The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [242]
‘And sing? Prick-song?’ Lymond suggested.
Philippa was silent. Then she said, ‘I don’t suppose either of us has had a particularly rollicking morning. I was stupid, and everyone else seems to have suffered for it. When did you get the letter?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lymond said. ‘The damage is done, and at least we are less ignorant, if not noticeably wiser than before. Now you have involved the rest of us, I suggest you step back and let us struggle on in our own puerile way. That apart, where do we stand? I assume Tristram Trusty has passed on my talk with your mother?’
‘And your memorable talk with himself,’ Philippa said. ‘I can quite imagine what you would have done in his place.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Lymond dryly. ‘But I shall speed the divorce all I can. What else?’
‘This,’ said Philippa, hauling papers out of the serviceable bag at her girdle. ‘They’re yours.’ And she held them out.
Slack-lidded, Lymond did not at once move. ‘Today, you are full of surprises. What are they?’
‘Reports,’ Philippa said. ‘From de Seurre and Nicholas Applegarth and Hercules Tait. Didn’t you wonder why Bartholomew Lychpole had no letters waiting to pass on to you? He didn’t have them because I intercepted them. Here they are.’
‘Now,’ said Lymond slowly, ‘you have astonished me.’ He moved forward thoughtfully and taking the papers she offered him, stood turning them over. ‘These have been opened.’
‘I opened them,’ Philippa said. ‘Didn’t you wonder either how my letters reached you? Lychpole came and told me he was in correspondence with you. He’s not very discreet. Or very clever.’
She had his full attention now. He was watching her face, the blue eyes dainty as metal embroidery. He said, ‘Do I have it clear? Bartholomew Lychpole informed you unasked that if you wished to write to me, you could do so through him. He also informed you that I was leaving Russia and that all the dispatches from Europe would therefore be coming to him. And because you thought him untrustworthy, you decided to intercept them? How could you do that?’
‘I am studying with Ascham,’ Philippa said. ‘The Queen’s Latin secretary.’
‘I noticed you capped all my best quotations,’ said Lymond absently. He turned, and, finding the porcupine chair in his way, laid the dogeared packet for the moment on the seat, and sat himself on the arm of it. ‘And on the strength of Lychpole’s tender concern for your marriage vows, you decided to stop all the traffic between us?’
‘I’ve read all your books as well,’ said Philippa, getting the confession over quickly while he was unlikely to dwell on it. ‘It sounds feeble, doesn’t it? But there was more to it than that. Lady Lennox also knew that you were in Russia. And I didn’t tell her.’
‘So?’ Lymond said.
‘So I feel,’ Philippa said, ‘that Bartholomew Lychpole may be a little more than just careless.’
‘In which case,’ Lymond said, ‘Lady Lennox has seen all the letters Lychpole has sent me already, including the two written by you. Why did you open these?’
Philippa, who had gone red, said flatly, ‘They might have been important. You were a long time on the voyage.’
‘So you knew I was coming,’ Lymond said. ‘And Chancellor. What a tense winter you’ve had. All the same, it’s a pity you opened them. Now we shall never know whether the Lennoxes reached them before you did. Were they important?’ And picking them up, he began to leaf lightly through them. ‘Christ, what a gossip.’
‘Espionage is gossip,’ Philippa said. ‘Is that the series about our octogenarian Pope’s wars against the Imperialists?’
‘He fights Charles because he is an octogenarian,’ Lymond said. ‘He was born when Italy was free: a welltuned instrument of four strings, Naples, Milan, Venice and the States of the Church. He has waited for this all his life, a