The Ringed Castle (81 page)

‘She says then, Will you write?’ said d’Harcourt, with difficulty. Doors creaked audibly, but the Voevoda remained on the landing.

‘What about?’ said the Voevoda, eyebrows raised, watching him. ‘My dear d’Harcourt, I thought you were pursuing the lady. Do you really mean to act as her errand-boy?’

Ludovic d’Harcourt, keeping his temper under extreme provocation, made one last attempt for Mistress Philippa. ‘She said, if you wouldn’t write, I was to give you a message. She says,
What about Gardington?
’

‘And what does she mean by that?’ Lymond said. In the torchlight, his eyes were hard and arrogant: the Voevoda Bolshoia interrogating.

Ludovic d’Harcourt threw open his arms. ‘How should I know? She didn’t say. I’m only her errand-boy.’

He suffered, for an undue length of time, Lymond’s considering gaze. Then the Voevoda said, ‘I see. An angry piece of flesh, and soon displeased. Then you may retire gladdened by the assurance that your loving office is ended. Is there anything else?’

It was the kind of treatment which above all d’Harcourt disliked. He turned on his heel and walked off, and Lymond, standing, watched him quite out of sight before, at last, he let himself into his room and striking tinder, lit one stand of candles. Then he walked to his aumbry and stood before it a few moments longer before, with a sudden flare of distaste and impatience, he turned the key and flung open the door.

He did not drink any more than he had become accustomed to drinking. But he did not answer, either, when Ludovic d’Harcourt, penitent, returned to tap on his door.

On April 25th, there was held at court the Masque of the Allmaynes, the Pilgrims and the Irishmen. It was most successful, although it was noted that the Pilgrims’ robes were decorated with a most unusual linear design in yellow ochre, sap green and dragon red. Mistress Philippa was complimented on the effects of her feathers.

On April 26th, Master Peter Vannes, Dean of Salisbury and late English Ambassador to the Doge of Venice, crossed from Calais to Dover with his secretary, his servant, his four stirrupmen, his men at arms and a prisoner. In the baggage, nailed down as he had received it from the Bailiff of Padua, was a box containing all the personal correspondence of the late Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, sometime claimant to the monarchy of England. An idle man, waiting about the harbour at Dover witnessed the arrival and, travelling post, set out to cover the seventy-two miles from Dover to Fenchurch Street, London.

On the same day, April 26th, there arrived off the town of Scarborough on the north-east coast of England two French ships, on their way to land French troops in Scotland. They also carried an English rebel named Thomas Stafford and a hundred soldiers, part French and part English refugees. Stafford, a nephew of Cardinal Pole’s and a grandson of the late Duke of Buckingham, landed on the coast with his friends, and, seizing Scarborough castle, proclaimed himself King. The local militia, who had been warned long ago to
expect precisely such an attack, were awaiting him quietly and moving in under the leadership of his other uncle the 5th Earl of Westmorland, captured Stafford and rounded up almost all the invaders.

On Wednesday, April 28th, before the news of Peter Vannes’s landing or the news of the Scarborough invasion reached London, and ignorant therefore of both events, Francis Crawford of Lymond cancelled his engagements and, releasing his staff for the day, set off alone and fast out of London, to ride forty miles to the manor of Gardington, Bucks., there to call on his great-uncle, Leonard Bailey.

It was raining. He passed some carts making their way to the city, with milk, and farm produce, and kegs and parcels done up in sacking; and one or two vagabonds, and the odd man in a good coat, with servants and runners, coming up early from his house in the country. But few, as yet, bound outwards from London as he was.

Lymond had ridden a few miles therefore before he became aware of the drumming of hoof beats behind him, travelling as fast as his own over the mud and stones of the highway. Without pausing, he threw a glance over his shoulder, and saw the rider was hooded and cloaked, and was waving to him. An instant later, and he recognized Philippa.

For a long and critical moment, it appeared to Philippa that he had not observed her and that she was going to have to put two fingers between her teeth, regrettably, and whistle him over. Then he brought his weight to bear on the powerful horse, and slowed it down and, wheeling, rode back towards her.

Her hood bounding: ‘Ludo told me,’ called Philippa, trotting likewise to meet him. ‘You were going to Gardington?’

