The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  No one had.

  ‘An extremely mettlesome leader of Cossacks, who has become a legend already in the Ukraine. There are many songs his men sing about him. You were asking about music. This is an example of it.’

  ‘Play,’ Lady Mary said. ‘There are virginals. Play and sing it to us. Or the harpsichord.’

  He rose with ease and perched at the harpsichord, one hand on the keys. ‘It’s only a marching song. But this version is interesting.’ And he sang lightly, picking out the notes one-handed, an expurgated version of the song which had roared round the camp, on the night Prince Vishnevetsky had joined him.

  In the market place of the Khanate,

  Baida drinks his mead

  And Baida drinks not a night or an hour

  Not a day or two …

  He did not make it too long, and they left the table and moved round him as he played, and made agreeable sounds as he finished. Philippa said, ‘Who did you say Baida was?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Lymond. ‘In fact, his name is Dmitri Vishnevetsky.’

  He did not expect it, clearly, to convey anything. And, indeed, only on Philippa’s face did any enlightenment show. But Lymond saw it, and before she had drawn breath to speak, he forestalled her. ‘But anything Rob Best told you about that,’ he said agreeably, ‘I should advise you to keep to yourself. Have you heard this new piece of music from France? M. de Roubay’s musicians are playing it in Edinburgh.’ And he turned and played properly and then rose and gave up his seat, and would not be persuaded to play again, but became part of the audience while Lady Mary herself played an estampie, to be followed by one of her cousins.

  Philippa, with loving care, favoured them last of all with a furious piece which fell short of the surprising technical skill of her husband, but far exceeded it in violent expression. He congratulated her winningly. ‘Music. The Medicine of the Soul.’

  ‘Aristotle,’ said Philippa impatiently. ‘But yours isn’t music. It’s numerology.’

  ‘Numerology,’ said Mary Sidney, ‘is the basis of all great music. Or so—don’t you?—Master Dee holds. But before we discover an argument, I suggest, Philippa, that you take the opposing army away and attack it in private. You did wish to see Mr Crawford, didn’t you?’

  She did not. But, she remembered with exasperation, it was necessary. Lymond was looking at her with raised brows and the rest of them, damn them, were smiling. ‘Yes, of course,’ Philippa said. ‘If you will excuse us?’

  ‘Go to Sir Henry’s room,’ Lady Mary called after her. ‘And if you use weapons, be sure to call witnesses.’

  The laughter followed them both along the dark passage.

  *

  Lymond shut the door and said, ‘Be a good girl and keep it short.’ Against the dark panelling the clear, colourless skin and fair hair looked deceptively delicate, like a tutor she had once had who turned out to be a practising gelder.

  The room, littered with cases and boxes, had obviously never been used since Sir Henry had left the previous summer to become Vice Treasurer and General Governor of all the King’s and Queen’s Revenues in Ireland. There were two white Irish rugs on the floor and a little slope field bed which still filled the room, with a cloth counterpoint lined with fustian and a leather lute case lying on it. Philippa squeezed her way irritably between a flat Flanders chest and a magnificent joined chair, with its seat lozenged in cream silk wrought with gold porcupines, and perched herself at last, with infinite if Turkish grace, on the windowsill.

  A large curtained object decorating the wall on her left provoked her to investigate with one finger: the painting beneath was of St Jerome, notable for his involvement with the lady Paula and her daughter Eustochion, and disarmingly naked. Philippa whipped back her hand and said with irritation to the St Jerome still standing immobile with his back to the wall: ‘I can barely see you, never mind confound you with eloquence. Come and sit on the porcupines.’

  ‘And sing? Prick-song?’ Lymond suggested.

  Philippa was silent. Then she said, ‘I don’t suppose either of us has had a particularly rollicking morning. I was stupid, and everyone else seems to have suffered for it. When did you get the letter?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lymond said. ‘The damage is done, and at least we are less ignorant, if not noticeably wiser than before. Now you have involved the rest of us, I suggest you step back and let us struggle on in our own puerile way. That apart, where do we stand? I assume Tristram Trusty has passed on my talk with your mother?’

  ‘And your memorable talk with himself,’ Philippa said. ‘I can quite imagine what you would have done in his place.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Lymond dryly. ‘But I shall speed the divorce all I can. What else?’

