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e91f5e8
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Danny Hislop was not there, nor the artist called Blacklock. Riding between Lymond and the fresh-faced Knight of St John who did not like eagles, Chancellor asked after them. Ludovic d'Harcourt glanced at Lymond without answering. Lymond said, 'They are undergoing a course of correction. If in the event they are either correct or in the least chastened, I shall be surprised.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ad1ec1d
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Perhaps the forces of winged retribution. The prophet Elijah being fed to the ravens. Like Baida, I have killed my three pigeons.' 'Two,' Adam said. 'Two died instead of Vishnevetsky. One died instead of my brother. Long ago. Attar, the Persian poet, saw the destiny of souls as a flight of birds across the seven valleys of Seeking, Love, Knowledge, Independence, Unity, Stupefaction and Annihilation, before at last being lost in the divine O..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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db35917
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Our motive in locking it, if it matters, was to spare you the embarrassment of an interruption. Unless the comte de Sevigny of today is really so different from the Master of Culter of ten years ago?' Perfectly at his ease, the decorative young man he was addressing leaned back on the shutters and studied him. 'I hope so,' Lymond said. 'When you were twenty, Mr Erskine, you killed a priest in the belltower at Montrose. Would you do so again..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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f3d9be8
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If it had been reeled off with defiance, Richard could perhaps have tolerated it. Instead, delivered with restraint and with clarity, it was the voice of the Voevoda Bolshoia, unquestioned master of armies, giving his considered decisions. And although these were what he had promised to hear and accept, the cavalier judgements, in cold blood, on all the principles and people he held dearest stopped his voice, in a sort of nerve-storm of gri..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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10dc0da
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A difficult young man, they had been told, thought John Erskine. How difficult he could not have dreamed; nor could James, standing silent beside him. Then James said, 'A brilliant rogue. We do better without him.' 'Perhaps,' said the other man thoughtfully. 'Indeed, he blocked every sally but one. Until you told him, he did not know his brother was a Calvinist.' 'So? You heard him,' said James. 'Ah, yes. I heard what he said,' answered Ers..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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3756289
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Will he travel tomorrow?' They both gazed, united in fascination, at the insensible and manhandled person of the sacrosanct Voevoda Bolshoia. 'I doubt it,' said Ludovic d'Harcourt. But he did. He stirred some time after that conversation, and if his awakening took rather less time than was obvious, the effect was to cheat Danny Hislop's expectant ears of whatever uncouth revelations he was hoping for. Without warning, his eyes closed, Lymon..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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c059bc3
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No. I won't. I won't bend my knee, or kiss your charming shoes either. I may possibly fall flat on my face, but that will be quite inadvertent.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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c7ed8fe
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Francis Crawford did not look at the English warden. Instead he wandered to the high window and, gazing down on the mild English countryside, said soberly, 'Affinity? French blood runs in both England and Scotland; their tongue is no barrier. As for religion ... Identity of faith is small recommendation. Freedom of faith, surely, is what must be sought for: tolerance between every sect and its neighbour; clemency from every government. Othe..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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1d89292
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The board is clearing. The old game is almost played, and the pieces broken.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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bc4e385
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One battle in twelve might be won by a brilliant military stratagem. The rest stood or fell by somebody's blunders. Only rarely, there came the feel of a great campaign evolved by a stylist: imaginative, comprehensive, irresistible.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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2648c65
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Our powder and arrows are going to run out on us some time. And so are our food and water and joie de vivre and good books and everything. Why not walk out now and get made into somebody's favourite slave?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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71a3217
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The round, unformed script on the fly-leaf said, Francis Crawford of Lymond. She stared at it; then put it down and picked up another. The writing in this one was older; the neat level hand she had seen once before, in Stamboul. This time it said only, The Master of Culter. That dated it after the death of his father, when until the birth of Richard's son Kevin, the heir's rank and title were Lymond's. And all the books were his, too. She s..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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4e64aea
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Why do you call him M. d'Harcourt? You called Jerott Jerott.' 'I called Jerott a great deal worse than that.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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e87e1b9
