Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [290]
She had explained as much as she could in her friendly voice, and her warm, firm clasp of his shoulder, helping him from one square to the next, had steadied him: when she moved him, he pulled her head down for a kiss. She had looked at the other child then, smiling, and touched his bright hair with her hand and felt him flinch like an ill-treated horse. The desperate smile did not alter. Marthe’s eyes were on her then, Philippa found. And across half the board, Marthe sent her a smile like her brother’s: light and cool and encouraging. Philippa, her hands shaking, smiled back.
There was a long pause. In a moment, thought Jerott, Gabriel’s remaining Pawn would reach the eighth square and would be exchanged, as had his first, for a piece of infinitely greater power. Thus Gabriel would have not merely two Pawns, but two attacking pieces played by the children which could not be taken. And one piece more on the board than Lymond possessed. Then Lymond said, ‘Rook to King’s Bishop’s sixth: check’; and Jerott knew he was going to try and prevent Kuzúm’s reaching the eighth square by attacking Gabriel’s King and engaging him until somehow checkmate could be achieved. Jerott moved; and so did Gabriel, threatening Archie; his face expressionless, who stepped forward and put Gabriel for the third time in check.
Then Gabriel escaped, as he had done before, by threatening Jerott; and, as had happened before, the manœuvre had to cease so that Jerott might be saved, lifting the pressure from Gabriel’s King for the one necessary move. Gabriel, smiling, said ‘Pawn to Queen’s eighth;’ and Kuzúm made his last move as a Pawn after all, with little gained for Lymond, Jerott thought, but the repositioning of his Rook. Jerott put up his hand and moved his fingers slowly over his brow, which contained a ringing headache such as he had never experienced before in the whole of his life. He had stopped wondering what Lymond felt because he could not conceive him at the moment as flesh and blood: a man of frivolity, who had outraged the fat bathers of Baden; a man who had slept at his side on the Dauphiné; a man he had drawn from the waves at Zuara: a volatile exhibitionist who had shared with him that crazy display of trick riding in Djerba. For all of them now, even Gaultier, grey-faced absorbing the moves, Lymond was only the disembodied voice of a disembodied intellect, the last Fate controlling their lives.
Kuzúm had become, unsuitably, a Bishop. For a moment Jerott wondered why, until he realized that by his position Lymond himself was now in check and, having to move, was presenting Gabriel with yet another chance of free action.
Gabriel took it. He put Lymond in check to his Queen. He turned him down the board, using Bishop and Rook and, all the time, his two invulnerable pieces: his Knight and his second Bishop, which could take any square with impunity, for no one would touch them. Once, Lymond was able to move Marthe to the eighth square and for a moment to challenge Gabriel’s King, forcing him to move up the board. A little later Gabriel in turn brought down his Queen, and for an instant both Queens confronted one another, and Gabriel’s seemed at Lymond’s mercy. Then Jerott saw that Archie stood in the next diagonal to Gabriel’s King, totally vulnerable, and it seemed instead that Marthe or Archie must be lost. Lymond moved his Queen quietly to the square behind Archie, shielding him; and Gabriel abandoned it, and returned to his smooth and brilliant game.
One would imagine, thought Jerott, that in any case they were well matched: Francis Crawford and Graham Reid Malett. They both had the capacity, the imagination and the concentration which this game of all games demanded. Gabriel, the older man, perhaps possessed more experience; but Lymond’s sharp-witted mind Jerott had seen sometimes take logic and soar without explanation beyond it, on