The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [302]
There was mild interest on the Voevoda’s face. He bowed, acknowledging the information; he bowed, smiling, to Sidney and waited for Adam, hesitating, to walk to his side. A second door, leading away from the Hall, had been opened on the far side of the room and Jerningham stationed there was waiting, his sword at his side.
Lymond was wearing no sword, and neither was Adam: one did not take weapons as honoured guests to a banquet. Even had they been armed, they could do nothing against such a number of soldiers.
You might argue, thought Adam sardonically, that they had not as yet been accused of any crime, or even officially arrested. But as Lymond must have realized at once, the indiscretions of Danny and Ludo, whatever in God’s name they were, could never account by themselves for this sudden and cavalier handling. After nearly three months of unalloyed, obsequious conduct, England, it seemed, no longer cared if she offended. What had changed?
Not, at least, Guthrie and Hoddim, jumping to their feet in the small room allotted them all in Sir Henry Jerningham’s house. Or Lymond’s manner, greeting them.
‘Carpets!’ said Lymond. ‘And you are going to have to sleep three to a bed: what a pity. But at least it is better than Maidstone Gaol.… What has just happened in Russia is, I am sure, very exciting, but if you had managed to keep it to yourselves, we none of us should be here.’
And Alec Guthrie, whom he had last seen at the Neglinna Bridge outside the Kremlin of Moscow, said, ‘It was Howlet, the sailing-master, who spread the news … sir. Why are we all here? Not, I take it, on vagrancy charges.’
‘Don’t be caustic,’ said Lymond lightly. ‘My buttons may save us all yet. We have been nailed, as they say, for horabull lyes and sedyssyous wordes, and because Daniel Hislop and Ludovic d’Harcourt have made a botch of something between them.’ He sat down on one of the pair of low beds and looked from Guthrie’s bearded face to Hoddim’s lined one; and his eyes were by no means as carefree as his voice. ‘Then tell me,’ he said, ‘what has happened in Russia?’
‘The Tsar is mad,’ Alec Guthrie said.
‘He is not an Englishman,’ Lymond said.
Guthrie said with some bluntness, ‘There are strains in his nature which are due to his race. There are others which are not. Since you left, the vagaries have increased, and the violence. He has become quite unpredictable. The man he adores today he will have cut for the hounds to eat the next morning. He will not be governed by the council you left with him. It must be one soul who speaks to his soul; one man who helps him undress; one who prays with him and one who reads to him of an evening.…’
‘Vishnevetsky,’ said Lymond. He paused, his eyes, blue as stones, moving from Guthrie to Hoddim. Adam, standing forgotten by the door, did not move or speak. Lymond said, ‘But Vishnevetsky could not win a place next to the Tsar, or keep it, alone.’
‘He is not alone,’ Guthrie said.
There was no need, with Lymond, to mention Güzel’s name. He was understood. Lymond, his considering gaze resting on Guthrie showed nothing on his face but the pure, mechanical process of thinking. Since he did not speak, Guthrie added after a moment, ‘You perhaps did not know it, but all your possessions were sent to St Nicholas and loaded on the Philip and Mary. Venceslas saw to it. She knew you were not going back. A matter, she said, of a prophecy.’
‘But I am going back,’ Lymond said.
And then Alec Guthrie said quietly, ‘Dmitri Vishnevetsky