The Ringed Castle (4 page)

It was after they had left the insect-ridden banks of the Dnieper that Danny Hislop reined up beside his friend d’Harcourt and said, ‘What intelligent remedy, like jumping in the river, do you suggest if we find this man Lymond irreconcilably dreadful?’

Ludovic d’Harcourt was not the man for extravagant phrases. He smiled and said, ‘I assume that if Alec Guthrie serves under him, then he is better than Alec Guthrie.’

‘In the field maybe,’ Danny said. ‘But I suspect the passion with which they don’t discuss him.’

‘They are afraid of him?’ D’Harcourt raised his comedian’s eyebrows.

Danny Hislop’s bright teeth flashed in his hairless, unremarkable face. ‘If they were afraid, they’d tear him to pieces like schoolgirls. My guess is that he’s gorgeous. A terrible tease and nasty at moments, but oh Maeve, he has such a way with him.… Is he gorgeous, dear Adam?’

Adam Blacklock, thus addressed, said quietly, ‘Undoubtedly gorgeous.’

Ludovic d’Harcourt bent his innocent gaze on his companion. ‘Hislop,’ he said. ‘Adam is humouring you. But be careful. I do not think the Russians will humour you.’

Danny Hislop shook his fluffy head of sparse hair. ‘Where, gentlemen, is your backbone? You see someone before you who is not afraid to say what he thinks, provided he is in a position of ascendancy with a door open behind him and a knife gripped in each hand. Besides, I love gorgeous people: they make me feel gorgeous as well.’ And he kissed Adam, who had been expecting it and did not flinch.

‘I think you should settle down,’ said Alec Guthrie’s dry voice just behind them. ‘These are the towers of Moscow.’

They had stepped out of the forest. Around them flowered the silk skies of sunset. The air, clear and warm, slipped against the clogged wool and sour metal and scuffed, sweaty leather of tired men and horses, and brought them the smell of spring grass and fresh earth and the still, breathing leaves of thin birch trees, the new stars like birds in their branches.

On the horizon, palisaded in wood, enclosed in long walls of russet-red brick and enthroned in the elegant scrolls of her rivers, rose the small hills of the city of Moscow, larger than London; the second Rome; the refuge and shrine of the church which the infidel drove from Byzantium. And within the walls, leafed and spiralled and knopped with bossed gold like an ikon, the Kremlin towers, globe thick upon globe, hung burning upon the iconostasis of the whole airy sky.

*

That night, by order, they spent outside the walls. The next day, a bright morning in the middle of May, they crossed the ditch and were led by their escort through the several walled suburbs of Moscow, the gates opening smoothly before them.

Riding over the grey wooden logs, they Were silent. They saw a city, mellow, irregular, low, of weathered log houses, thatched, or roofed
with layers of silvered wood battens, undercarved and flocked over with a wandering of vine and fruit tree and tangled greenery, assorting with swine and thin poultry and bushes of heavy, washed linen in the wooden fenced yards. There were shop booths, and buildings of board, and on the slope of the ground to the river, a handful of taller brick mansions set among the high walls, red and white, of rich convents and the squat shapes of churches, with their deep painted doorways and buttoning of assorted gold domes. Below them, half the width of the Thames, was the busy blue stream of the Moskva. And on the banks of the river the triangular wall with its twenty fortified towers which they had seen from a distance: the russet fifty-foot wall of the Kremlin, the High City where the Tsar lived.

They were taken not to a khan but to a smaller square building of brick, with stables lining two sides of its yard. There, men in wide, booted breeches came to lead off the horses and others to unload the packmules and show the way up the staircase, built Scottish-style on the outside, which gave on to their rooms on the first floor.

These were not luxurious, consisting of no more than two parallel chambers with a door in the long wall between them. The front room, with windows on to the yard, was entered direct from the staircase, and contained inside it another flight of steep stairs which appeared to lead down to the kitchens. In the room was very little: stove, table and an assortment of benches and stools. Here no doubt they were meant to take meals.

The inner room, of identical size, had no outside door and its windows looked out to the rear. Typically, it was lined with a wood sleeping-bench, supplemented by some chests and a number of new-made and un-Russian beds.

