The Ringed Castle: Fifth in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles

  ‘What in God’s name is going on?’ said Sir Henry Sidney’s voice, from behind stacks of shelving.

  ‘Go on,’ said Philippa. ‘The Lazar.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt, clutching his gold gown about him.

  ‘Why not? Go on,’ said Philippa.

  ‘I can’t think of any words,’ said d’Harcourt apologetically.

  ‘Never mind,’ Lymond said. ‘Say after me:

  ‘Which I, Lame Lazar List to Cure,

  But Light beneath the Lady’s Lure

  And Lift my Crutch with Leprous Glee,

  And Leap upon the Lady’s Knee … Nicholas?’

  ‘You do mine,’ said Nicholas, glowing.

  ‘No, I’ll do it,’ said Philippa, feeling her oats. She thought.

  ‘But I, dear Luck, will Lead you all.

  On Lilied Lawns of Light to Loll (‘Bravo!’ said Lymond.)

  Where Lute and Lyre will Lilt their Lay (‘Oh, bravo!’)

  And Lull sweet Lovers at their Play!’ said Philippa triumphantly.

  ‘That’s really very good,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Is there more?’

  ‘Yes: Death,’ said Lymond. ‘Where are the Medioxes? Philippa?’

  ‘Up there. I’ll get them,’ Philippa said. Hampered by drakes’ necks, she clambered on to a middle shelf and from there made her way upwards.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ called Lymond warningly.

  She called back, ‘It’s all right,’ and tossed him the death’s head, which he put on, while she perched where she was, observing approvingly.

  ‘Right?’ said Lymond.

  ‘Till Little-lookedfor Death appeared

  And Loathsome on the Lovers Leered

  And Laughter’s Lodge was Let to Fear

  And Love to Lugworms Fell …’

  ‘You’ve changed the metre,’ said Philippa.

  ‘I reserve the right,’ said Lymond, ‘to change the metre. Don’t interrupt.

  ‘Ah, Lamuel, lest your Life be Light

  Lament not for your Lost Delight

  Beshrew Loose Ladies in the Night

  Or …’

  ‘Let me do it,’ said Philippa.

  Lymond said, looking up, ‘That is robbery.’

  ‘I don’t care. Let me do it. You got all the last verse.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lymond generously. ‘It has to rhyme with fell.’

  And from her high perch, happily, Philippa declaimed.

  ‘Ah, Lamuel, lest your Life be Light

  Lament not for your Lost Delight

  Beshrew Loose Ladies in the Night

  OR LANGUISH LOCKED IN L!!!’

  There was a roar of applause, from friends, tailors and Yeoman, and Philippa fell off the stand.

  And, since the stand was not stable, it toppled with her, and striking the next stand, toppled that, which falling sideways, pushed a row of stands, with majestic slowness towards that part of the room where the paint and glue pots were standing. Chests opened. Hampers yawned. Cloth, clothes, bells, masks, heads, hay, swords, wigs and feathers erupted crashing upon floor and tables, while painters fled and tailors rose yelling and the explosions, continuing, dwindled; leaving nothing but silence, and the trickling of saffron, vermilion, yellow ochre, sap green and red lead, as they spread on the floor of the Revels.

  ‘Philippa?’ said Henry Sidney.

  ‘She’s knocked herself out. She’s all right,’ Lymond said. ‘So’s Nicholas. Look. I think d’Harcourt has broken an arm.’

  The dust hung in the hall like a tapestry. Picking his way over the rubble, oblivious to the noise of men’s voices returning, Sir Henry found and knelt by the wigged bundle which was Sumtuous Lechery, and felt her pulse anxiously. She had had, as Lymond said, a crack on the crown and was quite unconscious. Otherwise, miraculously, she seemed to be unharmed.

