Right, this isn't going to be a review as such, mainly because I couldn't synopsise the labyrinthine plot if I tried, and certainly not without prodigious spoilers. Also this is book 6 of 8 in the House of Niccoló series of historical novels, and 12 of 14 in my own infatuation with Dorothy Dunnett books(or, as I like to call it, 2015), and so I should have started a while back if I'd wanted to present any sort of scene-setting to the novels. What I would like to talk about is one specific character, and this post will effectively form a love letter to the wonderful Katelijne Sersanders.
"... it was a relationship, disembodied as that of the mistletoe, which found its nourishment in strange, diverse places: in the excitement of danger; in the marriage of music and word; in understanding allied with compassion. Until now, he had not fully realised how privileged he had been, knowing Katelijne Sersanders."
One of the best aspects of novels, with their easy way of getting you into the author's (or their protagonist's) head, is that you can fancy literary figures. Obviously this can happen in film or TV (I have a major soft spot for Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking), but I don't think this can really match the feeling of a novel. My favourite example of this is Dr Zhivago; the chapter where Lara is introduced is titled 'A Girl From A Different World' - and I completely stand by my 17 year old self, who was hopelessly in love with her as a character from those 6 words alone, before a jot of description or dialogue, and in spite of the following description of her tragic adolescence.
In both of Dunnett's grand historical sagas, you have a central character - Francis of Lymond, or in this case Nicholas van der Poele (Nicolló), who are ineffably competent, handsome, literate, brave, prescient and efficient. They are like Indiana Jones, Mycroft Holmes and Edward Rochester rolled into one, and it's a tribute to her wonderful writing that these bizarre male-wish-fulfillment men can be passed off as real characters who the reader will unpick with delight over the course of the books. Following the wish fulfillment theme, in each of the books there is generally a 'Bond Girl' - in the Lymond books these are typically beautiful and doomed, and are rare in their ability to see the good man behind the impassive warlord. In the later-written Niccoló books the women are generally more antagonistic and scheming, trapped in an Argentine Tango with the mysterious hero; here the central theme is whether the seemingly kind and genial hero is as good as he chooses to appear to be, and whether we should be rooting for him at all.
In both cycles there exists a prima donna, a counterpart to the fascinating leading man. For Lymond this is the divine Phillipa Somerville, who we first meet as a meek and mild child, and, through her misadventures with our hero, blossoms into a heartbreakingly beautiful lady of court, whilst maintaining her selfless and christian outlook, and proving herself every bit a match for the witty, urbane and preternaturally intelligent Lymond. We are invited to fall in love with Phillipa as he does, through her infectious and clever sense of humour, as made evident in a variety of courtly games, plays and songs.
Katelijne, introduced primarily in The Unicorn Hunt and central to To Lie With Lions, fulfills a similar role for Nicholas; she is a fantastically good-natured soul, but also can often seem the only character who can keep pace with his ferocious intelligence. For both she and Nicholas, their insight is based on a deep and cultivated empathy with others, though for Nicholas this leads to him using men as tools, to be bent but not broken, and for Katelijne the opposite, a self-destructive absorption of the problems of others, sacrificing her own ambitions and priorities on the altar of her kindheartedness. The key difference with Katelijne is that she is not a romantic match for Nicholas, whilst they are clearly twin souls, his feelings appear more brotherly than romantic, and Katelijne herself is not a romantic soul - as noted:
"From what I have seen of Katelijne Sersanders (...) she will marry whoever commonsense tells her to, and will have as many children as she knows will be reasonable, while conducting a perfectly satisfactory life that has nothing to do with either"
(can you see why I'm in love yet?)
Katelijne finds herself in the same places and situations as Nicholas for a variety of reasons; she is an efficient lady of court, caring, kind and competent, she is an attractive and engaging young lady, and also a tomboyish soul, deeply resentful of being excluded from the 'man's world', and using her cleverness to elbow into the affairs that come automatically do her dull-witted elder brother Anselm. In all of their entanglements she is characterized (and, by me, adored for) a delightful sense of humour, regularly raising the stony Nicholas to laughter by, like all the best comedy, being able to surprise him with her artful mental hopscotch. Her keen insight and sensitivity means she is continually saving our prone-to-nihilism hero from his darker aspects, and her quiet and intelligent competence means she is regularly relied upon to join up the dots in Nicholas' manic schemes. This in particular is a Dunnett trademark - her best scenes generally involve a hare-brained and breathless chase, whether a life-and-death escape along the rooftops of Leon for Lymond and Phillipa, or a drunken game of Flemish Football around the battlements of Edinburgh castle, with Nicholas and Katelijne as reluctant participants in To Lie With Lions. Lymond/Nicholas will turn the tides with a breathless moment of ingenuity - leaping to certain death, diving into a foaming torrent of water etc. - relying on the sympatico heroine to have seen the inevitable need for the lowered rope or embedded knife or carefully placed raft that allows the hero to cheat death. The pair harmonise as though of one mind and soul, and almost literally transcend their circumstances.
For some, a character like Katelijne will prove too good to be true, but for me she is simply a delight to read about, a tumult of wit and kindness, and a warm light that illuminates the rest of the book. It is suggested that, in both series of novels, Dunnett's central characters are at least in part based on her own marriage. Dunnett's husband, Sir Alastair Dunnett, was a towering figure in Scottish culture, as well as editor of the Scotsman, writer and businessman - a polymathic figure who you can imagine inspiring Dunnett's leading, truly 'renaissance' men, and that a wife's love might engender such a flattering portrait. One wonders therefore if Dunnett saw herself in her intoxicating heroines. As a well regarded painter, as well as wonderful novelist and historian, she certainly had the quality and humour - rather than waste my affections on her fictional characters, maybe I should focus on building that time machine so I can go flirt with her in 1948 or so....
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