  ‘This,’ said Philippa, hauling papers out of the serviceable bag at her girdle. ‘They’re yours.’ And she held them out.

  Slack-lidded, Lymond did not at once move. ‘Today, you are full of surprises. What are they?’

  ‘Reports,’ Philippa said. ‘From de Seurre and Nicholas Applegarth and Hercules Tait. Didn’t you wonder why Bartholomew Lychpole had no letters waiting to pass on to you? He didn’t have them because I intercepted them. Here they are.’

  ‘Now,’ said Lymond slowly, ‘you have astonished me.’ He moved forward thoughtfully and taking the papers she offered him, stood turning them over. ‘These have been opened.’

  ‘I opened them,’ Philippa said. ‘Didn’t you wonder either how my letters reached you? Lychpole came and told me he was in correspondence with you. He’s not very discreet. Or very clever.’

  She had his full attention now. He was watching her face, the blue eyes dainty as metal embroidery. He said, ‘Do I have it clear? Bartholomew Lychpole informed you unasked that if you wished to write to me, you could do so through him. He also informed you that I was leaving Russia and that all the dispatches from Europe would therefore be coming to him. And because you thought him untrustworthy, you decided to intercept them? How could you do that?’

  ‘I am studying with Ascham,’ Philippa said. ‘The Queen’s Latin secretary.’

  ‘I noticed you capped all my best quotations,’ said Lymond absently. He turned, and, finding the porcupine chair in his way, laid the dogeared packet for the moment on the seat, and sat himself on the arm of it. ‘And on the strength of Lychpole’s tender concern for your marriage vows, you decided to stop all the traffic between us?’

  ‘I’ve read all your books as well,’ said Philippa, getting the confession over quickly while he was unlikely to dwell on it. ‘It sounds feeble, doesn’t it? But there was more to it than that. Lady Lennox also knew that you were in Russia. And I didn’t tell her.’

  ‘So?’ Lymond said.

  ‘So I feel,’ Philippa said, ‘that Bartholomew Lychpole may be a little more than just careless.’

  ‘In which case,’ Lymond said, ‘Lady Lennox has seen all the letters Lychpole has sent me already, including the two written by you. Why did you open these?’

  Philippa, who had gone red, said flatly, ‘They might have been important. You were a long time on the voyage.’

  ‘So you knew I was coming,’ Lymond said. ‘And Chancellor. What a tense winter you’ve had. All the same, it’s a pity you opened them. Now we shall never know whether the Lennoxes reached them before you did. Were they important?’ And picking them up, he began to leaf lightly through them. ‘Christ, what a gossip.’

  ‘Espionage is gossip,’ Philippa said. ‘Is that the series about our octogenarian Pope’s wars against the Imperialists?’

  ‘He fights Charles because he is an octogenarian,’ Lymond said. ‘He was born when Italy was free: a welltuned instrument of four strings, Naples, Milan, Venice and the States of the Church. He has waited for this all his life, a priest, a linguist and a scholar. Now he sits there with his three scandalous nephews, drinking his repulsive mangiaguerra and scheming how to recover Naples and Milan and keep Venice Ayes 0, Noes 0, Neutral 19. Helped, I gathe
r, by Piero Strozzi’s Germans, Protestant to a man.’

  ‘And by the French,’ Philippa said.

  ‘Yes. Well, de Guise is supposed to have a remote claim on Naples through Renée of Lorraine. Hence the secret treaty between France and the Pope to recover Naples, and the Pope’s fury when the Constable pushed through the truce two months later. So our old man goes to work, and five months after that, manages a new secret treaty between himself and France—here it is. The Pope to create a new batch of French Cardinals, just in case. Each side to provide twelve thousand foot, five hundred men at arms and five hundred light horse. The crown of Naples to go to King Henri’s younger son, and land to the Papal Territory and the three nephews’ estates. Also, the French King is to invite the Sultan Suleiman to attack Calabria …

  ‘How the Pope adores Charles. That schismatic and heretical Emperor.… We will deprive him of the Empire, of his realms and of his existence as a human being and a Christian … that devilish soul of Charles, in that filthy body … the most vile and abject nation in the world … gnawing the vitals and drinking the blood of the poor … diabolical, soulless, thirsty for the blood of Christians … born to destroy the world.… If the enemy crosses my frontier by so much as the distance of this toothpick, a sentence so tremendous it will darken the sun.… And a bit in Italian, which is just as well. What sentence? Perpetual residence in Naples?’

