The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Later, when he understood what St Mary’s was, he realized that any soldier in Europe might have told him what to expect on that clear, cold day when he and Christopher and his quartet of impatient merchants finally stood on a field of snow outside Moscow, and watched marching past a thousand-long column of hackbutters in blue stammel and velvet ranked five abreast, each with his gun on his left shoulder and with his right hand holding his match. On beautiful Turkish horses and jennets, the Tsar’s boyars and nobles followed them in gold brocade, riding three by three. And lastly, there entered the Tsar in brilliant tissue, his scarlet cap hung with pearls and his high officials around him. At his right, grey furred and wholly calm, rode the Voevoda Bolshoia.

  George Killingworth, as was his regrettable habit, spat.

  Afterwards, they agreed it was a circus; a drama, a ritual dance; a precise entertainment designed and created by a clever and ruthless ringmaster. The silk pavilions; the flags; the rippling cloth which held back the crowds were all devices of western chivalry. The massed displays of drill and horsemanship were not. Only over the wide steppes of Russia was it necessary to move blocks of men by the thousand, riding hundreds of miles into battle; able to wheel and manoeuvre to distant, half-perceptible command.

  It was a skill they had never possessed; just as they owned the endurance to sustain siege to the point where life ceased; where they ate rats and shoe leather and, sometimes, each other; but did not have the stamina or knowledge or ability to mount the attack which would break the siege in the first instance.

  To simulate these things, with wooden forts and moveable towers, was only spectacular play-acting, just as the drill carried out on the pressed snow, on foot and on horseback, by hackbutters and boyars alike, with brands and pennons and flashing silk cords, was to the eye merely a brave coloured pattern shifting like shaken mosaic on the glaring white sheet of the snow.

  But even to the eye of a seaman or a clerk, or a merchant, it said something more. It spoke of brutal discipline. It told of a control based on skill, as well as on fear. And it showed a pride, in themselves and their training, which was reflected, in spite of himself, in the Tsar’s austere, bearded face.

  The last of the demonstration belonged to the gunners. Mounted on their long wooden platform, the hackbutters gave first their traditional display. Their target, sixty yards off, was a bank of pure ice, built six feet high and two thick, and stretching for a quarter of a mile before the chain of orderly, liveried men. The gunfire, rapping hard on the ears, seemed to be shot from the thin, glassy sky. Sound exploded around them like gorse-pods, striking their eyes and vibrating their finger-ends while the blue wall turned frosty and crumbled, and broken ice jumped like mirrors and cast long swathes hissing like salt to spangle the pale tender blue of the air.

  The wall lay flat. Beside it, two earth-filled houses thirty feet deep faced the long row of cannon, gold baguettes beading the snow. A match flared, a flag lifted and fell, and the guns fired: brises, falcons, and minions; sakers, culverins and cannons, double and royal; and lastly in order of size, the great cannon: Kazan, a year old, and Astrakhan, cast only three months before, each over a thousand pounds’ weight, with their black mouths more than a foot in diameter.

  They fired the ordnance three times in all, from the least to the largest in order, and as the last round went off, the small-bellied pot guns shot wild fire into the smoke, rising in flashes of scarlet and gold among the reeking black clouds, as the fields shuddered to the mounting explosions. Where the houses had stood, there was nothing.

  It was over. Unable to hear his own voice, Chancellor obeyed the Tsar’s summons to join him, and tried to express, in serviceable Russian, his ecstatic admiration for what he had seen.

  ‘It is the might of Russia,’ said Ivan Vasilievich. ‘The Voevoda Bolshoia can answer your questions.’

  ‘I have none,’ said Chancellor. His ears ached. A young, bearded man in an incredible robe lined with white ermine smiled, and raised his eyebrows at Lymond.

  ‘I have,’ said Christopher under his breath.

  The Voevoda, unhappily, had heard it. ‘What is your interest? The guns?’ Lymond said.

  Christopher had gone scarlet. He said. ‘Yes. No. I wondered how the men were trained.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Lymond, ‘he would like to visit our training quarters at Vorobiovo, His father and friends might find it instructive indeed to accompany him. My own house is nearby, and I should be honoured to offer you all hospitality.’

