The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘I can’t,’ said Ned Price.

  ‘You’ll have to,’ said George Killingworth hazily. ‘My God: if I can be tweaked for my Queen, you can spew for her.’

  *

  Francis Crawford of Lymond entered Moscow briskly just before midnight by the Elinschie gate, with a small company of men. A group of artisans, hurrying late with a lantern, bowed to the ground as the tasselled horses raced past and he lifted his whip in acknowledgement but did not pause until the Nikólskaya Tower of the Kremlin, nearest his house, where he dismounted and flung the reins to a groom. The captain of the barbican, hurrying forward, bowed and said, ‘My lord … the sovereign prince Ivan Vasilievich desires your presence in his apartments.’

  The Supreme Commander did not ignore him, nor was he scathing about the appearance and general alertness of the guard, which these days, certainly, was impeccable. He merely said, ‘Advise his grace, if you will, that I am coming?’ and, after a word with his men, walked off on foot towards the private staircase beside St Saviour, his servants and torchbearer following. He had unbuckled from his waist and left behind both his sword and his dagger.

  He was challenged six times before he reached the Tsar’s private chamber: by the hackbutters in the courtyard who waited there, matches lit and guns charged day and night; by the grooms who lay at every gate and door of the court; by the officers of the third chamber, where waited forty boyars’ sons through every night: by the officers of the second chamber, where Alexei Adashev slept with three others. He replied to each challenge correctly, his veiled eyes assessing and automatically delivering judgements. Six months ago, after a banquet, the stairs and passages of the palace, half lit and stinking, would have been strewn with the weeping bodies of drunkards, while far out in the mud the grooms waited shivering for their masters to arrive and mount and ride home.

  Adashev was asleep. Among the four men on duty, he recognized Lancelot Plummer, who bowed without speaking. He could not at once recall what was making the engineer peevish, but rightly assessed it as trivial. The guards on either side of the Tsar’s door were expecting him: as he approached, they swung their silver halberds at the salute, and made way. He did not awake Adashev, but instead knocked himself; and when the Tsar’s voice called, ‘Enter!’ Lymond pushed open the carved double doors and went in.

  The Tsar Ivan Vasilievich was in bed. The chamber priest, his office performed, was retreating, holding the crushed sprig of basil and the silver bowl of blessed water, sent each day by the abbots of the Tsar’s scattered monasteries. As Lymond paused and bowed, the Tsar waved his hand, dismissing his household officers also. The door shut.

  The Voevoda had come to know the room well. The walls hung with elaborate fabric and fish-scaled with dazzling ikons. The painted vaults. The silver shrine with its strange sculpted figures: the book of the gospels boarded with gold foil and jewels, and alive with the brooched forms of saints. The jewelled censer; the silver lamps and sconced tapers; the tall silver ewer and basin in which the Tsar washed his fingers clean of the handgrip of heretics. The Tsar’s deep voice said, ‘I wish to be told if you completed your errand.’

  The bedcover was of fox fur and the bolster of drawn threadwork; the bed was new, with a canopy of changeable taffeta lined with sarsanet and tasselled with silk and gold. In it the Tsar sat in a loose gown and shirt over fine linen hose, his pocket ikon still in his hands. Lymond said, ‘My errand was of no moment. But it is completed.’

  ‘You obeyed me,’ said the Grand Duke of Russia. ‘I wonder how often you obey me? Your churl Blacklock is not obedient. Ivan Mikhailov Viscovatu has complained of him. You know the frescoes in the Golden Chamber are not painted according to the canonical rules. Near to the figure of Our Saviour a woman is shown, dancing nonchalantly, and the inscription on it is Lechery and Jealousy.’

  Lymond gave no appearance of being disturbed. ‘If Mr Blacklock appears to take Sylvester’s part, it is purely on aesthetic grounds. Mr Blacklock is an excellent soldier.’

  ‘The part of an excellent soldier,’ said Ivan Vasilievich, ‘is to obey orders and avoid matters which have no bearing on warfare. Such niceness of taste may lead him into strange pathways. Perhaps he will find he appreciates the art of Sigismund-Augustus better than ours, or the heretical painting of England.’

  ‘Perhaps then,’ said Lymond, ‘you should have him followed, also.’

