Chancellor stood up rather carefully, his black-bearded face stolid. ‘Having seen how the first fared, I had rather forget it.’
Lymond lifted his eyebrows. ‘God hateth murder.’
Chancellor said, ‘Punishment is one thing. Foul retribution is another. I can guess how Konstantin will try to drag the truth from that man.’
‘I doubt if you can,’ Lymond said. ‘In some directions the Russian is peculiarly inventive. The Tsar, however, would have been more whimsical still. I take it you mean to sleep, or do you intend to hold wassail till morning?’
If Lymond was minded to be corrosive, Chancellor, blind with weariness, was not minded to match him. He caught Grey’s eye, and stooping to gather up the stained remnants of his outdoor clothing, he dragged his feet to the door and, with the other man, entered with relief the warm, candlelit quiet of their own inner room. He glanced back once as he went, and saw that Lymond, alone, had already forgotten him, and was welcoming with what looked like elaborate courtesy the shapeless, skin-padded figure which must be the Samoyèd Shaman and his interpreter. From which he deduced, without pleasure, that the lit de parade had no particular importance for Lymond, who had merely wished to discuss the knottier points of the Tsar’s compensation with the principal claimant in peace.
In that he was wrong. The two men entering the room might, to an onlooker, have seemed nervous. They were dressed in sewn tunics and breeches of deerskins, and both had the large head and broad olive face of the true Samoyèd, the eyes small and obliquely set; the chin smooth and beardless.
The younger and squatter of the two had pulled off his rough sleeveless fur and his hat, showing a crow’s wing of coarse, straight black hair down his cheek. The older, wearing a long coat of rubbed and stained sables, and a deep, shapeless hat of the same, made no move to disrobe but walked forward, quietly, until he was standing before the Voevoda Bolshoia. And although his manner, like the other’s, was alert and wary and to a degree diffident, there lay behind it something which was the reverse of diffidence, and which made it easy to look at him, and guess that here was the leader of his tribe. The door closed behind them and he stood and looked, without speaking, at Lymond.
For the first time since he had entered the hut, Lymond rose. He stood, his back to the wall, and said, ‘On the river …’ in English, and then, with an obvious effort, changed it to Russian. ‘On the river this evening, you saw the power of Slata Baba and spoke to me. You offered me help.’
The older man spoke. His voice, deep and grating, curried the silence: Chancellor, hearing the sound but not the words, shivered as he drew the bearskin over his shoulder. The interpreter, in stilted Russian, said, ‘We offer it still.’
There was an odd pause, during which the Voevoda was certainly searching for words. Then he said, also in Russian, ‘Then in the name of the respect I bear for your creed, and for the bird who carries in her the nobility of both your god and your race, I accept it.’
Then, since he could not stand any longer, nor find, groping, polysyllables of suitable majesty for any conceivable coda, the Voevoda Bolshoia of Russia subsided, not without grace, on his bed and from there, quite unwittingly, to the floor.
*
The foreign party slept late the next morning. The last thing Chancellor had heard, before sleep entirely claimed him, was a subdued bustle of some sort in the next room, and the resumption of the deep voice he had heard earlier: the Samoyèdes were taking time, it appeared, over their argument. The voice rose and fell, changed and modulated almost like music: it was extraordinarily soothing. Chancellor thought, vaguely, that he must learn the language and then, even more vaguely, that it must be simple, to need no interpreter.
He wished the Voevoda well from the monologue and there entered his mind, like a foul taste, the thought of Aleksandre, and what at this moment was happening to him. Then the thick, undulating voice claimed his thoughts, and led him soon wholly to slumber.
When he finally stumbled into the outer room half-way through the next morning, Lymond was sitting fully dressed in clean clothes on his mattress with pen, ink and a litter of papers spread all around him. He looked, as Richard Grey looked, like cheese lightly set in the chissel. A linen pad showed discreetly above one rim of his high stiffened collar, and there was another dressing in the thick of his hair. Chancellor said, ‘We may find it difficult to explain the quality of the ale in Lampozhnya.’
The look he received was wide, pure and cool as the ice. ‘I am in no discomfort at all,’ Lymond said, ‘and so do not qualify, I fear, for the olive branch. Konstantin has just reported that the captain Aleksandre unfortunately failed to recover from questioning.’
