The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Italy: Prince Of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger & Web Of Lucifer by Maurice Samuel

 

Samuel Shellabarger’s 1947 bestseller, Prince of Foxes, is a swashbuckling adventure novel in the tradition of Alexandre Dumas (père). Set against the vibrant panorama of the Italian Renaissance it chronicles the fortunes of a young and ambitious artist-soldier in the midst of conquest and resistance as the Borgias are plotting to subject central Italy to their rule. Like Shellabarger’s previous historical novel, The Captain Of Castile, Prince of Foxes, too, was swiftly adapted for the silver screen, once again with Tyrone Power¹ in the lead role, and with Cesare Borgia portrayed by Orson Welles. Sumptuous though the cinematography looks, the production having been shot on location in Italy (though regrettably not in colour), the film does not rival the verve of Samuel Shellabarger’s novel. Sixty-five years after its original publication Prince Of Foxes remains top-notch historical escapism, bursting with romance, adventure, wit, and one brilliantly entertaining twist after another.

 

1500. Italy is in turbulence, torn apart by strife between independent city-states and overrun by mercenaries in the pay of invading foreign powers. Convinced that Italy’s only hope of survival lies in unification, military captain Andrea Orsini serves as political agent for the increasingly powerful Borgias. Armed with cunning, charm, and a flexible conscience, Andrea faces his most dangerous assignment yet as he heads to Ferrara to persuade the hostile House of Este to concede to an alliance by marriage with the notorious Lucrezia Borgia. If successful, Andrea is to be rewarded with the city-state of Città del Monte and his choice between two high-ranking noblewomen for a bride. There is just the minor matter of ridding Città del Monte of its current ruler first.

That is, provided Andrea manages to stay alive that long in a political climate rife with assassinations. And provided the secret of his past does not leak out – a secret guaranteed to consign him to ignominy and strip him of everything he has worked for. For loyalty is a commodity, and secrets the coin in which everyone trades.

Even the wiliest fox cannot fool fate forever … or can he?

 

A few months before Prince Of Foxes began climbing the bestseller lists a historical novel titled Web Of Lucifer was released to smaller fanfare. A now largely forgotten work by Maurice Samuel, it provides unusually pertinent comparison reading.

 

Web Of Lucifer

Both Web Of Lucifer and Prince Of Foxes chart the career of a gifted young man in the service of Cesare Borgia and the moral dilemmas this employment eventually corners them into confronting. The two heroes come from the same region, Romagna (Mussolini’s birth region, as pointed out by Maurice Samuel in his account of writing the book), and from a similar family background. Both have lost their fathers. Samuel’s hero is named Orso, Shellabarger’s, Orsini. In both cases, love becomes an education in honour and decency. Several of the same historical figures appear in the books, including Lucia of Narni. Both authors dedicated considerable effort to grounding their plots in significant historical events and used a timeline spanning several years. Yet for all these similarities even a cursory glance presents no difficulty in ascertaining why one novel has remained a perennial favourite and the other sunk into oblivion. It boils down to a single issue: readability.

 

Consider the following paragraph, the opening of the first chapter of Web Of Lucifer: “Giacomo Orso of Picina, with whose adventures this book is chiefly concerned, was a lad when the story opens and not much more than a lad when it closes. He was seventeen years old at the time of his father’s death, he was twenty-three when he returned to his native Romagna from his service with Cesare Borgia; and he is introduced in this fashion precisely because in the Italy of those days – four and a half centuries ago – one was no longer “a lad” in the late teens, let alone the early twenties, if one had, like Giacomo, received an education. Cesare Borgia, for instance, was Governor of Orvieto at twenty. Cesare’s friend, Ippolito d’Este, was a cardinal at fifteen*. Lorenzo the Magnificent, who died at forty-two (when Giacomo was a boy of twelve), succeeded his father in the rulership of Florence when he was twenty-one – and at twenty-one he was already a master in the subtle manipulation of power which made him for two decades the key-stone of Italian politics. But Giacomo was still a lad when, at the age of twenty, he swore eternal fealty to Cesare Borgia, and only beginning to be a man when he retracted his oath three years later.” (Alfred A Knopf hardcover, 1947, p. 3)

 

In his foreword Romanian-born Maurice Samuel acknowledges his admiration for his former compatriot, Ferdinand Gregorovius, a historian of the Renaissance. Having made a decade-long study of the Renaissance for the purpose of writing Web Of Lucifer the author carries over his conscientiousness about historical substance into his stylistic choices, which amalgamate moralising nineteenth-century textbooks and the Victorian Gothic of Sir Walter Scott. As indicated by the above quote, the result is dense exposition, author intrusion, and foreshadowing, but also deliberately archaic dialogue: “’Why playest thou the saint with me? Knowest thou not well that I am as heartsick as thou? But what wouldst thou do with the Gianbattista? Didst thou not hear that they are worse than traitors?’” (p. 252).

 

As their titles suggest, where Web Of Lucifer and Prince Of Foxes diverge most significantly is tone and intent. The reader who is able to look past prose that by today’s standards is excruciatingly ponderous or who accepts the stylised dialogue as a nod to the period it attempts to recreate will find in Web Of Lucifer a solemn take on the uses of history in fiction. In Samuel’s novel the Italian Renaissance becomes a parable for the atrocities of World War II. Discursive and digressive, it invites sober reflection on grim, harrowing concerns, not least the corrupting effect of power and personal responsibility when faced with evil. An atmosphere of existential despair haunts the narrative, a despair held at bay only by hope in the few who fight to keep the candles of reason and justice burning in a world darkened by indifference, denial, and selfishness. Patient reading ultimately rewards one with an earnest character study in Giacomo Orso, out to avenge the murder of his father, and a minutely detailed, critical portrait of an era.

 

By contrast, Prince of Foxes is the amusement park version of the Renaissance, where you strap yourself into a seat in expectation of a fun diversion and are flung, gasping, into a break-neck thrill-ride. It is no struggle to appreciate the aims of Web Of Lucifer and the personal dimension these particular themes at that particular time may have held for the author (much of Maurice Samuel’s oeuvre, including translations and lectures, centred on Jewish cultural themes and Jewish-Christian relations), but I must admit to skimming heavy-handed passages on more than one occasion. While accessibility of style and charm of content are debatable measures of literary quality they undoubtedly make Prince Of Foxes a smoother read. However, more than a (biassed) case of popular fiction providing amusements literary fiction does not, this novel’s enduring popularity testifies to solid merits of it own.