They had come a long way, through foul and difficult passages; suffering gross meat and sour wine, stinking drink and filthy straw for a bedding; travelling in small barks and loose, jolting wagons. There was not one of them who had not been forced to fight for his money, his life or to preserve his fictitious identity: Plummer had a cracked rib; Guthrie a scar from a Janissary run drunk-wild with a mace. They had been blackmailed by ferrymen and cheated by inadequate guides and faced philosophically the unpleasantness of travelling at night through forests harbouring boar and plains ranged by wild cat or wolf.

By comparison, this was harbour and comfort. They had perhaps hoped for more, but they had been promised nothing. And being professional men they made, caustically, the best of it with the help of Danny Hislop’s sharp tongue. They threw down their saddles and baggage; they moved about, examining the appointments and stood at the windows, discussing what they could see. There was no sign of other quarters attached to the lodging, and no sign at all of the man
they had been summoned to meet. But presently a door opened somewhere and the smell of hot meat filtered up from the steep kitchen staircase. And a moment later a tousled head rose from it and they were offered unexpectedly a tray full of rough bowls of broth.

They had breakfasted already at the monastery, but none the less it was decidedly welcome. They kicked stools up to the long oaken table or ate standing, their exuberance quieted, so that they became aware of the noise of the city; of the broken rumble of wagons on the long laddered paving of timbers; of the discordant clanging of bells and the whining of vendors and the harsh spoken artillery of the Russian voice, with its scooping vowels and hard bitten consonants.

Adam Blacklock found it soothing. He spooned his broth, absorbing it, thinking of nothing, and suddenly among the sounds in the yard was another voice, light and clear and demanding, which he had not heard for a year and a half. It spoke in Russian, once, and then again, giving an order. And then was followed almost at once by a quick running step, scaling the stairs outside the house.

There was time to glance once at the others, sitting arrested, and then the door opened and Francis Crawford stood on the threshold.

For a moment Lymond remained there, surveying them. His eight officers, staring edgily back, saw a delicate-looking gentleman in a pretty paned and pinked tunic with the finest voile shirt bands and a link-belt of Italian enamel work. A man whose yellow hair, dry and light and unevenly tipped, eclipsed the sunlight behind him, and whose attic profile and unoccupied, long-shafted hands caused a small moan of ecstasy to burst, very circumspectly, from Mr Hislop’s baby-pink lips.

He was the same. Or very nearly the same. Relief flooded through Adam, and beside him Alec Guthrie smiled also, and said, ‘Francis!’

The wreathed, sapphire gaze rested on him and then moved, with perfect courtesy, along the haphazard grouping of faces. ‘So you have all arrived safely. I am glad. Don’t rise, gentlemen,’ Lymond said pleasantly. ‘I am sure you have worked hard for your breakfast.’

Which brought them all, untidily, to their feet as Lymond pressed the door shut and walked to the head of the table. There he tossed down some papers and, hooking the master chair to him, said, ‘Please sit. We have a great deal to get through this morning. I know four of you. Guthrie, will you kindly introduce me to the others?’ And stood, knee and elbow supported, while Guthrie, level-voiced, described them one by one. Roger Brown of Kirkcudbright. Hislop, from Renfrewshire, who had joined them when Hercules Tait left for Venice. And the two former Knights of St John, Alan Vassey and Ludovic d’Harcourt, a Frenchman of Scottish extraction who had come to replace Jerott Blyth.

‘Also departed,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘The beauty of worthy things is not in the face but in the backside, endearing more by their departure than their address. Daniel Hislop, the son of the bishop?’

‘The Bishop’s bastard,’ said Hislop, with a cold-eyed assumption of coyness. ‘Sir. My lord. Jesus.’

Lymond’s eyes turned to him, open. Then changing position, he seated himself, and placed his hands gently on the table before him.
‘Sir
will do,’ said Lymond calmly, ‘unless you receive divine witness to the contrary. I thought all our Knights of St John had hastened back for the Grand Master’s election on Malta?’

D’Harcourt answered: a burly, soft-footed man with wrestler’s features and a schoolboy tangle of pale, tightly curled hair. ‘Malta will manage without me. I wished to fight Mohammed in Russia.’

Lymond was watching his fingers. ‘And if the Tsar in his wisdom decides to fight the Lithuanian Christians and not the Koran-worshipping Tartars?’ He looked up.

‘I will fight,’ d’Harcourt said. ‘I am a mercenary, and I fight for the leader who pays best.’

‘So are we all mercenaries,’ Lymond said. ‘I would have you remember that, all of you. There is no precedent for what we are about to do here. We are about to offer this kingdom an army, and there will be no place whatever for anyone’s private crusade.’

