Checkmate (63 page)

‘But you didn’t believe her?’ Lymond said.

Her mouth for some reason dry, Mary Fleming faced the swift, un-aggressive inquisition. ‘They were full of money,’ she said. ‘You could hear the coins move when they were lifted.’

For a moment, Lymond’s eyes continued to dwell on her, then he turned back to the woman Euphemia. ‘And the gentleman who was to call for the boxes,’ he said. ‘Did she name him, or describe him in any way?’

That she remembered. ‘His name,’ Euphemia said, ‘was M. Janus, and she said he was an old gentleman, very heavy, with an English accent. She didn’t know,’ added Euphemia, suddenly frightened afresh by the atmosphere, ‘that I read the letter. They said I was to read everything.’

Janus. The two-faced God. The God of Gates, with a key in his hand.

‘I see,’ Lymond said. ‘Thank you. It was not your fault. I know where Mistress Philippa is, and I shall not even trouble Lord Culter, I believe, with the story. You will have her safely back before long. Mary, will you excuse me?’

But swiftly as he made out of the room, Mary Fleming pursued him. ‘Where is she? What do I say? What if someone asks for her?’ And then, as he turned, ‘You don’t know yet, do you?’

‘No,’ said Lymond. ‘But I shall find her. And if you are able, I would ask you not to let it be known, for as long as you can, that she is missing. Am I asking too much?’

‘No,’ said Mary Fleming. He was asking a great deal, but then, she would have given him a great deal, as once her mother wanted to do.

The last galliard had begun in the hall, and messieurs of the Town, pleased, well-drunken and wonderfully tolerant now on all matters to do with both collars and precedence were lost in wet-eyed pleasure at the splendour of it all, and in a mood to form loving friendships with every man in the room. Daniel Hislop, having exhausted his larynx, if not his stock of witticisms, had gone to earth among a huddle of somnolent advocates. Jerott, kept remarkably sober by his fellow captains, had
found a lady who liked black hair and Lyon velvet, and was skirmishing with her. Adam, uneasy about many things, agreed, for the third time, to become the lifelong blood-brother of a hatmaker and then stepped sharply aside, causing a landslide of creased yellow satin as Lymond’s voice spoke abruptly behind him.

‘Adam? Is Osias on duty? Or anyone else?’

Adam’s heart went cold. ‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘It was impossible, because of the …’

He was not allowed to finish. ‘On other days, has Philippa always been followed? I asked that this should be tightened.’

‘Always,’ Adam said. ‘Except for the one time you know about. Francis, what’s happened?’

‘And on that one occasion,’ said Lymond, as if he had not spoken, ‘how long was she away from the Hôtel de Guise? Is it known?’

‘An hour, Osias thought,’ Adam said. ‘She crossed the rue St Antoine from the de Guise house, going south. That’s all he could find out … Francis?’

‘She left the palace this evening,’ Lymond said. ‘So she wasn’t going, the other time, to one of the bridges. She didn’t leave by the Porte St Antoine, and she had hardly time to get a ferry over the river and back again. And that leaves the Petit Arsenal district.’

‘The Petit Arsenal?’ Adam said. ‘That’s where …’

‘What?’ said Lymond.

‘Danny was asked by Philippa not to tell you,’ said Adam slowly. ‘She thought, it seems, that your mother might try to visit a house in the Petit Arsenal district, and if she did, Danny was to prevent her.’

For the first time, Lymond did not speak at once. Then he said, ‘And the address?’

‘Danny was never told,’ said Adam quietly. ‘The only person who would know is your mother. If you like, I shall go and ask her. She went some time ago to her room.’

‘No. Thank you. I had better do that,’ Lymond said.

Long ago, returning from some turbulent sequence of misdeeds, the younger, beloved son of the house of Culter would rap at the door of his mother’s chamber, and be admitted, and closing the door, would bend upon her the grave, sweet gaze, made of mischief and love, that melted the bones in her body. Then, sinking to one knee, he would kiss her hand, in obedience and humility.

Now he rapped, and she heard his voice speak her name and, rising, she faced him as the door opened and shut and he stood, his bearing and looks unlike anything she had ever seen in him before, in any extremity. He said, ‘I have to find Philippa.’ And then, walking into the room, he dropped on one knee and said, ‘I will promise anything you wish, to the end of my life, if you will tell me the name of the house that you know of.’

And as she did not answer, staring appalled at his face, he said, ‘Philippa asked that you should be prevented from going there. We know it is near the Petit Arsenal. I think Leonard Bailey has found it.’

