The Ringed Castle: Fifth in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett
Learning to know all the scattered buildings of Westminster, and of Wolsey’s relinquished Whitehall; learning to recognize the officers of State and all their counterparts and double counterparts in King Philip’s households of Spanish and Englishmen, Philippa began to see the reason for the obsessive hard work, in a woman who was only moderately clever, in one of the hardest offices in the world. The fluency in languages modern and classical which visiting ambassadors found so impressive. The aching need for success which showed itself in her fierce joy in gambling; in the cosseted throng of her cage-birds; in her enjoyment in children; in the care—although, to be fair, her nature was to be thoughtful and careful of others—she took with the common people on her travels, stopping to speak with them, and anonymously to care for their troubles.
The desperate need she had for the bulwark of her religion.
Sitting sewing with Jane, or reading aloud, or playing, without much thought, on the lute or the virginals, Philippa’s mind, like one of the Emperor’s clocks, busied itself with the entrancing tangle of England.
The Queen’s mother had been devout. But she had needed the support of her church more than most—mother of five stillborn children in eight years; cast off for another after twenty-four years of marriage. Brought up in that household, naturally Mary Tudor would hold strong religious opinions, even had her own birthright not depended on it. Now, attempting to rule with no apprenticeship for ruling behind her, she needed it for support.
She had little enough, thought Philippa grimly, of the human kind. Jane Dormer was only sixteen; her grandmother too old to master the new political complexities; old Mistress Clarenceux too simple. Margaret Lennox, the oldest, the dearest, the most richly rewarded of all the Queen’s circle, was also the Englishwoman with the nearest Catholic claim to the throne … was that why she had been given, Tom Wharton had told her, the whole three thousand marks yearly tax revenue from the wool trade, simply as a royal gift? The group of gentlemen who had quelled the rebellions and seen to it that Mary returned to the throne had had to be repaid with offices which they were not necessarily fitted for. Even Reginald Pole, Cardinal, royally born and man of integrity, had not supported the Queen in one thing: he had been against the marriage with Philip.
My lord and nephew, the King of England. When she first heard the Queen speak of her husband, Philippa had expected to catch in the deep, over-strong voice the slightest shadow, perhaps, of defiance.
There was none. Perhaps there had never been. Perhaps in crushing the opposition to her marriage she had also argued into oblivion, to herself and to her prie-dieu, the personal reasons. The ponderous young man who visited her daily, tastefully dressed; who gave a due meed of his time to being agreeable to those odd people, the English, and who then retired behind closed doors with Ruy Gomez and the Spanish lords of his court, was no one’s soul-mate, except possibly the unknown Doña Isabel de Osario, mother of unspecified numbers of Spanish illegitimate children, and about whose predecessors Don Alfonso was lyrical. The Emperor’s exhortations to his son to please Queen Mary and to make her happy would hardly spring from cousinly kindness. No untoward personal emotions must upset the Imperial English alliance. More, a warm marriage bed might produce the son which would reconcile the English to their King and to his religion.
The Queen knew that, better than any.… But the pinched lips parted for him as they did for her love-birds; and the pale, shadowless eyes relaxed in the high-coloured face. At two, the Queen had been betrothed to the Dauphin of France, Henri’s brother. At nine, to the Emperor Charles, Philip’s father. Yet again she had been sought by the Dauphin’s father, Francis of France, twice married and twice widowed, with seven bastard children. She had been painted and inspected: ambassadors had surveyed her all her life, until her father proclaimed her a bastard herself. As a child, she had seen herself as an Empress, and as a grown woman had known herself to be no more than an ageing, emotional spinster, the bride of her God.
One could discuss none of this in the pure hearing of Jane, the dear and devout, herself almost the subject of a political marriage with Edward Courtenay, the inconvenient Earl of Devonshire, to keep him out of Elizabeth’s hands. One said it instead to Austin Grey, when he came to see her on her rare periods of leave at Lady Dormer’s, and to escort her to the triumphs and tourneys or the celebration of the Feast of St Lucy, or the St Nicholas’s going about, against orders, in the bright frosty glitter of a December evening in London.
