The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [307]
D’Harcourt looked round once, gave a kind of grimace in Lymond’s direction and then stood, holding his weak arm with the other, his head bent in thought on his chest.
Lady Lennox came in, with her secretary John Elder and Philippa Somerville, employing the stalk she had learned balancing sherbet jars on her crown in the Seraglio. After a reasonable length of time her head swam round on its neck and she bestowed a vigorous grimace on her husband. Then she was given a stool beside Lady Lennox’s chair while John Elder stood, holding the chair back behind them.
Since the two women had come in, Lymond had been standing remarkably still. He returned Philippa’s greeting, Adam noticed, with a look which was both questioning and guarded: Margaret Lennox with a smile was studying him in her turn. And from across the room, oddly enough, Ludo d’Harcourt had lifted his head and was watching also, first Philippa and then Francis Crawford, until Lymond in turn became aware of it; then d’Harcourt, reddening, looked away. The President banged with his gavel. ‘We are waiting for Master Vannes.’
But he was already at the door, the long-awaited Peter Vannes, Dean of Salisbury, the swarthy Italian now in his sixties who for six years had been Ambassador for England with the Doge and the Council of Ten. And as he came in and bowed to the Council, Adam noticed that he also smiled towards the clerks’ table, where a man sat at the head of the scriveners who was obviously, from his clothes, of some consequence. And that, one took it, must be the Queen’s Latin secretary, Roger Ascham, with some of his staff, ready at need to translate any necessary evidence in that tongue.
And on the desk before Ascham was a battered wooden box, nailed all over with yellow nails and barred strongly with iron, which had been splintered open, one would guess, with a chisel; and beside it some thirty papers in an irregular bundle; some rolled, some folded; none of them very neatly or efficiently kept. One or two were small notes, of the kind which might accompany a parcel. Some were letters running clearly to many pages, in thick dog-eared sheaves. The private papers of the late Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, with all the damning evidence they must contain of conspiracies and those engaged in them, on the lady Elizabeth’s behalf.
Peter Vannes seated himself and, without preamble, the Earl of Arundel began.
‘I do not mean to spend long over this matter. You are here to explain three attempts to steal or interfere with the coffer you now see before you. The three men concerned are in this room, and from none of them have we been able to discover their reasons, or on whose behalf they have been acting. We have not so far used force, since it seemed that the answer might quite simply lie in the contents of the coffer itself.
‘We have now read these papers. As I have said, we have not so far used force. I shall not hesitate to use it now, if I do not receive the answers I require. So I now ask you again. Master Tait, on whose instructions did you attempt to prevent these documents from reaching their proper destination?’
And Hercules Tait, man of taste and garrulous correspondent, drew breath to answer and was spared the necessity by Lymond, who had played chess with better men than Henry Fitzalan, 10th Earl of Arundel.
‘Master Tait acted under my instructions,’ Lymond said.
Everyone turned. Beside him, Adam heard Guthrie swear; and across the room Danny Hislop’s empty stomach gave a croak of despair. Philippa, allowing her head to drop back, stared at the ceiling inhaling and reviewed, speechlessly, a number of telling ejaculations in Turkish. The Earl of Arundel said slowly, ‘Indeed? And the attacks by the men Hislop and d’Harcourt were made on your orders as well? May I ask why, Mr Crawford?’
Her husband’s manner, thought Philippa approvingly, was quite perfect: deferential without being obsequious; serene without