The Ringed Castle (61 page)

‘Moscow and Philippa being, although on the same planet, some small distance apart, the most recent news,’ Lymond said, ‘has escaped me. The Lennoxes were trying to interfere, I rather gathered.’

‘You will have to look higher than that,’ Richard said. ‘The culprit for the moment is Pope Paul IV. There is a test case on foot in the Vatican.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ Lymond said, with mild irritation. After a moment, he added, ‘All right. You may as well tell me.’

‘I don’t know how much you know,’ said Richard. Resentment, fear, desperation seemed to shadow all they said. He pushed them aside, looking out at the grey moving sea with its looping of foam; the even, grey sky curtained by hanging dark vapours of storm-air. He said, ‘There is a truce in being, signed nine months ago, between the King of France and the Emperor Charles. It is supposed to last for five years, but it may be broken already, for all I know. Already France has formed a defensive league with the Duke of Ferrara and the new Pope, Pope Paul, the Caraffa, who is eighty years old and loathes Spaniards.’

‘The scum of the earth,’ Lymond said. ‘… the spawn of Jews and Moors, now the masters of Italy, who had been known only as its cooks …?’

‘So he has said,’ Richard agreed. ‘France is ready for war. Or at least, the de Guises want it, if the Constable does not. And if France wants to invade Naples and take back the old Angevin inheritance, she could hardly have a better opening than now, with a Pope strongly antagonistic to Spain, and the Empire ruled not by Charles, but this sluggish, inexperienced Prince.…’

‘So the Emperor has abdicated?’ Lymond said. ‘And left Spain and the Netherlands and Sicily and Spain to the noble Philip, Queen Mary’s husband? Then I should guess he has not been back to England.’

Richard shook his head. ‘The Emperor left in the autumn, after putting off the abdication for a year. Philip is in Brussels, supposedly bound by the truce, facing the Pope’s little league with King Henri and consulting the theologians, they say, on how to wage a defensive war against the Pope. In fact, he’s done rather more. The Duke of Alva is outside Rome already, with twelve thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse and twelve artillery pieces, and the city is waiting in panic.’

‘Defended by?’

‘Monluc and your friend Piero Strozzi. The truce is a farce. The French army is ready. They have been withdrawing troops from Scotland all autumn. Senarpont, they say, is gathering men at Boulogne to attack Calais and your other old compère Lord Grey of Wilton.’

‘And England?’ Lymond asked.

‘Waiting, as ever, for Philip to come. He has promised, I hear, to cross over at Lent. Spain wants the Queen of England to crown him,
and declare war on France if the French won’t observe the peace. The Queen, they say, has decided that if the truce is broken and the Low Countries attacked, she will stand by the old treaty Henry VIII made with the Emperor. That is, she will supply horse and foot without actually engaging in war.’

‘An honourable, if lunatic proposition,’ Lymond said. ‘And if she does, will her people follow her? What of the religion?’

‘Pole is Archbishop of Canterbury. The burnings go on. Mostly of theologians or people of humble position: the rest were given early warning to fly off to Geneva or Strasburg; some had gone there long before. The bishops have sent a hundred or two to the stake. At the same time, thirteen hundred Lutherans and Anabaptists have been cremated in Holland.… There was a plot against the Queen in the spring, but it was betrayed months beforehand. To rob the Treasury and establish Elizabeth as Queen, married to Edward Courtenay. In which case, she would have been a widow by this time.’

Lymond said sharply, ‘Courtenay is dead?’

‘Yes,’ said Richard slowly. ‘The only male claimant to the throne. He died in September in Padua.’

‘I see,’ Lymond said. He was looking out to sea, where a gull was soaring with white, knuckled wings, but his eyes did not see it. ‘And the lady Elizabeth?’

‘Is at Hatfield. There was a fuss in the summer, over some seditious papers found in her house. Some of her staff were arrested, and her household has been organized and staffed by the Queen. Since then it has been quiet. Since the hopes of a child heir have vanished, the marriage plans for Madam Elizabeth have been fairly constant, of course. The current one is to link her with Philip’s cousin, the Duke of Savoy. They suggested the Archduke Ferdinand, but the French Ambassador said that if they went ahead with it, they would marry the child Mary Queen of Scotland to Courtenay.’

‘Before or after his death?’ said Lymond with unexpected savagery. He added, ‘You realize you have told me nothing about my lisping child-bride and her tedious divorce?’

