The Ringed Castle: Fifth in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘I fear you,’ said Lymond.

  ‘You fear pain?’ Ivan said.

  ‘I fear, as any man would, the indignity of pain. I fear more to inflict on your highness the sufferings of a noble remorse, should you smite your jester too harshly. We are here to watch you deliver yourselves from the years of thraldom and oppression. There lies about us so much that is weighty,’ said Lymond. ‘Forgive us if sometimes we try in our poor way to be merry, and to lighten your burden. In his complaint, did Prince Vyazemsky remember to mention that on the occasion of every encampment he had in his tent the Khan Yam-gurchei’s five Tartar wives?’

  The Tsar’s eyes and mouth opened, and his hand became still on the staff-wood. ‘You say?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘To remove his dagger and bow as we did, and even, be it said, his boots and his white linen breeches was therefore an exploit, I wished humbly to claim, of some merit?’

  A rod between the two men, the staff remained still, but the ferrule had withdrawn, imperceptibly, from the glazed and burst skin of the jerkin. ‘And the wives?’ the Tsar said. ‘You failed to steal off the wives? Was there no Cossack leader, no promising pioneer hot for pleasure to whom you could have presented them?’

  ‘Alas,’ said Lymond. ‘None who has not heard already whistled abroad the prince’s liberal habit of life, and the unhappy reward of his ardours.’

  ‘Ho!’ said the Tsar Ivan, and repeated it, a good deal more loudly, suddenly dropping the point of the staff to the floor. His mouth open and working he stared into the unflinching blue eyes of the Voevoda; then lowering his head, he laid his cheek upon his two folded hands on the staff-end and began to breath noisily, the saliva blowing rainbow-spotted into the air. ‘Oh,’ said Ivan. ‘Oho. Oho. Oh. Oh.’

  Gasping, he raised a blind hand and unclosed, shut and opened the fingers. ‘Come nearer. Kneel. Let me see you.’

  Lymond knelt. The Tsar lifted his head and unlooking, let the staff go. It fell unregarded, with a crack, bouncing on the thin carpet. Ivan leaned forward and, stretching both hands, gripped the bright hair on either side of his Voevoda’s cool face, the thin skin lightly browned by the sun.

  ‘You are not afraid,’ said Ivan. He pulled one hand sharply away and Adashev, Viscovatu, Sylvester saw Lymond’s lips tighten, but he did not call out or speak, as Ivan opened his palm and showed a feathering of snatched yellow hair. There was blood at the side of the Voevoda’s brushed head. ‘You are not afraid,’ repeated the Tsar. ‘You are not afraid of the boyars. You are not afraid of me, but for me.…

  ‘I am twenty-six,’ said the Tsar. He put out his hand, letting the lock fall from his palm, and gripped Lymond’s shoulder. ‘I confessed. I confessed to my rages, my sins against my people, and Dmitri my firstborn was taken from me, and my friends quarrelled and plotted about me when they thought I lay dying. I have no friends.’

  ‘You have the men in this room,’ Lymond said.

  ‘The men in this room are afraid of me. All except you,’ the Tsar said. ‘They are afraid of the Tartar. They wish to send you to drive out the Tartar instead of defending the Grand Prince’s honour before those swine-hating animals. Do you hear what the Poles say of me? That my ancestors licked the mare’s milk off Tartar horsemanes while theirs were free princes. That a hen defends her chicks against the hawk and the eagle while I, a two-headed eagle, hide my cowardly head. They say that! And these councillors will not make war on them. Soon Livonia will send her ambassadors, suing for a renewal of this craven peace treaty, and these my councillors will readily grant it.…’

  The Tsar withdrew his hand sharply and sat back. ‘What would the Voevoda advise? What would you say to those dogs when they come?’

  Lymond rose slowly to his feet and stood still, close to Ivan. ‘What your councillors say. They are older and wiser than I am.’

  The Tsar, flushing, dashed his closed hand on his knee. ‘But if they are wrong?’

  ‘If fresh facts arise, they will have changed their judgement by then.’

  Sylvester’s dry voice said, ‘May one ask where these fresh facts might come from, that are so unaccounted for now in our reckoning? From the Voevoda?’

