|
0796838
|
And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
25cb64a
|
Though whether the mass murder of strangers for one's principles ranks higher in virtue than attacking one's neighbours for the hell of it is a point I'm glad I don't have to settle.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
4bd3442
|
You haven't enough artillery, have you?' 'Against you or the Germans?' said Lymond.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
838bce7
|
Moving forward quietly to Jerott's side, Adam Blacklock had heard. 'Don't you understand? The authorities are afraid of them both,' he said gently. 'Why do you supose this cordon is here, which only an unarmed girl was allowed to pass through? Lymond, loyal to Scotland, might be a threat to French power greater than even Gabriel, one of these days--Philippa!' And a wordless shout, like a cry at a cockfight, rose among the stone pillars and ..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
fdeac30
|
Jerott's hand increased its grip on her arm. 'He is an island with all its bridges wantonly severed. What hostage to evil,' said Jerott, poetic in his thumping displeasure, 'will this night's business conceive?' 'I don't know. But they're both nice and clean, if that's anything,' said Philippa. And led the way philosophically down.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
3020f68
|
Self-knowledge is not sold on the Rialto. And if it were, few people would buy.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
a6498af
|
O England,' said Kiaya Khatun. Her voice, mellow and strong, held an accent or a mingling of accents Philippa was unable to name. 'O England, the Hell of Horses, the Purgatory of Servants and the Paradise of Women.' She turned her splendid eyes on the soothsayer. 'She will be like Avicenna, and run through all the arts by eighteen.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
f2b9368
|
You have only to lift your hand,' Thorkel Fostri said. And after a moment, 'What else were you born for?' 'Why not happiness, like other men?" Thorfinn said. 'You have that,' said his foster-father. 'But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right.' 'I resist because it is no use resisting,' Thorfinn said. 'Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; ..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
1298478
|
Jerott?' said Lymond. 'What are you not saying?' His eyes, as the orderly cavalcade paced through the muddy streets, had not left that forceful aquiline face since they met. And Jerott, Philippa saw with disbelief, flushed. For a moment longer, the strict blue eyes studied him; and then Lymond laughed. 'She's an eighteen-year-old blonde of doubtful virginity? Or more frightful still, an eighteen-year-old blonde of unstained innocence? I sha..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
c67ada8
|
I do admire efficiency,' said Marthe. 'But how tedious it can be in excess.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
eb8836a
|
Kate won't be troubled. I don't know any gentlemen, anyway.' 'Thank you,' said Lymond.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
31f8019
|
I wish to make my fortune with you.' 'Well, you can forget about that, for a start,' said Francis Crawford. 'And if your place in Paradise has been written, then for God's sake hang on to it. Because we're going in the opposite direction.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
0163352
|
He can make you want to knock him down, if he feels like it, by simply saying "good morning". He possibly said simply "good morning" to Lord Culter. The difference was that, being his brother, Culter hit him."
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
1acacd9
|
when two friends discuss money, the third friend should invariably be asleep.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
15ef175
|
Leaving him was less like leaving even the most simple of her friends in Flaw Valleys, and more like losing unfinished a manuscript, beautiful, absorbing and difficult, which she had long wanted to read.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
4117d08
|
Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences. And take the consequences.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
ae7e1d3
|
And across the water, you would swear you could sniff it all; the cinnamon and the cloves, the frankincense and the honey and the licorice, the nutmeg and citrons, the myrrh and the rosewater from Persia in keg upon keg. You would think you could glimpse, heaped and glimmering, the sapphires and the emeralds and the gauzes woven with gold, the ostrich feathers and the elephant tusks, the gums and the ginger and the coral buttons mynheer Gos..
|
|
description
flanders
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
59a58ad
|
You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.
|
|
emotional
poignant
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
be31119
|
Well. On which aspect of our ill-advised doings are we about to lecture each other? I have very little to say. As I recall, I exhausted the matter on several other occasions.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
67ecd6a
|
I hope the string and clapper arrangement he calls a mind has been permanently put out of action.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
4f9ff10
|
Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,' said her mother. 'Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn't know what you're talking about. Have a bun.' 'He doesn't love the Turks,' said Philippa. 'He kills them.' 'That isn't hate,' said Kate Somerville. 'That's simply hoeing among one's principles to keep them healthy and neat. I'm sure he would tell you he bears them no personal grudge; and they think..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
0c4cb3c
|
Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
88e52a5
|
The sparkling smile became enormous. 'Do you think she has a dagger there? Do you? Ask her, M. Francis? For,' said the most noble and most powerful Princess Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland, delving furiously under all the stiff red velvet, showing shift, hose and garters, shoes, knees and a long ribboned end of something recently torn loose, and emerging therefrom with a fist closed tight on an object short and hard and glittering, 'for I h..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
7c58dbf
|
And, echoing Jerott, 'So why in hell have you come?' Philippa's gaze, bright and owlish and obstinate, held his to the end. 'To look after the baby,' she answered. And disconcertingly, after a second's blank pause, Francis Crawford flung back his damp head and laughed.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
ebd476b
|
They're talking about Marthe, Maitre Gaultier's assistant. What's she like? Pretty?' 'She's pretty,' said the man. Philippa studied the taciturn face. 'Oh, I see,' she said. 'Mr Blyth wants her all to himself?' For a moment, she thought it hadn't worked. Then the man gave a snort. 'Mr Blyth want her? He held us up at Avignon for two days refusing to go on until she was sent back home, but Gaultier wouldn't do it, and he had to give in. Mr ..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
