Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [333]
He didn’t expect to forget her, or their union. Wherever he walked, the echo of it stayed with him. So may thou love me like a branch full of honey, and only me. Around thee I have girt fields of sugarcane to banish all hate; so that thou may adore me, my darling, and never depart. The words were hers, and not his. He was departing. He had made her no avowals of love, for she had killed Katelina.
At the end, the King came to his side and walked with him out to the yard, where Chennaa was waiting. Then Zacco had laughed. ‘Your fondness for that elegant animal! If you had shown us half such tenderness, what might we not have accomplished together?’
‘But,’ said Nicholas, ‘with a beast there is no communion except the bond between rider and ridden. We are a King and a King’s loyal companion, and the regard we have for each other will always be greater than that, and endure longer.’
The King stood still, without answering. Nicholas faced him, and saw again how enchanting he was, and how alone, and how young. He said, ‘Most excellent, brave and glorious prince, may God give you happiness. You and your island.’
Reader’s Guide
1. For Discussion: Race of Scorpions
What are the key ingredients in the nature of James of Lusignan, king-in-the-making, of Cyprus? Will he be a better king than his sister Carlotta? What are some of the forces that bring Nicholas vander Poele to take a hand in this making? Does his recent equivocal experience in Trebizond influence Nicholas here?
2. When we first see Katelina van Borselen she is conversing with the troubador King Ren? of Anjou while he is painting an illustration of his recently written allegory on the theme of “The Heart as Love’s Captive.” How does this theme frame the relationship of Nicholas and Katelina? How do they each react to love’s captivity at the ancient black cone of Venus in Paphos? The ravine at Kalopetra? The shattered house in starving Famagusta?
3. Nicholas’s great public achievements during his stay in Cyprus are the modernization of the sugar producing processes at Kouklia and the victorious military and diplomatic assault at Famagusta. What did each enterprise satisfy in him? What did he learn from them? What elements of failure are in each of them?
4. The conflicts at this time in Cyprus will shortly produce the setting of the story which Shakespeare will use for his tragedy Othello. What echoes and intimations of this play, its characters and themes, do you find in Dorothy Dunnett’s novel?
5. How does the relationship between Nicholas and the young Diniz Vasquez replicate the nightmare version of Nicholas’s relationship with his family? The ideal version? Why do you think Nicholas brought Diniz to work in the dye factory? How does Jordan de Reberac tarnish this relationship at the end?
Dorothy Dunnett was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. She is the author of the Francis Crawford of Lymond novels; the House of Niccolò novels; seven mysteries; King Hereafter, an epic novel about Macbeth; and the text of The Scottish Highlands, a book of photographs by David Paterson, on which she collaborated with her husband, Sir Alastair Dunnett. In 1992, Queen Elizabeth appointed her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Lady Dunnett died in 2001.
Books by Dorothy Dunnett
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