The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Beside the Tsar, his brother Yuri did not rise; or the boy Tartar prince either. But Chancellor saw the Metropolitan stand, pulling the weight of his sakkos, and the Chief Secretary Viscovatu, who bowed to him gravely, and the richly dressed man with the soft, bearded face whom he remembered perhaps best of all: Alexei Adashev, the Tsar’s closest adviser and once, with the priest Sylvester, hisclosest friend also.

  He stood on the Tsar’s left hand, beside the crystal trimmed possoch, and that meant that he still held high office: that of Chancellor perhaps. And behind him, among the guards matched in white velvet was another man whom he recognized, and whom he had met for the first time over two weeks ago: the Voevoda Bolshoia. Mistress Philippa’s husband, Crawford of Lymond in court robes, bareheaded within the Tsar’s circle, and holding him also in a chilly blue gaze. Diccon Chancellor bowed to the Tsar, and followed by his four friends, walked down the carpet until he came to the bench in its centre and pausing, made full Western obeisance again.

  ‘Great Master, and King of all the Russians,’ said the Secretary Viscovatu to the Tsar. ‘The Ambassador Ritzert strikes his forehead before thee, for thy great favour in receiving the message of his mistress of England.’

  The letter from the Queen, in English, Greek, Polish and Italian, was read. Chancellor knew it by heart. Philip and Marie, by the grace of God King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austrich, Dukes of Burgundy, Millaine and Brabant, Counts of Hapsburg, Flanders and Tyrol … Whereas by the consent and licence of our most dear and entirely beloved late brother King Edward VI, whose soul God pardon, sundry of our subjects, merchants of the City of London within these our realms of England did at their own proper costs and adventure furnish three ships to discover, search and find lands, islands, regions and territories before this adventure not known to be commonly haunted and frequented by seas …

  We thank you for your princely favour and goodness … abundant grace extended to the said Richard Chancellor and others our subject merchants … pray and request you to continue the same benevolence towards them and other our merchants and subjects which do or hereafter shall resort to your country …

  It may please you at this our contemplation to assign and authorize such commissaries as you shall think meet to trade and confer with our well-beloved subjects and merchants, the said Richard Chancellor, George Killingworth and Richard Grey, bearers of these our letters … and to grant such other liberties and privileges unto the Governor, Consuls, assistants and Communaltie of the fellowship of the said Merchants …

  It was translated fluently, as it should be, since it had been in the Secretary’s hands for two days already for that purpose. But when the moment came for Chancellor to add his formal duty, and to refer, in language suitably rehearsed for a good hour to his mirror, the lordly gifts still awaiting transport from Vologda, the interpreter showed the same astonishing fluency. Chancellor, prepared to speak in the painful spaced phrases of two years ago, found his thoughts caught before he had formed them, and had to bend his mind hard to its purpose, while avoiding the academic blue gaze under the ikon. The devil, he thought, take all missionaries.

  But it was a comfort, all the same, when the Tsar spoke, and the same well-taught voice, speaking in English, translated without fear of mistake the grand prince’s welcome, and his inquiry after the health of Queen Mary his cousin. Diccon Chancellor answered in English, and then it was time to walk to the steps, and look into the lean, bearded face below the arched brows, and hear the Emperor say, ‘Give me your hand.’

  The hand of Ivan Vasilievich, long-fingered and bony, held his. The fleshy lips, opening unexpectedly, said, ‘Thou hast our tongue, I am told. Hast thou travelled well?’

  ‘Through the mercy of God and your grace, quite well,’ said Chancellor. He prayed that his grammar was less than ludicrous. ‘God give your grace good health.’

  His fingers were still in the Tsar’s. ‘Ritzert, thou wilt eat our bread and salt with us,’ said the Sovereign Grand Prince, and with equal suddenness released him, his cloudy eyes sliding to where George Killingworth stood, Diccon knew, just behind him. ‘Give me your hand …’

  Diccon Chancellor moved back. And as he moved, caught somewhere the wraith of a smile between Francis Crawford and the Russian who had interpreted. His stomach, already taut, gave a faint and warning vibration as he glimpsed all the implications of that. Then Killingworth, Best, Price and Lane had all been invited to supper; they were all bowing in great heavings of damp fur and velvet, and behind them, the doors opened for a stalking, sideways withdrawal, and freedom.

