By Dorothy Dunnett

Evil matters. So does love. So does pity. My pilgrim,’ said the Dame de Doubtance gently, ‘you have still three bitter lessons to learn.’

The penultimate scene of The Disorderly Knights foreshadows the age-old ethical dilemma that one is devastatingly confronted with in this, Pawn in Frankincense: When does the greater good outweigh the good of the individual? When it is a matter of life or death, how does one choose the sacrifice, and how will one live with the consequences of the decision?
Francis Crawford of Lymond’s hand is stayed by the redoubtable Philippa Somerville just as he is about to execute the malevolent and malignant Graham Reid Malett a.k.a. Gabriel. In the devastating scene Malett has shockingly revealed that Francis has a baby son who is under his power and if he dies, his son dies. Nevertheless, Francis, knowing the depth of threat Malett represents to the world is determined to carry through killing him after besting him in mortal combat. He is willing to sacrifice one child (Is GRM even telling the truth?) to save thousands.

And a child’s voice, echoing his in turn said, “No!”… No, Mr. Crawford!” cried Philippa forbiddingly, and ducking under the snatching arms that tried to prevent her, she ran forward…..sinking on her knees she shook, in her vehemence, Lymond’s bloodstained arm…There is a baby. You can’t abandon your son!” …Philippa Somerville, who believed in action when words were not enough, had leaned over and snatched the knife from Lymond’s left hand.

It is enough. Gabriel escapes back to the Ottoman Empire as, thanks to Lymond, he is persona non grata anywhere in Europe. There, in this book, he will betray his brothers, the Knights of St. John, and abandon all pretense of Christianity. He will successfully consolidate the power he craves under Suleiman the Magnificent while planning the entrapment and downfall of Lymond using his son as a pawn in the game.

The final scene in the preceding book has Lymond in front of a church altar vowing to find and save his lost son while somehow destroying Gabriel. Pawn in Frankincense is his quest.

We start out in Baden, in the Swiss Confederation, where Philippa, accompanied by Lymond’s sidekick, the usually very confused Jerott Blythe, has snuck away from her mother Kate and tracked Lymond down. She has come, she says, to look after the baby once he is found. One may ask, how could Lymond agree to take a 15 year old schoolgirl, the daughter his one of his closest friends, on such a treacherous journey?

As I have said before, and am now saying for the last time, I cannot tell you with what awe my family and friends, not to mention yours, would receive the idea that I should ship a twelve- year- old girl along the Barbary coast——’

Not surprisingly (if one has gotten to know her) Philippa prevails. And thank God for it. She provides the only safe haven and flashes of light in a book full of tension, fear and horror. Somehow, we know that she will always be all right. She is a master of “the feat of keeping her head, her reason and her sense of the ridiculous amid conditions of civilized lunacy.” Not that she doesn’t have a difficult journey. At one point, Lymond decides he must place killing Gabriel over finding his son and sends Philippa back home. He thinks. Philippa decides to continue the hunt virtually on her own and ends up entering the Sultan’s harem to protect the young toddler (because of course she finds him) from the cruel tentacles of Gabriel. As she writes to her mother, Lymond’s good friend,

Dear Kate. As you will see from the address, I am staying as a concubine in the harem of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, son of Sultan Setim Khan, son of Sultan Bayezid Khan, King of Kings, Sovereign of Sovereigns; Commander of All that can be Commanded, Sultan of Babylon, Lord of the White Sea and the Black Sea, most high Emperor of Byzantium and Trebizond, most mighty King of Persia and Arabia, Syria and Egypt, Supreme Lord of Europe and Asia, Prince of Mecca and Aleppo, Possessor of Jerusalem and Lord of the Universal Sea….There are two hundred and ninety- nine other girls here: but no one else from Northumberland. Tell Betty I have the dearest little black page.

We meet and continue our acquaintance with many intriguing characters, some fictional, some not. Some lovable, some not. They include Marthe, a young woman who could be Lymond’s twin. Sybilla’s child? But that’s impossible. Isn’t it? We learn there are two supposedly indistinguishable babies in peril, the other one being Gabriel’s own son from an unspeakable union. At times it seems we are in a retelling of the Odyssey, at others, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ladyhawke, or an Errol Flynn pirate movie situation. Even once, a very strange romantic comedy fake marriage, one bed trope. At one point, horribly, Sophie’s Choice came to mind.

Dunnett’s books are very cinematic thanks to the lush realism of her descriptions. She is merciless with what she puts Lymond and those he cares for through and they will not emerge triumphant unscathed. In one of the last chapters, I was physically trembling as I read. I love Dorothy Dunnett, but thanks to this at times painful book, I kind of hate her too.