The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [278]
On a task such as this, Lymond was always easy to work with. The caustic disciplines and the violence were for the field, not for the study. There he was quiet, carrying other minds with him; his own thinking heavily concentrated and naturally lucid in exposition: he was not, as Philippa had once called him, magisterial. On the other hand, he did not invite to work with him any but those who were capable of it.
After a week of it, broken certainly by many interviews and absences, Danny Hislop rose at the end of a day’s work, yawned uncontrollably twenty times, stretched himself, and said, ‘What in God’s name, dear Ludo, made you decide to abandon the life of fourscore winters and sail back to Russia? Not only will you have to work like a coining-wedge: you will have to fight Tartars as well.’ And gazing at Lymond, who was standing reading a paper, Danny said, ‘You realize we haven’t had any food? We know you don’t mind dissolving to a rat-trap of brass wire like the Bishop of Sisteron, but Ludo needs food to make his sore arm get well.’
‘I am thinning you down for the Primrose,’ said Lymond, still reading. ‘Have we missed a meal?’
‘We have missed two meals,’ said Danny Hislop with precision. ‘And God knows how many drinks. I haven’t been working at all well. Hislops need lubrication.’ And thank God, for his stomach was rumbling, the Voevoda gave the order for food and wine to be brought, and, when he caught Adam glaring at him, Danny merely glared back. It was his hard luck, as he told the Voevoda later, that while Ludo, helped occasionally by Adam, was merely putting Russia to rights, he, Danny, was also organizing all the rigorous arrangements to make sure that Ambassador Peter Vannes did not arrive at the English Court with a bundle of dangerous papers under his arm.
Vannes had not yet arrived. It seemed possible, despite the Voevoda’s conviction, that he never would, before Lymond and Danny and Ludo had to set sail for Russia. In which case, to preserve Mistress Philippa from unpleasant repercussions, someone else should be deputed to help stop those papers arriving. Adam Blacklock, for instance.
But Lymond was still adamant: he wished neither Blacklock or d’Harcourt to be told of the matter, and he was not prepared to be chivvied about it.
Danny did not pursue it. Ludo d’Harcourt, returned dazzled from Blackfriars, had given him hope that, against all expectation, the Voevoda was about to become human.
That had proved a fallacy, as d’Harcourt had also discovered. The damage at Blackfriars had been generously, even royally made good. But after it, the Voevoda had withdrawn behind a barrier as distinct as it was deliberate. There was no more playacting.
And Adam Blacklock, whose business was charts, and who had no right to be eavesdropping when Best and Buckland called and brought Jenkinson with them, or when Ludo and Danny, undressing, exchanged some terrible reminiscence of Novgorod or Ochakov, noticed it too, and noticed more than that.
It was only by accident that, calling at the Voevoda’s room late one evening, Adam saw by the half-empty cup standing among the books on his table that Lymond had been drinking as he worked.
The flask was put away and he was not unsteady on his feet or in any way affected that Adam could see: he was long past the time when he could not judge, to the thousandth part of a litre, just how far he wished to go, and then stop. But it was now so far from his habit that it gave Adam pause.
He mentioned it, stupidly, to the others. ‘He doesn’t want to go back to Russia?’ Danny speculated, horrified.
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Ludo d’Harcourt impatiently. ‘You can see he is counting the days.’
And although d’Harcourt was not usually, Adam thought, the most perspicacious member of the small party, in this instance he believed he was right. For Francis Crawford, the days of