Checkmate (37 page)

The two bottles sailed through the air. Pursued by three other pairs they made their way, hurtling, from one end of the table to the other. As it happened, there were no mishaps. The young men clambering over the end of the table desisted for the nonce and sat down. A dam of steaming dishes, thus released, proceeded like a millrace down the room and then halted again, blocked by a hilarious group. ‘Why,’ said the comtesse de Laval on Lymond’s other side, ‘are the pages four feet high? They cannot see where they are going.’

‘And yellow and violet silk!’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘It martyrs the eye even more than your vulgar collar,
mon fils.
’

‘They’re children. Whose?’ said Lymond sharply.

‘The merchants’ sons,’ said Philippa. The Marshal had been right. He
was
sober. ‘The children are serving everywhere except the royal table, to honour the King and allow them a share of the celebration. But of course, they’re frightened. And the crowd won’t let them through.’

‘They will,’ said Lymond briefly.

She caught his arm, and then dropped her hand instantly, her colour heightened. ‘No. You can’t control it for them.’

‘No,’ he agreed after a moment. He dropped back into his seat. ‘But I can dispatch some very dirty stares. Piero?’

‘I heard you,’ said Piero. ‘You have become responsible.
No te quiero. No te quiero, Juliano.
’

‘You will,’ Lymond said, ‘When the Paris Parlement votes us all that beautiful money to enable you to squeeze more victory prizes out of the poor bleeding treasury of France. If you will control that little bastard Paliano at your end, I shall petrify the equerries by the fireplace at mine. Oh Christ, he’s going to spill jelly all over us.’ He switched to French. ‘I see,
mon cher
, you carry this as the King’s pages do. I know a better way. Hold it thus, and thus. You see? And smile. The King likes smiling faces.’

Piero Strozzi closed his mouth, which had fallen ajar. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You have a son, don’t …’

He roared. ‘I beg your pardon. My foot slipped,’ said Philippa. ‘Have a date flan, and don’t talk so much while the hautboys are playing. If you lose your voice, none of us will know what to do.’

In fact, they did their best to salvage the occasion. The Sieur d’Estrée and the d’Andelots helped. But disaster, like a dropped stitch in knitwear spread running and, torn between sympathy and hysteria, Philippa was forced to watch the evening steadily and formidably falling apart.

Children were sick, burst into tears and dropped dishes. All the marzipan arrived at one table and all the cream dariolles at another. The trestle nearest the serving door captured all the Auxerre wine as it came through and refused to let the serving children carry it further.

The tables further from the serving door began throwing dragees in protest, followed by harder objects: Piero Strozzi at this point collected his own silverware and the Sevigny crystal and put it under his bench, which led to a good deal of excitement from the deprived diners who had to drink out of the wine flasks, share cups or pour wine on their platters and lap it, which some of them unhappily did.

A brief moment of uneasy silence fell during the saying of grace by the Cardinal, and another was accorded the eulogy to the Duke de Guise by the Prévôt des Marchands.

There followed a modest reply by the Duke, the hero of Calais himself, dressed, as Lymond had predicted, in white and gold velvet and diamonds. He made courteous reference, in the course of it, to the able support of his many brave captains and applause broke out all round the tables where Philippa and her companions were sitting.

When the Lieutenant-General had resumed speaking:
‘Chacun son tour,’
said Piero Strozzi under his breath. ‘You know why M. de Guise kept none of the booty from Calais? A million pounds in gold, he gave to his captains, and fifty thousand livres’ worth of English fleeces to d’Andelot alone—the painting of Jason there, mon fils, should bear a Coligny face. Monseigneur required a military success and a popular success both, and you and I gave it to him. O, God in heaven: we are to suffer a fanfare?’

The speech had ended, and the comte de Sevigny’s antiseptic blue gaze was turned on his garrulous companion. ‘He’s going to recite,’ Philippa said.

Lymond recited. It was, happily, something she could help him with.

‘His prayses with the princely noyse—’

‘—Of sounding trumpets blow’:

‘Prayse hym upon the viole, and—’

‘—Upon the harpe also.’

‘Prayse him with Timbrel and with Flute—’

‘—Organnes and Virginalles,’

‘With sounding Cymbals prayse ye hym—’

‘—Prayse hym with loude Cymbals.

