Uncle Gregory also neglected to explain how archers cut those scattering people down: all those frantic women and children; nor did he tell how horses trampled on the delicate, red-raw bodies. To hear such heady stuff, you’ll need to speak to a travelling pedlar with pins in his pack and a skull full of anecdotes, and a casual shrug for horrors. A pedlar will never disappoint you, if you truly want the nitty-gritty, and nothing spared.
But Uncle Gregory had his own mellified truth, and often his truth was persuasive. At times he was wise - I suppose he was wise. He knew a great deal. But when he told me about the Green Sun – well, I laughed in his pock-marked face and this deflated him. He swung his heavy head from side to side while seeking the perfect response; or else he was keeping his temper in check, for I was a wilful brat in those days.
We were visiting the beach at Al Cuernos, close to the outlying hovels where my father, Simeon, was blacksmith. Our cottage lay close to the road, and there we never starved, if only because of passing trade. Recently, the passing trade had included groups of knights on war horses, and marching men at arms with Papal mandates. Business was lively. But Uncle Gregory contributed absolutely nothing to the family pot. This was an obvious source of tension between him and my father, because Gregory had arrived unexpected and unwanted, as a wanted man.
While the soldiers passed by, Uncle Gregory would sweat and pray inside the cottage, until they had long gone. I knelt with him only once while he prayed. Opening my eyes and glancing sideways, as our mangy terrier nuzzled my naked crotch, I noticed how my uncle’s piggy eyes were wild and staring, and how he was fully alert, hearing the chimes from hammer and anvil. He was straining his ears, of course, for the comments and conversations of strangers, through our walls of wattle and daub. His forehead, I noticed, was trickling with sweat.
On that particular afternoon, while we knelt side by side on a filthy scattering of rushes, I was in disgrace. My soul was in mortal danger, according to my father. That morning, I had been caught behind the log pile with the baker’s son, Jacob, who was a year or so younger than me. In the words of my father, who’d found us together, we were ‘milking each other like two naked Adams’, and so we were. It was something we both enjoyed, every Saturday, by way of a longstanding arrangement.
My nose was broken, my lip was split and my left eye was an egg; and I expect that father might have murdered me in the yard with his bare hands, if my uncle had not intervened. Now, my wiry old father was no weakling, but my uncle was stronger. He protected me. He pushed my father back, making him stagger and almost miss his footing on the cobbles. Then my father raised his fist to my uncle, and Gregory raised his. But it was my father who stepped back, scarlet-faced and breathless.
“Brother,” said my uncle, calmly. “Why this rancour?”
“Don’t play the heretic priest with me!” growled Father. “Keep your own peace, brother!” He spat out that word, brother, as if it was a curse. But he actually spat on my prone body, and he told Gregory why and how very much he despised me.
My uncle sighed loudly but replied: “Well, - well, if the lad cannot pleasure himself to his own satisfaction, it is better for him to go with a boy than with a girl, for the world is coming to an end, and a dying world needs no more children. Don’t you agree with me, Simeon? See what Creation is becoming!”
This enraged my father. He yelled so much he lost the general power of speech and replaced it with foam-flecked bellowing. How all this might have ended, I cannot guess, but the sound of approaching horses brought an end to the confrontation. Gregory slipped quietly into the cottage, granting my father not a second glance. Seeing my chance, I scrabbled to my feet, still bare-arsed, and I followed him in.
The strangers, as expected, were knights and men at arms. I also eavesdropped on their conversations as father set to work, re-shoeing six horses.
One man said: “Those old men and women burned well enough; they were a long time pleading and repenting in the flames.”
Another giggled, “Ah, you see - God wanted them to suffer! They were heretics. The fire cleansed their filthy souls.”
And so it was, I discovered the nature of a Holy Crusade.
That evening, there was a strained atmosphere about the table, even though Mother - most unusually - had risen from her sick-bed to partake of the bread, cheese and wine. I studied her lean, grey face and her thinning hair, while she examined my cuts and spreading bruises.
“Leave the boy alone, Joanna,” snapped Father. “You honour him to touch him, and he does not deserve it. Your son is an effeminate loin-tugger!”
Then Father said, briskly, “My brother will be leaving us soon. Isn’t that right, Gregory?”
“In a week or two.”
“In a week or two,” said Father, copying my uncle’s cultured voice, by way of mockery.
“I have business to attend to,” said Gregory, quietly. “I have something to deliver to friends; but first of all, these roads need to be clear of soldiers.”
“Good Christians fear no soldiers,” said Father.
“Good Christians do,” said Gregory.
