Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [319]
Marthe, searching his face, drew a breath. ‘Last night you called me something else.’
His face was grave, but the smile had not quite left his eyes. ‘I called you sister,’ he said. ‘Was I right?’
‘Yes,’ said Marthe. And hesitating: ‘What made you sure?’
‘The luggage of poetry you carry,’ said Francis Crawford; and far down in the tired eyes the smile lingered still. ‘Your other burdens I can also share.’
‘I want no ties,’ said Marthe. ‘I need no help.’ As an afterthought, she added, ‘You have made free enough with your name.’
His thin-boned hands, lying loose on the counterpane, drifted slowly together and folded. He said, ‘Are you sure it is my name you should bear?’
In the little silence that followed she could hear clearly the tick of a clock. Like him, she knew too much poetry.… Uncivil clock, like the foolish tapping of a tipsy cobbler. A blasphemy on its face; a dark mill, grinding the night.… A nerve flicked, like a thread, at the side of his mouth and was gone.
Marthe said, ‘No, I’m not sure. I know the names of neither of my progenitors, nor have I any longing to know. To me, the matter is nothing.… My first recollection was of my convent at Blois: my only relations have been with the Dame and Georges Gaultier. And they answered no questions.’
Lymond said, ‘Gaultier is dead,’ his rising tension betrayed by his voice.
‘So is the Dame de Doubtance,’ said Marthe. ‘Your meeting with her was the last one: did she not say so to you? Surely you felt her beside you when you chose Kuzucuyum? Surely you knew she was with us last night? She died when you slept, at daybreak this morning.’
He didn’t ask how she knew. He accepted what she had said because he had reason to do so, and said only, ‘She died, knowing your parentage?’
Marthe shrugged. ‘The secret died with her. It would trouble her little. She had breathed life into her puppets: you and I to discover what in ourselves we still lacked. Philippa to be gilded as befitted her spirit. Jerott … to be taken from you. And my lover and I to be parted.’
For a while Lymond did not speak. Then he said, ‘What do you believe she wanted for Jerott?’
Marthe’s hands also were interlaced; her firm chin was high, her eyes dense and steady. ‘Kindness,’ she said. ‘He will have it.’ Then she rose, quietly because he had had more than enough, and said, ‘You will rest and get well. Jerott tells me you will not go at once back to Scotland. What then will you do?’
His slow voice was wry. ‘Earn my living. And that of my … new dependants.’
And Marthe turned at the door, her pale fall of hair alight with the sun from the window; the tired della Robbia face, so like his own, reflecting his irony. ‘There is no need. You are a rich man, brother,’ she said. ‘All of which Gaultier died possessed was bequeathed to the Dame de Doubtance, his patron. And all she had in each of her houses was willed, so long as I have known her, to you.’
He looked at her, disbelieving; and then instantly answered. ‘Then it is all rightly yours.’
‘No,’ said Marthe. ‘Whatever my life holds, I have no wish to owe it to them. And wherever she is, even dead—don’t you think she would know, if we frustrate her will now? What is there will keep you in luxury.’
‘It will keep Philippa and Kuzúm,’ Lymond said quietly. ‘Like you, I have no wish to be further beholden.’
Staring down at his spent face on the pillow, Marthe’s expression was wry. ‘The wife who calls you Mr Crawford,’ she said. ‘The child you don’t even know.’ And as he didn’t answer, Marthe said suddenly, ‘How many souls on this earth call you Francis? Three? Or perhaps four?’
For a moment he looked at her unsmiling; and for a moment she wished, angrily that she could recall the question. Then quite suddenly he smiled, and held out his hand. ‘Five,’ he said. ‘Surely? Since last night.’
He was slow to recover, but neither Jerott nor Marthe was impatient;