The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [300]
Towards morning, he had trouble avoiding what was normal to him and against her own kindling curiosity, she had to remind him of what he was about. Just before dawn, he slept at last, as far away from her as the great bed allowed him, his face to the windows. She lay, her hands spread over her body to comfort it, and watched him; and thought.
The bells wakened him. She never knew whether he remembered where he was, or who he was with. He stepped from the bed to the window as if the sound had summoned him, stooping once to pick up the bedgown she had discarded and throwing it over one shoulder where it lay, its fleecy lining exposed. She knew all the bells of Venice and supposed that one day, so would he. In the silence of morning, iron struck on iron as if the deeds of the night had been cast into sound for eternity. Strokes steady and irregular, harsh and stammering, spaced and crowded. Throbbing voices close by the roof-tops, and faint bells and flat in the distance, like dwarves in a heavenly foundry. A breath of incense moved through the bars. He said, “Let all stand still, for the master of the house has come.”
She heard him speak. But whether in irony or in agony, in defiance or in submission she couldn’t hear, for the din of the bells.
Reader’s Guide
1. For Discussion: The Spring of the Ram
The “design” that Nicholas vander Poele is making of his trading journey to Trebizond has many threads: one of them is the assembling of a company of brilliant but quarrelsome “experts” who will run a new global commercial enterprise. How are the comic “recruiting” of John le Grant, the subtle binding of Father God-scale, the careful promoting of Loppe, examples of this thread in the design? What in Nicholas himself sometimes hinders this part of the design? As a business, but also as a work of art, who is this design really for?
2. One of the achievements of The Spring of the Ram is the extraordinarily convincing depiction, from the inside, of the mind of an intelligent but spoiled twelve year old girl bent on challenging and possessing her world, whatever the consequences. What are some of the highlights of this portrayal, and what, finally, do you think of Catherine de Charetty?
3. On the same side, for once, as it seems, Nicholas vander Poele and Pagano Doria play the ancient Greek form of polo, tzukanion, before the court of the Emperor in chapter 34, and Father Godscale, noting the similar working of the two agile minds and bodies, recognizes that despite everything “Nicholas was in his element, partly because of the game Doria was giving him.” What, more broadly, is the game Pagano Doria is giving Nicholas? How are they alike and different? What understandings do you think are being conveyed as one dies, holding the eyes of the other for long moments, in chapter 38?
4. Nicholas made the yoyo that amuses Cosimo de Medici in the model of a persian toy, but by chapter 33 is reflecting that the Lady Violante of Naxos “was a better toymaster than he. A cord round his middle and running.” Is he right? How does this image illuminate the politics of the journey to Trebizond? Does it also illuminate the sexual politics of the novel’s last scene?
5. Intimate enemies, Nicholas vander Poele and Simon de St. Pol have each struck a consummately agonizing blow at the other through an angry young woman. Did they know they were doing so? What are some of the other ironies and potential tragedies here? How else does Nicholas feel and respond to what Marion de Charetty has called “the wound of Simon’s enmity”?
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.