The Ringed Castle (29 page)

‘No, it isn’t. It’s the detention and the silence,’ Chancellor said. ‘I give you leave to imagine what it was like the first time. We waited twelve days before he sent for us.’

‘Cleaning the silver,’ said George Killingworth, who had finished working on his boots and was brushing his beard, which was long, curling and golden and smelt of badly cooked rabbit. ‘According to Crawford. D’you still think he’s not to be relied on, Diccon? Maybe the Army thinks Englishmen ought to live in big houses.’

‘I imagine the Army is far too busy consolidating its own position to have any charity left over for foreigners,’ Chancellor said. ‘No. The climate is different. Moscow is different. They’ve had another fire. They had one eight years ago. There wasn’t a post left you could tie a horse to, and two years ago you could still see the mess. But this one has been cleared up, and the spaces between the houses are bigger, and there are water troughs and broom hooks at the street-ends. The buildings are better. There’s more brick. More glass and
less mica. Look at the studs on this door. Look at the work in that chest.’

Harry Lane said, ‘But no beds. No chairs. No trenchers. No metal-ware for the table: beech cups and a case of wood spoons at your girdle. And the drink is God-awful.’

‘Kvass,’ said Chancellor reflectively. ‘Described as water turned out of its wits, with a little mash added. Christopher …’

‘Drink,’ said Christopher aggressively, ‘has no effect on me at all. You said so yourself. It was the stewed hare.’

‘I said at Penshurst,’ said his father calmly, ‘that you could start drinking beer. English beer. Not mead sodden with hops and fermented in God knows what uncured receptacle. Tomorrow, God help us, we have to present our credentials to the Tsar of this country and ask for his favour, remembering that the present we intended to give him is still in Vologda, and will stay in Vologda apparently until the ground freezes over. We shall be bidden to dine. After dinner, there is only one test of manhood, and none of us, surprising though it may seem, is looking forward to it. You are not coming.’

‘But——’ said Christopher.

‘You heard your father,’ said Killingworth. ‘You can’t hold enough liquor.’

‘Can you?’ said Christopher, goaded.

‘No,’ said George Killingworth, after a moment’s reflection. ‘But who else is going to help us to bed?’

So Christopher was not among the five men who rode out next morning, with a gaudy escort of boyars, and pressed their way to the gates of the Kremlin through the cleared market place with its closed shops and sealed taverns: cleared so that the people of Moscow, and the soldiers and the lower though valuable nobility, could suitably congregate, and impress with their numbers and vigour; and so that the people in turn could witness the honour done to their country by distant and powerful kingdoms.

Tricked out in new Russian gowns of branched velvet and gold, furred with sable and squirrel and ermine, and edged and faced with black beaver, Diccon Chancellor and his four English gentlemen rode through the ranks of packed faces, sweating slightly under the mild sun of early October, and over the rise, past the scaffolding of the Tsar’s new Cathedral of St Basil, and dismounted at the Frolovskaya Tower, the ceremonial entrance to the Kremlin, where yet another company of soldiers awaited them at the bridge, in damascened helmets and coats of mail, with blue and silver tunics laid over them.

Their commander, a grey-bearded man with a face neither Slav nor Tartar, delivered a grave bow to Chancellor, and Chancellor saluted both him and the ikon over the gate, and crossed over the
ditch into the Kremlin. The soldiers marched stiffly before him, and more of them stood at attention, lining the rising ground where he was to walk.
(Every soldier in Russia is a gentleman, and does nothing else
. Who had said that? It was true. These were not the inbred faces of high western culture, but neither were they the faces of peasants.)

Princes and elders, to greet and walk with him, robed in figured velvet on tissue, with twisted silk frogging and gold filigree chains, and tall seamed caps on their heads. The faces of others; monks, boyars’ sons, servants, pressing between the ranks of the guard.

The palace square he remembered so well, with its lean churches hand-wrought like rizas above the dwarfed coloured forms of the people. The St Michael Archangel, with its clear fluted shells. The tulip-bed of the Blagoveschenski’s golden towers; the tall painted hoods of the Uspenski and its thin-mortared ivory stones. And the winged golden crosses and cupolas crowding behind.

