The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [41]
‘You are not afraid,’ said Ivan. He pulled one hand sharply away and Adashev, Viscovatu, Sylvester saw Lymond’s lips tighten, but he did not call out or speak, as Ivan opened his palm and showed a feathering of snatched yellow hair. There was blood at the side of the Voevoda’s brushed head. ‘You are not afraid,’ repeated the Tsar. ‘You are not afraid of the boyars. You are not afraid of me, but for me.…
‘I am twenty-six,’ said the Tsar. He put out his hand, letting the lock fall from his palm, and gripped Lymond’s shoulder. ‘I confessed. I confessed to my rages, my sins against my people, and Dmitri my firstborn was taken from me, and my friends quarrelled and plotted about me when they thought I lay dying. I have no friends.’
‘You have the men in this room,’ Lymond said.
‘The men in this room are afraid of me. All except you,’ the Tsar said. ‘They are afraid of the Tartar. They wish to send you to drive out the Tartar instead of defending the Grand Prince’s honour before those swine-hating animals. Do you hear what the Poles say of me? That my ancestors licked the mare’s milk off Tartar horsemanes while theirs were free princes. That a hen defends her chicks against the hawk and the eagle while I, a two-headed eagle, hide my cowardly head. They say that! And these councillors will not make war on them. Soon Livonia will send her ambassadors, suing for a renewal of this craven peace treaty, and these my councillors will readily grant it.…’
The Tsar withdrew his hand sharply and sat back. ‘What would the Voevoda advise? What would you say to those dogs when they come?’
Lymond rose slowly to his feet and stood still, close to Ivan. ‘What your councillors say. They are older and wiser than I am.’
The Tsar, flushing, dashed his closed hand on his knee. ‘But if they are wrong?’
‘If fresh facts arise, they will have changed their judgement by then.’
Sylvester’s dry voice said, ‘May one ask where these fresh facts might come from, that are so unaccounted for now in our reckoning? From the Voevoda?’
Ivan’s eyes moved from Sylvester to Lymond. Lymond said, ‘From the condition at that date of their army, and the condition of the one led by me. These are the only facts which concern me. Policy is a matter for you and the Tsar.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Alexei Adashev gently, ‘the Tsar considers the Voevoda should have a share in our councils.’
Lymond said quickly, ‘The Tsar has offered me the post of commander, and that I have accepted. Nothing else.’ And his eyes followed Ivan as the Tsar rose, his shadow falling over the six men below him.
‘The Tsar,’ said Ivan, ‘prizes honesty, and knows how to reward it. I dine in state, and cannot ask you to join me. But you will share none the less of my dinner, and those bold men you have caused to join you in my city of Moscow. Go in health to your house in Kitaigorod and these my officers will follow with that which will make you all merry.’
The hand stroking the auburn beard was held out and kneeling, Lymond kissed it, and was raised by it to stand before Ivan again. In a low voice, ‘Lend me your honesty,’ Ivan said; and meeting his eyes, Lymond bowed once again without speaking.
It was one o’clock on a still summer’s night when Francis Crawford again entered the Kremlin, and, with torches and his boy Venceslas to guide him, picked his way past the Nikólskaya Tower to the palace he and Güzel shared behind it. He had opened the door of his chamber when he was stopped by the soft voice of Güzel’s negro tirewoman Leila. So, dismissing Venceslas, he turned, and made his way instead to the musk-scented taper-lit room which his mistress had designed for her pleasure.
She was there, her hair unbound, dressed in light, soundless gauzes spread over the floor cushions on which she was resting, a little book stretched in leather unrolled with its strap loose in her hand. Beside her burned a claw-footed brazier, embossed with masks and harpies and sea monsters