To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [366]
So he told himself, in the well-deserved darkness where he had been left. Where he must cease to think of that small, surprising family he had been vouchsafed: Clémence and Pasque, Jodi and Egidia, Tobie, Moriz, John and the rest. And another person, already lost, already renounced: a friend; a precocious friend who, for a short time, had trusted and respected him, and placed her life in his hands. The only one who might have observed the broken thread in his design. Having been to Ultima Thule, he had not sold it.
He had, of course, sold everything else. It was what he was trained for.
It did not occur to him, because he was still in some ways inexperienced, that there are some things – the contents of a dovecote, for instance – which cannot be sold. For as the soul to the body, the birds will find their way back to their master.
Reader’s Guide
1. For Discussion: To Lie with Lions
What are Nicholas de Fleury and Katelijne Sersanders to each other, really? What does each offer to, or release in, the other? What do you think the future holds for them?
2. What are the various motives for which his well-wishers persuade Nicholas to throw himself into designing the great Miracle Play at the novel’s center? What are Nicholas’s motives? Can you contrast Jody’s response to the play with Gelis’s eventual response? Why, of all the possible Miracles in the medieval play-book, is the Nativity such an appropriate story for the novel, and for Nicholas?
3. The journeys of Nicholas, since he first left his home in Bruges years ago, have up to this point been to the far East, or the far South. The most memorable and exotic journey in To Lie With Lions is to the far North. How does Dorothy Dunnett exploit the territory of Iceland—its geography, its history, its economics, its symbolic resonance—in the novel?
4. “A good man is as a tree, sheltering those of his blood whom he loves.” Nicholas hears this brief allusion to family and future from the great scholar Cardinal Bessarion, and stricken, wishes it were true (ch. 36). Is it not true? Of his sons? Of the older men he believes are also of his blood? How do these shelterings deepen the potential for a tragic outcome under this “tree”?
5. Nicholas’s behavior to the king and country of Scotland causes the moral catastrophe that ends the novel: do you see any similarities or differences between this and the Emperor’s behavior to the Duke of Burgundy at the end of the novel? What grounds does Kathy have for hope at the end of the novel?
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 Companion Volume I (by Elspeth Morrison)
The Dorothy Dunnett Companion Volume II (by Elspeth Morrison)