  ‘Christ,’ said Harry Lane as they paced, handed from group to lordly robed group through the courtyard.

  ‘Deacon Agapetus put it better,’ Chancellor said. ‘Though an Emperor in body is like all other men, yet in power he is like God. Wait until you’ve lived through their supper. It will not remind you of Whitehall.’

  ‘It’s Oriental!’ said Robert Best hoarsely. He smiled and bowed, elaborately, to a fresh group of boyars.

  ‘… It’s Tartar,’ said Diccon Chancellor’s supper partner that evening in the Granovitaya Palace, as the bread ritual was beginning (Ivan Vasilievich, Emperor of Russia and Grand Duke of Muscovy doth reward thee with bread). ‘The whole system of government is Tartar. The women, shut away in the terems. The way their swords hang. The post-horse system, the yams. Half their language is Tartar. My God, they were subject to them for over two centuries. The Grand Duke used to stand here every year and feed the Great Khan’s horse out of his bonnet as homage. They tell you Tartars are born blind, like animals. But they became Moslems before the Russians became Christians. They were still struggling with Dasva, Striba, Simaergla and Macosch in these parts long after the Golden Horde had fought itself to a standstill.’ The speaker, one Daniel Hislop, stood up and sat down as another slice of bread was ceremonially passed between Grand Prince and supper guest. ‘You needn’t look haunted,’ he added, not without malice. ‘No one near us speaks English. Yet.’

  ‘You belong to the Army,’ said Diccon. It was a foregone conclusion. He had bowed to this short, clever-faced person who wore his embroidered, ankle-length robe like a second-best night-gown, and had betrayed no amazement, he hoped, on being addressed in the accent of Scotland. Daniel Hislop, without doubt, served under the Voevoda Bolshoia.

  Danny Hislop said, ‘There are half a dozen of us with Lymond, Mr Crawford.’

  ‘Is he here?’ said Chancellor, glancing round. Lit on its three sides by windows, and from above by great hanging lustres of bronze work, the big room was blazingly bright. Light flowed from the white linen and massy gold plate on the four long raised tables which lined it; from the long jewelled therliks of the serving lords, over a hundred, now moving among them with the dishes of young swan dressed with sour milk: the first of seventy dishes, Chancellor knew: baked meats and roast meats and broths, garnished with garlic and salt in the Dutch fashion, which he would be expected to sample with relish.

  And light, above all, golden as sunrise upon the high painted vaults of the hall, struck from the plate, the gold and silver basins and goblets, ewers, flagons and jugs wrought with beasts and fishes and flowers which stood piled on tiered shelves round the massive middle pier of the room. Beside it, two serving officers waited, napkin on shoulders, each bearing a worked stand-cup, circled with pearls, for the Tsar. A copper cistern of mead and sweet wine packed with snow, stood clouded beside them.

  ‘… Are you impressed?’ said Danny Hislop. ‘We don’t greatly care for western plate, as it happens, but we collect it to display to our visitors. He isn’t here, and neither is Master Guthrie, whom you saw perhaps with the guard in the morning. Or I should not be having the pleasure of your company.’

  ‘It seems,’ said Chancellor, ‘your sovereign lord trusts you.’

  Danny’s narrow eyes disappeared in a soundless laugh. ‘I wondered what happened
at the Troitsa,’ he said. ‘No. I am not valued enough to be spied on. Nor are Mr Crawford’s four other senior officers, who are all here.’ He raised his voice. ‘Blacklock: Master Chancellor has been admiring the Golden Room frescoes.’

  On George Killingworth’s other side, a spare, brown-haired man in his thirties leaned forward, his colour a little high, and said agreeably, ‘The devil rot you, my Daniel. Mr Chancellor said no such thing, I’m willing to wager.’

  ‘Adam Blacklock,’ said Hislop, introducing. ‘Blacklock is artistic by nature, and even eloquent, if you encourage him, on the subject of the liberty of the artist. He likes the frescoes. He likes the vices and virtues on the voussoirs. Don’t you, Blacklock?’

