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John the Pupil
David Flusfeder
The extraordinary new novel from David Flusfeder chronicles a pilgrimage to Rome made by three young men with a secret burden. But they will meet with temptation along the way…‘John the Pupil’ is a medieval road movie, Umberto Eco seen through the eyes of Quentin Tarrantino, recounting the journey taken from Oxford to Viterbo in 1267 by John and his two companions, at the behest of the friar and magus Roger Bacon, carrying a secret burden to His Holiness Clement IV. As well as having to fight off ambushes from thieves hungry for the thing of power they are carrying, the holy trio are tried and tempted by all sorts of sins: ambition, pride, lust – and by the sheer hell and heaven of medieval life.Erudite and earthy, horrifying, comic, humane, David Flusfeder’s extraordinary novel reveals to the reader a world very different and all too like the one we live in now.









Dedication (#uf74a5033-3a54-5b21-93b6-dd4d4cde0e41)
for brother Mathew

Epigraph (#uf74a5033-3a54-5b21-93b6-dd4d4cde0e41)
Every point on the earth is the apex of a pyramid filled with the force of the heavens.
ROGER BACON, Opus Majus
He shall pass into strange countries: for he shall try good and evil among men.
Ecclesiasticus 39:5
Contents
Cover (#u4b552cf4-1ace-5051-a9db-2673f4609a1e)
Title Page (#u7ec32aba-2934-5164-86d2-bd937cec3874)
Dedication
Epigraph
Note on the Text
The Chronicle of John the Pupil
Afterword
Notes
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by David Flusfeder
Copyright
About the Publisher

Note on the Text (#uf74a5033-3a54-5b21-93b6-dd4d4cde0e41)
A few remarks should be made here about the history of this unique manuscript.
I quote from Augustus Jessopp’s lecture ‘Village Life Six Hundred Years Ago’, first delivered to a notoriously uninterested audience in the Public Reading Room of the village of Tittleshall in Norfolk, and later collected in his The Coming of the Friars and Other Historical Essays (1885):
In the autumn of 1878, while on a visit at Rougham Hall, Norfolk, the seat of Mr. Charles North, my kind host drew my attention to some large boxes of manuscripts, which he told me nobody knew anything about, but which I was at liberty to ransack to my heart’s content. I at once dived into one of the boxes, and then spent half the night in examining some of its treasures.
The smaller strips of parchment or vellum – for the most part conveyances of land, and having seals attached – have been roughly bound together in volumes, each containing about one hundred documents, and arranged with some regard to chronology, the undated ones being collected into a volume by themselves. I think it almost certain that the arranging of the early charters in their rude covers was carried out before 1500 A.D., and I have a suspicion that they were grouped together by Sir William Yelverton, ‘the cursed Norfolk Justice’ of the Paston Letters, who inherited the estate from his mother in the first half of the fifteenth century.
They had lain forgotten until they came under my notice. Of this large mass of documents I had copied or abstracted scarcely more than five hundred, and I had not yet got beyond the year 1355. The court rolls, bailiffs’ accounts, and early leases, I had hardly looked at when this lecture was delivered.
It was in this last collection, which the genial eye of the schoolmaster-essayist-cleric Jessopp failed to apprehend, where the fragmented chronicle of John the Pupil lay buried.
Not until another generation after Jessopp were the first attempts made to piece the chronicle together. It is a great shame that the task did not fall to someone more skilled than the amateur antiquarian Gerald Lovelace, whose expertise did not match his enthusiasm. He succeeded in pasting the fragments together in double columns in some kind of chronological order but, robust as parchment is, many of the pages suffered in the process. He presented the ‘finished’ volume, whose translation he did not attempt, to the benefactress Celia (Cornwell) Bechstein. It has had an unlucky subsequent history, and here is not the place to detail or dwell on its misfortunes and depredations, the estate disputes, the book thieves, the fire at Chatham; until recently it had been stored, in harsh conditions, in a warehouse room in Ealing.
The text before you is a translation from a mixture of languages – primarily Latin, but also some Middle English, Old French, Italian, and Occitan, as well as Hebrew and Greek. Efforts have been made to preserve the spirit and voice of the original, at the expense, inevitably, of some of the literal meaning.
I have operated under etymological constraints, using only words that would have been known to John or are English cognates to his Latin ones. I may not use the word ‘succeed’, for example, other than to denote a sequence, because that is a secular, originally sixteenth-century term, which presumes to credit a favourable outcome to an individual’s capacities rather than to the divine will. A donkey’s ears cannot ‘flap’; our companions may not ‘embark’ or ‘struggle’ or use ‘effort’. When trying to find unanachronistic correlatives for John’s vocabulary, I have aimed not for the striking word or phrase, but the most apt and, in most cases, recognisable.
Where there are sections lost from the original manuscript, their absence has been marked by ellipses and blank space.
Most of the fragments follow an obvious chronology (helped by their author’s habit of dating each entry by reference to the saint to whom the day is dedicated). One of the harder parts of the editorial task has been to decide upon the arrangement of some of the others. The mistakes that have been made here are the editor-translator’s own: I am not a historian or a philologist, just a worker in language, whose path to John’s manuscript has been an unlikely one that need not interrupt the reader’s attention.
The original has now found a hospitable home in the library of a private collector, who commissioned this translation and provided me with a transcription of the original in the interest of making this extraordinary story available to its widest possible audience, and to whom unutterable thanks are due but hard to bestow, as he wishes to preserve his anonymity.

The Chronicle of John the Pupil (#uf74a5033-3a54-5b21-93b6-dd4d4cde0e41)
Being the reconstituted fragments of the account of the journey taken by John the Pupil and two companions, at the behest of the friar and magus Roger Bacon, from Oxford to Viterbo in A.D. 1267, carrying secret burden to His Holiness Clement IV, written by himself and detailing some of the difficulties and temptations endured along the way.

