“I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.”

“There’s some of them’ll be nursing a guid scratch or two on their hinder-ends this night.… Man, it was a rout.’ ‘I imagine,’ said Piero Strozzi, his dark face impassive, ‘that my lord Grey’s army would not relish their defeat either.’ ‘Oh, aye, the English,’ said Buccleuch absently. ‘We are, after all, at war with them and not with the Kerrs,’ the Marshal said mildly.”

“Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again.”

“I am here, Brethren in Christ, to lead you, every man, woman and little child of the Faith, to freedom. God in His mercy be praised.’ ‘Then God in His mercy has arranged that we should lead them from the rear,’ said Jerott Blyth thinly from the window. ‘The entire garrison of Tripoli has just marched away.”

“Jenny Fleming merely looked exasperated. ‘That young man,’ she said, ‘ought to be plucked out of his pride and impaled on a thornbush. He introduced me to someone as the Controller of the King’s Beam, last time we met.’ Which at least had the merit of making her daughter laugh, if a little wildly.”

“Jerott’s eyes and Philippa’s met. ‘When I meet my friend,’ said Jerott Blyth carefully, ‘there is likely to be a detonation which will take the snow off Mont Blanc. I advise you to seek other auspices. Philippa, I think we should go down below.’ ‘To swim?’ said that unprepossessing child guilelessly. ‘I can stand on my head.’ ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Jerott morosely. ‘Why in hell did you come?’ The brown eyes within the damp, dun-coloured hair inspected him narrowly. ‘Because you need a woman,’ said Philippa finally. ‘And I’m the nearest thing to it that you’re likely to get. It was very short notice.”

“My dear Gaultier,’ said Lymond. ‘It will send the Shadow of God into transports. I suppose I’ve seen objects more grisly before, but it doesn’t spring to mind where.… Twenty-four-carat gold, Jerott. Look. And studded with rubies like fish-roes.’ ‘Yes. I think he’ll be pleased,’ said Georges Gaultier. For the first time satisfaction, animation and even cheerfulness rang in his voice. ‘Sickening, isn’t it?”