The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [106]
The Tsar did not let fall either his eyes or his weapon. ‘I know you,’ he said.
Lymond suddenly smiled. Facing open-shirted the point of the dagger, his blue gaze alight, he made a sweeping, elaborate bow, and rose from it with an incredible flash of steel in his right hand: a flash that arched through the air and landed on the flat of its blade in the fox fur as Ivan’s knife, in its turn, lunged straight for his Voevoda’s heart.
Lymond leaped aside. He was not quite quick enough: the blade, as it passed him, drew a thin line through shirt and shoulder which pricked the cambric with red but drew not even a glance from Lymond himself. Standing still between door and window: ‘You know me,’ he said.
Pulled from the bed by the lunge, the Tsar of all the Russians stood panting and laughing by his pillows, and then, turning, picked up the little knife from the cover where Lymond had thrown it. ‘Where was it? Your boot? Ah, Frangike Gavinovich.’ He broke off. ‘I sent for you because I wish to play chess. Come.’
‘Like this?’ said Lymond calmly. The embroidery on his shirt flashed with his breathing.
‘Like this,’ said the Tsar, and, crossing the room, he lifted from its chest the robe of dark blue and green velvet he had worn at the banquet and turned, holding it, to his Supreme Commander. For a moment, Lymond paused, and then, kneeling, he accepted it, and drew it round his shoulders. ‘You are not obedient,’ said the Tsar. ‘You refused once to play chess with your sovereign lord. I remember it. You refused several times. An illness, you claimed. A mishap. A battle.’
There was a table, inlaid with onyx. Lymond opened the chessmen. ‘I had not been told,’ he said, ‘that the duty of the Voevoda Bolshoia in Russia included the playing of chess.’
‘You lie,’ said the Tsar, pulling the cover once more over his knees, and propping the bolster comfortably in the small of his back. ‘Why am I surrounded by liars and murderers and counterfeit officers of hearty complexion? You believed, being taught by the devil, that you would vanquish your lord, and that your lord, instructed by vainness, would kill you.…
‘You are right. I shall kill you one day, but not until you teach me the abominable practices which allow you to win. Because I am weak, I shall claim to start with my white. Then we shall resume our quarrel about the true interpretation of St Ambrose. I shall send for the librarian from the Josef Volokolamsk to refute you.… It is your move.’
They played two games, while the stove burned low in the corner and the tapers flickered, and did not speak of St Ambrose, or indeed of anything else, as they sat in silence, matching each other, mind locked with mind in a game which was not a game, and a combat which was not a combat, but as dangerous in its intensity as the dangerous play they had engaged in already. The first game, a brief one, was won by Lymond. The second, against all precedent, was brought to stalemate by the Tsar.
He was joyous. He shouted, flinging over the table so that the onyx splintered on the tiled floor; and, striding to the door, called for food and wine, and light and his jesters. Sluggish with sleep, the skomdrokhi displeased him, and were kicked out while he cracked open a chicken, and swallowed mead served by Lymond himself. Lymond said, ‘We didn’t speak of St Ambrose.’ His eyes were bright in the brilliant lamplight, but he had eaten and drunk very little.
The Tsar held out his hands for rosewater, and dried them on the fringed silken napkin Lymond brought over. ‘What of the Englishmen?’ he said.
Lymond replaced the ewer and basin and returning, took the tall-backed chair by the bed. The stove had been built up. The furred velvet