The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [124]
Lymond said, ‘I might say, perhaps, that in Scotland hospitality is sacred. It is also a country which has never been subdued by the enemy over its frontier, as you have never been able to subdue the Tartars.’ There was a stand of tapers, ring upon ring on a wrought iron base just beside him. While still speaking he unhooked the snuffer and pressed out each light, one by one. Half the garden fell into darkness.
‘We have such laws in Lithuania too,’ said the Prince. ‘But they apply only between gentlemen. So, your country being too mean to please you, it seems you have found the way to pomp and power, garlic to a gamecock, through the twelve modes of Cyrène. But I do not think I choose to find my life’s work subject to a mercenary’s whim.’
Lymond’s eyes were wide and blue. ‘Should I call for help?’ he said.
Vishnevetsky put up an elegant hand and pressed a bough of white flowers out of his way. ‘To put me out?’ he said. ‘Then the Cherkassy Cossacks would be denied to the Tsar and his army for ever. To defend you against my attack? The Voevoda’s repution would never recover. Besides, am I attacking you? I have trifled with your mistress’s aviary, that is all. Surely the Tsar’s supreme commander would not set the idle life of a bird against the favour of one who might be a powerful ally?’
‘Subject to your whim?’ Lymond said.
Vishnevetsky smiled. ‘You take my point,’ he said.
Lymond had stopped moving backwards. ‘I wonder,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘what makes you think I can be influenced by personal violence?’
Prince Vishnevetsky had not stopped. ‘I have no doubt of it,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I miscall you and your nation, and you stand behind bushes, a pretty mouset, and talk about shouting for help.’
Lymond stayed where he was. ‘It seems reasonable,’ he said. ‘You have a knife and I haven’t.’
‘But you have another,’ said the Prince. He had moved round the pool: a pillar, twined with some flowering shrub, was all that stood between him and the quarry Lymond had offered.
‘No,’ Lymond said. ‘But keep your knife. I cannot throw an unarmed guest into my pool. It would offend my fine instincts.…’ And as he finished speaking, Vishnevetsky laughed and sprang.
The second candelabra was at Lymond’s elbow. He lifted it like a tilting-pole and drove it, with all the power of his shoulders, at the Lithuanian’s body.
The force struck the candles streaming asunder. Some fell. Some sprang like the spines of a hedgehog. But the edge of the ring, in a hissing, glutinous mass, struck the stuff of Vishnevetsky’s bright quilted sleeve and set it alight as he ducked and hurled himself sideways, half overset by the weight of the blow.
The candelabra fell to the ground, in a crash of smashed tiles and rent foliage, and like napkins in a gale the remaining birds rose calling into the twilight. The last candles went out, and darkness fell on the garden.
Fragile terror filled the black air, with the buffeting of wings and the confused music of flutes. The air held all the life of the garden: the scent of blood and of jasmine, the stench of candlegrease and of singed and burned taffeta. From the ground below there was no sound after Vishnevetsky, thrusting his shoulder among the green leaves, had stifled the flames, and taking fresh grip on his knife stood waiting, somewhere, as his eyes widened in the dark. A siskin, crying, touched Lymond’s cheek and beat wildly off, its heart pulsing. Lymond spoke.
Seven Peters seven times
Send Mary by her Son
Send Bridget by her mantle
Send God by his strength
Between us and the faery host
Between us and the demons of the air …
The voice wandered, tangled with flute music. ‘… Your birds are taking revenge.’
It was true, damn him. His ears clouded by bird-sounds, Vishnevetsky had to strain all his acute senses to hear and follow the other man, his arm smarting under the fragments of quilting. A fool not to foresee that. And a fool to underestimate a man at the pitch of his training. It had been necessary to teach humility to this ambitious