Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [16]
The Lady of Doubtance, Jerott observed, was of the older variety of witch who liked a theatrical smack to her necromancy. The bedroom, or whatever it was in which they now stood, was lit with a single wax candle, so placed that it illuminated only the face of their hostess—that of a woman of considerable age, whose bush of dead yellow hair was dressed in the style of high Saxon romance, its plaits bristling under the long, sagging chin. She was seated in a tall canopied chair, its feet lost in darkness; and of her body, too, nothing could be seen but a glimpse of archaic, unravelling robes, and two hands burdened with rubies, which lay like insects on her lap. The mouth opened, black in the seamed, underlit mask. ‘You are welcome, gentlemen. Come near. I rejoice in comely people around me. You note, Mr Blyth: your exquisite companion is sulking.’
From a distance of four feet, with the hair standing out on his skin, Jerott, wide-eyed, gave a stiff smile. How Lymond’s dignity had stood up to that kick in the teeth he did not know; nor did he mean to look round and find out. But Lymond’s own voice said instantly, ‘You misjudge me. I was projecting, I thought, a strong impression of patience. Kneeling like a drunk elephant at the feet of the Blessed. Melodrama makes Mr Blyth uncomfortable.’
The lightless eyes switched to Jerott. ‘Does it? Yet what more melodramatic than to join a militant order of monks because one rather commonplace young girl died of the plague? Balance your own accounts, Mr Blyth.’
‘I have,’ he said. Hell: how did she know about Elizabeth? ‘I have left the Order of St John.’
The old harridan gave a leer. ‘A blundering Popistant?’
‘If you like,’ said Jerott; and again the shadowy eyes creased.
‘I neither like nor dislike: I merely record the truth. And that is not the truth,’ said the Lady of Doubtance. ‘You left because you found corruption and intolerance against which your own faith was inadequate. You also left because of the fall of Sir Graham Reid Malett, that great Knight of Grace. What a sorry marriage you would have had of it,’ said the detached voice airily, ‘had he been christened Elizabeth.’
No one had ever been able to call Jerott Blyth a submissive young man. Violent in love, in hatred and in all his enthusiasms, he heard those words in a rising passion of outraged disbelief. Also, what was worse, Lymond had heard them. White-faced with rage in the darkness, Jerott opened his mouth; and suddenly heard in his head the lady’s cool words of a moment ago. I neither like nor dislike: I merely record the truth. He did not speak.
Waiting, the other two people in the dark room were aware of a long silence. Then Jerott Blyth said, ‘Then you must put on record that once I loved a girl and wished to make her my wife; and once I loved a man and wished to make him my leader. I shall never do either again.’
Beside him, Lymond did not move. In front of him, the shrewd old eyes under the grotesque Saxon wig stared unwinking at Jerott. Then the Dame de Doubtance said, ‘These are words I have waited to hear. You are adequate to your fate, Mr Blyth. You need no help from me to find it.’
And, surprisingly, it was Lymond’s voice which said sharply, ‘You cannot debar a human being from love!’
The old face, undisturbed, turned to look at him. ‘It is easy. Who should know better than you? But what Mr Blyth has been engaged in was not love, my dear Francis. It was romance, a thing to which Mr Blyth has been very prone; together with melodrama. Whatever made you think that melodrama makes Mr Blyth uncomfortable? He revels in it.’
‘A figure of speech,’ said Lymond. ‘But now, perhaps he might be permitted to leave?’
‘Why?’ asked the Dame de Doubtance, and settling herself in her chair, smoothed out her thick skirts with one bezelled