 

On rereading

When I reread Prince Of Foxes some months ago it was the first time in two decades. Most readers, I expect, dust off a long unvisited favourite with some trepidation, hoping the magic its pages once contained will flare back to life as brightly, as warmly as it did all those years ago. A short while earlier I had gone back to a classic that, like Prince Of Foxes, had amazed me in my teens. My admiration for the author’s achievement certainly grew during that reread and cemented my love of the book. At the same time, the emotional disparity caused by intellectual maturation and memories of my excitement at the mind-expanding discoveries back in my teens continually interfered between me and the text, keeping me at an intangible, unbridgeable remove from the story – too much an observer instead of a participant. So I was wary about reacquainting myself with Prince Of Foxes. This time, I chose to try to trick memory by reading the book in another language (the original English).

 

The shake-awake freshness I had been unable to recapture with the other book – The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson – was there in full force with Prince Of Foxes. Perhaps my experiment helped a little. Perhaps a visit in the intervening years to Italy, including Venice and Rome, proved a stimulating support for imagination. But after puzzling about it I believe the determining factor lay in the different expectations I brought with me to the rereadings, expectations based on my original responses to the books.

 

In my teenage years it was the provocational capacity of The Long Ships that impressed me the deepest: the story affected my outlook on the world by challenging me to rethink notions of what is absurd. Since then I have come full circle: I consider many of my youthful beliefs folly and concepts which then seemed outrageous, if intriguing, self-evident. The most memorable element for my younger self had, through the years, lost that edge of the deliciously radical. In contrast, the appeal of Prince Of Foxes never rested on its ability to stretch the limits of my mind. It was always the characters that beguiled me with their spiciness and their cat-and-mouse games that make a point of confusing just who is holding the upper hand. The only surprise now was rediscovering how sharp and smart this incredibly enjoyable swashbuckler continues to remain.

 

Prince Of Foxes

Prince Of Foxes is historical fiction with flair. The storytelling crackles with vitality as arts, politics, religion, and warfare mingle in a twisting plot, sly verbal sparring, daredevil action, nefarious skulduggery, and plenty of picturesque pageantry. Fascinating characters make it all come together in a lively, brilliantly choreographed whole. (The people of Shellabarger’s Renaissance are like mosaics in a dazzling kaleidoscope, re-arranging themselves in ever-shifting configurations.) This book features not only one of my favourite fictional couples in the hero and his lady love but one of my all-time favourite characters in literature, the assassin Mario Belli.

 

In common with Alexandre Dumas’s swashbucklers the humour and adventure in Prince Of Foxes is not empty buffoonery. The at times ironic, even sarcastic, attitude to honour and devotion masks a search for ideals worth defending and thus an unmistakeable moral core informs the plot. Like Maurice Samuel, Shellabarger, too, found in the shadowy aspects of the Renaissance a mirror for the events that had recently ravaged Europe. (One of Shellabarger’s sons was killed in WWII). The historical framework of the novel consists of the move toward unification under an able and charismatic leader, a man who exploits popular hatred of the nation’s designated enemies as a rallying point for people to unite under a single banner.

 

Andrea Orsini admires Cesare Borgia as a genius, a political realist with the power and foresight to bring progress and prosperity by strong-arming Italy into unification. While violence and conspiracy are regrettable they must, Andrea reasons, be accepted as natural parts of revolution. And if the goal of unification at the same time profits the private interests of the House of Borgia – including Pope Alexander VI, Cesare and Lucrezia’s father – then that is the privilege of princes. Yet as in Italy from the 1920s onward and Germany from the 1930s onward, so in Borgia Italy: once the worthiness of a common goal is determined to make ruthless means acceptable allegiance enables not the sought-for liberty but tyranny.

 

If Shellabarger’s Cesare Borgia brings to mind the tyrant associated with Machiavelli’s The Prince, his portrait of the virtuous Marc’ Antonio Varano is surely influenced by Castiglione’s The Courtier. A counterpoint to the arbitrary exercise of power by the Borgias, Varano is an aging statesman whose guiding principle is to consider the common good, not private gain, and whose peaceable city state, Città del Monte, exemplifies government based on the rule of law. Judging Varano deluded as well as decrepit, the ambitious Andrea is predisposed to holding him in contempt as an inept prince and impotent ruler. Expecting Città del Monte to yield to the Borgias like wheat before the scythe, Andrea is perturbed when an obstacle he never saw coming suddenly endangers his own future: a battle with his conscience.

 

The narrative is unambiguous about the decision the righteous person must make when the time comes to choose between submission to injustice and rebellion against it. A major character who endorses the idea of Italian unification but opposes Cesare Borgia’s oppressive methods explains: “’It may be urged that if I favour the end he seeks, I should support him; that treachery and craft in a good cause are justified. Not so. If good at times springs out of evil, to God’s almighty dispensation, not to evil, be the praise. He makes man’s villainy to serve Him: that is His perquisite. But let no man believe that he serves God by villainy. The kiss of Judas brought Our Blessed Lord to the Cross and, thus, salvation to mankind, yet Judas hanged himself’” (p. 306).

 

Prince Of Foxes depicts a society in which religion is closely allied with politics, exemplified by the unscrupulous tug-of-war over Lucia of Narni². A historical figure, the Blessed Lucia Brocadelli was a nun and holy woman who at the time the novel covers was greedily fought over by cities and princes eager to enhance their fame and reputation by securing her permanent presence as a spiritual guide. The Savonarolan background of the historical Lucia is not directly referenced in the novel (if I recall correctly), nor is the persecution his followers eventually suffered. Instead her fortitude and piety are made to serve as reminders of truths no conscience can escape. Girolamo Savonarola was a Florentine preacher who is now principally remembered for organising a bonfire at which books and artworks judged immoral were burned. But his vocal condemnation of Church corruption and belief in the superior authority of the Bible over ecclesiastical bodies also made him one of the cogs that eventually produced the Protestant Reformation. He was executed in 1498; ironically, through burning at the stake. Unlike the controversial zealotry of her teacher, Shellabarger’s Lucia of Narni is the gentlest of visionaries, a sufferer whose understanding of the human psyche nurtures her empathy even as she encourages reform. In Prince Of Foxes religious faith is a tempering, humane influence, not the darkly fanatical and destructive force so common in historical fiction set during the Renaissance or the Middle Ages. It would be going too far to say that this is a spiritual novel, but the inspiration the novel’s philosophy draws from faith and agape is, I think, a fundamental part of the story’s power to uplift.

