Our play continued. I prayed I was safe for the moment, in my seeming ignorance.
But what would happen if?I was lightly tapping my fingertips against my chair
arm. Lawrence cleared his throat. It was my move. It was time to castle. No
reason to wait. I reached out to pick up my king. Then I looked down again at
the board, really looked and dropped the king. Oh, dear God, I’d very nearly
handed him the game, and all because I was so bloody scared I could scarcely
keep my wits together.
I looked with my full attention, and quickly saw that if I had castled my king,
my queen would have been lost a move later by a fork by his knight. It was a
deceptively simple trap, one that would not pass unnoticed to a chess player of
any merit. I realized then that he was smiling at me. It wasn’t a nice smile at
all. It was patronizing, as if I weren’t worth much of anything at all. Perhaps,
something warned me deep inside, perhaps I should let him win. Let him feel smug
and superior. Let him think I wasn’t worth anything at all.
But no, I just couldn’t. There was too much anger in me?at him?at this man who
had so deceived me, who appeared to hate me for no reason that I could discover.
I would show him that I was indeed an opponent to be reckoned with. I would wipe
that self-satisfied look right off his face. He had seen my abstraction,
possibly wondered at it, and knew he would win because I was naught but a female
and I couldn’t think logically, couldn’t analyze, not like a man.
At that moment, the game of chess symbolized my own victory or defeat in this
house.
He saw the difference in me immediately, of course. Soon his own concentration
equaled mine. If he wondered what I was thinking now, if he wondered at all at
my new absorption in the game, I didn’t know. And he didn’t say anything.
Brantley entered with the tea tray, and seeing us totally engrossed in the game,
departed as silently as he had entered, pausing only long enough to add three
more logs to the fire.
After about ten more moves, I managed to gain the advantage. I mounted a very
strong king side attack that I knew would crush him. I moved my knight to the
crucial king bishop five square. There was no challenge from him. Within a few
moves my queen and her bishop were bearing down upon his king. A final move by
my knight, and I had him boxed in.
A queer smile played over my lips as I looked up at him, straight into his eyes,
and said ever so softly, “Checkmate, sir.”
I felt I could conquer the world in that moment. I felt strong and whole and
indomitable. My eyes glittered. I knew I was smirking.
After a few moments of silence, Lawrence gently lifted his conquered king, held
it aloft for a moment in long, slender fingers, then gently laid the piece on
its side. He sat back in his chair, his fingers lightly touching his pursed lips.
The firelight danced about us, casting fanciful shadows and shifts of light over
his face. Finally he said in a slow, thoughtful voice, “A well-played game, my
dear. Victory tastes sweet, does it not?”
I turned my head slightly, so that my face was in the shadows. I felt tense,
afraid, and excited. “Of a certainty it does, my lord. Could victory ever taste
otherwise?”
The oddest smile flitted across his face as he said, “No, there is nothing like
it?to see, to feel, to deal the final blow to one’s enemy. But do you not agree
that the most important of victories, the sweetest by far, is the final and
ultimate victory, the total devastation of the adversary?”
What was he talking about? What did he mean? I could not ask. I could not risk
exposing what I knew. Ah, but I had just beat him.
I had beat him, I had beat him.
I was brilliant, I was strong, and so I said in a clear, overloud voice. “Yes,