With experts' eyes, Henry Sidney's guests scrutinised the map his foreign visitor had brought, inscribed in elegant but cryptic script, allegedly showing his homelands, "Endor".
All had come, the invitations' allusions to sensational geographical discoveries irresistible: members of the Muscovy Company, John Dee from duties to the new Queen, de Nicholay from France.
And from his Scottish home, Crawford of Lymond with his wife.
Crawford and the princely stranger, who had so quickly mastered English, formed the circle's centre, deep in a spirited discussion about sea-routes, sail-plans, problems of measuring longitude.
Sea-grey eyes meeting cornflower-blue - two kindred souls coming together.
~*~
A/N:
- "It was like an evening at Penshurst ... handsome hours such as these, charged with good wine and light talk and music, enclosed with comfort, and incised all about with a curving, trephining wit." (Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle)
- In a time (1560s) when Australia was not yet discovered and no reliable method of measuring longitudes had been found, the possibility of an unknown continent like Middle-earth doesn't sound as fantastic and improbable as it would in our time.
- For those unfamiliar with Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles: all characters mentioned here (except Lymond) are historical figures interested or working in the fields of cartography, astronomy & astrology, and geography.
30.09.07 B-drabble for Denise, who asked for an encounter between Imrahil and Francis Crawford of Lymond.
All had come, the invitations' allusions to sensational geographical discoveries irresistible: members of the Muscovy Company, John Dee from duties to the new Queen, de Nicholay from France.
And from his Scottish home, Crawford of Lymond with his wife.
Crawford and the princely stranger, who had so quickly mastered English, formed the circle's centre, deep in a spirited discussion about sea-routes, sail-plans, problems of measuring longitude.
Sea-grey eyes meeting cornflower-blue - two kindred souls coming together.
~*~
A/N:
- "It was like an evening at Penshurst ... handsome hours such as these, charged with good wine and light talk and music, enclosed with comfort, and incised all about with a curving, trephining wit." (Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle)
- In a time (1560s) when Australia was not yet discovered and no reliable method of measuring longitudes had been found, the possibility of an unknown continent like Middle-earth doesn't sound as fantastic and improbable as it would in our time.
- For those unfamiliar with Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles: all characters mentioned here (except Lymond) are historical figures interested or working in the fields of cartography, astronomy & astrology, and geography.
30.09.07 B-drabble for Denise, who asked for an encounter between Imrahil and Francis Crawford of Lymond.