The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘Wait,’ Philippa said. ‘Wait a moment.’

  But because John Dee was correct, by his own lights, Lymond opened his eyes and looked at them all as they were looking up at him: Ludovic d’Harcourt in a torn jacket; Fergie Hoddim with a stained bandage over one arm; Adam Blacklock with no new injury, but the scar of the old one thin and red across his blanched face. Danny Hislop … there too, against the wall, with his leg on a stool. But no Alec Guthrie.

  With a sudden smooth movement, which cost him more than he had expected, Lymond sat up. And John Dee, a tall man with high colour on his sharp cheekbones and a black cap on his light hair, said, ‘The Muscovy fleet will sail from Gravesend with the dawn tide. You have missed your ship. You have to thank God for your friends and beg their forgiveness.’

  It was Hislop who saw the move coming. He flung himself across the threshold, stabbed thigh and all, as Lymond slid from the table and made for it. Lymond wrenched the door open across Hislop’s felled body but the delay was enough: Blacklock had him, and Hoddim, one-handed, and the door was kicked shut and locked in his face as he ripped himself free. He stood, still facing it as they released his arms slowly, and then turned.

  Alec Guthrie’s voice, serene from the shadows, said, ‘You are not going to Russia. You are not going. All your life you have resented control and brooked no hint of instruction or guidance. This time, your will is not paramount.’

  Moving slowly, Francis Crawford crossed the room to where Guthrie lay. Stripped as he was, to shirt and breech hose, Guthrie was paler than his short grizzled beard, and there was a length of stained linen bound, over and over, by his neck and shoulder and chest. But his eyes were clear and resolute on Lymond and Lymond answered him quite as sharply. ‘Do you think my will was paramount when I came to this country? I came on the Tsar’s order, against his wishes and my own, because it seemed good for Russia. I am returning for the same reason.’

  And Guthrie said, ‘You will not reach the Dwina alive.’

  ‘Because of the arms?’ Lymond said brusquely; and raised his aching brows in exasperated impatience. ‘Don’t you think? Don’t you know your merchants by now? The Privy Council may have unloaded the munitions, but the Muscovy Company had its own interests to look after, and did. There are nine casks on board which answer to pewter, but you won’t find the contents on anyone’s cupboard in Moscow. It’s not what we asked for. But it’s something.’ He stopped, and taking his time looked with deliberation into each hostile face. ‘I am not throwing away two years of my life for a fancy. The foundations are built. I will not let the Tsar, or Vishnevetsky or anyone else stop the fabric from rising upon them.’

  ‘How will you deal with them?’ Guthrie said. ‘How will you deal with unbalanced and ignorant aliens?’

  Lymond flung his crossed hands wide. ‘How do I ever deal with the Tsar? From moment to moment, from second to second, averting, training, sustaining … cossetting him like a nurse-maid if I have to.… He cannot have gone so far away in ten months.’

  ‘And Vishnevetsky?’

  ‘Baida, so young, so glorious? I shall serve under him,’ said Lymond mildly. ‘It will not be for long.’

  ‘And Güzel?’ said Danny Hislop, from across the width of the room. Lymond turned.

  But it was Philippa who answered, with her brown hair drifting loose round her pale, thin-boned face, and her brown eyes concentrated and frowning. ‘This is what you must consider. She isn’t fickle, Kiaya Khátún. She knew what was coming. Master Dee here has drawn up your horoscope—yes,’ as his face hardened—’I gave him your birth date. He didn’t return the favour, I may say, by allowing me more than this single fact from its contents. Your horoscope says that you will not go back to Russia.’

  ‘Then it is wrong,’ Lymond said. And with a patience which could be felt, he tried once again. ‘I want you to try to understand. I am going alone. The risk, if any, is mine. I have no dependants, no responsibilities; I am adamant that this time no one will accompany me. What I hope to do in Russia is worth the risk I shall take. Do you imagine I would do what I did tonight if I did not think it of an importance unimaginable? If I can pull this one man back from the brink, I can save a nation perhaps from something worse than the Tartars. Perhaps bridge the gap of two hundred years. Perhaps find an existence worth living.’

