The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [149]
‘Beginning with security?’ Chancellor said.
‘Because it is needed most, yes. Because it will impress the Tsar most, yes. Because it will create the climate in which other reforms may be contemplated, yes.’
‘And because the Voevoda Bolshoia, as a result, will be the most wealthy and powerful man in Russia?’ Chancellor said. He had not intended to descend to personalities, and was not sure why he did so, except perhaps to keep an articulate and beguiling tongue at a defensible distance.
There was a moment’s flash of total anger, abruptly destroyed. Lymond said, ‘My dear Master Chancellor. You appear to have closed the conversation, don’t you?’
Chancellor stared at him, his wits shocked awake. He said, ‘How can you complain? It is the impression you give without stint.’
It looked as if he would receive no reply. Lymond put down his tankard and, stretching his legs, tilted back his bare head so that the light rested on his face and the length of his throat. His eyes were closed. ‘I don’t complain,’ he said. ‘I merely try to fill time with an exchange of views on a subject I supposed common to us both. You receive the impression that I am personally ambitious. I receive the impression that you are a draper. We may both be right. I had not expected to quarrel about it this evening.’
Chancellor said, without removing his eyes, ‘I am paid by the Muscovy Company. And you are paid by the Tsar.’
Lymond looked at him. Astonishingly, the brittle, high-tempered face had altered again. ‘And what do you see when you stand at the wheel,’ he said, ‘and face all the liberality of the ocean? A bolt of fine violet at eighteen pounds six shillings and sixpence the piece?’
In his turn, Chancellor was looking into his tankard. ‘Cloth builds the vessel,’ he said. ‘And launches her; and pays for her crew.’
‘But you do not travel by cloth,’ Lymond said. ‘But by sea card and compass and star. I say again. That is why you are here, on your way to Lampozhnya. That is why you have exhausted every merchant in Muscovy with your questions: about Sarai and Urgendj; about Bokhara, Samarkand and Otran. You will travel with trinket and parchment, but you will have no patience for huckstering. Your eyes are on the Ob and the Euxinian Sea: your heart, Master Chancellor, is in Cambalu.’
‘You are pleased to be caustic,’ Chancellor said. ‘I am not a Mandeville. I am the servant of Sir Henry Sidney and Master Cabot. I have some aptitude for navigation and I have been trained for it, most rigorously. I am told where to go by the Company and I am taught how to go by John Dee and Dr Records and Digges. That is all.’
‘Herbestein came here as an ambassador,’ Lymond said. ‘And left his writings, as Ibn-Fodhlan did six hundred years ago. Priests travel, dispatched by the Pope to make their conversions. Marco Polo became a trader of such wealth he was known as Il Milione. Pilgrims travel, and colonists, to escape persecution, and men sent by their monarchs to collect rarities: manuscripts or animals or evidence of natural phenomena. There is always a reason, a primary reason to start with. But a man who faces such dangers as the unknown world still offers must have, within himself, another compulsion. An agitation, as Nicolas de Nicolay would put it. Why should it not be spoken of?’
‘To fill an idle moment?’ Chancellor said. He refused the lead.
‘To learn,’ Lymond said. ‘We have cross-staffs and astrolabes at Vorobiovo. War means cannon, and cannon means a system of range-finding. Measurement is a basic science which we need for our forts and our buildings; map making is another, for our campaigns. Plummer and Blacklock are our experts: you know that; they have picked your brains often enough.’
‘And you would pick my brains also?’ Chancellor said. ‘Or do you have something to offer me?’ And again, before he could stop himself: ‘An appointment if Adam Blacklock should die?’
But this time there was no answering anger. His arms folded, Lymond waited