  Some private baiting was going on, which Chancellor did not understand. He watched the next great vessel come in, and be presented, and cut up, and tasted. The Tsar, sitting alone in his high-backed ivory chair, was somehow different. Chancellor studied him, and realized that he was no longer wearing the Kazan tiara, but the crown of Vladimir Monomachus, and that he had changed his robe of silver tissue for another, of scarlet sable-trimmed baldachine. Looking at the opposite table he saw, with disbelief, that all his courtiers had likewise exchanged their gowns of bright silver for others, edged and collared with snow-rafts of ermine. A tall figure, standing by his chair, made him look up, and he received Danny Hislop’s ungentle foot on his ankle just as someone intoned. ‘The Great Leader Ivan Vasilievich, Grand Duke, King and Lord of all Russia, extends his favour to Ritzert, and sends him meat from his own table.’

  Diccon Chancellor hastily rose, as the dish was offered to him, and he took something and placed it on the flat round cakelike substance they gave you for platters. He bowed to the Tsar, and then on all sides to his Councillors, and sat carefully down. ‘Do you like pickled cucumber?’ said Danny Hislop. ‘Or prunes? I’ll pass them along.’

  The sauce dishes were gold. The vinegar, salt and pepper vessels were gold. The dippers and small drinking pots at each cover were of gold, and some of them jewelled. All of them were quite dry. Diccon Chancellor toyed with his knife among the anonymous meat chopped up in saffron, and shook his head to the pickles. Danny smiled. ‘Patience,’ he said. ‘In some things we are Muscovite. It will be wine, and not fermented mare’s milk.’

  ‘We?’ said Chancellor.

  ‘I am lavishly paid,’ Danny said, ‘to think in the first person plural. ‘We are no mean acquisition, you know. Fergie Hoddim over there, with the moustache, God rest his razor, is our legal expert, the provider of snares in which apes are caught. Ludovic d’Harcourt learned his physic in Malta, and will defy any Montpellier man when it comes to hiring a leech. Lancelot Plummer, the beautiful gentleman in chastely sewn samite, is an engineer and architect unparalleled, who has built for our Voevoda Bolshoia a column for St Simeon Stylites to sit on.’

  ‘I passed it, I think, on the way here.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Danny. ‘The Kremlin palace. You passed Mr Crawford’s Kremlin residence. You have not yet seen the one Plummer has built at Vorobiovo but you certainly will. The rewards for expertise, as I have said, are enormous. We also fight.’

  Chancellor said, ‘The princes and boyars must envy you.’

  He was understood. This curious, blunt-featured little man with the high pink brow under his seamed, stiffened cap said, ‘The ruling powers in this enterprise leave nothing out of account. The princes led the army against the Crimean Khan Devlet Girey last summer and were extremely unlucky … Voevoda Sidorof killed and Ivan Sheremetev wounded, the hero of Kazan. He handed you the pork. Yes. It had all the marks of a rout,’ said Danny blandly. ‘But Devlet Girey received news that the Tsar was advancing with his army on Tula, and that was enough to put the Tartars to rout. They fled back to the Crimea and we captured some nice herds of ponies. Sixty thousand in fact. Only perhaps two hundred of them thoroughbred, but steppe ponies are useful. It almost consoled the widow of Voevoda Sidorof and the mistresses of Ivan Sheremetev.’

  ‘You were with the Tsar’s army?’ said Chancellor.

  ‘We were all with the Tsar’s army,’ said Hislop. ‘It was sad to miss all the fighting. But we did rather better at Wyborg.’

  ‘Against Gustavus Vasa of Sweden?’ said Chancellor. Braced for an evening of stilted Russian conversation while plodding through uncongenial Russian food, he had expected nothing as fascinating as this.

  ‘He felt,’ said Danny sorrowfully, ‘that we were encroaching on his possessions on the Gulf of Sweden. He hadn’t heard, I am afraid, of the slight changes in the Tsar’s defence forces. We laid siege to Wyborg and dealt fairly bracingly with the villages round it. There were so many prisoners that Swedish girls were going for a shilling.’

  Chancellor said, ‘The Tsar and his Council would be grateful.’

  The lashless eyes opened. ‘Oh, so were the princes,’ said Danny. ‘Everyone is grateful. Adashev. Sylvester. Viscovatu. Sheremetev. Prince Kurbsky, the other great hero of Kazan. We are to be permitted to mount an exploratory campaign against the Crimean Tartars next summer. With the Voevoda Bolshoia in command.’

  ‘And that God-damned eagle,’ said a distant voice, unexpectedly.

