The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Slow, ungainly, and not very comfortable, the great overland Odyssey began on the broad River Dwina, with a long halt to load goods at Kholmogory, the first market town of size on the river. There they were to lose Dick Johnson, who was returning to England and who would see the new cargo safely north to the Edward.

  Christopher found Kholmogory boring. There were a lot of meetings, and solemn pacings round warehouses full of stinking barrels of train oil and crates of walrus tusks and heaps of glistening salt. Some of the Russians came and pulled at the pieces of cloth Mr Lane picked out from the Edward’s cargo, and then began offering roubles and altines with their fingers: Mr Lane packed the cloth away and just laughed.

  There was nothing much to do in the town, which was very old, and stuck on an island in the Dwina. There were no brick buildings at all: only log houses with carved eaves and windows, and a ramshackle church made like a toy out of spills, and the ships in the river. The Edward’s cargo was in flat-bottomed river boats with their decks lined with bark and caulked with tarred moss, with a long, heavy rudder. They were like Gravesend barges, and had a mast and a sail each to use if there was a following wind, which there wasn’t.

  As it was, they would have to be towed all the way upstream, Christopher reckoned. He thought of the Edward. He wondered if Mr Johnson and the purser would remember to check off the marks before loading, and whether Mr Buckland would put oatmeal and butter on the Kamen Woronucha, and if they would see any whales. He rather wondered what Nicholas was doing at Penshurst, and then stopped wondering as Judde and Hawtrey came to find him and carry him off to someone’s house to try caviare, which Hawtrey had just learned was an aphrodisiac.

  Christopher asked someone later what an aphrodisiac was, and was convulsed with shame when the whole party exploded in laughter. Best patted him on the shoulder. ‘Know-alls,’ he said. ‘You should hear George Killingworth when his poods are giving him trouble.’

  They stayed an interminable time in Kholmogory. But at last there came a day when Dick Johnson set off north with the new cargo, and Christopher’s father and his friends made their farewells and took to the boats, to be pulled south up the broad, dazzling reach of the Dwina. The magistrate Makaroff and Grigorjeff, his fellow merchant, came with them, while a light boat rode ahead to the Peremines, the towpath relay stations to arrange for food and drink and new bargemen. Before them lay a sail of seven hundred miles. And after that, two weeks of riding to Moscow.

  It took forty days, in clear summer heat, which blistered George Killingworth’s tender, gold-bearded skin and turned the rest of them every shade from vermilion to russet. The bargemen sang as they pulled them past the short ochre scrub blocked with ice-tumbled boulders; past the queer fossil grove outside Yemza; past small wooden villages, and forests of elm and birch, oak and fir and fields of rich growing corn, fed by the river, while the hawks’ bells trilled at the mast, and the streamers trembled like fast-moving water against the deep ocean-blue of the sky. At night they slept by the riverside.

  Presently the Dwina turned into the single stream of the River Sukhona, shallow and stony where a canal had robbed it of water. In the lee of the tar sheds at Ustiug they transferred to flat-bottomed stroogs, and suffered a minor delay while Lane and Grey went to cast an eye over some hides and some tallow on Grigorjeff’s recommendation. While the others were waiting, the cook drank himself senseless and fell into the river; they fished him out too late to save him. There passed a gloomy twenty-four hours, clogged with officialdom, which Makaroff spent largely in conclave. ‘He’s working hard,’ said Henry Lane.

  ‘He’s hoping for a discount,’ said Christopher’s father mildly. ‘I told you John Buckland refused point-blank to take that damned cook back on the Edward. I wish I’d never mentioned the Germans.’

  ‘What about the Germans?’ asked Christopher, mystified; but Makaroff came back at that moment, with all the arrangements completed, and very soon they had embarked on the stroogs and were making for Totma, and from there to their main halt on the way to the capital: the large and ancient city of Vologda, whose Namiestnik, Osep Grigorievich Nepeja, came to the river to welcome them.

  They were very wet. The warmth had not yet abated, although they were now past the first week in September, but there had been a thunderstorm a few days after Totma, and Christopher, aware of new responsibilities on his shoulders, was glad that the bales were wrapped in sacking and cerecloth, and wished he were, too.

