The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Nepeja was different. Through all the rescue he had prayed, his voice rising and falling, his hands working on the great silver crucifix, his forehead beating the sand. Now, in the little stone room given him in Alec Fraser’s brave manor, he took to his bed and only clambered out of it to peer at the weather, and rub his hands at the fire and attack Lymond, whenever he opened the door, with questions and anxieties, accusations and complaints.

  It was understandable enough. He had been told he was coming to London; he had expected to arrive, richly dressed and primed with gifts, with his merchandise in chest and barrel behind him. What was he to understand, knowing nothing of the sea, of a nation which, far from achieving these things, cast him naked on the shores of a different country and made of him, it seemed, not an ambassador but a beggar?

  And to all these outbursts, Lymond was patient. Patient as he was not when the night before, wandering half-slept up and down their big room, Robert Best had stopped and said, stupidly, ‘I am the only one left. All the freighting of those bloody cargoes. The lists and the invoices, the account books and ciphers, the notes and charts and letters of privilege. All the stuff that we bought in Pskov and Novgorod and Moscow and Lampozhnya; the furs we worried about, the tallow we thought had too great a foot, the honey we haggled over … even Brook’s cargo we took on at Vardȯ … all of them gone. The seamen gone to the bottom, with all they could teach of the coast. The new compass, the new astrolabe, the man the Tsar knows and trusts, lost and gone. Lost and lost and lost and lost … and no one to tell of it. No one knows it but me. My God, I’m the only one left!…’

  And his voice, rising and rising, had snapped like a stalk, for Lymond, standing cold-eyed before him, had struck him full on the face. And then, with a thrust of both hands had made him collapse on the floor, where he sat, his face livid, staring up at the Voevoda Bolshoia who said, ‘You are an adult Englishman, I believe. Then act like one,’ and walked away.

  But Best did not break down again. Nor did anyone else.

  So, in private and derisive challenge to the unmannerly fates, Lymond wrote the letter the Laird of Philorth was to dispatch, notifying the world of the end of the third Muscovy voyage, and in the same temper signed it. And thus on the second dawn after the wreck, riding on an uneven road through a night black with wind and arched with a glittering frenzy of stars came Richard Crawford of Culter, and saw the forty-foot grey castle of Philorth, with its new keep and round tower rising from its green mound, and the white running light of its stream, spilling through the short marshy grass to the dunes and between the rocks to be lost in the sea.

  What made him look to the sea, he never afterwards knew, unless his eye was drawn by that trickle of sweet running water, and the noise it made in the silence of sunrise, against the spaced hiss of the waves and the wind sound, never wholly expended, as of a man whistling absently now and then, high and low, soft and loud, through his teeth with a muffled orchestration behind it like kettledrums beating dried out by distance.

  He looked to the beach and saw, far off, a man standing there; and without knowing why, stopped his servants, turned his horse and, alone, set out towards him.

  The grass was bright yellow-green and caulked underfoot with brown mud, from other horses and Philorth’s black cattle. Behind it the rain-wet beach was the colour of pastry, with the sea beyond, white against grey, and a paler grey sky flat and heavy above.

  It had been, until now, a mild autumn. There were still, here and there, the tall white heads of angelica, and starry fool’s parsley, as well as club rush and deer’s grass and the wide leaves of plantain. There was, somewhere, a small budding of gorse and he had seen, coming, a single harebell and some soiled, green-eyed daisies. The wind still blew, sending light leapfrogging through the short grass, and the bearded dune grasses ahead stood combed, like a fine Arab’s mane. But it was not the wind of two nights ago, bemusing the nostrils with its uneven force, exposing the thin pain of face nerves, the icy ache of cheek flesh and the flanks of the nose, the aching seizure, like cramp, in the fingers. A crow passed, planing, like a still, triangular rag and he thought, suddenly, that the man on the beach had moved also, and vanished.

  Then he saw, rounding a bluff, that this was not so. He was still there, far across the grainy dark peach-coloured sand, resting in a coign of dune and grey rock, his hands round his knees, his face quite still, turned to the sea. An oyster-catcher, which had risen, piping, settled again at the water’s edge in a flash of black and scarlet and white and began its angular walk. Richard, dismounting, tied his reins to a gorse bush and walked also, across the heavy sand, to that unreal figure.

