The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [174]
‘Greco-Italian,’ Lymond said. ‘But you have found some wenches worth keeping?’
‘Oh Sultan! Your religion is cursed
And your daughter is a wretch.’
The Sultan summons his guards.
‘Take Baida, and tie him securely,
And hang him on a hook by his ribs.’
Baida hangs not one night nor an hour
Nor a day or two.
The Lithuanian shrugged. ‘My men are content. Like the butcher’s hounds, they will eat anything.’ He emptied the silver beaker and leaned back, a long limbed, vivid, malicious young man with a cleft chin and soft, chestnut moustache. ‘Do you hear them throwing taunts at one another, your army and mine? How long since your men had a woman?’
Baida hangs and reflects,
Thinking of his young valet
And his jet-black horse.
Target of the dancing black eyes, neither of Lymond’s men offered anything. From his life in Turkey perhaps the Voevoda seemed more at ease than any save Vishnevetsky on the low, cushioned seat. Holding his cup on one knee, he studied it and not the Lithuanian, although his unsoftened face held somewhere the faint deepened grooves of amusement. His expedition to the north had brought about no change Best could see in the Tsar Ivan’s favourite. He remained spare and sharp and deadly as the claws of his eagle. And as he did not at once reply, Dmitri Vishnevetsky added something, in a soft voice, to his question. ‘And how long has the Voevoda remained uncomforted?’
Lymond smiled. He looked up, catching the eye of his servant, and then as the vodka was poured, turned the chilly blue eyes on Baida. ‘I gather that I am about to be signally favoured. I take it the other problem has already been solved.’
Vishnevetsky gave a brief shout of laughter. ‘You are right. There are fifty women between my five thousand: some will go hungry, and by God, we have none for your rutting pigs. My men have fought an action today. They need twelve hours’ indulgence. Take your troops down the Dnieper, and we will catch you up before you are free of the ice floes.’
‘And the women?’ said Lymond.
‘Oh young and faithful valet!
Lend me a supple bow
And a quiver of arrows,
For I see three pigeons,
I’ll kill them for the Sultan’s daughter.’
When he fired—he shot the Sultan,
And the queen in the nape of the neck
And the princess in the head.
‘They will be no problem,’ Baida said.
Then the talk turned to Ochakov and how to so singe Devlet Girey and his horde that Moscow and Lithuania both might be spared his attacks in the summer.
They talked a long time, and ate, and Guthrie and Hoddim, when permitted, gave their cogent and less than subservient opinions, and Robert Best listened. And when the plan of campaign was completed, Lymond had the final word. ‘We avoid the Turks, and we take no Turkish prisoners.’
‘What?’ Dmitri Vishnevetsky, as the song ran, had drunk deeply of liquor, but he was not so far confused as to let this stricture pass. ‘Are you crazy? A kidnapped Pasha will fetch thirty thousand pieces of gold in ransom.’
Lymond said coolly, ‘A kidnapped Pasha will be returned by the Tsar to the Sultan. I regret it as you do. But I gave this undertaking before I left Moscow.’
Vishnevetsky stood up, swaying slightly and smiling. ‘As the Tsar’s Tsaritsa, you give undertakings. The Tsar is not my master.’
The jibe made no impression. ‘He pays me and my Cossacks,’ Lymond said. He had not risen, nor were the small graven rings of his armour, each with its legend of faith, in the slightest disturbed. ‘Who pays yours?’
The Lithuanian stood without moving. Then throwing back his smooth chin, he gave a great bellow. ‘Why, my sickly Sigismund surely. My great king and his courtiers, who spend their time in dancing and masks, and not in war with the Tartars. Who … what does Kurbsky say? Who stuff their gullets and bellies with costly buns and marzipans, pouring down wines as