The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  There was a note of private amusement in the pleasant, assured voice which Chancellor did not quite follow, but the unforthcoming demeanour of Mistress Philippa’s husband had undergone no change since that surprising evening at Vorobiovo, and they completed their conversation on strictly impersonal lines, to Christopher’s clear disappointment. Which was why Christopher accompanied his father to Novgorod, along with Mr Killingworth and Mr Best, in the large covered sledge provided by an indulgent Muscovite government, with Mr Hoddim and Mr Hislop riding informatively alongside.

  What happened at Novgorod was not entirely George Killingworth’s fault, although Danny Hislop afterwards blamed his beard, which he claimed had a life of its own like Chang-kuo Lao’s miraculous donkey, which could travel thousands of leagues a day, and then at rest could be folded like paper.

  In the event they were not popular, as no pensioner of the Tsar was popular in this city which had once ruled from the Arctic to the Urals, until taken and planted by Muscovites. It was still great in size, despite the fires which fourteen years before had destroyed the whole Slav quarter of the town, and the previous year had burned 1,500 izbas to the ground. It was still great in trade, forming the market for barter between the east and the trading routes to the west, and it employed a western mode of transaction, and a suavity missing in the oriental ambience of Moscow.

  Primed with warnings; aware of the anomalies in the Company’s position; reminded that on Chancellor’s previous visit petitions had been made to the Tsar denouncing the English as pirates and rovers, George Killingworth quartered the markets of Novgorod, and was overwhelmed with enchanting discoveries. Tallow, sold at sixteen shillings in England, could be bought at seven shillings the hundredweight here. A piece of cloth worth six pounds, including transport, could sell here for seventeen roubles, or fourteen pounds at the lowest.

  There was no competition. Flemish cloth travelled nine hundred miles overland to market at Novgorod: he could undercut it with ease. There was no product he could not buy cheaper or sell dearer, unhampered by taxes, while the peasant selling twenty geese for a rouble, or ten sheep, or two cows, or four sleighs, would have spent a quarter already on customs and tolls. ‘My people are like my beard: the oftener shaved, the quicker it will grow,’ had said the Tsar; and so the taxes flourished, and the usurers, extorting their furtive twenty per hundred in corners.

  So it was perhaps inevitable that a scuffle should begin in the bazaar, among the Flemings, and that the Englishmen should be followed to the flax and hemp market and then to the warehouse for tallow by a growing crowd of angry, powerful-looking people in bedraggled skin and sheepskin coats and felt hats. There, Killingworth explained for the fifth time, to a group of booted officials, that he and his company possessed new duty-free privileges, and for the fifth time Chancellor produced and unrolled the creased document, and for the fifth time everyone waited while the customar sent for someone who could read.

  Unfortunately, this time Killingworth’s patience expired before the end of the long wait, exposed to the jeering, quarrelling crowd. Shaking off Chancellor, he simply strode into the warehouse, picked up a billet of wood and proceeded to make his own examination of the casks.

  Rob Best made to follow, but Chancellor stopped him. ‘Wait here, and hold the parchment. Christopher, go and fetch Hoddim and Hislop. Mr Killingworth will have to come out.’

  The crowd were already pressing into the warehouse. Christopher saw his father begin to fight his way through the doorway to Killingworth’s side and then, with a clap on the shoulder from Best, began to burrow his way in the opposite direction, swimming upstream like the idol Perun until he came to the building where he knew he would find the Voevoda’s men.

  They were doing some haggling of their own, but in a civilized way, at a table, with a full jug of mead at their elbows. There was no question by this time of the Voevoda’s authority in any of the principal cities under the Tsar. In theory, he could requisition what he wished, at his own price, for the use of the army. In practice, policed by Plummer and Hoddim, the bargains were struck if possible without antagonizing anyone. Now, Fergie Hoddim got to his feet as soon as Christopher was shown, gasping into the room and reaching for his new fur coat said, ‘Oh, aye. Is it spuilzie or wrangful detention?’ while Danny Hislop, less philosophic, said, ‘That bone-headed ox Killingworth?’

  ‘In the wax and tallow warehouse,’ said Christopher, wheezing.

