The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [241]
‘But you are here,’ Philippa said. ‘Can Muscovy spare you?’
Lymond’s blue eyes dwelled on her with chilly amusement. ‘In the nature of things, there are a number of gentlemen filling the void, I imagine, with some assiduity. Have you ever heard of Baida?’
No one had.
‘An extremely mettlesome leader of Cossacks, who has become a legend already in the Ukraine. There are many songs his men sing about him. You were asking about music. This is an example of it.’
‘Play,’ Lady Mary said. ‘There are virginals. Play and sing it to us. Or the harpsichord.’
He rose with ease and perched at the harpsichord, one hand on the keys. ‘It’s only a marching song. But this version is interesting.’ And he sang lightly, picking out the notes one-handed, an expurgated version of the song which had roared round the camp, on the night Prince Vishnevetsky had joined him.
In the market place of the Khanate,
Baida drinks his mead
And Baida drinks not a night or an hour
Not a day or two …
He did not make it too long, and they left the table and moved round him as he played, and made agreeable sounds as he finished. Philippa said, ‘Who did you say Baida was?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Lymond. ‘In fact, his name is Dmitri Vishnevetsky.’
He did not expect it, clearly, to convey anything. And, indeed, only on Philippa’s face did any enlightenment show. But Lymond saw it, and before she had drawn breath to speak, he forestalled her. ‘But anything Rob Best told you about that,’ he said agreeably, ‘I should advise you to keep to yourself. Have you heard this new piece of music from France? M. de Roubay’s musicians are playing it in Edinburgh.’ And he turned and played properly and then rose and gave up his seat, and would not be persuaded to play again, but became part of the audience while Lady Mary herself played an estampie, to be followed by one of her cousins.
Philippa, with loving care, favoured them last of all with a furious piece which fell short of the surprising technical skill of her husband, but far exceeded it in violent expression. He congratulated her winningly. ‘Music. The Medicine of the Soul.’
‘Aristotle,’ said Philippa impatiently. ‘But yours isn’t music. It’s numerology.’
‘Numerology,’ said Mary Sidney, ‘is the basis of all great music. Or so—don’t you?—Master Dee holds. But before we discover an argument, I suggest, Philippa, that you take the opposing army away and attack it in private. You did wish to see Mr Crawford, didn’t you?’
She did not. But, she remembered with exasperation, it was necessary. Lymond was looking at her with raised brows and the rest of them, damn them, were smiling. ‘Yes, of course,’ Philippa said. ‘If you will excuse us?’
‘Go to Sir Henry’s room,’ Lady Mary called after her. ‘And if you use weapons, be sure to call witnesses.’
The laughter followed them both along the dark passage.
*
Lymond shut the door and said, ‘Be a good girl and keep it short.’ Against the dark panelling the clear, colourless skin and fair hair looked deceptively delicate, like a tutor she had once had who turned out to be a practising gelder.
The room, littered with cases and boxes, had obviously never been used since Sir Henry had left the previous summer to become Vice Treasurer and General Governor of all the King’s and Queen’s Revenues in Ireland. There were two white Irish rugs on the floor and a little slope field bed which still filled the room, with a cloth counterpoint lined with fustian and a leather lute case lying on it. Philippa squeezed her way irritably between a flat Flanders chest and a magnificent joined chair, with its seat lozenged in cream silk wrought with gold porcupines, and perched herself at last, with infinite if Turkish grace, on the windowsill.
A large curtained object decorating the wall on her left provoked her to investigate with one finger: the painting beneath was of St Jerome, notable