The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘Oh, God!’ said Lymond explosively; and then, drawing breath, set himself to take hold again. ‘Look. It’s my fault. You’re falling asleep as you stand. But give me a moment. Sit down on that bloody rock for a minute, and let me try to explain. And listen to me as if I weren’t related. Can you make some sort of frenetic endeavour, and pretend to do that? Because in the only sense that matters, Richard, it’s true.’

  He stopped as Richard reseated himself, a hand on his shoulder, and stood looking down at him crookedly, as he used to do long ago, but with different eyes, and a face differently blocked. He said, ‘You rode sixty miles through the night for a brother who doesn’t exist. I haven’t been here for four years. I have been growing and changing, somewhere else, with different people, speaking a different language. The old ties are gone: my family wouldn’t recognize me: what in God’s name do you think I could find to say to them? And the new ties are only on paper: the divorce is a formality as the marriage was. And for all he knows of me, the boy could be anyone’s son; perhaps … it doesn’t matter. Do you know how he was saved?’

  ‘Not in detail. By a chess game, Philippa said.’

  ‘Do you know how the other one died?’ Lymond said.

  Richard shook his head.

  Lymond took his hand away. ‘By the deaf-mutes, at the same game,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see this child. If you can’t understand that, I can’t help it. I don’t want to see anyone at Midculter; it would serve no purpose and the second parting would only be worse. I am part of this embassy. I have a share in it. I have to go to London with the Ambassador and aid him in all he has to do, and carry out other duties, for which I am entirely responsible to the Tsar. When I have done so, I shall sail back with Nepeja to Muscovy. And after that, I am not coming back.’

  Richard, his face white with fatigue was staring at him as if, indeed, they were not related. ‘You are going back to that woman in Russia?’

  ‘To Güzel, yes. And to St Mary’s.’

  Bitterly scathing, ‘Is there any of St Mary’s left?’ Richard said.

  ‘Hislop will come back with me. It is more than St Mary’s. We are the nucleus of the Tsar’s army.’

  ‘So you are important?’

  ‘My life is there,’ Lymond said.

  ‘A big fish in a little pool. What you wanted,’ Richard said.

  If he was moved suddenly to laughter, he did not show it. ‘Or, If you have made your bed well, well may you lie on it,’ Lymond said. ‘The Buchan version is even apter.… Richard, I am not worth anyone’s heartache.’

  ‘I know that,’ Richard said. ‘But she does not.’

  ‘She will have to learn,’ Lymond said.

  *

  It was full day when they returned to the castle, and Alec Fraser (my wife’s Da is the Provost), voluble with excitement, led the third Baron Culter into the Great Hall, the third Baron’s brother modestly following.

  They all rose; but Adam Blacklock first of all, to greet the man he remembered well from his early days at St Mary’s in Scotland, when the first great struggle began between the two leaders who hated each other: Lymond and Gabriel, Sir Graham Reid Malett. So he shook Richard’s hand, and noted the distress on his face and the serene and arrogant calm of the Voevoda’s, smiling behind him. And noted, too, the quick turn of Culter’s head as the Russian flowed from man to man about him; the domestic language they all used: Yeroffia to Lymond; Lymond to Simeon and Phoma to discover if the Ambassador would receive them. Ludicrously, Lord Culter had not expected his brother to be familiar with Russian. Certainly, he had not looked for the deference which surrounded Lymond on every side; and not only, Adam was aware, from the Russians. To d’Harcourt and Hislop and himself, he was the Voevoda Bolshoia. But, obviously, Lymond had not told his brother.

  The two men, talking, disappeared with Alec Fraser into the Ambassador’s room, and the door shut behind them.

  Danny Hislop, who had slept for thirty-six hours, on and off, with a sporadic remission for eating, stretched himself and said, ‘So that nice man is Belial’s family.’

  ‘Do you think,’ d’Harcourt said critically, ‘he has enjoyed the reunion?’

  ‘Do you think,’ Danny Hislop said even more critically, ‘either of them has enjoyed the reunion? I know that smile. Cooled in snake blood.’

  ‘In which case,’ said Blacklock with foreboding, ‘we are due for a hell of a journey to Edinburgh.’

  ‘Via Aberdeen,’ Hislop said. ‘My wife’s Da’s the Provost.’

