The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [29]
‘I know. Where does he stay?’ Philippa asked.
But that Richard could not tell her. Sensibly relegating it therefore to the foot of her list of priorities, Philippa found occasion instead to visit her friend Agnes Herries and her seven children at Terregles, calling on her way back at the convent of SS Winning and Mary.
The Abbess, a tall pallid woman, turned out to be catastrophically lacking in her sister’s nimbleness and delicacy both of body and wit. After keeping Philippa waiting for some considerable time, she sent for her and surveyed her without particular favour. ‘To what do I owe the honour of this unheralded visit? Sybilla, I see, has not seen fit to accompany you.’
‘She didn’t know I was coming. Forgive me,’ said Philippa humbly, her sharp brown eyes winsomely pleading. ‘I should have known how busy a person of standing must be. We speak of you a great deal at Midculter.’
‘I beg leave to doubt it,’ the Abbess said, sitting down and indicating at last that Philippa also might take a chair at her desk. ‘The Dowager Lady Culter seems to find it convenient to overlook the nearer members of her family. I doubt if she has been here in five years.’
Philippa did not doubt it at all, from Sybilla’s rare references to her sister. She also knew, although she did not mention it, exactly how much in goods and endowments Lord Culter and his mother had paid and were paying annually into the foundation’s treasury. She said, ‘You knew Mr Crawford, I think, as a boy.’
‘A gaudy child,’ the Abbess said, ‘with an insolent tongue. I have heard the tale of your marriage. You have come, I would gather, to question me?’
Proving, thought Philippa, paling, that one does not become an Abbess for nothing. She said, ‘Then there is something to tell?’
The shrewd old eyes openly studied her. ‘It is usual, I believe, for a husband’s circumstances to be known to his bride before marriage?’
Time was too short,’ Philippa said.
‘Then my sister has surely informed you?’
‘She has said nothing,’ Philippa said. ‘And I have no right to question her. The marriage was purely a formal one, and will be dissolved shortly.’
‘In that case,’ said the Abbess, ‘by what right are you questioning me? And why, indeed, should there be anything in your husband’s life which is not all too blatantly public already?’
‘Because,’ said Philippa, ‘when I returned to Midculter from Turkey, I didn’t give a full account of what happened. There was a Frenchwoman as well on that journey, one who joined us in Lyons and stayed with us most of the time until we parted at Volos. Her name was Marthe.’
‘I see,’ said the Abbess of SS Winning and Mary.
‘And,’ said Philippa, ‘she called herself Lymond’s sister.’
There was a silence. Then, ‘And did Francis accept that?’ said the Abbess.
‘He could do nothing else,’ said Philippa bluntly. ‘If they had been twins, they couldn’t have looked more like each other.’
‘And you said nothing of this to Sybilla?’
‘No,’ said Philippa. ‘That is why I am here. It is two years, reverend mother, since Mr Crawford left Scotland, and there is no sign so far that he intends to return. Lady Culter is not in good health. She depends on this son, and his absence is trying her badly. I think the root of the absence may be his meeting with Marthe.’
‘Such revulsion over a by-blow? How did Marthe account for her birth, then?’
‘She knew nothing,’ Philippa said. ‘Except that she had been brought up in Blois by a woman called the Dame de Doubtance.’
‘Who died in the winter, leaving Francis a fortune? That I heard also,’ the Abbess said. ‘And what story do you think would comfort your husband’s fears and bring him home to Midculter?’
She had known it was going to be difficult. She had not known how hurtful it could be as well. ‘That his mother is all he thought her to be,’ Philippa said.
True or not, it was the right answer to give Sybilla’s own sister. The Abbess leaned back, and although she said, ‘A child’s view!’ she was not displeased.