The Ringed Castle (78 page)

‘Wait,’ said Lymond. His jerkin off, he was rummaging shirt-sleeved through the stands: a moment later, he emerged with a long Turkey gown which he tossed to d’Harcourt. ‘Come on, Hospitaller. You’re Lame Lazar. Nicholas, you can be Luck. And’—as Nicholas caught the red cloth cloak tossed him—‘and I, of course, shall be Lamuel the Lewd.’ A satin doublet of hideous orange engulfed him for a moment, and then he pulled it down, and began to tramp, without progressing, before Philippa. ‘Now go on.’

‘I’ve forgotten.… No, I haven’t,’ said Philippa. Long Sunday
evenings of nonsensical charades with Kate and Gideon paraded before her, and evenings spent devising songs, and poems, and doggerel, with Ls or without.… She drew breath and started, haltingly, making it up as she went.

‘Very good. Not enough Ls in the last line,’ said Lymond critically.

‘Then you do better,’ said Philippa, incensed.

‘Gentlemen!’ said the Yeoman.

‘What in God’s name is going on?’ said Sir Henry Sidney’s voice, from behind stacks of shelving.

‘Go on,’ said Philippa. ‘The Lazar.’

‘I can’t,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt, clutching his gold gown about him.

‘Why not? Go on,’ said Philippa.

‘I can’t think of any words,’ said d’Harcourt apologetically.

‘Never mind,’ Lymond said. ‘Say after me:

‘You do mine,’ said Nicholas, glowing.

‘No, I’ll do it,’ said Philippa, feeling her oats. She thought.

‘That’s really very good,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Is there more?’

‘Yes: Death,’ said Lymond. ‘Where are the Medioxes? Philippa?’

‘Up there. I’ll get them,’ Philippa said. Hampered by drakes’ necks, she clambered on to a middle shelf and from there made her way upwards.

‘Gentlemen!’ called Lymond warningly.

She called back, ‘It’s all right,’ and tossed him the death’s head, which he put on, while she perched where she was, observing approvingly.

‘Right?’ said Lymond.

‘You’ve changed the metre,’ said Philippa.

‘I reserve the right,’ said Lymond, ‘to change the metre. Don’t interrupt.

‘Let me do it,’ said Philippa.

Lymond said, looking up, ‘That is robbery.’

‘I don’t care. Let me do it. You got all the last verse.’

‘All right,’ said Lymond generously. ‘It has to rhyme with
fell.’

And from her high perch, happily, Philippa declaimed.

There was a roar of applause, from friends, tailors and Yeoman, and Philippa fell off the stand.

And, since the stand was not stable, it toppled with her, and striking the next stand, toppled that, which falling sideways, pushed a row of stands, with majestic slowness towards that part of the room where the paint and glue pots were standing. Chests opened. Hampers yawned. Cloth, clothes, bells, masks, heads, hay, swords, wigs and feathers erupted crashing upon floor and tables, while painters fled and tailors rose yelling and the explosions, continuing, dwindled; leaving nothing but silence, and the trickling of saffron, vermilion, yellow ochre, sap green and red lead, as they spread on the floor of the Revels.

‘Philippa?’ said Henry Sidney.

‘She’s knocked herself out. She’s all right,’ Lymond said. ‘So’s Nicholas. Look. I think d’Harcourt has broken an arm.’

The dust hung in the hall like a tapestry. Picking his way over the rubble, oblivious to the noise of men’s voices returning, Sir Henry found and knelt by the wigged bundle which was Sumtuous Lechery, and felt her pulse anxiously. She had had, as Lymond said, a crack on the crown and was quite unconscious. Otherwise, miraculously, she seemed to be unharmed.

