The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  She was flown at the hare hunt, which the Tsar led with his princes and boyars, and to which Chancellor and his friends were invited. Danny Hislop was not there, nor the artist called Blacklock. Riding between Lymond and the fresh-faced Knight of St John who did not like eagles, Chancellor asked after them. Ludovic d’Harcourt glanced at Lymond without answering. Lymond said, ‘They are undergoing a course of correction. If in the event they are either correct or in the least chastened, I shall be surprised. You say you have hunted.’

  ‘With Sir Henry. At Penshurst,’ said Chancellor. The eagle had a ruby in its feathered hood, and its swivel and chain were of gold. He had told Christopher to stop staring at it.

  ‘Giacque automne autre fois oubliait en Ferrare, Avec quelques oiseaux le poids de la tiara. Yes. Well, this is different,’ said Lymond.

  Diccon Chancellor said, ‘I see that.’

  Lymond followed his gaze with perfect calm. ‘She does her office well and busily, as a good hunter should. She is pagan, Slata Baba: the golden idol of the Samoyèdes, a people who eat one another, so I am told. You should visit the fair at Lampozhnya. They bring sledges of furs from Pechora which would drag down crosses, like that boisterous gown of black velvet. I intend to go to the Mezen at Lent. If you wish, you may come with me.’

  Far to the north, the River Mezen flowed to the Lacus Cronicus, the Frozen Sea, farther than any Englishman had yet gone. Chancellor said, ‘Your master trusts you?’

  ‘Ask him,’ Lancelot Plummer had said, nudging up to his horse when he had asked the same question, ‘why he left the Emperor on the night of the banquet with blood on his shirt.’ But Chancellor had not asked him and neither, he was quite sure, had Plummer.

  ‘My master and I,’ Lymond said, ‘understand each other very well.’

  Presently, the Tsar called Chancellor to his presence, and greeted him with his bare hand, and allowed him to present his son Christopher, who bowed as he had been taught, and tried not to look at the cloth-of-gold robe and the knives and daggers hilted with rubies, or the plated gold cap fringed with chained jewels. Around them rode the boyars in their furred brocades running with gold, on Turkish horses with necks curved each like a palm branch, coloured wolf grey, and the grey of lilac and starling, and red bay and gold-brown and russet. And between them thronged the grooms in black and gold and the dogs, pouring in spate like a brown mountain river over the sunlit field, towards the wide thicketed meadow where they were to hunt.

  It was a preserve of hares, a simple cachement of animals as arbitrary as a byre or a dovecote or a warren of coneys, and the sub-boys of maple and sallow and blackthorn were man-made to furnish it. While Chancellor watched, the horsemen with the Tsar deployed themselves round the whole area, with men on foot, black and yellow, interleaving between them, and the dogs, hard-held, milling and tugging at the Tsar’s side. He had been allotted two, with two men to hold them, and Lymond likewise. No one else, he noticed, was permitted hounds but a handful of princes appointed by the Tsar. Then Ivan Vasilievich cried aloud, and the mastiffs were released.

  It was not a long business. Afterwards, they were allowed to change their dress at a tower five miles from Moscow where pavilions had been raised, and where the Tsar later received them seated on his ivory throne and talked in Russian to Chancellor, while kneeling men presented them with confections of coriander and almonds and aniseed, and a pyramid of coloured sugar, on which Chancellor made no comment.

  The marks of favour, so desirable for his business, were unexpected and plain. Merchants had been summoned, and his meetings with them and the Chief Secretary Viscovatu were to begin in the Kremlin tomorrow. The Tsar’s councillors Alexei Adashev and Sylvester and the staff of his Voevoda Bolshoia would lend their aid as became needful. With the Pristafs appointed to guide him, the Ambassador was now free to make what excursions he wished. The ships of the great lord Hugh Willoughby, whose death he regretted, were to be returned to the English intact, and might be sailed home in the spring, with the others. He hoped to have Master Ritzert’s company soon with his gerfalcons, to fly at crane and heron and wild swan outside Moscow’s posterns. He invited him and his son to a bear-baiting.

  Chancellor answered it all. Christopher beside him, said nothing; nor did Lane or Killingworth or Price or Rob Best, seated sick-faced beside Lymond.