  ‘I’ve informed the Namiestnik. I’ve shown the document to every petty office-holder in Novgorod. They can’t be in trouble,’ said Hislop.

  ‘They can’t read,’ said Christopher.

  ‘They can read,’ said Fergie, shoving papers into his pouch and embarking on a hasty round of handshaking. Hislop had already gone to round up his men. ‘They just dinna want to offend their well-furnished friends in the city. It’s natural. Is it a case of litigation, d’you fancy, or just simple manual force?’

  It was a case of both. By the time Christopher got himself on a horse, and with Hoddim and Hislop and twenty trained cavalry charged across the frozen snow of Novgorod to the warehouse, you could see the glare of its burning against the grey winter sky, and the trampled snow was overlaid like a lava-bed by a creeping carpet of mingled tallow and blood.

  And Chancellor, Killingworth and Best were in prison.

  ‘It was a grand case,’ said Fergie dotingly afterwards, when they had been to Pskov and bought all the flax and felt and hemp and tallow and wax that four ships could hold, and Diccon Chancellor’s black eye and Rob Best’s bruises were turning yellow. ‘Mind, in a decent country they would hae had you under Ejection and Intrusion, Molestation and Spuilzie, and a plea for dampnage and skaith sustained forbye. Man, they lost their warehouse.’

  ‘It was a public market,’ said George Killingworth, from sheer furious habit, through the scarf which shrouded the lower part of his face.

  ‘Aye. But ye were tellt not to go in by the customar. And then ye flung a cask at his heid.’

  ‘Well, they were coming at him with hatchets,’ said Chancellor mildly.

  ‘Aye. It’s the Lord’s wonder ye werena killed,’ said Fergie. ‘I never heard of a fire more opportune. They tell me the flaxbox they found in the tallow was melted out of all recognition, which is just as well, because they’re death on incendiarism. For theft now, they’d just put you to the pudkey, unless it was your second offence; and if ye had enough gold in your palm, maybe not even that. But traitors, church robbers, kidnappers, men who murder their masters and incendiarists—death. And not even an attorney. Man,’ said Fergie, carried away. ‘The crown must make a fortune. No costs to speak of, and for every simple arbitration, the roubles pouring out to the judge and the clerk and the notary, and the losing plaintiff to pay ten in the hundred of the sum in dispute to the Tsar.… D’ye know he owns all the cabacks, the drink-houses?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rob Best.

  ‘Leased at three thousand roubles a year, and the landlord daren’t throw out a drunk or he’ll be sued for spoiling his sovereign’s income.…’

  Chancellor let him run on, with the sledge. They had been saved, by Hislop’s force and Fergie’s jovial implacability in argument. Their right to trade had been proved. Their innocence in the matter of the fire had been, if not proved, at least left in doubt. Killingworth’s mad disregard of the inspectors had been the only incontrovertible sin, and there had been a nasty possibility at first that the matter would be removed, as the law properly demanded, to the Tsar’s courts at Moscow.

  He did not want that, and neither did Killingworth. There must be no trouble between themselves and the Tsar. Nor—what would almost be worse—should the Tsar be moved on their behalf to punish the Novgorodians, and thereby end all hopes of peaceful trading with the city for good.

  It was Fergie who had reduced the matter to a fine, to be paid on the spot; and it was Danny Hislop who, when the sum demanded proved to be stubbornly monstrous, suggested the common Russian alte
rnative of duel by proxy.

  They had argued all afternoon over that, choosing their champion, and then demanding Chancellor’s. Chancellor had wanted to do it himself. He had been warned against this practice, which admitted any form of attack, and any weapon save the gun or the bow. Short and stocky in build, he was no match in weight for these thick-built men with the powerful shoulders and arms. But he was fit, and fast, and had learned a few tricks at sea he had found useful, before now, in dark streets in alien harbours, and he was tired of life as a draper’s major-domo. But though he was vehement, and Christopher naively eager, and George Killingworth, in a dignified way, perfectly prepared to take issue on behalf of his rights, the matter was settled by Rob Best, who said simply, ‘I’m the biggest,’ and by Danny Hislop, who said immediately, ‘Right. Best it is.’

