123
" The words now had meaning. All poetry had meaning, and sorrow she had never envisaged. Behind, veiled in soft rain as the dragon-prowed barge slid across the grey water to Pera, she saw for the last time close at hand the soft, frescoed height of the Seraglio, heart of the Ottoman world, its domes and chimneys and towers, its tall cypresses and gardens picked out in grisaille and gold.
Today, perhaps, the Gate of the Dead would perform its true office for a small boy whose heritage no one knew; who had lived in squalor and perished in fright. A sacrifice to diminish the soul. A sacrifice to colour all the rest of one’s days. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4)
127
" Marthe said dryly, ‘Philippa wishes only to say thank you, and so also do I. They say in Italy, don’t they, that the boat will sink that carries neither monk, nor student, nor whore.… How good that we have Mr Blyth.'
‘How good that we have Mlle Marthe,’ Lymond replied. His clothes, freshly changed, were impeccable and his brushed yellow hair, free of sand, was lit guinea-gold by the gleam of the lamps. ‘Of her fellow men so charming a student. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4)
132
" You must, of course, do as you please,’ she had remarked. ‘But I really think, through all these years, that Mr Crawford has learned to take care of himself. I am sure his unique sense of domestic responsibility will impel him, unswerving, to trace us wherever we go.’
Which was precisely the kind of bitchy remark, thought Jerott furiously, that Lymond himself would have made. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4)
136
" Philippa thought again of the bride, blushing, receiving her shoe-buckles; and the Pilgrims of Love, giving their hearts and their laughter and the moonlit song of the lyre. And Míkál’s beautiful voice: The fountains make thee thy bride’s veil; the lyre spins thee thy ribbons; the mallow under thy foot is the hand of thy bridegroom….Sometimes, one must travel to find what is love. She let her mind go just so far; and then, with gentle hands, closed the door she had opened. Then, wearing not her Turkish robe but a plain woollen dress of her own, her hair unbound; with no paint and no jewels but a small silver brooch long ago bought by her father, Philippa walked with Onophrion to the place of her wedding. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4)
139
" Señor, more wine? I am amazed,’ said the captain, ‘that so lovely a lady has not married.’
‘But indeed she has married,’ said Lymond. ‘Five times. And not one husband, poor fellow, survived matrimony by more than a year. She is too good for them. The last one, dying, compared her to a nugget of gold. Do you melt it or do you rub it or do you beat it, said he, it shineth still more orient. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4)