  D’Harcourt had been less lucky. By the time Sidney got there, Nicholas was helping Lymond pull him from under a chest: his left arm was undoubtedly broken, and he had had a bad blow on the head. Sidney said, ‘There are beds in the offices. I shouldn’t like to move him until he’s been looked at and had the arm set. Nicholas, find the Yeoman and tell him one gentleman is hurt and will he go to the nearest apothecary’s for a bonesetter. Mr Crawford …’

  ‘I shall stay with him,’ Lymond said. His shirt torn and his hand and cheek grazed, he had taken no other harm and was intent, with some success, on making d’Harcourt more comfortable.

  ‘No,’ Sidney said. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so. I know these people here. I shall see that your friend gets the best service possible, and I shall have him taken to Fenchurch Street as soon as he is able to travel. But I think Mistress Philippa should be in the care of Lady Dormer. These are kind men, but rough.… Nicholas would help you carry her, and the barge will take you straight to the gate.’

  Lymond rose and stood, frowning.

  ‘Truly,’ Sir Henry said. ‘You can do no more for him here. Trust me with him.’

  And after a moment more, ‘Yes, of course,’ Lymond said; and stretching, looked for the first time about him. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ. I shall have to go down and unload the Primrose.’

  ‘It was a notable play,’ said Henry Sidney. ‘And worth any cost in my book. Provided your officer here bears you no resentment, I think the other victims may soon be propitiated.’

  ‘That,’ said Lymond, ‘is precisely why I dislike leaving you. I must exact the promise, please, of an accounting.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Sidney. ‘On the other hand, you still have to make your peace with Mistress Philippa.’ He glanced, smiling, towards the flaxen wig and Lymond, his lips twitching, surveyed it as well. Sidney added gently, ‘The men who fight under you are fortunate.’

  Lymond turned and looked at him, and then smiled; and for all there were only two years between them, Sidney felt his maturity of a sudden drop away. ‘But life,’ Lymond said, ‘is not quite like this in Russia.’

  Philippa was still unconscious when he disentangled her from the cluster of Medioxes and, pulling off the wig, lifted her in his arms while Nicholas, climbing before him, pioneered their footing out of the shambles.

  Outside, the sun was still shining, and the oarsmen waiting, patiently, to take Sir Henry back to the Savoy. Lymond explained, briefly, and climbed into the barge, Nicholas helping. Nicholas, in spite of the unfortunate outcome, was still full as a millstream with bubbles: he giggled all the way to Lady Dormer’s, in between droning verse and applying, frequently, for the lines he had failed to remember. Lymond settled with Philippa’s head on his arm, and was disposed to smile, sometimes, too.

  Whiffle. She was a quick-witted child. From Kate, of course. He stirred back the brown hair which had caught in her lashes. And that was Kate’s too. What did she take from Gideon? Honesty. That both her parents had. And courage. Riding through the night once, into unknown country, to find him, and pay some sort of debt she thought she owed to him, or her parents. And, of course, following him for the sake of the child. In spite of a good deal of uncivilized behaviour, he recalled clearly, on his part.

  Courage from both parents, too. You would go far to find a woman braver than Kate. And music—from Gideon? Yes. Both studied and felt—that furious display on the harpsichord at Lady Mary’s, defiant though it had been, had been more than plain pyrotechnics. But then, she was no longer ten, and had put to use the years of study and practice. How old, then, was she?

  The year he fought his brother, they had met. The year of Pinkie, or the spring just after. Which made her … nearly twenty.

  He was aware of deep surprise. But of course, the mind which had comprehended and discussed with him all the intricacies of the present blunderings of nations was not, could not be a child’s. The loving spirit which could serve Queen Mary, seeing clearly all her weakness, had nothing immature about it, or the wit which Ascham had found worthy to teach.

  Unlike Kate, this girl had broken from her setting. All that Kate was, she now
had. And standing on Kate’s shoulders, something more, still growing; blossoming and yet to fruit.

  All that he was not. He looked at her. The long, brown hair; the pure skin of youth; the closed brown eyes, their lashes artfully stained; the obstinate chin; the definite nose, its nostrils curled. The lips, lightly tinted, and the corners deepened, even sleeping, with the remembrance of sardonic joy.… The soft, severe lips.

