The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [185]
Alec Guthrie did not trouble to reply. Instead, ‘You may well find,’ he said, ‘that Hislop stays with you and comes back to Russia. He’s the best we’ve had since Jerott Blyth.’
‘In other words, humour him,’ Lymond said. ‘How dangerous it is when the shepherd cannot find the pastures, the leader of the expedition cannot tell the road, and the vicar knows not the will of God. How you are going to enjoy presiding over St Mary’s, Guthrie, while I am away.… I have told them to pass all the dispatches from Europe into your hands, to keep for me. The last one from Lychpole had an enclosure missing: see if it can be traced. There should be no more after September: I have asked Brussels and Applegarth and Hercules Tait in Venice to write direct to me in the care of Lychpole in London. It may be that the success of the Muscovy mission depends rather more than they know on what is happening in Europe.’
‘I am told,’ Alec Guthrie said carefully, ‘that the English have expressed some interest in your movements as well.’
‘A heart-to-heart talk with Master Chancellor?’ Lymond said. ‘The Lennoxes want me back, I imagine, to demonstrate their power to the Catholic faction and the monarch, using the Somervilles as a lever. Which will fail. I imagine the talkative Diccon has already mentioned my much-disputed divorce. The Lennoxes claim that without my presence, I cannot be disjoined from my child bride. I have enlisted the help of the Grand Prior of France and the Grand Master of the Order in Malta to prove them wrong. By the time I land at London, I should be free of Philippa Somerville and she of me, as the romantic phrase no doubt will incline. God knows who could conceive it had ever been otherwise.’
‘Except on paper,’ Guthrie said dryly.
‘Except on paper. A stratagem,’ Lymond said, ‘I hope I am not going to have cause to regret.’
That night was his last with Güzel, and he gave it to her, minute by minute as his parting present, with all the sureness, the elegance, the strange and delicate reticences she had come to know and respect. And her gift to him was no less.
Next morning, dressed, he took leave of her in her chamber, where she stood clothed as if for a wedding in her robe of white Persian silk damask with bands of small winged creatures and animals, and the sleeves and hem inscribed in gold Kufic lettering: In the name of God, the Merciful, the Gracious. There is no God but God. Her hair, reeled with pearls, stranded her ears and hung at her white nape like ash buds. The glossy lids were open and clear; the scented lips smiling. She said, ‘You gave me Russia. And now Russia is taking you away.’
‘For a winter,’ Lymond said. ‘You said that nothing could hinder us.’
As a spring, brimming, swirling and waning, her smile ebbed and flowed with her thought. ‘They say we deserve one another. I have no exhortations to give you. I understand what is happening. Perhaps I understand better than you do. You are not going to Scotland, so no vows will be broken.’
‘And if I were?’ Lymond said. ‘You say I have given you Russia, but your gifts to me have been of a different order. The prize of your body. The companionship of your mind. The fruits of your experience. You have taught me hardihood and it is for me now to exercise it. Indeed, Güzel.…’
She looked up at him, with the familiar, fathomless eyes. ‘I wonder,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘if it is not for this that I have been taught.’
She stirred. ‘I have given you nothing. I have shown you what was there in you already, and you have been man enough to destroy what is weak and to foster what is strong until it is unassailable. There is only one country in the world now fit for your sovereignty, and that country is here.’
‘I know it,’ he said. He took her hand and bending his head, kissed and held it. ‘Kiaya Khátún, your power is great.’
She smiled, a flashing spasm wide and queer as the Dancers on snow which began