The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [207]
Four days after the wreck, accordingly, Sybilla Lady Culter received word from her Queen that Francis Crawford her son was in Scotland and, for the first time in her long life, fainted before the courier’s eyes. And Kate Somerville, who was staying with her, swept up the royal dispatch and read it, sitting by the Dowager’s bed, long after the courier had gone and the excitement had died away, and then sat pale faced, with her sight quite detached from her brain until the exquisite little woman on the bed stirred and opened her eyes, and a moment later, summoned a smile. Then Philippa’s mother, abandoned equally by her unaccountable young, fell forward, eyes streaming, and hugged her.
The tidings reached London on the first of December, and were brought to Philippa forthwith by Jane Dormer, entering their own room and clasping her hands. ‘Mr Crawford is back.’
To Philippa, who had been reading Bartholomew Lychpole’s correspondence for weeks, this was not the news it might appear, but a franchise at last to display the satisfaction she felt at his coming. She said, ‘I must write to his mother. Where is he? St Anthony’s?’ And then, taking time to read Jane’s transparent face, she said baldly, ‘What?’
Because Philippa knew the men of the Muscovy Company, it was hard at first to conceive the scale of the disaster; the fact that every ship had been lost, and every life, save for a handful of men on a beach in the north-east of Scotland. And Diccon. And Christopher. She stood by the window while Jane told her and then said with flat efficiency, ‘Will you go to Penshurst, or shall I?’
Alone and sick on a diet of promises, with war rushing towards her, and her sister, sweetly recalcitrant, in the city, the Queen was in no mood to permit her women to leave her. It was Philippa therefore who fell ill with an unexplained fever and retiring from court, rode thirty miles through icy roads to tell Mary Sidney that her dear Diccon Chancellor was dead, and to break the news to his younger son Nicholas. She missed therefore the brief appearance in London of Robert Best and John Buckland, brutally altered, during which they attended meeting after meeting, answering the endless, harassed questions of the Muscovy merchants and set out north again in the second week of December in superior company, and armed with two documents. One, drawn up by the Muscovy Company, was a public instrument for registration in the books of the Lords of Council and Session in Edinburgh; the other (rycht excellent, rycht heich and mychtie princesse our dearest sister) was from the Queen of England to Marie de Guise, Dowager Queen and Regent of Scotland. Both referred to the merchant ship called Edward Bonaventure of one hundred and sixty tons’ burden, thrown shattered and broken by storm on the Scottish coast next to or near the shore called Buchan Ness while making for London, and which so perished and sank that part of its goods had been lost, floating in the sea, and part thrown into the hands of the inhabitants from the coast at Buchan Ness and other adjacent coastal places belonging to the Serene Queen of Scotland and by them unjustly seized and detained.
The Company, legal in Latin, begged by these present instruments of administration that Queen, Council and officials of Scotland would have these goods returned to their owners, and recommended the party of six, including Robert Best and John Buckland, through which their request was conveyed.
The Queen, requesting letters of safe conduct for the same little party in Scotland, dwelt longer upon matters proper to kingdoms, such as the person of good estimation sent from the Duke of Muscovy in embassy with certain gifts and jewels to be presented to us. These goods, jewels and letters she asked to have restored, along with those of his fellow survivors, reasonable reward being given to those who recovered them. Her dearest sister would also, she begged, succour the Ambassador during his stay in her country, and also