‘Oh. Yes,’ said Richard. ‘One of the objects of the truce was to allow the ransoming of prisoners of war. After haggling for months, the Constable of France got his son back, to find that, while in prison, he had fallen in love with a lady and married her.’

‘It happens,’ Lymond said. ‘More frequently in prison than out.’

‘Quite. Except that the Constable had been at great pains to affiance the young man to the King of France’s illegitimate daughter, with all the honours and recognition that implied.’

‘Did it?’ said Lymond.

‘If your father is the King of France,’ Richard said. ‘So there arises the matter of a divorce. The marriage between the young lady and the Constable’s son has not been consummated.’

‘So they say,’ Lymond said. ‘Do you believe Philippa?’

For a moment, Richard was silent. Then he said, ‘Naturally. So does her mother.’

‘I thought you would believe her,’ Lymond said. ‘Yes? Well? You had got to “consummated”.’

‘So it is to be placed before a public convocation of cardinals, and on the current mood of the Pope will depend the outcome of their marriage and yours.… Why do you
do
that?’ said Richard. ‘You know we believe Philippa.’

‘Perhaps I envy her,’ Lymond said. ‘No one believes me.’

‘Not even Kiaya Khátún?’ Richard said.

Lymond’s eyes, surprised and informed with pure malice, swung back from mid-ocean contemplation. ‘And what do you know about that? You astonish me, Richard.’

‘Only that you took her to Russia. Or so Philippa says.’

‘It was the other way about. But of course you are right. Kiaya Khátún is of the happy family circle.’

‘You didn’t marry her!’ said Richard sharply.

‘No! No,’ said Lymond soothingly. ‘All but the ceremony. We hope to have the four children legitimized.’

For a moment, with sinking heart, Richard believed him. Then he saw the look on Lymond’s face, and found he could bear it even less. He got to his feet, stiff and unslept, with all the weariness of the night suddenly upon him. ‘At least,’ he said, ‘you are back.’

And if he had been looking at his brother’s face then, which he was not, he would have seen worn into the bones a burden identical to his own, which rested a moment and then was as swiftly banished. Lymond, rising also, stood for a moment, contemplating the brightening sky. From nondescript grey, the shell-rim of each turning wave had sharpened into a deep peacock green: the distant sea, tweeded and slubbed with frantic white, lay brown on the horizon. Lymond said, ‘While Best is away, I shall have to be Nepeja’s interpreter and act with the Queen as his principal. I have no hopes of private exchanges. Nor, with the life I lead, would it be suitable. When you go back, I should like you to tell them.’

Face to face, they were the same height: one middle-aged and heavily built; the other light to the point of attenuation. ‘Tell whom?’ said Richard harshly.

‘Oh,
God!’
said Lymond explosively; and then, drawing breath, set himself to take hold again. ‘Look. It’s my fault. You’re falling asleep as you stand. But give me a moment. Sit down on that bloody rock for a minute, and let me try to explain. And listen to me as if I
weren’t related. Can you make some sort of frenetic endeavour, and pretend to do that? Because in the only sense that matters, Richard, it’s true.’

He stopped as Richard reseated himself, a hand on his shoulder, and stood looking down at him crookedly, as he used to do long ago, but with different eyes, and a face differently blocked. He said, ‘You rode sixty miles through the night for a brother who doesn’t exist. I haven’t been here for four years. I have been growing and changing, somewhere else, with different people, speaking a different language. The old ties are gone: my family wouldn’t recognize me: what in God’s name do you think I could find to say to them? And the new ties are only on paper: the divorce is a formality as the marriage was. And for all he knows of me, the boy could be anyone’s son; perhaps … it doesn’t matter. Do you know how he was saved?’

‘Not in detail. By a chess game, Philippa said.’

‘Do you know how the other one died?’ Lymond said.

Richard shook his head.

Lymond took his hand away. ‘By the deaf-mutes, at the same game,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see this child. If you can’t understand that, I can’t help it. I don’t want to see anyone at Midculter; it would serve no purpose and the second parting would only be worse. I am part of this embassy. I have a share in it. I have to go to London with the Ambassador and aid him in all he has to do, and carry out other duties, for which I am entirely responsible to the Tsar. When I have done so, I shall sail back with Nepeja to Muscovy. And after that, I am not coming back.’

Richard, his face white with fatigue was staring at him as if, indeed, they were not related. ‘You are going back to that woman in Russia?’