… and see your face on the roof of the friary. Sometimes you would cast your eye down at us and we would scatter. More often, the face would disappear as if it had never been there at all, as if you were something we had conjured to frighten ourselves with. He was a prisoner, it was said, convicted of monstrous crimes. He was mad, he fed on the flesh of children, he wiped his mouth with his beard after he had done feasting. He was in league with the Devil, he was the Devil, performing unnatural investigations. Sometimes we would hear inexplicable thunder from the tower, a few claimed to have seen lightning on clear sunny days. Once, by myself, grazing my father’s goats, I was touched by a rainbow, slowly turning, painting the field with brief marvellous colour.
As I got older, I would go there less often. The grass grew higher by that part of the Franciscans’ wall. Strange flowers bloomed. Animals refused to graze there.
Most of the commerce of our village, maybe all the commerce, was done with the friars. They bought our milk and cheese and mutton, we cut down trees to sell for firewood. Sometimes we would catch sight of their Minister walking to Oxford. We would see the friars at mass. They came to preach to us. And, when I was about nine years old, two of the friars came to our village and gathered the children in a circle by the pond. They asked us questions about numbers and words, they instructed us to wield their shapes, and gave us apples in exchange for the correct answers. At the end, I had by far the most apples.
The following day, they came for me. I had no part of the transaction. When it was done, my father seemed satisfied. I hope he got a good price for me.
And so began my education. In the tower at the top of the friary where, Master Roger, you have your seclusion and your books – twenty or more when I arrived, an immense library to which you proceeded to add, bought through means I never did discover. It was not just me at first in that room of books and instruments and crystal and glass, there were other boys lifted from villages who had also passed the apple test.
You taught us the trivium, the arts of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, and the quadrivium, which are the arts of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.
You read Aristotle to us, so much Aristotle, the ways of the heavens and the beasts of the field, Aristotle on Categories, on Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Sophistical Refutations. And you read Porphyry to us, and Nicomachus of Gerasa, and John of Sacrobosco, and the Elements of Euclid and the Practical Geometry of Leonardo of Pisa because, Master Roger, you said geometry is the foremost instrument for the demonstration of theological truth as well as being necessary for the understanding of natural philosophy.
The class shrunk, boys were cast aside, sent back to their villages, or given occupations elsewhere in the friary. And we read Grosseteste on light and Boethius on music, and Ptolemy on Astronomy, and Aristotle again, on the Heavens and Meteorology, on Plants, on Metaphysics.
And we read Qusta ibn Luqa on the Difference between Soul and Spirit and Averroes on geometry, and the antique authors of Rome: Seneca on the passions, Ovid on the transformations. You had taught in Paris, you used your lecture notes from the time before you had become a friar, and the class further shrank, my companions were too dull, too slow, they could not compute, deduce, dispute to our Master’s satisfaction, no matter how loudly you read or how hard you drove your wisdom against their bodies and souls.
For your primary method of pedagogy was to beat the information into your students’ heads: Here are the examples, numbers 1, 2 and 3. What are the examples?– Beat! – What are the examples?! List them! – Good enough. Now what law do these examples illustrate and prove? – Beat! – What are the examples? – Yes. Now what laws do they illustrate? – Yes. Now again. And again.
Your other method was to offer a short description of a special case in nature. It was the pupil’s work to gather this new information into what he already had been taught, to offer up a law to account for this otherwise strange manifestation, and the craft would be to form an argument so fine that it would entice you, Master Roger, elsewhere now, unmindful, back into the dispute.
(And, in the schoolroom, when they thought they were unobserved and unheard, Brother Luke would maliciously lead his fellows in a recitation of the martyrdom of Saint Felix, the strict teacher whose pupils stabbed him to death with their pens.)
Elsewhere, I saw little of the friary and nothing of the world. The friars went out to the city to preach, while my work was to learn. And then there were just two of us, me and Daniel, whose understanding was just as nimble, perhaps even nimbler than my own, but had an impediment which sometimes kept the required answers hidden behind eyes that were too large for his body, and we were the last vessels for my Master’s knowledge. Occasionally, on the roof, constructing the apparatus for the burning mirror, I would see my former classmates and the novice friars below. I once saw Brother Andrew and Brother Bernard nursing a broken-winged starling, but my Master called me back before I could discover if their labours prospered. I attended prayers. Each day, before Vespers, I had an hour for myself when I would lie on my bed, and meditate, try to quench the triangles and squares that occupied my inner vision and fight the demons that grow so strong before daylight, and bring myself closer to the steps of Our Lord, and otherwhile try to remember how my life used to be.
In this way were my days sanctified. In this way did I give thanks to the God who made me and the Saviour who redeemed me.
• • •
My Master does not approve of the divisions of the seasons. My Master does not approve of many things or, indeed, people. He disapproves of Peter of Lombardy and Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus and the translators of the Holy Scriptures who have incorporated so many errors into the sacred text. He disapproves of the Principals of our Order who have sacrificed the lamb of knowledge on the altar of temporal concerns. He disapproves of anyone who does not believe the evidence of his own eyes and takes no pains to celebrate the glory of creation by gathering knowledge to gain a closer apprehension of God’s work.
My Master holds the wisdom of his own teacher Robert Grosseteste to be above all others in the present age, but even he is not beyond reproach as in his acceptance of the division of the seasons into four, when it should be, rather, three, intervals of growth, equilibrium and decline. My Master also has proved that the calendar is wrong. By his calculations, one-hundred-and-one-thirtieth of a day is being lost every year, as our method of reckoning the passage of time loses pace with the rhythms of the stars.
• • •
And I would help him build his mirrors and lenses, my instruction would proceed, and he would beat out time and we would sing together, and the fallacious seasons passed, and the misreckoned years passed, and I was seventeen years old and the only one left in his classroom.

Saint Athanasius’s Day
Brother Andrew so dainty and girlish, Brother Bernard silent and large and phlegmatic, half-doltish. Brother Luke the reprobate, malicious and acting so freely, and somehow, his lightness, always escaping censure. Perhaps this is because he has the ear of the sacristan. Brother Daniel is the perpetual mark for Brother Luke. There is a quality about Brother Daniel that offends Brother Luke, and rouses his energies. Brother Daniel takes these attentions without complaint, as if they are his due. He humbly bears the weight of Brother Luke’s tricks.
At night I go to sleep listening to the murmur of this little herd of novices in the dormitory as they devise their wiles against Brother Daniel. They do not include Brothers Andrew or Bernard in their works. Brother Andrew would be their mark were it not for the greater offence that Brother Daniel causes them. Brother Bernard stands neither for nor against them. They regard him as a beast in the field, not quite man.
As for me, they do not dare to act directly. They whisper against me too, I hear them, on walks down to the refectory, to mass; but the fear of Master Roger’s mystery and power extends to me: just as in those days of living outside the walls, when we looked up to the friary tower to frighten ourselves and fear you and throw little stones that would not reach a quarter of the way to the roof, not daring to look over our shoulders as we ran away to the safety of our fathers’ world, in case we saw demons flying after us, they dislike me but they do not dare to assault me in case Master Roger’s power move itself against them.
• • •
You ask me to observe the world, and you are my world, so I shall begin with you.
Master Roger is well-made. His body is strong, putting to shame the constitutions of men half his age. His eyes are the colour of the sea on a stormy spring morning. His beard is grey. He credits his strength and vigour to his diet. The purpose, he says, in eating and drinking, is to satisfy the desires of nature, not to fill and empty the stomach. He has his own elixirs of rhubarb and black hellebore, which he pounds down to a paste and adds to his meat. And I have mine, justly accorded to my age and capacities. My Master says that if I observe the regimen he lays down I might live as long as the nature assumed from my parents might permit. It is only the corruption of my father and his fathers before him that limits the utmost term beyond which I may not pass.
Master Roger does not sleep in the dormitory. Master Roger does not take his meals with the rest of the friary. Master Roger appears at most services, space around him separating him from the rest of the Order, his voice sonorous, distinct, godly. The remainder of the time he is in his room at the top of the tower, performing his investigations.
Our lessons are fewer, now that he is working so hard on his Great Work. But still, towards the end of each day, he will test me on the knowledge that he has poured into me, and then add a little more. I must answer his questions about mathematics and music and grammar and rhetoric and optics, demonstrate the burning mirror he has made; and if my answers are not full and prompt, if my demonstration is not performed with his subtlety and skill, if I do not speak with as much insight and wit as if he were the respondent, he beats correction into my head.
Humbly, I observe myself. I am of smaller stature than my Master. My limbs are narrow and may not carry great loads. When I observe my own features they do not displease me, but they are not yet full. On occasion I am told by one of the older friars to walk with greater solemnity because my body, if not countermanded, tends to rise with every step.
I am the mirror he is constructing, to reflect him back to himself.
• • •
Our steps are directed by the Lord. I had no choice in this, nor should I have. Who is the man that can understand his own way? But all the same, in the order of our days, in the book of our hours, as I perform my spiritual exercises, my mind wanders. As Cassian has written, we try to bind the mind fast with chains and it slips away swifter than a snake.
Once, when I was very young, there was a traveller, a Frenchman, who visited the friary. He spoke of mountains and kings and far places and aroused my Master’s envy, but also his respect. He had visited Tartars and Saracens and travelled in carts pulled by giant dogs that had the ferocity of lions. The traveller’s skin had been burnt in eastern deserts; his right hand was missing two fingers. He made mention of other injuries but as his body and much of his head were covered by a dark cloak we could only conjecture what they might have been. When he spoke, some of his sentences fell away before finding their conclusion, and he looked silently past those assembled as if part of him were still dwelling in a far place.
In front of me there is a map of the pilgrim way from Canterbury to Jerusalem by way of Rome. The journey does not signify an actual one, I know that. The purpose of this exercise is to lift the spirit into closer fellowship with Our Lord. Imagining myself on this pilgrim route, I walk towards the celestial city, stepping closer into the tread of the Redeemer as he laboured under the Cross.
It is in contemplation that the Christian finds the true Jerusalem.
Demons tempt me away. A demon of vanity drives me to demonstrate my own cleverness. Another demon pulls with his fingers at my cloak tugging me away from Our Lord, whispering to me about the false, earthly road.
I look into the rivers, the sea, the towers of the cities. I trace my fingers along the vellum and hope, forlornly, sinfully, for an actual journey, to take bodily steps along an actual road, a strange sun on my skin, dip my feet, not my fingers on ink, into a changing water.
The rivers and the sea are inscribed in azure. The writer who drew the map is at work most of the days, and nights, sleepless and secret, because my Master needs him for his Great Work. The map is unfinished. The imaginary pilgrim may not travel to the Holy Land because the map stops short of Rome. The sea disappears and the land becomes sky because the scribe suffers from a need to draw lines and curves with azure in the margins of my Master’s work.
I inscribe this on cuttings of parchment from my Master’s Great Work. At the end of the day, I sweep away the shreds from around the scribe’s desk and take what I require for my own work, a humble mockery of the true work. I do not think my Master begrudges me a little ink to make an account of my days.

