The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [165]
When he finally stumbled into the outer room half-way through the next morning, Lymond was sitting fully dressed in clean clothes on his mattress with pen, ink and a litter of papers spread all around him. He looked, as Richard Grey looked, like cheese lightly set in the chissel. A linen pad showed discreetly above one rim of his high stiffened collar, and there was another dressing in the thick of his hair. Chancellor said, ‘We may find it difficult to explain the quality of the ale in Lampozhnya.’
The look he received was wide, pure and cool as the ice. ‘I am in no discomfort at all,’ Lymond said, ‘and so do not qualify, I fear, for the olive branch. Konstantin has just reported that the captain Aleksandre unfortunately failed to recover from questioning.’
Chancellor’s bearded cheek jumped as his teeth came together. He said, ‘So the next captain is Konstantin.’
‘It was the inherent danger in the arrangement,’ Lymond said with a trace of regret. ‘I come to thee, little water-mother, with head bowed and repentant. So such exquisite knowledge of the hellish squadrons of Lennox is denied us.’ He paused. ‘On another matter. You have heard of the Stroganovs?’
Richard Chancellor stared back at him and felt suddenly quite exhausted.
He had heard of the Stroganovs. On the journey north, the meeting between Lymond and Yakob Stroganov, whose father Onyka had established the forty-year-old saltworks at Solvychegodsk, had not escaped Chancellor. He knew, from hearsay, that the family traded with the Samoyèdes, far beyond the River Ob. He even knew that his brother, Gregory Anikiev Stroganov, had established some kind of trading-post on the River Kama in Permia, where dogs carried bales and drew sledges, and men ground roots for their bread, and the white rind of fir trees. He had not expected, in the short span of time now left him, to be able to meet them and question them.
Not until now, when he heard Lymond calmly arranging a meeting for their last day in Lampozhnya. And even then, he disbelieved it until next day he came in with Grey from their huckstering, and entering Lymond’s room, saw the burly, grey-haired man in fine furs sitting at ease there, and was introduced to Gregory Stroganov.
Afterwards, he wondered at his surprise, for the Tartar yurts of the Siberian princes were spread far and wide beyond the Pechora, and although many, like Ediger, owed the Tsar allegiance and tribute and many others, quarrelling among themselves, were glad to call the Tsar brother, there were still tribes like the heathen Votiaken who found it more tempting to raid rich Russian settlements than to share the problematical benefits of a ruler so far away.
Successful settlers brought Ivan rich dividends in furs and in salt. It was in his interest to protect his Siberian frontiers. And Lymond was his Voevoda Bolshoia.
So one could understand this meeting, which had brought Gregory Stroganov from his Permian home, and had already lasted, from the look of the empty tankards and strewn, crumpled papers, a good part of the day. Its purpose so far as the English were concerned was not immediately clear. Then Lymond, bringing more vodka and discoursing, in amiable fashion, on the distinguished nature of the navigator Chancellor’s public career and in his interest in the world’s unexplored quarters, led Stroganov to question Chancellor, politely, on his specific interests and allowed Chancellor, for thirty intense minutes, to ask all the questions whose answers he so burningly wanted to know. After that, by a means he witnessed with nothing but admiration, the talk turned insensibly to the discussion of iron.
Richard Grey, already intent, became avid. From Vologda to Moscow to Kholgomory had travelled the acrimonious letters, attempting to decide what course to follow about Russian iron. Their ore, smelted with charcoal, was less good than the Tula uklad, the Tartar steel they had found in small samples. None