Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [41]
‘I will ask,’ Lymond said, ‘who is my sister?’
The faint voice, sighing, answered him. ‘You wish to know who you are? Many men go to the grave without that favour. You are the husband of Philippa Somerville and under cursing, will remain so. Do you hear me? Do you hear me, both of you?’
‘She is outside,’ Lymond said.
‘She is at your elbow,’ said the whisper from the canopy. A voice laughed harshly. His face blanched, Francis Crawford swung round from the dais.
Behind him, Philippa stepped from the murmuring darkness. The distant light textured the floating brown hair and drew glints from the absurd fluted stomacher. Her face, high-browed and burnished, looked up at his without fear.
‘I am of the loyal cranes,’ she said, ‘that stand round the King at night holding stones in their feet. Love, fear and reverence: write these upon the three stones of the cranes.’
She smiled at him gravely and, turning to the tall chair under the ruby lamp, spoke to it. ‘Accident joined us. Why should any such marriage be binding?’
The young, fresh, practical voice rang through the room. Round the chair, the air became dead. When the next words came, they were slow and faint, and addressed to Lymond. ‘I have promised your grandfather.’
Lymond said, ‘My grandfather is dead. And what did you promise concerning the marriage of Marthe and Jerott?’
The voice was cold. ‘Did the woman Marthe promise love?’
‘She promised kindness,’ said Lymond. Behind him the room spoke, in a sound as fine as the stretch of a ligament.
‘Jerott Blyth has had kindness,’ said the still, sexless voice; and chilled them with the breath of its disdain. It deepened. ‘Have you learned nothing? You should have died with the dog.… The bond will endure. Swear to it! The marriage will stand. Swear to it! Speak my name!’
‘Camille,’ said Lymond. Behind him there came again, far away, the small sound of movement.
The voice rang. ‘Keep me with you.’
‘I am with you,’ said Lymond. The sound came again, louder. Philippa looked at him.
‘Then swear!’ The voice altered and rolled, rebutted from corner to corner. ‘The marriage will stand. I have your mind in my palm. I will crush it.’
‘Then do so,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘I renounce the bond and the marriage. I defy you, Camille. Do us harm if you dare.’
‘No!’ said Philippa suddenly. A wand of pale light, dropping through the powdery air, fell slanting beside her and accepted the contours of cabinet and ewer and ciborium. Her hands on her skirts, she swept round and saw what had caused it.
Jarred by a monstrous and uneven thrust, the bronze door behind her had begun to swing out on its hinges. It opened slowly, shuddering, and the boom of it rose and fell like a mustering wave in a sea cavern, gathering resonance with its momentum.
Philippa heard. Lymond shout, pitching his words through the clamour; but she did not hear what he said.
Nor did the man on the threshold. Wide-shouldered and powerful, silhouetted against the flickering light of the candlesticks Jerott Blyth found the resonance, in his wrath, of Assurbanipal. But fiercer even than that was the shrieking voice from the chair, overpowering it. ‘Swear! Swear! The marriage stands, or I curse you! Francis Crawford!’
Then the swinging bronze door reached its terminus. It thundered into the wall; and the shock of it rolled through the room like the hoofbeats of the Volscian’s squadrons, splendid with brass; and clashed in the skull like its bucklers.
‘Francis Crawford!’ said the powerful voice. ‘In fire is your friend; in flood is your foe; in powder is your release. Remember me!’
Then Jerott set foot in the chamber.
Philippa faced him. Francis Crawford ran like a deer in the other direction. Before Jerott was well inside the room Lymond was half-way to the dais. As the echoes diminished, he reached it. The flame from the jacinth lamp streamed in the draught, plunging the mouth of the chair into darkness. The light from the doorway, rimming Jerott’s striding legs and broad shoulders, played on other limbs that were also moving: golden limbs, sweetly poised below