The Ringed Castle

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘I shall not embarrass you,’ said John Dee gently; and Lymond flushed. Dee said, ‘It is not one thing you seek, I fancy, but two; and the place for neither is Russia. The first you will have. The second you shall never have, nor would it be just that you should.’

  His voice altered. ‘But if you must sail, you will have need of your gold. It is here. Your gentlemen here brought it from the Philip and Mary, in a box of surpassing antiquity.’ And lifting the cloth from the board on which Lymond was sitting he revealed a battered Egyptian sarcophagus, resting beneath, painted with lotus flowers and the names of one of the pantheistic God-triads: Ptah, Sekhet and Imhotep.

  Lymond loosed a short sigh. ‘Characteristic,’ he said, ‘to the last. But I hardly think I shall be troubled by customs duties. Is it heavy?’

  ‘Inordinately so,’ said Guthrie dryly. ‘I would advise you to repack the contents and leave it.’

  And so, bending, Lymond dragged the coffin from under the trestle, and as the others watched, John Dee gave him a chisel. He loosened the nails along three of its sides; then he lifted the lid and easing it, laid it quite open.

  Inside, there was no duty-free cargo of spice-bags. There was no visible fortune in ikons; no parcels of plate, or caskets of jewels or of money. Instead the coffin held what it was meant to contain: a wrapped and embalmed human body. The head and face of the corpse were uncovered, displaying fine locks of bright guinea-gold, and a man’s features, large and handsome and peaceful in death. In recent death: in a death of no more than two or three years’ duration.

  Far from her side, Güzel had given her student his last and most telling test. In the shroud lay the corpse of the man Lymond had killed: Joleta’s brother, Graham Reid Malett.

  As he was meant to, Francis Crawford himself saw it first. The blow to the stomach was physical: it brought an explosion of nausea so violent it all but undid him. He had to grip with the whole of his will, not to give way to the instinct for refuge: refuge anywhere private and dark: against the wall; in the trench of a chair; behind the safe, bloodless fence of his fingers.

  He is not a machine, Philippa had said twice already. And he knew that after the first shock, she was standing there watching him; her own horror engulfed in her boundless Somerville concern for his feelings. Adam Blacklock, his face sallow, had gone to the window.

  Lymond’s face since the blow had been colourless; nor in the smallest act did he betray himself. Instead, with a fine, measured smoothness, he spoke to them. ‘You heard d’Harcourt talk of Sir Graham Reid Malett. He was a senior Knight of the Order, and a great man whose ambition destroyed him.’

  ‘And this is the man you killed?’ said John Dee.

  ‘Yes,’ Lymond said. ‘I only hope I look as eligible two years after someone assassinates me. Where do you think my dear Güzel has put my worldly possessions? Or am I to survive on the stimulating effects of revulsion?’

  Philippa was looking at him, but Lymond did not give her a glance. He slid a hand, delicately probing along the dead man’s big-boned, bandaged side. Danny Hislop, determined but pallid, said ‘I don’t suppose your gold could be inside the body?’

  And Lymond, astonished, said, ‘Do you think that even Güzel …? Ah well. Perhaps Mr Dee could provide me with scissors …?’

  Philippa left the room. Lymond saw her go, and then saw Adam turn and run after her. Dee, at the end of the coffin, had made no move to give Lymond what he asked for. He said coolly, ‘You have gone too far.’

  ‘I know,’ Lymond said. The light swam, like a lamp in the fog, and then became quite brilliant again. He said, ‘In any case, I have no time to seek it. I must leave. You will allow me?’

  ‘We shall not stop you,’ Guthrie said. ‘But I doubt if you will reach Gravesend by morning. If your gold is here, we will keep it for you, with your baggage at Fenchurch Street. If you stay in Russia, we shall send it there.’

  ‘And the dead man?’ said Fergie Hoddim. ‘Graham Malett?’

  And Lymond standing up, said, ‘Put him in the earth. It is where he belongs. In the earth, but not in the sea.’

  The jewelled robe he had worn at the banquet was too conspicuous. Dee gave him an old jerkin, dark and shabby, to cover his shirt, and he ripped the jewels from his girdle and put them with the rest of his money, to serve him on the journey.

