The Ringed Castle: Fifth in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles

by Dorothy Dunnett

  The tall chimney stacks, crusted and twisted and diapered. The tiers of glittering glass from tower windows, square headed and mullioned and transomed, and the tailored grey cupolas, capping them. Trefoiled friezes and curling leaf ornament; swag mouldings and roundels in terra-cotta of pure Italian work. Running patterns of plasterwork, such as those which clad the walls of this building, with trailing flowers and mythological monsters: arches of flint and brick chequered, like the one standing outside in King Street. Square Gothic gatehouses, with their feet in the river, such as that which led into the Palace. The tennis courts. The tilt yards. The twenty stone piers of the Bridge.

  And what did he make of the Presence Chamber, thought Danny, with its ranks of high leaded lights and great gold compartmented ceiling? And below it, the hangings of gold tissue with the emblems of England and Spain entwined in raised purple velvet, and the frieze of antique work, picked out in gold.

  The dais was at the end of the room, under a heavy fringed canopy. And there, the Queen and her consort sat, unmoving, on tall gilded thrones.

  Queen Mary looked ill. Dressed as if for a wedding, with her neck thickly ringed with large pearls within her rigid winged collar, and her gemmed skirts unwieldy as curtains, she breathed from her stillness a kind of violent impatience. She was suffering, it appeared, from the rheum and a toothache. And Philip, it was said, from something worse, which he had brought uncured from Brussels, having failed these many weeks to make a recovery.

  But he gave no appearance of restlessness. Elegantly disposed, with his thin acquiline nose and stubborn, fair-bearded jaw he was wearing the dress sent him by his bride for their wedding day, of cloth of gold with English roses and pomegranates, all picked out in gold beads and seed pearls. On each sleeve Danny, counting discreetly, identified nine table diamonds, and his white plumed bonnet had a little chain and a medallion with diamonds and rubies.

  The long-deferred, long-wanted reunion had taken place at Greenwich, four days before. At every stage of his return, from Calais to Dover, from Dover to Canterbury, from Canterbury to Greenwich King Philip had found two of the Queen’s gentlemen waiting, one of whom had ridden off forthwith to take the Queen news of his progress. On the day of his arrival at Greenwich, each London church sang the Te Deum by order of the Bishop of London, and the church bells rang all the time, while in the palace down river the King and Queen walked to their closet, and heard their first Mass on their knees there together.

  They had stayed two days at Greenwich before passing upstream to Tower Wharf with the Court, where they were met by the Lord Mayor, aldermen and sheriffs and all the Crafts in their liveries for the ceremonial ride through the City. King Philip pardoned the prisoners in the Tower in passing, and the noise of bells and trumpets and guns shooting off from the Tower was only surpassed in horror by the noise of the waits on the leads of St Peter’s in Cheap, whom Danny had joined, with Ludovic d’Harcourt, to gain his first, unpredjudiced view of King Philip.

  The shopkeepers were glad to see the King present, and the Privy Council, with their palms itching, it was said. But the people gazed at the Spaniards, as Danny was gazing now at the Spanish lords grouped round the throne, and heard without enthusiasm King Philip’s publicized statements instinct (in translation) with goodness and clemency. He wished to enjoy his states, he said, rather than to increase them. And more than anything, because of its cost, its toil and its perils, was he opposed to the waging of war.

  Danny recalled retailing that to the Voevoda, and the Voevoda listening with sympathy. In fact, Lymond had quoted him Elder:

  O noble Prince, sole hope of Caesar’s side

  By God appointed all the world to guide

  But chiefly London doth her love vouchsafe

  Rejoicing that her Philip is come safe.

  He could do it with his face as bland as a bishop’s. He was perfectly serious now, standing behind Nepeja and his nine Russians in cloth of gold and red damask, listening to the start of the Oration. Nepeja’s voice began with a tremble, and then settled down to its normal vibrating sonority. The Tsar’s letter, somewhat marred with sea water, had already been delivered: The most high and mighty Ivan Vasilievich, Emperor of all Russia, sends from the port of St Nicholas in Russia his right honourable Ambassador surnamed Osep Nepeja, his high officer in the town and country of Vologda to King Philip and Queen Mary; with letters, presents and gifts as a manifest argument and token of mutual amity and friendship to be made and continued for the commodity and benefit of both the realms and people.

