“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

Here’s my last quote for WG #17, still from the book Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett (and omitting names and a few phrases for the sake of avoiding spoilers). Lymond is saying he’s already pledged to someone, something his companion doesn’t expect:

She saw that, looking ahead in the fog, his profile contained a curious and suspended calm, the smiling mask of a state far from peaceful. “Not her,” he said. “But for my lifetime.” And walking still he offered her, smiling again, four lines of verse, lightly spoken.

“Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera
Pour nulle vivante, tant sout elle bonne ou sage
Forte et puissante riche de hault lignaige
Mon chois est fait, aultre ne se fera.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. It was a half-truth. Subconsciously, she had always known. She said, “It’s my turn to beg your pardon. I only wanted to assure you that I have nothing to tender but friendship. But if you want it, there is a great deal of that, going cheaply.”

That verse has to be the most famous one in the series. Or infamous. I don’t know any more. It makes an appearance again (among other places) in an incident that involves an oboe in a flowerbed, but of course you have to go read that yourself.

It’s also one of those rare verses where the author actually gives a translation. (I can read fluently only in two languages. French is not one of them.) Pages later, but still a translation:

Long as I live, my heart will never vary
For no one else, however fair and good
Brave, resolute or rich, of gentle blood.
My choice is made, and I will have no other.

The last line is emphasised in bold in my copy, and I found that both touching and a teeny bit ridiculous at the same time. The original source (which contains more than this one verse) is unknown, but they appear in the poetry album of Margaret of Austria.

And this is the end of WG #17 for me! Just in case anyone wants to go through the previous quotes, a summary:

1. gems of lapis lazuli
2. strange birds cry Today! Today!
3. horns of unicorns
4. snails within the shell
5. free of all shadow
6. perfume of cedars
7. tant que je vive

Hopefully I’ll get more inspired to post after doing this for seven straight days! All posts for WG #17 are tagged as misc: weekly geeks #17. Yes, I’m a bit anal like that.

I didn’t actually mean to do this at the start, but I ended up quoting passages with quotes in them, either in the narrative itself or where the characters (notably Lymond, since he has a barrage of quotes stored in his head) are quoting something. Also ended up with quite a few verses of poetry and a lot of links.

All quotes are from Dorothy Dunnett’s Checkmate, the sixth and last book in her Lymond Chronicles. The first book in the series is titled The Game of Kings — if you like historical fiction, you might want to give the books a go. Even if you’re not much of a fan of historical fiction, you might still want to give it a try; nothing beats good storytelling, people!

Extra information appended to the quotes I either found through Google or Wikipedia or through the Yahoo Groups Game of Kings and Marzipan, though I didn’t take anything directly from the groups. (It’s just hard to attribute stuff when groups aren’t public. You should join if you have any interest in discussion — some of the stuff there is just fascinating. A warning, though: GoK especially is a minefield when it comes to spoilers, so you might want to tread carefully.)

Maybe I just like lapis lazuli? As Joanne observed on the first quote, it is a gorgeous gem.

Anyway. This is still from Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett. Some names were omitted from the quote to protect the uninitiated etc. XD

The scent of the small room was pleasing. Moonlight limned in grey in the story of Psyche on the finely arched window, and alighting within, touched upon nymphs and garlands and roses, and upon lines of silver, glittering by the chimney-piece:

I will harness thee a chariot of lapis-lazuli and gold
Come into our dwelling, in the perfume of the cedars . . .

Where are the links of the chain, glimmering there: joining us to the past? The perfume was pleasing because it was familiar to him. The other presences, in the silence, were older.

The two lines looks like they came from the Epic of Gilgamesh, particularly from Tablet VI. It’s what Ishtar, the goddess of love, is offering to Gilgamesh, but he rejects her. I think I am slightly agog at what’s implied behind these quotes.