  And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil. ‘We’re there, sir,’ Nicholas said.

  The air hurt his skin. His nerves, unsheathed, left him over-sensitized and defenceless, as sometimes happened: exposed raw to the touch of his clothes, as if his flesh had been stripped off with acid. He remained perfectly still.

  ‘… Sir?’ Nicholas said.

  So Francis Crawford moved and, bending, took the weight of the straight shoulders and the crumpled skirts and the supple hands and the fall of long, ruffled hair. It was not a child’s body, any more.

  He carried Philippa from the boat and through the garden of the Savoy, without moving his hands. Somewhere he stopped, because Nicholas was speaking to him: it seemed that Lady Dormer was out, with her women, and the house was empty except for the kitchen maids. Nicholas offered to go find them and the physician they favoured. He agreed, and found himself inside the house, with an excited kitchenmaid beside him, showing him to Mistress Philippa’s chamber. She was still in his arms, and had not wakened.

  The maid seemed to have gone. He lowered Philippa on her bed and took his hands away, without touching her again. Then he simply stood, watching her face. Once she sighed, and he moved backwards, unthinking, and came to rest half-way to the door as she fell silent again. Shortly after that, she moved her head once or twice: she was not far from waking. He stood, with his back to the door, until Lady Dormer arrived. Then he went downstairs, and stood at the window.

  Almost immediately, it seemed, Lady Dormer was beside him. Mistress Philippa had wakened: she was well, except for a headache. She sent him her apologies and had also uttered, on waking, some words in Turkish which Lady Dormer was thankful to say she was unable to translate. Lady Dormer did not recommend visitors just at present, but perhaps Mr Crawford would send to ask how she was in the morning.

  He said something, and became aware that he was expected to leave. He felt like a dog, he thought, whose master had died. He left the house, but did not remember the journey to Fenchurch Street.

  The next thing he did remember was Ludovic d’Harcourt’s voice behind him saying, ‘Are you all right? You’ve been standing there for two hours.’ And it was probably true: he was in his own room with the lamps unlit and the door left half-open behind him. The light from the passage, coming through, fell on d’Harcourt’s big form, and the broad scarf which cradled his arm.

  Francis Crawford said, ‘I … beg your pardon. Pantokrator brooding in the dome. Come in and sit down, and tell me how you feel.’ He walked to the nearest lamp and picked up the tinder, his hands shaking. He threw it down.

  ‘Let me,’ d’Harcourt said, and, using the fingers of his immobile arm, lit the lamp. He said, ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No,’ said Lymond. ‘It’s delayed shock, I suppose.’ The stroke of his pulses, unremitting, gave back the accelerated beat of his heart.

  With a profound effort, he gripped himself, and steadied his breathing. ‘But what happened at Blackfriars? Your arm and your head?’

  After five minutes, d’Harcourt said, ‘You should go to bed. I’ve been perfectly looked after: it’s a clean break, and I feel the ache, but nothing more. I enjoyed the revel. If you’ll forgive me, why in God’s name don’t you——’ He broke off.

  ‘Do it more often?’ Lymond said. He looked as if he wanted to laugh, but hadn’t the energy.

  ‘Go to bed,’ d’Harcourt said abruptly, and left him.

  At some point during the night, Lymond went downstairs and sat in the dark before John Dimmock’s harpsichord. He played, when he did begin, very softly, and it reached no further than the room where his three disciples of St Mary’s were fast asleep. D’Harcourt did not wake up. Danny Hislop who was not musical did, and, rolling over, stuffed his ears with the blankets. But Adam lay for a long time listening, his eyes wide in the dark to music which, without opium and without alcohol, Lymond had never allowed within his hearing before.

  He could not guess at the echoes which lay under the music. Man has an animal appetite, or I would be nothing. I, too have had my Margaret Lennox and my Agha Morat and my child-whore Joleta Reid Malett … more of each, and for longer. It has destroyed neither of us. And now nothing can hinder us.

  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.

  Chapter 10

  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 l
eaflets? 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.