He looked underslept. He came to rest beside her, his gaze wry but not unduly harsh. Only Philippa recognized the aura of resistance surrounding him, like the kindly, masterful, obdurate resistance Lady Dormer displayed when brought face to face with a lapse in good breeding. But Philippa, through the months, had learned how to deal with Lady Dormer. So she greeted him again.
‘Khúsh Geldi
. Are you going to Gardington?’

And he said, ‘Yes. And you are going to protect me?’

‘You need a witness,’ said Philippa. ‘Unwanted, unasked, unwelcome as ever, here I am.’

‘Again,’ said Lymond.

If she had not been expecting it, it might have hurt; although he had not spoken sharply. ‘Yes, again,’ Philippa said. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that if you sometimes invited me somewhere,
I
shouldn’t always have to keep standing in doorways being glared at?’

He said, ‘I hadn’t thought of it as a social occasion.’ Then after a moment he said, ‘I can hardly glare at you, when you have taken all this trouble to follow me. You think
I
shall need a witness?’

‘With Bailey,’ said Philippa grimly, ‘you need a full suit of armour. He was born, like Genghis Khan, in a Rat Year. I think this is one occasion when you will have to forget your finer feelings and let the populace in. I shall try, I promise you, not to humiliate you.’

‘You could hardly do that,’ Lymond said, and his horse, shaking its head in the rain, moved restively under him. ‘You know more about my sordid parentage than I do. Leonard Bailey being what he is, do you think it likely that I would allow a royal lady-in-waiting to go with me?’

She raised her eyebrows. Thinned and glossy and perfect, they arched over her dense brown eyes, invisibly cultivated: the rain had brought fresh colour naturally to her young skin. She said, ‘Well, how nice. I seem to have the moral ascendancy this time. Dear Mr Crawford, I have been there already. Alone. And on your behalf. It is for you to repay the obligation. Trencher chippings, please, for the dutiful sow.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ said Lymond, and gave a gasp of laughter, and then stopped, looking down at his gloves. After a moment, he said dryly, ‘So, having disposed of my finer feelings and my obligations, there seems to be only one objection you haven’t thought of. With an annulment pending, it would be quite ludicrous for you and for me to spend a day and a night unescorted.’

‘Oh,’ said Philippa.

‘Checkmate,’ Lymond said. She could feel his eyes on her, filled no doubt with ungenerous triumph. ‘Stalemate. Goodbye, Philippa.
Allaha ismarladik!
And let my Lord, when he divorces me, give me in your place wives better than you: submissive, faithful, obedient, penitent, adorers, fasters, widows and virgins.…’

‘Speaking of virgins,’ Philippa said.

His horse moved again. ‘No,’ said Lymond.

‘Speaking of virgins, there can be fewer acts more directly prejudicial to a divorce on the grounds of non-consummation than sharing a double bed in the Sultan of Turkey’s seraglio. If you remember,’ Philippa said.

And stared at him owlishly for that, she well knew, was a tricky matter. Not because of what happened between them, which had been precisely nothing. But of what Mr Crawford had experienced that night, the night the child Khaireddin had been killed.

But he had forgotten, for after a moment’s thought he said only, ‘So you are intending to rely on medical evidence to dissolve the holy union between us.
Ubi tres medici, duo athei?’

‘And
vituperato sia chi mal pensa,’
said Philippa blandly. ‘Could we, do you suppose, begin riding on? It is really rather wet.’

But he did not move his horse. ‘I have one move left to play,’ Lymond said. ‘Do you want me to see this man Bailey?’

‘Yes,’ said Philippa warily.

‘Then I will see him,’ said Lymond sweetly. ‘But only if you go back to London.’

She had thought of that, too. She kept her brown eyes fixed open upon him, and allowed her mind, lushly, to fill with the injustice of it all. Her nose grew pink. ‘Then,’ said Philippa simply, ‘I shall cry.’ And, to order, her eyes filled and spilled over with the first of two surfing tears.

With Austin, it had always been most effective. Mr Crawford, on the other hand, neither offered his kerchief nor words of chastened apology. Instead he drew his horse sharply from her and, without a word, wheeled and rode forcefully off.

After a moment’s sinking comprehension, Philippa gathered her own reins likewise and stubbornly set off at top speed behind him.

