The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘Whom Maximilian described as not a prince of much ability, nor with counsellors of great experience and prudence, and no money. Then he put off his coming till Lent,’ Lymond said. ‘Why? Oh, I suppose the trouble with His Holiness.’

  ‘Ruy Gomez was here last month,’ Philippa said. ‘And you won’t find what happened in these papers. He brought a letter from the King to the Queen, dwelling on the Pope’s misdemeanours and explaining why it was necessary to fight. Paget, but not the Queen, was to be asked to engineer a break between England and France.’

  Lymond said, ‘Your Spanish Trusty again? The French are putting it about that the Queen has promised to pay for ten thousand foot and two thousand horse, on condition that Philip crosses to England.’

  ‘She has promised him three hundred thousand gold crowns,’ Philippa said. ‘Apart from that, she hasn’t committed herself and won’t, I think, until he arrives. She isn’t well. But she observes all the canonical hours. She prays day and night.’

  ‘And has just sent the Inquisition to purge the University of Cambridge,’ Lymond said, ‘with coffins tied to the stake, and dead men tried for heresy. All for her husband, who is about to make war on the Head of the Catholic Church. While time is moving on: for the Pope, who must have Naples before death finally claims him; for Mary Tudor, with the gates closing between her and her unborn children; and the husband who comes and comes, and has not come yet.…’ He looked up. ‘You are right, of course. She is far from asinine. This Queen is tragic’

  ‘You see that. Now then,’ Philippa said, in an apparent non-sequitur which was the very essence of cunning: ‘will you play for me? Properly?’

  He didn’t answer at once, but at least he didn’t dissemble. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said. ‘But although it might be proper, it wouldn’t be in the least different. Perhaps it’s the Russian climate.’

  She had thought of something else. ‘The prophecy may be true then, may it not?’ Philippa said. ‘That your father’s two sons would never meet in this life again? Since it seems——’

  ‘Since it seems that Richard is not my brother. Even by opening my letters,’ Lymond said, ‘I don’t see how you knew about that.’

  ‘About the Dame de Doubtance? You’ve forgotten. I was in Lyons on the day that you saw her,’ Philippa said. ‘So was Güzel. Do you like Russia better than Scotland?’

  Sitting deep in the chair, Lymond had a faint smile in his eyes. ‘I am not being kept in Russia by evil enchantments. If that is what you mean to imply.’

  ‘I meant to imply that Güzel helped us all to escape from Turkey. And that perhaps there was a price to be paid for it?’

  ‘If it helps to think so, I have no objection,’ said Lymond. ‘In fact, there is an infinite range of reasons, among which that plays only a fractional part. All I want is in Russia. I have been taught to face reality: an excellent thing.’

  ‘Music, the Medicine of the Soul. And chess,’ Philippa said.

  Lymond’s gaze, faintly hostile, was level. ‘And chess,’ he agreed.

  ‘But you can’t face the facts in my letter?’ She was sitting, rigid, on the windowsill, neat from her caul to her velvet slippers, and her hands folded like a child’s in her lap. The brown eyes were stubbornly challenging.

  Lymond rose, with charm quite as lethal. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘The chasse à cor et à cri is quite finished. I am going back to the others. Or your chivalrous Marquis will worry.’

  ‘Why?’ Philippa said. ‘Because Sybilla deceived you? Or would you feel differently if it were your father she had deceived?’

  Half-way to the door, he turned quite deliberately and faced her. ‘No, Philippa,’ he said. ‘Listen to me, for I shan’t say this again. It is the end of the matter. Why you began it, I can’t conceive. It has done nothing but harm, and to pursue it will only cause more. Finally, it is really no possible business of yours. You kept these reports out of the wrong hands. That I do appreciate. And if you will drive it now from your mind, we shall manage very well together in the short interval of marriage which I trust, remains to us.’ And he smiled, turning already.

  Philippa said, ‘And if that isn’t being damned magisterial, I don’t know what is. It’s my business because I love your family and you love your own, stately, self-perpetuated miseries. I have found a great-uncle of yours called Leonard Bailey in Buckinghamshire, at a manor called Gardington. He says Gavin Crawford is not your father, and he has papers to prove it. If you go there, he will show them to you. Or so he says. If you will take my advice, you will go. If you don’t, it’s because, for all Russia has done for you, you haven’t the backbone.’

