The Ringed Castle: Fifth in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles

  ‘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?’

  It was an argument which would be thrashed out in the end, with the Company’s powerful Goverment members, and far from the Muscovite Ambassador’s hearing. No one had to be told that war might be coming; that to buy and refit and victual a fresh fleet of ships the Company would have to raise capital by calling once again on its members. It was Lymond who said, ‘But it seems to me that your trade with Russia on both sides is perfectly secure, whatever happens in the Narrow Seas or the Baltic. This indeed is your lifeline, and perhaps Russia’s. Your object should be to improve your ships, and foster any research which will improve your navigation. And then to look beyond Russia.’

  ‘Chancellor is dead,’ Garrard said.

  ‘There are others,’ Lymond said.

  ‘Burroughs. Vanished on Searchthrift. Wyndham’s dead, and so is Pinteado. Roger Bodenham’s too old, and settled in Spain. No one at Penshurst, and Sir Henry’s off with his map-drawing secretary and his tract-writing chaplain to write the topography of Ireland. Buckland——?’

  ‘No,’ Lymond said. ‘I am told there is a man called Tony Jenkinson.’

  Garrard said, ‘You hear a great deal in Russia. Or—you were friendly with Chancellor?’

  ‘We talked a little about this,’ said Lymond. ‘Could Jenkinson take a fleet of four ships to St Nicholas?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Garrard said. ‘If Buckland and the rest of you advised him. The charts would have to be redrawn.’

  ‘Adam here could help with that,’ Lymond said. ‘As for the rest, we can supply what we know for a rutter, whether Jenkinson is the man to use it or not. Who could meet us and draw the notes up?’

  There was a short silence, during which d’Harcourt met Adam’s eye and Adam in turn avoided looking at Danny. Then Sir George Barnes said with a sigh, ‘There really only is one man. But he’s living quietly. I suspect … I think I had better find out if he can see you. But he’s the man. By the name of John Dee.’

  The meeting broke up soon afterwards.

  ‘We deceived you there,’ Danny said to Ludovic d’Harcourt, watching all the black gowns and fur collars sweeping down the oak stairs. ‘You thought we were interested in trading with Russia.’

  ‘I did,’ said d’Harcourt obediently.

  ‘And we’re not,’ Danny said. ‘We want an excuse to call on a caster of horoscopes and a heretic. Maybe he wants his future read? I hear it’s all done with a crystal of coal.’

  ‘In that case,’ said his colleague briefly, ‘I hope they keep sousing the damned thing with water.’

  *

  On foot and unattended, with the blessing of the Muscovy Company, Francis Crawford of Lymond n
ext morning walked to the market in Gracechurch Street, and turning north, crossed the cobbles of Bishopsgate to the house in Threadneedle Street of John Dee.

  It was not easy to find, being one of a group of houses belonging to a former religious foundation and occupying, with its gardens and courtyards, the triangle between Broad and Threadneedle Streets. The servant who opened the door was of the kind one might expect to find in a scholarly bachelor’s household, and the room she took him to, dark and crowded, was as sluttish as herself, with a vague smell of sulphur and horseradish. The dust lay on the woodwork like rock flour. There she left, and Lymond waited.

  It was very quiet. Outside it had begun to rain: the creak of it against the small, obscured panes of the windows was the only sound in the room once the maid’s footsteps had receded and vanished; louder than all the far-off London noises: the chatter, the cries and the barking, the rumble and squeak of cart wheels; the perpetual landslide of horses’ hooves between the leaning canyons of wood and plaster and stone. In the room itself there was nothing to see: it was a parlour for receiving unwanted guests and held not even a book which would have identified the interests of the occupier. Lymond glanced round once and then stood perfectly still with his back to a rent table, his cloak thrown beside him, his face serene, as the silence stretched on.

