The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [253]
There was the briefest of silences. Then Lymond, stretching out his gloved hands, raised her ringed one and brushed it with the lightest and most sardonic of kisses. ‘Margaret. I always misjudge you. Tudor and Douglas you will always be, but Lennox never. We are ignoring the fact that Scotland already has a Queen, betrothed to the Dauphin of France?’
‘We are remembering the fact that war changes many things,’ Margaret said. ‘The Scots are not eager to go to war for the sake of the French, however the Queen Regent may coax them. If they refuse, the French marriage may never take place. Then Mary, Queen of Scots, must needs seek a husband. And my son is eleven.’
‘While she is only fourteen. My felicitations,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘You will be the young Queen’s good-mother. I must encourage you to see Kate Somerville, if she isn’t beheaded, and exchange notes on the experience. I am sure you will succeed but it must, I am afraid, be without assistance from me. I am going back with Nepeja to Russia.’
‘And the Somervilles?’ said Margaret harshly.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did it not occur to you,’ he said, ‘that your convictions about my nature and my habits might now be a trifle outdated? I am not sixteen. I am the Voevoda Bolshoia of Russia, my dear Lady Lennox, and what you do with or to the Somervilles is a matter for your own conscience and undoubted ability, as the Race of Japhet is a matter for mine. And if you fail, send your Darnley to Russia. I might find a princess for him to marry. If she will take him.…’
‘Such as your woman; the woman who keeps you? What is she, this fine whore from Turkey?’ She had clasped her two hands hard together, unable to believe, as yet, that he had refused her.
Lymond smiled. ‘What she is not, despite all you have said, is frustrated. I am not on offer. I extend to you and Matthew my deepest regrets.’
He stretched his hands to the door, and she pulled her fingers apart. ‘You would send your wife and your wife’s mother to the headsman? I mean this. I mean this, Francis. If you sail back to Russia, you will arrive there to find your union dissolved by a higher authority than the Pope.’
He stared at her, and for the first time the wide blue eyes were faintly troubled. ‘Do you suppose that the fine whore from Turkey will expect me to marry her? You almost persuade me to stay here. In any case, why be so impetuous? Your inheritance of Angus may come to you all in the pride of its grease without any inducement but your obvious merits. There are six weeks to pass before the fleet sails. Let us enjoy them, each in our own petty way, and see what the Grand Joculator will bring us. You have forgotten to mention, by the way, what you proposed to do with my son.’
And that, in the end, was what dismayed her: that he could outguess and anticipate even the secret ways of her venom. She set her jaw and staring at him said, ‘I would take him into my kitchens.’
‘Yes. That was what Graham Malett said,’ Lymond remarked. ‘Except that he added something about his bed also. So then I shall admit you to a secret. I killed my son. The child at Flaw Valleys is the son of Graham Malett and his sister Joleta.’
*
He missed the barge going back to the Vintry and the Ambassador, expansive with satisfaction and relief, worried about it at intervals all the way back to Fenchurch Street and upbraided him the moment he arrived, which he did shortly afterwards. Lymond handled him a little like a blast bloomery with an order for toasting-forks, and Hislop and d’Harcourt had to retire hastily, exploding and also regretfully aware that whatever passed between the Voevoda and the Queen’s stately cousin, it was not going to be vouchsafed to them.
Two days after that, by arrangement, two members of the Queen’s Privy Council arrived at Fenchurch Street to open private negotiations at last with the Ambassador, and to begin discussions more secret still with the Voevoda Bolshoia, Mr Crawford. One of these, Sir William Petre, the Queen’s Principal Secretary, was a member also of the Muscovy Company and the other, Thomas