Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [66]
‘I suppose I have,’ Jerott said. They were speaking in English. A pair of oak doors made their appearance in the lamplight whose panels, beneath the coat of arms of the d’Albon family, gave a stirring account of the siege of Troy, at which the Marshal de St André would no doubt have been present, had the event not occurred prematurely. They opened on Lymond’s approach.
‘Not at all,’ said Francis Crawford, leading the way across a magnificent tiled courtyard, past a fountain and up a flight of steps to a door which also opened before he could touch it. ‘Your troubles arise from the tenets you insist on adhering to, not the ones you depart from. If we cross to this staircase we should avoid … I beg your pardon.’
A tall young woman with unbound black hair who had been standing turning the pages of a book in the room they were traversing turned fully round and remarked in French, ‘Please do not apologize. My mother the Maréchale is out, but you may still avoid me should you wish simply to pass through the door. Unless I can offer you and your friend some refreshments?’
She despised him, Francis had said; and that much was clear. What he had not said of Catherine d’Albon was that she was beautiful. Strong-limbed and slender with a clear, high colour, she had slate-grey eyes pure as ice-water under level black brows, and the long, straight fall of her hair on the loose brocade robe she was wearing was hazed like boiled silk in the candlelight.
At the end of such a day’s work as Lymond had devised and carried out, he was immune, understandably, to any possible impact from either her looks or her anger. Jerott heard himself being introduced; heard the damning grace with which, giving it just enough attention, Lymond refused the offer of food and asked after the health of the Maréchale.
‘She will come back later this evening. She asked me, should you return, to beg you to excuse her. Since it seems M. de Sevigny requires neither food nor entertainment at her hands, the constant presence of his hostess may not be entirely necessary.’
‘You see?’ said M. de Sevigny, opening his unfortunately metal-soiled hands. ‘I am like Time, Li tens, qui s’en vait nuit et jor, Senz repos prendre, et senz sejor. How can I expect my friends to forgive me?’
‘I shouldn’t worry. You haven’t got any,’ said Jerott, and smiled hazily at Mademoiselle d’Albon who smiled reluctantly back. Lymond made no effort to continue the conversation, but bowed and stood aside to let Jerott mount the circular staircase which led to his apartments.
Their luxury was what one might have expected, given the scale of the rest of the building. Recalling the girl’s eyes following them both up the stair Jerott said suddenly, his hands in scented water, ‘What did you mean? That she would court whom she must?’
‘Don’t let’s go into all that: it’s too tedious,’ said Lymond, and dropping his towel on a tray, walked across to where the table of wines glowed by the fireplace. ‘I am not going to marry Catherine d’Albon, and that is all that need concern anyone. Are you, do you think, of sober habit on this trying campaign of non-aggression?’
He looked up and Jerott, meeting his inquiry, felt the colour rising under his skin. He said shortly, ‘Have you ever known me drunk in the field?’
‘Sometimes the bedchamber is the field,’ Lymond said. ‘I am offering you one glass, out of moral parsimony. As a skin bottel in the smoke So are you parcht and dride. Yet will you not out of your hart Let my commandement slide. What news of Lyon?’ He sat down, a cup of Pedro Ximénès in his palm.
Jerott sat down too, in a tapestry chair with cord fringes, and a lugged back which held his head between the ears like a pillow. He said, ‘The troops from Piedmont should be coming into Lyon about now. Danny means to come north as soon as they settle. Adam will wait until the Duke de Guise and Strozzi arrive. By the way … there seems to be a prevalent idea that the Italian army