Blanched by age and by agony, her skin had no colour at all, and her drawn brows this time were no longer those of a beautiful woman. Then she said, her timbreless voice barely audible, ‘It is called the Hôtel des Sphères; and it is in the rue de la Cerisaye.…

‘It is where you were born, Francis.’

He left while she was speaking. He reached the Grand’ Salle without thinking, as the quickest way to reach the staircase, and found his way blocked, unbelievably, by the muscular countryman’s body of his brother.

‘You are very busy,’ Richard Crawford said, ‘for a man assisting at the nuptial feast of his monarch. Wherever you are going now, I am sure you won’t mind if I come along with you.’

Over and over, the same song, the same burden; the obstruction; the battle; the challenge:
if you won’t lead, try following, Richard!

But where he was going now, he could not take Richard. Nor, looking at his brother’s face, could he think of any ruse that would serve him. Richard said, ‘They tell me Philippa isn’t to be found. I don’t suppose you would know where she is?’

‘No. Ask Euphemia,’ the comte de Sevigny said. There were men all about them.

‘Don’t look round,’ Richard said. ‘There is no way out there. It would be rather crude, but if I have to, I shall stop you with violence. You are in a hurry, aren’t you?’

He was in too much of a hurry not to take all the care in the world with the next move. It was bluff and double bluff: a step, a feint, another step, and a sliding movement which took him out of Richard’s grasp just as his own blow, low and accurate, made his brother gasp and desist. Then he was moving as fast as he could through the crowds, with Richard he knew a few bare yards behind him.

He had not gained enough distance to outpace him on the stairs or in the outer rooms and passageways, so he did not attempt it. Instead Lymond turned inwards across the corner of the Grand’ Salle and up to where stood the wreathed double doors of the Chamber of Requests, flanked by two Archers of the Royal Bodyguard.

‘Monseigneur?’ one of them said. He knew them both well.

‘I have to assist their graces,’ said Lymond. ‘The noble earl my brother is not meantime to be admitted.’ And did not look back as he stepped through and the doors shut behind him.

The King, with a black silk mask binding his brow, was surprised but instantly welcoming. ‘The man we wish to see. Come, you create marvels in the field. Show us how to adjust this galleon so that Monseigneur my son may properly guide it.’

The golden room was full of people, and ships. The ships were ingeniously mechanical, and made of red velvet and cloth of gold, with silver sails as high as a man. The King, Lorraine, Navarre and Nemours, masked and impatient, were already seated each in his barque. Condé,
abandoning his, was kneeling beside the ship of the Dauphin, ferreting within its entrails with a hunted expression to do with a rip in his exquisite stockings. Mars, fil de Mars said, ‘It is unsafe. I will not ride in it.’

‘Nonsense,
mon fils
,’ said the King. ‘Is it unsafe?’

‘One requires to steer it with caution,’ said Condé. He rolled up his eyes, bored, at Lymond, who knelt beside him quickly, and surveyed the mechanism.

‘Well?’ said the King. ‘Our audience, messieurs, awaits us. Is it safe for the Dauphin?’

Lymond rose. ‘On any other day, yes,’ he observed. ‘But on his wedding night—no: I should not trust the Dauphin to any but a perfect vehicle. It would be better to launch five boats instead of six.’

‘We can’t do that,’ Condé said. ‘We have to steer round the hall and pick up our consorts.’

It was spoken with the irritation of a man whose consort for the purpose was the Duchess de Guise, ten days over the birth of her untimely offspring. His Majesty said, ‘The Dauphin was to have uplifted Queen Catherine. You say the steering will not answer?’

Lymond touched the levers. ‘I could make it answer,’ he said. ‘But that would hardly …’

‘Then you shall steer it,’ said the King heartily. ‘François, give him your mask. And the cloak. The height is different but seated, it will not be noticed. The plan, de Sevigny, is to steer twice round the hall. Then I shall pause and take up the Queen of Scotland beside me, while Navarre takes his wife, Lorraine takes my daughter Claude, Nemours takes Madame Marguerite and you, of course, take her grace the Queen.… Does it astonish you, to find yourself so acting with the princes of the blood?’

‘I am overwhelmed,’ said Francis Crawford rapidly, and climbed into the ship. Someone signed to the King’s gentleman nearest the door and he opened it, and caught the eye of the trumpets.