Austin never required brisk handling, as Don Alfonso did, by the end of the evening. He listened to her stream of speculation in silence, and didn’t laugh at her at all, but seemed to regard her power of observation and analysis as something worth celebrating on their own.
Cut off in full spate, Philippa was apt to find it pleasant, but embarrassing. ‘Oh, that’s Kate for you,’ she said the first time. ‘All the Somervilles are fiends for dissecting their neighbours. We had you judged from the moment your nurse brought you to visit, and you cried when the cook’s niece was sick. Tender-hearted.’
She thought, with contrition, that he flushed, but he had more than enough social ease to disguise it. ‘If I were less tender-hearted, I might be tempted to wonder whether you saw in the Queen’s marriage an echo of your own. What dreams are in your head, Philippa? Is it dreams which prevent the annulment from taking place?’
The round brown eyes which opened upon him were probably answer enough. ‘My goodness,’ said Philippa. ‘You’ve never been in the hands of the Turks, or you wouldn’t expect anyone to have much time for dreaming. Nor, I imagine, do you have any recollection of what Lymond is actually like. My mother can barely put up with him. We can’t get an annulment because he hasn’t written giving his formal consent. Which reminds me. Have you ever heard of a gentleman called Leonard Bailey?’
‘No,’ said the Marquis of Allendale on the faintest note of inquiry.
‘Oh,’ said Philippa. ‘Well, if you do, I should be deeply obliged if you’d tell me. He’s by way of being a relation by marriage.’ And was thoughtless enough to giggle at his expression.
Roger Ascham, with whom she had begun her classical studies, was less tender-hearted in his reaction. ‘There are one hundred and eighty thousand people in London. I know them all,’ he said.
‘Well, you write Latin letters for half of them,’ said Philippa, unsubdued. She possessed, it would appear, a brain almost as quick for Latin as Madam Elizabeth’s, and a great deal of rummaging about in the library of her nominal spouse had given her an advantage in some directions which the Queen’s Latin secretary thought quite unethical. They read Virgil, Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Terence and endless pages of Xenophon together and wrangled about Philippa’s analysis of King Philip’s character, which Master Ascham claimed to understand completely after three years as the English Ambassador’s secretary at Augsburg.
‘It would never occur to the Emperor,’ Ascham said, ‘that his son is unpopular. He will give him everything, whether he can hold it or not; whether he has ever fought in anger or not. The Emperor is twisted with gout—a dying man, and no wonder. I remember the Golden Fleece banquet. He had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never less than a quart of Rhenish wine at one time. And the boy’s a tyro. Hates to stir himself: lies abed in the mornings; keeps his fine shape for wooing by diet, and none of your exercise. Have you seen him in the lists?’ asked Master Ascham. ‘I saw him joust genteelly at Augsburg. He hurt neither himself, his horse, his spear, nor the fellow he ran with.’
‘A stout stomach, pregnant-witted, and of a most gentle nature,’ Philippa quoted, with delicacy.
Ascham stiffened, his face going purple.
‘I know. That mountebank Elder,’ Philippa said.
‘John Redshanks,’ said Ascham thinly. ‘An amateur cosmographer from some puny church in a place called Dumbarton. Who claims Henry Darnley to surpass the late King Edward—the Lady Elizabeth—the Grey children as a Latinist.’
Fastidiously, Roger Ascham laid down his quill. ‘He does not presumably know of your existence, for which you should be thankful. Unless he is a friend of your husband’s. In which case you would do well to deliver your husband a warning. No offers from that quarter will ever do good to anyone except the Lennoxes. I have heard them exhort the Queen to have her sister executed time without number. Fortunately, the Emperor’s Ambassador has been as strong to dissuade her. The present talk is of marrying Madam Elizabeth to the Margrave of Baden, or any other small state lacking a coastline. They will be hard put to it to find a grate for that coal to burn in.’
‘What cause have they to banish her?’ Philippa said. ‘I heard that her devotions were constant and her discretion alarmingly total. And when the child is born, she will be a further remove from the throne.’