‘—There are times when I feel,’ Philippa said, ‘that one set of cymbals would be sufficient.’

‘But the Duke de Guise,’ Lymond said, ‘is happy with two sets of cymbals, and
quand le bâtiment va, tout va
 … Philippa, Philippa, what have you been hiding from us? A plague of demons is attempting to enter the room, a sword of fire out of the gullet of each of them, and every one of them as high as the clouds of heaven. The City Fathers have commissioned a Spectacle?’

‘Oh dear!’ said Philippa, groaning. ‘The City Fathers have commissioned
two entertainments from Jodelle. But they should have drawn the boards first.’

‘They should certainly have drawn the boards first,’ Lymond concurred. ‘They’re going to act in and out of the King’s jacket buttons.… Oh, Christ. Orpheus?’

‘Orpheus,’ agreed Philippa sorrowfully. Fighting his way through the crowd, his laurel wreath knocked quite a little askew, trod a singular figure with a carmine smile, a paunch and a lyre. From the shifting shape of his mouth, but from nothing else, one could tell he was singing.

The court, being accustomed to mime, made no concessions. The volume of greeting, conversation and comment rose, intensified and thundered back on itself, carrying Orpheus into masterful inaudibility. A pasteboard belfry jammed in the doorway, tripped, and entered on six dirty feet. A second one followed.

‘Francis …’ said Piero Strozzi.

‘Be quiet,’ said Lymond. ‘I’m lip-reading.
Chantés rochers, et avecq’ vostre Orphee, Adorés moy d’un grand Roy le Trophee
. Rochers?’

‘Clochers,’ Philippa said. ‘They ordered rocks and got belfries. Bad handwriting.’

‘Hell’s own bells too, if I may say so,’ said Lymond.

‘Rocks with Sirens in them,’ Philippa corrected him patiently. “You’re very slow. It’s Jason and the Argonauts.”

‘No one’s handwriting could be that bad,’ said Lymond. The Sirens, quavering, retrieved their meandering minims, breathed, and arrived in scratchy unison at their ultimate lines.

A yap of hysteria rose from the audience. ‘Francis,’ said Piero Strozzi. ‘Mon petit François; Madame; I have done my best to help make of this historic Triumph an event which Messieurs of the Ville will relate to their grandsons. I have tried. You have tried. But nothing, mort-Dieu, can redeem this
bella cagata
. I, Hesychast,’ said Piero Strozzi, ‘am going to lie on the floor and—forgive me—study my belly-button.’

And he did, gracefully, accompanied by the claret flask. Philippa Somerville looked up at Lymond, who had risen and was concentrating visibly on the players.

‘Well?’ said Philippa kindly.

He turned his head slowly and stared at her. ‘Minerva in a canvas shirt of mail and a helm with a cock on the top. There’s a gorgon’s head on her shield.’

‘Oh.’

‘She has quite a short ginger beard. She’s forgotten her lines. In any case, she can’t hear the prompt.’

‘That must be awkward for her,’ Philippa said.

‘Yes. There she goes. You should listen. How about that?

‘And now,’ continued the architect of the battle of Calais, his voice somewhat stifled, ‘there is a very large ship attempting to walk through the doorway.’

‘Argo,’ said Philippa. ‘I told you.’

‘And you recall those little budge wigs made of lambskin …? Could it be Jason?’ said Lymond. ‘In leopard fur, kicking the belfries in their white satin slops? It’s not their fault. They can’t see where the door is. But they’ve got the ship through. They’re trying to put up the mast. And who’s
that?
’

Philippa craned. ‘That’s Mopsus, the Argonauts’ soothsayer. He was killed by the bite of a serpent.’

‘Not this one. This one,’ said Lymond, ‘is going to be hanged like Mumphazard for saying nothing. You know how Jason died?’

‘Naturally,’ said Philippa, severely. ‘A beam from the ship fell on his … Oh, dear.’

‘Philippa,’ said Lymond weakly against the rising gale of anguish and laughter, ‘I do beg your pardon, but if I am to attend court again, I shall have to retire under the table with Piero. Gradatim.’

He gazed owlishly at her and she, her eyes brimming, stared back at him. Acutely as she felt for the échevins’ suffering, there was a limit to one’s powers of civil endurance.

