Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [40]
Francis Crawford embarked on his search and completed it, neglecting nothing; and if he had any natural feeling, none was visible. Even when, as he was finishing, the candles finally expired he showed no surprise, but closed the last drawers in a marquetry desk without hurry, and turned in the shadows to look at the long crowded room and the high chair at its end, still illumined by the small fiery star of the oil lamp. Across the dark spaces the monumental candlestick shone dusty gold, and the chessmen glimmered like moonstones.
Less bright than either were the folds of brocade which charged the seat of the chair and fell from it. Tarnished brocade, which stiffly coped the still kneecaps it covered, and lay in stony scrolls about the slippered foot on the dais. The half-open hand on the bliaud held no sceptre, and there was no crown on the regal head which stared from the canopied blackness; only a hennin set on two coarse golden plaits which lay within the red veil of the lamplight.
The Dame de Doubtance’s chair was once more occupied. And the cold, running drenching through all the room, told of anger as the lightless eyes, without movement, stared straight into Lymond’s.
His hands closed. Then, his back very straight he walked slowly forward until he stood, as before, in front of the dais.
There he halted. In the dim ruby light his hair glowed like silk seen through a wine glass. A breath came from the chair, bearing speech with it.
‘Aucassins …’
‘I am here,’ Francis Crawford said softly.
‘And not afraid?’ The whisper was harsh.
‘Of many things. But not of the grave.’
Within the cavity of the chair nothing moved but sound, and that barely. ‘Li beaus, li blonz … Of what are you afraid?’ came the whisper.
‘Search my mind,’ Lymond said calmly. ‘It is open to you.’
The chair was silent. Below the threshold of hearing the other dead forms in the room, touched by air and by warmth seemed to stir faintly, waking. The man, unmoving, gave no appearance of heeding them.
So it seemed untoward that presently he should flinch without warning, and that his chin should lift and his face harden, like that of a man threatened by enemies. From the chair, loud and harsh and not in a whisper at all came a long, contemptuous cackle of laughter. Then the whisper said, as if nothing had happened, ‘You are foresworn. You should fear me.’
This time he did not answer at once, and when he did, it was carefully. He said, ‘I am here because you willed it.’
‘I willed,’ said the seated figure, ‘that all I owned should be yours. You have wronged me.’
He said gently, ‘Had I done otherwise, I should have wronged Marthe. Who is Marthe?’
Like a powerful snake coiled and striking within the chair, the voice hissed and cried, loud as a street-call: ‘Sotte! Putain! Trafiqueuse! Have I died for this?’
He did not speak. The lamp burned. Then softly the voice said, in the old threadbare whisper, ‘Marthe is a vagabond. You have learned pity. You have met evil. What, Aucassins … What of love?’
This time his voice of its own accord was quite steady. ‘I have learned love as well. For a nation,’ said Francis Crawford.
‘For no person?’ said the voice from the shadows.
‘For no person,’ said Lymond, assenting. ‘If Marthe is a vagabond, who is Güzel?’
A snigger came from the chair. Then the whisper said, sharply, ‘The mistress of Dmitri Ivanovich Vishnevetsky.’
‘And what,’ said Lymond softly, ‘is your name?’
The room all about him stopped breathing. Then from the chair rose a singing vibration, like the note of a tuning fork, or a voice humming in madness, or pleasure. When it came, it was the loud voice that spoke, coyly muted. ‘You know … You know. You see, you cannot quite keep me out. You know. Ah!… that it is Camille the Volscian.’
He said abruptly, ‘I know. You will harm her.’
And the voice, threadbare again, said, ‘You speak in riddles. What would you ask me?’ And then, loudly, ‘He will not ask. He is afraid.