  Ivan’s eyes moved from Sylvester to Lymond. Lymond said, ‘From the condition at that date of their army, and the condition of the one led by me. These are the only facts which concern me. Policy is a matter for you and the Tsar.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Alexei Adashev gently, ‘the Tsar considers the Voevoda should have a share in our councils.’

  Lymond said quickly, ‘The Tsar has offered me the post of commander, and that I have accepted. Nothing else.’ And his eyes followed Ivan as the Tsar rose, his shadow falling over the six men below him.

  ‘The Tsar,’ said Ivan, ‘prizes honesty, and knows how to reward it. I dine in state, and cannot ask you to join me. But you will share none the less of my dinner, and those bold men you have caused to join you in my city of Moscow. Go in health to your house in Kitaigorod and these my officers will follow with that which will make you all merry.’

  The hand stroking the auburn beard was held out and kneeling, Lymond kissed it, and was raised by it to stand before Ivan again. In a low voice, ‘Lend me your honesty,’ Ivan said; and meeting his eyes, Lymond bowed once again without speaking.

  It was one o’clock on a still summer’s night when Francis Crawford again entered the Kremlin, and, with torches and his boy Venceslas to guide him, picked his way past the Nikólskaya Tower to the palace he and Güzel shared behind it. He had opened the door of his chamber when he was stopped by the soft voice of Güzel’s negro tirewoman Leila. So, dismissing Venceslas, he turned, and made his way instead to the musk-scented taper-lit room which his mistress had designed for her pleasure.

  She was there, her hair unbound, dressed in light, soundless gauzes spread over the floor cushions on which she was resting, a little book stretched in leather unrolled with its strap loose in her hand. Beside her burned a claw-footed brazier, embossed with masks and harpies and sea monsters and swags of dully shining fruit. The red chipped eyes of the charcoal roused the uncut heavy stones she wore round her ankles, her wrists and her neck; the tasselled Greek earrings trembling against the smooth olive skin, the lips and eyes so finely brushed with oil and smooth pigments and tinting that she looked like a painting in gesso, the white high lights and ochre flesh tones overlaying the greenish brown undercoat, with the small mouth and the straight thin-boned nose and the long, clear-lidded archangel eyes. She said, ‘Since we came to Moscow, I have never seen you look tired.’

  Lymond closed the door and crossed the carpet towards her. ‘I am not tired,’ he said. ‘I have been stabbed, fenced with, caressed and plucked like a chicken, and I have also drunk and eaten far more than I hope ever to be asked to again. But I am satisfied. As the Bishop of Arras remarked——’

  ‘A good peace can only be made by a good war? It is peace then?’ said Güzel. ‘Ivan has admitted you to his Council?’

  ‘Yes. He may not be aware of it yet, but he has,’ Lymond said. ‘I am far too dirty for your exquisite cushions.’

  ‘You are,’ said Güzel. ‘Take off your coat and your jerkin.’ She watched him. ‘What have you been doing? Your shirt will have to go, too. If you look over there, there is a finished night robe I was going to give you. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Baiting a boyar or two,’ Lymond said. ‘How did you know so much about the road to Astrakhan?’ The robe she had shown him was fox-trimmed, and of Persian silk. Bare to the waist he allowed it to fall over his shoulders and subsided, with the oiled ease of total physical control, among the cushions beyond the low brazier.

  ‘You are an animal,’ the Mistress said. ‘Barbarous Scot. You have no shame and no shyness. Who do you think nursed you in those days out of Volos?’

  ‘Master Grossmeyer,’ said Lymond. ‘The sick do not interest you, unless with very good reason. Did you learn of the road to Astrakhan from Suunbeka or Ediger?’

  ‘Su
unbeka and her son have become Christian,’ Güzel said. ‘She has turned her back on the Tartars, her people.’

  ‘She is none the less Yamgurchei’s daughter as well as the captive widow of the last Khan of Kazan. I salute the persuasiveness of your doctor, your cook and your sewing women, not to mention your personal charms. The incident did all that was necessary.’

  ‘The Tsar is lonely,’ Güzel said calmly. ‘Since his illness, he and his wife have lost confidence in Sylvester and Adashev. Anastasia is looking, too, for someone strongwilled who will steady him. There is a vein of unnatural violence.’

