Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [43]
Martha stood upright. ‘For carnal pleasure?’ she said, and laughed wildly. ‘Like unto Uranus and Gaea? It hadn’t occurred to me. On the other hand, it is a gift of Francis’s to fill his house with sons bred in incest.’
Jerott lifted his hand. Lymond caught the powerful wrist in his fingers. Philippa choked, and Francis Crawford spoke softly to the lovely woman he had called his step-sister. ‘He who strips the wall bare, on him will it fall.… You knew of the trap. Why not dismantle it?’
‘Because,’ said Marthe, ‘that was the instruction the Dame de Doubtance left for me. I am cursed enough, I sometimes fancy, without incurring her further displeasure. The trap was to be sprung only by you.’
‘Why?’ said Lymond. At his side he gripped Jerott’s wrist still.
‘Is this why?’ said Philippa, her voice reaching remote over the chamber. And the three others turned.
With eyes of copper, of stone, of crystal, the images in the room gave back unchanged the stare of its invaders. Only, the painted leather panels of the wainscotting had all, as in a galliard, changed places. Where they had been was a chequer of pigeon holes: neat recesses in black from which, here and there, gleamed a scroll-end of slender, rolled paper.
‘The horoscopes?’ said Lymond. He let Jerott go.
‘And other things,’ said Philippa, a trifle austerely. Her legs were trembling. ‘If she didn’t actually use a broomstick, there were one or two things she preferred to keep out of the way of the Consulat. They’re filed by Zodiac symbols. What sign were you produced under?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Lymond shortly. ‘But I’m sure, whatever it is, you will find the chart before anyone. Jerott, come with me. Marthe, your stock in trade is lying all over the floor. I suggest you begin to pick it up and leave the genealogy to Labour here, with a vine in her hand. Did you reach the chair through a door in the panelling?’
‘Yes,’ said Marthe. Her bearing was still one of contemptuous amusement but she also had begun, if you looked very closely, to tremble. She said, ‘Are you going to tell me that you guessed who I was from the beginning?’
He looked at her. ‘Not from your appearance.’
‘How, then?’ Where another woman might have been tearful, she was angry.
‘You spoke … in words,’ he said.
‘So did she!’
‘So did she,’ he assented. After a moment he said, ‘What did you mean, In fire is my friend?’
Marthe said, ‘What?’ She looked both upset and defensive.
‘In flood is my foe? In powder is my release?’
But Marthe’s fair face remained blank. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Lymond. ‘I suggest you stay here until I come back, and that you govern your tongue. You are unlikely to drive either Philippa or myself to the wineflask.’ He turned away without looking at Philippa.
Jerott did not want to leave the room. It was a commentary on his lack of trim that Lymond was able to compel him, and quickly, leaving Philippa and his step-sister together.
Philippa was pleased to see them go. Disregarding instructions without hesitation she crossed to where Marthe stood, her ruffled head bent, studying a chipped Isnik dish without seeing it. Philippa said, ‘There’s blood on your arm. Are you hurt anywhere else?’
‘No,’ said Marthe. She watched as Philippa tore a neat strip from her shift and then folded it. She allowed her arm to be taken. ‘A flank attack? Your tactics are a little more subtle, at least, than your husband’s.’
Philippa, baring the gashed forearm, began deftly to bind it, a smear of dust on one tinted cheek. She said, ‘Do you know you spoke in two voices?’
She was so close, she saw Marthe stop breathing and start again. Lymond’s step-sister said, ‘I tried to sound as she might.’
‘You succeeded,’ Philippa said. ‘I think you need to be careful. In any case, he doesn’t give anything away, whoever he thinks he is speaking to. You ought to know that. It only upset Jerott and made him fling out those fatuous accusations. Anyone with any sense can see that you have no more romantic interest in Lymond than I have.’ She completed her task and glanced