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Lymond knelt. The Tsar lifted his head and unlooking, let the staff go. It fell unregarded, with a crack, bouncing on the thin carpet. Ivan leaned forward and, stretching both hands, gripped the bright hair on either side of his Voevoda's cool face, the thin skin lightly browned by the sun. 'You are not afraid,' said Ivan. He pulled one hand sharply away and Adashev, Viscovatu, Sylvester saw Lymond's lips tighten, but he did not call out or..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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4c3a490
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Philippa Somerville slowed her horse to a trot, and, pulling off her right glove, held her hand high and flat, white palm outwards as she paced forward to Lymond and stopped. 'Never again,' Philippa said. 'Never, never again.' He sat still, breathing deeply as yet from the ride, with his face brushed and ridged with wet light from the rain. 'No,' he said. 'I don't deserve that. I think.' Philippa looked down and then up again, her cheeks re..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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03f373f
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You lead, therefore you kill.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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5321237
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Here you have a hawk of the lure, not of the fist. He will not come to you. If you would have him, you must lay your heart upon your hawking-glove; and feed it to him.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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4748d5d
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I wish,' said Lymond, 'it would try a major key sometimes.' 'Wind,' Chancellor said, 'is a melancholy creature.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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030c44a
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We met once when you were a boy, at Midculter.' He paused. 'You are not like your brother.' 'No,' Crawford said. He gave his hand another shake and then loosed it with apparent reluctance. 'Richard will never be whipped at a cart-arse for bawdry. I don't know whether you notice, but he wears nothing but mockado and fustian. The graveyard at Culter is full of pauperized mercers.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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93044b0
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How the devil was she fooled into firing in the first place? Don't tell me that wasn't your fault,' said Lord Culter, a familiar wariness displacing the warmth of reunion. 'All right, I won't,' said Lymond. 'Jerott, did you get shot also? No. Then kindly muster the lady in your monkish arms and ride with her to the castle. Yours is the only reputation that will stand it. And don't say I don't endow you with princely rewards for sitting on y..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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b715864
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I see,' said Jerott slowly. 'You've thought it all out.' 'That's what I do,' said Lymond. 'I sit on my brood-patch and think.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ac1b6b0
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Half-way there, a touch of his normal common sense returned to him and he slowed down, wondering what exchange of courtesies he was going to offer a vagabond, an Abram man, or an idiot. Then the man turned his head and Richard saw that he was none of these things. That the frieze cloak he wore was rich, and fell back from the silk of a high-collared tunic; that his hair, flicked by the wind, was yellow as mustard and the shadowless face, fa..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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59cbc59
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I was a slave in the corsair Dragut's own palace. I saw his women--Spanish, French, Italian, Irish. I was at the branding of all his poor children. To some women, degradation like that is the worst sort of torture.' There was a small silence, in which Philippa's epiglottis popped like a cork. Beside her, Jerott's breathing faltered in the same moment and resumed, shallowly, as he went on straining to hear.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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12d3cc8
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The trouble about Mr Crawford,' said Kate, 'is that he puts up with his enemies and plays merry hell with his friends.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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58399b2
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So, as Lymond strode out and stopped, rigid and white by the doorpost, Sybilla set eyes on Francis, the son of her heart; and so Francis Crawford, after four years of unharnessed power, came face to face at last with his mother. And Kate, falling upon the door and looking up at her self-contained relative by marriage, saw his face torn apart and left, raw as a wound without features; only pain and shock and despair and appalled recognition,..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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da9de28
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You are a mathematician,' John Dee said. 'I am a musician,' said Lymond.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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cc0a821
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I have been taught to face reality: an excellent thing.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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7165d0f
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Then she said, "Thorfinn!" quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points. "No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth!" the name reached her like sling-shot. Groa said, "They are the same man. I should know. I married both."