Later, on the beach, Gregory sat quietly on the shingle for a long time, as we waited for the sunset. The meal had ended badly, after Father asked him, politely, how it was he had escaped the flames of Montségur, when so many Cathars had not.
“After all,” said Father, with a scowl, “as you are a Perfect One; surely, you should have perished as well, alongside your doting flock? They should have heard you singing at the stake! You always had such a marvellous voice.”
“And would you have welcomed that fate for me, Simeon?”
I caught both hurt and anger in Gregory’s voice, while I wondered what sort of priest my uncle might be. In those days, I knew little of the world beyond, and while I had heard that heretics were dying in the flames throughout Occitania, the word ‘Cathar’ meant little to me then. Our parish priest, old Father Anthony, had preached no sermons against them, for his favourite theme was the sins of the flesh, and he spoke with great personal knowledge and vigour every Sunday. I was yet to hear how Cathars delighted in sniffing the arses of cats, nor how they held that the world was merely the Devil’s bauble, shaped by the Devil, who in fact was the God of All Creation. Only the spiritual was holy, and the one true God was Jesus Christ, who was entirely spirit and never flesh, even when incarnate, and even when He was apparently dead and bleeding buckets on the cross.
Of course, these days, most of what you hear about the Cathars is twisted nonsense, concocted by enemies.
My uncle left the table after my father flung a cup of bastard wine in his face. I expect he was trying to regain his self-respect, because he had backed down over me. Gregory took his drenching well enough. He blinked away the stinging, staining concoction. Then he rose, calmly, and muttered that he would take a long stroll along the beach.
“Do what you like, heretic brother!” growled Father; and then he asked me what I was gawping at, and he told me to get out at once and feed the pigs. I knew the pigs didn’t need feeding, because they had been fed already, less that one hour ago; but I was glad to leave the table. Mother also rose, and she shuffled quietly back to her sick bed.
Gregory and I walked side by side, through undulating dunes with spiky grass, towards the grumble of waves over shingle. He walked quickly, his head bowed, and I marked how he was dressed in a tatty grey cloak with a large cowl. The cowl was up, concealing his features, even though the evening was humid.
“Don’t judge your father too harshly,” he said, but his voice sounded sad and weary, coming from far away.
“I don’t judge him,” I said. “But about what I did, with Jacob...”
Gregory raised a hand. He swept the cowl from his head, and his jowls swung with clear disapproval. “That was a filthy business, boy! - and you should be ashamed of yourself, truly. It’s better if you desist. Still, I don’t believe that Jesus will condemn you, excessively.”
“You said it was a worse sin, with a girl?”
“Yes, Matthew; but only if a child is the issue.”
I wanted to hear more, but my uncle quickened his step and I struggled to keep up with him, across the deep sand drifts.
As soon as he reached the empty, isolated beach, he paused and began an eerie, ponderous chant -
“AEIOU! - AEIOU! - AEIOU!”
I recognised the chant as a sequence of the common vowels, but each vowel somehow sounded different, self-contained, like a world within a world. There was resonance, certainly, and Gregory held each note for so long, I thought the sky was trembling and might fall. Yes, - yes, this was a call to the End of Days, but there was no fear or sadness in his face, only acceptance. For myself, I felt grief to the marrow of my bones and my spine was tingling. I knew, even then, that I could never wholly condemn the teeming, clamorous earth, even with a promise of eternity on the sea breeze. At last, my uncle noticed my embarrassing tears, and he stopped his appeal to intangible powers.
“Look around you. Are you grieving for the crab and the gull, or for yourself?” he asked, softly.
“For all of it, I think,” I replied, wiping my eyes. Is our world really going to perish, Uncle?”
“Listen,” said Gregory, throwing an arm around me, “you clearly feel the meaning of the chant, and that is to your credit, Matthew. But never believe that I despise this world. Like you, - like all men and women, I will grieve for its passing. However, the world will be no more - and soon. We must be watchful and notice the signs.”
“But why, Uncle, - why? Is Jesus returning?”
Gregory shook his head. “No, Matthew. He will never return to this muddled, imperfect place, for here we have … well, we have intersections of both Heaven and Hell, you understand? The New Heaven and the New Earth will be kingdoms of the spirit, and only of the spirit.
He noticed my puzzled frown.
