The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [263]
Danny said, ‘Well?’ and as Lymond did not respond, he tried again. ‘Sir? Now the ships can be loaded, the Company is talking of sailing for Russia by the end of April, or early May at the latest. What if Vannes hasn’t arrived when you sail?’
‘An interesting thought,’ Lymond said. He was not, Danny thought, looking quite so carefree as on previous occasions; or perhaps had merely less patience than usual for the bastards of Bishops. Lymond went on, ‘I am not, if that is your point, contemplating taking Mistress Philippa with me to Russia, much as you would adore to witness the consequences.’
‘What, then?’ Danny said. ‘He may be held up indefinitely.’
‘Somehow,’ Lymond said, ‘I don’t think so. I think Peter Vannes will arrive, with papers or without them, before the Ambassador and I leave for Russia.’
‘And me,’ Danny said. He gazed at his commander’s occupied eyes. ‘Why? Why should you think so? A premonition? Mr Dee’s crystal ball?’ He flinched as Lymond looked at him at last. ‘I’m just persistent by habit,’ said Danny.
But Lymond, changing his mind, had decided to answer him. ‘For one inadequate reason,’ he said. ‘Today, the English Privy Council agreed to all the Tsar’s demands for skilled men and armaments.’
‘I know. Mind, voice, study, power and will, Is only set to love thee, Philip, still. Hooray,’ Danny Hislop said.
‘Hooray,’ Lymond agreed. His face, older than his years, was not accommodating and his eyes, too brightly coloured for a man, were perfectly bleak. ‘Except that when these talks started, I had no hopes of this concession, and there was no reason why it should ever have been granted. Why did they grant it? Why? Why? Why?’
To which, if the Voevoda Bolshoia did not know, Danny Hislop could venture no answer.
Chapter 9
In April, Sir Henry Sidney returned to London to obtain money and arms to make a second incursion against the Scottish colonizers in Ulster. On his way to Whitehall he called at Penshurst to see his two small children Philip and Margaret, and to learn from his wife the latest news of the Court. When he left, he took Nicholas Chancellor with him.
After what he had learned from his wife, his reception by Heath and Petre and the rest was no great surprise: it seemed that the supply of arms was at present even shorter than the surplus of money. Bearing this discovery with him, more in rueful admiration than anger, Sir Henry descended one bright Monday in April on the London home of old Lady Dormer, and demanded an introduction to Philippa Somerville’s husband.
It was the sole invitation in that macabre three weeks of celebration that Lymond accepted with any willingness. Received at Court and released from his ambassadorial duties, Osep Grigorievich Nepeja was free at last to plunge over the beard into the revelries arranged by the Muscovy Company, feasting and banqueting in other men’s homes, and seeing without stint the unrivalled wonders of London.
Muscovite Ambassadors, outwith the control of their Tsars, were not encouraged to view the marvels of other lands and comment upon them. But after weeks endured chained to the conference table, Master Nepeja was unable to resist it. He was shown all over Whitehall and Westminster. He saw St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower and the Guildhall of London. He viewed, as the Spaniards had all done before him, the Round Table of the enchanted King Arthur, with the names of the twelve knights still written where they used to sit round it.
The Lord Mayor gave him a banquet, with five Knights Aldermen and five other Aldermen and many notable merchants of the Muscovy Company. Master Nepeja attended it in a gown of rich tissue, his undergown being of purple velvet embroidered, and the edge of his hat set with pearls and other fine jewels, while his horse trappings were crimson velvet embroidered with gold, and his bridle gorgeously sewn. Those who lined the streets and admired him were not to know that the horse was a present, or that the rich cloth of tissue, the cloth of gold raised with crimson velvet, the crimson and purple velvet in grain,