We’ve had a deal of bad poetry, haven’t we? Suggesting the climax to this thrilling and literary spectacle. The Olla Podrida, my sweet-hearts, will now be set on the fire.
Well, get the coffer out, said Tobie roundly. You find his clean clothes and I'll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I...
Watch carefully. In forty formidable bosoms we are about to create a climacteric of emotion. In one short speech—or maybe two—I propose to steer your women through excitement, superiority, contempt an...
Unwanted, unasked, unwelcome as ever, here I am.’‘Again,’ said Lymond.
They expected to be fed; and Lady Buccleuch, for whom pregnancy spelled food, had already taken strategic foothold by the windows, where the cold dishes were ready laid.
Sybilla said, ‘If there are swords, then I suppose you must wear yours. But it is you we need.’‘We?’ he said.‘Five hundred thousand people,’ said Sybilla.‘You have a high opinion of my swordsmanship,’...
Standing drunk in the yard, while the rain soaked his hair and spread cold through the cloth of his doublet, Jerott thought of the fine design, firmly executed, of the campaign of Guînes and of Calais...
Some day, I must take my own prolific advice and contrive to drop dead.
So, although it was more than she ever dared hope for, it was not the same; and never would be.
She’s got sense, that girl; and too much backbone to push herself where she’s not wanted. Tell her it’s no good, and she’ll soon see the point.
She ought to be at home in Flaw Valleys, doing her morning exercise on the lute, at which, said her teacher, she would have had a distinguished future, had she not been born English.
She looked,’ said Alec Guthrie dryly, ‘like a clever woman who was not unaware that five ill-dressed passers-by were displaying an unhealthy interest in her personal life.
Richard walked over to him. It was not a long way but he walked slowly, as if he were tired, and halted, eventually, face to face with his younger brother. He said, ‘Change your mind. It is the last c...
Repressively, Lymond himself answered. I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me, he said.
Philippa drew a deep breath, and found relief in expelling it. ‘Do you think,’ she said carefully, ‘that someone is going to be goaded into doing something soon?’ There was a long pause. ‘I think,’ sa...
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 o...
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 s...
On the day that his grannie was killed by the English, Sir William Scott the Younger of Buccleuch was at Melrose Abbey, marrying his aunt.
Oh, Christ, Richard,’ Lymond said. ‘You don’t need to remind me what country I belong to.
O England,’ said Kiaya Khátún. 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 Para...