  ‘In his brother. In his great-grandfather. But in himself I see nothing yet. There may be a good mind under all that loose-lipped emotion. But it is a gamble from moment to moment whether one is about to be embraced or garotted.’

  ‘Can you control him?’ Güzel asked. There was a tap on the door. Leila came in followed by Venceslas bearing a tray: he dispensed wine, which Lymond waved aside, and withdrew.

  ‘I think so. We can do a great deal for him, if he will allow us. Whether I can also control the boyars at the same time is a matter which only the hangman will finally tell.… Güzel, I wish you to take back Venceslas.’

  She looked up from her Sassinian goblet of wine. ‘He is clumsy?’

  ‘No. Like the elephant, a beast very docible and apt to be taught. But I prefer not to be served out of gratitude.’

  ‘Now I,’ Güzel said, ‘think that the most intriguing form of service of all. I was sorry for him. In the manner of this most hoggish of nations, his father had drunk wife and children completely away. I redeemed Venceslas from the inn he was slaving for. Would you put him back? I thought tonight you were no friend to the winecup?’

  The dense brown eyes were watching him as he lay on her cushions: his veiled lids and lit golden hair, and the polished brown skin between the open furs of his robe. He raised his eyebrows, studying the pattern of cut velvet under his fingers, and said, ‘Do you want to hear of it? I joined the men of St Mary’s at Plummer’s brave piece of self-assertion in the Kitaigorod. We were followed there by six of the Tsar’s courtiers and twenty-five serving men, together with a cart filled with silver vessels and platters of food, and two small carriages holding the drink. All, it was made clear, were to be consumed on the premises immediately, with the help of the visiting courtiers, and the silver vessels were ours to retain. We each received seven goblets of Burgundy and seven each of Rhenish wine, muscatel, white wine, Canary, Alicant and malmsey, twelve measures of hydromel and a quantity of food, among which I remember eight dishes of roast swan, eight of spiced crane, several of cocks dressed with ginger, boned fowls, blackcock cooked in saffron, hazel-grouse cooked in cream, ducks with cucumber, geese with rice, hares with dumplings and turnips, elks’ brains, cakes and pies of meat and of cheese, pancakes, fritters, jellies, creams and preserved walnuts, which I escorted myself half the way from Astrakhan.

  ‘The meal,’ said Lymond, ‘was marked by a great deal of merriment and an embarrassment of toasts, the custom being for each proposer to stand in the centre and propose one by one the healths of each of the company and their respective lords or commanders, together with a number of other sentiments to do with health, fortune or victory. The proposer expresses the wish that not so much blood may remain in his enemies as he means to leave in his goblet. He then drinks, bareheaded, and turns the empty goblet upside down over his head. His listeners each time do likewise. The Russian has an exceeding capacity for liquor.’

  ‘So?’ said Güzel.

  ‘So have we,’ Lymond said. ‘Adam succumbed, but the rest of us packed the six Muscovite gentlemen back into the cart and saw it safely back to the Kremlin. Alec Guthrie said it was the best night he’d had since he matriculated, and d’Harcourt embraced me. Even Danny Hislop glowed with a highly intellectual goodwill. The burning of SS Boris and Gleb has, I gather, now been forgiven me.’

  His voice, lightly sardonic, lapsed into silence. For a moment Güzel did not speak either. Then she said, ‘I understand. I shall take Venceslas to be my own servant.’

  He looked up sharply then, his fringed eyes distended. ‘What do you understand?’

  The long Greco-Italian eyes smiled back at him. ‘What were you thinking of? Necromancy? I understand what is perfectly plain. That you are succeeding in what you have set out to do. And that of normal human impulses you experience nothing.’

  He continued to stare at her, his hands lightly woven together. He said, ‘All I can give you is Russia.’

  The woman Güzel, courtesan and mistress to princes, smiled at him with parted, rose-tinted lips, her own white ringed hands lying loose in her lap. She said, ‘It is a property of women, to know how to wait.’

  Lymond said, ‘If I have laid my traps as I hope, Vishnevetsky will make some move in your direction, or in mine. I want him to fight for us.’

  Thoughtfully, Güzel stretched out and studied one hand and then returned it, slowly, to rest on the other. ‘If you are content with Russia,’ she said, ‘then so am I. But you did not tell me you had taken an English girl-child to wife?’