  Nepeja was hospitable. A large man in middle years, with a square, curling beard, he had three or four words of English, from his previous meeting with Chancellor, whom he addressed, they noticed, as ‘Ritzert’; and Christopher wondered if it were yet another legacy from the Tartars, this use of the simple first name which he had observed in quarters unexpectedly formal.

  They were lodged by Nepeja’s own house, an elaborate confection of wood with round and spired roofs and outside staircases all covered with awnings. Their own was plainer, with board beds attached to the wall in place of proper bedsteads; but compared to a wet night in the mud on the riverside, it was equal to any of the slope beds in red leather cases at Penshurst. Master Nepeja himself, in a long brocade robe with pearl collar, was richly dressed and possessed some elaborate horse harness and nice silverware, they noticed: there was no sign of a wife, if he had one. But there again, like the Moslems, the Russian wife kept to her terem, and was not exposed to the stares of the opposite sex. Christopher, who had found out what aphrodisiac meant, thought it a pity.

  His father and Master Nepeja had an interminable meeting after dinner that first night, during which Christopher fell asleep, but was aware that the Namiestnik was being inquisitive about the exact names and histories of all the Englishmen in the party. He heard his father describing, floridly, George Killingworth’s drapery business in London, and the eminence of Judde and Hawtrey’s respective parents, and the experience of Richard Grey, who had captained the Matthew Gonson to the Levant twenty years before. He extolled Henry Lane’s brains and trustworthiness and even mentioned, Christopher realized sleepily, that since his last visit John Sedgewick had become affianced to Sir George Barnes’s grand-daughter.

  It all seemed fairly irrelevant until Christopher realized suddenly that Nepeja was drawing up a report for the Tsar. No one lightly was allowed to enter the city of Moscow. And without the Tsar’s agreement, no one was permitted to leave it.

  The Namiestnik was talking now of conquests they had made at a place called Astrakhan, and how the Khan of the Crimean Tartars had sent an army to Tula that summer.

  ‘To Tula!’ his father had said sharply. ‘Did they march on Moscow?’

  Christopher sat up.

  ‘No. There was a battle, but the Tartars retreated. They have gone back to the south. But in the spring, they say, the Tsar will send a pack of great hounds to rout this bear out of his hole.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Chancellor said. ‘I hear the Tsar is following Sigismund’s habit and reforming his army with mercenaries.’

  ‘Where do you hear that?’ said Nepeja.

  ‘Or is that a sweeping assumption? I know of a Scot here in service with him,’ said Christopher’s father. ‘I should prefer to think the Tsar free to turn his mind to matters other than martial. Trade, for instance.’

  Osep Nepeja’s sallow, thick-folded face was polite, and quite blank. ‘The Grand Duke’s army is purely for the purpose of defending his frontiers,’ he said. ‘There is a scattering, it is true, of service foreigners.’

  ‘The man we know,’ said Rob Best quite unexpectedly, ‘is called Francis Crawford. Have you heard of him?’

  The Namiestnik’s thoughtful brown eyes turned on him. ‘Yes. The gentleman with the eagle. His home is in Moscow.’

  Suddenly, Christopher was perfectly awake. He said, ‘A Scotsman called Crawford is——’

  ‘Mistress Philippa’s husband. We know,’ said his father without turning round.

  ‘Here in Russia?’ Christopher said
.

  ‘Yes,’ said his father, and this time looked at him with a quelling, slate-coloured eye.

  ‘With an eagle?’ said Christopher, failingly, under his breath, but this time no one answered him at all, and they had gone on to talk about taxes.

  He got no further, either, when he questioned his father next day. Word had come through just before they left England that Mistress Philippa’s husband had taken employment in Russia. It was none, said his father, of Christopher’s business.

  Christopher’s romantic soul was disappointed. ‘Doesn’t he want to come home?’ he inquired.

  ‘You must ask him that if you meet him,’ was all his father would say, rudely, in answer; and it was left to Christopher to try and squeeze more out of Rob Best. But Rob Best would not be informative either, except to say that he’d heard Tartars used eagles sometimes for deer hunts.