George Killingworth, beside him, had never seen it before, nor Henry Lane, nor Ned Price nor Rob Best, his broad shoulders laden with sables. The last time he had been here, he had carried with him the Tsar’s reply to his King’s letter, written in Russian and Dutch:
We, greatest Lord John Vasilievich, by the grace of God Emperor of all Russia … sent by your true servant Hugh Willoughby, the which in our domains hath not arrived
 … 
Whereas your servant Richard is come to us, we with Christian true assurance in no manner of wise will refuse his petition.…

Well, Hugh Willoughby had arrived in the domains of Ivan Vasilievich: he was there now, on the
Esperanza
, floating under the banner of St George west of Nenoksa, with the log of that last, frozen voyage no longer where he had laid his handsome head by it, his final words blurred under the brittle, manicured fingers. Alas, Hugh Willoughby.

The stairs up to the terrace, with robed figures moving forward to greet him. The doorway to the Vestibule and the long room he remembered, with silent, deferential figures moving about. He heard George Killingworth, looming beside him, give a muffled snort in the midst of the tension, and knew he had caught sight of the wash of gold light from the walls, laden with burnished parcel-gilt on broad shelves: pitchers, ewers and basins, plates and salt cellars and tankards, flagons and standing cups, fat pineapple and thin knotted Gothic. Someone had cleaned the silver.

He must not let his mind wander. In unknown waters, you kept your lead going and sounded every half-glass. It was the second time that you sailed on the sandbar that bilged you. Then it would be alas, Diccon Chancellor.

The painted ante-room, with a silent revetment of sitting, gold-mantled Councillors and above them, the frescoes chosen by the
priest Sylvester to edify and instruct his young Tsar:
The Wise Son is the Mother’s and Father’s Joy. The Fear of God is the Beginning of Wisdom. The Heart of the Tsar is in the Hand of God
.

Leading from that was the Chamber of Gold, which had once had golden frescoes under Tsar Vasily, but which Sylvester had caused to be covered with more vigorous stuff. The Ten Battles and Victories of Joshua, Chancellor remembered, and a number of prominent successes in Russian history, with the princes of the Rurik dynasty gazing inscrutably down from the vaults, and Christ Emmanuel where the lights were. At the doorway, recalling the previous occasion, he said, ‘Do we wait?’ and an English voice whose owner he could not see said, ‘The lord Ivan Vasilievich is prepared to receive you.’ Then the doors opened, and they were inside.

The figured vaults, prismatic with colour, chambered the room like a honeycomb, in which sat the Tsar’s golden princes, like bees in the cell. And facing them across the empty, tapestried floor, the Tsar sat on his raised golden throne, foiled and jewelled as the ikon above his crowned head, the brocade of his gown seeded with pearls and plated with deep-moulded orphrey. His hair was more auburn than Chancellor had remembered: the nose long and slender; the eyes blue and cloudy under the brow prematurely lined. Chancellor swept off his hat, as did the four Englishmen with him, and the courtiers rose, in a flash of gold tissue, and bared their heads likewise.

Beside the Tsar, his brother Yuri did not rise; or the boy Tartar prince either. But Chancellor saw the Metropolitan stand, pulling the weight of his sakkos, and the Chief Secretary Viscovatu, who bowed to him gravely, and the richly dressed man with the soft, bearded face whom he remembered perhaps best of all: Alexei Adashev, the Tsar’s closest adviser and once, with the priest Sylvester, hisclosest friend also.

He stood on the Tsar’s left hand, beside the crystal trimmed
possoch
, and that meant that he still held high office: that of Chancellor perhaps. And behind him, among the guards matched in white velvet was another man whom he recognized, and whom he had met for the first time over two weeks ago: the Voevoda Bolshoia. Mistress Philippa’s husband, Crawford of Lymond in court robes, bareheaded within the Tsar’s circle, and holding him also in a chilly blue gaze. Diccon Chancellor bowed to the Tsar, and followed by his four friends, walked down the carpet until he came to the bench in its centre and pausing, made full Western obeisance again.

‘Great Master, and King of all the Russians,’ said the Secretary Viscovatu to the Tsar. ‘The Ambassador Ritzert strikes his forehead before thee, for thy great favour in receiving the message of his mistress of England.’