  Diccon Chancellor said, ‘We are only merchants and seamen. I am afraid we should not know how to appreciate what we saw. But Christopher would enjoy it.’

  ‘Then let Christopher go,’ Lymond said. ‘Master Hislop will take him, and bring him back to my house, where you may take wine and await him in comfort. And, of course, your friends …?’

  But George Killingworth, mumbling into his golden beard, cravenly declined and so did Harry Lane and Ned Price. Only Best, who had so nearly smuggled the Voevoda’s wife on to the Edward Bonaventure to join her soldier husband in Russia, accepted almost before he was asked. A marriage of convenience was what Philippa Somerville had called it. And Rob Best did not need any convincing that the Voevoda’s domestic arrangements were very convenient indeed. He did not ask himself, as Diccon Chancellor did, why on earth the Voevoda should wish him to witness them.

  Chapter 5

  Lancelot Plummer, who had designed it, took Chancellor and Rob Best to Lymond’s home at Vorobiovo, riding south through the snow, and across the broad links of the river, and up the white, wooded incline from which the Kremlin domes could be seen flashing golden against the dusky red snow-sky of sunset. Earlier that day, Christopher had gone to visit the Streltsi. D’Harcourt, riding briefly beside them, said, ‘Danny is not perhaps the most maternal of guides, but he’ll see the lad comes to no harm. On the other hand …’

  He hesitated. They were riding together in the Voevoda’s own massive carved sledge, drawn by matched and plumed horses, their harness whipped with silver and set largely with turquoises. Rob Best’s mouth had been slightly open since they set out, but Chancellor’s black-bearded face was unyielding. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘The boy is coming to join you?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Chancellor with some impatience. A tall brick wall had come into view, speckled with snow, with snow-laden trees like a painting behind it. The entrance was through a handsome tower of white stone, leaved and patterned with brick. The sledge drew up, was recognized, and allowed to pass through.

  Plummer said, ‘Ludo thinks our honoured leader is not to be trusted with children. You will realize this is nonsense. A harsh and holy life has our Mr Crawford, like the great and glorious St Antony. Ludo is only resentful because the Voevoda doesn’t think much of his medicine. You must admit, Ludo, that Master Grossmeyer inspires a little more confidence.’

  Ludovic d’Harcourt didn’t reply. Chancellor said, ‘But the Voevoda has a son of his own, I understood?’ and was taken a little aback as they both turned and stared at him. Then d’Harcourt said, ‘Yes. In England. He has a wife also. I gather they weigh equally on his conscience.’

  They passed under a bower of branches, false-lit like a delicate woodcut by the riming of snow from the north. Bushes fled past them; beaded trusses of white; furred spokes of wood; and the veiled trees in the white distance almost hid the white-grey pile of a great house. Lights glimmered.

  ‘All this is the Voevoda’s?’ Chancellor asked.

  ‘It belongs, tax-free, to him and his mistress,’ said Lancelot Plummer. ‘So do the townships of his pomestie, his military fief. Also all the meadow and pastureland on both sides of the Moscow, and the rent of the bath stoves and bathing houses outside the walls of the city. His annual income is hard to keep track of, but I imagine fifteen thousand roubles would safely cover it.… We designed the gardens on the lines of the Queen Dowager’s at Binche, but had to take the statues inside in November because of the cold. We
have marble rockeries and scented fountains, and flowers of silver and coral, with artificial showers and lightning. It would be a perfect showplace, if anyone ever came who could appreciate it.’

  ‘Does the Tsar visit him?’ Chancellor said.

  ‘The Tsaritsa has been here,’ said Plummer. The sledge was sweeping round to a halt before the dusky mass of a house, built like quartz, crystal on grey crystal, with the leaves and towers and cupolas of its rooftops like a worn flowerhead crowding the sky. A long, canopied staircase, cascading down the tiers of the building, ended in wrought copper gates between which stood the elegant, fair-haired person of their host. The grooms jumped from the sledge and drew the rugs to one side.

