The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [257]
He did not think this was going to take a long time, because this fellow not only knew what he wanted: he had thought through the English objections. Disconcerting. Agreeable, even, since argument was one’s business. He thought of the patient hours with Nepeja and fully understood, even more than the Company, precisely why the Tsar of Russia had entrusted this errand to this man.
After the break, it was the English objections they began with. Petre let the Bishop take the lead, while he gazed around at the books. He thought he saw a De republica, but it couldn’t be. Pole had once spent two thousand gold pieces trying to trace that in Poland. He behaved, as he often did, as if he were not listening.
‘Since you speak of Sweden,’ said the Bishop of Ely, ‘you may well know the consequences of your fighting there last year. The harvest suffered. No Swedish corn has come to Brussels and bread has failed, so that no armies can be mustered. No men may gather anywhere until the new harvest is reaped, and wheat meal sold last winter, sir, at forty-six shillings the quarter, so that our women laid their newborn babes in the streets, unable to nurture them while you were sailing at your ease upon this embassy.’
‘I beg to say,’ said Lymond, ‘that I cannot recall standing in so many cornfields: perhaps some other conflicts took place in Holland and Brittany as well. Your point, however, is taken. And at this moment the Tsar should be receiving an ambassador from Sweden in his turn, suing for peace between our nations. Provided Russia is strong and firm, as she showed herself to be last summer, this peace will continue, and your corn will be safe. Meanwhile Sweden may upbraid you, but she cannot march upon you.’
‘She can, however, cancel her commercial treaties,’ Dimmock said.
‘It is unlikely, because they are to her advantage. But she may do so,’ agreed Lymond. ‘It is for you to decide how severe a blow this could be. It was a risk you also took, I imagine, when you launched your present trading agreement with Russia. It may reassure everyone to remember that Lithuania has no standing army and is unlikely to resort to force, particularly when it would mean depleting her Russian frontiers.’
It was time to interfere. ‘On the other hand,’ said Sir William Petre, ‘it may encourage an alliance between Poland and Lithuania and Livonia, and Livonia belongs to the Order of Teutonic Knights which have long been the special concern of the Emperor, and therefore of King Philip.’
‘Except,’ said Lymond, ‘that thirty years ago the Order’s Master repudiated the Pope and turned Lutheran. And I am told that both Poland and Lithuania are being pushed by the Czech Brethren towards Protestantism, while the Lithuanian lords have come to think Calvinism fashionable. It is not a fever which the Queen presumably would like to see spread. In fact, my Tsar extracted an undertaking three years ago from Livonia that they would make no alliance with Poland, and he is at present in a position to enforce it. He is not a friend, as you may know, to the Roman Church, but neither will he allow other faiths to spread within his borders.’
‘You have said that Russia is making a peace, on her own terms, with Sweden,’ Petre said. ‘You have said that, given arms, she can secure herself from attack from the Tartars and from the group of countries inclined to Protestantism on the west. You have not told us what