  ‘Ludo doesn’t like Slata Baba,’ said Danny cheerfully. ‘On Malta, they have no sense of drama. It is the double-headed eagle, my boy, which will demolish whole Tsardoms of blood-drinking Mussulmen.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t mind Tartars,’ said the man pointed out as Ludovic d’Harcourt. A large man, Chancellor saw, with a round, cheerful face, freshly scrubbed.

  ‘What I said,’ replied Danny, ‘was that I didn’t mind the women of polygamous tribes, reared to please men upon the marriage couch or off it. Tartars are nasty, especially when raiding near my property. Stripping ikons for earrings; raping nuns; drinking from sacred goblets. They filled the monks’ boots with live coals at one monastery, and made the poor bastards dance about frying. Tartars have rude impulses.’

  He sounded disarmingly earnest. ‘And the Russians?’ Chancellor asked.

  Shocked, the clever gaze turned on him. ‘Pure with the pure, unsullied with the unsullied,’ said Danny Hislop with simplicity. ‘Inclined to shoot off their arrows at flying poultry and stripped peasant women, poor Sheremetev, but proud to march against the Ishmaelite foe, singing divine liturgies.’

  ‘And yourselves?’ Chancellor said. ‘The Swedish girls, sold for a shilling?’

  ‘They went,’ said Danny, ‘to the very best homes. Holy Mother of God, he’s elected to send round the wine.’

  It arrived, in six-gallon basins of silver, and soon after that, the royal pledging began. Three times, Diccon Chancellor was sent malmsey, or mead, or Greek wine by the Sovereign Prince of all Russia, and in his turn he watched as each of the Tsar’s courtiers was called up by name to receive wine or meat. The feat of memory was beyond anything he had seen at court in Europe and its effect, he thought, was incalculable. It told the people that their Tsar knew and recognized them. It told the court, by the names unspoken, who might be out of favour. He waited, drinking as little as he might, and watching his colleagues from the edge of his eye do the same, until he was summoned to rise and go to the carved ivory chair.

  The Tsar had changed again. On his head was a different diadem: on his shoulders a robe of dark blue and green velvet on a crimson silk ground, all wrought with gold and coloured silk pomegranates. The cup he held out was baroque mother-of-pearl set in silver.

  ‘Ritzert,’ he said. ‘Thou hast come from a great sovereign to a great sovereign; thou hast made a great journey. After thou hast experienced our favour it shall be well with thee and thy countrymen, Drink, and drink well, and eat well even to thy heart’s content, and then take thy rest, that thou mayest at length take my greetings back to thy mistress.’

  This time no one translated, and Chancellor answered also in Russian, and drank, and on returning the cup found it pressed, as he had expected, into his hands. Holding his gift, and declaring, briefly, his grati
tude, he bowed and backed from that disturbing, bright-eyed presence with the bony, hot hands.

  The others got through the same ceremony with the smoothness of painful rehearsal, with the exception of George Killingworth, who had to wait while the Tsar called the Metropolitan to admire the colour and size of his beard, upon which the Metropolitan observed reverently, ‘This is God’s gift,’ and blessed it. Clutching his goblet, Killingworth rejoined Chancellor in a hurry, his face red as a cockscomb above the flowing evidence of his Maker’s generosity. Shortly after that, the Tsar watched the last man return to his bench, and tapped with his possoch, and spoke: ‘You may depart.’ The supper had lasted five hours.

  It was dark outside. Escorted by nobles and lit by wavering torches, Diccon Chancellor and his three colleagues made their way, with dazed concentration, down the steep flights of stairs from the Granovitaya Palace, and across the shaved wooden paths to where their horses were waiting. The Secretary, Viscovatu, had said farewell outside the palace, and had told them that they would shortly be summoned to discuss their business with a panel of boyars and merchants. Meanwhile, with the help of their Pristafs, they were free to enjoy the city of Moscow, and to join the Tsar and his subjects in the entertainments of the season.

  For their own safety, the Chief Secretary had added, he must request them to entertain no one in their own premises, without the protection of at least two Muscovites present. Until they found their own property, the house was theirs free of charge for their lodging. They would have a fixed allowance of bread, meat, hay and straw, wood for the kitchen and stoves, and salt, oil, pepper and onions each day, together with three sorts of mead and two kinds of beer. Meanwhile, said the Secretary, the Tsar was pleased to desire them to drink his health at their own board this evening, and was sending a cart with three barrels of wine for that purpose.…