  Which was the intelligent choice. For no sooner did the Novgorodians see Robert Best issue, stripped to the waist, to defend his Company’s rights in the courtroom, than they decided to cancel the fight and draw lots. Then, buffeted in the back by the swaying of half the citizens of Novgorod, held back neither by rail nor by bar, they had witnessed the name of the Company sealed in a round ball of wax, and the name of the Governor of Novgorod sealed in another.

  Beside him, Chancellor knew, Fergie Hoddim was grinning. On his other side, Christopher had turned faintly green. Then the tallest man in the crowd was brought forward to hold the two balls high in the crown of his hat, while another stranger came forward on tiptoe, his arm stripped to the shoulder and stretching, picked out one moist lump of wax.

  The judge broke the ball in his hands, and unfolded the stained scrap of paper.

  It held the name of the Muscovy Company. They had carried their point, and the Company was held innocent of any malicious intentions towards the Governor and people of Novgorod.

  The air had not been rent by cheering, and the thumping he received on his spine was not entirely that, Chancellor thought, of bonhomie, but no one knouted them either. Now, Moscow-bound with the sledges hissing in train through the snow, he said to Fergie Hoddim, ‘What was grand about it from your point of view, Hoddim? No disputation; no subtle by-play between the opposing lawyers. Merely a display of animal force displaced by an accident of fortune.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ said Fergie, who with Hislop had joined Chancellor and his son in the heavy, roofed sleigh for the homeward journey. ‘It was the subtle by-play, ye might say, that got ye the accident of fortune, not to mention the happy outcome of the process, confirmed under the white wax, so to speak. As to disputations,’ Fergie said, ‘ye need look no further than Daniel Hislop.’

  ‘You may be right,’ agreed Danny Hislop, pink bull terrier to Fergie’s lined bloodhound. ‘I lack Mr Hoddim’s profound faith in the powers of argument. I wanted to do something crude, like threaten somebody.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mr Hoddim. ‘Threats? Bribes? Remeid of law should be open to a’body, proponi in publicum, without recourse to perversion. Public justice is sacred.’

  ‘What was in the second ball of wax?’ asked Diccon Chancellor.

  Fergie Hoddim looked astonished. ‘The name of the Muscovy Company,’ he said, affronted. ‘A good lawyer leaves nothing to chance. The wax came from the store ye had just bought up yourselves, and at a better price, I may tell you, than if the Tsar had elected to commandeer it. Just so.’

  Diccon Chancellor laughed suddenly. ‘Just so,’ he agreed. ‘Mr Hoddim, don’t you miss your compatriots? Rude of arts and ignorant of politics, they’re too simple for you here.’

  Above the long, glossy moustaches, the hooded eyes cast him a shrewd look. ‘Simple, would you cry them? They knew just how far to go, to test your power and standing, and mine.’

  ‘Not yours, my dear innocent: the Voevoda’s,’ Hislop said. His pale eyes gleamed at the Chancellors, father and son. ‘You know he is a banner lord? Magnified, feared and beloved of all men. I hear you are considering a trip to the Lampozhnya Fair. I hope you will insist on his accompanying you. It will lengthen his life, I should think, by a couple of years.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ Chancellor said.

  Turning from Christopher’s open-eyed gaze, Hislop trained a bland eye on his father. ‘A man of rare endowments, the Voevoda,’ he said. ‘But in the north he need exercise fewer of them, perhaps. We inferior beings would also welcome a respite.’

  ‘Mr Crawford is a hard task-master?’ Chancellor said. ‘My son tells me that soon you will be able to put a hundred thousand well-furnished men into the field at forty days’ notice. In a country of this size, with such problems of climate and communications, and a people totally undrilled, I should have thought it quite a feat.’

  ‘Yes. Well,’ said Danny. ‘He has made sure there is one person we shall always fear more than the enemy. The atmosphere of lofty command can, however, be a trifle dispiriting. We do hope you will both go to Lampozhnya.’

