The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [76]
‘I don’t believe it,’ Philippa said, ‘because the story I heard was quite different. I heard the second two children were not Sybilla’s. I heard they were fathered by Gavin.’
‘Then why come to me?’ said Leonard Bailey. ‘If that version pleases you then pray, mistress, believe it. But I’ll warrant you it came from a Semple. And without a paper to prove it, at that.’
‘And what proof do you have?’ said Philippa.
He was enjoying it. He gave a laugh, his lips looped at the corners; the saliva winking between broken teeth. ‘What a keen nose for facts! How you long to hear me say, None. But I have proof, my mistress. First, her sweet children’s colouring. Gavin was brown-haired, and so is Richard, his eldest. What of the second son, Francis?’
‘It isn’t proof,’ Philippa said. ‘His mother might have been fair.’
‘You are right. It isn’t proof. But it gives you pause to consider, does it not?’
‘And in the second place?’ Philippa said.
‘In the second place, I have what no one else has. I have evidence, written evidence, that the children Francis and Eloise were Sybilla’s.’ He laughed again. ‘Don’t you wish you had scanned my shelves more closely? But they are not there, Mistress Philippa. The papers are where only I may find them. And there is only one way you will ever learn what is in them. If you send Francis Crawford here to me to ask me for them, with all the respect and duty that is my due as the creature’s great-uncle. Tell him to come to me, Mistress, and beg for them. Then I might let him see what his true ancestry is.’
She could not move him. When at last she rounded on him, accusing him of the grossest misrepresentation and malice, he merely laughed again, and then, rising, took her by the arm and walked her out of the house. She made him stop on the threshold so that she could open her purse and fling down on the table the price of the cracked bowl for Dorcas. Then she marched down to the gate where George and Fogge waited, and mounted.
Chapter 9
The road Philippa took then was not back to Hampton Court Palace, but to the city; and because she had confided in them, Fogge and George, her groom, rode with her to her appointment at Tilbury.
She made poor company. And they, after attempting to cheer her with conversation, lapsed into silence, glancing at her from time to time. Philippa, riding like one of Mr Dee’s mechanical toys, heard and saw nothing but the strident voice of Leonard Bailey, overriding and destroying what she had already, with such trouble, accepted: the story of the untoward marriage, and the part played in it by the woman she knew, who had been Sybilla Semple.
In two days, she was to set sail for Russia. In three months or less she would be facing Lymond himself, already astonished and irritated by the responsibility of her presence, and would have to persuade him to come home to Scotland, and to Sybilla. And would have to tell him what Leonard Bailey had just told her … or would have to conceal it.
She could not tell him. Of that she was sure. And he would never learn it in Scotland, if in all the years of his life there had been no rumour: nothing that had come to the ears of his enemies, and used against him and Sybilla. Any misconduct there had been in Sybilla’s life had taken place outside Scotland, Philippa propounded to herself, trying to face possibilities; trying to throttle the instinct to forget it all and do nothing.… Therefore if Lymond came home, who would tell him if she, Philippa, said nothing?
No one. No one, that is, unless Leonard Bailey, roused by her visit, decided to take a last, exquisite revenge. That was one risk she took, in saying nothing to Lymond. The other danger was subtler still. Suppose that, given the choice, Lymond would prefer to be the son of his mother, on any terms whatsoever, than to be the offspring of Gavin alone?
She knew too little about him. Kate would have advised her, but there was no time now to consult Kate. And even Kate could not see the circumstance, as she did, against a lifetime of war and diplomacy, education and statesmanship,