  There was a catastrophic silence. Then Lymond, speaking very softly, said, ‘Don’t be childish. What else have you done?’

  ‘Faced up to reality,’ Philippa said. She had got off her windowsill and was standing facing him, her hands at her sides. ‘I knew you would be angry. I do this for my own private entertainment.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ Lymond said. ‘You’re performing a play, in a schoolroom, for an excited audience of one. I said what else have you done?’

  Below the long, taffeta bodice, Philippa’s interior had begun to ravel with cramp pains. She said hardily, ‘Nothing, so far. I didn’t know another permutation in breeding was possible.’

  There was another brief pause. Then Lymond said pleasantly, ‘I would strike a man who was stupid enough to say that to me. Were you followed to Gardington?’ His face, carrying little colour at any time, had the sallow bleakness which a sharp change of wind can effect; his responses, far from automatic, were made under a pressure exactingly contained.

  Bent on her purpose, Philippa received his question without understanding. She said, ‘No,’ and then remembered: the group of horsemen so opportunely placed on the road coming back from Gardington and the civil confinement which followed. ‘That is,’ she said, with her spine staring like a plucked fowl’s, ‘I may have been. I was met by the Lennoxes.’

  Lymond drew a long breath and said, ‘Ah. I wonder which version they’ll publish. Unless they find another permutation, as you call it, to offer?’

  Philippa said, ‘I’m not the Voevoda Bolshoia of Russia, so I make mistakes. I make diabolical mistakes. But I’m the only one trying to help. You don’t know what Bailey is like. I was prepared to be hurt, and I got hurt. You weren’t prepared to do anything. Not even to go to Sybilla directly and ask her for the truth.’

  ‘Which would have proved my devotion to my family,’ Lymond said. ‘What did she tell you?’

  To her inner self, Philippa Somerville said, I am not going to be sick. To Lymond, she said, ‘I didn’t ask. I don’t care what you are going to say. I don’t care. I don’t care. These things have got to be said. Everyone is frightened to speak to you.’

  ‘But I allow no one—no one at all, to speak to me like this,’ Lymond said. ‘Come here.’ And as she hesitated, he said in the same, pleasant voice, ‘I don’t need to strike you. Words will do just as well.’

  She came towards him, between the furniture, with her neat beret and jewellery and fine satin skirts and took her place in front of him, her mouth firm, her round brown eyes open. She said, ‘You despise Mary Tudor. You are offered love and won’t accept it except on your own terms. That isn’t tragic. It’s the word you’ve just mentioned—it’s childish.’

  He waited until she had finished, and for a moment indeed he did not speak at all. The he said, dropping the words with lucid, passionless economy into the stillness, ‘Of all the homes I have known, yours has been a shining model of wisdom and kindness and honesty. For what you and your mother have done in the past, for me and for the child, I owe you a profound debt of honour. You have that claim on me. So has your mother. But if you press it too far; if you will accept no appeal and continue to press it, over and over; if you move into my life, both of you, and take your stance there and feel obliged to command and instruct me in how I should or should n
ot behave, you will destroy our relationship. I shall walk away from you both; I shall deny you both; I shall repudiate all you have done for me. It will all be as if it had never happened … I don’t know what you fear for me, but that you should fear. For I cannot afford it.’

  She was unbecomingly crying. She said, ‘How do you find what will hurt?’ because she knew his temper and was braced for it, whereas he had employed a lance she had never dreamed of, against a place which had no defences.

  He said, ‘This matter is mine, and not yours or Kate’s. I never want to hear you speak of it again. Do you hear me?’

  And Philippa said sobbing, ‘Yes. But I won’t do it.’

  ‘Yes, you will,’ Lymond said. ‘My God, do you think I said all that because I can’t make you? Be quiet and get out of my life. Or I shall send Bailey’s papers to Richard.’

  Then she cried protesting aloud and Austin Grey, waiting anxiously and restlessly at the end of the passage outside heard the sound, and other sounds of Philippa in distress, and drawing his sword, blundered along the narrow corridor and flung open the door. Philippa choked. Lymond, his face perfectly stark, said, ‘Oh, God in heaven, Tristram Trusty …’ and moved quickly back as the sword flashed towards him. Philippa yelped.

