The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [75]
Philippa did not move. She said, ‘I knew none of this.’
Its fury gone, the harsh voice was flat. ‘I gave you leave, Madam.’
‘I have no wish to stay,’ Philippa said. ‘Except for one thing. Where were Sybilla’s next children born?’
Her fortitude no longer extended to stilling her hands. But it did force her, at least, to meet the long, speculative look he bestowed on her. He drew a slow breath. ‘Ah,’ said Leonard Bailey. ‘So there lies the heart of the matter. The girl is dead, so—your interest is in the boy, Francis?’
‘Yes,’ Philippa said.
‘And then,’ Bailey said, on the same genteel note of inquiry, ‘and then what is your interest?’
Philippa answered as steadily. ‘That of a friend.’
‘A friend. So. Then the boy himself has sent you to inquire? He has doubts, perhaps? Or is it a question of inheritance? Or knighthood? Or some prize for which legitimacy—ah, that precious thing, Mistress Philippa—legitimacy is essential?’
‘No,’ Philippa said. ‘It is none of these.’
‘Then why?’ Bailey said. He was smiling again. He sat back in his hard-backed joined chair, the broken reed thrown on the papers, the coarse wisps of his hair escaped, in his emotion, from the thin greasy edge of the cap. ‘I fear you will have to explain it. My time is limited. I cannot gratify your curiosity for no reasonable purpose.’
‘He didn’t send me,’ Philippa said. ‘He is not interested, nor are any members of his family except myself; and my interest is soon explained. Mr Francis Crawford and I have been married.’
His pleasure was a thing tangible to the sight: it spread from his shining broad hands to his mouth and his eyes; it emanated from him like an odour. ‘Married!’ said Master Bailey. ‘With Sybilla Crawford’s son for a husband! Then get you fast to a lawyer.’
‘Why?’ said Philippa bluntly.
‘Why? Because your sons, Mistress, will have no more name than your husband has, and an inheritance of a kind no one can tell. I knew her ways,’ Bailey said. ‘I knew Sybilla Semple, and while I was there, at Midculter, I could keep her in check. But I was thrown out of Midculter, and when the first Baron went off, there was no one left, in Midculter or out of it, to restrain her.
‘Richard is Gavin’s son,’ Bailey said. ‘But in the boy and the girl who came after him run the seeds of four, or six, or ten possible fathers.… Who could blame the dear woman? Rich, titled—there was only one flaw in the household, and that without remedy. It was too late by then to rear Gavin as he should have been reared in his youth. He was a rough man and a rude lover, but that was not poor Gavin’s fault. Get a lawyer, Mistress. Your children will be pretty, but nameless.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Philippa said. Sybilla, wise, witty and fragile, was the woman he was speaking of. And what he had said was untrue.
He was breathing hard still, with excitement, and the smile remained on his face. ‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘It is not in your interests to believe me. And in her old age, I am told, the lady is most persuasive. Can you not imagine her in her youth? Such blue eyes: such golden-haired purity. Each man she met fell in love with her. But she was circumspect with her lovers. She chose wisely and enjoyed them in secret—in France, or behind some stranger’s curtain in Scotland. And wherever the girl and the boy were begotten, the births both took place