The Ringed Castle (85 page)

‘Because of the prying?’ Philippa said. ‘Or because of the certificate that wasn’t there?’ And as he looked at her without speaking she said, ‘For there should have been three papers, shouldn’t there? There was no certificate for your other sister, whom we know was illegitimate. There was no paper for Marthe.’

She did not know that her headache showed too: that the fresh colour had gone from her cheeks and had left behind it two half-circles of strain under her thinking brown eyes, and a single line across the clear brow, between the sheer, silky falls of her hair. She stood lost in worried contemplation and was only moved to look up when a sound told her, to her surprise, that he had found his way without warning to the door.

Francis Crawford stood with his back to the doorpost and said,
‘Yunitsa
, forgive me. My ailment will be the worse for it, and so shall I, but I am going to leave you.’

She had seen him look like that before once, at Volos, and she made no move to stop him. Only,
‘Yunitsa?’
she said.

He smiled, a glimmer in his darkened blue eyes. ‘What, after all Best’s Russian teaching? It means
heifer,’
he said. ‘Good night. And thank you, wise Philippa.’

The maid came soon after that, with the food and the potion for
headaches. Philippa sent the meal back, and, rather desperately, took the mixture herself.

*

The idle fellow from Dover, aghast at his ill-timed sleep by the roadside, set off in the dawn light to Gardington and was fortunate enough to find an inn called the
Chicken
just short of it, where Mr Crawford had ordered beds for the night. He and the lady, it seemed, had failed to occupy them. The innkeeper, discussing the matter, began to have hopes of compensation. When none was forthcoming the innkeeper, disgruntled, recalled something else. A reward, Mr Bailey had said, for every soldier of Crawford’s whom he managed to detain on the way.

There had been no soldiers so far. But this was a powerful fellow: not the kind of man an old gentleman would like for a visitor. The inn host, switching the talk to refreshment, showed his unwanted visitor into a chamber and, slamming the door, turned the key on him briskly.

*

Waking next morning wan, limp, but full of persevering good sense, Philippa Somerville was surprised to find, passing Mr Crawford’s neighbouring bedroom that the door was standing ajar, and inside there was no sign of an occupant. From the innkeeper she heard what she might already have guessed. Mr Crawford had ridden out early, having paid for them both and having arranged for two trustworthy grooms to accompany the lady to London. He had also left her his apologies.

Considering this, she came only slowly to realize what the innkeeper was also explaining. ‘It’ll be the news, mistress. Everyone is going to London. They say it will be war, within days.’

‘What news?’ said Philippa hardily. And listened in silence to the account of Thomas Stafford’s ill-timed Scarborough raid.

‘They say,’ said the innkeeper, ‘that the French have already been warned to fly from the country. And the Scots will declare war soon, so they expect. All the high officers are called back to London. War.… It’s a dreadful thing, Mistress.’

He sounded pleased, Philippa thought.
A longing for novelty, peculiar to this nation
. Or so the Venetians said.

She didn’t want breakfast. She left the inn while he was still exclaiming and rode with her two grooms to London with a premonition, and a fear, in the back of her sensible mind.

There was rumour of war at every halting-place between Gardington and London. By the time he reached Fenchurch Street, it occupied Francis Crawford’s mind to the exclusion of almost everything else: the French had sent five hundred Gascon foot soldiers to Scotland and were to dispatch three thousand more; Scotland had been asked by France to raise fifteen thousand French-paid Scots infantry. The Queen Dowager had been voted sixty thousand pounds by the Scots Parliament. On the Border, the English were planting fifteen hundred reinforcements at Berwick and Carlisle, Norham and Wark.… When war came, Richard Crawford, who was not his brother, would be fighting for Scotland.

But he, the Voevoda Bolshoia, would be in Russia. He had reached Dimmock’s house before he was reminded, by the bustle outside, of the thing he had contrived to lose sight of: that today, Thursday April 29th, he was to attend the great banquet to be held by the Muscovy Company to mark the departure of the first Muscovite Ambassador. His coat for it, already chosen, was Russian, and made by Güzel’s staff: it was so heavily jewelled that Dimmock’s servants, terrified, had offered a special case with three locks to keep it in.

