Queens' Play (69 page)

‘It is the King’s,’ said Lymond cheerfully. ‘I understand that, unlike the pots and pans, he does not expect it returned.’

Under his own gauntlet, the edge of a bandage showed. She understood him too well. No duties; no obligations; no responsibilities—except to himself. And yet … he had kept the glove.

‘Say me a riddle,’ said the Queen.

The jennet was becoming impatient; he had paused long enough. ‘We are not private enough,’ he said. ‘Your servant, my lady.’ And smiling, tightened the reins.

‘Sing me a song, then,’ she pressed. He was hers; he had worn her gauge; others should see how pleasant they were together. But he only smiled again, and bowed, and moved off, the applause rattling down the stands, and the equerries closing in behind, his banner held high over his head.

Mary, watching half-annoyed, half-absorbed, raised her voice chanting; hardly heard, Margaret Erskine was thankful to notice, in the noise and movement around. Then she broke into full song, taking both parts herself, in a very good imitation of the famous voice: the voice which through a long winter had sung to the King and courtiers of France, and had played with her Queens.

August 1961—October 1962
Edinburgh and the Isle of Skye

Reader’s Guide

1. For discussion of
Queens’ Play

In some respects
Queens’ Play
is a sixteenth-century spy story, its hero a Scottish “mole” at the French court. How comfortable is Lymond as a state “operative”? Why is the state uncomfortable with him? Does he safely complete his mission, to save a child from an assassin? How does the tragic failure of his relationship with Robin Stewart qualify this?

2. Though
Queens’ Play
does not travel to Ireland, the politics and plight of that small, proud, conflicted nation are crucial to the novel. Why does Dorothy Dunnett choose to tell the story of Ireland largely through the figure of the emphatically anti-political Phelim O’Liam Roe? What qualities of ancient Ireland, sixteenth-century Ireland, perhaps even contemporary Ireland, does O’Liam Roe display?

3. In an important scene toward the end of the novel, Lymond attempts to “show the French court to itself in a new light: not as his companions, his victims, in some deliberate essay in decadence, but as ministers to his art.” Is this a ruse or is it true to some extent? Is Lymond just “using” his art or is he a true artist?

THE LYMOND CHRONICLES

The Game of Kings
Queens’ Play
The Disorderly Knights
Pawn in Frankincense
The Ringed Castle
Checkmate

King Hereafter

The Photogenic Soprano
(
Dolly and the Singing Bird
)
Murder in the Round
(
Dolly and the Cookie Bird
)
Match for a Murderer
(
Dolly and the Doctor Bird)
Murder in Focus
(
Dolly and the Starry Bird
)

Dolly and the Nanny Bird
Dolly and the Bird of Paradise
Send a Fax to the Kasbah
(
Moroccan Traffic
)

THE HOUSE OF NICCOLÒ
Niccolò Rising
The Spring of the Ram
Race of Scorpions
Scales of Gold
The Unicorn Hunt
To Lie with Lions
Caprice and Rondo
Gemini

The Scottish Highlands
(with Alastair Dunnett)
The Dorothy Dunnett Companion Volume I
(by Elspeth Morrison)
The Dorothy Dunnett Companion Volume II
(by Elspeth Morrison)

“The finest living writer of historical fiction.”
—The Washington Post Book World

THE GAME OF KINGS

Dorothy Dunnett introduces her irresistible hero Francis Crawford of Lymond, a nobleman of elastic morals and dangerous talents whose tongue is as sharp as his rapier. In 1547 Lymond returns to defend his native Scotland from the English, despite accusations of treason against him. Hunted by friend and enemy alike, he leads a company of outlaws in a desperate race to redeem his reputation.

Fiction/978-0-679-77743-4

QUEENS’ PLAY

Once an accused traitor, now a valued agent of Scottish diplomacy, Lymond is sent to France, where a very young Queen Mary Stuart is sorely in need of his protection. Disguised as a disreputable Irish scholar, Lymond insinuates himself into the glittering labyrinth of the French court, where every courtier is a conspirator and the art of assassination is paramount.

Fiction/978-0-679-77744-1

THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS

Through machinations in England and abroad, Lymond is dispatched to Malta, to assist the Knights Hospitallers in the island’s defense against Turkish corsairs. But he shortly discovers that the greatest threat to the knights lies within their own ranks. In a narrative that sweeps from the besieged fortress of Tripoli to the steps of Edinburgh’s St. Giles Cathedral, Lymond matches wits and swords against an elusive villain.

Fiction/978-0-679-77745-8

PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE

Lymond cuts a desperate path across the Ottoman empire of Suleiman the Magnificent in search of a kidnapped child, an effort that may place this adventurer in the power of his enemies. What ensues is a subtle and savage chess game whose gambits include treachery, enslavement, and torture and whose final move compels Lymond to face the darkest ambiguities of his own nature.

Fiction/978-0-679-77746-5

THE RINGED CASTLE

Between Mary Tudor’s England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible lies a vast distance indeed, but forces within the Tudor court impel Lymond to Muscovy, where he becomes advisor and general to the half-mad tsar. In this barbaric land, Lymond finds his gifts for intrigue and survival tested to the breaking point, yet these dangers are nothing beside those of England, where Lymond’s oldest enemies are conspiring against him.

Fiction/978-0-679-77747-2

CHECKMATE

Francis Crawford returns to France to lead an army against England. But even as the soldier-scholar succeeds brilliantly on the battlefield, his haunted past becomes a subject of intense interest to forces in both the French and English courts. For whoever knows the secret of Lymond’s parentage possesses the power to control him—or destroy him.

Fiction/978-0-679-77748-9

VINTAGE BOOKS

Available at your local bookstore, or visit

www.randomhouse.com