Chancellor’s bearded cheek jumped as his teeth came together. He said, ‘So the next captain is Konstantin.’
‘It was the inherent danger in the arrangement,’ Lymond said with a trace of regret. ‘I come to thee, little water-mother, with head bowed and repentant. So such exquisite knowledge of the hellish squadrons of Lennox is denied us.’ He paused. ‘On another matter. You have heard of the Stroganovs?’
Richard Chancellor stared back at him and felt suddenly quite exhausted.
He had heard of the Stroganovs. On the journey north, the meeting between Lymond and Yakob Stroganov, whose father Onyka had established the forty-year-old saltworks at Solvychegodsk, had not escaped Chancellor. He knew, from hearsay, that the family traded with the Samoyèdes, far beyond the River Ob. He even knew that his brother, Gregory Anikiev Stroganov, had established some kind of trading-post on the River Kama in Permia, where dogs carried bales and drew sledges, and men ground roots for their bread, and the white rind of fir trees. He had not expected, in the short span of time now left him, to be able to meet them and question them.
Not until now, when he heard Lymond calmly arranging a meeting for their last day in Lampozhnya. And even then, he disbelieved it until next day he came in with Grey from their huckstering, and entering Lymond’s room, saw the burly, grey-haired man in fine furs sitting at ease there, and was introduced to Gregory Stroganov.
Afterwards, he wondered at his surprise, for the Tartar yurts of the Siberian princes were spread far and wide beyond the Pechora, and although many, like Ediger, owed the Tsar allegiance and tribute and many others, quarrelling among themselves, were glad to call the Tsar brother, there were still tribes like the heathen Votiaken who found it more tempting to raid rich Russian settlements than to share the problematical benefits of a ruler so far away.
Successful settlers brought Ivan rich dividends in furs and in salt. It was in his interest to protect his Siberian frontiers. And Lymond was his Voevoda Bolshoia.
So one could understand this meeting, which had brought Gregory Stroganov from his Permian home, and had already lasted, from the look of the empty tankards and strewn, crumpled papers, a good part of the day. Its purpose so far as the English were concerned was not immediately clear. Then Lymond, bringing more vodka and discoursing, in amiable fashion, on the distinguished nature of the navigator Chancellor’s public career and in his interest in the world’s unexplored quarters, led Stroganov to question Chancellor, politely, on his specific interests and allowed Chancellor, for thirty intense minutes, to ask all the questions whose answers he so burningly wanted to know. After that, by a means he witnessed with nothing but admiration, the talk turned insensibly to the discussion of iron.
Richard Grey, already intent, became avid. From Vologda to Moscow to Kholgomory had travelled the acrimonious letters, attempting to decide what course to follow about Russian iron. Their ore, smelted with charcoal, was less good than the Tula uklad, the Tartar steel they had found in small samples. None so far approached the quality of Persian forgers, who could make plates for light armour like silk, or the strength of a Turkish blade, which could cleave a skull to the brains like a mushroom. And yet London was desperate for cheap steel: had been in need of it for four years, since the Steelyard monopoly was abolished, and the price of German steel ros
e higher and higher. And here, to talk about iron, was one of the family who might know what was true and what fable of the tales they had heard of rich iron deposits, about copper and zinc, lead and tin lying far to the east.
Blandly, Gregory Stroganov told them what he knew: there was iron, in Karelia, Cargapolia, Ustug Thelesna, but imperfectly founded; there was silver and copper on the River Pechora, but little of it had so far made its way west. He said, ‘For good steel, we should fire it as the Voevoda tells me you do, with stone coal. But our workmen are ignorant. We need metallurgists to find our ores and show us best how to mine them. Men come from Germany, from Italy, and then they leave us. We need ironfounders to teach us how to refine the metal, and forge it. Then we would have the best and cheapest steel in the world.’
Richard Grey said, ‘Why shouldn’t the Company do it?’
‘Do what?’ Chancellor said. ‘Send founders and hammermen and refiners? We haven’t got them. We have to conduct half our business at Robertsbridge in French as it is.’