‘An army!’ said Alec Guthrie.

‘Can you possibly imagine,’ Lymond said, ‘that I brought you all from France to rush about on demand, killing Tartars?’

‘Eight of us?’ said Adam diffidently.

‘Nine of us,’ Lymond said dryly. ‘To find out what exists, and plan what we want to exist. To create the prototypes, and instruct the instructors. And then to muster and train and equip a national army.’

‘Dealing meanwhile with such aggravation or reaggravation as molesting invaders may offer us,’ said Fergie Hoddim. ‘Yon’s a long business, sir.’

‘Yon’s a lifetime,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘Fergie’s all right.
He
isn’t married.’

‘Neither are you,’ said Adam sharply.

‘No, but the women are all the right shape for Fergie,’ said Hislop.

‘Then you will have to decide, won’t you,’ said Lymond, ‘between women and money? It will be a stay of five years. Are you prepared for it?’

Guthrie said, ‘Are you staying five years?’ And his blunt, bearded face turned squarely to Lymond’s.

Lymond said, ‘I am not staying anywhere unless we are granted fees on a scale greater than anything we might earn in Europe. That, on your behalf, I can promise. In return, I shall offer the Tsar five years from this spring of our services. After that, you may take your fortune and go.’

‘And you?’ said Guthrie again.

‘You need not, I think concern yourself about me,’ Lymond said, his brows lifted slightly.
‘D’Harcourt!’

‘It was me,’ said Danny Hislop. And as Lymond continued to look at him, he added bright-eyed, ‘I only said you were gorgeous.’

Francis Crawford threw down the card he was holding. ‘The buffoon of the party,’ he said. ‘You have, I am sure, enlivened the long summer evenings round the camp fires. Your men, I am certain, find your quips irresistible and your effrontery something to talk about, slapping their knees with their girl friends. With me, you refrain.’

Danny Hislop, hanging his head, was mouthing a long and inaudible apology. Guthrie half rose to his feet but sank back at a brief glance from Lymond. Lymond said, ‘Since you are still with St Mary’s, I assume your ability is unquestioned and your performance impeccable. It would be a pity to have to take both unsung back to the Bishop. This is a country with no middle degree. Between the top rank, which you will hold, and the bottom rank, which you will be controlling, there is a chasm. If you bridge it this way, you will bring yourself and your friends into ridicule. The proceedings in this room are formal because I intend all our proceedings in Russia to be conducted with the utmost formality. Whatever has been the custom before, in this company we shall use surnames only; and that applies to you all. We are a coterie of foreigners in an old and alien and bigoted society, and to conquer it, we must move away from each other and employ no codes and forget even our language.… What are the defences of Moscow?’ He was looking at Danny.

‘Us,’ said Danny. After a second he added, ‘The walls and the rivers.’ His colour was high.

‘What walls?’ Lymond said. ‘Tell me how they are manned. And the names of the gates and the bridges.’

He had picked, as it happened, the most observant man in the company. Danny Hislop pursed his lips, aware of the ranked eyes around him, and then, drawing breath, reeled off with care all the details which Lymond had asked for.

‘Good. And the house we are in?’ said Lymond kindly. ‘How would you defend this house, Hislop?’

‘Given weapons?’ said Danny. He was recovering, but kept any hint of the caustic most rigorously out of his voice.

‘Assuming hand guns and bows and all that goes with them, but nothing else except for your knives and your swords.’

Danny glanced round. ‘Against what sort of attack? It’s not very defensible.’

‘It isn’t, is it? Against an attack by fifty men, with bows and inferior small arms,’ said Lymond.

‘Christ!’ said Plummer, But Danny, thinking it out as he spoke,
produced, in snatches, the scheme for defence he had been asked for. Then, restored, the bland hazel eyes rested on Lymond.

‘Thank you,’ said his commander. He looked round. ‘I hope you all heard it. I further hope you will all obey to the letter the instructions I have laid down on conduct. Because if you make a mistake with these people, you can expect neither to survive in this house, nor to escape through the walls of the city. Is it possible,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘that we might now carry on with our business?’

Much later, when their discussions were ended and the afternoon was half worn through, Lymond touched Guthrie on the shoulder and walked with him to the window, where they could see the courtyard and the crowded brown ranks of log houses, and beyond them, the walls of the Kremlin. Lymond said, ‘They’ve been in good hands. They will still be under you for all day-to-day purposes.’