Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
‘Through the thumb-marks and liquor stains, barely,’ said Lymond. ‘Perhaps I failed to mention——’
‘That you don’t like your correspondence read?’ Philippa said. ‘But you did tell Kate that you had no interest in Elizabeth or the Earl of Devonshire. That wasn’t true.’
‘That wasn’t true,’ Lymond acknowledged, still reading.
‘Hercules Tait says that Courtenay died after fourteen days’ fever in Padua, and that Vannes, the English Ambassador, got the chief Magistrate of Padua to lock up all Courtenay’s papers until the Queen wrote to say what she wanted.’
‘Luckily,’ Lymond said, ‘Hercules Tait, who wrote the report, has a friend in the Council. So the following day, without Vannes being aware of it, the Bailiff of Padua was asked to send Courtenay’s papers secretly to the Chiefs of the Ten back at Venice, where the box was opened by a carpenter and the contents all read. A number of letters, marked with a cross, were taken out of the bundle and the rest put back into their linen cover, stitched, replaced and nailed into the casket, which was sent back to Padua, apparently intact. From there, presently, Peter Vannes was allowed to collect it, and is at this moment on his way home to hand it, with the letters, to the Queen.
Unfortunately,’ said Lymond reflecting, ‘Tait doesn’t know which letters were abstracted, and he says he is watched and may not be able to get the casket from Vannes.’
‘Why does it matter?’ Philippa said. She looked again at the report in her hand, which included none of these extremely interesting facts.
Lymond shrugged, ‘Courtenay was the sole male heir, several times removed, to the throne of England, if Queen Mary dies childless. There have always been plots to marry him to the lady Elizabeth. He was supposedly involved in the scheme to rob the Treasury last year—they put his secretary Walker in prison. Ruy Gomez and his friends were only recently suspected of trying to kill him—even the merchants can tell you all about that. So his correspondence is highly inflammable.’
‘And who is liable to be burnt?’ Philippa said.
‘I am,’ Lymond said placidly. ‘And more important, John Dee. And more important still, the Queen’s sister Elizabeth. But not until Vannes arrives with the casket.’
In silence, they stared at one another: sardonic blue gaze into clear, vigorous brown. ‘And I,’ said Philippa at last, ‘am about to be suspected as a junior unpaid courier scurrying about between you all?’
‘It is no doubt Lady Lennox’s hope,’ Lymond said. ‘As I told your mother, I shall do what I can to thwart it. She said you had been to Hatfield only once. Is that true?’
‘Yes. Mr Elder asked me to go once again, but I made some excuse,’ Philippa said. ‘Madam Elizabeth did warn me, to do her credit.’
‘I am not sure that she deserves any,’ Lymond said. ‘But if you took her nothing but books, nothing can be proved against you. And if Margaret Lennox did read your letters, she will know that it was not the last sprig of the white rose which had engaged your attention.… What a pity that we rushed into marriage. Your reputation has never been questioned, and you acquired all my ill-wishers instead.… The Pope, it says here, is angry with France for not coming to help him more quickly. He has not therefore hastened to present the French with all their new cardinals, or the Constable’s son with his divorce, which is still being strongly debated. To wit:
can the Pope separate a marriage contracted per verba de praesenti, but which
, and the rest of it.’
‘… but which has not been consummated. Don’t be diffident,’ Philippa said. ‘The theologians say no, and the canonists disagree, quoting Leo I who in letter 92 to Rusticus, Bishop of Narbonne, says that
matrimonium per verba de praesenti
is not marriage,
nisi accedat copula carnalis.’
‘And you understand Latin as well,’ Lymond said. ‘As I remember?’
‘Well enough to note the implications and observe them,’ Philippa
said. ‘Although it removes a certain zest from court life. I should like you to read the papers from Brussels.’
‘You would?’ he said. He put down the papers. ‘How long is it since you were home at Flaw Valleys?’
‘Two years,’ said Philippa.
‘Are you by any chance …’ said Lymond.
‘… baiting you?’ Philippa said. ‘Only when you are inclined to be magisterial.’
‘Oh, good God,’ Lymond said. ‘Kate must be out of her mind.’
‘And thank heaven you aren’t my father?’ said Philippa.
‘Roughly,’ said Lymond, and began to laugh, and then stopped. ‘Look. I must go. Is there anything else?’