872b41a
|
He was a second too late. Ducking, the felt-capped man, muscles hard, dragged himself out of that grasp and, flinging off to one side, got his balance, glanced once at Jerott, and then darted off into the darkness. After the first step, breathing hard, Jerott stayed where he was, swearing. But he could hardly leave Lymond. He looked up. 'Bravo,' said Francis Crawford, sitting crosslegged on top of the wall, his hood shaken free on his shoul..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
9ba8b97
|
Gabriel,' said Jerott firmly, 'is now at Birgu, Malta, engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the Grand Mastership of the Order of St John. He is unlikely to spend a large part of his time arranging esoteric disasters for his adversaries. He is far more likely to arrange to kill them stone dead.' 'All right. You go and get killed stone dead on that side of the garden, and I'll stick to this,' said Lymond.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
b01b816
|
Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three and you're a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-round proficiency.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
01a84aa
|
I made one mistake. Who doesn't? But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. Of course it left me deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to associate with.... But what in God's name has happened to charity? ... Self-interest guides me like the next man but not invariably; not all the time. I use compassion more than you do; I have loyalties and I keep by the..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
e8ad286
|
Patriotism," said Lymond, "like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether. [...] It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A child's home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbours, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps,..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
a598c20
|
Of all the homes I have known, yours has been a shining model of wisdom and kindness and honesty. For what you and your mother have done in the past, for me and for the child, I owe you a profound debt of honour. You have that claim on me. So has your mother. But if you press it too far; if you will accept no appeal and continue to press it, over and over; if you move into my life, both of you, and take your stance there and feel obliged to..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
d50d2be
|
Lymond said gently, "Let us bathe in moral philosophy, as in a living river. Double-dealing is my business."
|
|
the-game-of-kings
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
15c2d36
|
For reliable information, apply to a lawyer, a barber or prostitute. My informant hasn't found out so far who paid the captain.' 'But she will,' said Margaret, her face grave. 'I hope so,' he said with equal gravity,
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
724a91c
|
Taut, merry, nervous, expertly mounted, exquisitely clothed, haughty in their bright youth, the chevaliers of France poured from the disheveled clearing. Sunlit, all that morning, they spanned the glittering woods: diamond on diamond, grey on grey, riches on riches; bough and limb indistinguishable; skirts and meadows sewn in the same silks; skulls in antique fantasy knotted with rhizome and leafy with fern frond. Webs, manes, beards, spun ..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
5973378
|
What do you hope for that you haven't got? What can that child give you?' There was a little silence. 'A virgin audience for my riddles, I believe,' said Lymond thoughtfully, at length. 'But it certainly poses an ungallant question.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
ed97d8f
|
If the wedding was wanted at Melrose--and Buccleuch, as Hereditary Bailie of the Abbey lands, had fewer objections than usual to any idea not his own--then the congregation had to come armed, that was all. The Scotts and their allies, the twenty polite Frenchmen from Edinburgh, the Italian commander with the lame leg, had left their men at arms outside with their horses, the plumed helmets lashed to the saddlebows; and if there were a few v..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
8f6834f
|
Will Scott grinned. Grizel Beaton had slapped his face four times, and apart from these four small misjudgements, they had never touched on a topic more personal than which of Buccleuch's bastards to invite to the wedding. But he liked her fine; and she was good and broad where it would matter to future Buccleuchs, which summed up all his mind so far on the subject.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
3867aec
|
It wasna a man,' said Andrew Kerr broadly. 'T'was my aunty. I tellt ye. I'm no risking cauld steel in ma wame for a pittance, unless all that's mine is well lookit after--' 'An old lady,' said Lord Grey with forbearance, 'in curling papers and a palatial absence of teeth?' 'My aunt Lizzie!' said Andrew Kerr. 'She has just,' said Lord Grey austerely, 'seriously injured one of my men.' 'How?' The old savage looked interested. 'From an upper w..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
0d73ff3
|
I've heard the Prior here talk about Gabriel,' said Richard serenely. 'He seemed at times to be confusing him with the Pope.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
7b06a34
|
The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs . . . there's something unchancy about a left-handed race.' 'I'm right-handed,' offered Will Scott. 'Aye.' 'And six foot three in my hose.' 'Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.' 'I'm saving it,' he said austerely, 'till I've the theme for it.' 'Oh!' said Grizel Beaton (Younger)..
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
0390721
|
Intelligence is the only indispensable commodity in life or in warfare. If you think otherwise, go live in a hut with a poet. The rest of us will do our best to defend you.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
5aa96ca
|
That night at Dumbarton was a classic of its kind. She had hopes still, I think, of enslaving me despite myself with her charms. And I probably thought the same. We both found we were mistaken. It had its moments; but she has the mind and morals of a jungle cat. She didn't enjoy meeting ... another of the same.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
1b6443c
|
You have not yet discovered what happens to Russians at sea.' 'The same thing, I suppose, that happens to Englishmen,' Chancellor said. 'Scots, I take it, are immune.' 'To sarcasm, yes,' Lymond said.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |
|
7670f71
|
Kate said, her eyes very large, 'I find your rudeness abominable and your politeness obnoxious but my goodness, Francis Crawford, what terrifies me more than a jungle of tigers is the moment when you look worried.
|
|
|
Dorothy Dunnett |