The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [17]
But it was the man within the harness at whom they all looked. A man tall, wide-shouldered and young, with blue eyes and a long, flattened nose and a moustache and beard of fine, thick auburn hair, who spoke Russian in a bass voice, and waited while Viscovatu translated, and Lymond, baring his head, answered in neat, balanced Latin.
Ivan was young. This Adam had not known. Young as himself; younger than Fergie; younger by far than Alec Guthrie. The man who had planned the conquest of Kazan and had outfaced the boyars, who was bending his mind to the new laws, the new schools, the new tutors and the new printing which must drag Russia from its barbaric enslaved history could be in age very little more, or little less than the other man standing before him. In years, in ability and, it seemed likely, in pure intellectual arrogance, there was not all that much to choose between Francis Crawford and the Sovereign Grand Prince Ivan Vasilievich.
A shiver of foreboding travelled up Adam’s spine. There was more talking. He saw Lymond turn towards him, and bracing himself, he moved forward in his turn and paid his respects, in European court fashion, to the Tsar. Then the Chief Usher moved forward and he saw that the chest containing Kiaya Khátún’s present, of which he had heard, was being passed from him to Viscovatu and thence, on one knee, to the Emperor. There was a waft of spices, and Ivan lifted the narrow lid.
Inside were a number of long objects wrapped in soft linen. Adam, standing close to him, smelt the frankincense in their folds and knew, with sudden finality, that the aroma was all of spice that the fine chest contained. Instead, lifted out one by one by the secretary and examined one by one by the Tsar, were the objects which the woman Kiaya Khátún/Güzel/the Mistress had brought with her from Stamboul in that coffin painted with lotus flowers and the names of Magna, Horus and Harpoctates: the prototypes, in perfect small, of six of the newest field-pieces and handguns from the West.
He felt himself go red, and saw Guthrie had flushed also. Given the smiths and the metal, these guns in their proper size could be dealing death on the field in six months. Death, perhaps, to the Tartar and Turk. But death later to whom?
And then he thought, ‘But in himself and us, Lymond has already placed a weapon a thousand times greater than these in the Sovereign Grand Prince’s hand.’
Ivan was speaking. Lymond replied, through the interpreter and Ivan uttered again. Neither man smiled: there was no change and no softening in that unexpected bass voice. Then the box was closed and taken away, and the Tsar lifted his heavy, chased sceptre again, holding it loosely in his well fleshed, metal-soiled fingers, and, echoed by his interpreter, began to voice a string of uninflected, flat questions.
Lymond answered. He went on answering while Adam, the blood alternately flooding and leaving his veins, tried to stand at ease, without swaying or stiffening, and with mounting anxiety, to follow the mood of the exchange. On the Tsar’s side, there was, if anything, an added brusqueness by now. The questions came without cease: he had, it was clear, a precise catalogue in his mind of what he wanted to know and only once did the man on his right—Adashev?—with the cloudy brown beard lean forward to murmur to him.
His next question was pointed. Lymond took a moment longer than he need have done to volunteer a reply. When he did speak, it was in Russian. He had been asked, Adam supposed, how he could hope to control thirty thousand assorted men through an interpreter, and with no humility had demonstrated his answer. It would also, he knew, be in excellent Russian. Given, single-minded, four months in which to learn a new language, he would back Lymond against any linguist on earth.
In any case, it had given him at this moment the ascendancy he needed to change briefly the lead of the interview.