Philippa said, ‘You called Mary Tudor asinine. I want you to read these reports. They begin two years ago when King Philip left her to join his father in Brussels for a stay, so he said, of two months. Read them. Read how often she begged him to return, and how often he promised, and how often he disappointed her. Read about all the gossip that began to reach us from Brussels: about the tournaments and weddings and masked assignments attended by the King and his most intimate servants.…’
‘Ruy Gomez?’ said Lymond.
‘Yes. King Roy,’ said Philippa. ‘I know his secretary.’
‘Not,’ said Lymond, ‘the Spanish Tristram Trusty?’
‘Spanish, yes,’ Philippa said. ‘Trusty, no. You know the saying. Germans woo like lions, Italians like foxes, Spaniards like friars and French like stinging bees. I don’t know why they left Scotsmen out. And Greco-Venetians. The only one I know about Greece is the old one.
Chi fida in Grego, sara intrego.’
Lymond said, ‘When you tell me about your Spaniard, I shall tell you about my Greek. Attend to what we are discussing. So what did the Queen do about it all?’
‘She took his picture down and kicked it out of the Privy Chamber,’ Philippa said. ‘She wept. She wrote to the Emperor, begging him to let Philip return, and sent Paget to implore him to hurry,
because of the Queen’s age, which does not admit of delay
. King Philip told her, through Paget, that if he did not return to her the following month, she was not to consider him a trustworthy King.
‘So, for the fourth or fifth time, arrangements were made for the dear man’s arrival; and for the fourth or fifth time he cancelled it: because of illness, he said. She sent three couriers to Brussels, one after the other, and when after nine days not one of them had returned, she was nearly crazy with worry and suspicion. But he didn’t come anyway, because of the Abdication. The Emperor Charles was retiring to his Spanish monastery, having given his son all his kingdoms. They say he turned back at the gates of his palace, crying. But
by the middle of September, all his luggage was on board ship for Spain, except his bed and his clocks; and in October the Queen was again told that Philip was coming. I can tell you,’ said Philippa feelingly, ‘nothing was thought of, nothing expected save this blessed return of the King.’
‘Whom Maximilian described as
not a prince of much ability, nor with counsellors of great experience and prudence, and no money
. Then he put off his coming till Lent,’ Lymond said. ‘Why? Oh, I suppose the trouble with His Holiness.’
‘Ruy Gomez was here last month,’ Philippa said. ‘And you won’t find what happened in these papers. He brought a letter from the King to the Queen, dwelling on the Pope’s misdemeanours and explaining why it was necessary to fight. Paget, but not the Queen, was to be asked to engineer a break between England and France.’
Lymond said, ‘Your Spanish Trusty again? The French are putting it about that the Queen has promised to pay for ten thousand foot and two thousand horse, on condition that Philip crosses to England.’
‘She has promised him three hundred thousand gold crowns,’ Philippa said. ‘Apart from that, she hasn’t committed herself and won’t,
I
think, until he arrives. She isn’t well. But she observes all the canonical hours. She prays day and night.’
‘And has just sent the Inquisition to purge the University of Cambridge,’ Lymond said, ‘with coffins tied to the stake, and dead men tried for heresy. All for her husband, who is about to make war on the Head of the Catholic Church. While time is moving on: for the Pope, who must have Naples before death finally claims him; for Mary Tudor, with the gates closing between her and her unborn children; and the husband who comes and comes, and has not come yet.…’ He looked up. ‘You are right, of course. She is far from asinine. This Queen is tragic’
‘You see that. Now then,’ Philippa said, in an apparent non-sequitur which was the very essence of cunning: ‘will you play for me? Properly?’
He didn’t answer at once, but at least he didn’t dissemble. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said. ‘But although it might be proper, it wouldn’t be in the least different. Perhaps it’s the Russian climate.’
She had thought of something else. ‘The prophecy may be true then, may it not?’ Philippa said. ‘That your father’s two sons would never meet in this life again? Since it seems——’
‘Since it seems that Richard is not my brother. Even by opening my letters,’ Lymond said, ‘I don’t see how you knew about that.’
‘About the Dame de Doubtance? You’ve forgotten. I was in Lyons on the day that you saw her,’ Philippa said. ‘So was Güzel. Do you like Russia better than Scotland?’
Sitting deep in the chair, Lymond had a faint smile in his eyes. ‘I am not being kept in Russia by evil enchantments. If that is what you mean to imply.’
‘I meant to imply that Güzel helped us all to escape from Turkey. And that perhaps there was a price to be paid for it?’