  ‘And that is the truth, isn’t it?’ said Danny Hislop’s brittle voice. ‘You have found a reason for living. Restored like bloody Chrysostom, because of an earthquake. But there are two questions in all this you haven’t considered. Is Russia ready for you? And will you conquer in the end, or will Russia?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Guthrie said. ‘You thought—we all thought—we had laid the foundations, firm and steady and secure when you left. It was not so. No matter what the Tsar did; no matter what brashness Prince Vishnevetsky committed, the soldiers and the people together might have stood firm, you would think. The Tsar is one man. He could not come, one man, and remove our money and our weapons. He had to have willing servants, and the Streltsi themselves had to be overawed and subservient, to allow themselves to be so treated. They are a nation accustomed to violent, unreasoning rule, and when it yokes them again, they have no instinct to withstand it, to beat it down and replace it with sanity. I tell you, they are not ready for us yet. And if you had given them arms and then laid down your life on some whim of the Tsar’s, they might have turned against Europe and savaged it.’

  ‘They need time,’ Lymond said. ‘I know they need time. And they would have had time if we had been allowed to bring in our trained men; to begin teaching and practising, so that slowly we can rely on ourselves; our own industry. I did not want arms. I wanted iron foundries and founders; I wanted the means to make arms, gradually, as we educated these people towards responsibility. I thought we could surrounded the Tsar with a circle of counsellors so strong that if any one of us died, the rest could carry on; could control him, and perhaps in time, teach him to control himself. It seemed possible. It is still possible. I cannot turn my back on it now.’

  ‘And the effect on yourself?’ Guthrie said.

  For a short time, Lymond was silent. Then he said, ‘I had some strengths, which have grown. I had some weaknesses, which have gone.’

  ‘That is true,’ Adam Blacklock said. Slumped between floor and wall, he had leaned his tired head on the panelling; his face, with its thin scar, was turned without expression to Lymond. ‘You have become a machine.’

  ‘No,’ said Philippa. ‘That is not so.’

  ‘But that is so,’ said Lymond. ‘How could I do my work otherwise?’

  ‘Then,’ said Philippa, ‘why have you let Lychpole betray you, and then escape scot-free?’

  ‘Lychpole?’ said Guthrie; and Philippa turned her brown eyes to the settle.

  ‘How did the Privy Council know that Mr Crawford was gathering information from Venice and England? How did Lady Lennox know Mr Crawford was in Russia before any of us? It was Master Lychpole, in Ascham’s office, who supplied the information to Russia. And although the other clerks were all there today, he was not. He was poor, and he became a double agent because he needed the money. And because of that, you have let him go, haven’t you?’

  Ludovic d’Harcourt was staring at her. ‘Then I can tell you, not all of us will be so magnanimous. If that man betrayed us, then he will suffer for it.’

  Lymond moved. Turning from Guthrie he walked through the crowded room, picking his way past the books and the charts and the papers round the great Mercator globe and finally perched himself where he had been lying, on the edge of the long wooden trestle under the swaying oil lamp and the mirror. His face, quite composed, showed the burden about the eyes and the brow which Philippa saw, and was sorry for: his voice, though not loud, was clear and even and flowed without stint.

  He said, ‘Lychpole is blameless. He is out of the country: I helped him to go overseas before any of this happened, since it seemed possible that his part in the correspondence wo
uld come out. It was not Lychpole who betrayed us.’

  They had all straightened slightly: they were all looking towards him. In the shadows, the level gaze of John Dee rested, bright as his mirrors, on Lymond.

  ‘Who betrayed us then?’ Guthrie asked.

  And for answer, Lymond looked at Danny Hislop. ‘When Peter Vannes landed, why was there no attempt on his luggage till Sittingbourne?’

  Danny flushed and then paled; the light eyes bright, the balding, pale fluffy scalp copied like a dandelion clock by its shadow. ‘Oh, Maeve,’ Danny said. ‘The Wrath and Indignation of a Prince, Mother told me, is Death.… They were expecting an attack. They had a double guard on the casket, in a separate wagon, and it was watched night and day. The men at Dover could do nothing about it, so someone rode to London to warn us and ask for instructions. But you were at Gardington, sir.’

  ‘So you rode to Sittingbourne. Why then,’ Lymond said, ‘was it Ludo d’Harcourt who made the first attempt on the casket, and not you?’

