The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [59]
‘You have not heard, I suppose, from your husband?’
‘From Mr Crawford? No, Lady Lennox,’ Philippa said. ‘Nor do I expect any letters.’
Lady Lennox smiled, her back straight against a large walnut chair upholstered in ginger brocade, entwined with the arms of Stewart and Douglas. ‘This churlish bridegroom!’ she said. ‘However fleeting the marriage, he owes it to you, one would think, at least to assure himself that you are well, and in no need. Indeed, it is more urgent than that. I am told that the annulment will depend on his communicating with you. He must assure them, as you have done, that the marriage was on paper only; and that further, he is willing to release you.’ She smiled. ‘Do you think he is? Or is it not possible that seeing you now, a privileged lady of the Queen’s privy chamber, he might change his mind?’
A picture of Kiaya Khátún rose into Philippa’s head, superimposed on a lengthy tally of other ladies, all remarkable for their beauty, brains and general complaisance as the mistresses of Francis Crawford of Lymond. Lifting her eyebrows, Philippa transformed a giggle, gravely, into a cough. ‘No,’ she said with regret.
It sounded bald, but there were pitfalls in qualifying it. She could mention his age, but it was possible that Lady Lennox was even older than he was. And even Ruy Gomez, one remembered, had married a child-bride of twelve. Further, it would be impolitic, Philippa felt, to refer to Kiaya Khátún. Philippa opened wide, disingenuous eyes on the Countess of Lennox, and the Countess of Lennox smiled back.
‘And you?’ she said teasingly. ‘Are you so sure that this marriage was platonic? No man with his arts would give his name to someone he found distasteful, or would submit to a marriage service without a chaste embrace, at least, from the bride. Did you not find him pleasing?’
There was something between them, Kate had said. And looking at those smiling, violent eyes, Philippa suddenly knew what it was. She said levelly, ‘I admire his cleverness. He, I think, admires my plain speaking. There is, I suppose, friendship between us. But, to answer your question, in all the years since I was a child of ten, there has never been a gesture of affection between us. There has been no occasion.’
The black eyes resting on her brown ones were calm. ‘And when he came to Flaw Valleys,’ Margaret Lennox said, ‘of course it was to visit your mother.’ She rose, and, pausing by Philippa’s chair, lifted her clear-skinned face as she might lift a doll’s, by the chin. ‘Charming,’ said Lady Lennox. ‘A good, kind-hearted girl. We must find a husband worthy of you, from among all those eager escorts at Court. But first, by some means, we must find Mr Crawford and have you set free. Do you and your family use every means to discover him, and we shall also. He has obligations. He shall be reminded of them.’
Philippa began her letter to Kate in the palace that evening, and was found by Jane Dormer with her face swollen and her nose a brilliant red, in the first wave of homesickness she had felt since coming to London. Mistress Clarenceux, appealed to, made Philippa pack up her letter and belongings without further ado, and transferred her for four days of freedom to the Sidneys’ house at St Anthony’s, Broad Street, where she realized for the first time how tired she was. Nursed by the staff of Sir Henry, she slept for the better part of twenty-four hours, and then resumed both her usual acute interest in her fellow human beings, and her half-begun note to her mother.
… in your rustic solitude, far from David’s timbrels and Aaron’s sweet sounding bells—how can you bear it? Outside Spain, there is nothing to touch us for living civilly, now gussets have reached us at last. True, our clothes are badly made, and our hair is dressed in the French style, instead of the way Spanish unmarried girls do it,