The Disorderly Knights, Take Three

[rusty_halo]

http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2783

I bought another copy of The Disorderly Knights because the pages are falling out of my original.

I think the third read is the charm with these books. It’s like everything comes into focus and I suddenly understand and appreciate everything that’s happening. The first read is just about figuring out what the hell is going on, the second is figuring out what the themes and subtext and underlying meanings are, and the third read is putting it all together to make a wonderful brilliant whole.

(My mom's in the first stage right now. She called me yesterday in the middle of the poisoning scene in Queen's Play, ranting about what a drunken mess Lymond's become. I told her that I couldn't say anything without spoiling her until she read to the end of the scene; fifteen minutes later I answered the phone and was greeted with "Robin Stewart is the murderer"!?!? Ah, I've created a convert!)

So, The Disorderly Knights. I'm only 66 pages in and already wanting to blog about it. I really need to hook up with one of these Dunnett re-reading groups so that I'll have more people to discuss this with!

I think The Disorderly Knights might be my favorite Lymond book (although The Game of Kings and Pawn in Frankincense are also close). I love the narrative structure--it's the Lymond book that reads most like an adventure novel. It reminds me of a Sharpe book--the battles, the siege, the military tactics. The pacing and the build of suspense are wonderful, particularly in the Malta and Tripoli chapters. And the villain. I've read lots of complaints that Gabriel is too simplistic of an antagonist, that his goals are too "pure evil," sadistic, psychopathic, pure selfish ambition, but... there are people like that. I was reading this New York Times article about Bernie Madoff the other day and it could have been a description of Gabriel:

But some analysts say that a more complex and layered observation of his actions involves linking the world of white-collar finance to the world of serial criminals.

They wonder whether good old Bernie Madoff might have stolen simply for the fun of it, exploiting every relationship in his life for decades while studiously manipulating financial regulators.

“Some of the characteristics you see in psychopaths are lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims,” says Gregg O. McCrary, a former special agent with the F.B.I. who spent years constructing criminal behavioral profiles.

Mr. McCrary cautions that he has never met Mr. Madoff, so he can’t make a diagnosis, but he says Mr. Madoff appears to share many of the destructive traits typically seen in a psychopath. That is why, he says, so many who came into contact with Mr. Madoff have been left reeling and in confusion about his motives.

“People like him become sort of like chameleons. They are very good at impression management,” Mr. McCrary says. “They manage the impression you receive of them. They know what people want, and they give it to them.”

As investigators plow through decades of documents, trying to decipher whether Mr. Madoff was engaged in anything other than an elaborate financial ruse, his friends remain dumbfounded — and feel deeply violated.

“He was a hero to us. The head of Nasdaq. We were proud of everything he had accomplished,” says Diana Goldberg, who once shared the 27-minute train ride with Mr. Madoff from their homes in Laurelton, Queens, to classes at Far Rockaway High School. “Now, the hero has vanished.”

If, in the end, Mr. Madoff is found to have been engaging in fraud for most of his career, then the hero never really existed. Authorities say Mr. Madoff himself has confessed that he was the author of a longstanding and wide-ranging financial charade. His lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, declined to comment.

During the decades that Mr. Madoff built his business, he cast himself as a crusader, protecting the interests of smaller investors and bent on changing the way securities trading was done on Wall Street.

Sound familiar?

And, of course, the really wonderful thing about Gabriel is there but for the grace of god is Lymond. He's the perfect foil: all of Lymond's brilliance, his ability to manipulate others, his schemes, his talent at acting, his ambition, his courage, his temper... but with absolutely no moral underpinning. His existence sheds such an important light on Lymond because it reveals what makes Lymond a hero despite all his flaws: his underlying ethics, his compassion, his strength of will and willingness to sacrifice himself when it comes to helping others. Gabriel's false humility--always a scheme to gain recognition--reveals Lymond's actual humility, the compassion and self-sacrifice for which he never expects credit. Gabriel's actual cruelty reveals just how phony Lymond's supposed cruelties really are.

And I just adore the contrast of it. That the ideal of manhood, the tall, beautiful, heroic, pious martyr dude is UTTERLY FUCKING EVIL, and the irreverent, devious, snarky mercenary-with-an-outlaw-past who consorts with prostitutes and questions religious doctrine is the hero.

Maybe it's also that I love Lymond most in this book because I loathe Gabriel, and Lymond is the only one who can see through him. (I think part of the reason this gets to me personally is that I knew a woman like this--thankfully not on such a violent level! But I'd bet good money that she was clinically psychopathic. She drew me and others in as friends, knew exactly how to play herself up with lies and manipulation so that we adored her, and then used us against each other in order to achieve her own goals of ego and social power. She made my life hell for a year and one of the best decisions I ever made was to cut her out of my life completely.)

