The ringed castle1971

Crawford is rescued from Volos by the clever, beautiful and power-hungry Kiaya Khatun and they travel to Moscow, where he is to train the Tsar's army. Determined never to return to Scotland, he summons some of the mercenaries from the force he trained in Scotland and has to negotiate with a volatile and brutal Tsar, in an insular society held back from greatness by the extremes of its climate and the lack of communication with Western Europe. Philippa has taken the child back to Scotland, and now becomes embroiled in the English court of Mary Tudor, for which desperate hopes for an heir, the absence of Mary's Spanish husband, and England's return to the Catholic faith of England are the chief, if concealed, interests. From London, merchants set out to establish a trade route with Russia...