From Malta, letters from a Knight of St John called de Seurre; and from Greece and Turkey long epistles, with ribbons, from a wandering poet whose name was Míkál: Dragut Rais is leading the armada of Suleiman from Turkey to attack the Emperor’s men in Florence and Corsica, so they say.
And from a scholar of Guthrie’s acquaintance in England named Bartholomew Lychpole: The Queen has ratified the marriage with Prince Philip and called God to witness that she has not consented to marry from any carnal affection or desire, nor from any motive but her kingdom’s honour and prosperity, and the repose and tranquillity of her subjects. All present, the letter added in its broad, angular writing, had tears in their eyes.
The Queen has decided not to execute William Courtenay, and he has been allowed out of prison. The Queen’s half-sister the Lady Elizabeth has been released from the Tower, and the Stillyard merchants shot off cannon for joy when she passed, which displeased the Queen mightily.
And in early August: The Spanish marriage has taken place. The Prince has no English. The Queen speaks no Castilian, but understands it. The Spaniards he has brought with him are not impressed, and are heard to say openly that the Queen is a good creature, but rather older than they had been told, although if she dressed in their fashions she might not look so old and so flabby. At least, they conclude, the King of England (as he now styles himself) fully realizes that the marriage was concluded for no fleshly consideration, but in order to remedy the disorders of the kingdom and preserve the Low Countries.
Much was made at the wedding of the Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, than whom there are few closer to the Queen Mary. She acted as Mistress of the Robes and Purse Bearer as well as First Lady, and had with her a fair son of eight, whom they call Henry, Lord Darnley.
The letters moved backwards and forwards, but the secret of their destination was perfectly kept. Only the Countess of Lennox, cousin to Queen Mary, and mother of the fine son Lord Darnley, benefited from a hint dropped from the lips of Sir Thomas Wharton, who came by with Austin Grey one fine autumn morning, to pay the lady his manly respects.
A woman in her late thirties with King Henry’s political cleverness; and King Henry’s will; and King Henry’s fair and untouched physical splendour, the Lady Margaret received the news at first coolly. ‘Philippa Somerville has returned? A Northumberland family, I recall. With property adjoining Lord Allendale’s.’ Her voice had flattened a trifle. ‘The girl is of some importance?’
‘Not in herself,’ Sir Thomas said mildly. ‘Although the property, as you say, is fairly extensive. I was more concerned with her family connections. You know she’s just spent a year with that Scots fellow Crawford of Lymond?’
‘Ah!’ said the Countess of Lennox. After a moment she said, ‘No. Poor, misguided child. I had not heard of this. Where did this happen?’
Tom Wharton’s voice, answering, clashed with Austin Grey’s, attempting apparently to remonstrate. Tom Wharton won. ‘In somewhat doubtful circumstances in the poorer parts of the Middle Sea, so I believe. It is said he went through a form of marriage with the girl. At least she claims to have papers.’
‘She has papers,’ said Austin Grey sharply. ‘Tom, you know as well as I do this was a regular marriage. They went through it as a matter of form. But it was a marriage.’
‘Well. She says it was a matter of form,’ said Thomas Wharton. He flicked the young Marquis on the arm. ‘Don’t get so excited. Your friends will make fun of you.’
Margaret Douglas said slowly, ‘Married? Francis Crawford is married to this farmer’s daughter from Hexham?’ Then without removing her fine eyes from Thomas Wharton, she added, ‘Why?’
Far better than Austin Grey she knew from years of experience how to conceal surprise or dismay or excitement, but even so, the effort behind her very detachment told Tom Wharton all he wanted to know. He said, ‘That we don’t know. But Flaw Valleys is very close to the Scots Border. And he has used it already in actions against my father in England.’
‘I remember,’ said Margaret Douglas. ‘Her father was Gideon Somerville. One of Lord Grey’s staunchest lieutenants through the Scottish wars and between them. He served with the Queen for a while.’
‘He is dead,’ Tom Wharton said. ‘There’s only his widow now at Flaw Valleys, and his only child, Philippa. I tell you, I shouldn’t like to see Flaw Valleys become the base for Francis Crawford’s activities. And that is what may well be the outcome.’