‘If it helps to think so, I have no objection,’ said Lymond. ‘In fact, there is an infinite range of reasons, among which that plays only a fractional part. All I want is in Russia. I have been taught to face reality: an excellent thing.’
‘Music, the Medicine of the Soul. And chess,’ Philippa said.
Lymond’s gaze, faintly hostile, was level. ‘And chess,’ he agreed.
‘But you can’t face the facts in my letter?’ She was sitting, rigid, on the windowsill, neat from her caul to her velvet slippers, and her hands folded like a child’s in her lap. The brown eyes were stubbornly challenging.
Lymond rose, with charm quite as lethal. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘The chasse à cor et à cri is quite finished. I am going back to the others. Or your chivalrous Marquis will worry.’
‘Why?’ Philippa said. ‘Because Sybilla deceived you? Or would you feel differently if it were your father she had deceived?’
Half-way to the door, he turned quite deliberately and faced her. ‘No, Philippa,’ he said. ‘Listen to me, for I shan’t say this again. It is the end of the matter. Why you began it, I can’t conceive. It has done nothing but harm, and to pursue it will only cause more. Finally, it is really no possible business of yours. You kept these reports out of the wrong hands. That I do appreciate. And if you will drive it now from your mind, we shall manage very well together in the short interval of marriage which I trust, remains to us.’ And he smiled, turning already.
Philippa said, ‘And if that isn’t being damned magisterial, I don’t know what is. It’s my business because I love your family and you love your own, stately, self-perpetuated miseries. I have found a great-uncle of yours called Leonard Bailey in Buckinghamshire, at a manor called Gardington. He says Gavin Crawford is not your father, and he has papers to prove it. If you go there, he will show them to you. Or so he says. If you will take my advice, you will go. If you don’t, it’s because, for all Russia has done for you, you haven’t the backbone.’
There was a catastrophic silence. Then Lymond, speaking very softly, said, ‘Don’t be childish. What else have you done?’
‘Faced up to reality,’ Philippa said. She had got off her windowsill and was standing facing him, her hands at her sides. ‘I knew you would be angry. I do this for my own private entertainment.’
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ Lymond said. ‘You’re performing a play, in a schoolroom, for an excited audience of one. I said
what else have you done
?’
Below the long, taffeta bodice, Philippa’s interior had begun to ravel with cramp pains. She said hardily, ‘Nothing, so far. I didn’t know another permutation in breeding was possible.’
There was another brief pause. Then Lymond said pleasantly, ‘I would strike a man who was stupid enough to say that to me. Were you followed to Gardington?’ His face, carrying little colour at any time, had the sallow bleakness which a sharp change of wind can effect; his responses, far from automatic, were made under a pressure exactingly contained.
Bent on her purpose, Philippa received his question without understanding. She said, ‘No,’ and then remembered: the group of horsemen so opportunely placed on the road coming back from Gardington and the civil confinement which followed. ‘That is,’ she said, with her spine staring like a plucked fowl’s, ‘I may have been. I was met by the Lennoxes.’
Lymond drew a long breath and said, ‘Ah. I wonder which version they’ll publish. Unless they find another permutation, as you call it,
to
offer?’
Philippa said, ‘I’m not the Voevoda Bolshoia of Russia, so I make mistakes. I make diabolical mistakes. But I’m the only one trying to help. You don’t know what Bailey is like. I was prepared to be hurt, and I got hurt. You weren’t prepared to do anything. Not even to go
to
Sybilla directly and ask her for the truth.’
‘Which would have proved my devotion to my family,’ Lymond said. ‘What did she tell
you
?’
To her inner self, Philippa Somerville said,
I am not going to be sick
. To Lymond, she said, ‘I didn’t ask. I don’t care what you are going to say. I don’t care. I don’t care. These things have got to be said. Everyone is frightened to speak to you.’
‘But I allow no one—no one at all, to speak to me like this,’ Lymond said. ‘Come here.’ And as she hesitated, he said in the same, pleasant voice, ‘I don’t need to strike you. Words will do just as well.’
She came towards him, between the furniture, with her neat beret and jewellery and fine satin skirts and took her place in front of him, her mouth firm, her round brown eyes open. She said, ‘You despise Mary Tudor. You are offered love and won’t accept it except on your own terms. That isn’t tragic. It’s the word you’ve just mentioned—it’s childish.’