So I'm reading for a couple of things this time. One is Lymond's goals--is Lymond 100% set on using his experience in Malta to build his Scottish mercenary army, or is he ever tempted to stay with the Knights? Is he ever drawn in by Gabriel, or is he suspicious from the beginning? At what point does he start to figure Gabriel out? What mistakes does Gabriel make that begin to give himself away?

The other interesting thing is to look at Gabriel's tactics. The Lymond/Gabriel relationship is one big real-life chess game (which comes to fruition, literally, at the end of Pawn in Frankincense), and I've gotten expert at studying Lymond's methods and tactics, but what are Gabriel's? We get so used to Lymond being able to out-think those around him, but with Gabriel he's challenged on every level--Gabriel (and arguably Margaret Lennox) are the only antagonists we meet whose ability is really on par with Lymond's.

Gabriel's ability to manipulate others, his faux humility, his ability to get other people to do his dirty work while keeping his own hands apparently clean--these are obvious in retrospect. He plays on people's need for a leader, their tendency to follow blindly, and on the image their religion has taught them of how a savior figure looks and acts.

And, as a good chess player, he's playing several strategies at once. The way he uses Lymond is a good example. First, he's trying to win Lymond to his side, because Lymond as a supporter would help him take power--his goal at this point is still to oust de Homedes and become Grand Master. If he's really lucky he'll be able to win Lymond over and get Lymond to kill de Homedes for him. Second, he's planting seeds in the minds of other knights that Lymond is a troublemaker, a cynic who disapproves of their way of life. This is his way of setting up Lymond as a fall guy--if things go wrong, he's got a scapegoat, a convenient outsider who no one trusts to begin with. If Gabriel can't actually get Lymond to kill de Homedes for him, Gabriel's in the perfect position to do it himself and blame Lymond--who could suspect Gabriel when he's spent this whole time loudly praying for de Homedes's redemption? And third, by sending Joleta to Lymond's family in Scotland, he's got Lymond as a back-up plan in case everything in Malta goes wrong (which is what ends up happening). Presumably his initial plan would've been to try to find a way to take over the Culter estate--have Lymond marry Joleta and then, oops, everyone dies, guess Gabriel's in charge [ETA: or actually, it's to take over the Scott family by killing Will Scott and marrying his widow, I forgot that part], but he gets an even better opportunity when he learns that Lymond is building a mercenary army, because then it's just a matter of ousting Lymond and taking over... which he nearly does.

I just adore how brilliantly it's written. I'm trying to dissect Dunnett's methods this time around, because she does an absolutely incredible job of painting Gabriel as beyond suspicion, as living up to the hype and more, and yet I loathed him from the beginning and jumped for joy when he was finally revealed to be evil. Yet I have no doubt that the people who followed him, these brilliant well-meaning knights, utterly bought into Gabriel's lies. He's so good that even the second time I read it, I could hardly believe that he could be this good at manipulation, that he'd turn out to be so utterly rotten.

One of the ways he does it: he's so good at making himself look humble while making Lymond look petty. From the beginning, he makes constant wry insinuations about Lymond's lack of faith and supposed desire to believe the worst of the Knights. And since these are ironic, self-aware comments, supposedly deferring to Lymond, there's no way Lymond can argue with them without looking like he's protesting too much and unfairly attacking Gabriel.

"M. le Comte de Sevigny is to give us the benefit of his experience," [Nick Upton] said.

Again [Gabriel's] wise, disarming blue gaze scanned Lymond. "I did not care to court his already well-founded contempt by expressing it," he said. "But that, of course, has been all along in our minds.... Shall we go ashore?"

And, sparing Francis Crawford the need to reply, Gabriel turned and moving lightly, for all his great height, led the way on to the baked sandy clay of Birgu.

He's so evil! He's just barely met Lymond--how would he know anything about Lymond's supposed contempt? But he manages to point it out in a way that casts suspicion on Lymond, is specifically set to raise the hackles of these men who love Gabriel and have just met Lymond. And he turns away and cuts Lymond off so that Lymond can't defend himself, while making himself look generous by "sparing" Lymond the need to reply.

He does it again two pages later, in front of de Villegagnon:

Gabriel, gentle irony in his voice, addressed Lymond direct. "You are to appear, M. le Comte, along with the Chevalier here in an hour's time before the Grand Council to corroborate M. de Villegagnon's report from France. You will see us, as I am sure you would prefer, at our worst."

Durand de Villegagnon, a deeply passionate man behind a shell of militarism and law, looked uneasy. Lymond did not. He said "I try to rely not on feelings, but facts."

Oh, that gentle irony! Here he is, making it look like he's politely acknowledging Lymond's criticism, when really he's the one bringing up this supposed criticism in the first place, painting Lymond negatively in de Villegagnon's eyes. And it works--de Villegagnon's been traveling pleasantly with Lymond for days but now he's "uneasy." At least here Lymond gets a chance to defend himself, pointing out that he's looking at facts, not being driven by his supposed anti-Knights of St. John feelings, but Gabriel's poison is already starting to seep into de Villegagnon's impression of him.