‘Tom, that’s nonsense,’ said Austin Grey. ‘The man isn’t even there. And she’s going to have the marriage annulled.’
‘How wise,’ said Margaret Douglas. ‘And where, then, is her importunate husband?’
‘She says,’ said Wharton, ‘she left him in Greece. Volos, I think. She travelled back alone with his son.’
There was a moment’s blank pause. Then the Countess of Lennox began, despite herself, to laugh. ‘His son! How many foolish extravagances has he permitted himself, on this odd peregrination? By whom? Philippa?’
‘The child is over two,’ said Austin Grey. He was a little pale. ‘In fact, Lady Lennox, Mr Crawford has disappeared and there is no reason to think that he will ever come back to Scotland. As Tom has said, the marriage is to be dissolved. I really think you need have no misgivings about it.’
‘But,’ said Lady Lennox, ‘if he did come back, it might be quite serious. I think we should find out what is happening about the divorce. And whether in fact the child genuinely means to go through with it. How old is she? Fourteen?’
‘Seventeen, Lady Lennox,’ said Austin Grey.
He had displeased her. ‘Indeed,’ she said. And after a moment, ‘Old enough, then, for Court. Sir Thomas, is she presentable? If her parents were in the Queen’s household, she cannot be too rough in her ways.’
Thomas Wharton put his velvet-shod foot firmly on top of Austin Grey’s toes, and kept it there. ‘She would do at Court very nicely,’ he said. ‘She has an uncle somewhere in London. The Queen would remember the family.’
‘Then,’ said Lady Lennox, ‘I shall get the Queen’s permission tomorrow to invite her. And you shall take the summons with you Lord Allendale, when next you go north to the Somervilles. I take it you would have no objection to showing this girl how to conduct herself in the city?’
And Austin Grey, flushing, confirmed shortly that he would be pleased to escort Mistress Philippa Somerville in any way the Countess might indicate.
Chapter 5
Philippa’s letter, stained with food and sea water, arrived in the Kremlin in September and was laid by a servant on the Voevoda’s carved desk in the palace granted to him and to his mistress by his sovereign prince, Ivan IV. It lay there, ranked with other papers and packets, neatly dated and docketed, awaiting the Voevoda’s attention. Crawford of Lymond, as demanded of his new office and title of Russian commander, was absent in the field with his officers; whether exercising or fighting, his household did not know.
Smoothly conducted by the Mistress’s small, white-fleshed hands, the business of the luxurious house continued without cease. The Mistress’s riches were unpacked; the carpets laid; the tapestries hung, the books and paintings displayed; the lute and harpsichord uncrated and placed in the new rooms designed and built to her orders so that the strict timber edifice, raised in a cleared space near the Nikólskaya Tower for some dead appanaged prince, had gathered wings and balconies and galleried gables linked with steepled porches and bridges and stairs, tooled and painted and fretted like a gingerbread mould.
Outside, Güzel’s house was pure Russian. Inside, it was Venetian and Arab and Turkish, from the Murano glass and silk hangings to the silver incense burner and the blue and yellow tiles on the floor of the hot room where the lord of the house might strip off the stiff leather and steel of two weeks’ campaigning and emerge, bathed and rested, in the fresh robes made for him from the velvets and damasks in her embroidery rooms.
Those who lived in the Kremlin, whose wives walked ve
iled to church and to weddings and, surrounded by slaves and by stewards, took part in public life not at all, watched the foreign princess secretly; defensively; consumed by an envious and frantic curiosity. Güzel, knowledgeable in the ways of both men and women and accustomed to ruling, steel within silk, the still greater establishment of the Stamboul harem, made no inexpedient advances but waited, allowing her visiting tradesmen and craftsmen to glimpse and be astounded by the tall Gothic splendours of her Nürnberg clock, and the fragile and unimaginable mystery of the Italian harpsichord.
On the day the Tsaritsa’s chief lady in waiting called on her, Güzel’s house was ablaze with wax lights and hung with the smells of jasmine and the almond and sugars of sweetmeats. She saw the kitchens and the serving rooms, and met Master Gorius Grossmeyer, Güzel’s German physician. Two days later, Güzel received the first ceremonial visit from Anastasia herself and was able to present her with the silk robe, re-embroidered with crystals and bullion, which her woman had made for the new son Ivan, then four months old, and to invite her to consult with her doctor.
