The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  The chosen joined the small procession.

  And so he drinks and sways

  And looking at his valet, says

  ‘O youthful valet,

  Will you remain faithful to me?’

  The chorus rose and fell through the air. Vishnevetsky smiled, stopping beside Slata Baba. ‘I do not see your Venceslas. Is this the eagle?’

  ‘Venceslas does not go to war. This is the golden eagle. Perhaps you will hunt her with me later. Or have you had hunting enough?’

  They were inside the tent. On the hide floor rugs had been laid, Turkish-style, and Lymond and his guest dropped to sit on a long woollen bolster, surrounded by cushions. On these, Guthrie, Hoddim and Best ranged themselves in silence, sliding the shubas from their shoulders. Vodka was brought. Prince Vishnevetsky, brightly knowing, waited until his beaker was full and, raising it, toasted his host before he answered. ‘You observe we have prisoners.’

  ‘I observe you have Tartar women,’ said Lymond. ‘So you found the yurt.’

  ‘I found the yurt,’ the Lithuanian said. ‘It was fifteen miles to the south.’

  The Turkish Sultan sends for Baida

  And with flattery speaks to him.

  ‘Baida, so young, so glorious

  Become a loyal knight to me,

  Take my daughter’s hand

  You will reign supreme throughout the land!’

  Guthrie caught Hoddim’s eye. Without speech, Best knew what he meant to convey. The yurt was the moveable city, the heart of the nomadic horde. The Tartar tents, made of wattle and hide, were set on carts which spread over the steppe like a township, drawn by a thousand camels or more from pasture to pasture; set at night into streets swarming with women and children, chickens and cattle. By day the men hunted; shooting, fishing, hawking wild horses, raiding and stealing, for the Tartar had no money and no means of livelihood save barter, nor any art or science save war. And behind in the yurt, the women flayed the horsemeat and dried it, and sewed the sheepskins they wore, and milked the mares for the strong drink they lived on, while the old men taught the children to shoot, and denied them what food the yurt held, until they had hit the true mark.

  From the yurt had come the menfolk that yesterday the Voevoda’s army had slaughtered. Without their young men, it was unlikely the tribe would survive. And Vishnevetsky, neatly forestalling Lymond, had delivered the death blow. He said, ‘They had made a few raids. You would have been amazed. There was gold in the wagons, and one of the Ataman’s daughters was wearing sapphires.’

  ‘Have you brought her?’ Lymond asked.

  ‘No. She was ill-favoured. You need not wonder long why their maidens wear linen over their mouths, and breeches to muffle their ankles, or why the Tartar would link with a man or a horse as soon as a boy or a woman. The wives are not all as your formidable Turkish beauty.’

  ‘Greco-Italian,’ Lymond said. ‘But you have found some wenches worth keeping?’

  ‘Oh Sultan! Your religion is cursed

  And your daughter is a wretch.’

  The Sultan summons his guards.

  ‘Take Baida, and tie him securely,

  And hang him on a hook by his ribs.’

  Baida hangs not one night nor an hour

  Nor a day or two.

  The Lithuanian shrugged. ‘My men are content. Like the butcher’s hounds, they will eat anything.’ He emptied the silver beaker and leaned back, a long limbed, vivid, malicious young man with a cleft chin and soft, chestnut moustache. ‘Do you hear them throwing taunts at one another, your army and mine? How long since your men had a woman?’

  Baida hangs and reflects,

  Thinking of his young valet

  And his jet-black horse.

  Target of the dancing black eyes, neither of Lymond’s men offered anything. From his life in Turkey perhaps the Voevoda seemed more at ease than any save Vishnevetsky on the low, cushioned seat. Holding his cup on one knee, he studied it and not the Lithuanian, although his unsoftened face held somewhere the faint deepened grooves of amusement. His expedition to the north had brought about no change Best could see in the Tsar Ivan’s favourite. He remained spare and sharp and deadly as the claws of his eagle. And as he did not at once reply, Dmitri Vishnevetsky added something, in a soft voice, to his question. ‘And how long has the Voevoda remained uncomforted?’

  Lymond smiled. He looked up, catching the eye of his servant, and then as the vodka was poured, turned the chilly blue eyes on Baida. ‘I gather that I am about to be signally favoured. I take it the other problem has already been solved.’