“Try, then, to follow my thoughts,” he said. “That white-breasted, white-winged gull that shines in the evening sunlight, while it soars above us, - it is as dazzling in its own way as any archangel – yes? Well, that same bird will skewer the scurrying crab or peck out the eyes from a new-born lamb. Now, which is Heaven and which is Hell, when both Kingdoms are in the world, and in the gull - and in every living thing? It is the spirit which brings beauty to Creation, and we recognise it well enough, because we are essentially spirit. But flesh corrupts our nature, because it imprisons us. Flesh is a poison which surrounds us - eating away at our true nature, hour by hour. Yes, the spirit may shine through a beautiful face, and it is expressed through a beautiful body – girl or boy, and also through the flowers of the meadow, or by the shining wings of a gull. But listen to the cries of a gull! It knows it is still imprisoned as it flies, and only by dying will it cease to cry. Only when it dies will its murderous hunger cease; and it’s just the same with Man. We cry and we we suffer, because we are all strangers here, as Christ was once a stranger, when He came to us in spirit and walked among us. Our journey is a flight from the material to the spiritual, and away from the hunger of need.”
I grasped then how my uncle was a practised preacher, not that I enjoyed any sermon. Gregory, it was true, was more compelling than Father Anthony, who trembled in his pulpit with evident enthusiasm at any mention of misdirected cock, arse, or quim. However, I felt distant from my uncle on that beach and this is no great wonder, despite our ties of blood. Merely one month before, I had no notion that my uncle existed: that my father had a very strange and older brother.
Was it merely the ties of blood that compelled my father to offer him shelter, even though Gregory was a fugitive? To this day I cannot answer that. My father seemed to despise Gregory and was always hinting that he should move on. Once he accused my uncle of putting us all in danger, and so he had. But the bread and cheese and wine remained on offer, and Gregory was allowed to sleep in our grain store at night, with fine woollen blankets to keep him warm enough, and to protect his slumbering body from the teeth of mice and rats.
As for myself, did I even like my uncle? I found him repulsive to look at, it was true, if only because of his jowls and pocked-marked face. He was nothing like my father, who was lean and tall with the profile of a king, or at least a minor duke with a touch of in-breeding. Gregory was a shortened sketch of a man, by comparison; but his bearing was educated and noble, while my father’s manners belonged in the tavern and the brothel, and he was familiar with both.
Gregory’s visit, however, might have become no more than a family anecdote, altered by the telling, if Mother hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. She began to cough blood, a thick dark blood and pinkish blood too, and in-between her fainting fits, she raged and whined about a crushing pain in her chest.
One morning, Father put his pack together quickly, and he entrusted Mother to my care, and surprisingly to Gregory’s care, before he set out on foot for the town of Belincon, which was ten miles beyond the mountains. There, it was said, a renowned Jewish doctor might be found. Before Father left, he warned us – sternly - to watch over Mother night and day: to keep her comfortable and calm, although he had revealed himself to be an impatient and infrequent nurse. He had often blamed Mother for keeping him away from his forge and missing the chance of money. He had even yelled at her, while she sweated and writhed in her sick bed. He would lean in, pushing his bristly red beard into her face, and accuse her of exaggerating her pains, just to gain attention and sympathy. Was it then I began to despise him?
The mountain track to the Belincon road was arduous and winding and we did not expect to see Father for at least six or seven days. I reflect, now, how I was still too young to be in charge. I was glad when Gregory assumed a temporary role as head of the house; and at first, there were encouraging outcomes. Remarkably, Mother’s health started to improve.
Now, I don’t say this was any sort of miracle, although I am tempted to assert that it was. All I can tell you, because of my solemn vows and my discretion, was that Gregory usually carried around with him a small wooden bowl. This was kept in a leather pouch, and this in turn was tied about his waist with fraying string. I first saw this bowl when Gregory was giving Mother a little wine to drink. He had raised her with one arm from her pillow, so that she would not choke, while his free hand raised the wine to her lips. Mother drank gratefully and greedily, and soon the bowl was drained.
Gregory nodded and set the bowl down on the small tripod table. (Father had crafted this table out of iron, as a wedding present to Mother.) I took the opportunity to inspect the bowl in more detail. At first glance it was disappointing, being barely a hand-span across, roughly made and darkened with age. There was a crude jagged pattern on the outside, but little else to distinguish it. I saw no harm in reaching out to inspect it in more detail, but Gregory saw my intention and smacked away my outstretched hand. He was frowning and flushed, from his brow to his jowls, and his small dark eyes were squinting with suspicion.
“That’s not for you!” he snapped. “Never for you!”
I ran from the confined, malodorous side room, when Mother had been settled, and I stood in the yard and looked towards the mountains, where the snows of winter were lingering into May, at least upon the peaks. The air was cool and fresh, - good to breathe, and I thought about running away, far from Al Cuernos and its turmoil. I knew I should never return, if I ever followed my feet.