  ‘Ask Ludo,’ said Danny bluntly, and the round, pale eyes had lost their facetiousness. ‘You didn’t warn me he was coming. The guard on the box was so thorough that I thought the whole thing was hopeless once I got there. But I had a few men with me, and we hung about, trying to plan a diversion, as I remember, when the diversion happened of its own accord. For some reason, the whole lodging was in an uproar: we couldn’t see why. I thought the guard’s attention would be distracted and I might as well profit by it. I was wrong. The alarm had been caused by another attempt on the casket. By Ludo. I walked into the thick of it, and they got me, as well.’

  ‘Well, d’Harcourt?’ said Lymond.

  ‘That is right,’ said Ludo d’Harcourt.

  ‘I know that is right,’ said Lymond gently. ‘But as you know perfectly well, I didn’t send you to Sittingbourne. How did you know about Peter Vannes? How did you know we wanted the papers in the casket?’

  ‘I heard you tell Danny,’ d’Harcourt said. For a moment he was silent, then he said, ‘Do you remember what we talked about once, on our way to the Revels by river? How you said you knew who had tried to kill you in Russia; whom Lady Lennox had paid to see you dead if you didn’t return? You had been talking about the members of the Muscovy Company. And I said that it might just as easily be one of ourselves?’

  ‘I remember,’ Lymond said.

  Danny said, his voice thin, ‘Ware riot. Ware riot, dear hunters. He couldn’t have heard you telling me about Peter Vannes.’

  ‘But I did,’ d’Harcourt said. ‘And then the messenger came, and you took Dimmock’s best horse and dashed off, and I wondered why Peter Vannes hadn’t been intercepted at Dover, as you’d planned. So I followed. And you didn’t make an attempt on the casket, did you, Danny? I did, and I failed, and then, when you realized what was happening, you made your own effort, which naturally ended in capture. But the papers were still there intact, with whatever harm they were going to do us. And you, of course would run no risk. You were the paid agent of the Crown and Lady Lennox.’

  ‘Is that true?’ Guthrie said; and Adam, studying Lymond’s face, felt sick at heart.

  Lymond stirred, and then, watching his hands, answered Guthrie. ‘I told Henry Sidney I knew who it was. And of course, it was likely to be someone close to me, at St Mary’s, if it were not Bartholomew Lychpole over here. And it was soon proved, in fact, not to be Lychpole, because the English Privy Council continued obviously to receive their information even when Lychpole had none—because, as it happened, my dear wife Mistress Philippa had purloined the last batch of dispatches, thinking to prevent them from falling into Lychpole’s innocent clutches.

  ‘In fact, the dispatches were innocuous because I had already warned all my correspondents that Lychpole’s identity had been betrayed to the English Council; and Lychpole himself had of intent been sending nothing that mattered. For matters of moment all my correspondents have been using other channels and a very complicated cipher indeed, both of which we owe to Master John Dee.’

  ‘So you did know it was Hislop,’ Guthrie said. ‘Even in Russia?’

  ‘Not at first,’ Lymond said. ‘I had a great many correspondents. I made a great many inquiries. One of the first places I wrote to, in connection with the annulment of my marriage, was the Order of Knights Hospitallers on Malta. I found out nothing reprehensible about Danny, except that he was a Bishop’s bastard, which he had never concealed from us. From Malta, I found out that Ludovic d’Harcourt had been dismissed from the Order on account of a forbidden affair with a woman.’

  ‘Branding me, straight away, as a traitor,’ said Ludo with angry sarcasm. Danny Hislop, out of all expectation, had not interrupted.

  ‘And from Lady Dormer, who had staying with her the new English representative of the Order,’ said Lymond, ‘I found out the name of the lady.’

  There was a long silence. Then Philippa, rather pale, said, ‘Joleta?’

  And Lymond, watching her steadily, said, ‘Joleta Reid Malett who died through my agency. The sister of Gabriel, whom I set out to dispatch also, and did.’

  ‘And mother of the baby Khaireddin …’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt; and, his mouth open, staring at them all, started to sob.

  ‘… who is alive,’ Lymond said.

  Philippa made a sound and tried to recall it, too tardily, for she saw the response to it flash into Lymond’s face and then vanish again behind the admirable control.

  D’Harcourt said ‘You were offered your life in exchange for one of two children. You let them kill Joleta’s son. And you saved your own.’