 

This was also a time when everyone and everything were thought to have their own, proper place in a grand, divinely ordained structure. Conforming to that place was essential for the maintenance of harmony. To upset the proper order of things was therefore more than a simple personal rebellion: it was considered an attack on the Divine, an act of destruction that carried moral and religious consequences for everyone else in the now weakened structure. Andrea’s ambitions therefore force him to hide the truth about himself beneath layers of artfully constructed pasts. Luck he does not believe in, but destiny, it is known, can change with the wheeling of the stars across the sky – and Andrea is bent on helping his stars rearrange his life in major ways.  Belief in the influence of celestial bodies is, in fact, so common that prudence induces him, at a defining point before a crucial undertaking, to bribe an official astrologer into drawing up a favourable horoscope in order to boost the courage of the people he is leading.

 

Andrea’s opportunism is fortunately timed. Italy is in upheaval and the normal workings of society are out of joint. But while the success he is enjoying as the novel opens is based on genuine achievements as a soldier and diplomat those same achievements would have been impossible without the springboard of deliberately created but dangerous illusions. Significantly, our introduction to Andrea and his adventures takes place in Venice, a city rich in symbolism associated with masques and disguises, in the studio of a master craftsman and artist (the famous instrument-maker Lorenzo Gusnasco da Pavia). It is a scene steeped in hidden agendas, in deceptions involving identity and provenance, in transactions with ulterior purposes, all while the key players conduct themselves as if nothing except elegant manners, quick wit, and courtly generosity is of any consequence. Unlike the anonymity and freedoms associated with Venice’s Carnival the masks in Prince Of Foxes, whether literal or metaphorical, are neither liberating nor an aid for indulging in irreverence or licentiousness. On the contrary, masks are worn as confirmation or proof of identity. They are a deadly serious and necessary political and social armour. Having a mask torn off – being exposed – means death, either ritual death through loss of social and/or political status or literal death.

 

Masks worn to deceive, conceal, or to impress are adapted to the different personae one is required to play in a given situation: ardent lover, obsequious servant, loyal ally, honourable soldier, indispensable diplomat, humble artist, etc. (Crafted by the author to represent an ideal Renaissance man, Andrea is uniquely suited for the versatility his career demands. His proficiency with brushes and paint (he is, literally, a second Mantegna), music, and metallurgy complement his skills as a soldier and diplomat. These attributes are no mere shorthand for character perfection. They serve the plot and enrich the portrait of the age. Fortunately, too, Andrea displays the intelligence required for readers to believe in his polymathism.) Simplicity is associated with a lack of social graces and therefore as appalling as lack of breeding. Nobility and respectability are recognisable in sophistication – elegance of manners, gallant valour, educated tastes, the arts of diplomacy – backed up by raw power and bold ideas.

 

No wonder Andrea thinks Varano is an easily oustable, rustic simpleton, just like the Chevalier de Bayard’s³ insistence on honour above all causes Andrea to detest the Frenchman as an annoying pest. In a social milieu sustained by show and illusion nothing is more unsettling or subversive than sincerity and authenticity. Once Andrea begins to suspect that Msrc’ Antonio Varano is actually not the fool he had assumed and that the man’s courtliness merely follows different norms than any known to celebrated society it throws the younger man off his practiced game. His manipulative habit of always playing a part leads him to mistake and misread intentions every time the castle inhabitants at Città del Monte fail to respond to ritual cues and signals in the accustomed manner. Consequently, he mistakes hospitality and politeness for threats and hypocrisy, then is confused when the dangers he expected fail to materialise. As long as he continues to dissemble he also absurdly misjudges and misunderstands the two women he courts. Only when he drops his artificial persona, voluntarily in one case, inadvertently in the other, is he able to discover their true natures and to understand them. Interestingly, neither woman has ever attempted to mislead him about their feelings albeit one is discreet whereas the other wears her heart on her sleeve.

 

In mediaeval thought physical appearance was an outward manifestation of the soul. Beauty or perfection of body implied purity, ugliness or deformity or disability, vice. Faces and bodies in Prince of Foxes therefore constitute another mask. Lucrezia Borgia’s angelic countenance acts like a glamour that effectively disarms resistance; Alda’s intellect and ethics are commonly inferred to be proportionate to the smallness of her stature; and Mario Belli’s macabre visage, “the spitting image of Judas Iscariot” (p. 22), enhances his fearsome – and well-earned – professional reputation through the falsehood and devilry people read there. The sardonically exaggerated elegance Belli flaunts is found to be grotesque, and the same marks of breeding that in other men would be considered proof of nobility earn Belli angry suspicions of insolence. His very smile causes people to shiver and cross themselves. Belli’s ambiguity is one of the trump cards of the plot: are we supposed to side with him or against him? Some readers may feel no doubt (I saw signs this time around that I missed when I was a young reader), but Shellabarger still manages to pull a surprise twist at the end.

 

Not much room is given to the female characters to be protagonists. The men are the doers and facilitators. Likewise, the principal male/female relationship has a sly charm that contributes sparkle and brightness to the story, yet the dynamics between the various male characters follow more surprising courses and probe tenser depths. Women’s roles are essentially confined to being givers and receivers of love who exert either a positive or negative moral influence on the men in their lives. Within that narrow definition, however, they possess individual spirit and shrewd intelligence. Angela Borgia is no one’s fool but she loves passionately and sincerely; her cousin, Lucrezia Borgia, who hates discord and tries to make everyone happy has learnt to be pragmatic, accepting what she believes she cannot change; Costanza Zoppo, the only one who felt a bit distant to me because the plot sidelines her at a couple of points where a direct spotlight on her would have been warranted, is a worrier yet refuses to trade her integrity for fame and fortune; Alda dei’s Nani’s vanity protects her from being diminished by stereotyping and she turns prejudice into a blind that screens mutiny; the gamine Camilla Baglione cannot resist an opportunity for mischief but is brave and loyal to the core; and Lucia of Narni’s weakened body houses a burning inner gaze that shies from nothing. Every single one of them engaged my interest and several, including an antagonist, also elicited my sympathy.

