Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [92]
It fitted. It fitted so neatly, if you did not know all the people involved in it. She said, ‘You assume it was Sybilla’s love-child who died. But what if Gavin’s son was also named Francis Crawford?’
‘You feel,’ said Lymond, ‘that it would be convenient if I could be discovered to be the son of Sybilla, even if on the wrong side of the French blanket. But if Marthe is born of Béatris and Gavin, and I of Sybilla, how do we come to be so alike in appearance? And Beatris, you say, is Marthe’s mother. I wonder if it would be wise to tell her.’
Philippa was not, at that moment, thinking of Marthe. She said suddenly, ‘You said Gavin would come to disport himself at Sevigny. But there was no Sevigny in the family until you bought it. There was no reason for him to be …’ She broke off.
He had remembered who and what she was. Philippa, cold to her fingertips, saw Lymond’s face change. ‘Go on,’ said Francis Crawford evenly.
‘I was going to say, there was no reason for Gavin to be in the neighbourhood,’ said Philippa slowly. ‘But of course there was. I don’t suppose you know what it is. But the records at Notre-Dame de la Guiche show more than the birth and upbringing of Marthe. They show that Sybilla was at la Guiche also with the Poor Clares until 1515: her family must have placed her as well as her sister with a religious order. There’s no one there now who remembers the Clarisses of forty years ago, but the register says that she applied at the beginning of 1515 to return to secular life. Six months later she left, followed by a peasant girl called Renée Jourda from Coulanges who had served her in the convent and had become apparently attached to her. From la Guiche of course she returned directly to Scotland, where she married Gavin, and ten months later became the mother of her eldest child Richard.’
‘The third Lord Crawford and, as it turns out, the only legitimate offspring. A poor record, even for Scotland,’ Lymond said, his voice amused. But he was not amused, or he would not have missed the vital, the incredible point in all Philippa had told him.
Philippa said, ‘You’ve forgotten the two papers, the ones Sybilla signed, confessing that the two children known as Francis and Eloise Crawford were hers, but not fathered by Gavin. They were countersigned by three different people. One was a priest, whom we now know is dead. The second was a woman called Isabelle Roset. The third was Renée Jourda.’
‘I see,’ said Lymond. He turned, and lifting a fragment of broken marble from the balustrade weighed it in his hand. Then, leaning over, he tossed it over the handrail and watched it bound, exploding, from surface to surface. ‘And Renée Jourda still lives with her people at Coulanges?’
‘No,’ said Philippa. ‘She’s a widow. She lives alone in a farmhouse near Flavy-le-Martel beside Ham, the town King Philip is staying in. If she still lives, that is. Chaulny was sacked.’
‘And if she still lives,’ said Lymond, ‘she could tell me who Sybilla’s lover was. But do I want to know? I am Gavin’s son.’
There was a pause. Then Philippa said, staring at him stoically, ‘I think you want to know. I don’t think it matters to you what your parentage was. But I think you need to know the truth about Sybilla.’
Francis Crawford laughed. ‘Perhaps I do,’ he said. ‘But it is an amusement I shall have to deny myself. Even the most Christian King, in time of battle, has to forgo his hunting. I may do it at leisure, when horns are in season. Or I might decide—would you ever forgive me?—that Sybilla’s small eccentricities are really of no importance at all. Except, of course, that they prompted you to take so much trouble to put it all right. You love Sybilla. She is fortunate.’
Because she could not speak, Philippa said nothing.
He pushed himself from the staircase and without taking her arm, began to rove back uphill to the courtyards. ‘As her foster-son, perhaps I feel differently. At any rate, I find I object quite strongly to being involved in the past any further. Will you therefore, of your