Free Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

overlooking the outcrop and beside it a spring, and a small statue, decently carved. The monk, turning, dipped both his hands in the water and then, shaking free of the stifling hood, cupped his face in its sweet, mossy coolness. His hair, burnished gold in the sunshine, was innocent of any tonsure. And the supple fingers, laced over his eyelids, identified him to Archie Abernethy as clearly as the rich fabric glimpsed under the habit.
    With a crack, a rotten bough broke in the wood and fell from branch to branch with a hiccoughing swish. The little man with the broken nose turned, startled, to watch it.
    He removed his gaze from the monk for only a moment, but it was enough.
    He heard no one moving. Only a hand gripped his thigh and another his arm and grunting, he found himself jerked from his niche and forced hurtling through the air, somersaulting to the edge of the outcrop. Hisknife was wrenched from its sheath. He hit the ground with his shoulders and roared as his feet plunged and stamped into vacancy. He began to fall just as Lymond’s voice said
‘Archie!’
and Lymond’s hands, still wet from the spring, gripped him with all their sinewy strength and drew him back up to safety.
    Archie Abernethy lay on his back gasping, and his mistress’s domineering spouse stood over him, eyeing him coldly.
    ‘And what the bloody hell,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘do you think you are doing? Trying to prove to somebody that I can’t protect myself?’
    The small, sun-tanned man with the grey beard sat up and rubbed himself where it hurt most. ‘Ye didna ken it was me,’ he retorted.
    ‘No. I thought it was that pot-bellied oaf from Midculter who was watching the house all this morning. Why?’
    ‘I wanted a word wi’ ye,’ said Archie placatingly. ‘I would have nudged ye in the street, but I fell to wondering if anyone else was following ye. I couldna approve of the heid of an army wandering about the like o’ yon with all the work still to do. What do I call ye … milord Count?’
    ‘Mr Crawford will do,’ said Lymond tersely. They had known each other, if fitfully, for seven years. He returned to the spring, rinsed the dust from his hands and picking up Archie’s knife, threw it to him. ‘With all the work still to do, as you say, I have to go down soon. You don’t seem to have lost any of your native effrontery.’
    ‘I do well enough,’ said Archie. ‘I stayed in Scotland while ye were blowing your tucket in Russia. When Mistress Philippa came to tell us she was going to France, your leddy mother teilt me to go with her.’ His black eyes, sharp in the seamed face, scanned every change in the other man’s countenance.
    ‘Philippa called at Midculter?’ said Lymond. He had drawn out a handkerchief and was drying his fingers one by one on it, slowly. ‘And how is the third baron Crawford of Culter?’
    ‘Your brother is well,’ said Archie shortly. ‘And all the bairns, and his wife. They consider your place is in Scotland.’
    ‘So I hear,’ said Lymond agreeably. ‘Unfortunately for almost everyone, I have no intention of going there. Do I gather Mistress Philippa is in France to fetch me?’
    ‘You ken better than that,’ said Archie tartly. ‘If we’d known ye were in Lyon, she’d never have come here. She was going to Blois to track down some bluidy papers, but Mistress Marthe answered her letter first, and told her to come here to begin with.’ His black eyes rested on Lymond’s downcast blue ones. ‘She means you and Mistress Philippa to meet in her house.’
    ‘By shifty means and crooked ways. I have realized that,’ said Lymond. ‘Ah, and who is he apart, marked out with sprays of olive and offering sacrifice? Perhaps she is anxious to have nieces and nephews.’
    ‘She also says,’ pursued Archie, who was used to this, ‘that shesuggested the ultimatum that kept ye from Russia. If that makes mair sense to you nor it sounds like.’
    Lymond lifted his eyes. ‘So