 

Major spoilers:

If one prominent female character erodes into stereotype it is because the plot eventually squeezes her into a worn mould as the other woman. Whereas Camilla Baglione represents love that breeds loyalty, Angela Borgia is the personification of passion that warps into hatred. The latter woman’s sexuality is the subject of all too familiar misogyny, yet Shellabarger cannot be accused of making her a cardboard villain. She is a convincing character and her storyline develops organically. One of the very rare characters who are open about their feelings, she does not seem to understand the need to wear a mask. She gives of herself to the man she loves, faithfully, without holding anything back, for which she is at first exploited, then scorned by her lover, and punished by the storyline. As convention once stipulated, although the perceived breaches against morality for which Angela is shamed are actually mutually committed, Andrea’s offenses are measured according to a different scale. These include Angela falling pregnant and using an abortifacient (off-page - blink and you'll miss it). The affair is soon superseded by a violent act that frames Andrea as a victim deserving of sympathy and, by implication, forgiveness, while simultaneously removing any doubt about Angela’s innate depravity and, also by implication, voiding her claim to fair treatment. For Angela does not take Andrea’s betrayal sitting down. When he ends their relationship with callous, casual words, she retaliates by severing him from herself with a hot-blooded physical act. What remains of their storyline is a jilted woman whose subsequent storyline is filled with humiliations and an anything but sinless hero who to the end is not above deriving satisfaction from those humiliations. Whether she deserves sympathy or whether she truly has gone beyond the pale the narrative at first seems to leave to the reader to decide: the last glimpse of her is accompanied by an acknowledgement of her suffering. But it is immediately countered by a comment I presume is an allusion to Dante’s Inferno⁴. Prince Of Foxes is a story that probes beyond facades and finds reason for tenderness and forgiveness. Arguing that redemption is conditional, however, the conclusion firmly rejects amnesty, tallying with Christ’s parable of the ten foolish and wise virgins (“virgin” is figurative here and does not denote gender, either).

End of spoilers

 

Instances of unexpected insight afforded by a couple of secondary characters supply poignant subtext to sensitive but seemingly ignored themes. Slavery, which included the breeding and sale⁵ of little people (dwarfs/midgets in the novel’s terminology) by nobles such as Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua (mentioned in passing in the book as wanting to buy Alda), was a feature of Italian Renaissance society. As the novel comments, the “beloved little monsters of Court, dwarfs and other human curios, trotting about in attire no less eccentric than themselves, added the gargoyle touch” (p. 67). In a society where slavery is as commonplace a part of the fabric of everyday life as portents and signs, characters display attitudes believable for their time. People like Alda (Camilla Baglione’s dwarf companion) and Seraph (Andrea’s “blackamoor” page) are spectacles like Belli, and usually irrelevant except as entertaining pets and human collectibles (Like unmasking implies loss of power among higher classes, having their nude appearance publicly speculated on by others emphasises Alda and Seraph’s slave status, pp.14, 168.). The omniscient narration frames character beliefs and actions in this cultural context and the reader will have to pay attention to subtle clues to realise how carefully the authorial critique is realised: in the fizzy presence of irony in plot twists and characterisations, in subversive autonomy. One will find no denunciatory lectures being mouthed by a culturally sensitive hero or heroine.

 

The narrative continuously juxtaposes physical abnormality and spiritual deformity. One is judged or shunned without testing, the other goes undetected or is admired and rewarded. Even beloved “human curios” are regarded as things apart from ordinary humanity. Camilla, who clearly loves (and is loved by) Alda and considers her “twice as clever” as herself (p. 166) nevertheless treats this “Princess of the Dwarfs” (dei Nani) like a dress-up doll and a showpiece who must perform at command. At the same time it is in this character that we are quietly made aware of the differences between public and private reality. The patronising assumptions underlying the amusement Camilla and Andrea derive from Alda (and Seraph) is pointedly absent from her interactions with Mario Belli. Scarred by a society that equates worth with physical standards they can never meet, Alda and Belli instantly develop a sympathy for each other that others do not comprehend. Their alliance is seen as “proof positive that dwarfs had no souls; or rather that they were imps of hell, who would naturally find the company of Satan congenial” (p. 385). But “[in] each other’s company, they were off stage, no longer outsiders on the defensive, but snug in the comradeship of a point of view” (p. 295).

 

It is the unprocessed attitudes of his own time and milieu that on a few occasions cause Shellabarger’s judgment to slip as he negotiates historical fact with concessions to entertainment. The old stereotype that little people are prone to vanity is on display in the portrayal of Alda, but Seraph, on the other hand, is a clear-cut example of myopia. A slave child of African heritage whom Camilla acquires on a whim from Andrea, his character and personality are sheer caricature. “An ebony cherub, a jet cupid” (p. 14) he is made to strut self-importantly through his few scenes “like an infant sultan” (p. 167). Like Alda’s, his personal history is omitted but he is moreover deprived of the de-stereotyping benefit of an independent voice. The implied intention that readers’ laughter be affectionate makes the objectification even more souring because it so blindly neglects the value accorded in the novel to the concepts of justice and freedom.

 

On balance, it is one of the few blots and flaws in an otherwise astute and riveting historical novel. Prince Of Foxes goes into the past and collects advice for the future, imparting inspiration and warnings with such panache that the resulting story can be enjoyed as pure escapism. To borrow the peerless and extremely fitting description of S. Morgenstern’s classic tale of True Love and High Adventure⁶ it has “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants [okay, dwarfs]. Hunters. Bad Men. Good Men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes [several Borgias surely count]. Spiders [with so many castles, they must lurk in a murky corner somewhere]. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.” Plus: Cannons. Astrology. Madness. And More. In short (I know, I know), Prince of Foxes is as entertaining as historical fiction gets. Do give it a try.

