The Ringed Castle (66 page)

Kate said sharply, ‘Of course I know what I’m saying. Philippa has been worried sick, and so has Richard and so have I. Now we have you back, at least for a visit. You’re here, and still nothing happens. It’s a thousand times worse for her.’

Lymond said, ‘You promised——’

‘Not to talk about it. I’m breaking my promise.’

‘Because,’ Lymond said carefully, ‘of what Philippa wrote in her letters?’

‘Because the person who brings you up matters,’ snapped Kate. ‘And it’s time you thought less of your emotional feather bed and more of other people’s. And when you look like that, I know exactly how your odious father came to be detested. Stop!’

‘To hear more?’ said Lymond. ‘Goodbye, Kate.’

‘No,’ Kate said. ‘Wait. There is someone out in the passage to see you.’ She grabbed his arm and he stopped, his face hard with animosity.

‘Who? The child, on its hindquarters, begging?’

‘No …’ said Kate, and fell back as he wrenched his arm from her grasp and, swinging from her, pulled the door open.

Outside, standing very straight and patiently against the opposite wall was a small person in a long, hooded cloak worked with fur, with jewels on her lightly clasped fingers and more, gleaming through the chain at her throat. Her hair, unlike Kate’s, was dressed with shining and perfect elaboration below a fragile French hood and its colour, once so blonde, had turned the pure porcelain white which suits only a fair, finegrained skin, and makes the depth of blue eyes still more striking.

Small and silent and elegant she waited, and did not move as the door was pulled open, although the hem of her skirt, had you looked closely, was trembling and her eyes, hollow with vigils, were unnaturally dark.

So, as Lymond strode out and stopped, rigid and white by the doorpost, Sybilla set eyes on Francis, the son of her heart; and so Francis Crawford, after four years of unharnessed power, came face to face at last with his mother.

And Kate, falling upon the door and looking up at her self-contained relative by marriage, saw his face torn apart and left, raw as a wound without features; only pain and shock and despair and appalled recognition, all the more terrible for being perfectly voiceless.

There was time to comprehend it, and to see a reflection of it begin to break in Sybilla’s paper-white face. There was time for Kate to cling to the door and realize, with a sickening ache in her chest, the size and scale of the mistake she had made. Then Lymond drew a long, unsteady breath and moved. Without a word or a glance, he thrust between Kate and his mother, and walked to the end of the passage. For a moment, his back to them, he paused. Then with his fist he struck the door open and vanished. A moment later, they heard his step on the stair, and the main door opening, with an ostler’s voice wishing him a good night. Had they looked out of the window, they might even have seen him walk off through the snow, his bare head bright and dark by turns under the lamps.

But they did not see it, for Kate was on her knees on the cold flags of the public inn passage, crying, and Sybilla was standing beside her, on the same forlorn spot, and unseeing, stroking her hair.

The girl Osep Nepeja did not want was coming downstairs as Francis Crawford came into their lodging, and she drew aside on the landing, since she saw it was the head one, the one who paid and never came near them. Who likely, they said, wasn’t able.

But Lymond greeted her, smiling, and smiling gripped her and walked her into his room and kicked the door shut.

Half-way through the night she said, ‘What’s the matter?’ but he didn’t answer.

And Osep’s friend drew a long, lonely sigh, there in the darkness; for he had been thoroughly able, and she had thought that perhaps
he had liked her. But it was the old story. Some bought a drug for their troubles; and some bought a body. She waited until she thought he was sleeping, and left him, with her money, and a few extra coins as a keepsake.

With their funds, their possessions, their lives threatened by the forthcoming war, the merchants of London decided as a measure of trust, a measure of pride and a measure of long-headed commerce to give to Osep Grigorievich Nepeja the finest reception ever received by foreign envoy to the capital city of England. And the Crown, for intricate reasons of its own, elected to support them.

Come in stately progress; escorted from county to county by sheriffs, the Ambassador’s party was met within twelve miles of London by a company of eighty Muscovite merchants riding in velvet coats and gold chains. By them he was taken to spend the last night of his journey in the house of one of their number, where he was given gold, velvet and silk to make a riding coat for his processional entry. The following day, after an apprehensive night, he was received by an even large number of representatives of the Muscovy Company with even more horses and liveried servants, and taken foxhunting.