Saint Abran’s Day
Once I knew how to herd goats, to fetch water without losing a drop, to make myself small against my father’s anger. Now I have become skilled in the art of gliding through the refectory and kitchen, to pick up bread, to lean over candlesticks and slice off small segments at the base of the candles, and on through the building, to the stairs, my arms folded, hands holding my spoils in the sleeves of my cloak. Our scribe needs food to eat and light to work by.
It is harder to gather wine and beer. When I descend into the cellar, to tiptoe past sleeping Brother Mark, to lift away two bottles, to make my return journey past the sleeping sentinel, to climb back up into the corridor by the dormitory, I am almost as anxious as I used to be, when I first followed Master Roger’s instruction to fetch food for the scribe. I know that it is not stealing, he explained to me that it is not, but still I shake, and pray. I must take two bottles, because when Brother Mark makes his accounting of the cellar, he touches each bottle in turn, chanting, sing-song, Here is master bottle and here is his wife, here is master bottle and here is his wife … His reckoning is done by remembering whether there was an even or an odd quantity of bottles on the previous day.
The scribe bemoans as he transcribes. He is being made to work too swiftly. It is the word, not its shape, that matters, Master Roger tells him, urging him on, Faster! Faster! I have written in the Book, in a rougher hand than the scribe’s, because Master Roger did not trust the scribe to draw Hebrew characters without understanding. Maybe, somewhere, a family is missing its father, a mother her son. The scribe shapes an azure line in the margin, he cannot help himself, a turn of thin colour that suggests the tip of a wave, a leafy branch of a tree. He sharpens his pen and wipes his face and looks around, as if for escape. There is none. He is here until the Book is finished or the world has ended.
Or if the Principal discovers what Master Roger is doing in his room. There is an Interdiction cruelly upon him. He may not write or debate or disseminate, other than sequestered in the friary classroom with his appointed pupil. The Order suspects him of novelties, which is an accusation hardly short of heresy. Yet he may exchange letters with friends and outside patrons of influence whom the Principal and even the Minister General should not seek to offend. Master Roger’s rooms are turned into a single industry. It is all done in the utmost secrecy. The Book is secret, which is maybe as it should be. In antique times, Master Aristotle composed a commentary to kingship, power and wisdom for his pupil Alexander of Macedonia. Master Roger’s Great Work is the true successor to Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets. Many evils follow the man who reveals secrets, wrote Aristotle. The planets align, the Principal vexes, Master Roger writes the words on wax tablets for transcription, the scribe cuts them into the page. I steal a wheel of cheese from the cellar and draw an imaginary journey before picking up my own pen.
We live in the Last Days. All things are temporary. The gates behind which Alexander enclosed Gog and Magog are falling. The horsemen are already abroad. In which case, I asked my Master, why should he, should we, make so many terrible labours to produce his Book? It is a work of majesty, indisputably, a magnificence of learning and opinion and ingenious device, which tells of the world and how it is viewed and the arc of the rainbow and the movements of the stars and of health and immortality and engines of war, all manners of things that would seem miraculous were they not founded on observation and deduction and Scripture, but, even if it is finished, even if it is somehow delivered and received by its intended Reader, would it not be for nothing? All things are known to the angels. They should not need to read it. And, as it has been written, the spread of learning will itself hasten the End Times. My Master hit me across the head with his Greek Grammar and commanded me to read and memorise the declensions of forty-nine nouns. It was as if I had accused him of vanity and pride, and maybe, thoughtlessly, I had.

Saint Epimachus’s Day
The winding blue lines of the scribe’s demon entered my dreams last night. They became a river in Eden, branches of the Tree, our Beginning as well as an End. I wonder what takes place in Master Roger’s dreams, whether he permits himself to imagine figures without end.
There was trouble in the dormitory again. But I watched without attention. The day was so similar to the previous day, as it will be to the next. We beseech you O Lord, that the virtue of the Holy Spirit may be present unto us: which may mildly both purge our hearts, and also defend us from all adversities, through Our Lord Jesus Christ your Son: Who lives and reigns, God, with you, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end.
• • •

Saint John the Silent’s Day
The scribe’s hand shakes, the pages are almost filled. His escape is close at hand. Master Roger is almost merry. His Great Work is nearly made.
And now, he said, we must talk about how we are going to deliver it.
We? I said.
The proscription is absolute against his leaving this friary which is his prison. For a moment my heart had leapt at the thought of accompanying my Master on a journey; but then I took his meaning as being abstract, that he was generously acknowledging my small part in his Work’s manufacture and kindly including me in a conversation about the method of its delivery.
You, he said.
Perhaps he mistook my silence for misapprehension, or fear, or simple stupidity.
You, he repeated. You are the only one I can trust. You will take it to the Pope.
A special mark of favour, an answering heart, or just the fate that the Lord bestows upon us somehow miraculously accords with what I most yearn for.
You will go in three days, he said. The day and the stars are propitious. Ten plus seven.
Numbers of perfection, I said.
You will have companions, Master Roger said.
Companions?
The journey is too difficult for one boy to complete on his own. Do you have friends here? Whom do you trust?
Despite my exhilaration, I was suddenly sad. I felt friendless, alone. Other than Master Roger, whom it would be an awful presumption to claim for a friend, I have no intimates, no ties of true affection. I have lived in this place for seven years and more and established no bonds of love. Maybe the journey will not be the thing of glory I have dreamed of, maybe there will just be the perpetual here and now, we carry with us the stain and the mark. And I was jealous too. This mission is too grand, too enormous to share.
Who are your friends? There will be three of you.
I thought of the dormitory I sleep in, the novices at play. I looked at the faces my recollection brought to mind, the companions I would not tire of, the friends I would like to share my adventures with, and my heart.
Brothers Andrew and Bernard, I said.
It shall be done, he said. And you will proceed with your writing to make a chronicle of your journey.
How he knows of my secret writing, I do not know. I bowed my head.
Yes, I said.
And you will collect these treasures along your way.
He gave me a list of the things I will be seeking. He also gave me a stack of parchment and three pens and a pot of ink for my writing.
But do not tarry. If it is a choice between the speed of your journey and the search for these treasures, stay on your road.
Yes, I said.
The way will be hard. You have so little experience of the world. The Devil extends his power into unlikely places. There are demons who look like men.
Yes, I said.
And women, he said.
Yes, I said.
God will direct you.
Yes.
He saw there was something that I needed to say. He asked me what it was.
My father, I said, who lives in the village. I have not seen him in five years. I would like to take leave of him before I go.
My Master did not say anything. He turned away.
Downstairs, life proceeded as it always does, as if the world had not changed. Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Nones, Vespers, Compline. The sun rises, sets, rises again. We pray, give thanks, eat, drink, purge, sleep. God is good. The friary walls are cold against the skin.

