The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [154]
Chancellor thought of something he had once read in one of Ned Lane’s scribbled notebooks. The princely ancient ornament of furs: they be for our climate wholesome and delicate: grave and comely; expressing dignity; comforting age. And of longer continuance and better with small cost to be preserved than these new silks, shags and rags, wherein a great part of the wealth of the land is hastily consumed.
He repeated it to Lymond, in the rough hut with its three rooms which they shared, he and Grey and the Voevoda, while Aleksandre and his men were quartered more rudely elsewhere. And thought it odd, before he spoke, that of all the company, here or at Vologda or Moscow, Lymond was the only man who would understand him.
Lymond said, ‘You dream of a world where man kills like the eagle, for self-defence or survival. Discomfort without hope of betterment is not a great springboard.’
Chancellor said abruptly, ‘Neither is luxury. It ends in the Gulf of Arzina.’
He had not meant to speak of Willoughby, and was thankful that Grey had left their evening meal early, and had gone out into the crowded, flickering darkness with his interpreter and an adequate bodyguard. Lymond, the soup bowl still in his hands, said, ‘Was life at Robertsbridge so meagre?’
They had not spoken together in this way since that night in the church outside Kholmogory. And even then, Lymond had not asked, and he had not talked, of his personal life.
Seated now like the other man, on the least luxurious of hide-covered crates, Chancellor looked across the stove at him and made a decision.
‘The point is that I was, and am, a pensioner. I was schooled and brought up in the household because I had a head for mathematics and a mind to be interested in more than the household accounts. When Cabot came back from Spain I had already been studying navigation. I’d read Pedro de Medina and examined all the maps Sir William could get. I went to Cabot for instruction. He was seventy-three and Grand Pilot of England and I was twenty-eight. Three years later I sailed with Bodenham in the Aucher for Chios and Candia. We fought the Turks, and we brought home a cargo of wines. I studied; I worked for the Sidneys. Sir William died. My wife had died when Nicholas was born. The boys were being brought up as I had been, as part of the household. The Panningridge farm brings in something; but even if I had wanted to, I could hardly deprive them of that. When Sir Henry moved to Penshurst, I went with him.’
‘And two years later, were proposed for the Muscovy voyage,’ Lymond said.
Chancellor looked at him. ‘I learned all there was to know about the route to this sea before Clinton had issued his orders to levy the seamen. I had every map; I had read every book; I had made every calculation. Othere the Norman came to the Frozen Sea, seven centuries ago, and Cabot had the notes Alfred King of England made on it. You know about Herberstein. We had some other German accounts, and a Piedmontese map and information from ships at Vardȯ. Your Scottish herald called David had left notes of his visits for Denmark to Russia. Cabot and I went over them all.’
Lymond said, ‘You were chosen then for the first voyage by Cabot?’
Chancellor said, ‘Willoughby was chosen by Cabot. And I to serve under him.’ It was not said pettishly: he was not a callow young man. But it was said.
Lymond said, ‘He owed Willoughby a favour, I would fancy.’
Of course, it was true. It was through a relation of Hugh Willoughby that Sebastian Cabot had been received at the start of his fortune into the court of Ferdinand, King of Aragon. But he, Chancellor, had had just enough pride, thank God, not to say so. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had my way to make in the world, and a faith to justify, and a debt to pay, so I strove to the uttermost limits to do my work, and I succeeded.’
Lymond