Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
He waited until she had finished, and for a moment indeed he did not speak at all. The he said, dropping the words with lucid, passionless economy into the stillness, ‘Of all the homes I have known, yours has been a shining model of wisdom and kindness and honesty. For what you and your mother have done in the past, for me and for the child, I owe you a profound debt of honour. You have that claim on me. So has your mother. But if you press it
too
far; if you will accept
no appeal and continue to press it, over and over; if you move into my life, both of you, and take your stance there and feel obliged to command and instruct me in how I should or should not behave, you will destroy our relationship. I shall walk away from you both; I shall deny you both; I shall repudiate all you have done for me. It will all be as if it had never happened … I don’t know what you fear for me, but that you should fear. For I cannot afford it.’
She was unbecomingly crying. She said, ‘How do you find what will hurt?’ because she knew his temper and was braced for it, whereas he had employed a lance she had never dreamed of, against a place which had no defences.
He said,
‘This matter is mine, and not yours or Kate’s. I never want to hear you speak of it again. Do you hear me?’
And Philippa said sobbing, ‘Yes. But I won’t do it.’
‘Yes, you will,’ Lymond said. ‘My God, do you think I said all that because I can’t make you? Be quiet and get out of my life. Or I shall send Bailey’s papers to Richard.’
Then she cried protesting aloud and Austin Grey, waiting anxiously and restlessly at the end of the passage outside heard the sound, and other sounds of Philippa in distress, and drawing his sword, blundered along the narrow corridor and flung open the door. Philippa choked. Lymond, his face perfectly stark, said, ‘Oh, God in heaven, Tristram Trusty …’ and moved quickly back as the sword flashed towards him. Philippa yelped.
It held the stuff of both climates: the tragic and the childish. Lymond was quite unarmed. The room, crowded with bric à brac, was no more fit for a tournament than a woodshed. As Austin Grey came pursuing towards him, Lymond slid back between stool and box and bed until, glancing sideways, he was able to snatch up a baton, left stuck under the buckle of a round leather chest. He used it, parrying, just as Austin’s first sword-stroke descended and said, breathlessly, ‘What in hell are you doing here? It isn’t your quarrel!’
Philippa, joining her voice to his, said wetly, ‘Stop it!’
‘She says, Stop it,’ said Lymond.
The sword, flashing wickedly, slid past his shoulder. His face grim, his dark eyes unexpectedly savage: ‘Someone has to teach you a lesson,’ said Austin Grey.
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Lymond with exasperation, and finding the field bed behind him, somersaulted to freedom behind it.
Philippa said sharply, ‘Stop! Austin, stop it!’
But Austin, slithering over the bed, paid no attention. The sword cracked on the baton, and cracked again; then as Lymond ducked, the blade bit into the square maple table and then lifted, flashing again. Philippa hauled open the door. ‘Mr Crawford!’
‘What, battling down the staircase?’ said Lymond, and laughed. ‘No, thank you. Allendale, don’t be a fool. Put up.’
Austin said, ‘She came here to help you.’ He cut, across the width of the porcupine chair, and splinters flew from it.
‘She helps everybody,’ Lymond said. He heeled round the bedpost within an inch of the sword and, ripping the silk off the face of St Jerome, threw it bunched over the blade rising behind him. ‘Wait until you are wed. She’ll do your breathing for you.’ Austin shook off the cloth.
Philippa said, ‘That isn’t true!’
‘No,’ Lymond said. ‘He’s breathing the way you want him already. Gallant, sensitive, and kind to his mother.’ He flung himself sideways and laughed. A large box, fallen on its side, revealed itself as Sir Henry’s quilted black velvet close-stool. The pewter pot, rolling out, was scooped up and appropriated, in a second, as a bizarre shield by Lymond. Austin’s sword clanged on it; and again; the blade sliced, spraying, through the candlestick stand on a desk and Lymond, tapping and dodging, met a stool and was nearly sent staggering. Austin’s sword, unimpeded for once, slashed down and cut the baton cleanly in half.
Philippa said, ‘That’s enough. He didn’t harm me. You must stop now, Austin.’
Austin did not respond.
Philippa, lifting her skirts, plunged from the wall and thrust her way to the scene of the action. ‘Austin. You are fighting an
unarmed man
with a
sword.’
