The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [251]
Danny recalled retailing that to the Voevoda, and the Voevoda listening with sympathy. In fact, Lymond had quoted him Elder:
O noble Prince, sole hope of Caesar’s side
By God appointed all the world to guide
But chiefly London doth her love vouchsafe
Rejoicing that her Philip is come safe.
He could do it with his face as bland as a bishop’s. He was perfectly serious now, standing behind Nepeja and his nine Russians in cloth of gold and red damask, listening to the start of the Oration. Nepeja’s voice began with a tremble, and then settled down to its normal vibrating sonority. The Tsar’s letter, somewhat marred with sea water, had already been delivered: The most high and mighty Ivan Vasilievich, Emperor of all Russia, sends from the port of St Nicholas in Russia his right honourable Ambassador surnamed Osep Nepeja, his high officer in the town and country of Vologda to King Philip and Queen Mary; with letters, presents and gifts as a manifest argument and token of mutual amity and friendship to be made and continued for the commodity and benefit of both the realms and people.
Rob Best, threadily, was translating to English, and someone Danny couldn’t see into Spanish. Perhaps the Count of Feria. The beloved, Ruy Gomez had gone to Spain, to fetch money and troops and supplies and without him, it was a wonder that the King went on breathing. But the other lords were all standing round him, and somewhere must be the Jesuit, thirty-seven years old, it was said, and suing for the hand of Jane Dormer. Moved by a quest for knowledge, Danny was scanning the languid cloaked forms when it came to him, as a fly to the nose of a salmon, that he had nearly missed something much more important. The Somerville girl must be there somewhere.
A tall, regal woman: the Countess of Lennox. A small one, Madame Clarenceux. A young one, with fair hair drawn sleekly back in a caul: Jane Dormer, he suspected. And another, perhaps a year younger, of no very great height, but straight-spined, with the fine, straying grace of one of the lesser carnivores. Her dress was modest; her unchildlike face shadowed by a winged cap of sheer stiffened white, with a gemmed tassel worth a small fortune laid quivering against one pure cheek. Danny Hislop said, ‘Christ!’ although under his breath, and saw Adam turn, and then follow the line of his gaze to Mistress Philippa Somerville, newly of Lymond and Sevigny.
She was looking at Lymond, gravely but with a question somewhere, it seemed, in the fine-drawn line of her brows. Hislop saw the Voevoda counter the stare with another one, perfectly soulless. Then as the girl continued to look at him, Lymond’s mouth relaxed for a moment, into something which was not more than resignation but showed some advance, at least, on its habitual arrogance. Under his breath: ‘Majnún and Leylí,’ said Danny Hislop to Adam.
Then the girl looked away, but not before someone else, he noted, had absorbed the small tableau. The Countess of Lennox, it seemed, was interested in Francis Crawford, and Francis Crawford’s wife Philippa. Indeed, her splendid eyes, scanning him, made Daniel Hislop mildly glad, for once, not to be the object of a woman’s attention. He was so intrigued that he barely heard the Oration end, and its two translations, and the Queen’s reply, and the handing over of the two timbers of sables: eighty fine skins of full growth with long, glossy black hair, spared with some pain from the Company’s Storehouse. For the six timbers of sables, the twenty entire sables, exceeding beautiful and the six great skins, worn only by the Emperor for worthiness had never reached London, but swam waterlogged through some deep northern waters, and made mysteries for the inquisitive seal. The Embassy advanced, one by one, to kiss the Sovereign’s hand and be greeted.
The procession reformed when it was over, and as processions do, took some time to retire from the chamber, and nobly escorted, traverse the Great Chamber and then the long gallery which led back to the Thames. In the gallery, Lady Lennox