‘To Güzel, yes. And to St Mary’s.’

Bitterly scathing, ‘Is there any of St Mary’s left?’ Richard said.

‘Hislop will come back with me. It is more than St Mary’s. We are the nucleus of the Tsar’s army.’

‘So you are important?’

‘My life is there,’ Lymond said.

‘A big fish in a little pool. What you wanted,’ Richard said.

If he was moved suddenly to laughter, he did not show it. ‘Or,
If you have made your bed well, well may you lie on it
,’ Lymond said. ‘The Buchan version is even apter.… Richard, I am not worth anyone’s heartache.’

‘I know that,’ Richard said. ‘But she does not.’

‘She will have to learn,’ Lymond said.

*

It was full day when they returned to the castle, and Alec Fraser (my wife’s Da is the Provost), voluble with excitement, led the third Baron Culter into the Great Hall, the third Baron’s brother modestly following.

They all rose; but Adam Blacklock first of all, to greet the man he remembered well from his early days at St Mary’s in Scotland, when the first great struggle began between the two leaders who hated each other: Lymond and Gabriel, Sir Graham Reid Malett. So he shook Richard’s hand, and noted the distress on his face and the serene and arrogant calm of the Voevoda’s, smiling behind him. And noted, too, the quick turn of Culter’s head as the Russian flowed from man to man about him; the domestic language they all used: Yeroffia to Lymond; Lymond to Simeon and Phoma to discover if the Ambassador would receive them. Ludicrously, Lord Culter had not expected his brother to be familiar with Russian. Certainly, he had not looked for the deference which surrounded Lymond on every side; and not only, Adam was aware, from the Russians. To d’Harcourt and Hislop and himself, he was the Voevoda Bolshoia. But, obviously, Lymond had not told his brother.

The two men, talking, disappeared with Alec Fraser into the Ambassador’s room, and the door shut behind them.

Danny Hislop, who had slept for thirty-six hours, on and off, with a sporadic remission for eating, stretched himself and said, ‘So that nice man is Belial’s family.’

‘Do you think,’ d’Harcourt said critically, ‘he has enjoyed the reunion?’

‘Do you think,’ Danny Hislop said even more critically, ‘either of them has enjoyed the reunion? I know that smile. Cooled in snake blood.’

‘In which case,’ said Blacklock with foreboding, ‘we are due for a hell of a journey to Edinburgh.’

‘Via Aberdeen,’ Hislop said. ‘My wife’s Da’s the Provost.’

They left Philorth next day, on the Earl Marischal’s horses, with Nepeja in borrowed clothes bringing up the rear of the little procession, the third Baron Culter beside him.

Lymond was not in borrowed clothes, because alone of all their possessions, his had been loaded into the pinnace. For that, and for Chancellor’s chest, now on its way safely to London, he had Adam Blacklock to thank.

Riding beside him now, at the head of the company, Adam found occasion to ask the question he had been longing to put, ever since they rode through the arched gate of Philorth and left the grey manor behind, and the yellow green grass, and the beach upon which the long breakers moved in dark pleatings, under a clear, light blue sky white with cloud.

The sun was low. It struck the grass like green fur, with a sparkle; the hills were like half-dried velvet and the thin coloured leaves of the trees glittered in the long shadows and orient light: autumn trees, their branches combed by the gale and moving overhead in veil upon veil of chestnut and auburn and yellow, of flame and chrome and veridian; the large coin of the poplar paper-yellow against the fine hazy mist of the birch; the sprays hanging, nebula upon nebula, coarse grained and fine as bright flour, swaying over the riders as they made their way south in the clear, mellow air.

And as they rode, they were partnered with music, voices and lute, just and sweet in sonorous harmony, from a cheerful cluster of pilgrims who joined them, riding in company. The music, light and merry, accompanied them. The leaves, in notes and chords and cadenzas soared overhead, and the yellow sun shone upon them through the long dancing nets of the trees.

‘That prophecy,’ Adam Blacklock said then to Lymond. ‘I can guess. It was that you and your brother should meet once again.’

He could not see Lymond’s face, but his voice was perfectly clear. ‘No. In fact it wasn’t,’ he said.

Adam was shocked, as well as disappointed. ‘Oh. So,’ he said, ‘it didn’t come true?’

‘I’m afraid,’ Lymond said with infinite calmness, ‘I’m rather afraid that it did.… Do you really enjoy poor motet singing?’