Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [1]
than Lymond ever could.
THE LYMOND CHRONICLES
FOREWORD BY Dorothy Dunnett
When, a generation ago, I sat down before an old Olivetti typewriter, ran through a sheet of paper, and typed a title, The Game of Kings, I had no notion of changing the course of my life. I wished to explore, within several books, the nature and experiences of a classical hero: a gifted leader whose star-crossed career, disturbing, hilarious, dangerous, I could follow in finest detail for ten years. And I wished to set him in the age of the Renaissance.
Francis Crawford of Lymond in reality did not exist, and his family, his enemies and his lovers are merely fictitious. The countries in which he practices his arts, and for whom he fights, are, however, real enough. In pursuit of a personal quest, he finds his way—or is driven—across the known world, from the palaces of the Tudor kings and queens of England to the brilliant court of Henry II and Catherine de Medici in France.
His home, however, is Scotland, where Mary Queen of Scots is a vulnerable child in a country ruled by her mother. It becomes apparent in the course of the story that Lymond, the most articulate and charismatic of men, is vulnerable too, not least because of his feeling for Scotland, and for his estranged family.
The Game of Kings was my first novel. As Lymond developed in wisdom, so did I. We introduced one another to the world of sixteenth-century Europe, and while he cannot change history, the wars and events which embroil him are real. After the last book of the six had been published, it was hard to accept that nothing more about Francis Crawford could be written, without disturbing the shape and theme of his story. But there was, as it happened, something that could be done: a little manicuring to repair the defects of the original edition as it was rushed out on both sides of the Atlantic. And so here is Lymond returned, in a freshened text which presents him as I first envisaged him, to a different world.
Author’s Note
In 1961 the initial manuscript in the Lymond Chronicles, The Game of Kings, was first launched in the United States of America. It had the great good fortune to be received and handled by a lady whose name is still known and respected throughout the publishing world, the late Lois Dwight Cole.
To Lois, for her unfailing support and interest throughout the series, my thanks will always be due.
I should also like to pay tribute to the Librarian and staff of The London Library, who have aided me so courteously over the years to assemble fact as well as fantasy.
The verse quoted at the head of each chapter is taken from the prophecies of Michel Nostradamus.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Author’s Note
Map
PART I
PART II
PART III
PART IV
PART V
Part I
Liepard laisse au ciel extend son oeil
Un aigle autour du soleil voyt s’esbatre.
Chapter 1
Quand ceux du pole arctiq unis ensemble
Et Orient grand effrayeur et crainte.
What the celebration at the castle had been, Austin Grey never discovered. He rode in to his tryst at the Tournai and found the inn ankle-deep in drunk burghers, thronging the common room and spilling out into the courtyard where inoffensive travellers like himself were attempting to sup their bread and mutton and chicory salad in the airless July dusk of Douai.
He avoided using his title. Money, and a steady, effective insistence, procured a room for him. There he removed the dust of his two days’ journey through French-speaking Flanders from Calais.
He had meant to dine indoors, but the heat and the smells forced him down to the yard where he cut food as best he could, between the elbows of a wheezing book-pedlar and a talkative merchant from Antwerp, playfully intent on the bodice-strings of the serving-maids. A group of students somewhere under the gallery were hymning cuckoldry (co co co co dae) with an artistry worthy of a Magnificat; and a pair of fishmongers, locked in liquescent brotherhood, reeled