  ‘I understand Italian,’ Philippa said. ‘The threat, if you read on, is to release the Emperor’s subjects from their oath of allegiance, and confer the kingdoms on those who shall obtain them. And the justice of God, he says, will cause even the Turk to come and inherit them.’

  ‘I see,’ Lymond said. ‘We love the King of France and will make use of him, as we would even of the Turk, for the need of the See Apostolic. But the King of France doesn’t want to fight, yet. The Duke of Alva crosses into Papal territory on some small excuse, and Strozzi and all the French ministers are hanging on to the pontiff’s coat tails to persuade him not to give Philip cause to start a full-scale war. For now Charles has abdicated and King Philip is running the Empire—I see his character has not escaped blessing, either.’

  ‘Little beast, begotten of that diabolical father?’ Philippa said.

  ‘You do know Italian. An inexperienced youth, having by the grace of God become master of so many kingdoms, his first exploit is to take up arms against the See Apostolic to give proof of himself.… That accursed silly boy; would to God he had never been born, nor yet that iniquitous father of his: rebels to God; a treacherous race, without faith.… Rely upon it, the powder is prepared and the guns shotted and that if ignited, everything will be consumed in all directions. A fair estimate. And note of a letter from Queen Mary of England to her husband King Philip, congratulating him on the Duke of Alva’s success, and suggesting that since all is going well, he should come back to England.… Oh God, the asinine woman,’ Lymond said.

  Philippa Somerville was silent.

  ‘But she pays you. The point is taken. Ah, here is Venice. We love the Seignory, both as Pope and as man. Offered half Naples to intervene on the Pope’s side, the Seignory declines, and hopes that matters will adjust without their help—Ayes 100. The Pope is angry: Tomorrow or the next day we shall depart this life and you will remain, and in the ruins will remember this poor old man, and lament not having chosen in time to provide against our downfall.…’

  ‘His Serenity the Doge,’ Philippa said, ‘has accommodated His Holiness with three tons of coarse cannon powder. You have reached the bit about Courtenay?’

  ‘Through the thumb-marks and liquor stains, barely,’ said Lymond. ‘Perhaps I failed to mention——’

  ‘That you don’t like your correspondence read?’ Philippa said. ‘But you did tell Kate that you had no interest in Elizabeth or the Earl of Devonshire. That wasn’t true.’

  ‘That wasn’t true,’ Lymond acknowledged, still reading.

  ‘Hercules Tait says that Courtenay died after fourteen days’ fever in Padua, and that Vannes, the English Ambassador, got the chief Magistrate of Padua to lock up all Courtenay’s papers until the Queen wrote to say what she wanted.’

  ‘Luckily,’ Lymond said, ‘Hercules Tait, who wrote the report, has a friend in the Council. So the following day, without Vannes being aware of it, the Bailiff of Padua was asked to send Courtenay’s papers secretly to the Chiefs of the Ten back at Venice, where the box was opened by a carpenter and the contents all read. A number of letters, marked with a cross, were taken out of the bundle and the rest put back into their linen cover, stitched, replaced and nailed into the casket, which was sent back to Padua, apparently intact. From there, presently, Peter Vannes was allowed to collect it, and is at this moment on his way home to hand it, with the letters, to the Queen. Unfortunately,’ said Lymond reflecting, ‘Tait doesn’t know which letters were abstracted, and he says he is watched and may not be able to get the casket from Vannes.’

  ‘Why does it matter?’ Philippa said. She looked again at the report in her hand, which included none of these extremely interesting facts.

  Lymond shrugged, ‘Courtenay was the sole male heir, several times removed, to the throne of England, if Queen Mary dies childless. There have always been plots to marry him to the lady Elizabeth. He was supposedly involved in the scheme to rob the Treasury last year—they put his secretary Walker in prison. Ruy Gomez and his friends were only recently suspected of trying to kill him—even the merchants can tell you all about that. So his correspondence is highly inflammable.’

  ‘And who is liable to be burnt?’ Philippa said.

  ‘I am,’ Lymond said placidly. ‘And more important, John Dee. And more important still, the Queen’s sister Elizabeth. But not until Vannes arrives with the casket.’

