The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [83]
Once in the barge, the King mounted the steps to be seen, and waved his bonnet back to the palace. The Queen stood at the river Windows of her apartment until he had embarked and sailed out of sight, and then was overtaken by an unrestrained bout of violent sobbing. Later, as was her custom, she sought comfort in prayer.
‘Domine Jesu Christi, qui es verus sponsus animae meae, verus Rex et Dominus meus … O Lord Jesus Christ, Who art the true husband of my soul, my true King and my master. Thou Who didst choose me for spouse and consort a man who, more than all others, in his own acts and in his guidance of mine, reproduced Thy image; Thy image whom thou didst send into the world in holiness and justice. I beseech Thee, by Thy most precious blood: Assuage my grief!’
Part Two
Chapter 1
At Sweetnose, there was frost in the shrouds and a cold midsummer fog which forced the Edward Bonaventure to lie idle on the last stage of her journey to Russia, with the boom of the whirlpool in Chancellor’s frustrated ears, and a flotilla of impertinent Lapps gathering under his poop, assembling for the midsummer fishing of belugas and walrus and salmon at Pechora.
He did not know until one of the grinning creatures climbed aboard, crucifix swinging, with a gift of fresh salted salmon, that Christopher had been off with them at half-tide to smear oatmeal butter on the Kamen Woronucha, the biggest rock by the whirlpool; and when the fog presently lifted, he viewed Christopher’s crowing with fatherly disfavour, and mentioned to his sailing-master, John Buckland, that he should probably be burned as a heretic.
Buckland, a stolid Devonshire seaman, grinned without answering. Light-hearted by nature, with a questing, vigorous mind and a long apprenticeship in the exact arts, Diccon Chancellor was a good friend on shore. But at sea, launched on his adventure with the stars caught in his astrolabe, he carried, like a man drunk on small wine, an aroma of happiness.
It had been a fine trip, Chancellor thought; and better still since he had left the Philip and Mary to discharge her cargo and drop her agent at Vardȯ, and had been able to sail on alone, with his charts and his sightings, and Buckland, who knew what he wanted. Christopher had been all he had hoped. The new merchants had been no trouble, and three of them had been with him before, and knew what to expect; or were here because they liked the unexpected. Eleven reasonable men, barring the two Members’ sons, Judde and Hawtrey, who had needed a little careful handling until Buckland got them interested in navigation. And Best had drummed some Russian into them as well.
‘If we can keep the cook sober,’ Chancellor said to the Master as, pitching slightly, the Edward stubbed her way round to Cross Island and headed for Foxnose across the wide gulf of the bay, ‘we’ll have sailed two thousand miles in a month. Then you can turn round and go back, while our troubles are only beginning.… D’you know why the Germans can’t keep a navy afloat?’
And Buckland, who was in a state of some elation himself, grinned and said, ‘Why? No oatmeal and butter?’
Richard Chancellor batted a derisory palm. ‘No! The cooks burn them down to the waterline.’
They crossed the bar of the River Dwina on 23 June, and anchored off the village of Nenoksa, in the roadstead of St Nicholas, where the brine pipes ran in from the ocean. As before, the log cabins were plumed with the steam of salt boilings, and as before, there combined with the breath of violets and rosemary, drifting over the water, the fishy reek of the hot trenches swimming with blubber.
But this time, there was no need to send a party ashore, and to demand food and hostages. Men were aboard before they were content with the grip of the anchor, with gifts of eggs and butter and beef, and mutton from the white-faced black sheep