182
" Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera
Pour nulle vivante, tant soit elle bonne ou sage
Forte et puissante, riche de hault lignaige
Mon chois est fait, aultrene se fera
***
Long as I live, my heart will never vary
For no one else, however fair or good
Brave, resolute, or rich, of gentle blood
My choice is made, and I will have no other. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
185
" For a moment, disconnected by the stitch in his side, he listened not to the sense but to the interplay of the two flexible voices, one masculine and light, one mellow and feminine, unreeling their story, faintly affronted amid mounting hysteria. He opened his eyes.
He knew, because his memories of Francis Crawford went back further than those of anyone there, that Lymond was rather drunk, although he could still disguise it. The quick-wittedness, the invention, the faultless comedy timing were present at the price of a little concentration which had closed his outer consciousness for the moment. Jerott, no longer laughing, sat in the shadows and watched the dazzling performance and both the players, blond and brown, artist and acolyte.
Acolyte. But Philippa was a child no longer: he had known that since that single evening in Lyon. The severe, clear-skinned profile turned towards Francis might have belonged to any great lady. The brown and brilliant gaze only quizzed him at intervals: she seemed able, Jerott saw, to sense by instinct the course of his fantasy; and as with Lymond, what she was doing at present occupied all her awareness. Then Francis surged to his feet, leaving his robe, and launched into Jason’s querulous tour de force, fractured by interruptions and a mounting fury of incoherent resentment, and finally disintegrating in chaos. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
187
" We are here. We will work together for what purpose seems to us right. We will work with calm, and with tolerance and, please God, with saving laughter.
‘We know something of men. We know of evil, and of sloth, and of self-seeking ambition. We accept it, and will use what we have of wit and good faith to overcome it.
‘And if we do not overcome it, still we are the road; we are the bridge; we are the conduit. For something have we been born. For something have we been brought here. And if we hold firm, the men who peopled our earth need not be ashamed, when the reckoning comes, to say, we worked with all we had been given; and for one another.’ "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
188
" My name is Francis Crawford, and my brother and I studied at St Barbe.’
‘I know that,’ said Moses. He took the ring, and stood, the broad grin stamped on his features. ‘It is true what you did to all the Professors’ boots?’
Lymond stared at him. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. I’m afraid it is.’
‘Is it true about the mathematical proposition you placed before Orontius Finnaeus that spelt …’
‘I don’t know how you heard about it,’ said M. de Sevigny. ‘Perhaps you had better not tell me what else you know about my misspent youth.’
Moses said, ‘When the ladies of the rue Glatigny were invited …?’
‘That,’ said M. de Sevigny, ‘is what I meant. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
191
" 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. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
192
" I know enough,’ said Adam Blacklock, ‘not to ask a lot of interfering bloody questions and expect them to be answered. If someone builds a bulwark that high, it’s for reasons that matter, I take it.’
‘I also,’ said Alec Guthrie. ‘But a bulwark may cut off help, as well as interference. Jerott is right. To measure a ladder against it from time to time is justifiable.’
‘Then let’s leave it to Jerott,’ said Danny. ‘The next man with a ladder, I fancy, is going to find himself bounced off and run through the brisket. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
193
" Lord James said, ‘We have no doubts of Lord Culter’s constancy. We wish to know where your faith stands.’
‘Why?’ said Crawford with distinct querulousness. He added, ‘I thought we were discussing pourpoints.’
Lord James Stewart took a turn to the window and back. He said, ‘If you take a ball through your breastplate tomorrow, a pourpoint will not preserve you from hell.’
‘No, but my breastplate would,’ said Crawford irritably. ‘It’s a new kind I had made in Russia. Anyway, who isn’t going to hell?’
‘Richard your brother,’ said Lord James ill-advisedly.
‘Then that settles it,’ said Lymond, satisfied, and began folding his draperies. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
194
" 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, vigorous man with red hair and an old man left in his blood in a bothy; of a henchman dragged from his horse with an arrow in him, and another, darker of skin, dead of fighting in a Greek courtyard. Of a man returning from perilous seas to drown, seeking his son, near his homeland; of a girl dying blind behind yellow silk curtains, and another burning at night in an African pavilion. And a child, a son … an only son … playing with shells at the feet of the father who shortly would kill it.
One does not, of set purpose, linger long on such a threshold. Sooner or later, the chains must give way; the accusing, querulous voices cease; and the insistent, imperious summons, saying over and over, ‘Aucassins, damoisiax, sire! Ja sui jou li vostre amie, Et vos ne me haés mie! "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
196
" 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 Erskine. ‘But I rather think the interest will lie in what the comte de Sevigny does. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
197
" How do you take leave, for all time, of a brother?’
‘You wish him well,’ Lymond said, ‘if that is what is in your mind. And you accept from him his understanding, and his pity, and his fellowship as he is driven, as you are, through the world. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
199
" To a chorus of resonant barking, the instruments proceeded to adjust themselves into tune. A billy-goat, alarmed, aroused his harem, and distantly a muffled lowing broke out.
Philippa said, ‘Oh dear. It must have cost a fortune. Did Gideon ever do this to you?’
Kate thought. ‘No, but I did it to him. He hadn’t called to see me for a week, so I sent eight bell ringers to serenade him at cock-crow and his mother’s parrot dropped dead, quoting Luther.’
‘What did it say?’ Philippa said. Sitting on the sill, with her long brown hair falling over her night robe, she looked, in the darkness, like the daughter who had come back from Turkey: calm and smiling and soignée.
‘Music is a fair and lovely gift of God, and deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart,’ said Kate, surprised. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)