The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [118]
There was music later, when the table was drawn and they were seated at leisure, on cushions and long tasselled benches and tall chairs, watching the play of small flames in the brazier. Women played on the lute, and a boy sang, and accompanied himself on a curious eight-stringed lyre. Then Güzel herself took the lute, and played to them, singing in her true, mellow voice, but in a language Chancellor could not understand.
He had wondered, at the beginning of this evening, what pleasure this handsome, wealthy woman had found in her creation. He knew now, looking at the powerful man they called Lymond. He had expected vulgarity; he had been afraid of embarrassing dalliance; he had been prepared to be disgusted or bored.
In the event, his host and hostess had barely exchanged a glance in the course of the evening: there was no call for it. Cool and assured, each wholly in command of all the civilized arts of giving pleasure, they wove and interwove their attentions, controlling the evening between them; guiding the talk; leading the laughter. Güzel was well read, as well as highly trained in all the womanly arts. She held Plummer in disputation and brought pen and paper so that Adam could dispose of some fanciful theory with a sweep of his long, artist’s fingers.
But Lymond was more than well read. Somewhere, God knew where, he had picked up a formal education and had bettered it. He was also well informed, to a degree Chancellor found disturbing. Political awareness one found in the Vatican, and at the courts of Henri of France, and the Emperor Charles, and in the unhappy government of England and the torn ducal palaces of Italy. One did not look for it here, in a soldier who lived by his sword, in a country so remote that the transmission of news was itself a feat worth remarking.
That kind of mind was not Güzel’s creation. And that explosive combination of physical skill and intelligence, so dangerous in the world of affairs. Henry Sidney had it, but couched in a family setting which enabled him to stay in favour through two conflicting reigns. Ned Somerset had had it; and Warwick to a degree. And the de Guises in France: the Duke, the Cardinal, the Prior. Brains, hardihood, and looks.
Brains and hardihood were here in this man. And looks he had not observed before. Good hands, and a body agreeably marshalled. Hair strongly springing which was not yellow, but stranded with all the live colours between citrine and amber. An overbred face, with bone fitted to bone like the hilt to the tang of a blade; a gaze, wide and blue, and hard as the gaze of an idol. And the long, linear design of the mouth, with its hairline engraving of temper.…
What passion did this exquisite woman find there? The bower of Majnún and Leylí, Lymond had said; and Chancellor had long since recognized the unfair irony behind that expansive remark. Whatever took place between these two strong-willed and experienced people had nothing to do with cheap sentiment, or simple chapbook romance. He was glad that the Voevoda credited him, at least, with the wits to discover as much. And he knew why the girl Philippa never thought to speak of him except by his surname. He said to the artist, sitting beside him, ‘What is Mr Crawford’s Christian name?’
Adam Blacklock looked startled. He said, dropping his voice, ‘Francis. Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny. The Russians call him Frangike.… In St Mary’s we prefer to use surnames.’
It was a warning, but one quite unnecessary. Diccon Chancellor could not imagine himself or anyone else addressing the Voevoda as a fellow human being. He smiled. ‘You at least