Austin pushed her out of the way and, taking a sudden stride forward, nearly managed to pin his opponent between the window and bed, dodging the lute which Lymond flung at him as he did so. ‘It will perhaps teach him,’ he said, breathing hard, ‘not to force his presumptuous manners on women.’
‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Tristram Trusty,’ said Lymond. And making three precise movements: a step by the stool, a feint by the chair and a swinging stride by the bed, kicked Austin Grey’s sword neatly clean out of his hand.
It fell beside Philippa. She picked it up before Austin could turn, jammed it hard behind Sir Henry’s desk, and hurtling forward flung her arms from behind round her protector. Like the jaws of a crocodile, two capable feminine hands closed on Austin Grey’s arms over the elbow, rendering him for the moment totally helpless. And a capable feminine voice, directed past Austin Grey’s ear to his opponent, said baldly, ‘Hit him.’
Lymond, already balanced on the upswing to hurl himself forward, dropped his arm and said, with dawning reproof, ‘I was going to.’
‘I know,’ said Philippa. ‘And it’ll take half an hour and end with an audience. Hit him.’
Under her hands, Austin Grey suddenly struggled.
‘Hit him!’
said Philippa sharply. ‘It’s the only way he can stop now, with honour.’
Which was not only perceptive, but practical. So Lymond hit him.
The Marquis of Allendale fell very neatly and was caught and lowered to the ground, quite insensible, by Francis Crawford of Lymond and his wife.
Lymond was laughing, with not quite enough breath to do it with. Straightening from Austin Grey’s body, he was gurgling still with breathlessness and hilarity: he sat on a box for a while, with his hands nearly touching the floor and his tangled head drooping between them, gasping at intervals. Philippa said, ‘Now, I’ll stay with him. You go along to the others and take your leave.’
Lymond pulled his head up. ‘As if nothing had happened.’
‘Well. Nobody knows,’ Philippa said. Poor Austin was moaning a little.
‘Except you and me,’ Lymond said rising abruptly. He walked to the door. ‘You were going to give me a promise.’
From where she knelt by her knight, Philippa looked up at the other man, graceful, facile and worldly. ‘You are thinking of someone else,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t change from minute to minute. I don’t change at all.’
‘I don’t think you have changed since you were ten years old,’ Lymond said. ‘How fortunate we all are, in some ways.’
He made his farewells with perfect courtesy and left by the door into Broad Street. Back in Fenchurch Street, shocked by his looks, Adam Blacklock was rash enough to address the Voevoda, and was treated to the kind of response, white-hot, venomous and unforgivable, which he had largely spared Philippa Somerville.
The holocaust in his head by that time was on its most staggering scale: was there a scale for headaches? Perhaps Master John Dee could plot them. Except that Master Dee would certainly want his date, time and place of birth, and Master Dee was not going to get them.
A commanding resolution. Margaret Lennox presumably had them in detail already.
There did come a time, eventually, where thought was quite impossible. Francis Crawford read for a little, then, since he knew very well what was coming, locked his door and lay, face downwards waiting, upon the high pillared bed.
He did not welcome it. But in its own way, sometimes, it was better than thought.
On Thursday, March 25th, twelve months to the day since he took leave of the Tsar his master, Osep Grigorievich Nepeja, the first Muscovite Ambassador to England, was summoned to Westminster to present himself before the King and the Queen, and to make his formal Oration.
The State barge, in which he left the Three Cranes wharf in the Vintry, was decked with streamers and flowers and gilding and flew the flag of St George for both England and Muscovy, and carried the arms of both countries. With him travelled Lord Montague and a large number of merchants from the Muscovy Company, as well as ten City Aldermen and his own far-travelled escort, which included the Voevoda and three men from St Mary’s. On the jetty at Whitehall he was met by six lords in velvet, with trumpeters, and by them conducted up the Watergate stairs to the long gallery, and from there to the Great Chamber, hung with brilliant blue baldachine and spread with one of Wolsey’s damascene carpets.
There he was saluted by Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, the Lord Chancellor; William Paget, Baron de Beaudessert as Keeper of the Seals, William Paulet, Marquis of Wiltshire, the Lord High Treasurer; and William Howard, Baron of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral, the last two being Charter Members of the Muscovy Company.