  They left Philorth next day, on the Earl Marischal’s horses, with Nepeja in borrowed clothes bringing up the rear of the little procession, the third Baron Culter beside him.

  Lymond was not in borrowed clothes, because alone of all their possessions, his had been loaded into the pinnace. For that, and for Chancellor’s chest, now on its way safely to London, he had Adam Blacklock to thank.

  Riding beside him now, at the head of the company, Adam found occasion to ask the question he had been longing to put, ever since they rode through the arched gate of Philorth and left the grey manor behind, and the yellow green grass, and the beach upon which the long breakers moved in dark pleatings, under a clear, light blue sky white with cloud.

  The sun was low. It struck the grass like green fur, with a sparkle; the hills were like half-dried velvet and the thin coloured leaves of the trees glittered in the long shadows and orient light: autumn trees, their branches combed by the gale and moving overhead in veil upon veil of chestnut and auburn and yellow, of flame and chrome and veridian; the large coin of the poplar paper-yellow against the fine hazy mist of the birch; the sprays hanging, nebula upon nebula, coarse grained and fine as bright flour, swaying over the riders as they made their way south in the clear, mellow air.

  And as they rode, they were partnered with music, voices and lute, just and sweet in sonorous harmony, from a cheerful cluster of pilgrims who joined them, riding in company. The music, light and merry, accompanied them. The leaves, in notes and chords and cadenzas soared overhead, and the yellow sun shone upon them through the long dancing nets of the trees.

  ‘That prophecy,’ Adam Blacklock said then to Lymond. ‘I can guess. It was that you and your brother should meet once again.’

  He could not see Lymond’s face, but his voice was perfectly clear. ‘No. In fact it wasn’t,’ he said.

  Adam was shocked, as well as disappointed. ‘Oh. So,’ he said, ‘it didn’t come true?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Lymond said with infinite calmness, ‘I’m rather afraid that it did.… Do you really enjoy poor motet singing?’

  Adam stared at him, his eyes open, words of informed protest hanging, unsaid and smug on his lips.

  Lymond did not, however, wait for an answer. ‘There are times,’ he said, ‘when I can tolerate Robert Carver, and times when I find him quite incredibly banal. I wish you well of him.’ And touching his spurs to his horse, he drew it out of the column and into a sudden full gallop which took him far ahead, and through the distant dazzle of trees, and out of sight of the whole trotting convoy.

  Danny Hislop touched his horse to ride, busily, beside Adam’s. ‘He remembered an appointment?’

  ‘He remembered something you have forgotten,’ Adam said. ‘That this is his country.’

  Chapter 4

  Fortunately or unfortunately, the effects of shock and exhaustion do not last for ever. By the time the train of Osep Grigorievich Nepeja, Envoy and Nuntio to the great lord and Emperor of all Russia, had creaked into Edinburgh, a full choral rendering of O bone Jesu with John Fethy playing would have found the Voevoda once again quite impervious, as he was to the whims and vagaries of his Ambassador Osep.

  Restored, by time and by deference, to more sanguine good spirits, Osep Nepeja sat on his horse, full bearded, bluff as Magog and stared about him, uttering questions. All, on this first excursion abroad, was bewildering. The diminutive scale of the country with its crowded, changing topography moved him to much benev
olent jesting: he said nothing, the St Mary’s men noticed, of the good wainscot bed with a quilt he had been given at Philorth, or the painted ceilings and carved freestone fireplaces, the tapestry cloths and armed chairs and cushions, the decent tableware of glass and china and pewter in the same laird’s house.

  The number of cottages amazed him with their roofs of thatch instead of wood shingle. More than that, the number of buildings everywhere constructed of stone. Lacking Plummer, it was left to Adam to explain how Russia’s condensing damps and deep frosts were no problem in Scotland; to display the solid charms of the abbeys they stayed in and the French graces of the great royal homes with their carved walls and picturesque gardens; their fountains and chapels, their beautiful ceilings. He explained, with unwonted enthusiasm, the schooling provided by church and by tutor, referred to the number of eminent universities (four), and pointed out, in Aberdeen, the only granite cathedral in the known world. He then remembered, somewhat belatedly, the well known antipathy of the Russian Orthodox Church towards the church of his fathers, and cast round for rescue by Culter. It was not until Culter left them, to ride south on business to Edinburgh, that the rôle of guide was taken over and executed, without quarter, by Lymond.