The following day, Güzel was received by Anastasia in the Golden Rooms at the palace of Terems, bringing some lengths of deep crimson velvet and a covered basket of sweet cakes, borne by her serving woman. There she met the whole household of women, including the widowed Tartar Queen Suunbeka and her son, brought as willing hostage to Moscow after the Tsar’s victory over the Tartar stronghold of Kazan. She met too the wives of the princes, who soon visited her and were visited in their turn. But most of Güzel’s time, from then onwards, was divided between the house she controlled and the palace.
Whether the Voevoda knew what was happening, and what place, indeed, he had in this intriguing establishment, was something that the curious ladies of the Terems were unable to discover. That the two were unmarried was ascertained at the beginning. So also was the certainty, though from what source no one knew, that it was Güzel who had brought to the Tsar this inestimable band of Western trained soldiers, and that it was her resources which had furnished both the journey and the splendours of the residence which he shared.
The princes and boyars attached to the court, hearing the tale with a certain brooding interest from their wives, felt more than a spice of envy for the endowments which could call forth such favours. They were further gripped by what their wives could relay to them of Güzel’s experiences in the seraglio of the Sultan Suleiman, and all she had learnt there and from Dragut her lover, of the Turkish army and naval command.
Güzel knew a great deal, and it was not hard to persuade her, now and then, to tell what she knew, about the Spahis and the Janissaries, and their numbers and leadership; about their weapons and practices; about the Sultan’s advisers, and his policy towards the Tartars on Russia’s borders and towards Russia herself.
From Güzel, indirectly, the Boyar Council learned as much, in a few weeks, as the princes learned about western customs direct from her favourite Crawford of Lymond, the foreigner they called Voevoda Frangike. But to questions about Güzel, the Voevoda had proved politely uncooperative, proceeding thence smoothly to intolerance: whether the Voevoda was thus defending his mistress, his vanity or merely his right to possess a personal life was not entirely clear, either to his victims or to the men who were following him.
These, as it turned out, had little enough leisure to ponder it. Foiled over the house in the Kremlin, Lancelot Plummer exercised his talents as engineer and architect in designing a suitable home for himself and his fellow officers in Kitaigorod, the merchant quarter of Moscow adjoining the swallowtail walls of the Kremlin, and walled itself in identical white-veined red brick. He made the building of brick: spacious and utilitarian, with room for their equipment and a disposition this time of steps, doors and windows which would make outside assault a very difficult proposition indeed. A chaste line of dog-tooth white stonework and a minor embellishment of the principal doorways was all he permitted of flourish.
The third building he made for St Mary’s was at Vorobiovo, the country suburb south of the river, and had no flourishes within or without. It was here that their training ground was laid out, and where he and the others would work and live beside the rough wooden huts of the Streltsi, Ivan’s only trained standing force, until the groundwork was done, and they had created the fighting arm which Russia needed.
Once it had begun, the swiftness of it surprised all of them; even those who remembered the start of the band of mercenaries known to Western Europe as St Mary’s. Some of it was directly due to the change, now unequivocally clear, in Lymond himself. The cleverness, the far-sightedness; the broadly imaginative grasp of basic essentials were there and identified, with mounting enjoyment, by Danny Hislop’s bright watching eyes. But the remembered other side, so shrewdly guessed at by Danny, had disappeared as damascening melts in the heat, leaving only the iron. They were led, as was their due, by an active and distinguished commander. But any warmth, any cameraderie, any cultivation of trifling pursuits and sharing of friendships and laughter must be engendered, they found, among the six men who were left, and the Muscovite soldiers to whom, by and by, they also gave office.
The Voevoda did not stand aside: he was involved on the contrary in the very fabric of all they were building. But to the members, old and new, of the company he had created, whom he worked, as he worked himself, with a disciplined and violent intensity, he showed a blank and courteous indifference. And nightly, when he could, he withdrew from their society to Güzel’s civilized house, with its books and its music and its well-prepared food, bringing them in the morning the lists and orders he had prepared for their daily conference, and a group of boyars, to visit the training ground and watch his men as, with bow and axe and lance and handgun, on foot and on horse, they recovered the skills blunted in long weeks of travelling.
