Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [368]
‘Khush geldi: welcome: thou art come happily,’ she said gently, and let him come, where he belonged, within her gouvernance.
And so, incontinently, the striding flame that consumed them, without words, without courtship became, instead of the echo of lust, the cauterizing fire which expelled it for ever. For in the total extremity of need, with the fine mind overturned and subjugated for once by the overwhelming desires of his body, there still remained, drowned and helpless but there, the shadows of grace, and care, and courtesy, caught fast like stars in the deluge.
It would have been enough, were she still the crippled Philippa of Sevigny, to have swept her with him. But although she marked them, rejoicing, she did not need them, for by then she, too, was part of the torrent.
*
He slept half the night through after that, motionless in her arms in the kind of peace he had probably not known since childhood. She wept a little, from happiness and from pity for him, and then herself sank into slumber.
So that he had the felicity of wakening her; and the first thing she knew was the exquisite drift of his hands, and his voice saying, ‘Qedeshet, Mistress of all the Gods, Eye of Ra, who has none like her.… Come and let us beget all kinds of living things.’
And then his true courtship of her had its beginning; and to the worship of his body, he joined the fairest garlands from the treasure-house of his mind, and made a bower for her.
Adored; caressed into delight; conducted by delicate paths into ravishing labyrinths where pleasure, like carillons on glass, played upon pleasure, she leaned on his voice, and sometimes answered it.
… You mee embraced; in bosom soft you mee
Cherished, as I your onely chylde had bee …
… Quhen I wes hungry, ye me fed
Quhen I was naikit, ye me cled
Oftymes ye gave me herberye
And gaif me drynk, quen, I was drye
And vesyit me with myndis meik
Quhen I wes presonar, and seik …
And once, triumphantly, ‘And Harald went with his host out to Jerusalem-land, and sithence up to Jerusalem-town, and wheresoever he fared over Jerusalem-land, all towns and castles were given up to his wielding.’
And that was when she realized that laughter, which they had lost, had come back to them, and they were whole again.
*
Sleep overcame them far into the day and the November light was falling grey through her windows when he woke her to joy again, laughing. ‘Amis, art thou asleep? My lyves loy, myn hertes plesance … The world knows all our affairs. It is tomorrow, and nearly the day after tomorrow, and we have neither eaten, nor dressed, nor gone to visit Sybilla …’
‘I have eaten,’ Philippa said.
And then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. ‘I have begun to eat,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever.’
*
Sybilla was in her room when they tapped on the door and stood there, robed like children, with Philippa’s long hair on her son’s shoulder.
This time, it was Philippa who ran to her, and knelt, and put her head, smiling, on Sybilla’s lap.
Sybilla kissed her, and then taking her by the hand rose herself, and crossed the room to where Francis stood, his eyes grave, his face so changed that it took her breath away. He said, the deep blue eyes smiling at her, ‘They gave me some medicine.’
Then he held out his hands and, when she came, bent and kissed her.
She said, ‘I asked you to come when you woke, for I had something to show you.’
She glanced at his feet and then, quizzically, up at his face. ‘Can I send you on an errand?’
He flushed, Philippa was delighted to see; and then laughed. ‘Within limits. I am sky-clad like the Digambaras.’
‘Then you will simply have to risk upsetting the servants,’ said Sybilla. ‘Lace that garment properly. Then go to the music room