Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Scottish Fiction at 12:00 on 11 May 2025
Century,1983, 494 p. First published 1969.
This is the fourth in Dunnett’s series of novels featuring Francis Crawford of Lymond, Comte de Sevigny. See here, here and here. After the revelation in book three that Lymond had fathered a son on Oonagh O’Dwyer and Graham Reid Malett’s escape from the cathedral of St Giles, Crawford is faced with a dilemma. If he kills Malett then the child will be killed.
Taking advantage of the commission of Henri II of France to transport an elaborate spinet to the Grand Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and be French Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Crawford travels the Mediterranean accompanied by former Grand Knight of Malta and one of Lymond’s mercenary company, Jerott Blyth, and sixteen year-old Philippa Somerville, daughter of friends of the Lymond family whose intention is to protect Lymond’s child Khaireddin from further harm. Also in the party are the spinet’s constructor Georges Gaultier, his niece Marthe, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Crawford, and a Swiss cook, Onophrion Zitwitz.
Things are complicated by the fact that there are two fair-haired children of the correct age knocking about, Khaireddin and Kuzucuyum, one of them the child of Malett and his deceased sister Joleta. Both may have to be rescued.
False trails, betrayals and incident abound, including a set piece among the ancient cisterns below what was once Constantinople but is now – and has been for a hundred years – Stamboul, the atmosphere of Suleiman’s court is evoked admirably, Crawford’s trials grow. The climax comes with a chess game using live pieces instigated by Suleiman’s second wife Hürrem Sultan, known as Roxelana, to resolve the competing claims of Malett and Lymond as to the truth, a game which involves a pawn sacrifice.
There is something about the writing which lends the tale opacity, however. Perhaps Dunnett, like Lymond, is being too clever for her own good. Not that it affected her sales.
Possibly reflecting attitudes when the book was written a minor character, Pierre Gilles D’Albi, says of Marthe, “‘She has too many ideas. Women with ideas are a threat to the civilized world.’”
The series as a whole may be the Lymond Chronicles but as written this one is more the tales of Philippa Somerville and Jerott Blyth than of Lymond.
Sensitivity note: uses the word ‘nigger’.
Pedant’s corner:- bouillotte (is an 18th century card game, not a 16th century one,) a missing quotation mark at the end of a piece of dialogue. At one point Blyth is trapped in a small building which is on fire and giving off hydrocyanic gas, and survives. (Exposure to small amounts of HCN is usually fatal,) “since Odysseus’ time” (Odysseus’s time – I note Zakynthos’s appeared later so usage of the apostrophe wasn’t consistent,) Scandaroon (x 1, elsewhere Scanderoon,) “a English girl” (an English girl,) rauccous (raucous,) hoopoo (hoopoe.)