Addressed with the deference and charm he knew, to the touch of a hairspring, how to exercise, they would watch, studying the fine, the new points, and encouraged, would take lance themselves, to be allowed to achieve small successes; to have their failures excused and explained to them.
Then, over a meal from their lavish kitchens, they would be shown the company’s maps, the details checked and drawn in by Adam the artist from the dog-eared rolls stored in the armoury workshops with their carefree and contradictory inkings of coastline and rivers, added to by Adam himself, riding through the forests of birch, oak, fir and maple and the light rolling plains around Moscow; checking the cornfields, the marshes, the river systems between the Upper Volga and Oka; noting the bridges and windmills and huddled settlements doublestaked with tall poles to turn aside melting ice at the thaw; the occasional guard-post, sometimes ruined, sometimes rebuilt by Ivan, which he dismounted and examined; the wooden churches like clumps of sweet clover which he passed by, without looking back.
The results were impressive. So was their list of arms and munitions, compiled painstakingly with the help of the duma, and less meagre than they had feared. Ivan possessed brass Italian guns and pieces from Germany. There were brises, falcons, minions, sakers, culverins, double and royal basilisks and six great pieces with shot three feet high, as well as muskets, hackbuts and mortars, potguns for wild fire and bows for stone shot as well as the usual kind. There were the traditional hooked swords and pikes and ryvettes and iron maces, coats of mail and brigantines and steel targets and the characteristic spired helms. There were stocks and wheels for gun carriages and high mobile gun towers and all the appurtenances of siege and pioneer work, fashioned for them fifty years ago by engineers brought in from Germany.
Displaying the total Alec Guthrie conveyed, tactfully, a qualified satisfaction. It was not the moment to mention the fact that most of the weapons were of a certain antiquity, nor that it had become gradually clear that none of the Tsar’s relatives, boyars, boyars’ sons, courtiers, service princes, palace guards, merchants, burghers or frontiersmen knew what to do with them.
He did not discuss the other, private l
ists he and Lymond were compiling: of foundry and shot tower capacity, of raw material resources of iron and copper and salt and silver and potash: the plethora of timber and dressed leather; the disastrous scarcity of lead and corn powder and sulphur. They knew what stores of meat and fish, fresh, frozen and salted, the Tsar and his merchants kept in their warehouses, and what daily consumption of flour the Neglinnya corn mills could grind.
They had learned weights and coinage and were making costings for the best sources of army supplies: barrels, ladders and horse-carts; saddles of wood and Saphian leather; flax, soap and mats from Novgorod; elkskins from Rostov; bows and arrows at five marks apiece from Smolensk; sledges costing a poltina each. They surveyed the supply of tall Argamaks, the Turcoman horses, crossed with Arab stock, whose long necks and fine legs made for great speed over the flat plains of the south, but who could not endure long riding over rough country. They found they could buy for three roubles the small, short-necked Pachmat horses of the Tartars, who were used to wooden saddles and stirrups and could live for a lifetime on sawdust.
Coinage was a matter for tact. There was no gold in Russia: for that they used Hungarian coins. The silver Novgorod rouble was worth twice the silver Moscow rouble, and that was worth sixteen shillings and eightpence English money, but less converted to bullion. And, as Fergie Hoddim complained with some bitterness, half the time the seller hardly knew how to set a price on his product, being accustomed to barter.
‘Will I tell ye the price of a hatchet?’ snarled Fergie at their once-daily assembly at supper, tearing apart a wild goose helped down with gobbets of rye bread and spirit. ‘You try handing over an altine and they’ll spit on your uppers. A tied bunch of sable skins drawn through the hole where the haft enters, that’s the price of a hatchet. Forbye,’ said Fergie austerely, ‘if they’re going to count they wee dengi in fifties, I wish they wouldna use their big mouths as pouches. I clapped one lad on the shoulders last Monday, and it was Thursday before he was able to pay me.’
The Ringed Castle: Fifth in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles Page 8