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d702789
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I want you to try to understand. I am going alone. The risk, if any, is mine. I have no dependants, no responsibilities; I am adamant that this time no one will accompany me. What I hope to do in Russia is worth the risk I shall take. Do you imagine I would do what I did tonight if I did not think it of an importance unimaginable? If I can pull this one man back from the brink, I can save a nation perhaps from something worse than the Tarta..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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bccfad1
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And the effect on yourself?' Guthrie said. For a short time, Lymond was silent. Then he said, 'I had some strengths, which have grown. I had some weaknesses, which have gone.' 'That is true,' Adam Blacklock said. Slumped between floor and wall, he had leaned his tired head on the panelling; his face, with its thin scar, was turned without expression to Lymond. 'You have become a machine.' 'No,' said Philippa. 'That is not so.' 'But that s..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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fade051
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You need bed and a hot drink and a little less fluent self-pity.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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5c894cd
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Lymond's life was lived on this level: the level on which the future of whole communities could be steered or reshaped, improved or jeopardized by a handful of people.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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944712a
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In order to rule, one must face reality.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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1a8c48d
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We?' said Chancellor. 'I am lavishly paid,' Danny said, 'to think in the first person plural.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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b294157
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I have a feeling that someone is going to be malicious, and we may as well set them a standard. Shall we go in, lewd and rude, and provoke them?
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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6fd2bff
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If time allowed, I should be delighted to discuss my private life in every choice particular with all of you, but it really isn't relevant.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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1c36328
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It's true? You have no interest in him? But everyone either abominates Francis Crawford or longs to possess him. I wonder why you alone should be immune.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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89f0efa
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Now his response was merely to detach himself from personal contact. Looking back, she could not remember a conversation veering on the intimate from which he had not withdrawn immediately. He had had of course, in the past, more than enough of being devoured alive by the consuming interest of his admirers. A boy called Will Scott, back in Scotland. An Archer, they said, called Robin Stewart. Jerott, perhaps, long ago. Small wonder that Fra..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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ee4af55
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He was not a figment of daydream or of fantasy. He was the quick-witted man who had raced with her; the man whose strong wrists had pulled her from trouble; whose laughter recognized, more than his own, her buffoonery; whose voice had whispered, sung, exclaimed or cursed, with equal felicity, carefree as birdsong on top of their striving. Whose essence, stripped by necessity was, it now seemed, warm and joyous and of great generosity.
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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97d1164
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Oh, Marigold!" Lymond spoke plaintively. "A silken tongue, a heart of cruelty. Don't berate us. We're only poor scoundrels--vagabonds--scraps of society; unlettered and untaught."
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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d33454c
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All the linear delicacy of the boy he had once been stood exposed now in the still, blindfolded face of her son. The clinging yellow hair, orderly on the white linen, was the same silk that had veiled her rings when she had smoothed his pillow in childhood; the cheekbone under the bandage had once, fresh and firm, been pressed to her own; the beautiful hands, lying loose on the damask, belonged to him and also to another man, whom she had p..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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5374caf
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Behind the last door is oblivion. Standing before it, one can go forwards or backwards; but beside it are not the places of exquisite pleasure: the faces of pure ones confined to pavilions, reclining on green cushions and beautiful carpets amid thornless lote-trees and banana trees, one over another; for these have gone with the smoke of the opium. What remains, four years afterwards, are the haunted rooms of the departed: of a young, vigor..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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068faa2
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Except once, long ago, over an estrangement with his wife Mariotta, Lord Culter had never been jealous of the young brother he had seen grow from babyhood. Until the moment Francis had left home at sixteen, a prisoner of war to the English, Richard knew him solely as a blond and delicate boy, interested only, it seemed, in reading and music, whose apparent fragility concealed a will of steel, and a turn of phrase which could wound like a sw..
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Dorothy Dunnett |
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bc48370
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There are times,' said Philippa shortly, 'when I feel like the entire Russian army.' 'There are times," said Lymond equally shortly, 'when I wish that you were. It would solve the whole Tartar problem and save Ottoman Turkey for Jesus."
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Dorothy Dunnett |