  ‘I told you.… Did I not?’ Lymond said. ‘It was the Somerville girl. It can be annulled. She has probably sent post-haste to the Papal Legate already.’

  Güzel rose. She stooped and lifting her wrought goblet, drank from it; then walking from the circle of tapers she lifted something white from the shadows and returned with it to the warmth of the light. She said, ‘She says nothing of it. She has written to you.’

  The seal of the letter was broached. Without comment Lymond received it and unfolded the pages. There were several, covered in round schoolgirl script. He glanced at the first sentence, looked up to find Güzel standing, hands folded, watching him, and, rising himself, stood by the nearest group of branched lights, running his eyes down the pages.

  The flush of wine had gone from his skin, and the amusement, the edge of interest and involvement had all vanished also. She knew what the letter contained: a young girl’s chatter, of no weight or substance but evocative perhaps of a homeland vanished, and of a family and of friends. The girl had written in detail of the child, and had ended with the news which was clearly the purpose of the letter: that his mother was no longer young, and needed his presence. Güzel had made no attempt to conceal the letter from its recipient, and in such things the Mistress seldom made a mistake.

  Lymond never finished the letter. He read half-way through and then, closing it into its folds, tossed it one-handed into the brazier where it lingered, the penned words for a moment bright-lit: He is going to be tall. Across the plume of new flame: ‘Why should it matter?’ he said. ‘You can hardly imagine I pine for her.’

  ‘Not when you leave half her letter unread. Does it offend you to read of the boy?’ Güzel said. ‘Or does it remind you too much of the other?’ And met the gaze he turned on her, with serenity.

  ‘A moment ago,’ said Lymond with irony, ‘you reminded me of my handicap. I have been cheated of the tender emotions. Including nostalgia.’

  Then play to me,’ said Güzel calmly. ‘There is the harpsichord. You compliment me on the life I have shaped which offers more than common refreshment for more than common employment. If there is nothing to fear, there is nothing to avoid.’

  It was late. She was not as young as her protégé, and under the paint, the sills of her eyes were darkened with tiredness. But informed by experience, her instinct was quite unimpaired. She sank, cup in hand, in her cushions and sustained his level regard as he faced her, the light still and bright on the thready gold of his hair; over the mould of cheekbone and brow; about the strictly bracketed mouth.

  Then he laughed, and, walking straight to the instrument, lifted the beautiful lid. He struck the spaced keys a few times to test them before, sitting, he brought them, ringing, to play.

  When the noise had continued for some time the Chamberlain, who had no musical ear, called for a candle and knocked on Master Grossm
eyer’s door to invite him to share his wakefulness. ‘God’s mercy, a marvellous player,’ said the Chamberlain, straining at loyalty. ‘In twenty minutes, he fails to repeat himself.’

  Huddled listening on the edge of his bed, Master Gorius Grossmeyer nodded two or three times. ‘My scalpel, could you teach it to play, would give you just such a performance. The Tsar is fortunate.’

  ‘The Tsar has no interest in music,’ the Chamberlain said. ‘And surely the Mistress’s presence is fortune enough for any ruler?’

  Master Grossmeyer dragged off his coarse woollen hat and explored, scratching, the ruffled grey hair underneath. ‘The Mistress,’ he said, ‘is a woman. But this is hardly a man, but an impervious and versatile engine. You have only to listen to hear it.’

  ‘Does she hear it?’ the Chamberlain asked.

  Discretion, at three o’clock in the morning, is often a victim to slumber. ‘She hears it,’ Master Grossmeyer said grimly. ‘She wished to be the eminence behind the Tsar’s chair of state, and this she will be. She did not expect to see her chosen escort reach there before her, or to sleep alone in her bed while she did so. She is to be pitied.’

  ‘I prefer to think,’ the Chamberlain said, with a boldness he was later to wince over, ‘that they deserve each other.’

  Which was the conclusion, did they but know it, that the victorious and drink-happy men of St Mary’s had, with tolerance, agreed on already that evening.

  Chapter 6

  As a highly qualified Turkish-trained concubine from the harem of Suleiman the Magnificent, Philippa Somerville settled into English court life as a kite among chickens, and as a kite among kites into the Spanish court of the new King-consort Philip.