  It held the stuff of both climates: the tragic and the childish. Lymond was quite unarmed. The room, crowded with bric à brac, was no more fit for a tournament than a woodshed. As Austin Grey came pursuing towards him, Lymond slid back between stool and box and bed until, glancing sideways, he was able to snatch up a baton, left stuck under the buckle of a round leather chest. He used it, parrying, just as Austin’s first sword-stroke descended and said, breathlessly, ‘What in hell are you doing here? It isn’t your quarrel!’

  Philippa, joining her voice to his, said wetly, ‘Stop it!’

  ‘She says, Stop it,’ said Lymond.

  The sword, flashing wickedly, slid past his shoulder. His face grim, his dark eyes unexpectedly savage: ‘Someone has to teach you a lesson,’ said Austin Grey.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Lymond with exasperation, and finding the field bed behind him, somersaulted to freedom behind it.

  Philippa said sharply, ‘Stop! Austin, stop it!’

  But Austin, slithering over the bed, paid no attention. The sword cracked on the baton, and cracked again; then as Lymond ducked, the blade bit into the square maple table and then lifted, flashing again. Philippa hauled open the door. ‘Mr Crawford!’

  ‘What, battling down the staircase?’ said Lymond, and laughed. ‘No, thank you. Allendale, don’t be a fool. Put up.’

  Austin said, ‘She came here to help you.’ He cut, across the width of the porcupine chair, and splinters flew from it.

  ‘She helps everybody,’ Lymond said. He heeled round the bedpost within an inch of the sword and, ripping the silk off the face of St Jerome, threw it bunched over the blade rising behind him. ‘Wait until you are wed. She’ll do your breathing for you.’ Austin shook off the cloth.

  Philippa said, ‘That isn’t true!’

  ‘No,’ Lymond said. ‘He’s breathing the way you want him already. Gallant, sensitive, and kind to his mother.’ He flung himself sideways and laughed. A large box, fallen on its side, revealed itself as Sir Henry’s quilted black velvet close-stool. The pewter pot, rolling out, was scooped up and appropriated, in a second, as a bizarre shield by Lymond. Austin’s sword clanged on it; and again; the blade sliced, spraying, through the candlestick stand on a desk and Lymond, tapping and dodging, met a stool and was nearly sent staggering. Austin’s sword, unimpeded for once, slashed down and cut the baton cleanly in half.

  Philippa said, ‘That’s enough. He didn’t harm me. You must stop now, Austin.’

  Austin did not respond.

  Philippa, lifting her skirts, plunged from the wall and thrust her way to the scene of the action. ‘Austin. You are fighting an unarmed man with a sword.’

  Austin pushed her out of the way and, taking a sudden stride forward, nearly managed to pin his opponent between the window and bed, dodging the lute which Lymond flung at him as he did so. ‘It will perhaps teach him,’ he said, breathing hard, ‘not to force his presumptuous manners on women.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Tristram Trusty,’ said Lymond. And making three precise movements: a step by the stool, a feint by the chair and a swinging stride by the bed, kicked Austin Grey’s sword neatly clean out of his hand.

  It fell beside Philippa. She picked it up before Austin could turn, jammed it hard behind Sir Henry’s desk, and hurtling forward flung her arms from behind round her protector. Like the jaws of a crocodile, two capable feminine hands closed on Austin Grey’s arms over the elbow, rendering him for the moment totally helpless. And a capable feminine voice, directed past Austin Grey’s ear to his opponent, said baldly, ‘Hit him.’

  Lymond, already balanced on the upswing to hurl himself forward, dropped his arm and said, with dawning reproof, ‘I was going to.’

  ‘I know,’ said Philippa. ‘And it’ll take half an hour and end with an audience. Hit him.’

  Under her hands, Austin Grey suddenly struggled.

  ‘Hit him!’ said Philippa sharply. ‘It’s the only way he can stop now, with honour.’

  Which was not only perceptive, but practical. So Lymond hit him.

  The Marquis of Allendale fell very neatly and was caught and lowered to the ground, quite insensible, by Francis Crawford of Lymond and his wife.

