The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [190]
‘Perhaps that is what I should want,’ Chancellor said. ‘But I don’t. Any more than you do.’
He had been wrong to read understanding into the Voevoda’s face or his voice, or any of the softer emotions. ‘But you do not know me,’ Lymond said. ‘Whereas I know you exceedingly well. You should be glad. I may well find it tedious; but you should have an extremely interesting journey.’
The interesting journey began smoothly enough, with the traversing of the great Bay of St Nicholas from Foxnose, which the Russians called Cape Kerets, to Sosnovets Island, its crowded timber crosses already robbed by foreign seamen for fuel. From Point Krasni, known as Cape St Grace, to the River Ponoy it was calm, although becoming colder, so that Adam’s hands turned blue, holding the charcoal, and even below in the cabin he shared with Best and Hislop and d’Harcourt he had to huddle in his sheepskin to draw out his chart.
They were reasonably patient. But Hislop wanted to read, and Best and d’Harcourt played interminable games with worn cards. When he felt he had monopolized the lantern long enough, Adam found there was always daylight enough somewhere on deck: the strange grey light which persisted most of the night, as the sun dipped, sootily red, into the west and, red and lightless, rose again almost at once. Past the River Ponoy, on the Lappian coast, they ran into thick fog.
For part of that night they were hove to, and Buckland did not go to bed. Neither did Lymond. Danny Hislop, lying awake long after the others, heard his quick step on the stairs to his cabin well towards morning, after a brisk, subdued exchange with someone who sounded like Chancellor.
Since they set sail, Lymond had spent most of his time on the quarter-deck, or in Chancellor’s cabin, writing or talking. All the company with quarters in the stern castle had grown used to the murmur of voices, and the sight of Christopher Chancellor standing on deck alone, or walking by Buckland, or finding out Best or d’Harcourt, because he would not share his cabin with Lymond.
Danny Hislop had been there when the quartermaster, to keep his luff, had ordered the spritsail taken in and had seen Lymond calmly lay hands on the sheets to strike sail, and after, vault round to help pull on the mainsheet so that the helm could go down and the Edward come close to the wind. It was done with no fuss and an unthinking dexterity, so that Buckland turned and Chancellor said, ‘You have sailed.’
‘I have rowed,’ Lymond said. ‘It is not a fact of life with which I edify all my underlings. And three years ago I took a galley from Marseilles to Stamboul, for France. I have never handled a caravel. I know less, I imagine, than d’Harcourt does.’
‘Surely not,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt. ‘The Voevoda has been in Malta. I believe he has even fought for the Knights.’
‘Was that——?’ said Chancellor, and Lymond removed his eyes from d’Harcourt’s whimsical ones.
‘Where I met Nicolas de Nicolay? Yes it was; and also in Scotland. My stay on Malta was brief; and if you will follow d’Harcourt’s tone, instead of his words, you will gather that I did not fight for the Knights, or if I did, it was purely for my own ends.’
‘It has a likely ring about it,’ said Chancellor gravely. ‘And the exhibition just now?’
‘Because I could sail the Edward, I think. I can use compass and astrolabe; I know what Plummer knows about the practical side of surveying. But I do not know