  His hands were not very steady. Because he knew they were watching him, he did not avoid passing the open sarcophagus where his old, vanquished enemy lay. Someone had had to destroy Graham Malett, and this he had elected to do. It was his misfortune that the death of Gabriel was linked for ever with the death of a child.

  Of two tainted children, he had chosen to preserve the boy best equipped to survive, who had already won a place in Philippa’s life. The child whose mother was Joleta Malett; whose father, despite all d’Harcourt’s hysterical claims, was almost certainly her brother Gabriel. Or so Güzel had told him. And since Güzel seemed to know, he believed her.

  In order to rule, one must face reality. For Russia, no hardship must be beyond one’s endurance.

  John Dee said, ‘But man’s body is not an enemy, but a partner and collaborator with his soul.’ And Lymond, who had forgotten this time to defend the barriers of his mind, stood up and said pleasantly, ‘For these excursions, I make my own sea-charts.’

  And Dee, yielding at once, inclined his head and left him alone.

  Danny. Alec. And Fergie. Lymond looked at them all and said, ‘I should like to think that you understood. Perhaps you do. If you find an occasion to send it, I should like to have news of you. And of Adam.’

  ‘You will hear from us,’ was all Guthrie said. And since there was no time to lose, Lymond turned quietly and left them.

  He passed Adam, white face glimmering in the dark, on the stairs; but did not try to speak to him. There was no sign of Philippa. Blacklock would have taken her, of course, through the back door to the Sidneys’. Had it not been for that, he might have called at St Anthony’s himself, for he knew he was going to need help. But it was best to leave things as they were. And Sidney might try to dissuade him again. And he had had enough of that.

  Outside there was no moon, and the silence, in the heart of the city, was almost absolute: it must be very late. He had forgotten to find out the hour on leaving Dee’s house. It was not very surprising perhaps that he had forgotten, but a pity, for he had twenty-four miles to cover, and not very long in which to do it. If Dee’s information was correct: if the four ships for Russia were to sail with the dawn tide. King Philip’s men had not known that. He wondered who had arranged it, and when.

  He would, he made up his mind, make for Greenwich. It was where he had left the royal barge. With any luck—and surely he deserved a little luck—the barge might be there, and the captain mindful enough of his duty to take him where King Philip wanted him to go. But he had to get to Greenwich first, and that was on the other side of the river.

  He could do two things about that. He could find his way to Dimmock’s house, a few streets to the south-west. Or he could make straight for the river and hope to find a boat somewhere, say at Billingsgate or St Botolph’s, where the Muscovy fleet had been loading, which would take him for a fat fee to Greenwich. Or all the way, if need be, to Gravesend.

  He decided to make for the river and set off along Threadneedle Street, past the almshouses and the church of St Martin’s, towards the pump at Bishopsgate Street. He kept, for more reasons than one, close to the house walls. It was only now, trying to soften the sound of his breathing, that he realized how much of a beating he had taken, during that savage kidnapping at Greenwich. His shoulders ached; his ribs hurt when he moved. Cunning Alec, to keep his thoughts engaged while the second barge overtook them.

  In the middle of Bishopsgate Street Francis Crawford came to a halt as, through the storm of pain now settling in his head, a thought struck him, far too belatedly. Who had sent that second barge which had come so opportunely to stop him from going to Gravesen
d? Someone who did not want him to go to Russia any more than Alec Guthrie and his friends. Sir Henry Sidney? He did not think it likely. And Philippa, like his own men, had not been a free agent that day.

  You now know what you want. It didn’t matter. St Botolph’s was what mattered at this moment, and quickly, because it was becoming rather difficult to think. He moved quickly down Bishopsgate Street to the corner at Leadenhall, with the tall square tower opposite of St Peter’s, Cornhill, and was about to continue down Gracechurch Street when he changed his mind, and turned left instead, away from the wide market with its cobbles and then right into the winding, uneven dirt track of Lime Street. Once there, the darkness about him became quite complete.

  It was there, too, that he heard the first, stealthy steps all around him, and knew that he was being surrounded.

