The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [143]
His body, stripped almost naked, showed a raw blueish white in the flambeaux, and the wound on his face was a black seam crossing its whiteness, from cheekbone to lip to chin, distorting its normal lean diffidence. The bright, hollow eyes were different, too, from the steady, observant gaze of the artist. They moved restlessly, following the movements of the torchbearers, of the servants and the boyars and courtiers as they passed and repassed in his view, wrapped in furs and enjoying the hazed after-warmth of the banquet. There was a great deal of talk, and some laughter.
He spoke only once, when he heard at last the step he was waiting for, and saw the flares close in and brighten, and the shadows of Lymond’s coatless body, various as the blades of a fan, spring wheeling on the lit snow. Then Adam said, ‘Once, when you had been flogged at the post by your own men, I helped to save you.’
He had been overheard. Someone uttered a swooping obscenity.
Unlike those of his audience, the Voevoda’s voice was not thickened with drink, but neither did it reveal any minor key of concern or of pity. ‘Once,’ he said, ‘you were Adam Blacklock. But I, sad to relate, was a different man.’
Chancellor watched the twenty-four strokes, which Christopher did not; and saw Lymond at the end toss the rod with its fine clotted wires to the officers waiting, and turn back to the Tsar, pulling down the plain, samite cuffs of his shirt. The drawn thread work, stitched and spooled down the edges was flecked black with haphazard blood. Then someone cut down the raw, senseless flesh on the scaffold, and lifted it, face down like a child, on to a sheet ready spread on the snow. The two men who carried it off were, Chancellor saw, Guthrie and Hislop.
The Tsar stood up. Bright-eyed in the firelight, he strode forward and gripped Lymond’s shoulders. ‘A strong arm! A strong arm for justice, and a strong arm to defend me from evil.’
He opened his hands, his face surprised. ‘You are cold? A coat for the Voevoda!’ And while it was brought, he said, ‘I have that in my chamber will warm you. Let us see whose king will fall on the chessboard tonight! ‘
Lymond said, ‘It is late, majesty.’ They had put his coat, with its wide expensive edgings of fox round his shoulders.
The Tsar’s voice was softly resonant in his chest. ‘Do you refuse me?’
‘My lord, you are the halter of the colt and the horse; the leash of the goshawk,’ said Lymond. ‘I am your servant. I refuse you nothing.’
That night, returned to his chambers, Chancellor called his servants to him and revoked every arrangement for his visit next day to Lampozhnya.
In Kitaigorod, the men of St Mary’s did not go to bed, but waited all night without speaking outside the quiet room where Adam Blacklock was lying, in Dr Grossmeyer’s pedestrian care.
In the Kremlin, Francis Crawford played chess; and lost.
Chapter 9
Before Chancellor was awake, Lymond walked into his chamber next morning, bringing with him a baleful humour, dry and chill as the weather outside.
‘Arise with mirth,’ he said. ‘And remember God. I have countermanded your orders. Springs of wine, milk and honey gush from the rocks, and love is born everywhere. Whether you wish it or not, you are travelling to Lampozhnya today.’
He was dressed for travel, in linen breeches and boots under a high-collared tunic, with a loose, widesleeved garment in wool gem-buttoned over it. Searching out the landscape of his face with the shrewd master mariner’s eye, Chancellor noted the faint, spoiling traces of a night untroubled by sleep. No one but a European, Chancellor thought, could carry with him such an air of insolent decadence. Poor Philippa Somerville. He said, ‘I ask myself how you knew I had cancelled my journey.’
Lymond said, ‘Then I hope you answer yourself accurately.