The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [57]
Used to another styling, Philippa did not at once respond to her married name. Then she said, ‘Yes. And you are Master Lychpole?’
He nodded. He was not a young man, and he spoke in a low voice, as if anxious not to be heard in conversation with her. ‘I wished to ask you the favour of a few words in private. On a personal matter.’
‘Yes?’ said Philippa, lifting her eyebrows.
Bartholomew Lychpole’s voice had dropped half an octave. ‘Your husband is Francis Crawford of Lymond?’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa in the same sweet, lying cadence she had learned in Stamboul.
‘I am employed here,’ said Bartholomew Lychpole, ‘but I am a man of wide interests. I correspond. I hear many things. But I dare not say what I hear, you understand, or I should lose my employment. I am a poor man, and I dare not lose my employment. I beg you therefore …’
‘You wish to tell me something about Mr Crawford, and you do not wish me to quote you. I understand,’ Philippa said. ‘Whatever you say will remain quite private with me. What do you want me to know?’
‘I heard you were his wife,’ Lychpole said. ‘I don’t take risks. I can’t afford to take risks. But I thought you should know he is well.’
Philippa sat down very gently and looked at him. She said, ‘I am glad to know that. You have heard from him recently?’
‘Last week,’ said Master Lychpole. ‘Later, I dare say, than any message you have; even if the couriers managed to reach you. It’s not like writing from Brussels. I thought it would please you just to know he was well.’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa. ‘It will please his mother as well when I tell her. Where was he writing from?’
‘Oh, the same place,’ said Bartholomew Lychpole. ‘He dates his letters always from there, although I hear he travels abroad in the country from week to week, on his master’s business, whether it is attack or defence no one can tell me. This season, I wager he would prefer to be by your side in some good English rain. They say there can be a coldness well-nigh beyond mortal man’s bearing, this month in Moscow.’
Philippa Somerville’s eyes became exceedingly large. Lychpole said slowly after a moment, ‘But of course they are prepared for the cold. You must not allow it to worry you.’
Lymond’s titular wife drew a deep breath. ‘It doesn’t,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t thinking of that.… I wonder if your post would reach him more quickly than mine.’
‘You have a letter?’ said Lychpole.
‘I would give you one,’ Philippa said. ‘What direction do you have for him in Moscow?’
But there she came up against a politic silence. Whatever Bartholomew Lychpole’s business, it was conducted in secrecy, and his correspondence was not sent direct, but entrusted to a series of messengers, the last of whom conveyed it to Lymond, wherever in Russia he might be.
For Lymond, it seemed, was in Russia. And the more Philippa thought of it, the likelier somehow did it appear. He had no wish to come home. He had no interest in old loyalties and ancient entanglements, and yet would take no steps, Philippa thought, to place himself in direct conflict with them.
What more likely than that he had stayed on the perimeter, half in, half out the known world, to build a new sphere of power with Kiaya Khátún, who worshipped power, beside him? And this well-meaning, inadequate man was no doubt in some form his spy.
Of all the peoples of the earth, they have the hardest living, Diccon Chancellor had said of the Muscovites. And Sydney had quoted. If they knew their strength, no man were able to make match with them.
Small wonder Lychpole was uneasy. Lymond’s presence in Russia was more than an item of gossip: a matter of purely family concern. To reveal her knowledge of it would not only betray Lychpole’s confidence. It would send all the statesmen of Europe to probe the occurrence: so many squirrels gutting a pine cone. It would force Russia to show her hand, perhaps, before she was ready, and put Lymond’s own life at risk.
Or at more risk.