  Rob Best, threadily, was translating to English, and someone Danny couldn’t see into Spanish. Perhaps the Count of Feria. The beloved, Ruy Gomez had gone to Spain, to fetch money and troops and supplies and without him, it was a wonder that the King went on breathing. But the other lords were all standing round him, and somewhere must be the Jesuit, thirty-seven years old, it was said, and suing for the hand of Jane Dormer. Moved by a quest for knowledge, Danny was scanning the languid cloaked forms when it came to him, as a fly to the nose of a salmon, that he had nearly missed something much more important. The Somerville girl must be there somewhere.

  A tall, regal woman: the Countess of Lennox. A small one, Madame Clarenceux. A young one, with fair hair drawn sleekly back in a caul: Jane Dormer, he suspected. And another, perhaps a year younger, of no very great height, but straight-spined, with the fine, straying grace of one of the lesser carnivores. Her dress was modest; her unchildlike face shadowed by a winged cap of sheer stiffened white, with a gemmed tassel worth a small fortune laid quivering against one pure cheek. Danny Hislop said, ‘Christ!’ although under his breath, and saw Adam turn, and then follow the line of his gaze to Mistress Philippa Somerville, newly of Lymond and Sevigny.

  She was looking at Lymond, gravely but with a question somewhere, it seemed, in the fine-drawn line of her brows. Hislop saw the Voevoda counter the stare with another one, perfectly soulless. Then as the girl continued to look at him, Lymond’s mouth relaxed for a moment, into something which was not more than resignation but showed some advance, at least, on its habitual arrogance. Under his breath: ‘Majnún and Leylí,’ said Danny Hislop to Adam.

  Then the girl looked away, but not before someone else, he noted, had absorbed the small tableau. The Countess of Lennox, it seemed, was interested in Francis Crawford, and Francis Crawford’s wife Philippa. Indeed, her splendid eyes, scanning him, made Daniel Hislop mildly glad, for once, not to be the object of a woman’s attention. He was so intrigued that he barely heard the Oration end, and its two translations, and the Queen’s reply, and the handing over of the two timbers of sables: eighty fine skins of full growth with long, glossy black hair, spared with some pain from the Company’s Storehouse. For the six timbers of sables, the twenty entire sables, exceeding beautiful and the six great skins, worn only by the Emperor for worthiness had never reached London, but swam waterlogged through some deep northern waters, and made mysteries for the inquisitive seal. The Embassy advanced, one by one, to kiss the Sovereign’s hand and be greeted.

  The procession reformed when it was over, and as processions do, took some time to retire from the chamber, and nobly escorted, traverse the Great Chamber and then the long gallery which led back to the Thames. In the gallery, Lady Lennox touched Lymond’s arm.

  ‘Mr Crawford? You can spare an old friend a few minutes. It will be ten at least before your Russian friends are allowed to embark.’

  He did not appear, to the three men behind him, to hesitate. ‘I should be honoured,’ he said. ‘A friend is a friend, old or young, in these troublous times.’ And drawing Hislop’s attention, lightly, with a touch on the shoulder, Lymond moved softly out of line and followed the august woman sweeping tight-lipped before him.

  She found a small chamber through the next doorway, and walking in, turned swirling to face him. He said, ‘Is the door to be closed? I am uncertain.’

  She was wearing the large brooch which had been one of her wedding presents from
the Queen twelve years before, showing the History of Our Saviour Healing the Man with the Palsy. And she was on her own ground at last, fortified by royal wealth and favour and the victory of her religion. Margaret Lennox said, ‘What, my dear Francis? Do you think my reputation could be harmed by a man who is soliciting a divorce from his wife on the grounds that he cannot bed her? I am afraid, my dear, your affairs do not speed. A public congregation of Cardinals called specially over the Constable’s matter has proved disinclined to give dispensation. Quos Deus conjunxit, they say, homo non separet.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Lymond mildly, ‘if you erect mazes because you enjoy twining. When King Philip declares war, France will at once come to the aid of the Pope, who will then allow the divorce of the Constable’s son to proceed without hindrance. Mine will follow.’

