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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.