  ‘Plummer wanted the sledge drawn by a team of white bears,’ Lymond said, ‘but I thought it seemed a touch precious.’ He was wearing no jewels, but a caftan of oriental fabric so thickly embroidered that other richness was unthinkable. ‘Plummer dresses me also,’ added Lymond, with every appearance of candour. ‘Sometimes I think he will put the weevils in jerkins and codpieces. Please be welcome, and come in from the cold.’

  Chancellor got out and walked to the steps, with Best and the architect following. Looking back, he saw that d’Harcourt had remained in the sledge. He encountered the Voevoda’s clever blue gaze. ‘Our friend will stay and look out for Christopher,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Then he can warn him against me and my habits, and we can feel relieved and secure all together. Are you tired of roast swan in garlic?’

  ‘No,’ said Diccon Chancellor in a superhuman access of courtesy.

  ‘My God,’ said Lymond, stopping and staring at him. ‘In that case, I wish we had cooked it for you. Come along. Adam Blacklock is here, modestly reinstated, before you. I thought we should have a mildly cultural evening. I have not asked Mr Hoddim, who might expound too inconveniently on the laws of property, or Alec Guthrie, who is prone at times to be dismally moral. You are entering a different world: a world of determined sybaritic experience. The bower of Majnún and Leylí.’

  The reference struck no response from Diccon’s navigational repertoire. Rob Best’s mouth had opened again. Lymond looked from one to the other.

  Into Lancelot Plummer’s humourless eyes there came, without warning, a spark of undeniable entertainment. ‘A pair of Persian lovers,’ he offered.

  ‘A pair of Persian lovers,’ agreed Lymond, acknowledging the assistance. ‘Do you have a mistress, Master Chancellor? It is an asset no man should deny himself. Without it, the cooking suffers abominably, and I dare not mention what goes amiss with the drainage.’

  Chancellor laughed. He laughed for quite a long time because his sense of humour was touched, while his logical mathematician’s brain was telling him that very likely he would be flung out of the house for it, if not banished altogether from this alarming country of Russia.

  Lymond waited until he was nearly finished, and then, placing a hand on his shoulder, steered Chancellor up the remaining few steps, and along a gallery to the main double doors of the house. The light, flooding down from the sconces, gilded the bright feathered gold of his hair, and the cushioned silks of the caftan, and the faint lines round the relaxed mouth which were almost, but not quite, a smile. ‘Well, thank God,’ said Lymond. ‘I thought you were going to go down on your knees. The occasion is expensive, but not so far meet for prayer.’

  And so, with a degree of anticipation not far from horrified pleasure, Diccon Chancellor entered the country home of the Voevoda Bolshoia and his mistress, and did not look to see if there was a witch ball hung over the lintel.

  It was like an evening at Penshurst.

  If an evening at Penshurst could have been spiced, and scented and jewelled, and anointed, like King Raia Colambu, with oil of storax and benjamin, it would have bred handsome hours such as these, charged with good wine and light talk and music, enclosed with comfort, and incised all about with a curving, trephining wit.

  The vulgarity he had expected was missing. The beautiful woman introduced by Francis Crawford as The lady Güzel, your hostess and mistress of all you see about you, spoke English as well as himself, with an accent part Greek, part something else he could not identify. And recalling with compassion the pungent mind and honest gifts of Mistress Philippa, Diccon Chancellor recognized before him now, in the woman Güzel, the face and the mind and the power of a woman of destiny.

  She dined with them, facing Lymond across a low, marbled table of malachite, with Plummer and Blacklock on one side, and on the other himself and the bearded young man in ermine, whom he had noticed while watching the Triumph. His name was Prince Dmitri Vishnevetsky, and he was governor of Cherkassy on the Lithuanian frontier, which made his presence in Moscow worth pondering.

  He knew the Voevoda and his mistress fairly well, it was obvious, and called the Voevoda by his territorial name of Lymond, which his own men, out of habit, sometimes also used.

  It suited him; Chancellor thought. Brief; impersonal; without title, or else, if you wished it, a title in itself. He tried to see him through Güzel’s eyes. She had brought him to Russia, he had been told: had introduced him and his company to the Tsar; had established him in the position from which he had now risen to such eminence.