I'm trying to figure out why I hated Gabriel from the beginning. There are a couple of hints, even early on (everything I'm quoting is from pages 60-66, Gabriel's introduction).

Unique among the knights, Gabriel had a house to himself instead of sharing the communal life of the Langues.

Yeah, and I'm sure he has some completely innocent excuse that totally can't be traced back to his own manipulations, but the fact remains: Look as his hands. His ambition and greed are apparent when you ignore his incessant faux-humility.

And then there's his crusader zeal, his willingness to kill in the name of his religion. To his fellow knights, that just makes him look like more of a hero, but of course it immediately sits badly with me! (More on that in a bit.)

The other annoying aspect of him is that he immediately outshines Lymond. No one's allowed to outshine our hero! How could I not hate him? He's constantly described as taller, stronger, more powerful, more charismatic, more compelling even than Lymond. And of course, this is another aspect of what makes Lymond's struggle so difficult, because every single person, even Lymond's dearest friends and relatives, assumes that Lymond is just jealous. (Thus my cheer of joy when Richard finally backs him up!)

We also get one of those incredibly lovely Lymond POV moments in this chapter. (One day I'm going to go through and count every single Lymond POV scene in the series. I really doubt there are more than ten. In most books it's a given that you'll get the lead character's point of view; here Dunnett manages to make him a mystery and his thoughts a treasure because of the rarity with which they appear. And you know that whenever she gives you his thoughts, it's something really essential to understanding Lymond and understanding the series as a whole. I'm thinking of his thoughts on the two children in Pawn, or that his entire focus during that farmhouse escape scene in Checkmate was on saving the old woman, or that he believes Richard was totally justified in losing his patience and beating the shit out of him in Ringed Castle. After spending six books in the POV of characters who assume the worst of Lymond, it's a shock to get into his own head and see how compassionate and fair minded he actually is.)

So this is the scene that gives us Lymond's thoughts on the Knights of St. John. He walks through Malta until he's exhausted and purposely shows himself the worst aspects of the Knights and then their best aspects, while keenly observing their military and strategic readiness for the upcoming siege:

A great Church and a race of defenders had come to bless the peasants and noblemen of Malta, who possessed a rock and the language Christ spoke. Bitterly silent both about the privileges they had lost and the laws they were now to fulfil, the Maltese were apt to recall that the Church was already theirs long before the knights came; and that before the knights came, they had no need of defenders.

[...]

In the long journey from Marseilles, Lymond had not wasted his time. He knew [lots of strategic stuff about geography and resources].

Thinking; analysing; ignoring his soaked clothes and the stench of goat and stale food and human clothing, of oil and strong cheese and salt fish and the pervasive, peppery veiling of incense, he turned and [observed more...].

In this community of dedicated knights, in this historic, tarnished Order, set among brothers and a devout, sullen archaic race of Phoenicians on their rock halfway between Europe and Africa, he had unravelled first all that was stupid and petty and high-handed about these complacent aristocrats, toughened and coarsened by endless coarse war; their intelligence besotted with the syrups of religion and by the anaesthesia of the Order's thousand rigid rules.

But then, equally of purpose, he had left the hospital and the Church till the last.

[Lymond goes to the hospital.] They showed him everything. He saw the kitchens where sweating men, desiccated with heat and work, ladled chicken broth from the copper vats into silver bowls; the dispensary with its rows of majolica jars, its apothecaries and quiet novices working without siesta, powdering and mixing to the chant of prayers. He walked past the rows of beds, past knights sick of wounds and crushed limbs, of dysentery and enteric, of pox and sweating disease. He passed through the rooms where Maltese lay uncomplaining, and Moors; slaves and free men; poor and rich; of any faith and no faith. In poverty, in chastity, in obedience, the knights and novices toiled, in their thin hospital robes, side by side with the surgeons, and did not even look up.

[Then he goes to the Church] The church was full. On the diced marble floor there was no room even to kneel. And Lymond stayed there longest of all, without speaking, without moving; scanning the bowed heads among the gold and the marble; the raised faces showing age and patience, fear, compassion, timidity, conviction, strength. Of the five hundred Knights of the Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, of Malta, most of those living today in Birgu were here, praying for deliverance; praying for the survival of the Faith; praying for strength to endure. Malta fidei propugnaculum; Malta, Bulwark of the Faith, was before him, here.

As silently as he had come, Lymond left. Walking back to Gabriel's house through the graveyard and the steep sandy lanes, he marshalled dispassionately his information and his emotions on what he had seen. Centuries ago, appealing for a new Crusade, the cry had been "Dieu le veut!"--God desires it.