  He was not concerned, it soon appeared, with the superior blessings of climate or culture; he did not offer, as Adam had vaguely envisaged, to immerse their visitor in a total full day’s performance of Davie Lyndesay’s Three Estates. He was curt with Osep’s complaint that, in Scotland, one ate at eleven in the morning and then failed, as in Muscovy, to retire for one’s afternoon of restorative slumber. He answered instead questions about weights and coinage and taxes, trying to instil into the merchant’s head the matters he had begun to learn long ago in Vologda and, with his pitiful English, had forgotten. He explained briefly, and with great clarity, the workings of the burghs of barony through which they were passing, the function of the professional guilds, and from there, the operation of church, law and parliament, illustrating the lectures from their surroundings and their company as they progressed. He pointed out, uncompromisingly, the uses of good communication, including paved roads in town and in country and the lessons of husbandry: how the hogs were fed; the sheep and poultry of better quality; the beef better flavoured and firm. He then applied all he had related, item by item, to the future welfare of Russia.

  Riding on Nepeja’s other side, Danny Hislop saw with fascination a hearty, devious, half-educated Russian Governor becoming, under his eyes, a harassed and rebellious graduate. And catching the gaze of his fellows, shrugged with mock anguish, and grinned.

  They were met, by the Queen Dowager’s command, at the estuary crossing at Queensferry, and from there taken by her lords into the city of Edinburgh.

  Separated by three files from his mentor and able, at last, to unbutton his normal thought processes, Osep Nepeja’s first words on standing on the hill of Corstorphine and beholding, far over the marsh, the end-rock and castle of Edinburgh, bore witness to a long and weary journey, of which this was by no means the end. ‘Do we climb it on ropes?’ he remarked. ‘Or do they take up the horses in buckets?’

  They were given a house in the High Street, the steep cobbled main street of Edinburgh, which led down to the Queen’s home at Holy-rood, and up to the heights of the castle. Riding up from the West Bow to reach it, Nepeja saw a thoroughfare lined with tall grey stone houses, each with its turnpike stair; its flight of steps from first floor to street. And since, shoulder to shoulder, they admitted no entrance between them, you found your way through them by pends, arched tunnels pierced in the stonework which led through to green sloping gardens, their limits washed by a broad lake. The Ambassador stood a long time the first evening, on the lawn hedged with brambles, still red and green and black on the bush, and among the late roses, tall and leggy, with blooms like soggy brown vegetables. In Moscow, the snow would have lain three feet thick, this last month. And Lymond did not disturb him.

  For their lodging, their food and their servants, they were indebted to the Queen Dowager of Scotland, and the following morning her officers came to call on the Tsar of Muscovy’s noble ambassador, to receive his thanks, and to inquire his further wishes. And also, by shrewd and courteous questioning, to obtain what information they could about this curious embassy, to take back to their mistress and regent. Two days after that, Robert Best and John Buckland arrived back from London with four Englishmen and a number of documents. They also brought money, the Ambassador was pleased to discover, and instructions to comfort, aid, assist and relieve him and his, and to conduct him forthwith south to London.

  It was just before Christmas, the rites of which the Muscovite Ambassador celebrated privately with his servants, after his own fashion. Immediately afterwards, primed with all the necessary legal and political advice, the Queen Dowager of Scotland invited the Muscovite Ambassador to court.

  It is doubtful whether, despite Adam’s incorrigible salesmanship, Osep Nepeja appreciated any of the draughty splendours of Holy-rood Palace; its music, paintings and furnishings, its trumpeters and heralds, its painted friezes and wainscoting and long suites of tapestries on subjects of which Viscovatu would not have approved. Boiling unseen within the ranks of the newly clothed Muscovite party was the battle which had raged ever since Master Hussey had arrived from Paternoster Row and the quiet legal ambience of Doctors’ Commons to supervise, as he thought, the proper disposal of the wreck of the Edward Bonaventure and all that remained of her cargo.

