The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [305]
Henry Sidney gave a sigh. ‘It was more in the nature of a pious hope that if anything untoward happened to him, I should advise you to take to the heather. Or the equivalent.’
He was a very likeable man. Philippa Somerville grinned at him. ‘Well. I won’t take to the heather,’ she said. ‘But you can trust me to plunge wildly into the equivalent.’
Sidney was uneasy when he left, having persuaded her to accept none of his help to leave London. He would have been a great deal more uneasy had he returned five minutes later, to find she had left the house by boat, quickly, to visit the home of the Venetian Ambassador.
From there she went to John Dee’s. It was on her return from that unpublicized residence that she found a courteous gentleman waiting for her at the landing stage at the Savoy, and three more in the garden beyond.
They were Henry Jerningham’s men, and they wished her to accompany them, they said, on a. small matter of royal business. She was not allowed to change her dress but was taken, just as she was, to the Westminster apartments of the Countess of Lennox who treated her, as she had once before, as a much-cherished guest. But, as before, there was an armed man before every door and the Queen, invoked by courier, merely returned kind messages commanding her sweet Philippa to remain in Lady Lennox’s loving care until the current matter concerning her husband had been fairly examined.
The heather, as it proved, was extremely comfortable; but Philippa, growling, did not take to it.
*
Several days passed. In Henry Jerningham’s house, Lymond bore the waiting with equanimity; his officers a good deal more uneasily. In another part of London Hercules Tait conducted himself with decorum, as he had since his unfortunate arrest, and awaited, with some resignation, the exposure of his folly to Lymond. Elsewhere in the same building Ludovic d’Harcourt and Danny Hislop, incarcerated together, were no longer speaking to each other. Or if Danny, revived, thought of something wittily abusive to say, d’Harcourt no longer answered him.
On the first of May Sir William Petre and the Bishop of Ely called at Fenchurch Street with royal letters of recommendation under the Great Seal of England for the Sovereign Grand Prince of Russia; and with gifts for the Tsar and for his Ambassador, offering goodwill and friendship between the Queen and King and the merchants and fellowship of the adventurers for and to Russia.
Accepimus literas vestras amoris et amicitie plenas per dilectum Virum nuntium et legatum Osiph Nepeam ad nos delatas, said Ascham’s elegant Latin.… Speramus hoc fundamentum mutue amicitie, hoc modo bene et feliciter jactum et stabilitum magnos et uberes fructus tum fraterni inter nos et successores nostros, amoris et amicitie firme tum perpetui inter subditos nostros commercii coniunctionem allatuvum.…
To Master Nepeja, the Queen gave a chain of gold of one hundred pounds weight, a large basin and ewer, a pair of pottle pots and a pair of flagons, all made in the western style which did not in the least take his fancy, and all of gold, gilt or silver gilt, which did.
To the Tsar of Russia his cousins the monarchs of England sent two rich cloth of tissue pieces, one piece of scarlet cloth, one of azure and one of fine violet in grain. They also sent a set of body armour with helmet adorned with red velvet and gilt nails; and a lion and lioness, living.
The lions roared in their wagon outside Master Dimmock’s fine house through all the handsome exchanges, translated by Rob Best, and a crowd of some size had gathered by the time Sir William Petre and the Bishop emerged, duty done, and rode away, empty-handed and smiling.
The merchants were not smiling. Nor were the mariners at Gravesend, as the news travelled there as by drumbeat. With some misgivings Anthony Jenkinson, worthy gentleman and great traveller, stood in the street and looked at the lions from Affrik which he, in truth, had to translate to a contrary heaven across two thousand miles