The intent on both sides was to impress. Nepeja, dressed by the Muscovy Company, whose members comprised half the Government wore a gown paned with gold wire and sewn jewels like acorns, with a tall jewelled hat on his great bearded head. The Voevoda with his three colleagues following was as refined as a charming shell cameo in thick silk brocade sewn with white sapphires and cloudy star rubies. Across his shoulders he wore, as Danny Hislop’s dazzled eyes registered, the Tsar’s great
barmi
of pendant medallions.
Treading between the double line of brilliant courtiers, brittle as the Queen Dowager’s iron flowers at Binche, Danny wondered how much it impressed the middle-aged Governor of a trading town in frozen, Tartar-torn Muscovy. The broad river, so like the Moskva, but lined with great houses and long garden walls, pierced by handsome gateways and jetties. And behind it, instead of the uniform ranks of the izbas, the whole crowded panorama of London with its church spires and towers and the tiered rows of its houses in wood, brick and plaster with their random gables and windows, deep-carved and gilded; the booths and taverns and gardens; the palaces of
bishops and kings and the town houses of merchants and nobles in every extravagance of texture and period, Gothic and classical: the black and white of timber and plaster beside brick, moulded or carved in all colours from silver to red to yellow to the kiln-burnt ripeness of mulberry.
The tall chimney stacks, crusted and twisted and diapered. The tiers of glittering glass from tower windows, square headed and mullioned and transomed, and the tailored grey cupolas, capping them. Trefoiled friezes and curling leaf ornament; swag mouldings and roundels in terra-cotta of pure Italian work. Running patterns of plasterwork, such as those which clad the walls of this building, with trailing flowers and mythological monsters: arches of flint and brick chequered, like the one standing outside in King Street. Square Gothic gatehouses, with their feet in the river, such as that which led into the Palace. The tennis courts. The tilt yards. The twenty stone piers of the Bridge.
And what did he make of the Presence Chamber, thought Danny, with its ranks of high leaded lights and great gold compartmented ceiling? And below it, the hangings of gold tissue with the emblems of England and Spain entwined in raised purple velvet, and the frieze of antique work, picked out in gold.
The dais was at the end of the room, under a heavy fringed canopy. And there, the Queen and her consort sat, unmoving, on tall gilded thrones.
Queen Mary looked ill. Dressed as if for a wedding, with her neck thickly ringed with large pearls within her rigid winged collar, and her gemmed skirts unwieldy as curtains, she breathed from her stillness a kind of violent impatience. She was suffering, it appeared, from the rheum and a toothache. And Philip, it was said, from something worse, which he had brought uncured from Brussels, having failed these many weeks to make a recovery.
But he gave no appearance of restlessness. Elegantly disposed, with his thin acquiline nose and stubborn, fair-bearded jaw he was wearing the dress sent him by his bride for their wedding day, of cloth of gold with English roses and pomegranates, all picked out in gold beads and seed pearls. On each sleeve Danny, counting discreetly, identified nine table diamonds, and his white plumed bonnet had a little chain and a medallion with diamonds and rubies.
The long-deferred, long-wanted reunion had taken place at Greenwich, four days before. At every stage of his return, from Calais to Dover, from Dover to Canterbury, from Canterbury to Greenwich King Philip had found two of the Queen’s gentlemen waiting, one of whom had ridden off forthwith to take the Queen news of his progress. On the day of his arrival at Greenwich, each London church sang the Te Deum by order of the Bishop of London, and the church
bells rang all the time, while in the palace down river the King and Queen walked to their closet, and heard their first Mass on their knees there together.
They had stayed two days at Greenwich before passing upstream to Tower Wharf with the Court, where they were met by the Lord Mayor, aldermen and sheriffs and all the Crafts in their liveries for the ceremonial ride through the City. King Philip pardoned the prisoners in the Tower in passing, and the noise of bells and trumpets and guns shooting off from the Tower was only surpassed in horror by the noise of the waits on the leads of St Peter’s in Cheap, whom Danny had joined, with Ludovic d’Harcourt, to gain his first, unpredjudiced view of King Philip.
The shopkeepers were glad to see the King present, and the Privy Council, with their palms itching, it was said. But the people gazed at the Spaniards, as Danny was gazing now at the Spanish lords grouped round the throne, and heard without enthusiasm King Philip’s publicized statements instinct (in translation) with goodness and clemency. He wished to enjoy his states, he said, rather than to increase them. And more than anything, because of its cost, its toil and its perils, was he opposed to the waging of war.