The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [90]
At their head stood three mounted grooms, one of them with a great, ruffled bird hooded and chained to his crupper. And in front of these, sitting at ease in the saddle was the man who had spoken. A man, Christopher saw, with hair brighter than Killingworth’s under his furred and jewelled cap: with fair skin hardened with weather and untold experience, despite the clear-lidded flower-blue eyes into which Diccon Chancellor was staring. A man whose clothes made motionless points of silver and flame beneath a buff coat paned and embroidered: whose reins rested in gloves stitched with gold wire and dark, anonymous stones. Christopher lifted his eyes.
‘Ignore the dress,’ said the gentleman pleasantly. ‘It belongs to the Tsar. I have to hand it back to him on pain of fine, untorn and unstained, with the underwear.… Mr Chancellor?’
‘Mr Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny?’ said Diccon Chancellor.
The horseman smiled with his lips. ‘Ah. You have heard about Slata Baba,’ he said; and dismounting smoothly, threw his reins to the groom with the eagle, who moved up quietly to take them. The bird sat erect, unstirring from the thin scarlet plumes on her hood to the yellow, powerful talons, their bright, scythe-edged claws hooked on a block at the crupper. Her master, still smiling, stood and ran his blue gaze over the six tired English figures before him, also dismounted and standing in their wet cloaks at Chancellor’s shoulders. He bowed, and then smiled and bowed again to Nepeja and the two Kholmogory merchants. To Chancellor, he said, ‘First, since you know who I am, may I deliver my message?’
‘I am honoured,’ said Chancellor. He spoke automatically, for to himself he was thinking: Philippa Somerville’s husband. This—this is Philippa’s husband. He dared not look at Robert Best’s face, or Christopher’s, beside him.
‘Then I have to say,’ said the other man mildly, ‘that the great lord Ivan Vasilievich, by the grace of God Duke of Muscovy and Tsar of all Russia, has understood that you are come as Ambassador from his cousin Mary of England, and has sent me, his servant, to escort you to your residence, and to see that you are provided with every necessity. I am to ask whether you have been well on your journey?’
From a disadvantage of four inches and a quantity of stupefaction, Diccon Chancellor bowed. ‘God give health to the Tsar. By the mercy of God and the favour of the Tsar, we have been well on our journey.’
It was the formula. The other man completed it. ‘The great lord Ivan Vasilievich, Tsar of Russia, has sent you, Master Richard, an ambling nag with a saddle, together with other horses from his own stable for these your companions. Pray accept these and mount, while we have the honour of bringing you to lie at our monastery of Trinity St Sergius.’
His black beard lifting just a trifle, Diccon Chancellor stood his ground and did not glance at the string of horses approaching. ‘I should prefer not to visit the Troitsa Monastery,’ Chancellor said. ‘As you perhaps heard. I do not wish to seem ungrateful, but my time is too short for formalities.’
The decorative person who was Mistress Philippa’s husband made no effort to agree or to argue. ‘It is the Tsar’s order,’ he said.
‘The Tsar does not know the circumstances,’ said Chancellor quietly. There was not a great deal of daylight left.
The horses had been brought up. The man Crawford put a gloved hand on the bridle of the first and finest, and held it waiting for Chancellor. ‘He does not need to know them,’ he said. ‘He merely issues orders, and they are obeyed, fortunate man, as in England the Queen’s desires are honoured by all her guests, invited and other.’ His manner, irritatingly, was quite impeccably charming.
‘Or you have your heels broken?’ asked Diccon losing, suddenly, a thread of his patience.