Saint Brendan’s Day
Saint Brendan, the holy, sailed west with fourteen monks to find the island of paradise that prophecy had promised him. They sailed, in God’s name, and found the Island of Sheep by the Mountain of Stone, and they sailed on to an island on which the sailors lit their cauldron to prepare their food, but the island began to move and it was no island, but the great fish Jascoyne, which labours day and night to put its tail in its mouth, but may not, because of its great size, and the sailors fled and sailed fast away.
And they landed on a fair island full of flowers and herbs and trees in which were great birds that sang all the hours of prayer; and they sailed on through tempests and trials to the island of holy monks who do not speak, and in mark of their great holiness have an angel to light the candles in their church; and they sailed on and fought great beasts of the sea and, through God’s will, escaped an island of fire inhabited by demons who strode across the water to assault them with burning hooks and burning hammers; and they met the great traitor Judas, naked, fleshless, beaten by the winds and the sea; and they met Saint Paul on the island on which he dwelled for forty years, without meat or drink; and on they sailed, through a dark mist to the fairest and most temperate country a man might see, all of its trees charged with ripe fruit, and precious gems scattered across the ground, and a river which no man might cross. They plucked their fill of the fruit and they gathered as many gems as they would, and all was replenished, for this was Paradise; and they sailed back to their abbey in Ireland, from which they had been gone seven years. Shortly afterwards, Saint Brendan, the holy, the mariner, full of virtues, departed from this life to the one everlasting.
Consternation in the friary. Murmurs in the refectory, heads bowed in sharp telling. During the service of Vigils looks of pity and wonder were sent my way. After Lauds, I was summoned into the Principal’s rooms. Seldom have I spoken with the Principal. On a few occasions I have performed for him, for my Master to demonstrate my knowledge and, therefore, his pedagogy. I have always disliked these occasions, standing lonely and cold, unfriendly curious eyes upon me, to make recitations of Greek mathematics, of the houses of the constellations. I have never been in his rooms before. The Principal is a large man who has no love for Master Roger. He asked me what I had to say for myself. I had nothing to say because it did not seem opportune to demonstrate my command of tongues, ancient and present, or to recite my recent lessons in geometry and the nature of light.
These are heavy crimes you are accused of, he said.
Of what am I accused?
It would be best to tell all.
When I first made confession, I lied. I could not think of any sins to confess, so I invented some, gaining a consolation that at least on my following confession, I could confess to the sin of lying while making confession. But this was different. Was it my Master? Had the Principal learned of the Great Work, of the Mission to the Pope? Had the scribe reported of his imprisonment and labours? Did the Principal know of my part in the breaking of the Interdiction?
It had been an act of pride to think that I could deliver the Great Work to the Pope. If I was so stuttering and undone with the Principal, it was unthinkable that I might ever presume to be in the presence of the Vicar of Rome.
I have been guilty of the sin of pride, I said.
Never mind that. Let me smell your breath.
The Principal pulled me over to him roughly by the arm. A second time, he commanded me to breathe on him, which reluctantly I did. His own odour was not good, it tasted like neglected meat.
Again, he said.
I breathed on him again. He thrust me away.
This proves nothing, he said. You will have to perform penance. You and the other two.
I did not understand the purpose or meaning of the test by breath. But his reference to my two associates further strengthened my assumption that he was referring to Master Roger and the wretched scribe. We had broken the rules of our Order, of the blessed Saint Francis, of whom the Principal is a shadow. I was not concerned for myself. Happily, I would have taken all the blame but it could hardly be believed that it was I who had led my Master astray.
I will be taking counsel in prayer now. Tell the other malefactors to visit me after Prime.
He looked at me. I said nothing, deciding that in silence I should least harm my Master.
You will tell them.
Of course, My Lord. But, who?
Brothers Andrew and Bernard. Tell them to visit me.
I returned to the dormitory, gathered my writing materials and went into the shadow of the far wall that stands closest to my former village, where I write this now. I thought I detected the hand of my Master in this. I had not thought him malicious or vengeful. Was it because I expressed a desire to take leave of my father? But I could not believe he would take this kind of action against me, or threaten the mission to deliver his Book to His Holiness the Pope, or indeed make martyrs of Brothers Andrew or Bernard, sacrifice the innocents as well as his Great Work on a spiteful altar.
Incline, O Mother of Mercy, the ears of your pity unto my unworthy supplications, and be unto me, a most wretched sinner, a pious helper in all things.
My Master was delighted. He rubbed his hands together. His eyes shimmered.
So, you have got yourself in trouble, he said.
I do not know what I am supposed to have done.
You have been stealing wine from the cellar.
But I did this for you.
You did not tell them that.
I did not know what I was accused of, and nor would I have betrayed you even if I had.
You are a good boy, he said.
And then he beat my head with his hand, an action which hurt me but did not grieve me because I understood that it was an act of tenderness and acts of tender affection do not come easily to Master Roger.
Because you are my charge, I have been permitted to decide upon the penance that will be required of you to expiate your sin. I believe that they think it right, perhaps restorative, that one under an Interdiction be put into the position of a judge. They have even permitted me to determine how to dispose of your fellows.
But they are not guilty.
Are we not all guilty? Did we not all participate in the sin of the Fall?
I have never known my Master like this, so light and careless.
Be that as it may, he said. I am going to make an unorthodox judgement in your cases. The Principal will accept it. I have decided that this crime is so great, its cupidity, its incontinence and greed, the gluttony it indicates, the treachery against your Franciscan brothers, these sins are all so large that nothing less than a pilgrimage would suffice to pardon them.
My Master was smiling. His beard parted to reveal the paleness of his tongue, the yellow of his teeth. He reached his arm towards me but I was quicker this time and prepared for it and able to escape it this time.
Slowly, the grace of understanding was being granted me.
And where are we to go? I said feeling an answering smile on my own face.
For these extraordinary crimes, my Master said wiping his mouth with his hand, it is deemed that nothing less is required than for you to travel abroad to his Holiness to ask forgiveness of the Pope.
How? How did you order this?
But my Master was laughing, and when he had stopped laughing, his mirth had been discharged.
You will set out as we discussed. We have some preparations to make for your travels.
I am going to Rome?
Not Rome. The Papal court is in Viterbo. There is strife in Rome.
And then he looked at me and around the room, the books, the crystals, the boxes of herbs, the scribe’s table bearing the drips of his ink and the scars of his pen, the four packets wrapped in heavy cloth that contain the seven parts of the Great Work; and then he looked back at me again and reached for me and held me to his breast and stroked my hair in a powerful and strange charity and whispered that there was strife everywhere and he wished me good fortune on the road I had ahead of me.

Saint Restituta’s Day
It is said that, From a clear spring, clear waters flow. A man is estimated by the company he keeps. Brothers Andrew, Bernard and I stood outside the friary. Master Roger kept reiterating the details of my mission. You will tell the Pope this, and this, and you will demonstrate the device to him, and you will insist upon the need for a more satisfactory translation of the Bible.
The details of my mission are written on my memory. I had no need to be instructed in any of them.
And you will take this bag for the gathering of treasures. And here is parchment for you to write on. If you find the opportunity, send communication to me. And you remember the details of your itinerary?
I remember.
Our Great Work is in this box. Do not dare open it.
The bag for treasure is a heavy cloth one, the sort the villagers use to gather the harvest of apples. The box is made of wood and stained a dark red colour like blood. A single green stone is set into its lid and green wax seals it shut.
Do not open it. Promise me you will not open it.
I will not open it.
And you will carry this also.
He gave me this final load without care, wrapped in linen and tied with twine.
You will open this only when you have given up all hope. You understand me?
The extra packet is heavy at the bottom of the sack I carry, further cloth around it with my bowl and spoon and knife and parchment and styluses wrapped inside. The device I am to demonstrate to the Pope and the box containing the Great Work are in Brother Bernard’s sack.
I implore divine mercy that He Who is the One, the beginning and the ending, Alpha and Omega, might join a good end to a good beginning by a safe middle, my Master said.
Brother Bernard is eternally phlegmatic. He stood there, ox-like, bearing the burden of our load. Brother Andrew looked as anxious as I must have done. He shivered, his eyes closing and opening and closing against the sunshine. Suddenly, the prospect of a journey was a matter of trepidation. I had never been outside the village and the friary, except on the wings of Master Roger’s knowledge, and during my imaginary journeys. The friars gathered at the gate, Master Roger wiped away something that was occluding his eyes, and the Principal gave the blessing of the Sarum Missal.
The almighty and everlasting God, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, dispose your journey according to His good will; send his angel Raphael to keep you in this your pilgrimage, and both lead you in peace on your way to the place where you would be, and bring you back again on your return to us in safety.
And so our journey began. We walked past the village on the way to the river. I fancied I saw my father in a field beating a goat.

