Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [369]
Both Francis and Philippa looked at her. He said, ‘A letter?’
But Philippa, meeting his eyes, walked forward and taking the key said, ‘Let me get it. I know where the desk is.’
‘So do I,’ Francis said; but did not explain. And in a moment Philippa was back, with in her hand a long packet bearing the seal of Jerott Blyth.
‘That was found in Marthe’s baggage,’ said Lady Culter. ‘It is addressed to you, Francis, and there seems to be another letter within it. Take it, and read it.’
He took it from Philippa’s hands, his thoughts still, she saw on something else and not on the letter. Philippa said. ‘You may give me a brooch. A sapphire one.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘But will you take care of it?’
Her smile was a very private kind of answer. Then he looked down and broke the seal.
Inside was, as she said, another letter, with this time the wax already ruptured. Then he saw what the crest was, and lifted his eyes.
Sybilla said, ‘Jerott tells me that Marthe went to Blois. My guess is that she found this document there, and was bringing it to you. Or if not to you, to all of us at Midculter.’ She had seated herself again in her stiff leather chair by the fire. There was just enough light from the window to read by.
Lymond said quietly, ‘I don’t think I want to read this. You may have it.’
‘If it had been addressed to me,’ Sybilla said, ‘I would have withheld it. But we must keep faith with whoever is leading us. It is yours. Read it.’ And so he bent his head, reading.
At the end, he did not show his face even to Philippa. Instead he walked to the window, the paper still in his hand, and Philippa, who had thought, enchanted back into childhood, that there was an end to all pain heard his breathing and knew that whatever it was, it was not the old story. It was not another confession of petty fault, bought back by shame and by barter. Then he said, ‘Will you tell Philippa?’
The fire lit only one side of Sybilla’s face. The pretty profile, with its tilted nose and soft lips and large, thick-lashed eyes for a moment looked less than its seventy years: looked perhaps almost as it had looked when she spent such a night as that with a man as beloved; and from which had been born Francis Crawford.
Sybilla said, ‘What Francis is reading tells him for the first time that the castle Richard lives in, its lands, its estates, its wealth and all its properties belong to him, along with the title of Culter.’
At the window, Francis did not move. Philippa said, in a dry void of utter bemusement, ‘How? How can it be possible, when Richard’s birth followed your marriage?’
Sybilla said, ‘Richard’s birth followed my marriage to Gavin. Francis is the son of Gavin’s father, the first Francis Crawford.’
‘We know,’ said Philippa quietly. ‘We know, too, that Eloise was his daughter.’
‘You know that,’ said Sybilla evenly, ‘because it is as much as Leonard Bailey intended you to know. There was a very good reason why he did not sell my secret to anyone else … the same reason, I suppose, that compelled him to put Isabelle, who knew it, to death.
‘Francis and Eloise were the only children born to me and to Francis, Lord Culter.
They were legitimate. What Francis has in his hand are my marriage lines.’
Philippa sat down. Then, as no one spoke, ‘Please?’ she said. ‘I can’t understand.’ At the window, Francis had turned.
‘There is no need to make a long story of it,’ Sybilla said. ‘We married in France, secretly, and then he was lost at sea: swept overboard sailing home to Scotland with Albany. I had loved him.… Perhaps you know, or can guess, how I loved him. I had nothing left. I went back to Scotland. And there was the castle he had made, with his books in it, and his clothes and his music, and all the men who had known him … and his son, importuning me to marry him.… If Francis had died yesterday instead of Marthe,’ said Sybilla suddenly to the girl, ‘could you have brought yourself one day to marry Kuzúm?’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa. Her mouth was dry.