They exploded together, and Lymond slid, as he had threatened, under the table to lie silently shrieking beside the reclining figure of the Queen’s favourite cousin while Philippa, covering her face with her hands, sat helplessly through the heroic dregs of the Antique Triumph of Calais.

*

It ended just before midnight. A little after, wild-eyed with enforced courtesy, Lymond handed his wife into their coach and as they jolted off between their torch-runners, proceeded to relieve his feelings with a total recall of the
Argonautes
, from the warbling rocks to the whinnies of Mopsus.

Half-way home, he remembered that half his possessions were still with Jerott at the Séjour du Roi and the coach was redirected there in the midst of a calamitous declamation by Jason:

The coach stopped and Philippa, crying with laughter, followed him in. He entered, clucking
O trois trois fois trois fois heureus Trophee
and not in the least put out to find himself in the presence of his own English prisoner as well as Jerott.

Naturally, Jerott wanted to know what had happened: Marthe joined them, and almost immediately Danny and Adam. A jug of wine was brought. Sunk, trailing their finery in opposite chairs, Philippa and Francis Crawford related, restored to preternatural gravity, the events of the entire evening, beginning with the welcoming salvoes and going on with the chandeliers and Piero Strozzi’s silver.

They ended with the
Argonautes
, Philippa taking the parts of Orpheus, Minerva and Argo and Lymond the rest.

Austin Grey, standing obscured in the shadows, watched it in silence. But it rendered Danny and Adam, who in any case had also been drinking, almost totally helpless. Smiling, Marthe kept the wine flask going round. Jerott, already better fortified, with good reason, than anyone, laughed until his ribs ached so much that he had to fold his arms over them.

For a moment, disconnected by the stitch in his side, he listened not to the sense but to the interplay of the two flexible voices, one masculine and light, one mellow and feminine, unreeling their story, faintly affronted amid mounting hysteria. He opened his eyes.

He knew, because his memories of Francis Crawford went back further than those of anyone there, that Lymond was rather drunk, although he could still disguise it. The quick-wittedness, the invention, the faultless comedy timing were present at the price of a little concentration which had closed his outer consciousness for the moment. Jerott, no longer laughing, sat in the shadows and watched the dazzling performance and both the players, blond and brown, artist and acolyte.

Acolyte. But Philippa was a child no longer: he had known that since that single evening in Lyon. The severe, clear-skinned profile turned towards Francis might have belonged to any great lady. The brown and brilliant gaze only quizzed him at intervals: she seemed able, Jerott saw, to sense by instinct the course of his fantasy; and as with Lymond, what she was doing at present occupied all her awareness. Then Francis surged to his feet, leaving his robe, and launched into Jason’s querulous tour de force, fractured by interruptions and a mounting fury of incoherent resentment, and finally disintegrating in chaos.

Against her will, Marthe was laughing. Danny sobbed. Adam, his head in his hands, was also weeping with laughter. But Jerott, his attention already caught, watched Philippa Somerville, her gaze on her husband, come to her senses.

He knew how it turned you to water, that unguessed-at well of delight under the bitter intelligence. In his life with Marthe they had found it perhaps as many times as he could count on one hand: never more. When it came, you felt as Philippa looked, her soul in her eyes.

As he watched, she bent her head and crossing her hands, slid them along her forearms to still them. Oh God, thought Jerott. Don’t let it happen. She doesn’t deserve the torment. The lifetime of waiting, in return for a handful of moments of ecstasy. And standing behind him, always, the ghosts of his other, experienced women. The thoughts he did not share. The knowledge that one had his total friendship but never the key to the innermost door.… And there was an innermost door, which Marthe did not have, and had never had, although his hopes of that, and that alone, had been his reason for marrying her.

Adam was looking at him. Stupid with too much wine and too much emotion Jerott turned his head, and so caught, without warning, the expression on Austin Grey’s face. Then, as he watched, the polite mask replaced the scorn, the hurt anger; and Marthe, still laughing, was prompting Philippa and Philippa, obedient, was rising: ‘I beg your pardon. The honestest woolgatherer that ever came to us. What am I? Minerva?… 
Voyant ainsi, ô Roy, dans ma main docte et forte …
’