D’Harcourt had been less lucky. By the time Sidney got there, Nicholas was helping Lymond pull him from under a chest: his left arm was undoubtedly broken, and he had had a bad blow on the head. Sidney said, ‘There are beds in the offices. I shouldn’t like to move him until he’s been looked at and had the arm set. Nicholas, find the Yeoman and tell him one gentleman is hurt and will he go to the nearest apothecary’s for a bonesetter. Mr Crawford …’

‘I shall stay with him,’ Lymond said. His shirt torn and his hand and cheek grazed, he had taken no other harm and was intent, with some success, on making d’Harcourt more comfortable.

‘No,’ Sidney said. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so. I know these people here. I shall see that your friend gets the best service possible, and I shall have him taken to Fenchurch Street as soon as he is able to travel. But I think Mistress Philippa should be in the care of Lady Dormer. These are kind men, but rough.… Nicholas would help you carry her, and the barge will take you straight to the gate.’

Lymond rose and stood, frowning.

‘Truly,’ Sir Henry said. ‘You can do no more
for
him here. Trust me with him.’

And after a moment more, ‘Yes, of course,’ Lymond said; and stretching, looked for the first time about him. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ. I shall have to go down and unload the
Primrose.’

‘It was a notable play,’ said Henry Sidney. ‘And worth any cost in my book. Provided your officer here bears you no resentment, I think the other victims may soon be propitiated.’

‘That,’ said Lymond, ‘is precisely why I dislike leaving you. I must exact the promise, please, of an accounting.’

‘I promise,’ said Sidney. ‘On the other hand, you still have to make your peace with Mistress Philippa.’ He glanced, smiling, towards the flaxen wig and Lymond, his lips twitching, surveyed it as well. Sidney added gently, ‘The men who fight under you are fortunate.’

Lymond turned and looked at him, and then smiled; and for all there were only two years between them, Sidney felt his maturity of a sudden drop away. ‘But life,’ Lymond said, ‘is not quite like this in Russia.’

Philippa was still unconscious when he disentangled her from the cluster of Medioxes and, pulling off the wig, lifted her in his arms
while Nicholas, climbing before him, pioneered their footing out of the shambles.

Outside, the sun was still shining, and the oarsmen waiting, patiently, to take Sir Henry back to the Savoy. Lymond explained, briefly, and climbed into the barge, Nicholas helping. Nicholas, in spite of the unfortunate outcome, was still full as a millstream with bubbles: he giggled all the way to Lady Dormer’s, in between droning verse and applying, frequently, for the lines he had failed to remember. Lymond settled with Philippa’s head on his arm, and was disposed to smile, sometimes, too.

Whiffle
. She was a quick-witted child. From Kate, of course. He stirred back the brown hair which had caught in her lashes. And that was Kate’s too. What did she take from Gideon? Honesty. That both her parents had. And courage. Riding through the night once, into unknown country, to find him, and pay some sort of debt she thought she owed to him, or her parents. And, of course, following him for the sake of the child. In spite of a good deal of uncivilized behaviour, he recalled clearly, on his part.

Courage from both parents, too. You would go far to find a woman braver than Kate. And music—from Gideon? Yes. Both studied and felt—that furious display on the harpsichord at Lady Mary’s, defiant though it had been, had been more than plain pyrotechnics. But then, she was no longer ten, and had put to use the years of study and practice. How old, then, was she?

The year he fought his brother, they had met. The year of Pinkie, or the spring just after. Which made her … nearly twenty.

He was aware of deep surprise. But of course, the mind which had comprehended and discussed with him all the intricacies of the present blunderings of nations was not, could not be a child’s. The loving spirit which could serve Queen Mary, seeing clearly all her weakness, had nothing immature about it, or the wit which Ascham had found worthy to teach.

Unlike Kate, this girl had broken from her setting. All that Kate was, she now had. And standing on Kate’s shoulders, something more, still growing; blossoming and yet to fruit.

All that he was not. He looked at her. The long, brown hair; the pure skin of youth; the closed brown eyes, their lashes artfully stained; the obstinate chin; the definite nose, its nostrils curled. The lips, lightly tinted, and the corners deepened, even sleeping, with the remembrance of sardonic joy.… The soft, severe lips.

