The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [259]
‘In spite of the complaints of Portugal,’ Lymond said. ‘Perhaps, Sir William, we have covered sufficient ground for one day. There is the list of men and materials which my Tsar would wish you to send him. The profit to the Muscovy Company will be comparable to the profit they would be prepared to accept on the highest grade of their cloth. I propose that a thousand pounds of corn powder should yield the same profit as one piece of double-grain velvet; and that the same amount of serpentine powder should equate to one piece of a pile and a half, the rates for the rest to be settled between us. I am at your disposal at any time: perhaps your secretary would advise me when you wish to continue the discussion.’
It was the kind of list Petre had expected, if a little more specific than he had hoped: 3,500 hackbuts; 1,000 pistolets; 500 lb matches; 100,000 lb saltpetre; 3,000 corselets; 2,000 morions; 3,000 iron caps; 8,000 lances; 9,000 lb corn powder; 60 cwt sulphur; 52 fodders of lead. And the trained men one would also expect: ironfounders and engineers and gunners, physicians and apothecaries, printers, mathematicians; shipwrights.
Petre took the list and rose, Thirleby with him. ‘As you say, we shall place this before our colleagues and return. You are assiduous, Mr Crawford, in the service of your master.’ He bent an inquiring gaze, not ill-humoured, on the other man, twenty years younger, now standing before him with Mr Dimmock. ‘Your own country of Scotland then holds no attraction for you? I thought perhaps you were bent on repeating the great alliance between Scotland and Russia and Denmark, which was to result in the crushing of Sweden.’
Lymond did not smile in return, nor turn the matter as Petre expected. ‘I have had offers from that quarter, certainly,’ Lymond said. ‘But, so far, I have not been tempted.’
With an effort which contorted his stomach again, Sir William Petre refrained from looking at the Bishop. But outside on his horse, riding through the streets with his thirty velvet-dressed followers, he looked at Thirleby all right, and said with feeling, ‘My God!’
‘Yes. It was a threat,’ the Bishop said, ‘to make all other threats pale into insignificance. The question is, how far does he mean it?’
*
Behind them, Daniel Hislop put his head round Lymond’s door and said, ‘Yes, my lord? You wanted to see me, my lord?’
‘Come in and shut the door and stop being vivacious,’ Lymond said, without looking at him. Dimmock had gone. His papers, scattered over the table, had been gathered together and he was putting them away in his cabinet: Danny caught sight of glassware and licked his lips, audibly. ‘No,’ Lymond said.
‘But it went well?’ said Danny.
‘Well for whom?’ Lymond said. ‘It went according to plan. I want your report on the Vannes affair, please.’
He had shut the cabinet door, and locked it. Instead of sitting again, he stayed by the cabinet, tossing the key a little, idly, in his hand. He looked perfectly fresh, which was more than Petre and Thirleby had done. A clever bastard. Danny said, ‘Unless Peter Vannes lands off the south coast in a rowing boat, we’ll know as soon as he sets foot in England. I have men at Dover and Canterbury and Gravesend and Greenwich. And if it’s humanly possible, they’ll get his papers from him. It cost me a fortune. That is, it cost you a fortune. But if the Queen gets those papers and finds you’ve been corresponding with her sister and Courtenay, I suppose it will cost you your neck. It’s a pity we couldn’t take action earlier. We might have had Vannes waylaid in Venice or after.’
‘I am hoping,’ Lymond said, ‘that Hercules Tait has done precisely that. He was under orders to do so, if anything happened to Courtenay. The double precautions are simply because it has become doubly important. It now seems that Mistress Somerville has implicated herself.’
‘With Courtenay?