A Son of the Rock

Cassell, 1966, 513 p.

Being the continuing adventures of Francis Crawford of Lymond, Comte de Sévigny, following on from The Game of Kings and Queen’s Play. We start here with a small incident in the ongoing border skirmishes with English forces before Lymond sets out for Malta, the seat of the Order of the Knights of St John, currently under the corrupt leadership of Grand Master Juan de Homedès. A Turkish fleet is bearing down on the island and Lymond is accompanying a mission to warn of its approach. It is there he meets the fair and pious Sir Graham Reid Malett (known as Gabriel.)

After witnessing the fall of Gozo they engineer a message giving false information to the Turks so that their fleet sets out for Tripoli instead of attacking Malta. A small group of Knights travels there to help its defence. Lymond’s former lover Oonagh O’Dwyer, whom he previously persuaded away from would-be Irish King Cormac O’Connor, has taken up with Galatian de Césel, Governor of Gozo, but when the island is lost she falls into the hands of the Turks. It turns out she is pregnant with Lymond’s son, eventually named Khaireddin, but for most of the book he is unaware of this.

The attempts to prevent the Turks capturing Tripoli eventually failing Lymond is joined by Malett in his efforts to form and train a private army partly to police the perennial feuds in the Scottish Borders but also to make money as mercenaries.

In the meantime Malett’s young and visually captivating sister, Joleta, has been sent by him to Lymond’s mother for safe keeping. Her attitude to men, who have always it seems deferred to her beauty, is summed up her reaction to Lymond’s articulation of his feelings for her, “‘But you can’t dislike me!’” In this scene Lymond seems to act at odds with the gentlemanly demeanour we might expect of a novel’s hero. But we later find his reasons are sound.

Notably (to me anyway) the pivotal moment in the book takes place in a hostelry in Dumbarton.

Twists and turns, betrayals and unfortunate choices abound and there are several loose ends (presumably to be taken up in the three later instalments of the Lymond Chronicles.)

It all jogs along eventfully enough but there is something about Dunnett’s writing here that jars with me. Too many viewpoint jumps perhaps, too little transparency.

Pedant’s corner:- helments (helmets,) unhung (unhanged,) “nursed rom” (nursed from.) “‘Unless your  fortify’”  (‘Unless you fortify’,) pomegranite (pomegranate,) “which soaked hides at might need protect” (context suggests ‘hides it might need’,) “the knights vulnerability” (the knights’ vulnerability,) disks (discs,) demonaic (demoniac,) hiccoughing (hiccupping,) cameraderie (camaraderie,) “a oecumenical” (‘an oecumenical’, and the latter is usually, now, spelled ‘ecumenical’,) Sandilands’ (Sandilands’s,) “every man, woman and child for which the company were responsible” (for which the company was responsible,) connexion (connection,) “had reached a screaming crescendo” (had crescendoed to a screaming climax,) pollarchy (first known use of this word was in the 1850s, not in mediæval Scotland.)