  Vishnevetsky gave a brief shout of laughter. ‘You are right. There are fifty women between my five thousand: some will go hungry, and by God, we have none for your rutting pigs. My men have fought an action today. They need twelve hours’ indulgence. Take your troops down the Dnieper, and we will catch you up before you are free of the ice floes.’

  ‘And the women?’ said Lymond.

  ‘Oh young and faithful valet!

  Lend me a supple bow

  And a quiver of arrows,

  For I see three pigeons,

  I’ll kill them for the Sultan’s daughter.’

  When he fired—he shot the Sultan,

  And the queen in the nape of the neck

  And the princess in the head.

  ‘They will be no problem,’ Baida said.

  Then the talk turned to Ochakov and how to so singe Devlet Girey and his horde that Moscow and Lithuania both might be spared his attacks in the summer.

  They talked a long time, and ate, and Guthrie and Hoddim, when permitted, gave their cogent and less than subservient opinions, and Robert Best listened. And when the plan of campaign was completed, Lymond had the final word. ‘We avoid the Turks, and we take no Turkish prisoners.’

  ‘What?’ Dmitri Vishnevetsky, as the song ran, had drunk deeply of liquor, but he was not so far confused as to let this stricture pass. ‘Are you crazy? A kidnapped Pasha will fetch thirty thousand pieces of gold in ransom.’

  Lymond said coolly, ‘A kidnapped Pasha will be returned by the Tsar to the Sultan. I regret it as you do. But I gave this undertaking before I left Moscow.’

  Vishnevetsky stood up, swaying slightly and smiling. ‘As the Tsar’s Tsaritsa, you give undertakings. The Tsar is not my master.’

  The jibe made no impression. ‘He pays me and my Cossacks,’ Lymond said. He had not risen, nor were the small graven rings of his armour, each with its legend of faith, in the slightest disturbed. ‘Who pays yours?’

  The Lithuanian stood without moving. Then throwing back his smooth chin, he gave a great bellow. ‘Why, my sickly Sigismund surely. My great king and his courtiers, who spend their time in dancing and masks, and not in war with the Tartars. Who … what does Kurbsky say? Who stuff their gullets and bellies with costly buns and marzipans, pouring down wines as into leaky casks, and in their drunkenness promise not only to capture Moscow and Constantinople, but even if the Turk were in the sky, to drag him down with their enemies …’

  Pleasantly, Lymond’s voice took him up. ‘… who lie on their beds between thick down quilts, and get up barely alive and racked with’ drunken headaches, so timorous and exhausted by their wives that on news of invasion they shut themselves up in their fortresses, and put on armour and sit at table before their cups and tell tales to their drunken women: drinking from great full alabaster jugs …’

  ‘… filled not with wine but with the very blood of Christians. I came without the King’s sanction,’ said Vishnevetsky. ‘You guessed as much.’

  ‘And need the goodwill of Moscow,’ said Lymond.

  ‘When we have scoured Ochakov of its filth, I shall have it,’ the Lithuanian said.

  ‘And if you bring back Turkish prisoners,’ Lymond said calmly, ‘you will forfeit it. Your mother is of the blood of the Tsaritsa Anastasia and you are of the appanaged princes of Yaroslavl, but you will forfeit it. Be quite sure of that.’

  The Prince Vishne
vetsky regarded him with an attempt at a frown. ‘As the Tsar himself was told on a famous occasion, the fulfilment of unwise promises, Voevoda, is not acceptable to God.’

  ‘But,’ said Lymond, ‘we are not speaking of God. We are speaking of the Tsar of all Russia. And there was talk, what is more, about comfort …?’

  Best had forgotten the exchange about women. He saw the prince’s handsome face break into laughter, and he stepped to the door of the tent and gave someone a command. Best did not see the girl when they brought her, for he was invited to leave while Guthrie and the rest made their dispositions for immediate marching, and shortly afterwards Baida also appeared from Lymond’s tent and prepared his Cossacks, as the rest left, to make camp for the day with their booty.

  The last thing Best heard, as he found his horse and prepared with the others to move, was the final stanza of that mocking, rollicking song:

  ‘Take that, O Sultan!

