The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [49]
‘I read,’ said Sidney, ‘what you set down for Eden. If they knew their strength, no man were able to make match with them; nor they that dwell near them should have any rest of them. Fortunately, they don’t know their own strength.’
‘Unless you teach it them, trading,’ said Chancellor.
It had the ring of a long-standing argument. Sir Henry Sidney caught Philippa’s bland eye and smiled. ‘Diccon’s dream is of travel and conquest. A new Caesar, a new Alexander who will reach further than India and bring back an empire without need for needles and hawks’ bells and looking-glasses, and certainly without lading sheets and kerseys, and garnishes of indifferent pewter. But if you will go exploring, Diccon, you must allow those who dwell in the external light, by the essence of mechanical arts, to attempt to pay for the bottoms.’
‘Without the inferior light,’ Philippa said, ‘which produces sensitive knowledge?’
‘I exclude nothing,’ said Sir Henry, ‘except that Diccon will clamour to join the Worshipful Company of Drapers.’
‘Why,’ said Jane Dormer, ‘may he not enlarge the Christian faith and dominion to the glory of God and the confusion of infidels, comforted by the English merchants peaceably trading in Russia?’
‘Especially,’ said Philippa Somerville, ‘if the Russians are taught to exterminate Tartars.’
The men looked at each other. Sir Henry Sidney got to his feet, and laying his hand on his hip, gazed down on them all with benignity. ‘Thus,’ he said, ‘despite the late confused counsel of ministers, I am persuaded that in this schismatic world, those guided by lights external and lights inferior may well solve our problems in harness.’
Chancellor rose in his turn. ‘I do not go,’ he said, ‘because I am tired of you, or because I find your entertainment burdensome, but because I am wrecked on the wit of your women. Mistress Somerville, I have to thank you on Nick and Christopher’s behalf for your interest in them. Take heed at court. There are more monsters there than are born in the ocean.’
‘To laugh, to lie, to flatter, to face: Four ways in court to win men’s grace. Ascham will like her. I think I shall entrust her classical training to Ascham,’ said Sir Henry. ‘The voyage we are embarked on will demand the cunning and strength of the ancients before winter is over.’
*
On 30 November, the Sidneys’ first child was born; a son named, with resignation, Philip after the current King-consort. Shortly afterwards Philippa with serving-woman and escort rode the thirty-five miles north to London to enter the bridal court of the middle-aged Queen, with the badger’s nose and faded red hair and small, anchorite’s body within the stiff, quarried case of her costume.
There were no eunuchs at the door of Westminster, or black pages, or cool fountains playing. Philippa made the same curtsey to her Queen as she had to Roxelana Sultan; but in a wainscoted room hung with tapestries, before a canopied chair of state embodying the royal arms of England and Spain, and surrounded, on stools, on cushions, on fringed velvet chairs, by extremely plain women.
All except one. Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, First Lady and Mistress of Robes to Queen Mary her cousin, was thirty-nine and still handsome despite ten years of child-bearing, and a lifetime during which she had found herself by turn heir to the throne, bastard, and maid of honour to three of her uncle’s six wives.
She watched Philippa from her place by the Queen, her back straight, her eyes open, her hands still on the silver bone-lace of her kirtle, and the expression on her blonde, big-featured face showed nothing but faint, well-bred boredom. She said, ‘The daughter of Gideon Somerville, who served your grace well in the north, and was once an officer of my own household. Now your grace has two Scots in your service.’
Philippa, who was wearing a great many jewels, rose from her curtsey and, with an effort equally invisible, refrained from replying.
‘What child: no disclaimer?’ said a strong, masculine voice. The Queen extended