  And Lymond then, with a sudden gesture which perhaps only John Dee understood, turned to Philippa and said, ‘I told a lie. You must forgive me. I broke an oath, letting him perish. Should I have chosen him to survive, knowing his heritage?’ And to d’Harcourt he said flatly, ‘I let Joleta’s son live.’

  ‘And mine,’ Ludovic d’Harcourt said. The tears, standing wet on the rosy cheeks under the tightly curled hair, looked like a schoolboy’s tears, for a lost animal or a scraped knee. ‘The boy was not Gabriel’s. It was Joleta’s and mine.’

  One of Philippa’s hands spread its manicured fingers over her brow and her eyes for a moment. She took it away and said, ‘Can you prove it?’

  And grief, for a moment, was replaced in d’Harcourt’s ravaged face by defiant hostility. ‘She loved me, not her brother. Of course it was mine. She told me. She said, “Ludo, you have a son.” She laughed with the joy of it.’ Then, as no one spoke, he turned to Lymond and said, ‘You guessed then. You guessed that I was the man chosen to kill you.’

  ‘I knew,’ Lymond said. ‘At Lampozhnya, Aleksandre confessed. You betrayed Lychpole. And the Tartar girl was your doing, too.’

  ‘Then why——’ began d’Harcourt.

  ‘Then why did I let you live?’ Lymond looked at him. ‘I shall tell you that if you tell me why you rode to Sittingbourne that day.’

  ‘To try to get the papers from Vannes.’

  ‘Because you knew about them and you knew whom they might incriminate. And you had no inkling in fact that we were prepared for Vannes, and that Danny might be there already. It was a genuine attempt to help us, not to harm us. It has not been the first.… I came back from Lampozhnya prepared to confront you and I postponed it because of a change I found in you. Aleksandre killed for money. The Lennoxes are driven from ambition. You, I think, were misled from the beginning.’

  ‘Yes,’ said d’Harcourt. After a moment he said, ‘It was because of Joleta, I hated you. And the child you killed. I thought you killed. I heard it all in France from d’Aubigny, Lord Lennox’s brother. It was Lady Lennox who wrote and sent me the money.’

  Alex Guthrie said, his face very grey, ‘So I did bring you a traitor. You should have killed him, Francis.’

  ‘No,’ Philippa said. ‘You forget what I said. He is not a machine. Or he would not have changed Ludo’s intentions towards him.’

  ‘I don’t think
it matters,’ Lymond said. He could hear his own voice, but not very clearly; to the others it probably sounded the same. He added, ‘I did not care to think of anyone rushing out to kill Lychpole or Danny, that is all.’

  ‘Doesn’t it matter?’ d’Harcourt said. A dragging flatness in his voice, he appealed to Lymond, and Lymond shook his head.

  ‘I am taking no one with me to Russia. You may do as you please.’

  The eyes of the other men of St Mary’s, like animals in a wood, stared at d’Harcourt. And Lymond, in the same tone of voice, said, ‘He is not to be harmed. And that is an order.’

  From the shadows, John Dee’s dry voice spoke. ‘You must explain to your men why you will not harm a would-be assassin, and yet will do them such injury, when they attempt to save you from yourself.’

  There was a little silence. Then Lymond said, ‘Because d’Harcourt is not quite good enough to succeed at his task.… And they are.’ And as he spoke Ludovic d’Harcourt, unmolested, walked sideways through the wall shadows and, with a sudden uncouth snatch, through the door, while the impersonal lamp lit the bright salty drops on his cheeks.

  ‘It is so important?’ said Guthrie to Lymond. And then, ‘Yes. I see it is. You did not strike out of any petty frustration Then, if you are going, you will wish to take back your gold.’

  One felt the pressure must melt the fragile bones of one’s face; blow open the structure; send the blood streaming from every orifice. In the voice which, again, did not to himself sound familiar, Lymond said, ‘So the horoscope is already proved faulty?’

  ‘You must judge for yourself,’ John Dee said.

  And Lymond, looking at him, said, ‘I have not heard what else it contains.’

  ‘Some day, when you are better prepared, I shall tell you,’ Dee said. ‘There is little you cannot already guess. You know now what you want. You are about to learn how to give. But the hardest lesson of all is accepting. Am I not right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lymond. ‘But this is not the place nor the time.’