  The bony fingers turning the ikon case became suddenly still. Lymond did not move. The Tsar stared at him, the trailing auburn hair concealing his lips, his arched brows drawn down over the large, pale eyes staring at his commander. He said, ‘You jest with me?’ and the figured gold crumpled, like a walnut shell, under his fingers.

  Lymond said, ‘Your dagger is under your pillow.’

  The bearded lips smiled. With a sudden movement, the Grand Prince cast away the crushed ikon and slid his hand searching under the pillow. When he sat up, the long blade of a dagger lay still and blue in his hands. The Tsar said, ‘But you have a knife in your shirt-breast. Before I could move, you will kill me.’

  ‘Then I should lose my life,’ Lymond said. ‘Alexei Adashev and your guards would cut me to pieces.’

  ‘They would draw your ribs out with red heated pincers. They would sew you in a bearskin and set my hounds on you. They would drive a soaped stake …’ The Tsar stopped, his flecked lips shining between the hairs of his beard. ‘But your men are of the guard. They would save you. They would flee to the terems and take my son Ivan hostage.’

  ‘Your cousin Vladimir would avenge you,’ Lymond said. He drew off his gloves. The Tsar’s knife, quivering, flashed as he turned the point outwards. Lymond said, ‘If you will allow me?’

  The Tsar made no reply. The knife quivered, and the room was filled with the sound of his breathing: harsh breathing, like the cries of a distant massed rookery. Lymond slid off his camelhair honoratkey, and letting it fall, pulled open the sashed tunic beneath it, and then the jewelled ties of his shirt. He said, ‘I should prefer to keep on my boots and my breeches. But as you see, my lord, I carry no weapon in the breast of my shirt.’

  The Tsar did not let fall either his eyes or his weapon. ‘I know you,’ he said.

  Lymond suddenly smiled. Facing open-shirted the point of the dagger, his blue gaze alight, he made a sweeping, elaborate bow, and rose from it with an incredible flash of steel in his right hand: a flash that arched through the air and landed on the flat of its blade in the fox fur as Ivan’s knife, in its turn, lunged straight for his Voevoda’s heart.

  Lymond leaped aside. He was not quite quick enough: the blade, as it passed him, drew a thin line through shirt and shoulder which pricked the cambric with red but drew not even a glance from Lymond himself. Standing still between door and window: ‘You know me,’ he said.

  Pulled from the bed by the lunge, the Tsar of all the Russians stood panting and laughing by his pillows, and then, turning, picked up the little knife from the cover where Lymond had thrown it. ‘Where was it? Your boot? Ah, Frangike Gavinovich.’ He broke off. ‘I sent for you because I wish to play chess. Come.’

  ‘Like this?’ said Lymond calmly. The embroidery on his shirt flashed with his breathing.

  ‘Like this,’ said the Tsar, and, crossing the room, he lifted from its chest the robe of dark blue and green velvet he had worn at the banquet and turned, holding it, to his Supreme Commander. For a moment, Lymond paused, and then, kneeling, he accepted it, and drew it round his shoulders. ‘You are not obedient,’ said the Tsar. ‘You refused once to play chess with your sovereign lord. I remember it. You refused several times. An illness, you claimed. A mishap. A battle.’

  There was a table, inlaid with onyx. Lymond opened the chessmen. ‘I had not been told,’ he said, ‘that the duty of the Voevoda Bolshoia in Russia included the playing of chess.’

  ‘You lie,’ said the Tsar, pulling the cover once more over his knees, and propping the bolster comfortably in the small of his back. ‘Why am I surrounded by li
ars and murderers and counterfeit officers of hearty complexion? You believed, being taught by the devil, that you would vanquish your lord, and that your lord, instructed by vainness, would kill you.…

  ‘You are right. I shall kill you one day, but not until you teach me the abominable practices which allow you to win. Because I am weak, I shall claim to start with my white. Then we shall resume our quarrel about the true interpretation of St Ambrose. I shall send for the librarian from the Josef Volokolamsk to refute you.… It is your move.’

  They played two games, while the stove burned low in the corner and the tapers flickered, and did not speak of St Ambrose, or indeed of anything else, as they sat in silence, matching each other, mind locked with mind in a game which was not a game, and a combat which was not a combat, but as dangerous in its intensity as the dangerous play they had engaged in already. The first game, a brief one, was won by Lymond. The second, against all precedent, was brought to stalemate by the Tsar.