Güzel had made no such provision. It is only the poor man, said Güzel, who counts his belongings. The rich man guards himself, and lets his goods fall where they may.…

On Saturday Ely and Petre would come, with the royal letters and presents. And by Monday the four ships, towed downstream, would await the Muscovy party at Gravesend, there to take their leave of England.

So by Monday he must complete all his arrangements, receive the last papers, organize the last interviews. Four days so planned that it might be done, at the cost of a little hard work. But there would soon be time enough on the
Primrose
to rest and reflect. And it allowed no time—no time at all for personal business.

Adam Blacklock met Lymond at the door of Dimmock’s house. ‘Nepeja is going mad. You know that it is only an hour to the banquet?’

Lymond stared at him. ‘Calm! Calm,’ he said. ‘They are not likely to begin it without us.’

‘Well, they’re likely to begin it without Ludo and Danny,’ Adam said, who, no longer in Russian employ, had rebelled against Russian edicts. ‘They both rode out of London yesterday, and neither of them has been heard of since.’

Someone had taken Lymond’s horse. With Adam at his side he was already running upstairs to his room when the implication of that statement reached him. He stopped. ‘Together?’ said Lymond.

‘No,’ said Adam, his uneasiness suddenly crystallizing. ‘Danny first, and then we found Ludo had gone later. Neither of them left any message.’

‘Blackheath?’ Lymond said.

‘No. I sent there,’ said Adam. He added, worrying, ‘Have you come straight from Gardington?’

‘Forty miles. I am unlikely to live,’ said the Voevoda, with an air of abstraction. ‘Did Hislop receive any message, that you knew of?’

‘I asked that as well,’ Adam said. ‘It seems someone did call and ask for him. There is an impression Danny sent him off straight away. I wondered if he had dispatched him to you.’

‘Well, if he did, he didn’t reach me,’ Lymond said. ‘Good God: is that Nepeja?’

‘He has been ready,’ said Adam, ‘for the last hour and a half.’

‘You look very pretty as well,’ Lymond said, and disappeared into his room.

He was, astonishingly, ready in time, with no trace of the dust of his journey, and the work of Güzel’s sempstresses and goldsmiths and embroiderers like a riza adorning his person. There was a ceremonial ride, this time through Lombard Street and Lothbury to the towering oriel windows, painted, gilded and carved, of the Drapers’ Hall, hired by the Muscovy Company to do justice to the splendid occasion.

Inside, gathered in heated bales of fur and velvet and brocade, were the Governor, consuls, assistants and sad, discreet and honest Members of the Muscovy Company, waiting to convey their guests to their places at the long, laden tables before the blue cloth of state with its shield showing a ship in full sail, with the lion of England above, and round it the motto of the Company:
Refugium Nostrum In Deo Est
.

‘If the war comes,’ said Sir George Barnes on Lymond’s left hand, “twill be the only harbour we may trust. They say England will pay the whole cost of it, and all for King Philip’s purpose, not for our own. Trades suppressed, new taxes imposed.… How else will we finance the foot and horse they say the Queen has promised to send? The King can’t collect any more money in Brussels or Antwerp; they say Ruy Gomez can’t even raise it in Spain, or why else does he delay?’

It was all they could think of, the merchants crowding here to do public honour to the Ambassador, although they chatted and joked and called across the tables to one another between the entertainments: the jugglers and the singers and the acrobatics, and the one-act interlude by players in false heads, between the blubber dainties and the dariolles. There were no Sumtuous Hores.

The Voevoda Bolshoia, a civilized and entertaining companion, for a Scotsman, kept afloat the cross-conversations all about him, as deftly as the jugglers their balls, and gave no sign of the two, and three, and four other subjects which were occupying the rest of his mind in the meanwhile. Most of the senior officials were there. At the head of the table, old Master Cabot, with his broad face and broken nose and long, white forked beard. The knights, Andrew Judde and Will Chester, part-owners of the
Primrose
and the
John Evangelist
, and John Dimmock his host, owner of the
Anne
, now waiting to leave St Botolph’s Wharf with the
Trinity
, fully laden with twenty-one bales of cotton stuff and two hundred sorting cloths and five hundred pieces of Hampshire kersey in sky blue and red and green and ginger and yellow, with sugar and with nine casks of pewter of Thomas Hasel’s making, the cloth alone being worth £3,400. And below the casks and the crates and the bales, another cargo whose worth was not public knowledge, and whose contents had not been broadcast at all.