However, all this was still to come on that humid evening when Gregory and I sat side by side on the beach at twilight, and he told me about the Green Sun.
I’ve already mentioned how I laughed in his face, for the Sun is the fiery lamp of Heaven and its flames are gold and red and yellow, and never green – surely? But Gregory said he would prove me wrong, if I sat with him to see the sun go down.
“God’s universe is changing for the better, Matthew,” he said, “and soon enough a Green Sun will rise. But for now, we can only glimpse His promise at sunset, if we are fortunate. You must comprehend, we dwell in an age where good ideas and impulses still lead to evil actions, and that is a sign of humanity’s wilful ignorance or immaturity. It is the flesh which leads us into error, such as lust and impure passions. I comprehend, of course, that you know all about those. But embodied in the spirit, Matthew - every Man shall be as perfect as Our Lord. Once that is realised, the Green Sun will shine upon our days.”
His words were like waves, turning over the shingles of common-sense thought; but what he said was beguiling enough.
We looked to the sea and over the sea, as the sun sank low on the horizon - soon becoming a half sun while a path of orange light was on the waves, inviting us to walk over water and follow it to darkness. But the sun was trembling at the brim of night, gathering its resolve before a sheer descent, and while its curving edges were nibbled at by invisible teeth – the teeth of devils and demons - making them irregular and chipped. At last – at last, the sun began to die, to shimmer low and lower as a damaged and an altered thing. Soon, only the roof of the sun could be seen, a melting white-hot dome - there, where the ocean pours from the cusp of the earth, to who knows where? Lower, lower sank the dying sun, until it was only a tiny bar of liquefying gold, set where sea meets sky.
But Gregory clapped a hand on my shoulder and told me to observe with care, and I saw how the golden bar had turned to green; an unforgettable pulsing, vibrant green, like the lit bum of a glow worm. The darkening heavens flashed green above it; but now the sun was gone and it was night, or rather it was that momentary hesitation where the dark holds back to watch the last of the evening, in a slow retreat. The settled waves still glimmered with their own weak luminescence while, all about us, the boulders of the beach were fading grey suggestions of themselves.
So it was, Gregory began to impress me with his insights and I started to trust him. This, I recognise, was a fundamental blunder, for who mistakes a conjurer for a magus? He enchanted me with mysteries, - like the Green Sun and the Cathar priests who sang in the consuming flames; but his words were his particular sleight of hand, always practised and often bewildering, and behind his words lay a different reality, perhaps.
It is a fact, I did see the dome of the sinking sun change to green; but Gregory’s deception was to offer an interpretation of that spectacle, in accordance with the dogmas he lived by. Other eyes will have other accounts, and who can say where truth is to be found?
Now, as an old man in a monastery cell which I can never leave, I’m tortured by those days. I blame myself, even now, for the death of my mother at Gregory’s instigation.
Father had been gone for ten full days when Mother began to refuse her food. This was surprising, because there was colour in her cheeks again and her blue eyes were clear and observant. Every day, Gregory had allowed her to drink from his old wooden bowl, which seemed to channel the magic of healing. I allowed myself the hope of her recovery, but she ceased to pick from her platters of cheese and bread. More distressing, she refused to speak, even to me, while I wept and implored at her bedside.
I detested my father, naturally, but how I longed for his return! He would know what to do. He would make her eat all right! Where was my father? I did not know then how he had been trapped in Belincon after Crusaders threw a cordon around the town, in their intemperate lust for violence, heretics, virgins and Jews.
Father had secured his medicine and good advice from the celebrated Jewish physician. However, he was unable to leave once the Crusaders had marched in, swords at the ready, and demanding names and victims. One of the victims was the Doctor, who was thoroughly beaten and burned at the stake for sorcery. Who exactly betrayed that old gentleman, I cannot say. Possibly, the man’s own renown made him a conspicuous figure in Belincon. As for my father, according to his own account, he saved his own skin by reciting the Paster Noster to a group of jeering soldiers, and then with extravagant praise for the Pope in Rome. So it was, after a little taster of Damnation - where the cobbled streets ran with blood by day and echoed with screams of murder and rape by night, Father was able to leave for home.
By then, of course, it was far too late to save my mother.
Shortly after Father left Belincon, the town was burned, and Catholics, Jews and Cathars all perished together, or so they say. After all, God knows his own when it comes to sorting us out. And today? – well, today, you will not find that town on any map; and sometimes, it is better to forget, don’t you agree?
By the time my father was waving his pilgrim’s staff from the dusty track to announce his safe return, my mother had been rotting in her grave for three full days. Father could not help but notice the fresh mound of earth, close to our pigsty.