Saint Helena’s Day
The wood of the cross was a vile wood, because crosses used for crucifixions were made of vile wood. It was an unfruitful wood, because no matter how many such trees were planted on the mount of Calvary, the wood gave no fruit. It was a low wood, because it was used for the execution of criminals; a wood of darkness, because it was dark and without any beauty; a wood of death, because on it men were put to death; a malodorous wood, because it was planted among cadavers. After Christ’s passion what had been low became sublime. Its stench became an odour of sweetness. Darkness turns to light. As Augustine says, The cross, which was the gibbet of criminals, has made its way to the foreheads of emperors. As Chrysostom says, Christ’s cross and his scars will, on the Day of Judgement, shine more brightly than the sun’s rays.
After the murder of Our Lord, the Romans built a temple to Venus on Golgotha, so that any Christian praying there would be seen to be worshipping Venus. When Saint Helena, wife of the first Constantine, mother of the second, came to Jerusalem to find the True Cross, she commanded the temple to be razed, the earth to be ploughed up, and three crosses were disinterred, because Christ had been crucified beside two thieves. To distinguish between the crosses, she had them placed in the centre of Jerusalem and Saint Helena waited for the Lord to manifest his glory. At about the ninth hour, a funeral procession was going past. The dead man’s body was placed beneath each of the crosses, and beneath the third cross, the dead man came back to life.
•
The way cuts into us. Pebbles and twigs assail our feet, branches lash our faces and eyes. Our stops for rest are more frequent than I should have liked. The sun moves fast in the heavens; our feet go slowly on the ground. After the exhilaration of setting off on our journey when we took too fast a pace, stung by the novelty of strange trees and different faces, our bodies protested the labour. To Viterbo? To Paris? Canterbury, even Rochester would seem impossible. By the end of the day the next-but-one step would seem impossible.
Brother Bernard hardly speaks. He grunts when he walks, our beast of burden, our donkey. It is forbidden to members of our Order to ride. It is also forbidden to carry. We carry and yet refuse to ride, when a passing merchant or farmer offers us room in his cart, as if resisting a second sin obviates the first already committed. We are not pilgrims, or penitents, we are on a mission to the Pope, but my companions, who are ignorant of the true reason for our journey, refuse to break the saint’s commandment. They are both perplexed by their supposed crime and banishment. Neither, I think, is unhappy to have left the friary. Brother Andrew’s good nature emerges in whistling and song and an excited regard of everything he sees.
We walk. We accept alms from strangers who have sins to expiate. We walk in the same rhythm. The road we walked on was wide. And there were others on it too, I had never seen such diversity of kinds. Farmers driving their pigs, merchants in carts, cattle for market grazing by the side. And sometime a fine horseman would gallop past down the middle of the road. And we would gaze upon the finery and the speed and the hoof prints left in the mud and the steam disturbing the air.
Towards the end of the day, we had been singing to forget the pain in our legs and feet, until we had fallen silent, a little chiding, and then silent again, as we listened to the sound of our tread on the way.
People are kind to us. At night we were invited to sleep in a barn, our new dormitory with its friary of donkeys and convent of hens. I was asked by Brother Andrew if I understood their language.
Yes, I told him, they are saying, Please do not eat me. If you spare my life, I will lay you a very fine egg in the morning.
And he looked in wonder at the hens and thanked God for the wisdom that can penetrate mysteries, and Brother Bernard grunted, and I might easily suppose that he is the one who can speak the languages of the animals.
We slept on rough straw and as I fell asleep I felt, for the first time, the desire to be back in the friary where life is understood and I am under the shelter of my Master.
We were woken by a child who had been sent to bring us bread and milk, which was still warm from the sheep. The first taste of the milk was the strongest and the fullest, as if our appetites had shrunk to the shape of their first satisfaction. Rain and sunshine dripped through holes in the roof. Brother Andrew was smiling as he led us through the prayers. You O Lord will open my mouth. And my mouth shall declare your praise.
Our feet were aching to return to the journey. Bernard gathers his load, Andrew laid some stones into the sign of the cross. We stopped for breakfast and then Brother Bernard and I became impatient with Brother Andrew because he took so long to finish his food.
When we stopped again, in the shade of a tree, by the side of a river, stretching our legs, resting our tired, beaten feet, after we had performed our prayers, Brother Bernard and I ate the food we had kept back from breakfast. The bread was stale, the milk was sour, but after the labour of our day’s walking, each bite and sip contained whole worlds. My body strengthened with every mouthful. I felt I had discovered something here today, to do with size and magnitude. If I had filled myself as quickly as Brother Bernard was doing, then I would not taste or feel or perceive so much.
Brother Andrew was looking miserable. He confessed that he had consumed all his food at breakfast. I gave him half of the rest of what I had. Brother Bernard threw him a scrap of bread.
A rainbow is ahead of us, which is either an auspicious omen or a signal sent to direct us by Master Roger. I explained to Brothers Andrew and Bernard that there are five principal colours, black, blue, green, red, and white. Aristotle said that there are seven but you can arrive at that by subdividing blue and green into two halves of dark and light. I could hear my voice above the music of a songbird and how preferable that music was at this moment so I became silent.
We could hear the bird as we walked. Brother Andrew and I looked above our heads for the songbird but we could not see it in the trees, just heard its song. I looked around and saw Brother Bernard’s lips shaped forward, the whistling coming from them. I had not thought he was capable of such game or skill.
We wear the brown robes of our Order and the insignia of two keys on our chests, to signify our pilgrimage to Rome. The orders of angels watch our process towards Canterbury.
• • •
I have committed two sins, close to blasphemy, on the short way we have come. I have found myself wishing we were not carrying my Master’s Book and his device for the Pope and his packet that we are to open when we have abandoned hope or hope has abandoned us. I have even neglected to pick up treasure I saw in the woods. I made my companions stop. We must go back, I told them. Or at least we have to stop and you must wait for me. It was not hard to persuade them to drop themselves down in a glade in the forest.
I went back to where the treasure was, cut it away from the earth, put it in my bag, and made my laborious way back to where my companions were, or at least should have been. I halted, went farther on, then back the way I had come. The trees looked like giants who were mocking me before taking me prisoner, casting their nets of leaves. I searched for different paths through the trees in the event I had taken a wrong turn in my tiredness. I stopped, I renewed my search; I went this way, and that, and returned again to the place where I first thought to find my companions – who, revivified by their rest, leaped out laughing at me from behind the trees.
My companions question me about my Master. They ask what it is we do up in the tower. I may of course not tell them about the Book.
We study, he teaches, I learn. Sometime we sing.
Sing what?
Different songs. The shape of music reveals the hidden structures of many things. Music is the power of connection coupled with beauty.
You sing?
In line with Aristotle’s teaching. Music also teaches the virtues, courage and modesty and the other dispositions.
Who is Aristotle?
A great teacher. Perhaps the greatest.
A Franciscan?
No. Not a Franciscan.
A Dominican then?
Not a Cistercian?!
Bernard shows a particular antipathy to Cistercians.
He is not attached to any order, I tell them.
It is my favourite time with my Master when we sing. He strokes his beard, his eyes shine, his voice is large, full and profound. In singing we reach a communion. When singing he permits himself to be playful. He delivers a line, speaking of the earth, I answer him with the sky and stars, he repeats his, with more urgency, I hold fast, denying him his mud and earth; and then his voice rises higher lifting us both into a godly integration.
When I first was raised from the village into the friary, my Master told me stories. These were legends of the saints and fables concerning the beasts, the cunning of the fox, the lonely hunger of the lion, the foolishness of the donkey. Mistakenly, this is how I thought life would proceed, my Master and I sitting in the room at the top of the tower, the other pupils ignored. It was as if he was narrating these tales purely for me, in his deep voice, animated by the characters of the beasts into tones of excitement and anguish and wisdom. In this manner, I learned Latin. Later, I would be set the work of rewriting the fables in my own words, in different concisions. The fable of the frog and the mouse in five hundred words, one hundred, in fifty, in twenty. And, despite my Master, the matter was transmuted, from the stuff of marvel and wonder into a schoolroom task.
• • •

