The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [121]
‘And no profit either,’ said Vishnevetsky.
It was almost over. Before they left, Güzel led them to see Plummer’s masterpiece: the winter garden enclosed on the rooftop, and warmed with tall stoves in glazed tile. Here were rose trees in tubs, and plum and cherry trees and all kinds of flowers, and in the centre a pool with carp swimming, in dressed stone lined and bottomed in lead, and fed by a fountain with gargoyles.
Even this they hardly distinguished for the moment, because of the birds. These flew freely without cages among the flowering trees: doves and linnets, chaffinches and siskins, the rare white goldfinch, and vivid aliens Chancellor had heard nothing of. He saw peacocks.
Christopher was mute, but Best exclaimed aloud and so did Chancellor, turning to Plummer to praise it. Prince Vishnevetsky, by Güzel’s side, surveyed it in silence, and then spoke reflectively. ‘And does the Tsar sit content in the small white box of the Granovitaya Palace, his vainglorious Bologna; his second Ferrara? Or have you not shown him this?’
Plummer’s high-coloured, handsome face was smooth with food and wine and merited commendation. ‘If he wishes, I may build him a palace with ten times the opulence of this one. Twenty times. He has only to ask me.’
‘Remembering,’ said the Voevoda’s cool voice, ‘that the annual revenue of an architect is a round forty roubles in Russia. Building is your pleasure but soldiering, I would remind you and Blacklock, is your business and profit.’
Chancellor said, ‘You said the Tsaritsa had been here. Perhaps she will persuade the Tsar to house his court more stylishly. Or even to purchase some secular paintings.’
Güzel smiled. A dove, its wings drenched with the seaweed and roses of ambergris, flew to her shoulder, and he became aware that the thin, arching flutings he heard were not from some mysterious, unseen consort but from wings with silver flutes bound to their feathers. Güzel said, ‘The Tsaritsa Anastasia is beautiful, and has borne him a living son, after the deaths of three children. I have a copy below of the ikon they made for him: the Mernaya of St John Climacus, which they make to the size of the newly born baby. It is seventeen inches long.’ She paused smiling, and lifted the dove on her fingers, and threw it gently from her into the spray of the fountain: the sweet, wavering note of its music rose and vanished.
‘She was chosen from fifteen hundred, as the Orientals choose, and has been a good wife to him, as Oriental wives are. But she will persuade him of nothing.’
‘He despises women,’ said Prince Vishnevetsky. ‘Alas? There will be no Diane de Poitiers, no Mary, Regent of Flanders, no Medici Queen, no child Queen or Dowager Regent of Scotland, no Tudor Queen ruling in Russia? In a hive of Queens, Russia holds the last masculine cell. The Athos of the world’s monarchy. The Tsardom which does not admit the power of women.’ He lifted the orange-tipped fingers of Güzel’s small, perfect hand and looked at them. ‘And that is dangerous.’
The dark, painted eyes returning his smile were profoundly decorous. ‘A queen does not need to be crowned,’ said Güzel, ‘in order to rule.’
*
‘They’ve got forty siege guns and fifty small cannon,’ said Christopher, on their way down the stairs.
‘Oh?’ said his father.
‘They’ve got six thousand horse and foot under training. You should see the stables. They’ve got a tilt-yard. They run at the ring, and they have the quintain and squills and trick riding and hippas.
… They put me on a man’s shoulders and we ran at another man on a man’s shoulders and tried to knock the man off.’
‘And did you?’ said Diccon, when he had followed this.
‘No. They have a steam room and when they’re tired with exercise they lie there till they sweat, and then go and jump in the river.’
‘And did you?’ said Diccon.
‘Yes,’ said his son.
And looking at his bright eyes Diccon Chancellor apologized, silently, to the absent person of Ludovic d’Harcourt.
Chapter