The Ringed Castle (79 page)

He was asleep before Lymond closed the lid quietly and quietly returned to his room. It was daylight before he seemed to have time to go to bed, so he stayed dressed, and watched the sun rise, clean and virginal and bright from the east.

Soon, men would be around him and he must stop thinking, since there was nothing to think about. And allow the event, which was not an event, to sink forgotten to the recesses of d’Harcourt’s questing mind, and fade, unmarked, from the recollection of Lady Dormer or Nicholas. He remembered, with sudden, meticulous clarity, the woman he had bedded at Berwick and how, when he could bear it no longer, she had left him alone.

Too late, too late, too late; it had happened.

So England, resting upon her truce as upon a springboard of nettles, passed the dwindling days of her peace in attending to the departing comforts of Osep Nepeja, the first Muscovite Ambassador to London, and the fleet in which he would sail two weeks hence lay at the wharfside in the City, and discreetly completed its cargo.

For Nepeja, the two weeks were to pass in a welter of dedicated and unrestricted indulgence. Never before, so they said, had any ambassador been received in this country with the honours heaped upon himself. He passed, in his purple damask and his gold and red velvet, from table to merrymaking to seldom untenanted bed, drinking heartily, belching frequently and retaining, by a Muscovite miracle, a sort of regal and unsteady dignity which bore him through the most unlooked-for occasions.

He made the most of it, for he had their measure, this sordid nation gaping after wealth. Which after four centuries of kings could produce no monarch but this small, middle-aged woman, whose Secretary of State, whom he had been at such pains to please, turned out to be the son of a tanner.

In Russia, a man knew to whom he was speaking: boyar or peasant. Unless, by taking orders, a moujik turned into a clerk, a man in Russia kept his station, and his son after him through the generations. With this nation of madmen, where were you? They laughed at the stake, and boasted of relatives hanged: if you had no kinsmen quartered that you knew of, it was because you were not a gentleman, they remarked. They might well go to war, the other ambassadors said with resignation, for no other reason than a sheer love of novelty. And the Queen claimed she was poor, but where in Russia would you find such ostentation in living: the palaces of Whitehall and Westminster, Nonesuch, Chelsea and Oatlands, Richmond and Greenwich. And the clothes …

He had discovered that be was expected to retain the Queen’s gift of his clothes; that, in England, an ambassador’s perquisites were his own, and did not have to be handed back to his monarch. In this matter, and the freedom these traders possessed, unhindered by royal monopolies, Muscovy had perhaps something to learn.

On the other hand, he had found many particulars in which, however little the English might think so, the two countries were not so unlike. One of the Tsar’s greatest difficulties, everyone knew, was to find land with which to reward princely service: in England, the dissolution of the monasteries had served this very purpose and the
reconstitution of a few of them by this new Queen had not, so far as he could see, altered the circumstance by a whit.

These Englishmen claimed to despise a régime which dared not maintain a printing press. But what of their own, pouring forth scurrilous and seditious leaflets? Could they claim that no one had tried to suppress these? Why, they had even caught and brought home one of their scholars, for the crime of producing such print overseas.

They claimed to shrink from the Tsar’s rough chastisements, but what of their own burnings? They had no cause to sneer when they heard of Muscovite coffins exhumed and dragged by a team of pigs to the scaffold. Worse happened in England. In England the heir to the throne, the Queen’s sister, was watched and suspected as Vladimir always had been, but the Muscovites had been cleverer. Prince Vladimir was already elected future Regent and guardian of the child Ivan in the event of the Tsar’s sudden death: he was satisfied and the country was quiet. They pretended here to be surprised that so great a monarch could not overthrow a few Tartars, but what success was the lord Henry having in Ireland? Why, if the Queen called herself monarch of France, was she content with owning two fortresses only?

He had come to this country with an open mind. The Voevoda had told him so, and the Voevoda had shown him those things from which he thought Muscovy should benefit. But, in time, a man grew tired of foreign ways, and foreign food, and the incessant chirrup and yowl of uncouth foreign tongues, and Osep Nepeja felt he owed England nothing, and himself a small rest from his labours, with his journey done and his treaty concluded and the prospect before him of the long hardship of the
Primrose
’s homeward voyage.

So he did not seek to have the incessant pressure of instruction renewed, and went his own way, merely mentioning his surprise and disapproval to Robert Best over the undignified and expensive accident in the Office of Revels and Masques. The following day, the big Anglo-Frenchman, Master Ludovic, making light of his broken arm, had gone back up river to call on the young woman the Voevoda had married and had taken her an armful of spring bluebells gathered, so Master Daniel suggested sardonically, from the woods and fields outside Smithfield. The young woman, then recovered, had joined the Court and removed herself for Easter to Greenwich.

The Voevoda, as Master Daniel had also pointed out, had neither sent flowers to the young woman nor visited her, although he had dispatched a messenger the following morning to inquire how she was. Master Daniel, who found this inadequate, was properly caustic. The Voevoda himself had not accompanied Master Nepeja to any of his engagements that day, but had elected to spend it in contemplation, sitting deep in thought (or slumber? or post-revels exhaustion?) at the big desk in his room.

Danny Hislop, already staggered by intimations of unheard-of levity, made the most of the Voevoda’s changed plans for his day and put the reason down also to lassitude. He perceived his blunder the following morning when he was called to the same desk with d’Harcourt, to hear the outcome of the Voevoda’s day of silent retreat. It was, as he might have guessed, alarming and it did, as he might have guessed, entail a monstrous amount of work for Masters Hislop and d’Harcourt thus putting an end, as Danny expressed it, to his nice fineness and breathing desire towards effeminate and superfluous pleasures, not to mention Ludo’s visits to Smithfield.

