The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [131]
‘It’s war!’ shouted George Killingworth, and dented the committee table with his fist. ‘They treat trading like warfare, and think every stratagem justified. If a lie will be swallowed, they’ll use it. From the biggest to the smallest, they disbelieve what I say, and what they say themselves you would trust like the tongue of Beelzebub. What dishonesty will they not practise? Fraud and misrepresentation! They cheat me over the quality; they falsify the origin; they juggle with weight. What I buy is not what they deliver … look at that flax! They delay sales, and raise prices and argue. The more they swear and protest honesty, the greater the knavery.’
‘It works the other way,’ Harry Lane said ill-advisedly. ‘Don’t trust them if they agree too promptly, either.’
George Killingworth, who had just bought five hundredweight of flax yarn at eightpence farthing a pound, and who had since learned from the indefatigable Mr Hudson that hemp at Novgorod, had he waited, would cost him one and a half roubles the bercovite compared with two and a half anywhere else, lifted his beard above the table edge and turned a snow-bloodied eye on Mr Lane. ‘What’s a pood?’
‘Thirty-six pounds,’ said Mr Lane, obediently.
‘An areshine?’
‘A Flanders ell.’
‘A bercovite?’
Mr Lane was tactfully forgetful.
‘You see?’ said George Killingworth, and slammed shut the minute book. ‘If you don’t know your facts, you can’t blame the Russians for taking advantage of you.’
There was silence, as they all digested this remarkable volte face. ‘Anyway,’ said Harry Lane, ‘we’re selling them cloth for three times what it’s worth.’
George Killingworth looked at him coldly down the magnificent beard.
‘That’s different,’ he stated. ‘They need it.’
Chancellor conducted his battling merchants to Novgorod. He had been there before, but not as fast as this, travelling non-stop with their fleet of sledges, and changing horses in droves at the yams on the way. The first night they by-passed Klin and St Elias and drove ninety miles straight through to Tver, where they got food and fresh horses, and raced on their way, past Volochek and the deep-frozen Msta, to complete the six-hundred-verst journey in three remarkable days.
Two of Lymond’s men were with them: Chancellor was not sure why, except that Lymond had ordered it. He had seen the Voevoda only once since receiving their charter: he was much out of Moscow, and only occasionally Christopher reported seeing the powerful sledge, with its team of six horses, flying up to the gates of the Kremlin, or out across the river ice and into the flat, snow-filled country, to guide his commanders and visit his strongholds and garrisons. In their one brief meeting, in the big merchants’ hall near the Kremlin, Lymond had asked his plans, shaking the snow from his cloak, and on hearing them said, ‘I see. A town of price, like Paradise.’
‘Novgorod?’ had asked Chancellor, faintly surprised.
‘No. Ipswich, in fact. Who are you taking?’
George was going, and Rob Best. He thought he would take Christopher.
Lymond listened. ‘You’ve been there before. The merchants carry much more weight than they do in the east. You’ll find a good many Swedes and Livonians and Germans. The Germans are rarely sober in the daytime, but the Flemings may give you trouble. They have no privileges since they incurred the displeasure of the Tsar, and you’re going to be milking off at Vologda all the Russian goods they used to be offered at Novgorod. By the same token, the Dutch have just paid thirty thousand roubles to have their Customs indemnity restored: and you’re going to be odious to them as a toad.… I think you might find Fergie Hoddim useful. And Plummer. No, he would bore you to death. Danny Hislop, and he can tell you all the gossip.’
There was a note of private amusement in the pleasant, assured voice which Chancellor did not quite follow, but the unforthcoming demeanour of Mistress Philippa’s husband had undergone no change since that surprising evening at Vorobiovo,