The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [199]
Chancellor said, obstinately, ‘It is Dee you must meet.’ After a moment, he added, ‘It was you who told me Sir Henry had gone to Ireland?’
In the shadows, he could see Lymond’s eyes studying his. Then Lymond said, ‘People write to me.’
Chancellor said slowly, ‘As they do to Dee. He is ambitious for England. Letters come to him … from Antwerp and Worms, Rome and Paris and Amsterdam, Vienna, Seville and Genoa. And he is young; younger than I am. He is only twenty-nine.’
Lymond did not speak. Chancellor said, ‘How old are you?’
‘The same,’ Lymond said. ‘I imagine … no. I have had a birthday, I suppose, in the last day or two.’ He rose, and crossing to the candle, brought it back and planted it straight on the table, so that on either side of it, Chancellor’s face and his own were clearly and strictly illumined. Lymond said, ‘I have misled you. I have never met Dee, but I have been corresponding with him.’
‘Not about navigation,’ Chancellor said.
‘No.’
Chancellor said, ‘You have burned the letters.’
‘I have burned them, yes. I have told him I shall take no part in the thing he wishes me to meddle with. But we exchange news.’
Chancellor said, ‘You should take him your dreams.’
He meant it literally. He saw realization dawning on Lymond’s face; in his eyes deep-scoured like his own, he knew, in the candlelight, with a blurring of indigo underneath, on the thin eggshell rim of the bone. Lymond said, ‘Have I been talking?’
‘We all have, in nightmares. But yours have not been about the sea.’
‘You think Dr Dee cures opium eaters?’ Lymond said. And then, as Chancellor’s face changed, he smiled and said, ‘It was three years ago. But the effects are tiresome. I sleep alone when I can.’ He paused, and then said gently, ‘Your son will be John Dee’s next pupil. You cannot face marriage again?’
Richard Chancellor drew in a short breath, and let it carefully out, without stirring the candle. He said, ‘I have only met one girl to match Eleanor. And you are married to her.’
Lymond slid his hands off the table. On his shadowless face rested, openly, an astonishment so unexpected, so vivid that Chancellor himself was taken aback and said quickly, almost in anger, ‘I’m sorry. But she is a remarkable girl.’
‘She is a remarkable girl,’ Lymond repeated. He looked startled still. ‘She must be Christopher’s age.’
‘She must be about Christopher’s age,’ Chancellor agreed flatly; and Lymond suddenly shook his head, and pressing one hand, like a masseur, over the bones of his face, took it away, smiling.
‘No. I am sorry. You have the wrong impression entirely. If you are serious, there are no two people I can imagine who would suit each other better. I think of her as a child because I knew her as a child. But she is old for her age.’
Chancellor said, ‘She is concerned for your future.’
‘She is concerned for her dog and her cat,’ Lymond said. ‘It is a Somerville failing. Tell her your dreams. She would help you realize them. Burroughs won’t get to the Ob; not on a pinnace. But the charts he’ll bring back will set you on your course. When you have corrected the compass bearing.… Does Dr Dee object to corrections?’
He did not expect a serious answer, and Chancellor did not give him one. Lymond answered his smile with another. ‘No. What is his motto? Nothing is useful unless it is honest.’
‘Some of these tables are yours,’ Chancellor said. ‘He is going to want to see you about them. And the cross-staff Plummer made, and the drawings.… Something has to come out of this voyage.’
‘Something comes out of every voyage,’ said the other man sharply. ‘Out of every bloody fruitless endeavour. All the striving after the unknowable. The unattainable, the search for Athor, the creative force, rolled into a circle.