  Half-way there, a touch of his normal common sense returned to him and he slowed down, wondering what exchange of courtesies he was going to offer a vagabond, an Abram man, or an idiot. Then the man turned his head and Richard saw that he was none of these things. That the frieze cloak he wore was rich, and fell back from the silk of a high-collared tunic; that his hair, flicked by the wind, was yellow as mustard and the shadowless face, faintly engraved upon and tired as cered linen, was indeed that of Francis his brother.

  Lymond did not move. His head lifted, watching, showed no conventional welcome; his brows, cloudily drawn, suggested the weight of something so firmly extinguished that nothing was left, in thought or expression, save a curious air, part of resignation, part of defiance which had to do, perhaps, with his stillness. Only the edge of his cloak stirred tardily, with his inaudible breathing. His parted lips closing, Richard Crawford came to a halt and stood, looking down at his brother.

  ‘There is not a soul but over it is a keeper,’ Lymond said. ‘Welcome, brother.’

  You cannot embrace a seated man whose long sleek hands, broken with callouses, remain strictly clasped round his knees, and whose two open eyes are discs of smooth blue enamel. Richard stood where he was and said simply, ‘Thank God you’re back. And safe.’ And then, moved beyond pride, dropped on one knee.

  Lymond’s face warned him off. The repudiation, though he did not move, was as stark as if he had jumped to his feet, coldly incredulous. Shocked, Richard said abruptly, ‘Are you ill?’

  With care, Lymond changed his position. It was not a retreat, but the space between them undoubtedly widened. It made it possible for Richard to move in his turn, and finding a stock of grey rock, to sit on it, with a stone from the beach to employ him. He had picked it up before he found it was fractured; an eggshell guillotined by its fellows, to show a quartz yolk of glistening olive.

  ‘I must apologize,’ Lymond said. ‘One is afflicted with a certain enjambment of silence. Before our miscarriage at sea, we were accustomed to living like cormorants.’

  ‘Is that why you are here?’ Richard said.

  ‘That is why I am here. The nest is rather full, with a great deal of bill-snapping. It is a little like Ramadan. At the appearance of the first star nothing but gluttony, drunkenness and lust. Brechin will be rotten with pox.’

  ‘I was at Dunnottar. Did you know?’ Richard said.

  ‘No. I had, perhaps, a premonition,’ Lymond said. ‘The wonderful celerity of hasting nature. And here you are.’

  He was, of course, very tired still and looked it; the voyage, wreck apart, would overtax any man’s endurance. But that didn’t account for quite everything. Richard said bluntly, ‘I thought I should be welcome.’

  ‘I have fallen out of the habit of talking to brothers,’ Lymond said. ‘Is the Earl Marischal sending a courier to Edinburgh?’

  ‘Yes. And a party north, some time today. They will see the two men you mention on their way south to London, and arrange to conduct the Ambassador by easy stages to Edinburgh. The Queen Dowager will wish to see him. In any case, there will be some legal formalities to do with the wreck and the cargo. Is there a guard on her?’

  ‘On the Edward? Of a sort,’ Lymond said. ‘Most of it has probably gone. And pace the Muscovy Company, it would be a benign gesture not to pursue it too heartily. The
fishermen gave up a good deal of their time on the night of the wreck at my instance, looking for Chancellor.’

  He had heard the name before. ‘The new English pilot. A pity that,’ Richard said.

  Lymond’s fair brows shot up, in a way suddenly and sharply familiar. ‘He died in tender years, but ripe in grace. And conducted to heaven these his sailors, being drawn to enjoy these celestial waters which God hath granted to the faithful. At least we don’t have to bury them.’

  The edge, suddenly, was back, with all the hurtfulness he remembered so well. Richard said, ‘I hear you killed Graham Malett.’

  Lymond opened his lips before he spoke. ‘Eventually,’ he said.

  ‘And saved one of the two boys he had taken. Don’t you want to know how your son is?’ said Richard.

  ‘Since Moscow is in the same planet as Philippa, I know how my son is,’ Lymond said. ‘At least, she sent me a letter. If he were dead, I imagine she would have mentioned it in the first sentence.’