 

1. Although he seems to have been too much of a professional to ever deliver less than his best, Tyrone Power was at a point in his career where he must have been tired of parts that required little more of him than to look debonair as he struts around in period costume. In Prince of Foxes he cannot help looking too jaded for the youthful, optimistic vitality of Andrea.

2. Narni was long known as Narnia. According to Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis's literary executor,  Lewis found out about Lucia Brocadelli and Narni when he was fourteen and it helped inspire his own creation, including a heroine who is not believed when she sees and experiences supernatural things.  (Lucia Brocadelli, along with other Savonarolans, was hounded by disbelieving Church authorities and eventually fell from public favour.) Isn't it marvellous how the world of books is full of unexpected revelations and connections around every corner?

3. Two decades earlier, Samuel Shellabarger had published a biography of Pierre Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard (1928).

4. The line “Look at them and pass by” (p. 421) is, I am guessing, a reference to those in Dante’s Hell who are guilty of indifference regarding good and evil: "The world does not remember them at all;/ Mercy and justice treat them with contempt:/ Let us not talk about them – look and pass on." Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto III, translated by C.H. Sisson, Oxford University Press paperback 1993, p.57.

5. See for example Fools Are Everywhere: The Jester Around The World by Beatrice K. Otto, The University of Chicago Press, 2007, page 29: “According to a miscellany of 1670, dwarfs could be created by anointing babies’ spines with the grease of bats, moles, and dormice, while more palatable descriptions used drugs such as the aptly named dwarf elder, knotgrass, and daisy juice and roots mixed with milk to stunt growth. Children were kidnapped or bought to be turned into artificial dwarfs, and it was in Italy and Spain that the practice was most common, its perpetrators in Spain being called comprachicos or “child-buyers”. The practice was clearly known in England, as Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) testifies […] (3.2.327-29)”. Isabella d’Este owned several little people, mentioning Morgantino and Delia in her will. Her correspondence records the transfer of child dwarfs, as noted in Julia Cartwright's biography: “"I promised Madame Renée to give her the first girl who was born to my dwarfs. As she knows, the puttina is now two years old, and will no doubt remain a dwarf, although she hardly gives hopes of being as tiny as my Delia. She is now able to walk alone and without a guide, if the Duchess wishes to have her." Another " bella Nanina" was sent by the Marchesa to Ferrante Gonzaga's wife in October 1533, and the young princess wrote a grateful letter to her mother-inlaw saying that the dwarf was the sweetest and gentlest creature in the world, and afforded her infinite amusement."” (In Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua 1474-1539, Vol.II, 1923, p. 364, available at the Internet Archive.)

6. The Princess Bride, you philistine. (By William Goldman. Pan Books paperback, 1976, p. 9-10.)

 

 

Excerpt

(Little, Brown and Company hardcover, 1947, pp. 23, 24):

“Amethyst had yielded to azure in the square, the deep azure of Venetian night, which has its own starry radiance. Torches began flaring on the piazza. An echo of music sounded from the lagoon.

Orsini got up at last and strolled to the Columns of St. Mark, where the gondola lanterns bobbed up and down like tethered fireflies. He deliberated on the evening. Of course he would be welcome at the Papal Legate’s, but he had called there that morning and wound up his official business. An excellent establishment in the Giudecca, kept by a certain Mona Giulia, had been recommended to him if he required a buona compagna; but he reflected that he must leave at dawn for Chioggia, the starting point for Ferrara, and he was in no mood for a white night.

Selecting a gondola and settling down in the cushions, he instructed the boatman: ‘Anywhere, friend. The Canal Grande – an affair of an hour – then back to the Riva degli Schiavoni.’

They glided away through the spangled water, and he filled his lungs with the haunting sea air. Other gondolas slipped past with lovers or merrymakers. A delicious languor filled the night, lapping of water, wandering of music. He felt a longing, sweeter than possession, for the indescribable, the unattainable. He would return here someday with her; he would occupy one of these palaces; they would live in terms of color – sapphire and silver – in terms of a casement open on the sea-scented night.

[…]

It had grown late when finally the gondola, following the Riva degli Schiavoni, glided into the Rio della Pietà, upon which the entrance of the tavern, the Star, opened. Having paid his fare, Orsini stood a moment, drawing a last breath of the sea breeze and watching the lantern of the gondola until it disappeared beyond the next curve of the canal. Half drowsily he realized that it was a night he would always remember, the more perhaps because he had spent it alone. Then, turning back into the dank passage between house walls that led to the front of the inn, he found that the lamp marking the tavern door had been allowed to go out.

He groped his way through the pitch darkness, cursing the carelessness of the inn servants; but he could see vaguely the space between the mouth of the alley and the inn, which stood in a tiny campiello surrounded by houses. The scuttle of a rat startled him as if it had been a footstep, and he was glad to reach the end of the passage. He determined to have a word with the landlord about that lamp.

A metal click sounded, and at the same moment he was dazzled by the light of a dark lantern turned full against his eyes.

‘Gran Dio!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s up?’

‘This,’ answered a voice, coupled with the ripping, stinging blow of a knife.

Roman Empire: The Light Bearer by Donna Gillespie

It is not every week I close an 800-page trade paperback with the thought, I wish it had been longer. The Light Bearer, Donna Gillespie’s richly imagined odyssey of an extraordinary 1st century woman at the historical turning point when the might of Rome clashed with the tribal cultures of Germanic Europe, is one of the most gripping page-turners I have read. Notably, even a sense of incompleteness at the story’s conclusion did not seriously mar my enjoyment. What did throw me off, in the second half, was the contradiction between the admirable research that has obviously gone into recreating a civilisation about which few written records have survived, and the wholesale sacrifice, for dramatic effect, of historical chronology.

 

51. At the birth of Auriane, daughter of a Chattian chieftain, seeress Ramis prophesies the girl will rise to prominence in a time of war but slay her father – the greatest of all crimes. Resisting Ramis’s claims she belongs to the priesthood, Auriane is driven by tragedy to forgo the normal path to a family of her own, and instead takes up the life of a warrior with a duty to exact revenge.