Saint Augustine’s Day
After the trouble in Rochester, it was a relief to be back on the road. Our spirits soared, hills and clouds, sunshine. Our paces grew longer, Brothers Andrew and Bernard whistled the melody of the songbirds. As the days have proceeded, our bodies strengthen, the way is not so hard, our load not so heavy. This morning I had to tally the contents of the bags I was carrying in case I had left something behind, leaves of my Master’s Book scattered in the road. We cover the ground with less complaint, with lightness.
Rays emanate in all directions from every point in the cosmos, conveying the force of things to proximous objects. The act of looking is a reciprocal exchange of powers with the object being looked at. The act of looking is all one and multifarious, radiation of heat, the influence of the stars, the efficacy of prayer.
Were it not that sin makes the body opaque, the soul would be able to perceive directly the blaze of divine love.
But there are still those difficult nights, a long day’s walking behind us, the extra difficulty of climbing a hill to a town, which had seemed so close from the path, and finally permitted through the gates, but not to a bed – the bishop’s men bar us here, the Cathedral chaptermen bar us there, neither group has a tolerance for Minorites. The forest seems preferable to this, lying together in a bed of moss and leaves; until someone takes pity, a pure heart who has no taste for the chaptermen or the bishop, to whom we companions represent, perhaps falsely, a purer way.
We wear the badge of the two keys to signify our ascent to Rome. There are other pilgrims on our way, some with the badge of the cross for their journey to the Holy Land, others with the shell for Santiago de Compostela. We climbed the hill towards Canterbury. Brother Andrew desired to sleep out in the open again, I suggested we find the Franciscan hospice, Brother Bernard said that we must visit the Cathedral first, shrive our sins at the shrine of Saint Thomas.
But first we must get through this, Brother Andrew said pointing ahead at the crest of the hill, where a throng was filling the road.
Two men in red jerkins were blocking the road with staves. A smaller man also in red was moving at the front of the waiting people. The men with staves had the heaviness and placidity of oxen whereas this one showed the narrow face and sudden movements of a quick river animal.
Brother Andrew tried to see over the heads.
What are they after? he asked me.
I do not know, I said.
Money, said Brother Bernard.
We watched the ox-men raise their staves and let a merchant pass in exchange for a coin that went into the scrip of the narrow man.
My hand went, as if in sympathy, to the clasp of my own scrip, in which I carry the Great Work.
It is a mockery that they use the bag of the pilgrim for profit, Brother Bernard said.
Brother Andrew and I looked at each other in wonder, partly because of his tone of indignation and partly too because this was the longest speech that either of us had ever heard him make.
Some of the pilgrims in the throng had moved away to stand at the side of the road so that they could beg the toll from others. Brother Bernard thrust a way through for us to stand at the front. A family had just been permitted past without any exchange of money.
A penny for strangers, a half-penny for pilgrims. Locals do not have to pay the toll.
This was told to us by a woman who carried a basket of fish. Have a fish, she said offering one to Brother Andrew. Because of your fairness, she said. Brother Andrew reddened, looked down to the ground. When you eat my fish you can say a prayer for me, she said.
We have no money, I told the man with the scrip.
He ignored me, held out his hand for a penny for the toll from the woman with the fish.
We go as pilgrims and strangers in the world, I said.
Then that should be a penny and a half for each of you, he said talking out of the side of his mouth. The rest of his body was still, just his eyes always in motion.
We serve God in poverty and humility. We do not use money.
Everyone knows how you friars live. God does not need your riches or your greed, the man said.
The conversation seemed to gladden him, as if it gave him the opportunity to display his wit. Many gave loud assent to his words and I marvelled at and feared this godless, upside-down place where pilgrims are exacted a toll to visit a shrine and the best men of learning and devotion are seen as exemplars of vice.
What is in your bag? the man said. Treasures, I expect.
None that you would recognise, I said.
We will not pay, Brother Bernard said.
Then you will not pass, the man said.
Brother Bernard lifted the man away from the ground as if he was shaking a fallen leaf, and coins rolled out of his scrip, and the throng at first did not know how to respond to this turn of events. But when Brother Bernard had hurled the man into one of the guards with the staves, and was already moving to the other, who hesitated, as if he could not decide whether to set upon him or flee, members of the crowd were scratching around on the ground for the fallen coins, and Brother Bernard was advancing upon the second guard, who made his decision, to flee, and we watched him run, and then Brother Bernard said, in his usual tone of plain announcement,
We should go on.
We went on.
In Rule Three of our Order, the blessed Saint Francis counsels, admonishes and begs his brothers that when we travel about the world, we should not be disputatious, contend with words, or criticise others, but rather should be gentle, peaceful and unassuming, courteous and humble, speaking respectfully to all as is due. Behold, he says, I send you as a sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and as simple as doves.
Of the three of us, only Brother Andrew’s behaviour in the matter of the toll men was without sin. The Cathedral rose above us, as we made our slow process towards it through elbows and shoulders of pilgrims, and Brother Bernard denied that he had behaved improperly.
It was right, he said.
When Brother Bernard takes a position he is unyielding.
Those men were demons, he said.
We must give greater penance, I said.
You do as your conscience tells you and I shall do likewise, he said.
I had not been prepared for such multitudes. Brother Andrew thrust himself for safety between me and Brother Bernard. We were the sick, we were lepers and cripples, madmen, peasants, noblemen, pilgrims, all come to visit the relics of the saint. Beggars outside, preaching monks, merchants selling badges of the shrine.
Guard your bags, said a kindly-looking man on my left.
I carry three bags across my shoulders. In one are the necessities for my journey. In the second is space for the treasures I am to gather along the way, and the package my Master gave me that is only to be opened when we meet despair. The third bag is the scrip in which I carry my Master’s Great Work. Alerted by the kindly man’s warning, my hand went immediately to the third bag. I felt no stranger’s hand, the seal was untouched.
There are cutpurses everywhere, the kindly man said.
He was not a monk, and nor was he a nobleman, because his costume was ragged and worn. He looked like someone who worked on the land, but a labourer on the land would not have spoken in Latin. His tunic was extraordinary: on the worn thread were pinned dozens of lead badges in the shape of saints and stars.
Even here?
Especially here. You have not been to Canterbury before?
We have been to nowhere before.
They call me Simeon the Palmer.
I am John the Pupil. My companions are Brother Bernard and Brother Andrew.
You are making penance?
This was the first encounter I had had on my journey in which I felt greeted with tenderness. There was something about Simeon the Palmer, his wise eyes, the steadiness of his hand on my arm, his odour of violets, that made me yearn to tell him about my childhood and my father’s goats and life in the friary and my loneliness and my learning, and my mission and my Master, so that he should know to love him as much as I do.
We are making pilgrimage.
As am I. I go to Rome and then Compostela and on to the Holy Land.
You must carry a heavy burden of sins.
Most of them are not my own.
As we processed to the Cathedral gate, Simeon the Palmer explained to me that his occupation is to make pilgrimage on behalf of men who have a weight of sins, the desire to expiate them, and the money to pay someone else to do so on their behalf.
You make the pilgrimage and you perform the penance and your hirer stays at home and the consequence is that he is shrived?
That is how it works.
The world is a strange place.
Simeon the Palmer offered to make penance for us. You could divest your load on to me, he said.
I had not been prepared for the magnificence of the Cathedral, the glory of it, its size, the frescoes on the walls, the holy blaze of the windows. Brother Andrew and I made confession and washed our hands and the three of us were directed towards the foot of the stairs up to the martyr’s shrine, where we removed our shoes and joined the procession of those who have been afflicted, by deformity or disease or riches, because we are all equal in sin.
We kissed the floor, we climbed the stairs on our hands and knees. A registrar sat with a book of miracles beside the shrine. Two Cathedral monks stood watch over the pile of jewels and money left by previous penitents. We had nothing to offer except our devotion and humility. Master Roger warns that men devoting themselves to holiness must try to avoid the short direct rays emanating from delectable things, such as women and food and riches. Prostrate at the martyr’s shrine, I thought I detected an avaricious shine in Brother Bernard’s eyes, a hungry vacuity mirroring the glistening of the jewels.
After we climbed back down and reclaimed our shoes and received the blessing for our pilgrimage, we were outside the Cathedral gate again and Simeon the Palmer was with us, pinning a new badge on to his tunic.
Paradise knocks on your door, a beggar said holding out his hand towards us, but seeing the look in Brother Bernard’s eyes he quickly withdrew it again and turned his attention to other pilgrims.
My Master has placed a lonely burden on me. My companions believe that this is a pilgrimage of penance, so that is what it will have to be, for sins of pride and avarice and concupiscence. They do not know the purpose of our journey.

