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July 17 - August 5, 2025
In the gratified presence of their host, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch and Tom Erskine were still hard at it. Buccleuch, beaked like a macaw, was a baroque and mighty Scots Lowlander with a tough mind, a voice like Saint Columba’s, and one of the biggest estates on the Scottish Border.
“Lymond! We know all about Lymond. Rieving and ruttery and all manner of vice—” “And treason.” “And treason. But treason’s not Lord Culter’s dish.
There are those that want to take time and men to hunt down Lymond and his band of murderers; and those that demand that Culter should lead them as proof of his loyalty.
“As my lady of Suffolk saith,” said Lymond gently, “God is a marvellous man.” Eyes of cornflower blue rested thoughtfully on Sir Wat.
Nouvelle amour, nouvelle affection; nouvelles fleurs parmi l’herbe nouvelle.
“Ye murdering cur….You’ll end this night—”
“Mungo doesn’t think so,” said Lymond. “His mind is on fleshly lusts and his treasure.”
but if he’s developing into a Calvinist or a Lutheran or an Erasmian or an Anabaptist it isn’t very healthy: look at George Wishart and the Castillians.” “He isn’t quoting Luther. He’s quoting Aristotle and Boethius and the laws of chivalry and the dreicher speils of the Chevalier de Bayard on loyalty and the ethics of warfare.
“Because Buccleuch isn’t a plaster saint and Will would drive the Archangel Gabriel to lunacy and drink,” said Lady Buccleuch with candour. “Wait till you hear him on the subject of perjury, patriotism and divided loyalties.
What about this marriage of Richard’s and Lymond?”
Norman fairness recognizing Celtic darkness howled like a cluricane.
Do you like Richard?” “I’m married to him!” “That’s why I asked. You don’t believe in polyandry by any chance?”
May dew or none, my brown and tender diamonds don’t engender, they dissolve. Immoderation, Mariotta, is a thief of money and intestinal joy, but who’d check it? Not I. Here I am, weeping soft tears of myrrh, to prove it.”
And always the nobles who fell out of power were able to look for help to England’s Henry VIII, who as a matter of personal pride and pressing European politics meant to conquer Scotland for himself, and to take the child Queen Mary to England, there to rear her in English ways and marry her in due course to his son.
Now Henry was dead, and a child sat on the English throne too: Edward VI, for whom ruled his uncle, Edward Somerset, Protector of England and avid adherent to Henry’s policy for the marriage, who also burned and pillaged and put to the sword, and seduced the Scottish nobility with other weapons; for King Henry in marital and concupiscent frenzy had severed his country’s church
thought occasionally about religion when it appeared to be taking too close a grip on politics and therefore on the future of the Scott family, but this latest upheaval was nothing to him.
“It’s about Lymond,” said Sir Wat grimly, and let fly.
God forgive him, with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with.
And three million English are trying their damndest for the overlordship of Scotland with the hairy natives like you and me kicked out, and the land parcelled out to the Dacres and the Howards and the Seymours and the Musgraves.
between the raids every landowner between Berwick and Fife is courting England like a pregnant scullery-maid.
I am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels—the latter for preference; both if necessary.”
am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels—the latter for preference; both if necessary.”
Through the rustle of shock came the first cries of horror: from these rose a storm of exclamatory fright and abuse, and from that an orchestration of outraged feminine frenzy that tortured the very harp strings in the gallery. Someone, losing her head, plucked at the small, stately figure. “...
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“You won’t get your diamonds back, I fear, when the curtain comes down. And the name, please, is Lymond: a new medal: choose the trussell or the pile. My present face is the provident, forbearing one.” The smiling eyes turned on her were empty. “De los álamos vengo, madre. From the stews and alleyways of Europe with a taste for play acting—yes—and
And the name, please, is Lymond: a new medal: choose the trussell or the pile. My present face is the provident, forbearing one.” The smiling eyes turned on her were empty. “De los álamos vengo, madre.
From the stews and alleyways of Europe with a taste for play acting—yes—and killing and treason and crimes, they say...
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yes—and killing and treason and crimes, they say, nameless an...
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Haven’t I been worth five years’ excellent...
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Leave your female Telemachus alone for a moment; she’s not dead.”
“We’ve had a deal of bad poetry, haven’t we? Suggesting the climax to this thrilling and literary spectacle.
The youngest surviving Crawford, in leaving, had deftly set fire to the castle.
“It was your brother. He must be insane.”
“Not insane, dear.” Sybilla, speaking gently, contradicted. “Not insane. But magnificently drunk, I fear.”
“…So Lymond—dear God, Lymond must wait.”
Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed’s coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives.
the marriage which should painlessly annex Scotland to England and end forever the long, dangerous romance between Scotland and France.
and yf hit be in tyme of warre, they ought not to open the yates by nyght to no man.
“You’ve chosen a life of vice, and have been consistent and reliable and thorough and successful in carrying it out.”
How nice,” said Lymond, “to have simple emotions. No trouble with principles; no independence of thought; no resistance to suggestion; no nonsense about adult behaviour when it comes to one’s own amour propre.”
That evening at sunset the whaup and peewit lay quiet in Annandale and the black shadows of the Torthorwald and Mousewald hills marched east over moors prickling with movement and furtive noise.
Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur.
Restless, energetic, at twenty-five already a leader of horse,
Young Wharton was, he found, lying face down in the road, a cloth stuffed in his mouth and bent arms savagely clinched by Lymond. “Where’s Drummond?” “I knifed him. He’s lying in the road.”
“Then get him out of it, for God’s sake. We don’t want a public wake for him.
like the frog in the story, and while I can stare you down, it’s a little difficult for you to stare me up. You’ve put on weight, haven’t you?
And hit is not fittynge ne convenable thynge for a woman to goo to bataylle for the fragilitie and feblenes of her. And therfore holdeth she not the waye in her draught as the Knyghtes doon.
Music’s my joy and my obsession.”
“En mai au douz tens nouvel Que raverdissent prael, Oi soz un arbroisel Chanter le rosignolet. Saderala don! Tant fet bon Dormir lez le buissonet.”
The house of Drumlanrig was full of Douglases, and whether sincere or not, their welcome was a suitable blend of shock and cordiality.
Sly and splendid as a half-tamed leopard, Sir
