The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [275]
Almost immediately, it seemed, Lady Dormer was beside him. Mistress Philippa had wakened: she was well, except for a headache. She sent him her apologies and had also uttered, on waking, some words in Turkish which Lady Dormer was thankful to say she was unable to translate. Lady Dormer did not recommend visitors just at present, but perhaps Mr Crawford would send to ask how she was in the morning.
He said something, and became aware that he was expected to leave. He felt like a dog, he thought, whose master had died. He left the house, but did not remember the journey to Fenchurch Street.
The next thing he did remember was Ludovic d’Harcourt’s voice behind him saying, ‘Are you all right? You’ve been standing there for two hours.’ And it was probably true: he was in his own room with the lamps unlit and the door left half-open behind him. The light from the passage, coming through, fell on d’Harcourt’s big form, and the broad scarf which cradled his arm.
Francis Crawford said, ‘I … beg your pardon. Pantokrator brooding in the dome. Come in and sit down, and tell me how you feel.’ He walked to the nearest lamp and picked up the tinder, his hands shaking. He threw it down.
‘Let me,’ d’Harcourt said, and, using the fingers of his immobile arm, lit the lamp. He said, ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No,’ said Lymond. ‘It’s delayed shock, I suppose.’ The stroke of his pulses, unremitting, gave back the accelerated beat of his heart.
With a profound effort, he gripped himself, and steadied his breathing. ‘But what happened at Blackfriars? Your arm and your head?’
After five minutes, d’Harcourt said, ‘You should go to bed. I’ve been perfectly looked after: it’s a clean break, and I feel the ache, but nothing more. I enjoyed the revel. If you’ll forgive me, why in God’s name don’t you——’ He broke off.
‘Do it more often?’ Lymond said. He looked as if he wanted to laugh, but hadn’t the energy.
‘Go to bed,’ d’Harcourt said abruptly, and left him.
At some point during the night, Lymond went downstairs and sat in the dark before John Dimmock’s harpsichord. He played, when he did begin, very softly, and it reached no further than the room where his three disciples of St Mary’s were fast asleep. D’Harcourt did not wake up. Danny Hislop who was not musical did, and, rolling over, stuffed his ears with the blankets. But Adam lay for a long time listening, his eyes wide in the dark to music which, without opium and without alcohol, Lymond had never allowed within his hearing before.
He could not guess at the echoes which lay under the music. Man has an animal appetite, or I would be nothing. I, too have had my Margaret Lennox and my Agha Morat and my child-whore Joleta Reid Malett … more of each, and for longer. It has destroyed neither of us. And now nothing can hinder us.
He was asleep before Lymond closed the lid quietly and quietly returned to his room. It was daylight before he seemed to have time to go to bed, so he stayed dressed, and watched the sun rise, clean and virginal and bright from the east.
Soon, men would be around him and he must stop thinking, since there was nothing to think about. And allow the event, which was not an event, to sink forgotten to the recesses of d’Harcourt’s questing mind, and fade, unmarked, from the recollection of Lady Dormer or Nicholas. He remembered, with sudden, meticulous clarity, the woman he had bedded at Berwick and how, when he could bear it no longer, she had left him alone.
Too late, too late, too late; it had happened.
Chapter 10
So England, resting upon her truce as upon a springboard of nettles, passed the dwindling days of her peace in attending to the departing comforts