  It sounded unlikely, but sustained Christopher in speculation for the four days it took to divide their goods and their party by half. Here in Vologda, in a warehouse hired for ten roubles till Easter, would remain the major part of their cargo, to be sold where prices were better and trading somewhat freer than in Moscow. And here, waiting in Vologda for permission to sell it would be Mr Grey as Company Agent, with Edwards, Hudson and Sedgewick to help him; and Judde and Hawtrey largely to hinder.

  It was all fairly exciting, in spite of the time it took to separate the items for Moscow and transfer them from stroogs to telegas, which proved to be small narrow carts, of the kind you saw sometimes in Staffordshire, with four wheels, a pair of wood shafts and a box. The post horses alone, Mr Killingworth said, were going to cost over ten shillings.

  Master Nepeja wanted to see what the cargo was like, and nearly everyone disappeared one morning into the warehouse and came back in different moods: Master Nepeja looked bland and Mr Grey very stiff, while Mr Killingworth was scarlet. Christopher heard afterwards that they had been offered twelve roubles for a piece of broadcloth and four altines, or two shillings, for a pound of Will Chester’s precious refined sugar. They had refused and sold almost nothing. Christopher hoped, from the look on Mr Killingworth’s face, that they would get better prices in Moscow.

  Then the telegas were ready, including the butt of Holland and the cask of cane sugar which had been specially packed for the Tsar, and they began to assemble what was left of their party for Moscow: Christopher and his father as official royal envoy; Mr Lane and Mr Price to help Mr Killingworth as agent, and Mr Best to interpret. With them also came Master Nepeja and the two Kholmogory merchants.

  Their departure, through shouting and chattering crowds, was extremely impressive: so was their return when, having stuck fast in the mud half-way to Nikolskoi, they had to send for help to the next Yam station at St Obnorski, and conduct half their load ignominiously back to the warehouse at Vologda, including the Tsar’s sugar and holland. As Nepeja cheerfully remarked, it was an extremely warm autumn, and nothing could really be expected to travel until they had had the first touch of frost.

  Cornfields passed: meadows, rivers, woods and pasture-land and small wooden towns: Derevnia, Vochensko and Yaroslav on the Volga, where Diccon Chancellor invited his son to sniff the wind from Bokhara for musk, spices and ambergris.

  He remembered Rostov, after that; and Peraslav, because of the fish, and Dubna because he had caught a cold by then, and the Outschak because he was bored and no one would speak to him because Mr Lane and Mr Killingworth were arguing over whether they should have sold the broadcloth at Vologda for whatever price it would fetch, and Mr Price thought they should have made their trading post right away at Kholmogory and bartered the cargo for furs where they were cheapest.

  The effort to keep their voices down, in spite of the thunder and squeak of thirty ill-made telegas squelching through mud like deep gruel, didn’t do much for their tempers: his father had to remind them that until they presented the Queen’s letter and had their privileges officially confirmed, they had no right to start trading anywhere. And that at the present rate of unrepeatable progress, they would barely reach the Tsar and get all their business completed before they had to start back to St Nicholas to meet the incoming Edward again.

  They were still quarrelling when a rider, in a handsome furred hat, came spurring towards them and made a long announcement which Diccon Chancellor, his colour still heightened a little, translated anxiously. ‘The representatives of the great Duke Ivan Vasilievich, by the grace of God great lord and Emperor of all Russia, are on their way now to greet us, and we are commanded to meet them at the Troitsa Monastery at Serghiev.… We’ve passed it. Haven’t we?’

  Nepeja had joined them, dismounting. ‘It is ten versts behind us. We can be there very quickly. The carts can follow.’

  Two years ago he would have thought, his brow ridged: What would Willoughby have done? This time Diccon Chancellor said immediately, and politely, ‘I am in some difficulty. After your Tsar has generously agreed to receive us, we have no more than a matter of weeks in which to set up our trading stations, arrange for storehouses, offices and staff, meet merchants and visit commercial centres, sell our present cargo and arrange for another. And our journey has taken too long already.’

  Master Nepeja bowed. ‘I apologize for the weather. But the Troitsa is very near. One day will make little difference.’