The matter, as they might have guessed, was inevitably the business of Russia.

Through all the banquets and the routine engagements, the Voevoda’s work for the Tsar had continued, and since the treaty had been concluded, and they were free to engage men and seek expert advice, Lymond had been fully occupied. Now, with the help of Hislop and d’Harcourt, all that he had already done in this field was drawn together and intensified, so that in the short time still remaining in London his self-imposed task should be completed.

The Tsar had wanted men from every profession to advise him. This was not possible. But from those men who came forward, Lymond chose the likeliest, with the help of Dimmock and his colleagues. And in those trades where no men could be hired, he sought the best man he could find, and picked his brains mercilessly. He gathered books. John Dee, unearthing from his mountainous desk the plans, rejected, for a National Library, found for him the standard works, and men who, briefly, could explain or annotate them, however crudely. He sought advice on buildings and transport; on roads and law-giving; on finance and farming. He commissioned books and papers; he found those members of the Muscovy Company who were on the Privy Council and questioned them. He did what it was Nepeja’s place to do and what, unlearned and unable to communicate, the Ambassador had never contemplated.

And on top of that, with all the standing and authority he possessed, he set himself to force through the annulment of his marriage.

Of that, Danny Hislop was not made aware. Hislop only knew that leisure, always short, was now quite circumscribed. That as the ships were loaded and the lists came in of all the armour and weapons Dimmock found for them, he and d’Harcourt were set to make lists in their turn; to work out where and how to use this windfall; where to store it; how to allocate it; whom to train.

They sat with Lymond at his desk and worked, as they had done at the beginning in Russia, but this time not for the army alone. They saw illumined before them area by area the other regions in which Muscovy was backw
rd or vulnerable and, together, discussed the
solutions. Adam Blacklock, now a paid employee of the Muscovy Company, found himself being drawn in spite of himself to watch the solid weight of informed power moving slowly, as in a forge, against the obstinate and primaeval mass which was the present condition of Russia.

On a task such as this, Lymond was always easy to work with. The caustic disciplines and the violence were for the field, not for the study. There he was quiet, carrying other minds with him; his own thinking heavily concentrated and naturally lucid in exposition: he was not, as Philippa had once called him, magisterial. On the other hand, he did not invite to work with him any but those who were capable of it.

After a week of it, broken certainly by many interviews and absences, Danny Hislop rose at the end of a day’s work, yawned uncontrollably twenty times, stretched himself, and said, ‘What in God’s name, dear Ludo, made you decide to abandon the life of fourscore winters and sail back to Russia? Not only will you have to work like a coining-wedge: you will have to fight Tartars
as well.’
And gazing at Lymond, who was standing reading a paper, Danny said, ‘You realize we haven’t had any food? We know you don’t mind dissolving to a rat-trap of brass wire like the Bishop of Sisteron, but Ludo needs food to make his sore arm get well.’

‘I am thinning you down for the
Primrose,’
said Lymond, still reading. ‘Have we missed a meal?’

‘We have missed two meals,’ said Danny Hislop with precision. ‘And God knows how many drinks. I haven’t been working at all well. Hislops need lubrication.’ And thank God, for his stomach was rumbling, the Voevoda gave the order for food and wine to be brought, and, when he caught Adam glaring at him, Danny merely glared back. It was his hard luck, as he told the Voevoda later, that while Ludo, helped occasionally by Adam, was merely putting Russia to rights, he, Danny, was also organizing all the rigorous arrangements to make sure that Ambassador Peter Vannes did not arrive at the English Court with a bundle of dangerous papers under his arm.

Vannes had not yet arrived. It seemed possible, despite the Voevoda’s conviction, that he never would, before Lymond and Danny and Ludo had to set sail for Russia. In which case, to preserve Mistress Philippa from unpleasant repercussions, someone else should be deputed to help stop those papers arriving. Adam Blacklock, for instance.

But Lymond was still adamant: he wished neither Blacklock or d’Harcourt to be told of the matter, and he was not prepared to be chivvied about it.

Danny did not pursue it. Ludo d’Harcourt, returned dazzled from Blackfriars, had given him hope that, against all expectation, the Voevoda was about to become human.

That had proved a fallacy, as d’Harcourt had also discovered. The damage at Blackfriars had been generously, even royally made good. But after it, the Voevoda had withdrawn behind a barrier as distinct as it was deliberate. There was no more playacting.

And Adam Blacklock, whose business was charts, and who had no right to be eavesdropping when Best and Buckland called and brought Jenkinson with them, or when Ludo and Danny, undressing, exchanged some terrible reminiscence of Novgorod or Ochakov, noticed it too, and noticed more than that.

It was only by accident that, calling at the Voevoda’s room late one evening, Adam saw by the half-empty cup standing among the books on his table that Lymond had been drinking as he worked.

The flask was put away and he was not unsteady on his feet or in any way affected that Adam could see: he was long past the time when he could not judge, to the thousandth part of a litre, just how far he wished to go, and then stop. But it was now so far from his habit that it gave Adam pause.

He mentioned it, stupidly, to the others. ‘He doesn’t want to go back to Russia?’ Danny speculated, horrified.

‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Ludo d’Harcourt impatiently. ‘You can see he is counting the days.’

And although d’Harcourt was not usually, Adam thought, the most perspicacious member of the small party, in this instance he believed he was right. For Francis Crawford, the days of his life left in London could not possibly pass soon enough.

*

The bluebells Ludo had given her died before Philippa got down to Greenwich, but she took the tulips Sir Henry Sidney brought her, grown from the bulbs she had given him, begged by the French Ambassador from his colleagues in Turkey and Venice. And Austin, calling at Greenwich, had brought her sweetmeats and had been too distressed to examine the lump on her head.