The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [254]
The talks with Nepeja, covering ground already well explored by the merchants lasted more than a fortnight in all, and were not quite so straightforward as either Sir William or the Bishop had been led to expect. The gravity, wisdom and stately behaviour noted and commended so far in the Ambassador were replaced, as the discussions went on, by a certain querulousness.
He was a single foreigner in an alien land, whose tongue he still found incomprehensible. Makaroff and Grigorjeff should now have been at his side, and eight other merchants from the ill-fated Bona Esperanza guiding him; supporting him; lending weight to his arguments, helping him to detect sharp dealing and bad faith among these arrogant Englishmen. Left on his own, Osep Nepeja made sure that at least he should be no easy victim of guile.
With concealed exasperation, the Company officers noted it.
The trading concessions, it was true, were not quite so boundless as those granted them by the Tsar, but were reasonable enough considering that English ships would be carrying the Russian cargo, and that the Russian cargo must therefore necessarily be limited. There was no limit on the number of trading posts the Tsar might set up, in London or outside of it; although it was highly unlikely, considering the Russian economy and their dependence again on English bottoms, that the Tsar would find it worth while to have any.
All this had been thrashed out already, in long sessions with the Company at which Lymond and his colleagues had sometimes assisted, and other invisible sessions, between the Company and the Queen’s Privy Councillors, at which they had not. It seemed to the merchants now, excusing themselves to an impatient Bishop and a resigned Principal Secretary, that the Ambassador’s recalcitrance was due in part to his distrust of the separate talks which were also proceeding, in English, between the two Privy Councillors and Mr Crawford on another subject entirely.
Osep Nepeja resented the confounding of commerce with politics. He had told Robert Best, privately, that King Philip had led him aside on the day of the Oration and had asked him his views on the provision of materials of war between his nation and Russia.
‘And what did you say?’ had said Robert Best, who was as fascinated as anyone by the spectacle of Russian rebellion.
‘I said,’ answered Master Nepeja, ‘that such matters lay outside my commission, and I did not understand them. Would that I could be sure that the Voevoda will reply so, when consulted on matters of trade.’
Best, in the interest of all parties, reported this later to Lymond. ‘He thinks you’re parcelling up Russia in English between you.’
Lymond was not in a tolerant mood. ‘Then if he can learn English in time, tell him that he is welcome to sit in on our discussions. But I am damned if I am going to conduct a major negotiation with an interpreter perched at my elbow. The terms of this treaty were made clear long ago by the merchants. All he has to do, for God’s sake, is let them rewrite it all in long words.’
The second treaty, they all knew, was a different matter. Long before this, Lymond had delivered to the Privy Council, with the greatest circumspection on both sides, his formal note indicating the Tsar’s wish to discuss with her Majesty’s Council the provision of certain skilled men and materials outwith the normal channels of commerce. Long before, he had placed the same note before the leading members of the Muscovy Company with a single question. If the Privy Council gave him licence to proceed, were the Company prepared to supply such items as he required and give them space on their ships, assuming a reasonable percentage of profit?
To this, the Company had agreed. Conditions had never been mentioned. A withdrawal of the Company’s privileges in Russia had never been threatened or even hinted at by Lymond. But the possibility was there, in the very fact that the Tsar had sent this man to negotiate. It was small wonder,