And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil. ‘We’re there, sir,’ Nicholas said.

The air hurt his skin. His nerves, unsheathed, left him over-sensitized and defenceless, as sometimes happened: exposed raw to
the touch of his clothes, as if his flesh had been stripped off with acid. He remained perfectly still.

‘… Sir?’ Nicholas said.

So Francis Crawford moved and, bending, took the weight of the straight shoulders and the crumpled skirts and the supple hands and the fall of long, ruffled hair. It was not a child’s body, any more.

He carried Philippa from the boat and through the garden of the Savoy, without moving his hands. Somewhere he stopped, because Nicholas was speaking to him: it seemed that Lady Dormer was out, with her women, and the house was empty except for the kitchen maids. Nicholas offered to go find them and the physician they favoured. He agreed, and found himself inside the house, with an excited kitchenmaid beside him, showing him to Mistress Philippa’s chamber. She was still in his arms, and had not wakened.

The maid seemed to have gone. He lowered Philippa on her bed and took his hands away, without touching her again. Then he simply stood, watching her face. Once she sighed, and he moved backwards, unthinking, and came to rest half-way to the door as she fell silent again. Shortly after that, she moved her head once or twice: she was not far from waking. He stood, with his back to the door, until Lady Dormer arrived. Then he went downstairs, and stood at the window.

Almost immediately, it seemed, Lady Dormer was beside him. Mistress Philippa had wakened: she was well, except for a headache. She sent him her apologies and had also uttered, on waking, some words in Turkish which Lady Dormer was thankful to say she was unable to translate. Lady Dormer did not recommend visitors just at present, but perhaps Mr Crawford would send to ask how she was in the morning.

He said something, and became aware that he was expected to leave. He felt like a dog, he thought, whose master had died. He left the house, but did not remember the journey to Fenchurch Street.

The next thing he did remember was Ludovic d’Harcourt’s voice behind him saying, ‘Are you all right? You’ve been standing there for two hours.’ And it was probably true: he was in his own room with the lamps unlit and the door left half-open behind him. The light from the passage, coming through, fell on d’Harcourt’s big form, and the broad scarf which cradled his arm.

Francis Crawford said, ‘I … beg your pardon. Pantokrator brooding in the dome. Come in and sit down, and tell me how you feel.’ He walked to the nearest lamp and picked up the tinder, his hands shaking. He threw it down.

‘Let me,’ d’Harcourt said, and, using the fingers of his immobile arm, lit the lamp. He said, ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No,’ said Lymond. ‘It’s delayed shock, I suppose.’ The stroke of his pulses, unremitting, gave back the accelerated beat of his heart.

With a profound effort, he gripped himself, and steadied his breathing. ‘But what happened at Blackfriars? Your arm and your head?’

After five minutes, d’Harcourt said, ‘You should go to bed. I’ve been perfectly looked after: it’s a clean break, and I feel the ache, but nothing more. I enjoyed the revel. If you’ll forgive me, why in God’s name don’t you——’ He broke off.

‘Do it more often?’ Lymond said. He looked as if he wanted to laugh, but hadn’t the energy.

‘Go to bed,’ d’Harcourt said abruptly, and left him.

At some point during the night, Lymond went downstairs and sat in the dark before John Dimmock’s harpsichord. He played, when he did begin, very softly, and it reached no further than the room where his three disciples of St Mary’s were fast asleep. D’Harcourt did not wake up. Danny Hislop who was not musical did, and, rolling over, stuffed his ears with the blankets. But Adam lay for a long time listening, his eyes wide in the dark to music which, without opium and without alcohol, Lymond had never allowed within his hearing before.

He could not guess at the echoes which lay under the music.
Man has an animal appetite, or I would be nothing. I, too have had my Margaret Lennox and my Agha Morat and my child-whore Joleta Reid Malett … more of each, and for longer. It has destroyed neither of us. And now nothing can hinder us
.