‘It is true,’ Ascham said. ‘A son will bring Burgundy and the Low Countries to England. If Don Carlos were to die, it might unite England wholly with Spain. But is there going to be a child?’
It was not the sort of question asked by Jane, or by Austin, or by any of the plain gentlewomen surrounding the Queen. Philippa said, guardedly, ‘There is a cradle. She speaks of it sometimes. And she is plumper, they say, and of a better colour than before.’
‘She is happier,’ Ascham said. ‘But irregularity in her health there has always been. You have seen the blood-letting. You know of the medicines she takes. And if she has conceived, what chance will the child have? The hours of prayer on her knees, like her mother. The hours of studying papers, of committee with her ministers: this vast council of time-serving Privy Councillors, half of whom should be given provincial duties and sent back to their estates. Gardiner—Paget—Cecil—Petre … how can she know whom to trust, when during the last reign nearly all of them were against her?’
‘She trusts you,’ Philippa said. ‘In spite of the Roman beast and its dogmatic filth in tail-rhymed stanzas, not to mention a few other injudicious pronouncements.’
‘Do you suggest,’ said Ascham with hauteur, ‘that she should have appointed Elder? She took me because she had none better, as she should refuse retirement to William Petre. He has been there so long, he is a Council register in himself. While princes come and vanish like swallows, the land needs some weight in the saddle. Only pray that she doesn’t solicit safe birth for her heir by impossible largesse to the Pontiff. The banished friars are returning, I hear, and the Knights of St John are restored: soon the crown will give back its church lands, and Reginald Pole will be Archbishop of Canterbury, if they make sure to ordain him beforehand.’
Philippa’s brown eye surveyed him. ‘The Crown may give up its church lands, but I doubt if anyone else will be persuaded. The Earl of Bedford proclaimed that he cared more for his sweet Abbey of Woburn than for any fatherly counsel from Rome, and forthwith tugged off and cast down his rosary. The King was far from amused.’
‘I saw him amused only once,’ Roger Ascham said thoughtfully. ‘At a Brussels procession. They had a bear playing the organ, with the keys tied to the tails of twenty cages of cats. It was extremely noisy. The Prince laughed himself into tears. I wonder if he will do the same if … no,’ Master Ascham chided himself. ‘It is bad luck to anticipate disaster. In any case, we have gossiped enough: our time is at an end for today. Collect your books. Do you know Bartholomew Lychpole?’
The secretariat was not large. Philippa said, ‘The man in brown, who always wears spectacles?’
‘Yes. He wanted to speak with you. Wait.’ He bustled out.
Philippa was alone in the room when Master Lychpole arrived. She fastened her penner and then looked up to see him standing diffidently before her, the dim light grey in his lenses. ‘Madam Crawford?’ he said.
Used to another styling, Philippa did not at once respond to her married name. Then she said, ‘Yes. And you are Master Lychpole?’
He nodded. He was not a young man, and he spoke in a low voice, as if anxious not to be heard in conversation with her. ‘I wished to ask you the favour of a few words in private. On a personal matter.’
‘Yes?’ said Philippa, lifting her eyebrows.
Bartholomew Lychpole’s voice had dropped half an octave. ‘Your husband is Francis Crawford of Lymond?’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa in the same sweet, lying cadence she had learned in Stamboul.
‘I am employed here,’ said Bartholomew Lychpole, ‘but I am a man of wide interests. I correspond. I hear many things. But I dare not say what I hear, you understand, or I should lose my employment. I am a poor man, and I dare not lose my employment. I beg you therefore …’
‘You wish to tell me something about Mr Crawford, and you do not wish me to quote you. I understand,’ Philippa said. ‘Whatever you say will remain quite private with me. What do you want me to know?’
‘I heard you were his wife,’ Lychpole said. ‘I don’t take risks. I can’t afford to take risks. But I thought you should know he is well.’
Philippa sat down very gently and looked at him. She said, ‘I am glad to know that. You have heard from him recently?’