Saint Germanus’s Day
Germanus began every meal by swallowing ashes. He never ate wheat or vegetables, drank no wine and did not flavour his food with salt. Germanus gave all his wealth away to the poor, lived with his wife as brother and sister, and for thirty years subjected his body to the strictest austerity. He spread ashes on his bed, whose only covering was a hair shirt and a sack. Such was his life that if there had not been any ensuing miracles, and there were many miracles, his holiness alone would have admitted him to the order of the saints.
•
I related the life and miracles of Saint Germanus and we stood by the boats at Dover with hands outstretched. Paradise knocks on your door, Brother Bernard said. Brother Andrew is not yet used to mendicancy. He was shy, his eyes downcast, his cheeks reddening. All the same, it was he who received the greatest alms. A pious captain gave us passage on his boat, in exchange for our consenting to lead a service after the boat had got under way, and a promise not to impede or obstruct or beg from the passengers and crew.
Brother Andrew stood on the prow as we waited for the boat to take to sea. Brother Bernard, who shows an aversion to water, sat in the stern wrapped inside his cloak. Brother Andrew and I watched the passengers climb on board, the pilgrims and merchants, and a great lord, whose passage demanded a retinue of servants and the transport of a score of horses, and carts overlaid with barehide, their wheels bound with iron, and boxes made of iron and wood, and barrels of wood, and bags made of leather and canvas.
The lord’s chamberlain oversaw the loading of his master’s goods. He was a man of powerful build, who roared out orders to his underlings who followed his instructions as if on pains for their lives.
They are like soldiers obeying their general, I said to Brother Bernard, trying to rouse him from his dolour.
When did you ever see a soldier? Brother Bernard said.
It is true. I have never seen a soldier, or a lion, or a feast on a great man’s table, or a demon or an angel or a nun or a unicorn or a bride or a Jew. But before I set out on this journey I had never seen a cathedral or a man who made a living expiating other men’s sins, and neither had I seen a great lord. This one was a man of small stature and sharp visage. He watched his chamberlain issuing the orders and drank from a small flask.
Maybe it was this, the possibility of all things now that I am upon this journey, or maybe it was the sight of Brother Andrew stretched forward on the prow, his arms fully extended, his body leaning into the breeze, or maybe it was the gentle motion of the boat rocking beneath me, that I felt touched by something forgotten from long ago, and was suddenly lifted, exhilarated, incorporeal, yet alive with the acuity of my senses.
The faces of the sailors are marked. One has a scar on his forehead, another is missing part of an ear. My Master, I would question you about this. Is beauty a signifier of virtue? These sailors may have been beautiful once. Does that mean they were once less vicious than today? Is Brother Andrew more virtuous than Brother Bernard, simply because the beauty of his face marks him out as being derived from, or at least compatible with, the angels? Were the sailors more virtuous when they were young, unmarked by experience and difficulty? We are born fallen. An unbaptised baby is not innocent. I would like to ask my Master if it is a blasphemy to think that the sailors are lifted by their travails, if there is an equation between the scars on their bodies and the godliness of their souls, if appearance is the converse of substance, not its mirroring cloak.
As it is written in Ezekiel, You are the seal of the image of God, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You have been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering.
On the aft part of the boat, the great lord’s priest held a service for his lord and his retinue. Here, below, it was my office to lead the hymns and prayers of vespers.
Come O Holy Ghost, replenish the hearts of the faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. We beseech you O Lord, that the virtue of the Holy Spirit may be present unto us: the which may mildly both purge our hearts, and also defend us from all adversities, through Our Lord Jesus Christ your Son: Who lives and reigns, God, with you, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end.
We were the only three in orders taking passage on the boat, and Brother Andrew is too shy, Brother Bernard too rough, so I was given the office. My voice was fragile. I am unused to being the focus for so many other people’s attention. I am not a priest nor had ever hoped to be. I could hear my own voice cracked and light. As I spoke the sacred words of prayer, I shut my eyes, imagined myself back in Master Roger’s room, to give my voice, and heart, some strength.
Amen.
Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to him: and his wonderful works to the children of men. And let them sacrifice the sacrifice of praise, and declare his words with joy. They that go down the sea in ships doing work in the great waters, these have seen the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
Amen.
Simeon the Palmer brought himself towards me from out of the congregation of sailors. He complimented my sureness and my voice. He told me I spoke very well and assured me that the angels would smile upon our journey.
Brother Bernard is not enjoying the crossing. He sits with his head towards his knees, hugging himself as if desperate for the consolation of mother-love.
• • •
The tumult on the harbour, the wonder of a different land, almost like ours, almost familiar, but so new and strange and barely known. We took such timid half-steps on land, as if expecting, after the solid earth of England, succeeded by the liquid of the crossing, that France should be composed of vapour. Brother Bernard does not understand French; I see this place through his eyes, as if the day has been slightly turned. The butcher wears a different hat.
As it says in my Master’s Book, We expect things to be different in different places: manners and intellectual interests vary according to the diversity of regions; the body is altered by the heavens and when the body is changed the mind is aroused.
Brother Bernard stays close to me. Brother Andrew has to be admonished to remain with us, his attention is scattered upon the sights and sounds and smells of the harbour.
Here, I tell him, it is your turn to be the donkey.
Our load will tether him to the earth. We already carry too much. Our spoons and knives and bowls, my Master’s Book in its shining sealed box, the apparatus for demonstration to the Pope, our breviary, the secret thing in its humble container that we may not open. According to the rule of our Order, we are not meant to carry bags; each of us carries two.
It is not hard to find our way. Pilgrims, jabbering, creeping, praying, mark the way in a slow penitential caravan. Until, suddenly, we are driven into the mud at the side of the road by the train of the great lord, riding four abreast on black chargers. His carts and oxen fill the road, as we try to restore order to our garments and our possessions. The seal on the box is unbroken. The apparatus is intact. My bag for the collection of treasures was emptied and I had to gather them from the road, combined with mud.
Brother Bernard hurled clots of mud at the oxen and the lord’s servants, while I gathered my writing implements. I had thought I had chosen him for his strength and protection. Perhaps it was his soul I was concerned for, its safety, rather than that of my Master’s treasures or my body. I smoothed out my scraps of parchment, wiped off as much of the mud as I could with the sleeve of my cloak. I write this through the dirt of the road.