The blare of sound warned Richard Crawford that there was no prospect, when the doors opened, of slipping inside and on some excuse, of dragging out his younger brother. Instead he had to stand there, sickened still by the pain of his blow, and see the Archers fling open the leaves and the mechanical fleet of the king come swaying and tacking across the black and white squares of the floor.

The doors closed. Since there was no other exit Lord Culter stationed himself by the entrance, and watched with little attention as, to music and clapping, the royal crew skimmed round the pillars and threw silver light on the statues of past monarchs, long since dead, with their playthings.

It was not until the last graceful ship had passed him twice that he saw that the unsmiling mouth under the mask of the helmsman was longer and firmer than the Dauphin’s ever would be; that the chin and throat
were mature, and the airy hands on the silk reins were those which had just inflicted on him such careless agony.

Then the barque came to a halt and the captain, rising, smiled and held out his hand while the Queen of France, glancing at him, stepped in and sat down beside him. Her thick lips moved, asking a question, and at the answer she laughed and then sat, as the ship slid into motion and followed the rest down the length of the Grand’ Salle and into the depths of the palace. The last Richard saw of them before the crowds closed cheering between them was the Queen’s snubbed and inelegant profile turned on her chevalier, a considering look in the shallow, protuberant eyes.

Then, of course, he lost them. Lord Culter turned and, striding, made for the principal stairs.

Those, in his turn, Lymond avoided. Vanishing with remarkable speed from his vehicle he had almost reached the door to the Sainte Chapelle when he was fallen upon by an ancient abbot in his cups. To extricate himself without any means which would be unmemorable took him two minutes: running then, he found the locked doorway and then a porter who did not need the velvet and rubies to tell him who this was.

He was paid for his trouble; and then paid again to provide, as fast as possible, a plain cloak with a hood to cover the gentleman’s finery. Then Lymond passed through the door and crossing the balcony of the Sainte Chapelle’s upper floor, reached the narrow staircase which led down its side to the street.

He was unaware, as he passed, that he had breathed incense and glimpsed the taper-lit glass vaults of the chapel, or that he was treading the steps which, barefoot, Philippa had trodden eight months before. He only saw before him, swirling outside the gates of the Palais, the immense crowds which filled the streets singing, and waiting to cheer the departing guests from the most celebrated royal wedding ever made.

He was recognized twice, reaching the river. The first time his hood was dragged back in the crush and he saw, on the unshaven face pressed nearest to him, the first gaping yaw of astonishment. Then he ducked, pulling the cloth over his face and lost himself as fast as he could in the darkness. Behind him, as he went, he could hear voices calling his name and a ragged cheer rising, but they had not been able to follow his movements.

That and the next time, when a party of wool dyers swept into him near the river, held him up on a journey already fraught with the night-madness of celebration: of bonfires and drinking and dancing, of student songs and acrobats and men who would balance on hemp, and turn somersaults for a penny.

The wool dyers wanted him to come and drink with them. He refused, clapping them on the back; scanning the opposite bank where the fires danced red and blue over the water, and the sounds of merrymaking rose and rose, tossed as if in a blanket into the redolent air. Scraps of flame.
flocking like birds, shot into the night sky and dispersed, swinging and veering over the river. It was as bad over there, if not worse. He said, ‘I need a boat. Who will get me one?’

And so, in the end, he was rowing alone in an old creaking ferry, for which he had paid with one of the Bechistan rubies cut from his sleeve.
(I’d give unto her Indian mole Bokhara town and Samarkand.)
And even there, in the brief, heavy journey upriver, he had to have care, with other ill-guided boats jolting drunkenly against him; with floating debris and mills to look out for and another ferryman, who took exception to his amateur status and wanted to fight it out with him.

But he had had a great deal of practice at rowing, and it was direct, and avoided the crowds. So that, although it felt as sluggish and long as a drug-dream, he had probably saved fifteen minutes by the time he tied up by the Arche Beau-fils by the Célestins.

Then he had only to run. He knew where the rue de la Cerisaye was and had even walked along it to visit the monastery during his days as commander in Paris. The road ended in a high garden wall, and did not contain many houses. He entered it from the rue St Antoine, his feet in kid and velvet soundless on the thin sunken bricks of the road. The third or fourth house he came to, on the left, had a carving of some kind over its doorway which might be a globe. The moon, warmed by the reflected light of distant fires of joy, traced the thin-branched trees which stood between the gates and the delicate outline of the house. Above him, as he tried the lock, a weeping willow fell in cascades of yellow chenille, and a tall chestnut loomed with clutching fingers of half-open leaves. There was a wall of branched candelabra, which were pear trees.