Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [45]
‘Whereas,’ said Marthe, ‘she thought it worth while including the Crawfords. Don’t force him to ask. Read the dates out.’
But Philippa had given the book already to Lymond. ‘Look. There are seven names under Crawford, but you and Richard and your mother are the only ones living. The splendid first baron, of course, born in ’75 and his wife, born 1477, Honoria Bailey. Then in 1495 his son, the nasty Gavin, second baron Crawford of Culter, who married Sybilla Semple, born in ’88. And then Sybilla’s three children, of whom you are one. That, at least, we are sure of.’
‘Are we?’ said Marthe with interest.
Lymond, running his hands through the ledger, left Philippa to answer. ‘We talked downstairs about trying to trace three witnesses. We heard of these people in England. What they witnessed …’ She stopped, glancing at Lymond.
‘Go on,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I am unlikely, under the circumstances, to be discomfited.’
‘… what they witnessed was a pair of deeds by Sybilla, declaring that Mr Crawford and his young sister were hers, but not born to her husband.’
‘Bastards?’ said Marthe. Her eyes were shining. ‘But brought up as if they were Gavin’s?’
‘You have it,’ said Lymond. ‘At the end of the day, look what divine bounty we bring you.’
‘And the true father?’
‘No one knows. But look, there are the entries,’ said Philippa. ‘Richard, the eldest son, born in 1516 and legitimate. Then in ‘26, Mr Crawford. Then, three years afterwards, Eloise, the young sister who died.’
‘You should make a Jesse window of it,’ Marthe murmured. ‘So that is what you are looking for? The name of Sybilla’s lover? Then I wonder perhaps if I have found it?’
She had, at last, Lymond’s fullest attention as well as Philippa’s.
‘Where?’ Lymond said. He laid the ledger aside.
‘Inside the dais,’ Marthe said. ‘Come and see.’
There on its side lay the baldachine chair. Beside it the blackened carpet, felted with dust, had been lifted.
Below were the boards of the dais. And cut through the boards a deep cavity, within which something lay, wrapped in bandaging.
Marthe said, ‘The moving chair tripped some sort of lever. I saw the carpet had sagged and investigated. I haven’t taken anything out.’
She hadn’t taken anything out, Philippa thought, because she hadn’t yet resolved to reveal it. Until just now. Until she had the pleasure of knowing that Francis Crawford, too, had no lineage.
She watched Marthe lift the package, and Lymond receive and unwrap it.
It was small, and inside were only two objects. One of them was a key. The other was a folded sheet of thick yellow paper, with the name Francis Crawford in an unknown hand above the deep-printed wax of the signet.
The key, large enough to fit a main lock, was finely made: for a house, one would say, of no mean size or quality. ‘It doesn’t belong here,’ Marthe said. ‘It might suggest the house of Doubtance at Blois. Or perhaps Sevigny. Or of course, some house here in Lyon, for that matter. I could take it, if you like, to a locksmith.’
‘Thank you,’ said Philippa sourly. She ought, she knew, to be grateful that they had a large door to find, instead of a box or a drawer or a casket. What could possibly be behind it defied her jaded powers of conjecture. She said to Lymond, ‘And the epistle?’
He lifted the letter.
She gave him a paper-knife but he did not use it. He broke the seal with a single impatient movement which tore the sheet and sent the splintered wax flying. Philippa swallowed a cry and sat like a dog as he read it. And Marthe, without speech, did likewise.
He was, of course a volatile spirit. And no doubt, in their overt concern, they looked ludicrous. His eyes lifted, and switched from the brown to the blue gaze devouring him. Then he said, his voice hoarse, in a whisper:
‘His children let be fatherles
Hys wife a wydow make
Let his offspring be vagabondes
To beg and seke their bread:
Wandring out of the wasted place
Where erst they have bene fed.
And so let hys