In Rome, a runaway slave boy is about to be put to death when he is discovered to be Marcus Julianus, the long-ago kidnapped son of a prominent Roman senator. Left to his own devices, Marcus would prefer to immerse himself in a scholarly life, but his sense of justice and responsibility forge him into a statesman.

Through treachery, violence, and love, the lives of Auriane and Marcus become inseparable from the fate of their people, yet, unknown to each other, each has also been given a sacred amulet which in the darkest days will bind their lives together.

 

Warning: my discussion of The Light Bearer contains elements that may be viewed as spoilers by those unfamiliar with the history of the second half of the 1st century. The Chatti actually existed, and the historical dates and events associated with their fight against Rome make certain plot developments obvious. The same goes for the reigns of the Roman Emperors who figure in the story. I do not necessarily treat these events as secrets to be side-stepped.

The Light Bearer languished on my shelves for a long time before I picked it up, read about thirty pages, and then set it aside for months. Although I immediately liked the author’s writing style, the tense dynamics in the first chapter created a negative reaction in me. When the second chapter switched to another character in another part of the world and jumped six years, I grew too restless to continue.

But the impressions I had gathered stewed in the back of my mind, and after checking out a few related articles I found my interest renewed. This time, I withheld judgement until I was on firmer ground with the characters, felt enchantment rise , and devoured the story in five days. It took me longer to process what I had read.

When I call The Light Bearer a page-turner it is because I read much of it in that blissful state where constant thrills fuel a pulse-raising compulsion to find out what will happen next. The narrative tension rarely slackens, calmer episodes being as suspenseful, conflict-filled, and forward-moving as the fiercest action scenes. One of the biggest wonders is that, to me, there were no dead or irrelevant moments; there was over-arching purpose and meaning in every scene.

Some readers have found the prose ponderous and meandering, and it is true that Gillespie’s wielding of language as an artistic tool is particularly observable in the spiritual mysticism which pervades the customs and beliefs of Auriane’s tribe. On the other hand, the different tonal quality of the sections set in Rome just as effectively underscores the pragmatism of a more “modern” populace. My stylistic tastes have been shaped by a love of nineteenth-century literature and poetry, and so spareness is not exactly a requirement for my literary enjoyment; I drew aestethic pleasure from the lyrical rhythm of Gillespie’s writing.

If you are wondering about the mysticism, Gillespie simply illuminates a belief system rooted in Northern European mythology (see, for example, the Icelandic sagas). While the Chatti along with the other Germanic tribes believe in magic and there are a few instances of visionary trances and portentous dreams in the story, The Light Bearer here treads the path of historical fiction as carefully as slender archaeological and written evidence combined with anthropological studies of similar cultures allow, choosing not to diverge into fantasy literature.

The book is well titled, I think. Freya, or Fria as she is called in this story, is the Germanic goddess who animates all living things; she is a loving Mother Earth, and also revered as the bringer of light. In a society where women are considered closer to the gods than men and exercise both spiritual and political power – as priestesses, ambassadors, landowners, and war councillors - Auriane’s relationship with the goddess is both nurturing and empowering, offsetting the fatalistic aspects of her culture. It is another woman, the seeress Ramis, whose seemingly magical powers and stern prophesies instill fear-mingled respect in the Chatti and neighbouring tribes, who sets the riddle-like challenges for Auriane that inspire her growth into the (symbolic) light bearer for her people.

I thought Auriane a convincing character of her time and culture as well as an immensely admirable heroine. The role she inhabits in the story is one that is typically reserved for a male protagonist: a chieftain’s daughter, her skill as a warrior and ability to inspire others earn her the status of a Boudicca of the Chatti. Happily, she is anything but a clichéd superwoman. Her honesty and self-doubts engaged my sympathies and her stubbornness and cautious curiosity kept her very real. Also, relief of reliefs, there is no nervous attempt on the author's part to make Auriane "more feminine" by having the male protagonist be physically abler than she.

The active participation of women in Chattian society is contrasted with their lack of standing in Rome. Among her own people Auriane’s achievements as a warrior cause men and women to honour her as a leader blessed by the gods; her battle-scarred body is a badge of honour, her courage gives those she leads and protects comfort. In Rome, forced to become a gladiatrix (a modern word), her physical prowess singles her out as a freak: female gladiators are a suspect amusement, the frivolous indulgence of decadent Emperors. For the first time in her life, she becomes ashamed of her body which does not fit Roman standards of beauty, and her attempts to safeguard the welfare of her Chattian co-captives get her ridiculed.

The legends that grow up around Auriane capture Marcus Julianus’s attention before he ever meets her. Reading the reports and correspondence left by his father, who served with the Roman army in Germania and even conveyed his son a strange amulet from there, he becomes increasingly intrigued. “[...]she was the spirit of streams breaking through rock, the numen of primeval places. [...] She was a wild ghost, fighting nearby, and despite the vast space between them and the distance between their customs and ways, he sensed their enemy was the same” (pages 181-2). As someone who honours love over duty, and truth over safety, Marcus, too, eventually sees himself forced to resort to violence to oppose the rulers of Rome.

Does The Light Bearer paint the Germanic tribes as noble savages and Rome as a barbaric civilisation? Looking at Marcus Julianus’s admiration of Auriane, his wistful longing for a closer relationship with nature, and enlightened condemnation of many aspects of Roman politics and pastimes as decadent and cruel, yes. Looking at the internal pettiness, rivalries, conflicts, and superstitions that tear the Chatti apart as much as the military aggression of Rome does, no. Without Rome, Auriane’s journey to strength and insight could not be completed. Without the tragedies and injustices she suffers among her own people, that journey could not have been started. While it is easy to imagine where the author’s sympathies lie, and a sense of inevitability haunts the fate of the Chattian struggle for survival, the picture Gillespie presents of the Germanic tribes is satisfyingly complex. Ultimately, as Ramis tells a disbelieving Auriane, whose sense of failure as she fights to find safety for her family, her people, and herself poisons her with feelings with sorrow and unworthiness, catastrophe is fertile: it brings forth new worlds.

