Dorothy Dunnett

"In 1547 Scotland is clinging to independence after a humiliating English invasion. Paradoxically, the country's freedom may depend on a man who stands accused of treason. He is Francis Crawford of Lymond, a scapegoat nobleman of crooked felicities and murderous talents, with a scholar's erudition and a wicked tongue. Clawing his way back into a country that has outlawed him, and to a family that has turned its back on him, Lymond will prove that...

Somewhere within the bejeweled labyrinth of the Ottoman empire, a child is hidden. Now his father, Francis Crawford of Lymond, soldier of fortune and the exiled heir of Scottish nobility, is searching for him while ostensibly engaged on a mission to the Turkish Sultan. At stake is a pawn in a cutthroat game whose gambits include treason, enslavement, and murder.

Having refused a commission from the dowager queen of Scotland, Lymond turns mercenary, heading to Malta to observe the crusading order of Knights Hospitaller of St. John, a brotherhood of monks sworn to defend Christendom with swords instead of sermons. The knights' beloved leader, Sir Graham Reid Malett, is devout and charming, and openly declares it his mission to turn Lymond from his mercenary ways and bring him into the order. But as the Turkish...

Francis Crawford of Lymond, once an accused traitor, now a valued agent of Scottish diplomacy, is sent to France to protect young Queen Mary Stuart from assassinators that extend from her native country to the court of France.

The time is the 15th century, when intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe. Among them, none is bolder or more cunning than Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, the good-natured dyer's apprentice who schemes and swashbuckles his way to the helm of a mercantile empire. Winter 1474 finds Nicholas exiled in the frozen port of Danzig, Poland. His Machiavellian exploits in Scotland have cost him friends and family--not to mention countless riches....