The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [265]
‘Then pick it up!’ commanded old Lady Dormer. ‘I will not have my maids tormented by your wandering eyes. Mr Crawford, you will help him.’
Mr Crawford, exquisite in a high-collared jerkin with hand-ruffs, dropped neatly on his hunkers at the other man’s side and said, ‘One of Master Dee’s contrivances, do I gather? Is this what you are looking for?’
Sir Henry received the round painted glass with relief. ‘He gets them from France. It’s not worth my life to mislay them. Now.’
‘Over here,’ Philippa said. Standing just inside the porch of the room, she had her arm round a great feathered owl. Four times life-size at least, it reached as high as the neat, stiffened pads at her shoulders. The great dish of its face, lacking an eye, gazed at the company soulfully.
‘My … stars,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt. Sir Henry fitted the eye in its place.
‘Now,’ said Philippa, and stepping aside, let the owl go. There was a rumbling sound, and the owl started to move. It advanced upon them across Lady Dormer’s small Turkey rugs; it lifted its wings. Its eyes, headily beginning to spin, gave off intermittent beams of red and mysterious light. Its beak opened, and a strident call, earsplitting and monotonous, attacked the eardrums of everyone in the room. Lymond, on his feet, slid a table out of its way: Jenkinson, jumping, removed a cushion. The call wavered and sank; the revolving light halted, the wings dropped to rest. The owl, creaking, came to a sudden sharp halt, and one of its eyeballs fell out.
‘Damn!’ said Henry Sidney, dissatisfied. ‘I beg your pardon, Aunt Jane. Now where did it roll to?’
They played with it until they were called in to dinner, by which time the shadow of Richard Chancellor had temporarily vanished, even though Nicholas took his place at the board and was kept talking, briskly, by Philippa, while Lady Dormer steered Jenkinson and d’Harcourt to share their reminiscences of Malta.’ Henry Sidney leaned back while his wine was being poured and said to Lymond, ‘I met a friend of yours in Ireland, a man called Phelim O’LiamRoe. You won’t remember me in France, during the Northampton embassy. It was six years ago. You were rather occupied, I gather, in chastising Lennoxes.’
‘You know the story, then,’ Lymond said.
‘I know why the Lennox family dislike you quite so much, yes. I am glad you came back from Russia,’ said Henry Sidney. ‘Whatever befalls, I am sure you will handle it capably. But I was afraid for Mistress Philippa.’ He paused. ‘I have often wondered if Diccon Chancellor told you of the threat to his own life.’
‘The heresy charge?’ Lymond said. ‘No. Or not until we were already on the way home. He warned me of my own danger if I stayed on in Russia. In fact, if we must speak of it, he saved me from one attempt on my life. But you know him better than I do.’
It was difficult to continue against a resistance so adamant. Henry Sidney said, ‘The sledge race: I know. I have had it all at second hand from Rob Best. Did you ever discover who paid your captain to kill you? It is a matter which troubles me. The English colony over there is very small. A man who would murder a fellow countryman for money is a danger to the whole Muscovy Company.’
‘And you wish him disvisored. Yes, I know who it was,’ Lymond said. ‘And I promise you justice, once I have proof of it.’
Henry Sidney could read nothing in his profile; nothing in the hands dealing with his knife and his food. Sidney said, ‘Will you not tell me of your suspicions? Or at least Best and Jenkinson and Buckland, before you arrive back in Russia? It is Jenkinson and Best and Killingworth who will have to act for the Company, and bring the assassin to justice. Unless …’ He ceased speaking, his lips pursed.
‘Unless either Best or Killingworth is the culprit. Or Richard Grey, your other agent, who was with us at Lampozhnya.’ Lymond