  He was a highly-trained professional soldier and he knew all the tricks—the time-worn tricks one could employ to deal with that. Noiselessly, he set himself to identify his suroundings and make use of them. The silence helped, and the night-smells, pleasant and unpleasant: the trace of incense which betrayed a church with a graveyard he could silently cross; the smells of metal; of corn from the Leadenhall Granary; of flesh from the butchers’ closed stalls. The warm scents from a stable, of horseflesh and hay, where he waited for some moments, listening. The fresh, night smell of grass and spring flowers—primroses, violets and gillyflowers, the feathers of southernwood, the cushions of wild thyme and mint from a garden where he stayed also, his hand on a tree, listening to booted feet moving on stony earth, and spurs clinking.

  Four or five men, he knew by then; or even more. Not the watch; not a group of common footpads but armed men, and horsemen. From their stealth, he imagined they did not particularly want their business known. And he, of course, was their business.

  He proved that, quite early on, by finding some gravel under his feet in a courtyard and throwing a pebble as far as he could, the next time the footsteps came near him. He heard the click of its fall, and the soft, concerted rush of feet which followed, telling its own story.

  The trouble was, having lingered and doubled so much, it was hard to be sure still of his bearings. Or by now, he thought, he would have jettisoned his pride and tried to find Master Dimmock’s door. Or even the door of St Anthony’s. As it was, time was wearing on and although he kept moving downhill, towards the faint, distant smells of the river, he was no longer sure at what point he would be led to it, or how to find a boat once he got there. Swarming by day with seamen and porters, with stevedores and lightermen and water-carriers, the wharves with their courts and alleys and taverns were not the best place to find help in the dark.

  The night, as often happened in May, was by no means as warm as the afternoon had been. A small wind had sprung up and freshened, and his clothes, moving across his bruised skin, sent shivering chills through his body. His hands were stiff with cold; his face burning like … one of Güzel’s charcoal braziers. And now nothing can hinder us. And now the only thing hindering him was himself.

  And it was dangerous to let his nightmares interfere with his thinking, for he must have made a sound on the cobbles, or perhaps moved unsuspectingly into the light from a window, for somewhere to one side of him he heard a subdued shout and then again, from several places, the sound of booted feet moving rapidly. He ran, his hand outstretched, brushing the walls beside him with the light bough, soft with new leaves, which he had broken from his tree before leaving it. He was very conscious of the faint sound it made: of a hiss like the fall of light rain, but it could not be helped; and it told him where the next alley was, and, after that, of a gateway without a door, leading to an inn yard. He stayed there, flattened against the inside wall, and they missed him again. But he did not now know the way to the river.

  After that everything became much worse. He caught his foot in the centre gutter and stopped himself from falling headlong only by crashing into something which turned out to be a well-head: his ribs acquired another bruise and, what was worse, there was quite a lot of noise. He took to his heels and found sanctuary, after a bit, behind a cobbler’s booth, but after things had quieted he managed to rouse someone’s dog, and the multiplying barking alerted his own private bloodhounds again.

  This time, running, his bough snapped in two in his hands, and he was left with a stick too short to protect his hand and arm or to guide him between pilasters or about projecting flights of stone steps or past cabins or horse-blocks or water butts. His last, crazy miscalculation as they closed in on him after the latest cascade of sound was to climb, by touch, the wooden fence rising high on one side of the lane and find himself stumbling among the stacked planks in the yard of a carpenter’s shop.

  The noise that time was sufficient to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about where precisely he was. He found the fence again and followed it round, to find that it enclosed the yard completely. He strode stumbling to the side farthest from the approaching noise and finding a foothold began to pull himself up, wondering what indignity lay waiting on the other side: a cesspool or a pigsty; a henhouse or a fishmonger’s pile of stacked creels. At the same moment, before he had a proper purchase on the top, he heard a thud as someone’s feet landed inside the wall, a little along from him. And the next moment, his knife out, he was defending himself against someone who was gripping him, hand and arm.

  Ludovic d’Harcourt’s voice said, ‘Don’t. It’s me. You can’t climb over there: come farther along.’