  For chastising Baida.

  You should have known

  How to punish him.

  You should have cut off his head,

  And buried his body,

  Taken and ridden his jet-black horse

  And given your affection to the boy.’

  That night they made their last camp on land before taking again to the Dnieper. Robert Best, healthily tired, snored his way through the night and did not hear the scuffle and cry from the principal tent, which brought the guard running, to halt as the Voevoda appeared in the candlelit doorway, unhurt, unamused and fully dressed as they had seen him last. He surveyed them, commended their speed, and sent them for Ludovic d’Harcourt.

  Off duty, the former Knight of St John was asleep reprehensibly in his small-clothes: by the time he had flung on tunic and breech hose and boots, Lymond was in no mood to be gracious. D’Harcourt received the unpleasant dressing-down he knew he deserved for lying unprepared in the land of the enemy, no matter how recently vanquished, and then was bidden to go into the tent and dispose of what he would find there.

  What he found there was a dead Tartar girl, still clothed, but with her veil ripped back from her face. She lay among the cushions where Rob Best’s powerful haunches had so lately rested, and she had been stabbed to the heart.

  Rising from his knees, he looked round at Lymond, who had picked a finely chased knife from the floor and was carefully wiping it. From the turquoises on the hilt, d’Harcourt recognized it as the Voevoda’s own.

  ‘She tried to kill me,’ Lymond said. ‘Outraged maidenhood perhaps, but I doubt it. I rather think I have had a little gift from Prince Vishnevetsky. But I should not like anyone to lose confidence in me or in him. The less known about this episode the better, which is why I have sent for you. Mr Guthrie isn’t interested in women, and neither is Plummer, for different reasons. Mr Hoddim’s legal conscience would trouble him and poor Mr Blacklock is not yet strong enough, I feel, to make the thing plausible. So——’

  ‘Mr Hislop?’ said d’Harcourt woodenly.

  The uncomfortable blue eyes opened fully on his. ‘The sparrows know it, so why should it be hidden from me that Hislop has a Tartar wench at Kitaigorod? So you will roll her in the rug she is blemishing, and dispose of her how you will, provided that it is secretly, and sufficiently far from this tent. She is a murderess, and a heretic, an upholder of the faith you took vows to destroy. It appears therefore to be a task which befits you better than any other. Don’t you agree?’

  Ludovic d’Harcourt did not answer. But he did as he was told, and most efficiently, so that soon the Voevoda’s tent was vacant and ordered once more, and the Voevoda was able to retire, as he preferred, without company; but with the final verse of the Song of Baida remaining, freakishly repeating itself in his mind.

  You should have known

  How to punish him.

  You should have cut off his head,

  And buried his body,

  Taken and ridden his jet-black horse

  And given your affection to the boy.

  But of that, naturally, he said nothing at all to his underlings.

  Chapter 13

  The combined armies of the Voevoda Bolshoia and Prince Dmitri Vishnevetsky sailed down the Dnieper, causing damage to every major settlement on the way, and finally raided the Tartar stronghold of Ochakov, lying in the spring sunshine on the Euxinian Sea to the west of the Crimean Peninsula. Using fire, using decoys, employing the cannon concealed in their carts, they felled ramparts and broke wooden walls, killed and looted, freed prisoners and took them and confounded the violent defence of the enemy with all these and one measure more—the touch of flamboyant genius, the unexpected exploitation of the obvious which was the mark of St Mary’s. Into the streets of Ochakov, where the children screamed and the scimitars flashed through the swaying strings of dried fish, all furred and buzzing with flies, Lymond released a double cartload of swine, the abomination of the Musselman, and set the Streltsi firing their hackbuts over their heads.

  The Khan of the Krim Tartars was not taken, and not a tenth of his horde was lost in the raid: the numbers to achieve that needed a different season and a different campaign. But that night, in his round reeded house on the steppes, Devlet Girey prostrated himself on his carpet, and tears from his hollow eyes sank into his beard as he mourned his dead, and promised vengeance, and considered, gnawing his lips, the new offence and the new menace offered by Moscow.

  Far to the north, on their way home, the combined armies of Russian and Cossack raced across the fresh grass of the steppes, hunting, singing and shouting in a clamour of wind-pipe, drum and brass while their banners flew reeling across the endless blue skies of the Chernoziom.

