Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [53]
‘With Emeroides in the hinder parts
He stroke his enmies all
And put them then unto a shame
That was perpetuall …
‘I took the bungs out of the shallops,’ said Lymond.
*
He pulled himself together before she did, dropping her hand and running his fingers through his tangled hair, restoring it to something like normal orderliness. Then he surveyed her, seeing, one supposed, the dirty chemise and long cobbler’s apron, and the greasy felt cap, with the hair leaked from under its ear-flaps.
The familiar blandness returned to his face, smoothing out all the wild elation. ‘Well,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Make my compliments to the boys of Flaw Valleys, or whoever trained you in the use of a peashooter. You did very well. I shall now return you to the Schiatti, Hathor’s temple; home of intoxication and place of enjoyment. They won’t know whether to lock up their sons or their daughters.’
Philippa Somerville shoved her hair under her cap, stuck her hands on her hips, and without budging a step, stood and glared at him. ‘Do I appear,’ she inquired, ‘crazed with lust?’
His eyes flicked wide open, Lymond considered her. Then he bent his head, and she could not tell if he was smiling. ‘Very seldom,’ he said.
‘Or artless? Or addled? Or excitable?’ She was getting angrier. ‘Is that why you keep recoiling as if I was a line of armed cavalry?’
He was not smiling. He looked up slowly and met her gaze, his own level. He said, ‘I beg your pardon. I didn’t know I was giving quite such an insufferable impression. I think I forget sometimes …’ He hesitated, choosing his language.
Philippa finished it for him. ‘… that I am aged twenty, and Kate Somerville’s daughter; and sensible? For Sybilla, I am willing to involve you in any kind of genealogical embarrassment. But you really needn’t have fears of the other kind.’
‘I don’t. I know that perfectly well,’ Lymond said. ‘I am trying, I believe, to avoid offering you the kind of attentions which would be expected by Madame la Maréchale.’
He did not cite Güzel, she noticed. Who had the same training she had. Touched with remorse, Philippa said soberly. ‘Since we’re being frank … Wasn’t that foolish? The Queen is going to offer you the Maréchale’s daughter in marriage. It might well be what you need.’
‘What I need?’ said Lymond. Then he said, ‘Oh, I see. But you haven’t seen Madame la Maréchale in her chemise.’
With commendable patience, Philippa made no rejoinder. By mutual consent, they had begun walking rather swiftly towards the gate to the bridge-head. After a moment he went on. ‘I knew Catherine d’Albon was being sent south to meet me. I don’t want her. That is why I did what I did with her mother.’ He hesitated again, and then said, ‘What I told Marthe tonight was not strictly true. I am already pledged, and not only to the nation of Russia.’
Behind the cobbler’s apron unpleasant changes took place in Philippa’s abdomen. She ignored them. ‘To Güzel?’ she said steadily.
He shook his head. She saw that, looking ahead in the fog, his profile contained a curious and suspended calm, the smiling mask of some state far from peaceful. ‘Not to Güzel,’ he said. ‘But for my lifetime.’ And walking still he offered her, smiling again, four lines of verse, lightly spoken.
‘Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera
Pour nulle vivante, tant soit elle bonne ou sage
Forte et puissante, riche de hault lignaige
Mon chois est fait, aultre ne se fera.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Philippa said. It was a half-truth. Subconsciously, she supposed she had always known, since she was a schoolgirl. She said, ‘It’s my turn to beg your pardon. I only wanted to assure you that I have nothing to tender but friendship. But if you want it, there is a great deal of that, going cheaply.’
He slowed, with the intention perhaps of confronting her. But on second thoughts he said only, ‘Then the cost should not be beyond me. The pledge, without Latreia or Douleia, is simple friendship?