  In silence, they stared at one another: sardonic blue gaze into clear, vigorous brown. ‘And I,’ said Philippa at last, ‘am about to be suspected as a junior unpaid courier scurrying about between you all?’

  ‘It is no doubt Lady Lennox’s hope,’ Lymond said. ‘As I told your mother, I shall do what I can to thwart it. She said you had been to Hatfield only once. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Elder asked me to go once again, but I made some excuse,’ Philippa said. ‘Madam Elizabeth did warn me, to do her credit.’

  ‘I am not sure that she deserves any,’ Lymond said. ‘But if you took her nothing but books, nothing can be proved against you. And if Margaret Lennox did read your letters, she will know that it was not the last sprig of the white rose which had engaged your attention.… What a pity that we rushed into marriage. Your reputation has never been questioned, and you acquired all my ill-wishers instead.… The Pope, it says here, is angry with France for not coming to help him more quickly. He has not therefore hastened to present the French with all their new cardinals, or the Constable’s son with his divorce, which is still being strongly debated. To wit: can the Pope separate a marriage contracted per verba de praesenti, but which, and the rest of it.’

  ‘… but which has not been consummated. Don’t be diffident,’ Philippa said. ‘The theologians say no, and the canonists disagree, quoting Leo I who in letter 92 to Rusticus, Bishop of Narbonne, says that matrimonium per verba de praesenti is not marriage, nisi accedat copula carnalis.’

  ‘And you understand Latin as well,’ Lymond said. ‘As I remember?’

  ‘Well enough to note the implications and observe them,’ Philippa said. ‘Although it removes a certain zest from court life. I should like you to read the papers from Brussels.’

  ‘You would?’ he said. He put down the papers. ‘How long is it since you were home at Flaw Valleys?’

  ‘Two years,’ said Philippa.

  ‘Are you by any chance …’ said Lymond.

  ‘… baiting you?’ Philippa said. ‘Only when you are inclined to be magisterial.’

  ‘Oh, good God,’ Lymond said. ‘Kate must be out of her mind.’

  ‘And thank heaven you aren’t my father?’ said
Philippa.

  ‘Roughly,’ said Lymond, and began to laugh, and then stopped. ‘Look. I must go. Is there anything else?’

  Philippa said, ‘You called Mary Tudor asinine. I want you to read these reports. They begin two years ago when King Philip left her to join his father in Brussels for a stay, so he said, of two months. Read them. Read how often she begged him to return, and how often he promised, and how often he disappointed her. Read about all the gossip that began to reach us from Brussels: about the tournaments and weddings and masked assignments attended by the King and his most intimate servants.…’

  ‘Ruy Gomez?’ said Lymond.

  ‘Yes. King Roy,’ said Philippa. ‘I know his secretary.’

  ‘Not,’ said Lymond, ‘the Spanish Tristram Trusty?’

  ‘Spanish, yes,’ Philippa said. ‘Trusty, no. You know the saying. Germans woo like lions, Italians like foxes, Spaniards like friars and French like stinging bees. I don’t know why they left Scotsmen out. And Greco-Venetians. The only one I know about Greece is the old one. Chi fida in Grego, sara intrego.’

  Lymond said, ‘When you tell me about your Spaniard, I shall tell you about my Greek. Attend to what we are discussing. So what did the Queen do about it all?’

  ‘She took his picture down and kicked it out of the Privy Chamber,’ Philippa said. ‘She wept. She wrote to the Emperor, begging him to let Philip return, and sent Paget to implore him to hurry, because of the Queen’s age, which does not admit of delay. King Philip told her, through Paget, that if he did not return to her the following month, she was not to consider him a trustworthy King.

  ‘So, for the fourth or fifth time, arrangements were made for the dear man’s arrival; and for the fourth or fifth time he cancelled it: because of illness, he said. She sent three couriers to Brussels, one after the other, and when after nine days not one of them had returned, she was nearly crazy with worry and suspicion. But he didn’t come anyway, because of the Abdication. The Emperor Charles was retiring to his Spanish monastery, having given his son all his kingdoms. They say he turned back at the gates of his palace, crying. But by the middle of September, all his luggage was on board ship for Spain, except his bed and his clocks; and in October the Queen was again told that Philip was coming. I can tell you,’ said Philippa feelingly, ‘nothing was thought of, nothing expected save this blessed return of the King.’