  ‘I saw Willoughby once, in Scotland,’ Lymond said. ‘He held a fort there under the Protector, during the late King Henry’s Rough Wooing. As the great-uncle of the Lady Jane Grey he would have needed all his social dexterity, had he lived to return. I imagine he must have died just about the time she was executed. If Christopher is going to be sick, I think you should make some excuse and remove him. Disgust is held to be the summit of weakness. As well as, in this case, an insult.’

  They had driven the hares like sheep into the dogs. And when the slaughter was slowing, they had emptied sackloads of leverets into the arena, so that they loped and staggered and bumped, still blinded, into the mouths of the mastiffs. When the last dog was persuaded to leave, they counted three hundred bodies, of which the Tsar’s dogs had killed seventy. The Tsar, bestowing favours so gracefully, was elated. Best said, under his breath, ‘They are a nation of Goths. Rude, bloody and blind as the wild Irish.’

  ‘They do not pursue the art quite as it is practised in France,’ said the voice of Ludovic d’Harcourt softly. ‘But then, few kings can claim to have killed seventy hares in a single day’s hunting. Un chasseur émérite.’

  ‘You are thinking of venery,’ Lymond said. ‘Whereby all men of worth may discover a gentleman from a yeoman, and a yeoman from a villein. This is something quite different, as I said. This is a demonstration by a ruler of his power and fitness to rule. I suggest you do not forget it.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Robert Best.

  The following day, the business meetings began. Lymond did not attend, but Fergie Hoddim surprisingly did. It was not until his third intervention that Chancellor remembered the provider of snares in which apes are caught, and the Troitsa monastery, where Mr Crawford also had mentioned his legal confrère. Where Mr Crawford had refused point blank to do anything further about the affairs of his wife.

  He had one winter in which to persuade him. He had seldom met anyone who looked less amenable to persuasion. And yet, if Lymond did not return, he himself would go back, he had been told, to face an arraignment for heresy. And Lymond, Lady Lennox had said, would lose his life.

  How? It was not the first time, looking round at his talking companions, that Diccon Chancellor wondered that. Who was Lady Lennox’s agent? Not one of his seamen: they had sailed home to England, and when they returned would come no farther south than St Nicholas. Unless Lymond travelled a thousand miles north to bid them farewell, he would be out of their reach in Moscow. Therefore, it must be one of ten men: the six he had left at Vologda, and the four men, Killingworth, Price, Lane and Best, who were here at this table. Christopher, at least, could be left out of the reckoning.

  Which of them had been paid to kill the Voevoda Bolshoia? Which, when Philippa’s husband gave his last, bored refusal, would make sure that if he did not come home to England, he would not live to harm England in Russia? Who cared for England enough? Who was sufficiently afraid of Margaret Lennox? Or who, perhaps, hated Lymond from long ago?

  He looked at them all again, and found they were all looking at him, and that it had evidently been agreed, without his realizing it, that the Tsar should be approached with a request for stronger privileges than those so far mentioned verbally, and that Hoddim and he were to frame the letter, and Viscovatu to scan it. He nodded hastily and got hold of the inkhorn again and began to underline the headings they had already discussed. The leadline every half-glass. Or they would all follow Willoughby.

  The Tsar’s answer came promptly enough: if they would draw up a list of desired privileges, he would consider it. And that was already half done: they had discussed it long enough, God knew, among themselves. Per
mission to buy a house and build a warehouse at Kholmogory, where they could keep their books and store their goods prior to shipping. Permission to do the same at Vologda, where living was also cheaper than Moscow, and the opportunities for trade probably better, if the Novgorod merchants would come to them. Permission to set up a house in Moscow, where they must have the Tsar’s goodwill and representation at Court.

  Nothing, at this stage, could be said of the Tsar’s monopolies, imposed at will on wax, silk or lead, cloth or pearls. No one might sell furs, corn or timber, fish or hay, sheep or poultry or wild fowl until the Tsar’s warehouses were empty of all these goods, sent him as tribute. No one might sell anything if the Tsar wished to dispose of his stock—even spoiled stock he wished to sell cheaply. Permission …

  Ivan Mikhailovich Viscovatu said, ‘You make no mention of monopolies?’

  The Russian merchants by now had left the discussion. George Killingworth said, ‘We understand the Tsar reserves to himself certain items of trade. We have no wish to displease his highness.’