To a man accustomed to hunting bear and seeing three hundred hares slaughtered in one afternoon, it may have seemed a strenuous and not over-productive occupation. But after two weeks of travelling through the rich English countryside and being entertained in commodious English mansions, Osep Nepeja was not the voluble traveller he once had been. He kept his mouth shut, except for smiling, and allowed himself to be led among the fields and commons of the northern suburbs of London, witnessing hawking and archery, and admiring the manors and gardens of the wealthy and the religious houses, ruined or privately bestowed, which gave to the countryside so much of the general appearance of his own suffering land under the Tartars.

Then, after sufficient time had been wasted, he was led to meet the Queen’s representative the Right Honourable Viscount Montague with three hundred knights, squires, gentlemen and yeomen, all warmly and expensively dressed, and attended a brief open-air ceremony where he received from four richly dressed merchants a large gelding finely trapped, with a footcloth of Orient crimson velvet enriched with gold laces. Mounted on this, he was taken to Smithfield, the first limits of the liberties of the City of London.

There, translated by Robert Best, the City welcomed him in the person of Sir Thomas Offley, Lord Mayor of London, with his Aldermen all in scarlet, and the procession of Entry formed up. It was, considering the penurious state of the Ambassador and the
months of privation which had preceded it, a praiseworthy production. Dressed in his own style (by the Company) in a gown of tissue, embroidered with jewels and pearls, and with a long stiff cap, also jewelled, set upon his massive brow, the Muscovite Ambassador rode between the Lord Mayor and Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague, with his servants in golden robes following. Behind them, brightly dressed, came the servants and apprentices of both English parties: ahead, in spectacular ranks, rode the knights and merchants, with the other Muscovite guest and his three companions discreetly among them.

From Buckland and Best, the Muscovy Company knew who Lymond was, and had a very good idea what he was doing there. To their relief, discreetly approached, he had proved last night to be a man of good sense and reason. Nepeja was the Ambassador. Mr Crawford’s rôle, out of the public eye, should appear quite subsidiary. The Company, used to refugees of their own through several reigns, found nothing unusual in dealing with a foreign-born Russian, and in the ease of communication a positive blessing. Riding as it happened beside Sir William Chester, Alderman and merchant, Lymond talked about sugar all the way through Aldersgate and Cheapside and Lombard Street and into the opening of Fenchurch Street, while the London crowds, shouting and struggling, packed the network of streets all about them, and hung out of windows and dropped things, on occasion, on their heads.

No one fell to their knees and abased their brows to the Queen’s representative, or to the Voevoda Bolshoia, or to the first Ambassador of the lordly Prince Ivan, Tsar of all the Russians, but Master Nepeja had grown used to that. In spite of its money, it was an unruly and barbarous nation. But what would you expect, under the ignorant rule of a woman?

Lodged under the eaves of the extravagant Fenchurch Street mansion which was to house Nepeja during his sojourn in London, Blacklock, d’Harcourt and Hislop were not the only men of his party that night to throw themselves on their beds with groans of relief and exhaustion. Prone, with his hands over his face, Danny Hislop said, ‘My God. Do you realize there is going to be two months of it? Who is Master John Dimmock?’

‘A lion-hunter,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt, his eyes closed. ‘The man with the biggest house and the most money and a penchant for entertaining Russian Governors. I approve of the house. Did you see Nepeja’s rooms?’

‘Yes. It isn’t all Dimmock’s. Rob says the Queen supplied the bed and the hangings and the furniture. They’ve got some silver out of the Jewel-house as well. Rob says there’s a guard with pikes round the house twenty-four hours a day and they can’t sleep at night in
case the old man draws a thread in the hangings. The Voevoda’s room is almost as good.’

‘Do you think he will notice?’ Danny said. ‘I sometimes feel if I placed myself nude on the floor between the Voevoda and one of his meetings, he wouldn’t even walk round me.’

‘Dedication is the word,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt. ‘He has more patience with Nepeja than I have.’

‘Power is the word,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘If you control a large slice of Russia and are anticipating controlling the rest of it, that is how you behave.’

