The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [298]
On Saturday Ely and Petre would come, with the royal letters and presents. And by Monday the four ships, towed downstream, would await the Muscovy party at Gravesend, there to take their leave of England.
So by Monday he must complete all his arrangements, receive the last papers, organize the last interviews. Four days so planned that it might be done, at the cost of a little hard work. But there would soon be time enough on the Primrose to rest and reflect. And it allowed no time—no time at all for personal business.
Adam Blacklock met Lymond at the door of Dimmock’s house. ‘Nepeja is going mad. You know that it is only an hour to the banquet?’
Lymond stared at him. ‘Calm! Calm,’ he said. ‘They are not likely to begin it without us.’
‘Well, they’re likely to begin it without Ludo and Danny,’ Adam said, who, no longer in Russian employ, had rebelled against Russian edicts. ‘They both rode out of London yesterday, and neither of them has been heard of since.’
Someone had taken Lymond’s horse. With Adam at his side he was already running upstairs to his room when the implication of that statement reached him. He stopped. ‘Together?’ said Lymond.
‘No,’ said Adam, his uneasiness suddenly crystallizing. ‘Danny first, and then we found Ludo had gone later. Neither of them left any message.’
‘Blackheath?’ Lymond said.
‘No. I sent there,’ said Adam. He added, worrying, ‘Have you come straight from Gardington?’
‘Forty miles. I am unlikely to live,’ said the Voevoda, with an air of abstraction. ‘Did Hislop receive any message, that you knew of?’
‘I asked that as well,’ Adam said. ‘It seems someone did call and ask for him. There is an impression Danny sent him off straight away. I wondered if he had dispatched him to you.’
‘Well, if he did, he didn’t reach me,’ Lymond said. ‘Good God: is that Nepeja?’
‘He has been ready,’ said Adam, ‘for the last hour and a half.’
‘You look very pretty as well,’ Lymond said, and disappeared into his room.
He was, astonishingly, ready in time, with no trace of the dust of his journey, and the work of Güzel’s sempstresses and goldsmiths and embroiderers like a riza adorning his person. There was a ceremonial ride, this time through Lombard Street and Lothbury to the towering oriel windows, painted, gilded and carved, of the Drapers’ Hall, hired by the Muscovy Company to do justice to the splendid occasion.
Inside, gathered in heated bales of fur and velvet and brocade, were the Governor, consuls, assistants and sad, discreet and honest Members of the Muscovy Company, waiting to convey their guests to their places at the long, laden tables before the blue cloth of state with its shield showing a ship in full sail, with the lion of England above, and round it the motto of the Company: Refugium Nostrum In Deo Est.
‘If the war comes,’ said Sir George Barnes on Lymond’s left hand, “twill be the only harbour we may trust. They say England will pay the whole cost of it, and all for King Philip’s purpose, not for our own. Trades suppressed, new taxes imposed.… How else will we finance the foot and horse they say the Queen has promised to send? The King can’t collect any more money in Brussels or Antwerp; they say Ruy Gomez can’t even raise it in Spain, or why else does he delay?’
It was all they could think of, the merchants crowding here to do public honour to the Ambassador, although they chatted and joked and called across the tables to one another between the entertainments: the jugglers and the singers and the acrobatics, and the one-act interlude by players in false heads, between the blubber dainties and the dariolles. There were no Sumtuous Hores.
The Voevoda Bolshoia, a civilized and entertaining companion, for a Scotsman, kept afloat the cross-conversations all about him, as deftly as the jugglers their balls, and gave no sign of the two, and three, and four other subjects which were occupying the rest of his mind in the meanwhile. Most of the senior officials were there. At the head of the table, old Master Cabot, with his broad face and broken