  ‘But if England and France are at war,’ Margaret said, ‘will not Scotland declare war on us also? And until the divorce is made final, think of the plight of poor Philippa, tied to a Scotsman.’

  ‘An absent Scotsman,’ said Francis Crawford. He had closed the door and was standing just inside it, the gold barmi glistening in the dimness. ‘I shall be in Russia, I trust, by that time. And I have had legal papers drawn up, abjuring all claim to Flaw Valleys.’

  ‘But if you leave,’ Margaret said, ‘your divorce cannot go through. And what will the child’s lovers do then? Repeat the sad history which Mr Bailey tells of your mother?’

  ‘Am I supposed to be devastated?’ Lymond said. ‘I doubt, I truly doubt, if you have time to discover what does and what does not interest me. I take it that you are threatening Philippa?’

  ‘Your Philippa has been a trifle indiscreet,’ said Margaret Lennox. ‘A childish error of judgement, but it has done me a disservice in Scotland at a time when I wish the Queen Regent’s favour. I think it would be only fair if Philippa’s husband so conducted his affairs that this favour was restored to me. I want my inheritance of Angus.’

  ‘Wills, wives and wrecks,’ Lymond said. ‘I beg your pardon. The story goes that you sent your priest to Tantallon Castle where your father breathed his last in his arms, thus allowing Sir John to adjust the testamentary documents at his pleasure. I thought you were using the title of Countess of Angus.’

  ‘I am using it because it is mine,’ Margaret said. ‘Tantallon is mine. All my father’s possessions in Scotland are mine.’

  ‘Then how inconvenient,’ Lymond said, ‘that you are married to an outlaw and attainted traitor from Scotland. May I advise you about a divorce?’

  They gazed at one another. Lymond added, reproachfully, ‘I shall have to swim to the Vintry.’

  ‘You take it lightly,’ said Lady Lennox. ‘Perhaps you take it lightly from disregard for the girl. But the sentence for treason in this country is execution. And that applies not only to Philippa Somerville, but to her mother.’ She walked forward slowly, her back to the small latticed window, until she stood immediately before him, blocking the light. She said, ‘I have evidence of her conspiracy. I have only to take it to the Queen. And I shall, unless you help me win my inheritance.’

  ‘From the Queen Dowager? With my notable lack of prowess?’ Lymond said.

  ‘And you shall hold Tantallon for me,’ Margaret Lennox said. ‘And, in time, put my son Darnley on the throne.’

  There was the briefest of silences. Then Lymond, stretching out his gloved hands, raised her ringed one and brushed it with the lightest and most sardonic of kisses. ‘Margaret. I always misjudge you. Tudor and Douglas you will always be, but Lennox never. We are ignoring the fact that Scotland already has a Queen, betrothed to the Dauphin of France?’

  ‘We are remembering the fact that war changes many things,’ Margaret said. ‘The Scots are not eager to go to war for the sake of the French, however the Queen Regent may coax them. If they refuse, the French marriage may never take place. Then Mary, Queen of Scots, must needs seek a husband. And my son is eleven.’

  ‘While she is only fourteen. My felicitations,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You will be the young Queen’s good-mother. I must encourage you to see Kate Somerville, if she isn’t beheaded, and exchange notes on the experience. I am sure you will succeed but it must, I am afraid, be without assistance from me. I am going back with Nepeja to Russia.’

  ‘And the Somervilles?’ said Margaret harshly.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did it not occur to you,’ he said, ‘that your convictions about my nature and my habits might now be a trifle outdated? I am not sixteen. I am the Voevoda Bolshoia of Russia, my dear Lady Lennox, and what you do with or to the Somervilles is a matter for your own conscience and undoubted ability, as the Race of Japhet is a matter for mine. And if you fail, send your Darnley to Russia. I might find a princess for him to marry. If she will take him.…’

  ‘Such as your woman; the woman who keeps you? What is she, this fine whore from Turkey?’ She had clasped her two hands hard together, unable to believe, as yet, that he had refused her.