‘But not all of it,’ said Grey. ‘There are some ironmasters who would come. And what does Sir Henry Sidney expect for his steel—five or six pounds the firkin? We could freight it from Tula for four pounds, and make a profit if the quality were improved.’
He was deep in figures. Chancellor, the mathematician, left him to it, and in due course, having completed his business, Gregory Stroganov left, followed, after an ink-stained and well-lubricated interval, by Richard Grey, to close his affairs at Lampozhnya. Lymond, whose papers were already in order and cleared, offered the vodka jug once more, gravely, to Chancellor, who accepted it somewhat grimly. Lymond said, ‘I doubt if Sir Henry’s affairs will be seriously disturbed by an influx of steel gads from Muscovy.’
Diccon Chancellor took a long drink and stared at the other man. ‘So the Voevoda Bolshoia wishes help to create foundries,’ he said. ‘To make steel with the strength of the Persians’. Because the Tsar is going to ask me to send him shiploads of armour and weapons, and I am going to refuse.’
‘He is also going to ask you for an apothecary,’ Lymond said. ‘And we should like one of those. But I fear, as you say, that his hopes of munitions from England will return to him lame in both elbows. He will ask you for sulphur and lead and powder and saltpetre also. I hope you will be tactful.’
‘Or we shall not be allowed to take our goods out of the country?’ Chancellor said, descending to bluntness.
‘I don’t think you need fear that,’ Lymond said. ‘Unless you deal with him too curtly.’
Chancellor said, ‘I am hardly likely to do that. But what undertaking can I possibly make? The last time a party of skilled German workmen was about to travel to Muscovy, Livonia stopped it with the Emperor Charles’s backing. The Polish Ambassador has already been promised that no arms or military engineers will go to Russia. Sweden will feel the same. So will Cologne and Hamburg: England might find her own imports of weapons cut off. And Sigismund-August will continue to protest like clockwork, as you may well expect, against all such traffic to the Muscovites, enemy to all liberty under the heavens.’
Lymond, who had conducted the meeting sitting in comfort on his bed, closed his eyes and recited. ‘Our enemy is thus instructed by intercourse and made acquainted with our most secret counsels. We seemed hitherto only to vanquish him in this, that he was rude of arts and ignorant of policies. If so be that this trade shall continue, what shall be unknown to him? The Muscovite made more perfect in warlike affairs with engines of war and ships, will slay and make bound all that shall withstand him, which God defend. The author is Sigismund-August, the source is an excellent correspondent of mine in Venice.… I think you may promise the Tsar what you like, for I do not think for a moment that Mary Tudor will agree. The Tsar needs munitions, but he needs trade and communication with the west even more. By now the Company know this as well as I do. He may conceivably reduce your privileges, but the Tsar will never totally sever the bond, unless you anger him out of reason.’
Chancellor said, ‘Why tell me this? Even with the Company’s help, it will be a long time before your own cannon-founders and forgers can supply all the arms that you need.’
Lymond opened his eyes. ‘I wasn’t sure if you knew which way the wind was blowing. By the time you have your last interview with the Tsar, I shall be in the south with the army. When he puts the matter before you, as he is likely to do then, you will be ready to answer him softly. I shall not be there to help matters if you don’t.’
Chancellor said, ‘Is he mad?’ and received a long, half-veiled look he did not understand.
Then Lymond said, ‘No.’
There was a long and curious silence. Then Chancellor said, as if following a long explanation which had never been given, ‘But that is why you are staying.’
‘If the reasons for my staying,’ said Lymond, ‘could be said to have any but negative qualities, that is one of them.’
They left two days later, their business finished, their compensation paid and their debts discharged by the Voevoda himself; the God of Salaries, as he pointed out, his symbol a deer.
Their last act before leaving Lampozhnya was to attend the burial of one of the Christian Lapps of the sleigh race. It took place not as Chancellor had expected in some crypt or through some elaborate melting of ice, but consisted merely of a church service, followed by a procession in thick falling snow to the belfry with its flaring log roof and wide eaves.
