The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [43]
‘The meal,’ said Lymond, ‘was marked by a great deal of merriment and an embarrassment of toasts, the custom being for each proposer to stand in the centre and propose one by one the healths of each of the company and their respective lords or commanders, together with a number of other sentiments to do with health, fortune or victory. The proposer expresses the wish that not so much blood may remain in his enemies as he means to leave in his goblet. He then drinks, bareheaded, and turns the empty goblet upside down over his head. His listeners each time do likewise. The Russian has an exceeding capacity for liquor.’
‘So?’ said Güzel.
‘So have we,’ Lymond said. ‘Adam succumbed, but the rest of us packed the six Muscovite gentlemen back into the cart and saw it safely back to the Kremlin. Alec Guthrie said it was the best night he’d had since he matriculated, and d’Harcourt embraced me. Even Danny Hislop glowed with a highly intellectual goodwill. The burning of SS Boris and Gleb has, I gather, now been forgiven me.’
His voice, lightly sardonic, lapsed into silence. For a moment Güzel did not speak either. Then she said, ‘I understand. I shall take Venceslas to be my own servant.’
He looked up sharply then, his fringed eyes distended. ‘What do you understand?’
The long Greco-Italian eyes smiled back at him. ‘What were you thinking of? Necromancy? I understand what is perfectly plain. That you are succeeding in what you have set out to do. And that of normal human impulses you experience nothing.’
He continued to stare at her, his hands lightly woven together. He said, ‘All I can give you is Russia.’
The woman Güzel, courtesan and mistress to princes, smiled at him with parted, rose-tinted lips, her own white ringed hands lying loose in her lap. She said, ‘It is a property of women, to know how to wait.’
Lymond said, ‘If I have laid my traps as I hope, Vishnevetsky will make some move in your direction, or in mine. I want him to fight for us.’
Thoughtfully, Güzel stretched out and studied one hand and then returned it, slowly, to rest on the other. ‘If you are content with Russia,’ she said, ‘then so am I. But you did not tell me you had taken an English girl-child to wife?’
‘I told you.… Did I not?’ Lymond said. ‘It was the Somerville girl. It can be annulled. She has probably sent post-haste to the Papal Legate already.’
Güzel rose. She stooped and lifting her wrought goblet, drank from it; then walking from the circle of tapers she lifted something white from the shadows and returned with it to the warmth of the light. She said, ‘She says nothing of it. She has written to you.’
The seal of the letter was broached. Without comment Lymond received it and unfolded the pages. There were several, covered in round schoolgirl script. He glanced at the first sentence, looked up to find Güzel standing, hands folded, watching him, and, rising himself, stood by the nearest group of branched lights, running his eyes down the pages.
The flush of wine had gone from his skin, and the amusement, the edge of interest and involvement had all vanished also. She knew what the