  He was joyous. He shouted, flinging over the table so that the onyx splintered on the tiled floor; and, striding to the door, called for food and wine, and light and his jesters. Sluggish with sleep, the skomdrokhi displeased him, and were kicked out while he cracked open a chicken, and swallowed mead served by Lymond himself. Lymond said, ‘We didn’t speak of St Ambrose.’ His eyes were bright in the brilliant lamplight, but he had eaten and drunk very little.

  The Tsar held out his hands for rosewater, and dried them on the fringed silken napkin Lymond brought over. ‘What of the Englishmen?’ he said.

  Lymond replaced the ewer and basin and returning, took the tall-backed chair by the bed. The stove had been built up. The furred velvet robe, long since cast off, lay trailing over the arm of his chair. His skin was damp, but his face was not tired, or less than composed. He said, ‘You have your Council’s advice. Welcome them.’

  The Tsar stirred irritably. ‘They will break my monopolies.’

  ‘Time will break your monopolies,’ Lymond said. ‘Best do it with good grace while you can.’

  The pale eyes stared at him, the brow furrowed with weariness. ‘The Queen of England is married to the Emperor’s son. This English trade will harm the Baltic lands which are the Emperor’s allies. The Emperor may send his armies to stiffen Lithuania and Livonia against me. These English may be here not to trade, but as spies.’

  Lymond gazed up at the flushed face with its wet, shining beard. He said calmly, ‘If I thought they were spies, I would kill them.’

  ‘Are they?’ said Ivan.

  Lymond said, ‘It is unlikely. If you will allow me to attend some of their meetings, I can assure myself of it. There is something else your grace should bear in mind. The people of England are unhappy with the prince their Queen has married. They may rise against him. It is almost certain that the Queen dare not offend her people by spoiling a trading adventure for the sake of her husband. The Emperor will not incite Lithuania and Livonia against you, if you do not give him cause by threatening his allies. He will be your friend for life, and so will England, if you continue your crusade against the Tartars.’

  ‘So Adashev says,’ said the Tsar. ‘And it is plain. Turkey supports the Tartars. The fall of the Tartars is a blow against Turkey. And Turkey is the friend of the French and the enemy of the Emperor Charles.…’ He drew back, and, with a half-closed fist, fetched Lymond a light blow on the shoulder. ‘It is your career you think of, you dog. You yearn to wrest Turkish pearls and Tartar maidens from the Crimea next summer.… Rest content. I have said we shall march. And if these red English moujiks are true men, I shall give you something to take in your baggage. If England wishes me to fight the Emperor’s battles, and be kind to her merchants, and give up my monopolies, she must do something in exchange. Givemearms.’

  Lymond was silent.

  The Tsar’s beaked nose inhaled, with firm sonority. ‘You persist in this obstinacy. You say she will not do it. I, who know women, say she will. The benefits are such that she will. When I have explained them, she will listen. You say there is no King in that country; that the people dislike her husband. So there is only a woman, a creature given by God to serve man and obey him. If you were a man, you would realize this.’

  Lymond said, ‘I serve your grace as a man.’ His voice was level.

  ‘I doubt it sometimes,’ said Ivan Vasilievich. There was still some mead in the cup. He flung it, suddenly and pettishly, and it flooded over the white cambric of Lymond’s shirt, splashing his face, and mixing with the blurred marks of blood from the scratch on his shoulder. ‘I have offered you women. Why do you not take them?’

  ‘I have a woman,’ Lymond said. He had not moved to blot the thin streaks of wet on his skin. Only those who served under him would perhaps have recognized the look in his eyes.

  ‘Of whom you are innocent,’ the Tsar said. ‘Innocent as a maiden. You resent being followed. You do not know how closely you are followed. I say again. Are you a man?’

  Lymond took a long breath. Beneath his lips, his teeth were closed hard together, but his eyes were blue and open and lucid, and his limbs were composed. He said, ‘My debt is to Güzel, who is satisfied.’

  The other man nodded, galvanically, combing his beard with his fingers. ‘She brought you here. It was her message which prepared us for your coming, and her money which conveyed you from Turkey. Does she feel she has received due reward?’