  Richard stared at his brother. ‘Philippa’s mother has him, at Flaw Valleys. They’re at Midculter on a visit, just now. He is all that any man would want his son to be. My God, Francis, you gave a year of your life towards finding him. He has the exact Crawford colouring.’

  ‘Egg mimicry,’ said Lymond. ‘How many more of yours have you hatched?’ He had loosened his hands and was delving his long, ruined fingers through the sand of the beach, scattered with immaculate shells and small sharp stones of all colours. Lower down, nearer the sea, lay the shining thick satin scarves and maypole confusion of seaweed ribbons: bright green; strong sage yellow; with great bronchial branches of tube and artery, five feet long. Beyond that, the profiled waves, bearded like trolls, came riding black to the shore.

  ‘I have another son,’ Richard said. ‘Three children in all. Mariotta is well. Sybilla is not.’

  Lymond said, ‘Did Philippa get her divorce?’

  There was a little pause. Then Richard said, ‘That was crude, for you.’

  ‘But as you will find,’ said Lymond softly, addressing the sand, ‘I am a very crude man. Did she get her divorce?’

  The hammer strokes of fear, soft and regular as he had felt them at Dunnottar, began to beat in Richard’s chest. Now, he schooled his pleasant brown face and guarded his eyes as Lymond no longer needed to do, and said, in a voice of which he was not ashamed, ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘Moscow and Philippa being, although on the same planet, some small distance apart, the most recent news,’ Lymond said, ‘has escaped me. The Lennoxes were trying to interfere, I rather gathered.’

  ‘You will have to look higher than that,’ Richard said. ‘The culprit for the moment is Pope Paul IV. There is a test case on foot in the Vatican.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Lymond said, with mild irritation. After a moment, he added, ‘All right. You may as well tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know how much you know,’ said Richard. Resentment, fear, desperation seemed to shadow all they said. He pushed them aside, looking out at the grey moving sea with its looping of foam; the even, grey sky curtained by hanging dark vapours of storm-air. He said, ‘There is a truce in being, signed nine months ago, between the King of France and the Emperor Charles. It is supposed to last for five years, but it may be broken already, for all I know. Already France has formed a defensive league with the Duke of Ferrara and the new Pope, Pope Paul, the Caraffa, who is eighty years old and loathes Spaniards.’

  ‘The scum of the earth,’ Lymond said. ‘… the spawn of Jews and Moors, now the masters of Italy, who had been known only as its cooks …?’

  ‘So he has said,’ Richard agreed. ‘France is ready for war. Or at least, the de Guises want it, if the Constable does not. And if France wants to invade Naples and take back the old Angevin inheritance, she could hardly have a better opening than now, with a Pope strongly antagonistic to Spain, and the Empire ruled not by Charles, but this sluggish, inexperienced Prince.…’

  ‘So the Emperor has abdicated?’ Lymond said. ‘And left Spain and the Netherlands and Sicily and Spain to the noble Philip, Queen Mary’s husband? Then I should guess he has not been back to England.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘The Emperor left in the autumn, after putting off the abdication for a year. Philip is in Brussels, supposedly bound by the truce, facing the Pope’s little league with King Henri and consulting the theologians, they say, on how to wage a defensive war against the Pope. In fact, he’s done rather more. The Duke of Alva is outside Rome already, with twelve thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse and twelve artillery pieces, and the city is waiting in panic.’

  ‘Defended by?’

  ‘Monluc and your friend Piero Strozzi. The truce is a farce. The French army is ready. They have been withdrawing troops from Scotland all autumn. Senarpont, they say, is gathering men at Boulogne to attack Calais and your other old compère Lord Grey of Wilton.’

  ‘And England?’ Lymond asked.

  ‘Waiting, as ever, for Philip to come. He has promised, I hear, to cross over at Lent. Spain wants the Queen of England to crown him, and declare war on France if the French won’t observe the peace. The Queen, they say, has decided that if the truce is broken and the Low Countries attacked, she will stand by the old treaty Henry VIII made with the Emperor. That is, she will supply horse and foot without actually engaging in war.’

  ‘An honourable, if lunatic proposition,’ Lymond said. ‘And if she does, will her people follow her? What of the religion?’