  Of the eminence, there was no longer any doubt. Even had he not learned from Plummer of all the tangible marks of the Emperor’s favour, it was only necessary to think of the display that afternoon; to hear the stories of the summer campaigning; to watch the people bow in the streets, as they did to the old princely families, when the Voevoda’s train passed.

  And for the rest, one need only look around one. Plummer had built for a king: or, being given the heart of a building, had worked it over to become a suitable setting for Russia’s supreme commander. Outside, the groups of kokoshnik gables, the huddle of cones and pyramids and finials, the square stones set in thick mortar, with their brick trim in scarlet sawtooth or zigzag embroidery round window and cornice and drums. And inside, the jarred doors with frames of worked stone; the gilded piers, the majolica floortiles. All the arts of Syria and the Orient, of Turkey and Venice, of France and Russia itself had been combined in the interior. They said they had flown from Stamboul as fugitives. If that were true, it was impossible to conceive how these treasures could have been smuggled out also, or how, in less than two years, so much that was perfect could have been chosen, or gifted, or brought in from the closed caravan routes that lay behind Astrakhan and Bokhara. Great God, look at the Baghdad robes she was wearing of Tyrian purple laden with birds and with panthers; and the earrings next to the smooth olive face with its large eyes and charcoal black hair; at her ring with the cameo head of a negro, his neck encircled with diamonds.

  The silk figured lampas which fell rustling over the door: the Flemish tapestry, mild and exquisite, clothing another room fitted with fine stools and carpets and bookshelves whose rolls and volumes Adam Blacklock’s eyes had surveyed hungrily, his fingers smoothing the cover of the one he had borrowed, its boards laced and coloured with Persian cloisonné enamel.

  The Turkish towels. The cushion covers, worked in pearled German falcons. The paintings, each with its curtain. The wrought silver fuming pots, faint with pastilles of musk and ambergris, jasmine and benzoin. The beds hung with chagrin silk and blonde lace, the lawn sheets fumed with lemon and violets. The silver. The ewers and basins; the clusters of cups; the bellied livery pots, parcel-gilt with fruit swags and strapwork. The tall Chinese jar hooped with gold, with fringes of great netted pearls hung about it. The glimmering fruit bowls and candelabra here on the table before him, and the crystal salt, and the wine jug, and the little trellised goblets on baluster sterns, one of which he was emptying, and having refilled, and emptying again …

  Christopher came in, his eyes dilated from the darkness outside, with Ludovic d’Harcourt, the big, smiling Knight of St John. His manner, making his apologies, pleased his father in spite of himself: he did not stare at Güzel, but kissed her hand, and bowed to his host a
nd the other men, and gave only a passing blink at the laden table where the youngest of the blue-shirted servants, a boy of perhaps less than Christopher’s own age, was setting a fresh place for his son. The young manservant finished, and pulled back a stool, smiling, while Christopher, moving towards it, returned the smile warmly.

  ‘His name is Venceslas,’ said the Voevoda, whom nothing ever escaped. ‘He is Polish, but speaks English very well. Sit and eat, while he serves you. You have some space to make up.’

  Ludovic d’Harcourt left, closing the door ungently behind him. In spite of himself, Diccon glanced at his son, and then at the lad Vencelas serving him. The Polish boy was beautiful. Even if what the big knight had hinted was true, there was no need to concern himself unduly. The matter, he thought, was already adequately taken care of. Then they brought in the aromatic pie, which had small birds under its pastry, some stuffed with meat and some with eggs, and some fried in grape juice and limes, and the lambs stuffed with meat and ground pistachio nuts and cooked in sesame oil, and the sturgeon in broth, and the ground figs, cloves and mace, and the coloured jellies shaped like flowers and trees, and the golden spice plates with sugar plums and suckets wrapped in rolled aniseed leaves, and nougat and marzipan, and more spiced claret with honey, and Diccon Chancellor forgot everything else, looking at his son’s scarlet face.

  There was music later, when the table was drawn and they were seated at leisure, on cushions and long tasselled benches and tall chairs, watching the play of small flames in the brazier. Women played on the lute, and a boy sang, and accompanied himself on a curious eight-stringed lyre. Then Güzel herself took the lute, and played to them, singing in her true, mellow voice, but in a language Chancellor could not understand.