  And astonished even through the stupefying pain, Francis Crawford allowed himself to be dragged along the wall by the man who had betrayed and four times tried to kill him. ‘Here,’ said Ludovic and, bending, grasped the other man with his one good arm, and lent him his shoulder to climb out of the yard, and to safety.

  He had got so far when the yard gates burst open. The push d’Harcourt gave him almost unbalanced Lymond, but he held hard to the peeling wood of the fence and then, against all the thrust of d’Harcourt’s arm, half fell, half jumped down inside the yard once again. He said, ‘You can’t climb with one hand.’

  D’Harcourt said, ‘You fool! You fool …!’ And as Lymond resisted his attempts to push him away, the other man broke suddenly loose and ran straight into the oncoming enemy.

  Lymond heard it happen: heard his scream in the midst of the clash of steel: d’Harcourt must have had a knife also, and he must have used it. In the dark, whatever their orders, no one’s men at arms were going to be especially gentle with that. Then he heard another sound, a long bubbling moan which he had heard too often to make any mistake about. And, turning, Francis Crawford moved silently from the sound and, finding the place d’Harcourt had shown him, pulled himself achingly up, and over the top. He did not know how big the drop was. But he lowered himself until he hung by his fingertips, and then jumped.

  It was a little farther than he had hoped. He arrived sprawling on the cobbles, and then, rolling over, collected himself. The men were inside the yard, arguing. In a moment, having slain his protector, they were going to renew the hunt for himself. He found he did not greatly care. Breathing in long, retching gasps he stood for a moment where he was, his head resting against the too-high fence, his mind on Ludovic d’Harcourt. And only slowly became aware of something else: a rumour of scent; a perfume which was not that of clove-gillyflowers, or herbs, or sweetbriars, or the white double violet which comes twice a year.

  He said, his eyes closed, ‘Beshrew Loose Ladies in the Night. You use your scents like a Turkish concubine. I wish you would throw them away.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Philippa said. ‘You are standing under a lamp. Where are you going?’

  ‘A boat for Greenwich,’ Lymond said. He stared into the darkness. ‘They have killed d’Harcourt.’

  ‘I heard,’ Philippa said. ‘He came for me. Give me your hand.’

  And as his spread hand was taken, and he felt her other hand on his arm, authoritatively pushing and steering, he said, ‘You know?’


  ‘That your headaches lead to blindness? Yes, I know,’ Philippa said. ‘But be quiet. Or they will hear us.’ And after that, she did not speak again for a very long time.

  He did not therefore know which wharf she finally took him to, or how she found the boat into which someone pulled him. There seemed to be several men rowing and, from the conversation and the wind on his face, a small sail, which lent them suddenly an extra impulse of speed, tipping the boat so that he was turned over, on the sacking someone had put under his head.

  He had not been quite conscious but he awakened sufficiently to think that the vessel was riding too smoothly to be going against the tide. That meant that the full span of a tide, with a little over to allow for the turn … that meant that, at worst, six hours had to elapse before Jenkinson’s fleet could lift anchor and set sail from Gravesend. And perhaps more. The tide still seemed to be running strongly. He said, not knowing how far to project his voice, ‘What time is it? Philippa?’

  And Philippa’s voice said, ‘I’m not sure. But the helmsman thinks you will do it. If you will lie still, I am going to lay a dripping wet handkerchief over your forehead. The smell I can do nothing about. But it will perhaps drown my scent.’

  He could not remember saying anything about her scent. After a moment the promised wet handkerchief did arrive, and water ran down into his hair. It was another sensation, if it did not signally help. He said, ‘Have you enough money?’ because he did not wish the sum he carried to be known, and she said, ‘Yes. We have reached an agreement. They will take us all the way to Gravesend. Will that do, or did you want to be put off at Greenwich?’

  The barge at Greenwich might even have gone. And he did not feel capable of explaining to an irate captain and his escort and rowers, precisely what had happened, and that he himself had had no part in the attack on them. He said, ‘All the way,’ in the kind of encapsulated speech which had proved most successful lately and went to sleep. Or so he supposed.