  Diccon Chancellor said suddenly, ‘What keeps you here? Mr Hoddim evaded the question. You are highly paid, I expect. Perhaps your commander has passed on his passion for power. But there seems to be no camaraderie. I have never heard one of you call the other by his Christian name. And no one, except perhaps Mr Crawford, could call the life easy. When the fighting is over, what can you do with your leisure? Where do you go for civilized conversation? What sport can you pursue but the coarsest, within the harshest extremes of the climate? What entertainment is there: where can you find books, or listen to music, or enjoy the pleasures of the table, and visit the homes of your friends?’

  The pale, clever eyes glittered again. ‘Ah,’ said Danny. ‘You have a report to make to your superior.’

  Chancellor made a sound of impatience. ‘I have. But you may also credit me with the normal instincts of friendship.’

  ‘And a nose, naturally, for the prevalent cult of Belial the Epicene,’ Danny said. ‘You have seen him at his house at Vorobiovo. I doubt if he is there, or at the Kremlin house more than two days a week, and sometimes not for a good many weeks at a time. It pains me to destroy the legend, but if he pursued a life of ease himself, I doubt if one of us would follow him.’

  Chancellor said, ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘No. Why are we here, Hoddim?’ said Hislop.

  The tall brow ridged. ‘I’m damned if I know why you’re here,’ said Fergie candidly. ‘Why am I? The money’s good, and some day I’ll go home and spend it. I like fighting, and St Mary’s does that better than anyone else now in Europe. And I have a mind for the law, and a country where jurisdiction is just beginning to shake itself free of abuses, and has a use, maybe, for a trained mind in doing it. I never thought about it, but I suppose that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘You’re here because the land is virgin and you are an expert,’ said Danny crisply. ‘That’s why we’re all staying. Not only because we enjoy being superior soldiers. Plummer is spending all his spare time in a welter of bochki vaultings and wall systems. Guthrie visits a different lavra every week, unearthing ancient Greek scriptures like truffles. D’Harcourt is pursuing unfettered his God-given vocation to defend his sheep against the Mussulman wolf. And Blacklock, burning with artistic dedication, is teaching half the Ikonopisnaia Palata to oil-paint.…’

  ‘Half the——?’ said Fergie.

  ‘A slight exaggeration. Three pupils,’ said Danny cheerfully.

  ‘And you?’ said Diccon Chancellor.

  ‘You are, I suppose, right,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘There’s no conversation, except among ourselves: the princes aren’t going to hobnob with foreigners. There is no feminine company. The pleasures of the great outdoors are strictly limited unless you care for massacres or for fishing, which I do admit is prodigious. Given a fine day, you might find a group of ladies having a gentle swing on a wheel in the meadow, but you are more likely to come across gangs of boys kicking each other freely to death. The less said about the winter the better. And as you say, there are no entertainments, short of church a
nd court ceremonial, caterwauling, trials of strength and the indifferent jests by the Tsar’s team of paid buffoons.

  ‘… I think I am here for the same reason as Mr Crawford,’ said Danny reflectively. ‘To enjoy a condition of absolute superiority.… Isn’t that, after all, why you travel, Mr Chancellor? Why your friend Wyndham took combs and hatchets and nightcaps to the natives in Guinea: why Master Cabot returned so high-handed and generous from La Plata that he thought to bestow an island on his Genoese barber? Experts in a virgin land. What a world of confidence we may extract from it.’

  ‘I think,’ said Diccon Chancellor, ‘you underrate both us and yourselves.’

  ‘I know you think so,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘Wait, however. Wait until after Lampozhnya.’

  It was then, Chancellor afterwards realized, that his decision was really taken to make the trip to Lampozhnya: the long, hard journey to the winter fair in the north, where men could see fire and ice on the same firebrand. And afterwards, also, he realized how much of that decision lay at the man Hislop’s door.

  Returned, he told Killingworth, and, in Lymond’s absence, Alec Guthrie in the large house he and his fellows occupied when not out of Moscow. He had known Killingworth would easily be persuaded. He would take Christopher with him, and induce Richard Grey to leave the counting-house at Kholmogory. They needed train oil, and furs of a fresh killing. Why wait for them to come to Kholmogory, when one could buy them at Lampozhnya, straight off the sledge? Lane and Killingworth had their charter and the protection of the Voevoda’s establishment. They did not need his help to set up their warehouses and supervise the new house the Tsar was giving them at St Maxim’s, next to the Romanov palace.