Saint Hubert’s Day
Hubert was a beautiful and courteous youth, noble-born, loved by all, whose single passion was for the hunt. On a Good Friday morning, when the virtuous were all inside church, Hubert was giving chase to a magnificent stag. The animal turned, and Hubert was stupefied to see a silver crucifix between its antlers, while at the same time a voice spoke these words, Hubert! Unless you turn to the Lord and lead a holy life, you will go quickly down to hell.
Hubert gave all of his wealth away, entered holy orders, and for the rest of his life, he was diligent in fasting and prayer, became famed for the eloquence of his sermons, was a friend to the poor and a scourge of idolaters, whom he sought out with the same passion that once he had brought to his love of the chase.
Our first night in Gaul, a night spent on the straw of a pilgrims’ hospice, the snoring and dreams of the sleepers, the straw beneath us never still, rustling and shaking with the movements of mice, while the sleepers scratched at the fleas and lice that assailed them like an army besieging a town.
This is purgatory, Brother Bernard said shielding his eyes against the sunlight.
That is heresy, Brother Andrew said.
My throat and head were sore. I longed for my own bed, a less foul air, for a ministering remedy prepared by Master Roger.
In the men around us it was hard to identify God’s pilgrims. The only sin that did not seem illustrated was the one of Pride.
Our goods were safe. I untied the rope that bundled them together. Some of the pilgrims were sleeping. Others were praying. Two men scourged themselves in the foulest corner of the room.
We recited matins on the road. And our hearts lifted as we sang,
Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly
Nor stood in the way of the sinners
Nor sat in the chair of pestilence.
But his will is in the law of the Lord
And on His law shall he meditate day and night
And he shall be like a tree which is planted near running waters.
Around us, God’s creation, the fields and trees, the birds, the stream we drink from. Let the friars take care not to appear gloomy and sad like hypocrites, but let them be jovial and merry, showing that they rejoice in the Lord, and becomingly courteous.
More things have gone into my bag of treasure, which, if God decrees this journey prosperous, I hope to return to Master Roger full to overflowing, the bounty and reward for my Master’s trust in me.
• • •
Fires on the hillside at night, the lodging ground of a company of vagabonds and pilgrims, an unnatural band of wolves and sheep, who stare at us as we approach.
Brother Andrew had no desire to proceed. Brother Bernard drove him on, we climbed the slope towards the fire. And as we approached, we heard a clinking, the dull repeating sound of his process, Simeon the Palmer amongst us.
Light flickered on the faces around us, as Simeon the Palmer in his noisy costume acted the host in this fairy supper.
You have eaten? You have food? I know, God will provide, and He has, His ways are many, and always marvellous, it is His work to look after His servants, a Father’s strength, a Mother’s care, sit with us, you will eat with us.
Mindful of Brother Bernard’s suspicions (but he is always suspicious, he would interrogate the motives of an angel), I said that first we would need to make our own ground for the night. I have not yet collected many treasures for my Master, but the bag is not empty, and the work is a sacred one. And there is the bag with the Book, and there is the bag with the parts of the model for demonstration, and the secret package, for when hope is abandoned, and all of these I must keep secure. If I had just one bag to save, it would be easy to decide which it would be. The model is the fruit of our labour and study, but it is merely a thing, the Book is pure Thought, containing the wisdom of all times.
I looked for a place to lay our goods, I looked for a place that was a soft place to be, a leafy bed between trees, free of slope or stones, where I might cover our precious things with soft earth, a landfall of fruit, a canopy of leaves and twigs. And I looked for a place where the eyes of the vagabonds would not follow me. The place was not to be found.
You are very modest, Simeon the Palmer said mistaking the nature of my precautions. We are all men, which is the same as saying that we are all God’s creatures. There is a ditch away from the fire where we perform our necessary acts. No shame is attendant upon them.
Even for a friar, said a raggedy fellow sitting near the fire.
I left my bags with Brothers Bernard and Andrew (eyes downcast, skin reddened by the fire, the very image of the modesty that I was being accused of) who were already sitting by the fire with their expectant bowls. I walked down to the ditch, where I lifted my cloak and, unable to perform the act of voiding (my belly too empty, so many eyes upon me), waited in that position until I judged sufficient time had passed.
Sit with us, brother, Simeon the Palmer said. Tell us about your journey. Did you ride?
We are not meant to ride. Our Order forbids it.
Our redeemer rode on a donkey. Are you saying you are better than He?
The Palmer was in high spirits, joking, drinking, ladling soup into my bowl. He asked me what had brought us to our pilgrimage, but while I was still composing my answer, he pointed out men around us – that one had a vexatious wife, that one a smoking fireplace, that one a leaking roof, another had become a monk to avoid the punishment of the civil law.
And you? Brother Bernard said. When you make penance for your clients, do you repent your own sins?
I am the lamb, Simeon said. Chaste and clean. But you, you carry so much. I thought members of your Order went unburdened. Some bread? Have some bread. It is fresh.
He leaned towards me, and as he handed me a piece of bread, he whispered,
Hard to believe that you three are ordinary pilgrims.
I had no reply. I stuffed the bread into my mouth and chewed.
If you are in trouble, I can help. I have travelled this way many times. Where are you going?
As if helpless with the food in my mouth, I chewed.
Are there men in pursuit after you? Do you carry relics of the saints? Or maybe you are transporting monastery treasures that someone might mistakenly think you have no right to?
I finished the bread. No, I said, it is nothing like that.
He patted my arm, like a brother.
Of course not, he said.
When we were lying upon the ground, after Brother Andrew had preached – and it was marvellous to see, the softening of the rough company before Brother Andrew’s beauty and God’s truth – and after we had prayed and we were waiting for sleep, with its nocturnal temptations, to take us, and the world was so loud around us, louder than the hospice, because this time there were dark birds in the branches of trees, the rustle of beasts in the woods, I grew afraid.
I gathered up our bags and I woke Brother Andrew and Brother Bernard and told them we must go, silently and in haste, and they were sleepy and reluctant but I drove them on, like a shepherd with his small flock, and we made our way out of the lodging ground, and there were eyes upon us, cold in the firelight, watching our departure, and there was a clinking of metal that might have belonged to Simeon the Palmer.
I was not able to explain my fear to my companions. We set forth along the dark path. We slept finally, at dawning, in a chapel on a hill.
We woke hungry, it was so late in the day. Sun shone through the windows, our Saviour born, the kings from the east bearing him gifts. We said matins, even though the hour was so late.
Outside, we gave thanks for God’s creation. The earth was wet from an early-morning rainfall. I taught my companions a song that I used to sing with Master Roger. Brother Bernard, into whose head learning could never stick, immediately learned the words and the rhythm. We sang until our throats were dry, and then we drank from a stream and sang some more until, I think it was Brother Andrew who began it, we replaced our music with laughter. Laughter is a gift of the Holy Spirit. The Devil is powerless against it.
We laughed, without object or cessation. We laughed without ever, it seemed, being able to imagine a time without laughter, a moment when the world did not consist of the three of us lying on the grass outside a chapel in France, beating the damp grass with our fists.
Until we saw the men climbing the hill towards us. They were wet, cloaks and habits heavy from their night out in the rain, which was maybe why we had not heard them approach. Simeon the Palmer’s badges hardly made a sound as he walked.
But he was cheerful, as ever. He showed joy at seeing us. He praised our sharpness in finding a dry place to pass the night.
And your goods? I see you look after them. You are careful stewards of your treasures. Not a drop of rain upon them.
The men’s faces were stern. They came into the chapel and they gathered around our packages and I made to stop them, I thrust through them and reached for the shining box in which my Master’s Great Work is contained, but there were too many of them and only one of me, and the men seized me, held my arms tight, helpless, by my side. I looked to Brother Bernard and Brother Andrew but Brother Andrew was gone and five of them, maybe six, were subduing Brother Bernard, a confusion of cloaks and arms that might have been an occasion for mirth if it had not been for the enormity of what was taking place, our powerlessness, our despair, our fall, we had come this way and we had hardly begun our journey and already it was over.
We will take this, call it a shelter tax. We slept in the wet, you were in the dry.
There was nothing I could do against them. Simeon the Palmer took two of the bags, the box, shook it slightly, held it up to his ear.
You can go, he said. Take the rest of your goods with you. It is just a tax, we are not robbers.
I fought. I shouted, We have letters of credential from the Pope!
Or we can go. You can stay here. We will leave you to your chapel. The rain has stopped.
They tied my arms behind my back. They did the same to Brother Bernard, although that process took longer and required more assailants to keep him still. Helpless, we watched them leave. I wept.
And through the entrance of the chapel, where the Last Judgement was painted on the walls around the doorway, came Brother Andrew, creeping, carrying two of our bags. He unfastened the bonds that tied us.
I prayed for guidance and Brother Andrew joined in and Brother Bernard watched me.
And now? Brother Bernard said.
We follow them. We retrieve the box. Somehow.
As we gathered up our things, Brother Bernard blamed Brother Andrew for fleeing from the fight. I told him that if he had not, all three of us would be in bondage in God’s house. I carried the bag that Brother Andrew had saved in which were the parts for the model to demonstrate to the Pope. Brother Bernard carried a bag that contained Brother Andrew’s bowl and spoon and our breviary. The rest of our goods were with the band of thieves.
We made our way down from the chapel towards the foot of the hill. We could hear the men shouting ahead of us as they walked.
It had fallen upon me to be the leader of our little party. I am not quite sure how it happened; I am the youngest; I am the only one not in holy orders. I am a pupil, not a friar. Maybe it was because I knew more than they did: I knew the purpose of our journey.
Why do we have letters from the Pope? Brother Bernard asked me.
To speed us on our way. The box is for him.
What is in the box? Brother Andrew said.
The whole world, I told him.
Hard to believe that something so small could contain the whole world, Brother Bernard said in his usual tone of moody scorn.
I did not explain. I was preparing myself for the battle ahead. I would, I decided, fight for the Book with my life, if that was what it would cost. My Master’s Great Work ends with a ferocious self-humbling and an awkward politics, flattering the Pope, exalting him as one who should be worshipped, the vicar of the church, as God on earth; but, before that, it is a promise of knowledge that will shake creation, as Aristotle instructed Alexander. Master Roger will be Clement’s Aristotle, his indispensable tutor, counsellor, father.
And there are novelties in there, the secrets of magnetism and an ever-burning lamp, or how to make a firecracker to amuse children, the powder that is antidote to the most deadly snake bite, the slaying of poisonous things with the lightest touch. How to make an instrument of a year-old hazel twig that will vibrate to the natural powers of the earth. These things are offered to the Pope, not to a knave and his band.
It is the world, I told them, in a book.
A bible?
Almost as important.
It was a heresy for them to presume to take it, and an awful danger too, that they might read of the consuming fire that no water can put out, or of how to manufacture the crack louder than thunder that Gideon employed to defeat the Midianites.
The vicious company was stopping. We stopped behind the shelter of three trees. They were in a rough circle near a roadside altar beneath which twigs and leaves had been laid for pilgrims to make a votive fire.
We are higher up than they, and we have the advantage of suddenness, Brother Bernard said.
An advantage that would quickly turn to its reverse if we have nothing to support it with.
We have the sun at our backs, Brother Andrew said. Maybe they will be blinded as we ambush.
It was clear that he did not have the capacity for a fight and I could hardly blame him, but guilt at his earlier desertion was driving him to affect an appetite for battle.
I looked at the might of our tiny army. I examined our armoury. I made as if Master Roger was with us, to counsel us, to general our legions. And I asked Brother Andrew to repeat what he had said, and he did, and the spirit of God directed me.
Phaeton and his chariot will help us, I said.
I got to my knees to open the bag that contained the apparatus for the model to demonstrate to the Pope.
What are they doing? I asked.
What are you doing? Brother Bernard said. Praying?
Just tell me what they are doing.
They are standing, maybe they are disputing, Brother Andrew said.
One is reaching for the box but Simeon will not let him have it, Brother Bernard said.
Do not let them open the box, I said.
I had thought that constructing the apparatus under the scrutiny of my Master would prepare me for the work of assembling it at any occasion. My Master’s eyes are stern and steady, the faculty for being observed is most acute under his scrutiny. But here, on the side of the hill, our most precious work the possession of a company of unworthy thieves, my hands were shaking, my fingers fumbling, my skin pricking with labour and fear, the metal support legs fell on to their sides, like a giant insect falling dead to the earth.
Some of the other men seem to be grasping for the box too, Brother Andrew said.
And a smaller number are shoving against them. They are arguing, Brother Bernard said – but how are we going to stop them?
I do not know. Think of something. Sing. Dance.
The Palmer is shaking his head, Brother Andrew said.
He’s losing the argument, Brother Bernard said.
One of them is putting on your cloak, Brother Andrew said.
Maybe, I feared, my Master was wrong and the villagers were right, and his powers had nothing to do with investigation and repetition; and at my touch, no power would assist me.
They are about to open the box, Brother Bernard said.
Were it not for the apple! Brother Andrew sang walking lightly down the hill towards the robbers.
We should not have been saved! Brother Bernard sang walking more quickly to catch up with him.

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