  ‘She is content,’ Lymond said briefly.

  The Tsar continued to finger his beard. ‘But if she felt less content, as time went on? Perhaps she might leave … perhaps, being so deeply in her debt, you might feel you should leave with her. It comes to me,’ said the Tsar, ‘that it is this woman who is sapping your manhood. Perhaps the physic you need is quite simple—a fresh young princess from one of our rich princely families. I have one in mind; a gentle, pliable girl of seventeen or under, who has no brothers or cousins to inherit. Her father is old. When he dies, it will be my pleasure to leave the daughter her patrimony, and the title to her husband. She will teach you fleshly delights your Greek matron has never imagined. You may have sons, to become Voevoda in their turn. I will send your Güzel to a nunnery.’

  ‘You are generous,’ Lymond said. ‘But I cannot accept. I am married already.’

  There was a silence. Then the Tsar said, ‘She is here? Your wife?’

  ‘No. She is in England. The marriage was one of convenience, and will be annulled.’ The pleasant, undisturbed voice did not alter in timbre. ‘It has not been consummated.’

  ‘Then it is true,’ the Tsar said. His big hands lay loose on the fox fur, so deep was his interest and his curiosity. ‘You are a virgin?’

  Lymond’s gaze dropped. For a moment, head bent, he appeared to be collecting his thoughts, or composing his answer, or even perhaps controlling an answer more natural to his temper. Then he looked up and said, ‘No. The delights of the flesh do not interest me, but not because they have never done so. Rather the contrary.’

  The pale eyes stared. Slowly the ridged forehead cleared. The Tsar bared his teeth in delight, and flung back his thick beard, and laughed. ‘The pox? I shall send you my doctors.’

  ‘A night with Venus and a month with Mercury?’ said Lymond dryly. ‘No. The sickness, whatever it is, is not subject to doctors, I fear.’

  The Tsar fingered his lips. ‘There is a soothsayer from Kola …’

  ‘Nor a soothsayer,’ said Lymond. ‘I have had my fill of deadly harbingers.’

  ‘You fear them, Frangike Gavinovich? Why? Whom have you consulted? What doom have they told?’

  ‘I have met only one,’ Lymond said. ‘In France. A woman famed for her sayings. She prophesied that my father’s two sons would never meet in this life again. She spoke the truth, I believe.’

  ‘And,’ said the Tsar, ‘how many sons has your father?’

  ‘Myself and another,’ said Lymond. ‘My older brother, who still lives in Scotland. You see, therefore, there is no need to follow me. I s
hall not be seduced from my post by the Englishmen or overcome with a yearning for the land of my fathers. Nor shall I give my mistress cause to regret that she and I have come to Russia, and stayed in Russia to serve you. Until you send me away, I shall serve you.’

  Through and through, the pale eyes searched the other, unwavering gaze of flowerlike blue. ‘You do not smile,’ said the Tsar, ‘when I give you my robe. When I have given you plate and jewels, rents and land, the handkerchief from my sash, you do not smile.’

  Lymond stood up. ‘My lord … I receive them, because you take pleasure in giving, but I do not serve you for gifts. I serve you for friendship.… And until that day comes when I cannot defeat you at chess, and you will no longer ask me to play with you.’

  Ivan Vasilievich shouted. His laugh rang round the close, pictured room and drew chimes from the glass and the silver: he leaned forward among the heaped fur and struck Lymond’s arms to his sides with the grip of two powerful hands. ‘You will not leave me,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Francis Crawford.

  Chapter 4

  The next day, Lymond flew Slata Baba, and Chancellor, mute on his horse, saw the eagle, a speck in the sun, plunge to her kill like a storm of Saracen arrows and then, opening her great ragged wings, soar three hundred feet to hang, bank, and dive yet again.

  She killed in the air, wings backswept; muscled legs braced like forearms before her, and the hooked talons struck the crow or the grouse or the ptarmigan as knives into straw, crumpling bone and feathers and flesh into a broken cake of white and soft brown and scarlet. She killed on the ground and stood round-shouldered over her prey, held in the grip which could paralyse a man’s hand, before stooping to tear with the open, hooked bill. Then she would rise again, the eight-foot spread of her great earth-brown pinions masking the sky. And bright and blue as the sky were Lymond’s eyes, watching her.