  Lymond smiled. ‘What she is not, despite all you have said, is frustrated. I am not on offer. I extend to you and Matthew my deepest regrets.’

  He stretched his hands to the door, and she pulled her fingers apart. ‘You would send your wife and your wife’s mother to the headsman? I mean this. I mean this, Francis. If you sail back to Russia, you will arrive there to find your union dissolved by a higher authority than the Pope.’

  He stared at her, and for the first time the wide blue eyes were faintly troubled. ‘Do you suppose that the fine whore from Turkey will expect me to marry her? You almost persuade me to stay here. In any case, why be so impetuous? Your inheritance of Angus may come to you all in the pride of its grease without any inducement but your obvious merits. There are six weeks to pass before the fleet sails. Let us enjoy them, each in our own petty way, and see what the Grand Joculator will bring us. You have forgotten to mention, by the way, what you proposed to do with my son.’

  And that, in the end, was what dismayed her: that he could outguess and anticipate even the secret ways of her venom. She set her jaw and staring at him said, ‘I would take him into my kitchens.’

  ‘Yes. That was what Graham Malett said,’ Lymond remarked. ‘Except that he added something about his bed also. So then I shall admit you to a secret. I killed my son. The child at Flaw Valleys is the son of Graham Malett and his sister Joleta.’

  *

  He missed the barge going back to the Vintry and the Ambassador, expansive with satisfaction and relief, worried about it at intervals all the way back to Fenchurch Street and upbraided him the moment he arrived, which he did shortly afterwards. Lymond handled him a little like a blast bloomery with an order for toasting-forks, and Hislop and d’Harcourt had to retire hastily, exploding and also regretfully aware that whatever passed between the Voevoda and the Queen’s stately cousin, it was not going to be vouchsafed to them.

  Two days after that, by arrangement, two members of the Queen’s Privy Council arrived at Fenchurch Street to open private negotiations at last with the Ambassador, and to begin discussions more secret still with the Voevoda Bolshoia, Mr Crawford. One of these, Sir William Petre, the Queen’s Principal Secretary, was a member also of the Muscovy Company and the other, Thomas Thirleby, Bishop of Ely, likewise a negotiator of long experience through several reigns.

  The talks with Nepeja, covering ground already well explored by the merchants lasted more than a fortnight in all, and were not quite so straightforward as either Sir William or the Bishop had been led to expect. The gravity, wisdom and stately behaviour noted and commended so far in the Ambassador were replaced, as the discussions went on, by a certain querulousness.

  He was a single foreigner in an alien land, whose tongue he still found incomprehensible. Makaroff and Grigorjeff should now have been at his side, and eight other merchants from the ill-fated Bona Esperanza guiding him; supporting him; lending weight to his arguments, helping him to detect sharp dealing and bad faith among these arrogant
Englishmen. Left on his own, Osep Nepeja made sure that at least he should be no easy victim of guile.

  With concealed exasperation, the Company officers noted it.

  The trading concessions, it was true, were not quite so boundless as those granted them by the Tsar, but were reasonable enough considering that English ships would be carrying the Russian cargo, and that the Russian cargo must therefore necessarily be limited. There was no limit on the number of trading posts the Tsar might set up, in London or outside of it; although it was highly unlikely, considering the Russian economy and their dependence again on English bottoms, that the Tsar would find it worth while to have any.

  All this had been thrashed out already, in long sessions with the Company at which Lymond and his colleagues had sometimes assisted, and other invisible sessions, between the Company and the Queen’s Privy Councillors, at which they had not. It seemed to the merchants now, excusing themselves to an impatient Bishop and a resigned Principal Secretary, that the Ambassador’s recalcitrance was due in part to his distrust of the separate talks which were also proceeding, in English, between the two Privy Councillors and Mr Crawford on another subject entirely.

  Osep Nepeja resented the confounding of commerce with politics. He had told Robert Best, privately, that King Philip had led him aside on the day of the Oration and had asked him his views on the provision of materials of war between his nation and Russia.

  ‘And what did you say?’ had said Robert Best, who was as fascinated as anyone by the spectacle of Russian rebellion.