‘I think there’s something else,’ Adam said. ‘I think something happened at Berwick.’

‘We know what happened,’ Danny said agreeably. ‘He celebrated his return to English soil by hiring in one of——’

‘Not that,’ Adam said. ‘Or before that. I suppose being pushed in the face by your brother may be said to loosen the family ties.’

‘Adam!’ said Danny. ‘You mustn’t drop out of the choir. We have too much to do. What
do
we have to do?’

‘Wait about for three weeks,’ d’Harcourt said. ‘Tomorrow’s the first day of March: King Philip hasn’t set out yet from Brussels. And the Queen won’t receive Nepeja officially until King Philip arrives. The Privy Council won’t go near him either. He’ll have to kick his heels, and content himself with long talks with the merchants.’

‘In this house? What about us?’ Danny said.

D’Harcourt said, ‘I thought you were tired of the baubles of ceremony? Lymond won’t be received anywhere either; not until Nepeja is formally recognized. That means he can’t do his business. The Muscovy Company can talk about arms as much as they like but they can’t promise anything: only the Queen and Council can provide or withhold all the licences. All he can do is clear the air with the merchants by telling them what the Tsar wants and why. And Nepeja can do the same, on the trade side. My guess is that all our time will be spent with the Muscovy Company. Remember, all their records have been destroyed, and Chancellor’s eye-witness account. They know all Best can tell them. They’re bound to want our help as well.’

Adam said, ‘In full, deathless detail? How George Killingworth’s beard conquered Novgorod?’

‘What happened to the Emperor’s sugar?’ d’Harcourt said.

‘Who got carried out of the Emperor’s banquets?’ Danny said. ‘You know, it’s a funny thing, comparing England and Russia——’

‘No!’
howled Adam and d’Harcourt together.

‘No. We’ve had a lot of that. I was only going to say,’ Danny said, ‘how chastely agreeable it is to sit next to a woman again.’

Which only went to show, as the other two, exchanging glances agreed, that the sweet panacea of England was lancing the carbuncles of Russia already.

*

With Best and Nepeja, Gilpin and Hussey, Lymond and his three officers, it took the Muscovy Company three days to work through the obvious agenda: the progress on the wreck; the social news about the company’s officers still remaining in Russia: word of his son Richard for Sir Andrew Judde, of Richard Grey for his wife and daughter, of Charles Hudson for Sir George Barnes’s grand-daughter; of Thomas Hawtrey for William, his brother.

For the Company, it became slowly clear to all the outsiders, was one close-knit in friendship as well as commerce, and linked by intermarriage as well as by kinship of blood. And wealthy as these men were who inflicted on them, with such disarming apologies, long aching forenoons recalling the price of train oil and the terms of long, vanished documents, they were, many of them, Londoners of the first generation and merchants of the first generation, who had come to the city in their youth, and stayed, showing industry and initiative and imagination, and had prospered.

They commanded respect. In spite of their boredom, the three officers of St Mary’s found themselves spending long hours, willingly, round the table; combining with Best and Nepeja in an attempt to define markets and explain officialdom; detailing the concessions made by the Tsar and interpreting those demanded in return by Nepeja. Lymond, mercifully, seemed equally ready to offer help and to exercise restraint through all the discussions which had nothing to do with munitions—that aspect, it could only be guessed, was being negotiated through firmly closed doors. On occasion, he relieved Best as interpreter, and it was noticeable then how their progress improved, as he steered Nepeja, and clarified for him.

Nepeja was already dependent on him. As time went on the three, cynical pairs of eyes from St Mary’s could see that the merchants also, little by little, were beginning to lean on his advice. They had Buckland’s notes of the probable lading of the three vanished ships. They knew now the total losses, including the fragments being recovered from Pitsligo, hardly worth the total cost of the rescue. And, facing reality, they included in these the pinnace
Searchthrift
, sent out to Vardȯ with the
Edward
, and never heard of since the
Edward’
s last call there. So there came the day when Sir George Barnes threw his quill on the paper before him and said, ‘Gentlemen, we have lost six thousand pounds in two years. What is this Russian trade worth to us?’