  ‘Pole is Archbishop of Canterbury. The burnings go on. Mostly of theologians or people of humble position: the rest were given early warning to fly off to Geneva or Strasburg; some had gone there long before. The bishops have sent a hundred or two to the stake. At the same time, thirteen hundred Lutherans and Anabaptists have been cremated in Holland.… There was a plot against the Queen in the spring, but it was betrayed months beforehand. To rob the Treasury and establish Elizabeth as Queen, married to Edward Courtenay. In which case, she would have been a widow by this time.’

  Lymond said sharply, ‘Courtenay is dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Richard slowly. ‘The only male claimant to the throne. He died in September in Padua.’

  ‘I see,’ Lymond said. He was looking out to sea, where a gull was soaring with white, knuckled wings, but his eyes did not see it. ‘And the lady Elizabeth?’

  ‘Is at Hatfield. There was a fuss in the summer, over some seditious papers found in her house. Some of her staff were arrested, and her household has been organized and staffed by the Queen. Since then it has been quiet. Since the hopes of a child heir have vanished, the marriage plans for Madam Elizabeth have been fairly constant, of course. The current one is to link her with Philip’s cousin, the Duke of Savoy. They suggested the Archduke Ferdinand, but the French Ambassador said that if they went ahead with it, they would marry the child Mary Queen of Scotland to Courtenay.’

  ‘Before or after his death?’ said Lymond with unexpected savagery. He added, ‘You realize you have told me nothing about my lisping child-bride and her tedious divorce?’

  ‘Oh. Yes,’ said Richard. ‘One of the objects of the truce was to allow the ransoming of prisoners of war. After haggling for months, the Constable of France got his son back, to find that, while in prison, he had fallen in love with a lady and married her.’

  ‘It happens,’ Lymond said. ‘More frequently in prison than out.’

  ‘Quite. Except that the Constable had been at great pains to affiance the young man to the King of France’s illegitimate daughter, with all the honours and recognition that implied.’

  ‘Did it?’ said Lymond.

  ‘If your father is the King of France,’ Richard said. ‘So there arises the matter of a divorce. The marriage between the young lady and the Constable’s son has not been consummated.’

  ‘So they say,’ Lymond said. ‘Do you believe Philippa?’

  For a moment, Richard was silent. Then he said, ‘Naturally. So does her mother
.’

  ‘I thought you would believe her,’ Lymond said. ‘Yes? Well? You had got to “consummated”.’

  ‘So it is to be placed before a public convocation of cardinals, and on the current mood of the Pope will depend the outcome of their marriage and yours.… Why do you do that?’ said Richard. ‘You know we believe Philippa.’

  ‘Perhaps I envy her,’ Lymond said. ‘No one believes me.’

  ‘Not even Kiaya Khátún?’ Richard said.

  Lymond’s eyes, surprised and informed with pure malice, swung back from mid-ocean contemplation. ‘And what do you know about that? You astonish me, Richard.’

  ‘Only that you took her to Russia. Or so Philippa says.’

  ‘It was the other way about. But of course you are right. Kiaya Khátún is of the happy family circle.’

  ‘You didn’t marry her!’ said Richard sharply.

  ‘No! No,’ said Lymond soothingly. ‘All but the ceremony. We hope to have the four children legitimized.’

  For a moment, with sinking heart, Richard believed him. Then he saw the look on Lymond’s face, and found he could bear it even less. He got to his feet, stiff and unslept, with all the weariness of the night suddenly upon him. ‘At least,’ he said, ‘you are back.’

  And if he had been looking at his brother’s face then, which he was not, he would have seen worn into the bones a burden identical to his own, which rested a moment and then was as swiftly banished. Lymond, rising also, stood for a moment, contemplating the brightening sky. From nondescript grey, the shell-rim of each turning wave had sharpened into a deep peacock green: the distant sea, tweeded and slubbed with frantic white, lay brown on the horizon. Lymond said, ‘While Best is away, I shall have to be Nepeja’s interpreter and act with the Queen as his principal. I have no hopes of private exchanges. Nor, with the life I lead, would it be suitable. When you go back, I should like you to tell them.’

  Face to face, they were the same height: one middle-aged and heavily built; the other light to the point of attenuation. ‘Tell whom?’ said Richard harshly.