Richard Chancellor walked there with Lymond beside him, while the crowd wept and howled, and the candles guttered and blew in the snow. In front, uncoffined, they carried their dead, grey and hard on a board, in the sheepskin tunic and cap, the crucifix and skin boots he was accustomed to wearing. And when they took him inside the belfry and lowered him stiff on his feet, Chancellor saw round him a leaning stack of dead and stony companions, staring out, head upon head at the living. And in the hand of each rigid monolith of humanity was clenched a scrap of birch bark for St Nicholas, affirming that this old wrinkled Lapp in his furs, that young Russian woman, this hairless baby, its half-made eyes open on nothing, had died devout and shriven in Christ.
‘Even in Moscow,’ Lymond said, ‘they store them like billets all winter, until in the spring each man takes his friend, and buries him. Before, the ground is too hard. It is the crown of dead men to see the sun before they are buried. Or so they say. And each has new shoes on his feet because, they say, he hath a great journey to go.’
‘I find no indignity there,’ Chancellor said. The belfry blessed, the wood doors were closing. ‘The soul has gone, and what is left is nothing but humbling. Although I should, like the Muscovites, prefer to see the sun before I am buried.’
‘And I,’ said Richard Grey in a voice of bottomless gloom, ‘should merely like to see the sun.’
His conversation, all the way back to Kholmogory, was about the ninety-foot tar house he hoped to build in Kholmogory, in which eight workmen would spin hemp into cables and hawsers: two to turn wheels and two to wind up, at seven pounds per annum per spinner. By the time they reached Pinega, he had decided that three boys would be sufficient for spinning. By the time they reached Kholmogory, he had convinced himself that five Russians would do just as well, and would cost less than seven pounds together.
Chancellor was not listening and neither, he suspected, was Lymond, who spent the journey writing and reading in the big sleighs, and did not travel on artach at all. For Chancellor was now aware that, after Kholmogory, his way and Lymond’s would part, and that he would not see the Voevoda again. With half his troop, Lymond was leaving for Moscow, while Chancellor waited behind at Kholmogory, helping Grey load the furs into their warehouse, and making dispositions against the arrival of his small fleet from England.
Konstantin and half his company were to remain behind here to protect him, and to escort him when the time came to Moscow, to consult for the last time with Killingworth, and to speak for the last time with the Tsar.
But by the time he had arrived at Moscow, Lymond would have left on his campaign against the Crimean Tartars. And by the time Lymond came north from that, Chancellor would be at St Nicholas with Robert Best and his son, preparing to sail home to England.
To sail home to ruin, and possibly death. He had been told at all costs to bring Francis Crawford home with him, and this he had not done. He knew that, so far as high-powered soliciting could make it, Philippa’s divorce from her spouse was secure. He knew that to bring Lymond home, even if it were possible, would involve extirpating a difficult and clever and dangerous man from his own chosen and brilliant setting, and throwing him instead into all the small, insidious intrigues which throttled the court of Queen Mary.
There was no place for him there or in Scotland, compared to the one he held in Russia. And although Diccon Chancellor once had thought, wistfully, of a land where likeminded friends might meet and might talk and might make new and astounding discoveries, free of fear, he knew that it was not to be found yet in England. And that if it were, and he brought Lymond to it, he might find that he had not brought to England the Francis Crawford who had talked in the church, or in the small wooden hut at Lampozhnya, but the man who had flailed Adam Blacklock, and who had had Aleksandre put to the torture. Who flew Slata Baba and lay with a corsair’s late mistress and who had become what he was by unceasing servility to his Tsar.
So, for all these reasons, he said farewell to Lymond without asking again for his company; without begging; without referring at all to the threat under which he now lay himself. Only he said, ‘You remember the message I brought you. Your wife and your wife’s mother were threatened. You made light of it when we met in the Troitsa. I have no reason to think you have changed your mind now. But when I return, I shall be asked for my answer.’
And Lymond, standing hat in one hand with his loaded sleigh waiting outside, said, ‘Philippa will have her divorce. Of that I am sure, and the danger to Kate will be gone. If you see them both, wish them both happy. As for Lady Lennox, you may give her my explicit refusal.… And when she has spoken to you, Master Chancellor, she will realize that she has the better part. You do not want me in England.’
The Ringed Castle Page 37
