“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'll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem?”

“Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra's elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair, gazed at him sadly.”

“He was a second too late. Ducking, the felt-capped man, muscles hard, dragged himself out of that grasp and, flinging off to one side, got his balance, glanced once at Jerott, and then darted off into the darkness. After the first step, breathing hard, Jerott stayed where he was, swearing. But he could hardly leave Lymond. He looked up. ‘Bravo,’ said Francis Crawford, sitting crosslegged on top of the wall, his hood shaken free on his shoulders. ‘You’re a credit to the bloody Order, aren’t you? You know you’ve got a knife in your hand?”

“His leaf-gold tresses on end, his eyes in baskets from the long night without sleep, Phelim O’LiamRoe smacked his two fists together and cursed. The Queen Dowager, hardly aware of him, had turned her erect body to the window, followed by Margaret Erskine’s wide eyes. But Michel Hérisson, who had arrived so unexpectedly on the Irishman’s heels, ran his hacked and gouty hands through the wild white hair and said through his teeth, ‘Liam aboo, son, Liam aboo! My Gaelic’s all out in holes, the way my arse is ridden out through my breeches; but if you are saying what I hope you are saying, Liam aboo, my son, Liam aboo!”

“He didn’t always tell his father when it happened, because the old man’s face turned mottled blue over his doublet, and unless Will got in first, he would send a runner round all the estates, and the threshing would stop while grousing, reluctant men straggled back for their pikes and swords and mail shirts, taking a long time about it, waiting for Buccleuch the Younger to come up, furious on his sweating horse, and tell them curtly to get back to the fields.”

“Then she said, "Thorfinn!" quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points. "No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth!" the name reached her like sling-shot.Groa said, "They are the same man. I should know. I married both.”

“Did I ever tell you,’ said Lymond pausing on the afterthought, on his way to the flap, ‘that that aunt of mine once hatched an egg?’ He paused, deep in thought, and walked slowly to the door before turning again. His lordship of Aubigny, staring after the vanishing form of his brother, received the full splendour of Lymond’s smile. ‘It was a cuckoo,’ said Francis Crawford prosaically, and followed Lennox out.”