The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [87]
Presently the Dwina turned into the single stream of the River Sukhona, shallow and stony where a canal had robbed it of water. In the lee of the tar sheds at Ustiug they transferred to flat-bottomed stroogs, and suffered a minor delay while Lane and Grey went to cast an eye over some hides and some tallow on Grigorjeff’s recommendation. While the others were waiting, the cook drank himself senseless and fell into the river; they fished him out too late to save him. There passed a gloomy twenty-four hours, clogged with officialdom, which Makaroff spent largely in conclave. ‘He’s working hard,’ said Henry Lane.
‘He’s hoping for a discount,’ said Christopher’s father mildly. ‘I told you John Buckland refused point-blank to take that damned cook back on the Edward. I wish I’d never mentioned the Germans.’
‘What about the Germans?’ asked Christopher, mystified; but Makaroff came back at that moment, with all the arrangements completed, and very soon they had embarked on the stroogs and were making for Totma, and from there to their main halt on the way to the capital: the large and ancient city of Vologda, whose Namiestnik, Osep Grigorievich Nepeja, came to the river to welcome them.
They were very wet. The warmth had not yet abated, although they were now past the first week in September, but there had been a thunderstorm a few days after Totma, and Christopher, aware of new responsibilities on his shoulders, was glad that the bales were wrapped in sacking and cerecloth, and wished he were, too.
Nepeja was hospitable. A large man in middle years, with a square, curling beard, he had three or four words of English, from his previous meeting with Chancellor, whom he addressed, they noticed, as ‘Ritzert’; and Christopher wondered if it were yet another legacy from the Tartars, this use of the simple first name which he had observed in quarters unexpectedly formal.
They were lodged by Nepeja’s own house, an elaborate confection of wood with round and spired roofs and outside staircases all covered with awnings. Their own was plainer, with board beds attached to the wall in place of proper bedsteads; but compared to a wet night in the mud on the riverside, it was equal to any of the slope beds in red leather cases at Penshurst. Master Nepeja himself, in a long brocade robe with pearl collar, was richly dressed and possessed some elaborate horse harness and nice silverware, they noticed: there was no sign of a wife, if he had one. But there again, like the Moslems, the Russian wife kept to her terem, and was not exposed to the stares of the opposite sex. Christopher, who had found out what aphrodisiac meant, thought it a pity.
His father and Master Nepeja had an interminable meeting after dinner that first night, during which Christopher fell asleep, but was aware that the Namiestnik was being inquisitive about the exact names and histories of all the Englishmen in the party. He heard his father describing, floridly, George Killingworth’s drapery business in London, and the eminence of Judde and Hawtrey’s respective parents, and the experience of Richard Grey, who had captained the Matthew Gonson to the Levant twenty years before. He extolled Henry Lane’s brains and trustworthiness and even mentioned, Christopher realized sleepily, that since his last visit John Sedgewick had become affianced to Sir George Barnes’s grand-daughter.
It all seemed fairly irrelevant until Christopher realized suddenly that Nepeja was drawing up a report for the Tsar. No one lightly was allowed to enter the city of Moscow. And without the Tsar’s agreement, no one was permitted to leave it.
The Namiestnik was talking now of conquests they had made at a place called Astrakhan, and how the