‘Last week,’ said Master Lychpole. ‘Later, I dare say, than any message you have; even if the couriers managed to reach you. It’s not like writing from Brussels. I thought it would please you just to know he was well.’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa. ‘It will please his mother as well when I tell her. Where was he writing from?’
‘Oh, the same place,’ said Bartholomew Lychpole. ‘He dates his letters always from there, although I hear he travels abroad in the country from week to week, on his master’s business, whether it is attack or defence no one can tell me. This season, I wager he would prefer to be by your side in some good English rain. They say there can be a coldness well-nigh beyond mortal man’s bearing, this month in Moscow.’
Philippa Somerville’s eyes became exceedingly large. Lychpole said slowly after a moment, ‘But of course they are prepared for the cold. You must not allow it to worry you.’
Lymond’s titular wife drew a deep breath. ‘It doesn’t,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t thinking of that.… I wonder if your post would reach him more quickly than mine.’
‘You have a letter?’ said Lychpole.
‘I would give you one,’ Philippa said. ‘What direction do you have for him in Moscow?’
But there she came up against a politic silence. Whatever Bartholomew Lychpole’s business, it was conducted in secrecy, and his correspondence was not sent direct, but entrusted to a series of messengers, the last of whom conveyed it to Lymond, wherever in Russia he might be.
For Lymond, it seemed, was in Russia. And the more Philippa thought of it, the likelier somehow did it appear. He had no wish to come home. He had no interest in old loyalties and ancient entanglements, and yet would take no steps, Philippa thought, to place himself in direct conflict with them.
What more likely than that he had stayed on the perimeter, half in, half out the known world, to build a new sphere of power with Kiaya Khátún, who worshipped power, beside him? And this well-meaning, inadequate man was no doubt in some form his spy.
Of all the peoples of the earth, they have the hardest living, Diccon Chancellor had said of the Muscovites. And Sydney had quoted. If they knew their strength, no man were able to make match with them.
Small wonder Lychpole was uneasy. Lymond’s presence in Russia was more than an item of gossip: a matter of purely family concern. To reveal her knowledge of it would not only betray Lychpole’s confidence. It would send all the statesmen of Europe to probe the occurrence: so many squirrels gutting a pine cone. It would force Russia to show her hand, perhaps, before she was ready, and put Lymond’s own life at risk.
Or at more risk. Lymond had never shown any desire for security. Now, lodged at last in a land where his special gifts would be quite unsurpassed, he had an opportunity for dominion which he could expect nowhere else. Philippa had been aware, since the silence which succeeded
She thanked Lychpole, and even gave him some of the coins in her purse towards his goodwill when her letter to Lymond should be written.
But she wrote first to Kate at Flaw Valleys, and not until after Christmas, when the endless Masses were over, and the playlets by Udall, and the masques of Venuses and Cupids, and the subdued but infinite bickering between Spaniards and Englishmen. Philippa, with her light hand on the lute and her hard-won suppleness for the dance, had been much in demand over Christmas, and had been in some degree thankful to see the exhausting Don Alfonso disappear with his superior to Brussels for a spell, although this left Allendale’s quiet company, so undemanding that it troubled her conscience, the more she enjoyed it.
Then, after Christmas, her spare time was mortgaged by her mistress. The Queen was not well. Fatigue and wandering pains; an increasing number of the headaches which always had plagued her were all added to the strain of the disturbed, warring court she ruled over, and the uneven, unpredictable course of King Philip’s affections, and the interminable planning and plotting for the good of her people, with the barometer of their temper as odd and variable as her husband’s. And all the time her courtiers watched her, assessing her bulk and her colour, her temper, her energy, her appetite, and counting each day of her pregnancy.
With the dignity of long, bitter solitude, the Queen never confided. Observant and sensible, Philippa simply deduced what was necessary and did it. Sometimes she was required to read; sometimes to sing; sometimes to take sides in some abstract discussion which was merely a treadmill on which an over-active mind could exhaust itself. She led the Queen to indulge her pleasure in instruction, and was lent books; and learned with genuine humility how her performance on the spinet could be improved. She undertook, for Shrovetide, to arrange a Turkish masque with the Master of Revels.