Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [47]
It was empty, Marthe said, with all the money transferred to the Schiatti, and all the treasures to her rooms here in Lyon.
That might well be so, but she wanted to see for herself. There was something else also she wished to do, of which she had said nothing to Marthe. Jerott had found for her, unsurprised by her interest, the name of the convent where Marthe had been reared. It was near Coulanges, and close to both Blois and Sevigny. And now that she knew Marthe’s age, she could ask to search through their records.
She still found it hard to believe Marthe’s true age with all those fine-skinned blonde looks to refute it. But then, the Schiatti had been disinclined, for other reasons, to accept what she had told them of Lymond. The Constable was sixty-four; Piero Strozzi fifty-seven; the Marshal de St André fifty-two. The leaders of nations did not appoint young men to have overlordship of their armies. It took many years to establish a famous squadron of mercenaries. It required a man of exceptional power and maturity to attain, as M. le comte had done, the principal post in all Muscovy.
But whatever else he was not, Lymond was the infant a few weeks old whom Sybilla had brought home to Scotland that winter of 1526. Powerful he certainly was and mature, heaven knew, he had shown himself over and over to be. But he was also, however much he might wish to disguise it, only thirty years old in reality.
Which was, however, old enough to compel instant obedience when he said, as he did now, in a murmur, ‘Stand there and keep quiet a moment.’
He had drawn her to the side of the road, and up the steep kerb to a doorway. She waited, eyeing her husband as he stepped back, fading into the atmosphere. It seemed, on the whole, a fatuous idea to remain there when she could guard his back, at least, with the dagger. Just before he vanished totally, Philippa stepped down from her doorway and followed him.
In fact, he walked back twenty yards and then halted. Philippa halted behind him. Months of esoteric training in the Sultan Suleiman’s virgin seraglio had taught her, if nothing else, how to move silently. She had used her skill in the Hôtel Gaultier, to insinuate herself after Lymond. In point of fact, it came to her, she had really spent a large proportion of her young life following Lymond. Madame la Maréchale might be forgiven for imagining it was with an ulterior motive.
Marthe had thought the same. It was tedious, and a little undignified. Standing there, just within sight of the blurred shape of her husband, Philippa thought crossly that the formal nature of their relationship ought really to be self-evident. Quite literally, Lymond never touched her. A few times, in the past, he had struck her. But his threat tonight, needless to say, had not been serious.
He had a temper, but it would hardly drive him to injure her. Now his response was merely to detach himself from personal contact. Looking back, she could not remember a conversation veering on the intimate from which he had not withdrawn immediately. He had had of course, in the past, more than enough of being devoured alive by the consuming interest of his admirers. A boy called Will Scott, back in Scotland. An Archer, they said, called Robin Stewart. Jerott, perhaps, long ago. Small wonder that Francis Crawford today took routine precautions to repel invaders.
And of course, that was it. Standing there, her eyes blank in the fog, Philippa saw plainly so much which had escaped her. The dismissals she had suffered; the exchanges he had broken off; the measures he took, when he remembered, to dampen the ardour of any impressionable fool who might dream of clinging to him.
Such as herself. She remembered the ringed, picturesque hands on which she had fixed her eyes, and their abrupt withdrawal. It was not only in the eyes of the world that her pursuit of Lymond was being put