  ‘His highness,’ said the Chief Secretary, ‘is sensible of your restraint. He wished me to tell you however that he is willing to reserve for your company his whole purchase of wax, which is usually sold to the merchants of Riga, Revel and Poland, Danzig, Lübeck and Hamburg. He will in due course inform you of the price.’

  Diccon Chancellor bowed, and expressed his infinite pleasure, and so did Lane and Price and Killingworth and Best, preserving at all costs the decencies. But later that afternoon, in the privacy of their own serge-hung premises, George Killingworth swung Christopher off his feet, to his smiling astonishment, and dropping him, hurled his cap into a corner. ‘The wax monopoly. It doesn’t matter what price he charges. We can fix the selling-price at anything we choose. And who knows what else he will sell us! Perhaps the whole market. Perhaps the Hanseatic League will have to buy masts and pitch and cordage through us in future.…’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Diccon Chancellor.

  Ned Lane looked at him shrewdly. ‘You think his merchants might object. The ones that matter. The monasteries. The Council members.’

  Diccon Chancellor said, ‘I think the Dutch and Polish and Flemish and German merchants would object, to no uncertain tune, and that if he pushes them too far, he might well find himself at war with the west before he is ready for it. I think there is no chance at all that the Tsar will do all his trading through us.… Not at present, at least. In fact, I ask myself why he has risked the surprising concessions he has so far allowed us. What does he want?’

  George Killingworth had got hold of the vodka and was pouring it, expertly, into five wooden firkins. ‘Trade,’ he said. ‘A route for imports and exports which none of the Baltic countries can interfere with. My God, he can hardly expect us to do it without some special sweetening. The sea’s frozen half the year round: we can only get one fleet in and one fleet out at the best every year. And no one can say it’s a convenient journey. We’ve lost two ships’ crews already. We only arrived here safely both times because you and Cabot both know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Chancellor. ‘I still think he wants more than trade.’

  George Killingworth put down the jug and picked up the firkin. He said, ‘Maybe he does. But he hasn’t said so. And even if he does, it’s no business of ours. We are here to negotiate a trading agreement, that’s all. If he wants anything else, the Privy Council will have to handle it.’

  Ned Price said, ‘But Diccon has called himself an ambassador, and is being received as an ambassador. The Tsar might well expect him to have powers to treat for the Queen.’

  ‘He might,’ said Robert Best unexpectedly. ‘If the matter hadn’t already been disposed of at the Troitsa Monastery.’

  There was a brief silence while they stared at one another, recalling a provoking interrogation by the Voevoda Bolshoia, in the presence of Master Grigorjeff, who spoke more English than was apparent. Robert Best added, ‘So they know the limitations of your powers fairly well. The question remains, as Diccon says, why is he pleasing us at the risk of offending the Emperor Charles? And I think I know who has the answer. Master Francis Crawford, the Voevoda Bolshoia.’

  ‘Taking our part with the Tsar?’ said Killingworth with vast scorn and drained off his vodka and spat. ‘There goes a subtle, dissembling fox, who would barter his kin for a township.’

  ‘No,’ said Diccon Chancellor. ‘I think I understand Rob. There goes a gentleman of doubtful attractions who is providing the Tsar with an army. We might question its quality but the Tsar may have no qualms.’

  ‘Then he’s a fool,’ Killingworth said. ‘Does he think one pack of vainglorious mercenaries will hold back Poland and Lithuania? I’d like to see them in action.’

  ‘So should I,’ said Chancellor thoughtfully.

  Francis Crawford reached the same conclusion, on hearing Fergie Hoddim’s report on the petition the Muscovy Company had been allowed to present to the Tsar.

  ‘… complete freedom of trade, and special jurisdiction for all English settled in Russia. The English to decide their own quarrels, and the Tsar to settle all litiginous cases between subjects of England and Russia. A market twice yearly at Kholmogory, prices to be optional. Freedom from tolls——’

  ‘What?’ said Lymond.

  ‘And he’s offered them a wax monopoly,’ Fergie said, eyes shining with legal mysticism. ‘Proxime et immediate sequens. And ye ken what the tolls are. A tenth of a dengi on all Turkish and Armenian imports. Two dengi a rouble on all goods weighed at the Emperor’s beam. Toll-bars. River-dues. Storage-dues. Dues on the written contract if you sell an old nag. Dues on every God’s pound of salt.… They send out fifty thousand pounds of wax a year, they reckon,’ said Fergie. ‘And they can get four pounds the hundred for it in England.’

