The Ringed Castle (27 page)

‘Or you have your heels broken?’ asked Diccon losing, suddenly, a thread of his patience. ‘Or would your courier take the blame for all parties?’

And Francis Crawford of Lymond, undisturbed, replied. ‘For failing to trace you before you reached the Troitsa Monastery, Sergei will be whipped with a flail, whatever misfortune later overtakes other parts of his anatomy. The Tsar is unlikely to offer me violence, and would never dream of inflicting it on the orators of his cousin. You have a choice. You may conform, or go back to England.’

Diccon Chancellor looked at him without humility. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘I believed I was suggesting a sensible compromise.’

‘In Russia,’ said Lymond gently, ‘there is no such thing as a sensible compromise. Besides, they have to clean all the silver.… Do mysteries appeal to you? They say there is a copper cauldron at the Troitsa, full of herbs and cooked food, which never empties.’

He was holding the new horse’s stirrup. Chancellor hesitated one moment more; then, grasping the saddle, swung himself into place. ‘I seem to have heard it,’ he said. ‘I hear the tomb of St Sergius can work miracles, and make barren wives pregnant.’

They were all changing horses. Lymond, mounting, paced up to
Chancellor’s side. ‘The Troitsa Monastery,’ he said, ‘has an income of one hundred thousand roubles a year. They are the wealthiest merchants in Russia; and as their wealth increases, so the Tsar is able to borrow from them. The miracle of St Sergius and Russia,’ Lymond said, ‘is that they never need a sensible compromise. But don’t tell Nepeja I told you.’

Christopher saw the monastery first, white and gold against the grey sky of evening. Then they crossed the dip of a stream and rode up under the tiered, undercut walls with their string-courses of pigeons, and below the canopied arch of its entrance, its painted walls whiskered with blunt, flying angels, their haloes like spinneys of sunflowers.

Beyond, in the mild autumn air, stretched the towers, the churches, the cells of the lavra, lamps beginning already to glow under the trees, green and russet and bronze, of its gardens; and the blackrobed figures of some of its seven hundred monks moving, long-bearded and noiseless as shadows beneath. High above, fired like brands by the sunset, blazed the Dukhovskaya and Troitsa cupolas.

Dismounted, they walked between ranks of armed soldiers to the group of dark figures awaiting them. ‘The monastery,’ said Lymond agreeably, ‘is likewise a garrison. It is also a centre of the Russian Orthodox faith, which holds that the Roman Catholic is a deserter from the Primitive Church. Anyone knowingly eating with a Roman must be purified thereafter with prayer. A Metropolitan has been known to take issue on the whole matter indeed with the Archbishop of Rome himself, accusing his church of abuses, and himself of luring men to him by gluttony.… I take it that, as on the previous occasion, you are all dutiful subjects of the late King Edward and his father King Henry? The Tsar is an admirer of Henry of England.’

‘We are,’ said Diccon blandly.

‘Then you will come to no harm if you conduct yourselves soberly. You may not, for example, introduce or play on a harp. You will observe the Archimandrite whose mitre is black and round, and who wears a black pallium with three ribbons waving in front, signifying that from his mouth and heart flow streams of the doctrine of faith and good works. Your compliments should be addressed to him: perhaps Master Grigorjeff would interpret.’

Christopher looked at his father and grinned. If Master Nepeja had been able to master six words of English in the entire month of their journey, it was still six more than Grigorjeff. But his father, far from sharing the joke, was giving Lymond all his attention. Then he glanced at Master Grigorjeff and smiled.——’But——’

He broke off, still smiling. Lymond said quickly, ‘Ah. Forgive me. I see Master Grigorjeff does not speak English. Then if you will permit me, I shall act as translator. Unless you prefer to trust your own Russian? I am sure it is perfectly fluent.’

‘But rusty,’ said Diccon, still smiling. ‘Please. There are subtleties, I am sure, which it would be quite beyond me to convey.’

Through all the speeches and the excellent meal which followed, Christopher was still thrashing it out. It was not until later, when they were both in the chamber they were to share with Lane and Killingworth and Ned Price, that he said to his father, ‘Do you like Mr Crawford?’

Diccon Chancellor, in the act of climbing heavily on to his bed-board, turned’ and said after a moment, ‘He was helpful. Why, don’t you?’

‘He stopped you going to Moscow,’ said Christopher.

