The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [13]
Alec Guthrie’s eyes remained bent on the paper. ‘And her name?’
‘Her name is Güzel,’ Lymond said. ‘But you will refer to her, if you please—you will enjoy referring to her, I am sure—as the Mistress.’
He was smiling, Guthrie found, although he did not greatly care for the smile. He said, ‘As you say, it is none of my business.’ And then, because of what had once been between them, Alec Guthrie said, ‘She’s Dragut’s woman, and she’s a kingmaker. You know what Graham Malett became. You know why he wanted St Mary’s.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Lymond, ‘it escaped your notice, but we have already covered the subject. You are a mercenary. I am a mercenary. If you object to my money, my rule or my ethics, you have a remedy. You simply open that door and walk out of it.’
‘No,’ said Alec Guthrie grimly. ‘I knew the risks when I came. I’ll stay with you. If they accept us.’
‘But you didn’t know about the woman, dear Alec,’ said Danny Hislop at supper that night, when Lymond had walked down to his horse and departed. ‘Nobody told us about the woman. Güzel. The Mistress. What if they have a tiff and she withdraws all her assets before the Tsar has decided to keep us? What,’ said Danny dreamily, ‘if she takes against our coarse ways when she meets us? Or decides she’d prefer one of us to sweet Francis?… Jesus?… Sir?’
‘Presumably,’ Plummer said languidly, ‘it will keep him at least off your neck, Danny Dare-all. My saints, it’s a dedicated hunt for experience. Remember Joleta?’
‘Joleta?’ said d’Harcourt.
‘Graham Malett’s sister Joleta. Lymond bedded her before he killed her and her brother; did you know that, I wonder, dear Ludo? And her baby went the same way in Turkey.’
‘My God,’ said Alan Vassey with reverence.
‘Now then,’ said Fergie Hoddim. ‘Ye want to be careful with that sort of pronouncement, or ye can find yourself in the middle of a fine juicy action. Lymond killed Graham Malett. He engineered the death of Joleta, but didna just hold the sword personally. And he had to choose between Joleta’s boy and his own. Or so Jerott Blyth says. So he saved his own, and that’s only human.’
‘So it is,’ Danny said.
Ludovic d’Harcourt, looking somewhat dazed, said, ‘Do I gather there were two children at risk?’
‘That’s right,’ said Fergie Hoddim approvingly. ‘The mutes were going to kill one or the other, so he chose to keep his own boy. God, it’s a terrible system. Consuetudo, consuetudo, consuetudo, and no’ a good statute law on the ledger. The Court of Session would never be happy in Turkey.’
‘And then by all accounts,’ said Plummer sweetly, ‘he married.’
Six heads shot up. Adam Blacklock said, ‘Married!’ and Guthrie, who had been minding, at some cost, his own business, put down his spoon and said, ‘Yes, married. What does it matter? It’s nothing to do with our prospects here.’
‘A bath girl?’ said Danny. His eyes were shut, his expression deeply seraphic. ‘A duchess? A very rich Mother Superior? How do you know?’
Guthrie said, ‘It was in Hercules Tait’s latest letter. Crawford spent a night with the girl in Stamboul. She was caring for one of the children you talked of. Her people will have it dissolved.’
Joleta Malett had been—what? Sixteen? Adam, his appetite gone, said, ‘Who was it?’
And Plummer said, ‘Philippa Somerville. Do you remember, Adam, in England? The girl from that big steading near Hexham. She followed him, poor dear, out to Turkey.’
Adam got up from the table. He said, ‘She’s too young to bed with.’
‘Not quite,’ said Guthrie dryly.
*
Later, lying on his extremely hard bed, Danny Hislop thought it all over and produced, for his own satisfaction, a verdict.
‘Gorgeous I called him and that he is, Maeve: you’d be surprised. And nasty I called him, and that, Maeve, was a shrewd piece of insight, for nasty he certainly is. And a clever bastard, I called him.… Not to his face, dear. We’re not all born to be heroes. But what he may not know, Maeve, is that I’m a clever bastard as well.’
Chapter 3
The summons from the Sovereign Grand Prince Ivan Vasilievich, Duke of Muscovy and