The letter from the Queen, in English, Greek, Polish and Italian, was read. Chancellor knew it by heart.
Philip and Marie, by the grace
of God King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austrich, Dukes of Burgundy, Millaine and Brabant, Counts of Hapsburg, Flanders and Tyrol … Whereas by the consent and licence of our most dear and entirely beloved late brother King Edward VI, whose soul God pardon, sundry of our subjects, merchants of the City of London within these our realms of England did at their own proper costs and adventure furnish three ships to discover, search and find lands, islands, regions and territories before this adventure not known to be commonly haunted and frequented by seas …

We thank you for your princely favour and goodness … abundant grace extended to the said Richard Chancellor and others our subject merchants … pray and request you to continue the same benevolence towards them and other our merchants and subjects which do or hereafter shall resort to your country …

It may please you at this our contemplation to assign and authorize such commissaries as you shall think meet to trade and confer with our well-beloved subjects and merchants, the said Richard Chancellor, George Killingworth and Richard Grey, bearers of these our letters … and to grant such other liberties and privileges unto the Governor, Consuls, assistants and Communaltie of the fellowship of the said Merchants …

It was translated fluently, as it should be, since it had been in the Secretary’s hands for two days already for that purpose. But when the moment came for Chancellor to add his formal duty, and to refer, in language suitably rehearsed for a good hour to his mirror, the lordly gifts still awaiting transport from Vologda, the interpreter showed the same astonishing fluency. Chancellor, prepared to speak in the painful spaced phrases of two years ago, found his thoughts caught before he had formed them, and had to bend his mind hard to its purpose, while avoiding the academic blue gaze under the ikon. The devil, he thought, take all missionaries.

But it was a comfort, all the same, when the Tsar spoke, and the same well-taught voice, speaking in English, translated without fear of mistake the grand prince’s welcome, and his inquiry after the health of Queen Mary his cousin. Diccon Chancellor answered in English, and then it was time to walk to the steps, and look into the lean, bearded face below the arched brows, and hear the Emperor say, ‘Give me your hand.’

The hand of Ivan Vasilievich, long-fingered and bony, held his. The fleshy lips, opening unexpectedly, said, ‘Thou hast our tongue, I am told. Hast thou travelled well?’

‘Through the mercy of God and your grace, quite well,’ said Chancellor. He prayed that his grammar was less than ludicrous. ‘God give your grace good health.’

His fingers were still in the Tsar’s. ‘Ritzert, thou wilt eat our bread and salt with us,’ said the Sovereign Grand Prince, and with equal suddenness released him, his cloudy eyes sliding to where George Killingworth stood, Diccon knew, just behind him. ‘Give me your hand …’

Diccon Chancellor moved back. And as he moved, caught somewhere the wraith of a smile between Francis Crawford and the Russian who had interpreted. His stomach, already taut, gave a faint and warning vibration as he glimpsed all the implications of that. Then Killingworth, Best, Price and Lane had all been invited to supper; they were all bowing in great heavings of damp fur and velvet, and behind them, the doors opened for a stalking, sideways withdrawal, and freedom.

‘Christ,’ said Harry Lane as they paced, handed from group to lordly robed group through the courtyard.

‘Deacon Agapetus put it better,’ Chancellor said. ‘Though an Emperor in body is like all other men, yet in power he is like God. Wait until you’ve lived through their supper. It will not remind you of Whitehall.’

‘It’s Oriental!’ said Robert Best hoarsely. He smiled and bowed, elaborately, to a fresh group of boyars.

‘… It’s Tartar,’ said Diccon Chancellor’s supper partner that evening in the Granovitaya Palace, as the bread ritual was beginning
(Ivan Vasilievich, Emperor of Russia and Grand Duke of Muscovy doth reward thee with bread)
. ‘The whole system of government is Tartar. The women, shut away in the terems. The way their swords hang. The post-horse system, the yams. Half their language is Tartar. My God, they were subject to them for over two centuries. The Grand Duke used to stand here every year and feed the Great Khan’s horse out of his bonnet as homage. They tell you Tartars are born blind, like animals. But they became Moslems before the Russians became Christians. They were still struggling with Dasva, Striba, Simaergla and Macosch in these parts long after the Golden Horde had fought itself to a standstill.’ The speaker, one Daniel Hislop, stood up and sat down as another slice of bread was ceremonially passed between Grand Prince and supper guest. ‘You needn’t look haunted,’ he added, not without malice. ‘No one near us speaks English. Yet.’