  There was no sound of movement to break it. Only a voice, suddenly, light and dry, which spoke from the shadows. It said, ‘You are observant. But there is no need to defend your mind against me.’ And a tall man, moving from the dark inner doorway where he had been standing stepped into the room. A lean man with a long nose and high, ruddy cheekbones, who wore a dusty gown over his black, shabby doublet, and a black cap on his light, glossy hair; whose eyes were ageless but whose hands, loose at his sides, were capable and broad-fingered and young. He came to a halt a pace away from Francis Crawford and said, ‘I have certain foibles, which you must forgive me. Perhaps you think this meeting unimportant. It is not. I am John Dee.’

  Lymond said, ‘We have met, at Rheims.’

  The pupils in the large eyes moved back and forth, studying him. ‘You heard my lectures on Euclid? Ah. You were in France with the Scottish Queen Dowager, and it was fashionable. What did you learn from them?’

  ‘That you find lecturing tiresome,’ Lymond said.

  ‘So you find me patronizing,’ the other man said. ‘And I am rightly reminded that you are the master of armies. Shall we proceed on a basis of mutual respect until we find out whether we may endure something closer? Come. My study is warmer.’ And moving ahead of his guest, he walked along a dark passage and standing aside, opened a door. Lymond entered.

  The dazzle of light inside was so great that at first he shielded his eyes, blinded after the shadows. Then, dropping his hand, he traced the cause, and, angry as he was, his lips relaxed.

  Mirrors lined the walls of John Dee’s sanctuary. Mirrors subtly aligned and invisibly misshapen, placed on frieze and wainscoting and ceiling so that every aspect of the crowded room was repeated to cheating infinity: the piled books and crossed scrolls, the racks of instruments and shelves of pots, jars and alembics, the pinned maps and charts, the iron clock and the magnifying glass, the great Mercator globe on the floor, and the bunches of dried herbs, slowly swinging from the beamed ceiling. It was less a study than a workshop, with standish and quills competing with auger and handsaw and file: sawdust and filings were gathered everywhere and only the mirrors opposite the door, wilfully distorting, had been kept deliberately clean.

  Lymond studied himself, by turns squat and undulating, and suddenly laughed. ‘I am duly deflated. May I look?’ And finding his way across, examined them. He said, ‘You are severe with your visitors, Master Dee. You know why I am here?’

  John Dee shut the door. ‘Because Courtenay is dead,’ he replied. ‘Or does the merchants’ business come first? I may not taint Master Dimmock’s house, as perhaps you have gathered, since the recent unpleasantness. I have been acquitted of treason and absolved, with reluctance, from the charges of heresy: they sent poor Philpot through to examine me, and he became quite upset. Master Dee, you are too young in divinity to teach me in the matter of my faith, though ye be more learned in other things. You are right. I lack intellectual humility. A good thing to be without. But Cheke is broken and Eden dismissed and the Merchant Adventurers being scanned, one by one, for their faith. If I am to pursue my work I must do it quietly, living on horoscopes for frightened men and avaricious women. And my advice to the Muscovy Company is not publicly proffered. They mean to send out another adventure?’

  ‘They have four ships fitting, and the cargo already half gathered. We need charts. Better ones, including what was learned on this voyage.’

  ‘We?’ John Dee said. He lifted some books and revealed a stool, on which Lymond sat himself. ‘You are sailing with them to Russia? Scotland offered you no blandishments?’

  ‘I am sailing to Russia,’ Lymond said. ‘Even if the Queen of England changes her religion and dissolves her marriage tomorrow.’

  ‘Or dies?’ said John Dee.

  ‘Or dies. You have been gathering information for one purpose, I for another. We began to correspond because we appear to use the same sources. That is all.’

  ‘It is more than that,’ Dee said. ‘You helped me pass letters between Madam Elizabeth and Edward Courtenay. She is entitled to think of you as not unsympathetic. She hoped you would be more.’

  Lymond said, ‘I thought they had purged her household. Are you still able to exchange messages?’

