The Muscovite Embassy includes the young woman who captures Orlando’s heart. The idea of icicles being ‘many-coloured’ is intriguing, perhaps picking up hues flapping about in the pennants and flags of the ship.
‘Among them was the ship of the Muscovite Embassy flying its double-headed black eagle from the main mast, which was hung with many-coloured icicles several yards in length.’
Source: Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, ed. with an introduction by Rachel Bowlby (Oxford: World’s Classics, 1992), p. 47