There followed a long and unpleasant hour’s riding. The rain continued to fall in heavy, irregular showers. Mud flew against Philippa like snow, from the hooves of her own mare, and the riders and carts splashing by. She was never close enough to catch the mud from Mr Crawford’s big horse. He had very quickly vanished from sight, and but for the chance that she knew his destination and was still convinced that he intended to go there, she would have had no idea which road to follow.

As it was, she rode on grimly, accepting what punishment the elements chose to inflict on her, until she emerged from a small, noisy wood to see the road winding empty before her, and a single horseman waiting silent beside it, his long cloak sleek as satin with wet.

Philippa Somerville slowed her horse to a trot, and, pulling off her right glove, held her hand high and flat, white palm outwards as she paced forward to Lymond and stopped. ‘Never again,’ Philippa said. ‘Never, never again.’

He sat still, breathing deeply as yet from the ride, with his face brushed and ridged with wet light from the rain. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t deserve that. I think.’

Philippa looked down and then up again, her cheeks red with mortification. ‘It works with Austin,’ she said.

His lips tightened, and Philippa sat, empty and braced for the stinging attack she deserved. ‘It works with me, too,’ he said. ‘But perhaps not quite in the same way.’

There was another brief pause. Then he said, ‘I can hardly let you ride back on your own. Do you always get your own way by——’

‘Persistence,’ Philippa said, ‘is the secret.
So many buls do compass me That be full strong of head. Yea, buls so fat as though they had In Basan field been fed
. I haven’t had my breakfast.’

He lifted his eyebrows, but not quite in the same way as before, insolently, in the presence chamber at Whitehall. ‘Then you are
going to be very hungry, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Because on my journeys there are no halts before dinner. For bulls or heifers.’

But that worried her not at all, for she had got what she wanted despite him. Although, as she knew very well, she could never have caught him had he not stopped, from regard for her safety. For he did not want her. Of that, there was, loweringly, no possible doubt.

They had forty miles to cover to Gardington: a longer journey than any she would normally ride in one day; but she was light and active and determined and did not hold him back as they galloped, changing horses at post stations as they went; or, if she did, he concealed it. For the rest, it was a strange day which remained in her memory, for it was so different from her experience of him hitherto.

The quick, vituperative exchanges which she had found so challenging and exasperating and, sometimes, hurtful did not appear; and when she thought of the purpose of this journey she accepted that, today at least, his mind would be removed far from banter. He did talk, however, when there was breath at a ford or a ferry, or when he commanded a meal for them both, or half an hour’s rest and shelter at an inn. It was none of it personal conversation and began, so far as she could afterwards remember, with a book she had just read by Leonard Digges about prognosticating the weather from the sky. It appeared he had read Digges’s last book and they discussed it; and then went on to talk about Roger Bacon.

It was only gradually that she came to realize how steadily he was controlling the conversation: how, whenever it became less than detached, he steered the subject elsewhere or exchanged it skilfully for another. It was noticeable simply because there seemed, Philippa concluded, to be so few dull topics in the world, and even when he thought he had found one, it would suddenly burst into life, full of new aspects and intriguing possibilities as they discussed it, and then he would switch subjects again. She wished, looking at his face, that he would yield, and let the talk drift, as he would with some of his friends. But the strains of today were already quite bad enough, without forcing unnecessary demands on him.

Twice, they did stray briefly from the impersonal. She remembered querying, in surprise, a quotation from Thomas Aquinas and he smiled and said, ‘Forgive me, but I
have
read some books since I left my library at Midculter Castle.’

It was the first break in the wall with which he had surrounded himself. It was also surprising that he remembered what she had told him. She pursued it, indirectly, through the subject they were discussing at the moment, ‘If I were a man, I think I should choose to follow Cabot and Burroughs and … Jenkinson. I should want to explore.’

They were indoors at that point, resting and sharing a hearty, overcooked meal which she was too absorbed to eat and Lymond, she supposed, too apprehensive. He said, watching the ale in his tankard, ‘You avoid Chancellor’s name.’

‘I thought it was in the rules,’ Philippa said. ‘No emotive topics in case we exhaust ourselves before reaching Master Bailey. I know you offered to finance Diccon Chancellor. There was a letter to Nicholas in his papers. If I become the first lady merchant in Cambalu——’