‘He was under orders,’ said Diccon. ‘When you’re ready, you might blow out the tapers.’

‘And he made Mr Grigorjeff look a bit silly. I wondered if there was some bad feeling between them. Pretending he could translate.’

‘Ah,’ said Diccon Chancellor. Harry Lane, already under his blanket, was grinning.

‘What,
Ah
?’ said Christopher, getting incensed.

‘Ah,’ said Chancellor, struggling down in his turn, ‘but are you sure now he couldn’t translate?’

Christopher sat up. A drop of wax, unregarded, fell on the arm of his shirt. ‘You mean——’

‘I mean,’ said his father, ‘that you should remember one paramount rule. Watch your tongue.’ And he leaned over and blew out the taper.

They were in the monastery for three days and three nights, during which George Killingworth and his colleagues were in frequent session at long meetings held in and around the storehouses, and the contents of the telegas were subject to some picking and rummaging. Christopher, handed over to the monks for entertainment, ate rather well, and was conducted with some care through the buildings and along the fifty-foot walls with their twelve faceted watch-towers, and was shown the ten vaults with their immense nine-foot barrels of wine, beer and mead, filled by chute from above.

He had more time than he wanted to look at the Troitsa Cathedral, with its golden globes on tall, window-ribbed drums, and its thick white stucco, banded with stone fretted like lace. Inside, in the low trapeza, lay St Sergius’s coffin in draped cloth of gold. Christopher had seen it manage no miracles, although he spent some time watching the constant movement of people chatting, eating and praying, and had drifted through to the high, narrow hall of the church, with the square painted panels of its iconostasis rising in tiers of gold to the ceiling. The light dazzled: from a dozen candles taller than himself, and the blazing wick of a hundred-pound kettle of wax. It set fire to the rubies, the sapphires, the gold of the rizas, the embossed shields of the ikons: the Virgin Platytera, the Virgin Hodigitia, the Virgin Blacherniotissa, and Andrei Rubles’s three grave, almond-eyed angels seated at Abraham’s table. It lit the chalices, the crosses, the incense burners, the royal doors to the sanctuary, and the canopied gold of the altar, with its circle of dark, singing figures. A ring of candles shone on the white beard and sparkling brocade of the abbot. He wore a slabbed medallion with a sad, sunken figure lost in its centre.

They were all around Christopher, the sombre figures, in picture and fresco. Profiled bodies, bowing in long, graceful rows, turned their faces to watch him. Here, the uplifted thumb-shapes of wings. There, the elderly, dome-headed Child within the engraved foil of its cover. The prostrate, holy figures, curved like an ark. The hyphen eyebrows and long, thin-boned noses and down-curved, patient mouths. The hunched shoulders and creased double fingers of benison; the robes veined in folds like body moulds made of thin leaves, rising on walls, pillars and ceiling: settling, dry and humble and melancholy, upon him.…

‘They
will
use flax seed oil,’ a voice said at his elbow. ‘I have it on the best authority that varnish and candle soot together will soon
turn every saint into an Ethiopian and the Virgin Platytera into a subject for prayerful speculation. Have you eaten yet?’

It was Mistress Philippa’s powerful husband, with Makaroff at his shoulder.

‘No, sir,’ said Christopher.

‘Then come with us and rejoice,’ said Mr Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny. ‘You are going to Moscow tomorrow.’

They ate with the Abbot, and drank a great deal; and it was probably the vodka which loosened Diccon Chancellor’s tongue; and exasperation because in three days he had never had more than a few hours of the man Crawford’s company, and then as interpreter, with the monks crowding about him; or here with the abbot, or exchanging words, briefly, with Nepeja or Makaroff or his friend. At first, it seemed to Chancellor that he and Crawford were being kept apart by the Russians. Latterly, he had begun to wonder if he had been induced to think exactly that.

This was not a roistering, war-addled soldier boy, who had made promises to one girl too many, and had to marry her. For the first time, he understood and believed what Philippa had told Sir Henry Sidney. There was no relationship between them; no affinity, and no possible meeting of interests, he was sure, between the innocence on that side, and the experience on this. If Crawford had married her, it was for his own purpose, and for no other reason. That said, it seemed to Diccon, widower, father and man of considerable vision, that the least Francis Crawford could do was assure himself of the wellbeing of his wife, communicate with her, and, at the earliest moment, keep his promise to release her.

