The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [163]
Slata Baba had left her own finger-prints. Lymond said, ‘Who paid you to do this?’
Gripped by his bare arms, the captain spat on the floor. ‘Son of a whore,’ he said. ‘Why should I tell you?’
Taking his time, Lymond studied him. ‘Self-interest,’ he said eventually. ‘The question is not whether you die, but how you die. Tell me who paid you.’
Aleksandre smiled.
Konstantin struck him on the face. ‘Speak!’
And Aleksandre laughed through bleeding lips. ‘You teach well. You teach me how to withstand torture,’ he said. ‘I am not afraid. And meanwhile, you will wonder: who is it? Is it Prince Kurbsky who wishes ill to the Voevoda, that he may be the Tsar’s undisputed Commander? Is it Dmitri Vishnevetsky who has decided to leave Lithuania and throw in his lot with the Tsar, given a suitable office? Is it the priest Sylvester who hates you because you flayed your officer for attacking his frescoes, or Chief Secretary Ivan Mikhailovich Viscovatu, who fears you are too close to the ear of the Tsar? After I am gone, you will live for a short while I think, wondering. And then one of them will pay someone else to kill you, and they will do it.’
Chancellor saw, raw with shock, the eyes of the soldiers and Konstantin meet. Lymond studied Aleksandre. At length, ‘It sounds well,’ he said. ‘I cowered, almost, to hear you. Save that rivers must break from their courses before a Russian dares lay hands on me. Or any man whose life depends on the favour of the Tsar. And if you doubt it, let me tell you this. If you do not tell me the name of the foreigner who thinks he can kill the Voevoda, I shall give you to the Tsar’s courts for judgement. Who was it?’
Chancellor’s mind’s eye was awake, and witnessing the subtle, boundless range of the Tsar Ivan’s judgements and its weapons: fire and ice, the knife, the axe and the stake; the cunning abuses by snow and by water; the execution by animal. He said, ‘Judge and sentence and execute him here. You surely have powers.’
‘He is tried,’ Lymond said. ‘And sentenced. And will be executed when he has told me what I want to know; but not before. Konstantin and any four men he chooses will be his persuaders. When he has spoken the name of the man who has paid him, Konstantin will report it to me, and I, if I am satisfied, will give the order which will award his body to death. Konstantin?’
‘I understand, my lord.’
‘Aleksandre?’
‘I understand, my great lord,’ said the captain, with hideous irony.
They were about to take him away when Lymond spoke to him unexpectedly. ‘If you had attempted this solely for money, you would have been thankful to shorten your punishment. What grudge do you have, that is worth suffering for?’
For a long time, Aleksandre stood looking at him. Then he said, ‘I am a Lithuanian. What I learned from you I would have used against you, in Lithuania.’
Lymond said, ‘I see. But I am attacking the Tartars, not the Lithuanians.’
‘I hear differently,’ Aleksandre said. ‘I hear the great Emperor Charles is dying, leaving one inadequate son tied to Mary of England. I think when the Emperor is dead, the Tsar will think it safe to make Lithuania and Livonia his own, and the Tartar war will be forgotten. And with the Voevoda Bolshoia dead, he will fail.’
The emotionless blue eyes stared and stared, mordant in their contempt, until at last, Aleksandre dropped his. ‘With me or without me,’ said Lymond; ‘with the Tsar or without him, the army I am making will not fail, in any thing it may set its hand to. Konstantin, you will have the truth from him by the morning. Take him away.’
Richard Grey moved and then stopped, as the small cortège marched out. Chancellor, hastily attended to by the two half-dressed servants, began to push himself off the mattress. From his makeshift seat, shoulders on the wall, Lymond surveyed him. ‘Ah. The lit de parade