  Lymond was laughing, with not quite enough breath to do it with. Straightening from Austin Grey’s body, he was gurgling still with breathlessness and hilarity: he sat on a box for a while, with his hands nearly touching the floor and his tangled head drooping between them, gasping at intervals. Philippa said, ‘Now, I’ll stay with him. You go along to the others and take your leave.’

  Lymond pulled his head up. ‘As if nothing had happened.’

  ‘Well. Nobody knows,’ Philippa said. Poor Austin was moaning a little.

  ‘Except you and me,’ Lymond said rising abruptly. He walked to the door. ‘You were going to give me a promise.’

  From where she knelt by her knight, Philippa looked up at the other man, graceful, facile and worldly. ‘You are thinking of someone else,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t change from minute to minute. I don’t change at all.’

  ‘I don’t think you have changed since you were ten years old,’ Lymond said. ‘How fortunate we all are, in some ways.’

  He made his farewells with perfect courtesy and left by the door into Broad Street. Back in Fenchurch Street, shocked by his looks, Adam Blacklock was rash enough to address the Voevoda, and was treated to the kind of response, white-hot, venomous and unforgivable, which he had largely spared Philippa Somerville.

  The holocaust in his head by that time was on its most staggering scale: was there a scale for headaches? Perhaps Master John Dee could plot them. Except that Master Dee would certainly want his date, time and place of birth, and Master Dee was not going to get them.

  A commanding resolution. Margaret Lennox presumably had them in detail already.

  There did come a time, eventually, where thought was quite impossible. Francis Crawford read for a little, then, since he knew very well what was coming, locked his door and lay, face downwards waiting, upon the high pillared bed.

  He did not welcome it. But in its own way, sometimes, it was better than thought.

  Chapter 8

  On Thursday, March 25th, twelve months to the day since he took leave of the Tsar his master, Osep Grigorievich Nepeja, the first Muscovite Ambassador to England, was summoned to Westminster to present himself before the King and the Queen, and to make his formal Oration.

  The State barge, in which he left the Three Cranes wharf in the Vintry, was decked with streamers and flowers and gilding and flew the flag of St George for both England and Muscovy, and carried the arms of both countries. With him travelled Lord Montague and a large number of merchants from the Muscovy Company, as well as t
en City Aldermen and his own far-travelled escort, which included the Voevoda and three men from St Mary’s. On the jetty at Whitehall he was met by six lords in velvet, with trumpeters, and by them conducted up the Watergate stairs to the long gallery, and from there to the Great Chamber, hung with brilliant blue baldachine and spread with one of Wolsey’s damascene carpets.

  There he was saluted by Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, the Lord Chancellor; William Paget, Baron de Beaudessert as Keeper of the Seals, William Paulet, Marquis of Wiltshire, the Lord High Treasurer; and William Howard, Baron of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral, the last two being Charter Members of the Muscovy Company.

  The intent on both sides was to impress. Nepeja, dressed by the Muscovy Company, whose members comprised half the Government wore a gown paned with gold wire and sewn jewels like acorns, with a tall jewelled hat on his great bearded head. The Voevoda with his three colleagues following was as refined as a charming shell cameo in thick silk brocade sewn with white sapphires and cloudy star rubies. Across his shoulders he wore, as Danny Hislop’s dazzled eyes registered, the Tsar’s great barmi of pendant medallions.

  Treading between the double line of brilliant courtiers, brittle as the Queen Dowager’s iron flowers at Binche, Danny wondered how much it impressed the middle-aged Governor of a trading town in frozen, Tartar-torn Muscovy. The broad river, so like the Moskva, but lined with great houses and long garden walls, pierced by handsome gateways and jetties. And behind it, instead of the uniform ranks of the izbas, the whole crowded panorama of London with its church spires and towers and the tiered rows of its houses in wood, brick and plaster with their random gables and windows, deep-carved and gilded; the booths and taverns and gardens; the palaces of bishops and kings and the town houses of merchants and nobles in every extravagance of texture and period, Gothic and classical: the black and white of timber and plaster beside brick, moulded or carved in all colours from silver to red to yellow to the kiln-burnt ripeness of mulberry.