  ‘My cousin Blanche is still there. They don’t know the relationship with James Parry either. My good lady Elizabeth’s grace knows you are here. When Buckland and Best first arrived in London she was at Somerset Place with a lavish retinue of two hundred in red and black velvet, much admired by the populace. The business was to offer her marriage with Philip’s cousin, the Duke of Savoy, any heir to be educated and brought up in England, while the Duke and his wife live abroad. With Philip returning, the Queen’s anxiety to see her sister abroad is quite intense.’

  ‘And King Philip?’ Lymond said.

  ‘Would further the marriage. After all,’ John Dee said, ‘he is not likely to stay in England long. He has a war to pursue. And Brussels is a gay court, with King Ruy Gomez reigning. However, the Duke of Savoy was refused, which upset the Queen considerably. It is said she was hardly dissuaded from calling parliament and debarring the lady Elizabeth from the succession formally as a bastard. She certainly turned her out of London forthwith and back to Hatfield.’

  ‘An over-vehement refusal perhaps?’ Lymond said.

  ‘My lady Elizabeth? You haven’t met her, have you?’ said Dee. ‘She informed her sister that her afflictions were such as to rid her of any wish for a husband, but rather to induce her to desire nothing but death. I am told the Queen wept at the time, but not afterwards. The Privy Council don’t want the Queen’s sister abroad, and neither do the people. With no heir as yet, and the conflict over religion and over King Philip’s demands, the Queen dare not go too far against public opinion. As she always does, my lady had judged it exactly.’

  ‘You have great hopes of her,’ Lymond said quietly.

  Dee sat at his desk, an hour glass turning and turning between his big palms. ‘I have great hopes of this nation and someone must lead it. I look to whatever will serve. You cannot be unaware that that is why I have been writing to you. What in Russia can compare with the prospects which lie before England? You will have power and wealth, but what are these to a scholar? You will end your life an oasis in a desert of ignorance. You have thought of all that.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Lymond said.

  ‘Therefore there are other considerations.…’ John Dee broke off, exasperation on the lean, bearded face. ‘We cannot talk. You are behind bulwarks and entrenchments massive enough to protect a city from capture. The mistake is mine, to have angered you. Where did you have experience of this before?’

&n
bsp; The effect of the mirrors was prismatic. Wherever Lymond looked he could see himself, his hair, his hands, his body, and the bright repeated blaze of the candles, over and over. ‘In France,’ he said. ‘I know when my mind is being attacked.’

  ‘Do you think I stand here as your enemy?’ said Master Dee. ‘Mr Crawford, was your horoscope drawn up in France?’

  ‘No,’ said Lymond curtly; and then in the blaze of the mirrors saw a picture long since sunk from his conscious mind: of the house called Doubtance in the Rue de Papegaults, Blois, and a strange and feverish awakening with a woman bending over him.… What was the date and hour of your birth? He said, ‘It may have been done, once. With what results, I don’t know.’

  ‘If it were to be done again,’ John Dee said, ‘what could you fear? What would you lose?’

  ‘My privacy,’ Lymond said. ‘And would that speed our business?’

  Dee sighed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You are right. Let us persevere. The Courtenay matter. There must be letters. Many of them appear, as you know, to concern the problems of navigation in which he was interested, but it is not difficult to read behind the lines. He died in Padua, and from what I can learn, all his papers were sealed in a casket and locked up by the Bailiff for safety. Rumour has it that Peter Vannes the English Ambassador has been told to get them and bring them with him to London. He has certainly left for London.’

  ‘That much I have heard,’ Lymond said. ‘With a thousand Venetian crowns and the commendation of the Council of Ten, Ayes 19, Noes 0, Neutral 0. And he left with the casket. Whether he arrives with the casket is another matter. I think you should leave it to me. Lychpole should have letters for me from Hercules Tait.’

  ‘Lychpole has no letters for you,’ John Dee said. ‘It is one of the small mysteries I was hoping you would resolve.’

  Lymond stared at him thoughtfully. ‘Yes. That certainly calls for attention,’ he said. ‘So does another small matter. How does Philippa Somerville happen to be on visiting terms with the lady Elizabeth?’