Throughout The Light Bearer, catastrophe certainly forces Auriane to re-examine the things she holds to be true. The conclusions she draws repeatedly put her choices at variance with customs and traditions. An independent thinker who at the same time is a creature of a specific culture, her encounters with the different behaviour and values of the Roman aggressors spark off ideas and actions that increase her internal conflict and alter how she deals with the world. Thus a Roman thrall, Decius, a former soldier taken prisoner by the Chatti, goes from somebody she has despised for years to a reluctant ally and finally, dangerously, to more than a friend. Yet even as he becomes her key to unlocking the mysteries of this alien race and to turning their strenths into weapons for the Chatti, their association flies in the face of tribal laws. And so, in her very quest to honour and fulfill what is required of her, she constantly risks being made an outcast, or worse, be punished by death. Whether her questioning of tradition strengthens or weakens the tribe is a tense issue both for herself and her people.

The fascinatingly lively depiction of Chattian society in a period of transformation is one of the greatest strengths of the book. Once all the action moves to Rome in the last third of the novel, I thought the story weakened. I attribute it to five major causes:

Firstly, Gillespie’s Rome is almost as detailed as her Germania but the overly familiar emphasis on its corruptness, decadence, and tyranny lacked freshness. The epic scope of the first two thirds of the novel also shrinks to a story mainly concerned with love, personal survival, and political assassination. It is not a bad story at all, and as part of Auriane’s personal odyssey it makes sense, but the execution and focus fell short of my expectations.

Secondly, this is the section where Gillespie tampers with history to serve her plot purposes, shortening Emperor Domitian’s actual reign (81-96) by a decade or more. The political and social acts which for a long time rendered Domitian reasonably popular among the general populace (even while he remained at loggerheads with the senate) are completely disregarded, and the reader is told that any worthwhile accomplishment slips in only due to Marcus’s influence as First Advisor. The plot reduces Domitian into a childishly willful, insecure madman who is hard to distinguish from the novel’s earlier portrayal of Nero. Recent historians have suggested that evidence points to Domitian’s wife remaining loyal to his memory for the rest of her life. The Light Bearer adheres to the juicier, hostile sources that claim Domitia Longina participated in the conspiracy to murder him. The result is a well-paced thriller of an ending that nevertheless frustrated me as someone who until then had been reading an excellent historical.

Thirdly, Marcus undergoes a change from the intensely loyal boy and kind, intelligent young man of the first half of the novel to a character so self-righteous that I eventually began bristling with annoyance whenever his thought processes were shown. Unlike Auriane, he never doubts himself or his judgement, and apparently is free of human flaws or vices. His enemies envy him. His intelligence, education, and integrity cause every other character except Auriane to defer to his superior wisdom. His library and school are internationally renowned, but he seems to have nothing to learn from anyone. He sways tyrants away from monstrosities, advices military veterans on siegecraft, secretly ensure banned texts continue to be available, declines offers of the Imperial throne but picks the successor. As Domitian becomes uncontrollable, dispatching suspected enemies left, right, and centre, Marcus coolly concludes, “Here I am on the border of dark and light, the one check on a rational madman [...] You leave me no choice but to plan your death” (page 397). On at least two occasions after that he considers killing others, but naturally he is not being hypocritical because his motives are pure. At this point only his relationship with Auriane, which shows him from an emotional, kind, and protective side, redeemed him from near insufferability.

Fourthly, the grand scene which finally brings Auriane and Marcus together and sees them professing their love for each other is exasperatingly silly and unbelievable. Granted, Marcus is already familiar with Auriane and has even committed treason to protect her from harm, and Auriane has once, back in Germania, sensed what I guess is his presence in a trance with Ramis. But she has never clapped eyes on him or heard of him before the night they meet in Domitian’s garden after a violent incident. She is half-naked, restrained by Praetorian guards, and has just dealt with a lecherous Emperor. Then she sees Marcus and looks into his eyes: “She sensed the soul that uncannily matched her own” and that he, too, “loathed Domitian” [485]. It is love at first sight. When the Emperor leaves, Marcus dismisses the Praetorians. “She came close then, moving her head inquisitively against his chest, nuzzling him like a pony, and then was still, resting against him contentedly” (491). Right. In fairness, their scene together is quite sweet, but the context makes the whole thing ludicrously unbelievable for me. Furthermore, it was impossible for me to accept with a straight face the repeated reveries about how deeply she loves him after that one meeting. Earlier in The Light Bearer Gillespie proved she can write about love and sex in the most natural, character-revealing manner, so the unsuccessfulness of Auriane and Marcus’s first proper scene together was a surprise. Things do improve, however. Auriane regains her personality and she and Marcus have some interesting scenes together which make it clear that if Marcus wants her he will have to accept that, unlike Roman women, she will always make her own decisions about what is right for her. I was also pleased with the plan Marcus ultimately suggests for their common future.

Finally, loose ends. In 89 the Chatti revolted again, this time with the co-operation of the disgruntled Roman legions stationed in Moguntiacum (now Mainz). With the muddled chronology in The Light Bearer this event is instead pushed forward to early in the year after the Chattian defeat when Auriane was captured (historically, around 83, although Auriane is said to be no more than twenty-five when Marcus speaks with her in Rome despite the reader having been told she was born in the eleventh year of Emperor Claudius’s reign (page 3), which would have made her thirty-two in 83). Even so, the revolt (which failed) is noted only in relation to its consequences for Emperor Domitian. What effect the news has on the captive Auriane is not shown. Indeed, not only have Auriane’s priorities quickly shifted from thoughts of home to the discovery of love, but the reader receives no further information about the many characters left behind. While such knowledge is in no way vital to the plot, the complete silence did bother me as a reader invested in their individual lives and their destiny as a people. Interestingly, Gillespie did not intend to write a follow-up to The Light Bearer until her German publisher persuaded her to do so (link), and so, fortunately, there now exists a sequel, Lady Of The Light. Unfortunately, Lady Of The Light reportedly ends on a major cliffhanger, and a third volume is still being written. I intend to content myself with the ending of The Light Bearer until the third, concluding (?) part has been published.

