“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.”

“The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs . . . there’s something unchancy about a left-handed race.’ ‘I’m right-handed,’ offered Will Scott. ‘Aye.’ ‘And six foot three in my hose.’ ‘Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.’ ‘I’m saving it,’ he said austerely, ‘till I’ve the theme for it.’ ‘Oh!’ said Grizel Beaton (Younger) of Buccleuch, with a squeal of delight. ‘Will Scott! Are we having our first married set-to?”

“I’ve wed his two empty boots.’ ‘That you havena,’ said Janet, Lady of Buccleuch, lowering her voice not at all in the presence of two hundred twittering Scott relations as they gazed after their vanishing husbands. ‘They aye remember their boots. It’s their empty nightgowns that get fair monotonous.”

“It wasna a man,’ said Andrew Kerr broadly. ‘T’was my aunty. I tellt ye. I’m no risking cauld steel in ma wame for a pittance, unless all that’s mine is well lookit after—’ ‘An old lady,’ said Lord Grey with forbearance, ‘in curling papers and a palatial absence of teeth?’ ‘My aunt Lizzie!’ said Andrew Kerr. ‘She has just,’ said Lord Grey austerely, ‘seriously injured one of my men.’ ‘How?’ The old savage looked interested. ‘From an upper window. The castle was burning, and he was climbing a ladder to offer the lady her freedom. She cracked his head with a chamberpot,’ said Lord Grey distastefully, ‘and retired crying that she would have no need of a jurden in Heaven, as the good Lord had no doubt thought of more convenient methods after the seventh day, when He had had a good rest.”

“They’re talking about Marthe, Maître Gaultier’s assistant. What’s she like? Pretty?’ ‘She’s pretty,’ said the man. Philippa studied the taciturn face. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘Mr Blyth wants her all to himself?’ For a moment, she thought it hadn’t worked. Then the man gave a snort. ‘Mr Blyth want her? He held us up at Avignon for two days refusing to go on until she was sent back home, but Gaultier wouldn’t do it, and he had to give in. Mr Blyth and Gaultier haven’t spoken since. Aye,’ said Jerott’s man morosely. ‘It’s going to be a grand, sociable trip.”

“And here, above the valley of Yarrow, Lord Culter and his brother and twenty men from Midculter in their wedding finery with, thank God, half armour beneath, waited to intercept the English army on its plundering march, with two shepherds, twelve arquebuses, some pikes, some marline twine, a leather pail of powder, shot, matches, some makeshift colours, and eight hundred rusted helmets from the Warden’s storehouse at Talla.”

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