  ‘I will be frank with you,’ Chancellor said. ‘One day would make little difference, as you say. But if it were to stretch to a week, or two weeks, as has been known to happen, we may well have to return north before our work here is half completed. Who knows?—there may be further delay in Moscow. You say the Tsar is pressed with military concerns. It seems to me that, did he know all the facts, he would be concerned that this great opportunity for trade between our two countries should not be missed for the sake of a mere formality. I should like to proceed to Moscow as if we had never encountered his messenger, and I would be in your debt if both you and the messenger would support me.’

  A beautiful voice, speaking in English behind him, said, ‘The messenger would have his heels broken, and the Sovereign Grand Prince would then send him limping on foot forty miles to the Troitsa as punishment. Master Nepeja would merely lose his province, I fancy. And you your pains: the Tsar is not noted for patience. It is really simpler to come with me as you are bidden.’

  Diccon Chancellor turned, and the whole party with him.

  Noiseless in the rain and the mud and the shifting trample of horses, a long train of glittering riders had moved in behind them and stood, double ranked and in perfect alignment, the rain chattering on the motionless spires of their helmets; their tawny felt cloaks drawn over the chain mail that curtained their faces.

  At their head stood three mounted grooms, one of them with a great, ruffled bird hooded and chained to his crupper. And in front of these, sitting at ease in the saddle was the man who had spoken. A man, Christopher saw, with hair brighter than Killingworth’s under his furred and jewelled cap: with fair skin hardened with weather and untold experience, despite the clear-lidded flower-blue eyes into which Diccon Chancellor was staring. A man whose clothes made motionless points of silver and flame beneath a buff coat paned and embroidered: whose reins rested in gloves stitched with gold wire and dark, anonymous stones. Christopher lifted his eyes.

  ‘Ignore the dress,’ said the gentleman pleasantly. ‘It belongs to the Tsar. I have to hand it back to him on pain of fine, untorn and unstained, with the underwear.… Mr Chancellor?’

  ‘Mr Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny?’ said Diccon Chancellor.

  The horseman smiled with his lips. ‘Ah. You have heard about Slata Baba,’ he said; and dismounting smoothly, threw his reins to the groom with the eagle, who moved up quietly to take them. The bird sat erect, unstirring from the thin scarlet plumes on her hood to the yellow, powerful talons, their bright, scythe-edged claws hooked on a block at the crupper. Her master, still smiling, stood and ran his blue gaze over the six tired English figures before h
im, also dismounted and standing in their wet cloaks at Chancellor’s shoulders. He bowed, and then smiled and bowed again to Nepeja and the two Kholmogory merchants. To Chancellor, he said, ‘First, since you know who I am, may I deliver my message?’

  ‘I am honoured,’ said Chancellor. He spoke automatically, for to himself he was thinking: Philippa Somerville’s husband. This—this is Philippa’s husband. He dared not look at Robert Best’s face, or Christopher’s, beside him.

  ‘Then I have to say,’ said the other man mildly, ‘that the great lord Ivan Vasilievich, by the grace of God Duke of Muscovy and Tsar of all Russia, has understood that you are come as Ambassador from his cousin Mary of England, and has sent me, his servant, to escort you to your residence, and to see that you are provided with every necessity. I am to ask whether you have been well on your journey?’

  From a disadvantage of four inches and a quantity of stupefaction, Diccon Chancellor bowed. ‘God give health to the Tsar. By the mercy of God and the favour of the Tsar, we have been well on our journey.’

  It was the formula. The other man completed it. ‘The great lord Ivan Vasilievich, Tsar of Russia, has sent you, Master Richard, an ambling nag with a saddle, together with other horses from his own stable for these your companions. Pray accept these and mount, while we have the honour of bringing you to lie at our monastery of Trinity St Sergius.’

  His black beard lifting just a trifle, Diccon Chancellor stood his ground and did not glance at the string of horses approaching. ‘I should prefer not to visit the Troitsa Monastery,’ Chancellor said. ‘As you perhaps heard. I do not wish to seem ungrateful, but my time is too short for formalities.’

  The decorative person who was Mistress Philippa’s husband made no effort to agree or to argue. ‘It is the Tsar’s order,’ he said.