Also, I like the line about the glimmering chains, joining us to the past. I think it’s fitting that “Where are the links of the chain . . . joining us to the past?” is what is written on Dorothy Dunnett’s memorial stone.

Somehow I accidentally got onto the poetry train. Ah well. As before, this is from Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett.

This one I love because of its resonance in the story. And the importance it plays in the relationship between the characters, whom I shall not name because I was so clever to choose the last volume to quote from and I am still hanging by my fingertips to my “no spoiler” policy. And it’s beautiful on its own.

Aşk Olsun sang the plaintive, sweet voices to the undulating airs one had heard inside Zante, through Thessalonika, within the gates of Topkapi itself. Aşkin Cemal Olsun . . . Let there be love. May thy love be beautiful. May thy beauty be light.

The truth is that thy body is free of all shadow.
To soul and brain from thy abode comes the perfume of Paradise.
O thy beauty!
The brightness of the day and the night!
Are made timid by thy hair . . .

The words used by the Bektashi in the ceremony of the tekke: how could a group of student singers know these?

Notes (to self): I took some liberties with the formatting. Zante, Thessalonika and Topkapi are places (right?) we stopped at or passed through in Pawn in Frankincense (Book 4).

Aşk Olsun is a song in Turkish. The Bektashi is a Sufi order; the tekke is a building the Sufi gather in for ceremonies now I am not sure what a tekke is because I just reread the quoted sentence and realised that I was being redundant. I probably should reread Pawn in Frankincense, but reading that will probably cause me to burst into incoherent tears at parts, so I’ll refrain doing so for the the time being. XD

You know, I’ll just stick with this one book this week: Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett (surely you would not have expected anything less from me?). I chose this is one simply because I found the verse curious. Francis Crawford (aka Lymond) is throwing down barrels rather systematically down rooftops as he’s trying to dissuade what looks like the whole of Lyon from coming after him and his companion (”No one could say we hadn’t brought ourselves now to the attention of this majestic metropolis,” says Lymond later).

Towards the end he found some boules and bounced them down as well: they hailed upon barrels and footpads and trilled, with ringing reproach, on the rising helmets of the pikemen beyond them.

“As Snailes do wast within the shel
And unto slime do run
As one before his tyme that fel
And never saw the sunne . . .

“Whoops! That was Adam,” said Francis Crawford, watching open-eyed the progress of his latest invention. “Serve him bloody well right.”

Poor Adam, to be caught in that — I am rather fond of Adam and I didn’t really relish the image of him being crushed like a snail in its shell. (Nothing bad happens to him here, though I must say no one suffers Lymond’s company unscathed.) I found the whole scene hilarious.

This one is from Psalm 58 in English metre. I was quite surprised to learn that! I was wondering why Lymond would have verses about snails handy. Then again, he has quotes about everything in his head, I suppose.

Still from Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett; still people quoting stuff. I’m one of those people who can’t stand quotes if I don’t know the context, so excuse the length of this one:

“What prayers do you suggest?”

“In English?” Lymond said. “I don’t know. What about one from Geneva?”

She wondered for a moment if he would break into song, as he had on the wild journey home, with her mother’s chamber valet. But he merely put his hand on the doorlatch and spoke the words gently, and without the cynicism he had spoken of:

“And from the sword (Lord) save my soule
By thy myght and power;
And keepe my soule, thy darling deare,
From dogs that would devour.

And from the Lion’s mouth that would
Me all in sunder shiver
And from the hornes of Unicornes
Lord safely me deliver.”

She followed it all, her lips moving, “And from the horns . . .”

“. . . of Unicorns, Lord safely you deliver. Sleep well. Good night,” he said; and left, without sound, for the stairs to his apartments.

This one seems to relate to Psalm 22 (not that I know much of it). Lymond invokes at least a line from the prayer three times in Checkmate though I never could figure out why it’s important (or not).

I had always thought unicorns were nice and glowy and magical. Ah well. I suppose they could poke you with their horns if they wanted to.