Queens' Play

Menaced by England and riven by internal discord, Scotland in 1548 has only one hope for survival as a nation: an alliance with France to be sealed by the betrothal of the five-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin.

But once in France, Mary suffers a series of ominous 'accidents'. The one man Mary's mother, the Queen Dowager, feels that she can trust to protect her daughter, now seven, is Francis Crawford of Lymond. Despatched to France, Lymond embarks upon a nightmare game of hide-and-seek at the very heart of Henri II's glittering, decadent court. To expose the would-be assassin, he is ready to gamble his life, but does not forsee, as do his friends, what else he may lose.