The fellow had not inquired how Philippa was. He had not mentioned her. He had asked almost nothing of events back in England: a policy understandable enough, perhaps, if one considered the fanaticism of the Queen, and the Russian view of Catholicism. If Ivan believed that England still followed the tenets of Henry VIII (why did the Tsar admire him? did he have his eye on the Troitsa?) then there was no need to disillusion him.

Crawford had spoken readily enough about Ivan Vasilievich. He was a great merchant: most of the tithes of the north came to him as furs and walrus rusks: his storehouses were full of goods for selling or barter. It ran in the blood: the brother of Zoe Paleologus, said Crawford cheerfully, had bartered his right to the throne of Byzantium—three times, to three different people.

On trade matters he was informative. He was also disposed to be searching in his own inquiries. Chancellor found himself answering questions about the objectives and standing of the Muscovy Company, the nature of its financial arrangements and the names of some of its two hundred-odd members. He did not require to be told what
a joint-stock company was. ‘I have a friend,’ said Mr Crawford gently, ‘who keeps me in a state of celestial enlightenment on legal matters. Seven peers then, and twenty knights, most of them members of the Privy Council or Household … it would suit such a panel, I imagine, to trade as a body, through paid employees such as Mr Grey and Mr Killingworth here, rather than individually, as your merchant members in the other, regulated companies must do. Seven aldermen … the Solicitor General … the Attorney General … ten customs officers … six holding office in the Mint … and Sebastian Cabot as your permanent Governor. Mr Chancellor, your company can hardly fail to be the most successful merchandising venture in London. And who owns your ships?’

‘The company do,’ said Diccon Chancellor. The rest of the table had fallen silent. He wondered, as he had wondered for three days, just how much English Grigorjeff knew. Or Nepeja, for that matter. ‘They were bought and refitted with the six thousand pounds’ initial raised capital. The bulk of our members, Mr Crawford, are merchants.’

‘But the
Philip and Mary
, which you are hoping to see in the spring, is a royal ship?’

‘Chartered,’ Chancellor said, ‘by the company.’

‘And the timber and hemp you are anxious to buy, Mr Chancellor, will be used in the royal dockyards instead of the masts and cable the Council used to purchase from Danzig?’

Beside him, Chancellor could feel the faint, rising uneasiness of his three merchanting colleagues. George Killingworth said, ‘This is a small part of our cargo. Our remit includes the purchase of large stores of wax——’

‘Used,’ Lymond said thoughtfully, ‘by the English Chancery alone at the rate of five thousand pounds in the year for great seals, half-seals and writs. Or so my legal confrère has told me. And you, Mr Chancellor, are here—and most welcome too—receiving royal honours as a royal ambassador from your mistress?’

Of course, it was true. Of course it suited the company to obtain the Tsar’s interest at the highest level of all, by stressing that the negotiations had the direct support of the Queen. Of course it suited the Queen to have free diplomatic representation, without the expense of setting up an embassy; and to have first claim on certain items of cargo.

But the company had paid for these journeys. The company had paid for the gifts he was about to present—once they came from Vologda—to the Tsar. And the company would have to pay for the Queen’s continuing interest, he suspected, by furnishing the Queen’s dockyards and perhaps even her Treasury on the longest possible credits. He said, ‘I think it best to be plain. My presence here as
ambassador is purely a formality, as I think you might guess. We are here, Mr Crawford, on a matter of trade. We have no political interest in Russia.’

‘How improvident of you,’ said Mistress Philippa’s husband.

Behind the wide, cold eyes, the charming insolence, a woman might see, Chancellor thought, a life-long hunger for power; a litter of outworn romances. He said, ‘What is your position, here in Russia?’

‘I am a soldier,’ said Lymond.

‘Then you had some share in the successes last summer? I hear the Tsar has a much improved army,’ said Chancellor.

‘It is reasonably well organized,’ said Mr Crawford, with gravity. ‘Osep tells me that you expected to find me in Russia?’

Diccon Chancellor, brows raised, looked along the table at Master Nepeja, who did not meet his eyes. ‘I failed to realize,’ he said, ‘that you and he were on Christian-name terms. The title Voevoda surely means General?’

‘I am known, as you seem to have heard, as the Voevoda Frangike. Christian names are common usage. But I do confess to an association, of course, with the Namiestnik of Vologda. Osep was merely showing discretion. The Tsar does not necessarily wish to advertise the composition of his army.’