  They were on the verge of the riches of spring, when deer and antelope would run to the bow, and wild boars frequent the thicket, and foxes and beavers. When the stork would come back and geese and heron, swan and pheasant and partridge would stand in the brush, when honey would spill through the trees and there would be pike and perch, tench, roach and carp free to take in the unfrozen rivers, and the birchwoods would smell fresh and sweet under the melting spring sun, and the nightingale sing.

  Riding north, through the sharp wind and the light warming sun, the conquering armies felt the quivering change of the season. They rode bare-headed, thrusting off helmet and shuba, so that their mail tunics sparkled like river water and the ikons gave off great flashes, as if angel were speaking to angel, under the striding sword of St George.

  The leaders hunted, Lymond with Slata Baba behind him, murmuring to her as he unstruck and drew off her hood, praising her with his voice as he fed her her bloody reward, watching her, head thrown back, as she stooped and struck and returned, perfectly manned, to stand behind him again with her half-mantled wings. ‘For the first reason,’ Lymond said to nobody in particular, ‘is that hunting causeth a man to eschew the Seven Deadly Sins.’

  Then at night they made camp and the races began, and the contests on horseback, and the gambling round the fires with the small dice, like the English, flipped over the thumb, as booty changed hands, and bedfellows. For they had free people among them: Russians and Cossacks who had been slaves to the Turks, and captive Tartars: a chief or two, with a fiat face and a beard, and his black hair allowed to grow curling over his ears, unlike the polled heads of inferiors. These had earrings, which they would sell for a supper, and long, pleatless Hungarian coats, not unlike the Russians’ own, but buttoned Tartar-style to the left. There were horses and camels, bales of silk and strange eastern spangles, as well as young Tartar girls by the score. There was plenty to gamble for.

  Mesmerized, Robert Best watched it: watched how far licence was permitted, and when Lymond chose to send round Guthrie, or Hoddim, or one of his newly trained captains and touch the wilder forces back into order again. Eating with the rest of St Mary’s in their neat tent on one such night, he found Danny Hislop’s pale eyes on him, gleaming. ‘Not,’ said Danny, ‘the way in which the 13th Lord Grey of Wilton would care to arrange it. Bu
t you cannot expect an untaught people to be wrenched from their toys in a twelvemonth. It is not quite the Bacchanal that it looks.’

  A shout, splitting the night, arose from that part of the camp where Prince Vishnevetsky’s pavilion stood. His song, in quavering chorus, had accompanied them, fragmented, all the way from Ochakov.

  In the market place of the Khanate

  Baida drinks his mead …

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Robert Best.

  ‘The Prince,’ said Danny Hislop agreeably, ‘is, you will accept, a law to himself. Like Caesar, a cock for all hens. Have you seen the Cossacks dancing?’

  ‘Like witches’ get on their hunkers,’ said Fergie Hoddim. ‘With all yon leg-jerking and spinning. It’s not natural. They’ll do themselves a disservice. And the lowping!’

  ‘You should try it,’ said Guthrie. ‘You’ll be getting as fat as a sty-pig, full of sour milk and malt, and d’Harcourt will have to discover a fast for you. I think we need some night marches.’

  ‘Do you? So do I,’ Lymond said from the door, and sat down without ceremony as servants closed around him, Best saw, swiftly bringing washing water and towel, beer and mead and vodka in snow-clouded flagons, and the first platters of meat. Lymond said, ‘I think we shall allow them a day more of sport, and then begin some forced marches. Devlet Girey is unlikely to trouble Moscow, but other mischief is not slow to breed.’

  Hislop said, ‘You will disappoint your friend Baida.’

  ‘My friend Baida is leaving us shortly anyway,’ Lymond said. ‘He is planning to build a fort on the island of Khortitsa, below the Dnieper cataracts, to be a base against the Turks and the Tartars this summer.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Lancelot Plummer.

  ‘Without our interference, helpful or otherwise,’ Lymond said. ‘He has virtually committed himself to transferring allegiance from Sigismund-August to the Tsar, but his vanity on no account must be offended. Does anyone know how many women he actually has in his tent?’