But which God? Francis Crawford inquired pensively of each silent street of closed doors. For if your Moslem is also devout and self-denying, loyal and fervent, courageous and tolerant, and believes that to dispatch a Christian in battle will send him straight to the Red Apple of Paradise, then in the forthcoming attack, with no professional, no ideological flaw on both sides, sheer weight of numbers must tell.

(This also echoes Lymond's earlier conversation with Francis of Lorraine where Lymond calls Dragut "cordial" and Lorraine goes into a rant about how the great holy Christian Knights of the Order of St. John would never call a "murdering Turkish corsair" cordial, and Lymond replies gently "But I am not of your order.")

What I love here is... well, a bunch of things. The way Dunnett uses Lymond's names, so that it's "Lymond went here, Lymond went there, Lymond calculated strategy," but when we get close to him, to the moral thoughts of the human being underneath, it's "Francis Crawford" who "inquire[s] pensively." That Lymond is so smart that he's already devoured tons of information about the geography, agriculture, population, and military capability of the place, so he's already planning out how to deal with the coming attack. That he's able to analyze and process all of this so quickly. And that, at the same time as he's doing his military analysis, he's figuring out his emotions, deciding what he thinks of these knights, who he knows are trying to recruit him. And what I love is that he's so fair-minded about it. He's not the instant cynic Gabriel tries to paint him as. He looks at the dark side of the knights, but he also looks at the good they do and takes into account the sincerity of their beliefs.

I also love that he doesn't fall prey to any religious doctrine. We find out much later, in another of those rare POV moments, that Lymond does believe in some form of god (though he's "learned not to pray"), but he doesn't buy into any of the dogma. He goes from church to church throughout the series and plays along to the extent necessary to achieve his political goals, but he considers religion a private, personal matter that isn't anyone else's business. (I think he even says this somewhere, probably in Checkmate.) And he's even clear-minded enough to see that the Christian and Muslim crusaders really aren't that different, that they're both willing to kill for their beliefs. Even now in a lot of circles that would be considered blasphemy.

And then right afterward he has that great conversation with Gabriel:

"I have been surveying Birgu--all of Birgu. The Conventual Church and the hospital, as well as the magazines."

"And you would not mind being carried into either?" said Gabriel gravely.

"Not with eternity in Paradise assured for every Ottoman wound."

"Someone," said Gabriel, entering the room fully at last and kneeling, from habit, before the old and much-travelled shrine, "once called us mercenaries of the spirit. True, of course. But we are all in life risking one thing to gain another. Is it better to fight for vanity, ambition, money, revenge, pique...?"

"Would you fight to cleanse the Qur'an from the earth if the reward for death were the torments of Hell?" Lymond said.

There was a long pause. De Villegagnon, heated, drew breath to reply and thought better of it. Outside, as the violence of the sun subsided, life began to stir in the narrow street. The shadows moved. "I," said Gabriel at length, looking directly at Lymond, his eyes calm as a child's, "have always sinned and never, consequently, deserved more than a hope of Paradise. But if I had, and by fighting the Turk I must give it up... then my answer is, yes. For those that follow me, that they might taste Heaven, I would fight, as I mean to fight; and suffer, as I should be made to suffer. No man could do more."

"One man did not do as much," said Lymond tranquilly, and saw Gabriel's fair skin stained red from neck to brow. But instead of replying he crossed himself, and turning to the crucifix on the altar, bent in prayer.

What a perfect exchange for the two of them. First of all, in retrospect, the irony in Gabriel's words! He is fighting for vanity, ambition, money, revenge, and pique, and "I have always sinned and never, consequently, deserved more than a hope of Paradise." Yeah, you can say that again ... times twenty.

And then the moment where Gabriel turns red and goes to pray. It's not shame, as De Villegagnon complains afterward ("What devil possessed you? The like of that man is not to be found in Europe, and you shame him before his own shrine?"). Knowing what we know about Gabriel, of course, it's rage. He must be just barely restraining himself from ripping Lymond's head off right there. They really are adversaries right from the beginning, aren't they?

And then the fact that Lymond gets to him. I'm not sure if Lymond's already starting to see through his false piety, or how strongly Lymond disagrees philosophically, or if Lymond's just trying to figure him out ("It merely seemed as well to discover whether we are fighting for power or for the Holy Church"), but what I love is that we're being presented with Gabriel as this generous, serene saint figure, and Lymond as this suspicious doubter, but really, if you look at it? Gabriel's the one advocating violence and war and death in the name of faith, while Lymond is the one pointing out (I assume this is the reference) that these supposed warriors of Christ are ignoring, um, Christ, that guy who was all about peace.

Yeah, I love Lymond.

Current Mood: busy

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. Please click here to comment.
(Anyone can comment on public entries.)