  Firstly, there appeared to be, according to the news from Pitsligo, very little wreck and no cargo to dispose of. And secondly, the Muscovite Ambassador Osep Nepeja was not prepared to leave Scotland until he, personally, had received back the merchandise, crates and possessions that he had intended to barter in London. In vain, Lewis, Roberts and Gilpin, Hussey’s associates, tried to persuade him that the matter could be left in their hands: that no quirk of Scots law would escape Master Hussey or public notary Lewis; that no sharp dealing would be tolerated by George Gilpin, the resident secretary in Antwerp of the Society of English Merchants or by Edmund Roberts, a leading London merchant and charter member of the Muscovy Company. Nepeja simply announced that, until the pilfered cargo was recovered, he was staying in Scotland.

  The argument raged for the better part of twenty-four hours, and Lymond took no part in it whatever, thereby reserving, as Danny Hislop cynically remarked, all the undoubted respect and awe which he already inspired in poor Osep. Only, on the day of the royal reception, the Voevoda Bolshoia drew Roberts and Lewis aside and said agreeably, ‘You represent the Muscovy Company. May I ask what reception the Company intends to give Master Nepeja in London?’

  ‘Oh, you need have no doubts of that,’ Roberts said, expansively. ‘The best. No expense will be spared. Your friend Nepeja, Crawford, is about to find himself esteemed like a king. And yourself, of course,’ he added comfortably, for he and his colleagues, after the closest questioning of Buckland and Best, were resigned to the fact that the Tsar had sent not only a trading Ambassador but an envoy of another kind, whose business the State would negotiate. ‘The Company,’ said Edmund Roberts, ‘wishes the Tsar to understand the importance English merchants attach to the growing bond between our two nations.’

  ‘And the enjoyers thereof to be as men living in a golden world,’ Lymond said. ‘I merely wished to point out that the Muscovites are not the most trusting of races. If you wish him amenable, I am afraid you must allow Nepeja to do as he wishes in Scotland.’

  Irritating, as it turned out, but true. Warned in advance, the Queen Dowager, Regent of Scotland, gave audience therefore to the Ambassador of the noble King Ivan of Russia, and returned him gentle answers, and hope of speedy restitution of the goods, clothing, jewels and letters lost or pilfered from the English ship Edward, for which purpose she intended to send north her Commissioners, with a Herald of Arms, to Pitsligo, there to command by Proclamation and other edicts that all persons, no degree excepted, with an
y part of the spoiled goods should restore them.

  Nepeja, with Best as his interpreter, answered suitably, if without particular reverence. No one was wearing silver tissue, nor were the cupboards laden with white and gilt plate. The Court was handsomely dressed and more than adequately jewelled, but he found it hard to reconcile these bluff men with their chains and furred gowns with a nation which would permit a woman to order them; a group of foreigners to fight and rule in their midst. The Queen was a child, the Voevoda had told him, affianced to the young heir of France, and being brought up in that Kingdom. And until she came of age her mother, a Frenchwoman, was ruling in Scotland, advised by Frenchmen and protected by Frenchmen, as well as by Scots. ‘Are the boyars powerful?’ he had asked the Voevoda, and the Voevoda had said, ‘Yes. But they are divided. And the kingdom is under a strong rule, and a moderately wise one. If war breaks out between England and France, it will be another matter.’

  ‘This country will side with France against England?’ Nepeja had said. ‘The English then are its Tartars?’

  And the Voevoda had been amused, but had said, ‘Not every Scotsman wants to fight France’s quarrel. But there is a long history of coercion between the countries on the two sides of our border. The crowns of England and Scotland are both Catholic, but the refugees of Queen Mary’s persecution find harbour with the Queen Dowager in Scotland. She is tolerant, and far sighted in a number of ways. Don’t underrate her.’

  One listened and if one was wise, replied nothing to the Voevoda. For one found little to admire in such a nation, where the groom taking your bridle would exchange the time of day to your face, and the porter, the ferryman, the very peasant walking the fields would expect without shame to address you. Nor where the ruler was of that sex which no proper man could underrate.

  The exchange therefore was brief: the welcome and answer between monarch and ambassador concluded and Master Osep Nepeja given permission, if he so pleased, to stay in the realm of Scotland while these matters of restitution were being pursued. He kissed the Queen’s hand. So, too, did Messrs Buckland and Best, Hussey, Gilpin, Lewis and Roberts. Last, with equal deference, came Mr Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, presently in the employment of the Russian Tsar, and companion to Master Nepeja on his momentous embassy. As he took her hand, the Queen Dowager said, ‘If the Ambassador permits, we should like to have private words with this gentleman.’