The above caveats may seem overwhelming, but really they only apply to the last third of the book. Even there, Gillespie’s exceptionally vibrant, intelligent storytelling overcame most of my grumbles. Taken as a whole, The Light Bearer is so much more than the sum of its parts, and in many ways I agree with the praise this longtime bestseller (originally published in 1994) has earned from reviewers and readers. Auriane, for example, instantly became one of my top favourite fictional characters. How I wish there were more heroines like her! My final thought: for a first novel, The Light Bearer is a tour de force.

 

Books of related interest: Gillespie’s rendering of the Veleda, Ganna, the Bructeri - the tribe of Auriane’s mother, and Legio XIV Gemina, stationed at Moguntiacum, invite comparisons with their characterisations in Lindsey Davis’s Falco series, which presents slighly earlier events from the Roman point of view. Veleda, the Bructeri, and the Fourteeenth Gemina appear in The Iron Hand Of Mars (one of my favourites in the series),and both Veleda and Ganna (in the Falco series, Veleda’s successor) have their moments in Saturnalia. Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and Caenis can be glimpsed in several of the books. Domitian plays a particularly significant role in the first, The Silver Pigs. The Course Of Honour, also by Davis although not part of the Falco mystery series, is all about the life-long love between Vespasian and Caenis.

Teaser Tuesday: The Light Bearer by Donna Gillespie

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

 

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

 

My teaser

(Berkley trade paperback, 2006, page 104):

“At a turn in the path Auriane saw, half hidden in the trees, a lichen-covered stone tall as a man and carved with rune-signs traced in blood. And as they traveled on, suddenly all about them, hung from every bough, were myriads of bronze chimes shivering with each wind-breath; their thin ghostly chorus filled her with an aching, dreamy sadness.”

Set in first century A.D./C.E. Germania and the Roman Empire during the reigns of Nero and Domitian, Donna Gillespie’s The Light Bearer features a Teutonic warrior woman who is captured and taken to Rome where she is trained as a gladiatrix. Tribulations and romance follow amid the dangers of political intrigue.

At nearly 800 pages the novel qualifies as the heftiest tome of historical fiction I have selected from my bookshelves this year. Since I am merely an eight of the way into the book I am reserving judgment about the characterisations and plot, but so far lyrical prose and a mystical mood (reminiscent of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists Of Avalon) are anchored to action-filled, historically detailed storytelling.

 

Please feel free to share a link to your own Tuesday teaser!

Italy: The Food Of Love by Anthony Capella

Rarely has the title of a novel been more apt.

Anthony Capella’s The Food of Love is a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, this time set in Rome, Italy, and with food being the medium for expressing one’s feelings.

The Food Of Love is the vivacious and warmly comedic tale of Laura, an American art history student in Rome, and the two Italian friends – Bruno, a chef, and Tommaso, a waiter – who woo her.

I read this book with a constant smile on my lips. Everything you ever thought charming about Italy, everything that ever made you raise an eyebrow about Italians – it’s here, steeped in the sunshine of authenticity. Setting is not merely a background or a frame for more important things. In a sense, Rome is the story: the food lover’s Rome, that is, with a few culinary excursions elsewhere interspersed. At the same time, this is by no means a cookbook in novel form. It is simply romantic fiction at its freshest and most dizzyingly delicious.

The secondary characters round out the portrayal of Roman life and provide a sort of background choir that harmonizes with and slyly comments on the main story: Gennaro, for example, the barista in Bruno and Tommaso’s favourite bar in Trastevere, whose quest to “make a ristretto so thick you could spread it like jam” is lovingly chronicled in asides throughout the novel.

The story grew so real for me and I became so immersed in the lives of the characters that by the time I finished the book I felt as if I had gained a kilo or two. All those descriptions of love-inspired food preparation and mouth-watering dishes… I also felt I had just returned from one of the most rewarding trips of my life.

Sometimes fiction that has been happily rolling along suddenly screeches to a halt only to hit you with a depressing twist to prove its literary merit. I hardly dared believe this book would not have an ambivalent ending and steeled myself against one of those “better to have loved and lost” scenarios by authors enamoured of the bittersweetness of nostalgia. What a thrill to discover that the romantic tone of the book stayed true to itself throughout.

Romance fans should be aware that this is romantic fiction and so some conventions that are taboo in the former genre appear here. Again I refer you to Cyrano. But for those who enjoy casting their romantic nets wide, “The Food Of Love” is an unabashedly feel-good tale. A treat in every sense of the word.

 

Excerpt (Time Warner Books hardcover, 2004, pages 74-5):

“Bruno walked back into the sunshine, which was turning redder now that the sun was low in the sky, and wandered down the shoreline to where Gennaro’s old van was parked. He had lit the fire before going to buy the fish; a plume of glassy smoke crackled from the firepit. The others were still in the sea. He stood for a moment, gazing at Laura, her sleek figure outlined in a wetsuit as she clambered over the waves with her board. As he watched he saw her put an arm around Tommaso and pull him towards her for a kiss. Bruno flinched, and turned his attention back to the meal.

This is for Laura, he told himself. From me to her, even if she never knows it.

He spread a tarpaulin, found a stone to use as a chopping board and set to work. He had brought garlic, courgettes, fennel, and potatoes with him from Rome, and now he busied himself peeling and chopping. After a few moments his mind went blank and he drifted into the semi-automatic trance that cooking always seemed to induce in him, looking up only when the long shadows of the others fell across what he was doing.

‘Ah, Tommaso, you’re here. It’s nearly ready for you to start cooking,’ he said respectfully.

Laura squatted down next to Bruno to look at his haul. ‘It’s all so beautiful,’ she breathed, picking up a clam shell in which red shaded through to orange, like a sunset.

Bruno glanced at her hair; wet, tangled from the sea and crusted with salt. Her face, too, was daubed with apache-streaks of dried salt under each eye, and the cold of the water had raised the skin of her neck into little bumps where it was exposed above her wetsuit, like the tiny noodles on a sea-urchin. He closed his eyes and inhaled. Just for a moment, he could taste her – her skin rinsed with seawater, the salt in her hair…

‘You haven’t washed the squid properly, Bruno,’ Tommaso said, tossing the shapeless polyp into his lap.”