not think I can be moderate. Forgive me, forgive me …’
But her breathing