Sir Henry Sidney, soon to go back to Ireland, with his friend Edmund Roberts, newly back from his labours in Scotland, from which five hundred pounds of the cargo of the wrecked
Edward Bonaventure
had been recovered and was now on its way south in a hired English ship. Between them, Sidney and Roberts had given him the men and the advice he needed to mine the iron in Russia, and work it, and in time give them, he hoped, a steel surpassing that of the Turks and the Persians. In time.…

Anthony Hussey, whose cousin Lawrence had had such a signal success with the Queen Dowager in Scotland. As soon as he left for Russia, Lymond knew, a letter would be on its way from Scotland to the Queen Dowager’s dearest sister, Mary of England, regretting that she could not, without her dearest daughter’s advice, dispense with the rebellion of the sometime Earl of Lennox, and that therefore, as the wife of a man without civic rights, Lady Lennox’s claim to the Angus estates would instantly be stopped.

John Buckland, Master under God of the new flagship the
Primrose
, with Tony Jenkinson, who would sail in Chancellor’s place and do as well, probably, as Chancellor. And whom he, the Voevoda Bolshoia, would come to know in the long journey north, and either tolerate or dislike, it did not matter which. There had been good news for the Company that day, John Buckland had told him. They had had word that the
Searchthrift
was safe and had wintered at Kholmogory: the pinnace which Stephen Burroughs and Richard Johnson had taken to Vardȯ, hoping to sail east past the Ob. This they had not done, but this spring they were to set out again. So the Company were not without their adventurers, or John Dee his pupils.…

William Garrard, who had told Philippa how to reach Bailey’s
house: a good thing, or a bad? Robert Best, who knew as much as anyone about the Voevoda’s activities in Russia, but who was going back to Russia with him, and therefore had to be circumspect. Philip Gunter, whom he had met with Sir Henry; and Harry Becher, with the harem of drakes, whom he had not met at all.

Those with office near to the Queen: Sir Henry Jerningham, Vice Chamberlain and Captain of the Guard; the Earl of Arundel, President of the Council; Sir William Cecil; Sir William Petre, who left the chamber unexpectedly with Dimmock beside him, and did not come back for ten minutes.

The speeches began. Wine, in a loving cup, was passed back to back through the whole company to pledge the departing Muscovite Ambassador; and then the old man, Cabot himself, made the announcement they had all come to hear. To Osep Grigorievich Nepeja, first Ambassador to England from the Tsar of all Russia, the Company here present were agreed to bear the whole cost and charges incurred by the Ambassador and those travelling with him from Scotland to London, and also during his stay until sailing, as testing and witness of their good hearts, zeal and tenderness towards him and his country.

There was a touching display of appreciation, as this generous offer was translated by Rob Best and received by the Ambassador with hands clasped over his sturdy pearled chest. He embraced Master Cabot. He embraced Sir Andrew Judde and Sir George Barnes. He almost embraced Rob Best until he remembered that he, a mere servant of the Company, would be returning to Russia. Then, in rolling tones, the Ambassador started his answer.

It was launched into respectful silence, broken only by the obedient echo of Robert Best’s English. It proceeded with a little less clarity, against some whispering which was making itself heard at the foot of the tables. The whispering, spreading, became a subdued murmur, punctuated by hissing noises as the merchants so far ignorant tried to hush, from politeness, the merchants more favourably placed.

Francis Crawford, watching and listening, could sense only one thing. Whatever news had arrived, it concerned the merchants, not the Russians or his own affairs in any of their various aspects. And the news, whatever it might be, was good.

Then it reached the top of the table and Osep Nepeja, puzzled, brought his speech to a more rapid conclusion than he had intended while Best rushed through the translation and was applauded almost before he had done, so eager were his audience to get rid of him.

And in the end it was Sir George Barnes who stood and made the announcement, from a piece of paper passed along from his fellows; perhaps because he had the loudest voice; or perhaps because, with
Judde, his had been the vigour which had launched the Muscovy ships into their first, fateful journey to Russia.