  ‘Maybe the Tsar will ask four pounds the hundred pounds for it in Russia,’ said Lymond.

  ‘No. It’s fixed. Two pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence,’ said Fergie with triumph.

  The Voevoda’s chilly blue eyes were open in thought. ‘And what favours did the Tsar ask in return?’

  ‘None,’ said Fergie. ‘Or none so far. Ye ken Viscovatu. He can eat without opening his mouth.’

  ‘Then I think,’ said Lymond, ‘we had better have a show of strength. Tell Plummer to stop mourning over St Basil’s and do something about the weather. There must be a use for engineers in the cosmos somewhere. Meanwhile, until the snow comes, we had better keep Master Chancellor and his party entertained.’

  ‘Tartar women?’ said Fergie helpfully. ‘Danny Hislop …’

  ‘Healthy physical exercise,’ said Lymond tartly. ‘Until the roads harden up and they can get on with their trading. They have to wait in Moscow anyway until the Tsar replies to their letter. And meanwhile we all want the Tsar’s noble mind irrevocably set on war with the Tartars; none more so than Prince Vishnevetsky and his gallant Cossacks. War with Lithuania would be an unfortunate mistake. Not to mention the Poles. A haughty nation and a very insulting people upon advantage.’

  ‘You’ve heard from Vishnevetsky?’ said Fergie. He missed the niceties of civilized law, but the nature of Russian intrigue almost made up for it.

  ‘He’s coming to see me in December,’ said Lymond. ‘Let’s have our exercise in December. What a pity we couldn’t induce a Tartar or two to set fire to us.’

  ‘We could set fire to ourselves,’ offered Fergie, with unthinking enthusiasm. ‘Except then we’d have no one to fight with.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that,’ said Francis Crawford.

  And thinking of the character of his leader, and the strong and divergent personalities of his colleagues in the company of St Mary’s, Fergie Hoddim was inclined to agree.

  Half-way through November, after the mildest autumn for three hundred years, the temperature in Moscow dropped thirty degrees. By the beginning of December, the days were bringing anything up to ten degrees of frost and the r
ivers became broad white highways along which moved eight hundred sledges daily, carrying corn and fish into the city. The winter ice market opened on the Moskva, outside the Kremlin, selling casks and earthenware pots and painted sledges and grain, and stiff-legged hogs and bullocks and poultry, frozen like boulders, and boys swooped and flashed on the crystalline ice, bones bound on their feet and iron-shod stakes in their hands, as staffs and as weapons. Tame bears danced, their teeth rubbed with vitriol, and wild ones crept close to the villages. The rest of the Muscovy Company’s wares set off by sledge at last from Vologda, and the sledge carrying the Tsar’s wine and sugar overturned and was lost.

  Diccon Chancellor, sick of hunting and hawking and eating and drinking and witnessing crude entertainments unrelieved by the presence of women, took George Killingworth off to the Kremlin to present his apologies to the Tsar through his Chief Secretary Viscovatu, and to ask, for the fifth time, whether his highness was graciously disposed to reply yet to the Company’s humble petition. Master Viscovatu, faintly severe on the subject of the wine and the sugar, said an answer would certainly be supplied in due course, but that his highness was at present much occupied with affairs of war.

  ‘War!’ said George Killingworth, and broke off as Chancellor kicked him on the ankle.

  ‘Yes. It is the Emperor’s custom,’ said Ivan Viscovatu, ‘to hold a Triumph in the fields outside Moscow shortly after the St Nicholas’s Day banquet. It is the Tsar’s desire that you and your fellows will honour the Tsar and his commanders with your presence. Afterwards, it is possible that the Tsar’s time will be less circumscribed. I am sure you are anxious to visit trading centres other than Moscow.’

  George Killingworth opened his mouth and shut it again, the golden beard drawn like a curtain. ‘We are honoured,’ said Chancellor, and got Killingworth out before he could say anything aloud about the Voevoda Bolshoia, whose fine touch would be detected behind every courteous sentence. They already knew that the Tsar was pleased with his army. It looked rather as if the Voevoda were pleased with it, too. It remained to be seen whether the Tartars would be pleased also. ‘And every man in it a gentleman,’ said Diccon Chancellor to himself, thoughtfully.