Gregory left the cottage to meet him in the cobbled yard, while Father just stared at the evidence of a recent death. Perhaps he hoped it was not a human grave at all, for there was no cross.
“One of the ailing pigs?” he asked, softly.
I was still inside the cottage at the little window. I did not want to be seen, least of all by father. I was crying, watching, listening, and trying to hold my breath at the same time. I felt sure that my heartbeat would echo off the mountains, so fearful I was of what might come.
“No animal has died,” said Gregory, in a reassuring tone. “It is the grave of Joanna, and she is with the goats and the Goatherd in Heaven. She was Consoled at the end, brother. I offered her the Consolation and she accepted. It was Joanna’s wish, and now she has her eternal reward. You should rejoice...”
“And...and you buried her – you buried her like this? Like this? - in unhallowed ground, without so much as a marker?” Father gestured to the grave, his cheeks flushed and his brow knitted with hurt and bewilderment. His knees sagged and he clung to his pilgrim’s staff for support.
“Brother,” said Gregory, his voice still calm and soothing. “Do I have to remind you how the cross is an icon of worldly torture and nothing else? The cross disrespects our Lord Jesus Christ. And must I remind you how no ground is Holy Ground on earth, where the grains of Heaven jostle with the grains of Hell...”
“Gregory! Gregory, stop it! Stop all this bibble-babble! What have you done? Oh God, what have you done?”
Father had fallen to his knees, weeping. Gregory stepped forward; his right hand was outstretched in brotherhood. But Father’s temper was not so easily assuaged. He swept Gregory off his feet with a swipe of his staff. Then it was Gregory who was prone and my father was above him, repeatedly striking his brother. Violence is the Devil’s dance, but it is a fascinating dance, and I was entranced and detached as the stout stick rose and fell, rose and fell. The blows were hard and I counted them all.
Gregory closed his eyes and stopped writhing. But Father wasn’t done with Gregory yet, for he aimed more blows at his brother’s head. I ran out to stop him. After all, no man should be a Cain. But I was rewarded with a crack on my head from the pilgrim staff, then a flurry of strikes on my legs and my back, while I wiggled on the cobbles to escape the implacable agonies.
Father was screaming: “You let him starve her! You let him starve your mother!”
I must have fainted, because I came round in the cottage, where father was talking to three armoured soldiers at the table. I noticed their chain-mail and quilted gambesons, and their conical helmets which were rusty and dented from too many fights.
I raised myself slowly and carefully from the straw where I had been laid, to listen inconspicuously, if that was at all possible.
One soldier asked my father: “So, you say you were away, and this fellow was offered hospitality by your son?”
“Yes, that is so,” said Father. As I’ve explained, I am a good Christian, and I would never harbour a heretic. God bless the Pope in Rome! The soldiers in Belincon let me go, because I know my prayers.”
“Then you son has sympathy for heretics...?”
“No! No, I am not saying that! He’s just a boy!”
The three soldiers all turned their heads, as if on an inaudible command, to stare towards the corner where I sat - bruised and bloody and grinning like a May Day fool.
“Then, why did you beat him?” said the soldier who was asking all the questions.
“I, er.... I lost my temper, because I’d charged him with the care of his mother in my absence, you follow me? He must have let that Cathar heretic fill her mind with nonsense. The heretic must have offered her the Consolation - and so she refused to eat and drink, believing it would save her soul, if she renounced entirely the comforts of this world...”
The soldier banged a gloved fist upon the table, making the goblets and platters jump. “Tell me,” he asked, “how does a simple blacksmith know about such things? How do you know about the Consolation heresy? Are you a Cathar too, in fact, my friend?
“No! No, - I’ve told you! I love the Pope. God bless the Pope in Rome! Why otherwise would I have given you a post and three iron chains for the burning?”
The soldier nodded. “Very well. Very well, blacksmith...”
“Simeon, please...”
“Just one more question, then, Simeon; and think carefully. This heretic who came to your door and murdered your wife, did he have any belongings that you know of?”
“None that I can see,” said Father. Then he nodded in my direction. “You better ask my boy. He might be able to tell you, as he was here.”
Again, the three soldiers turned and studied me.
“Well?” said the soldier who was carrying out the interrogation.
“I... I think he came with a staff,” I said. “But I don’t know where that’s gone.”
“No matter,” said the soldier, irritably. “You are almost a full-grown man and you should know truth from lies. Think carefully about what I ask you next. Was there anything else? Something like an old wooden bowl, perhaps? You see, there is one heretic in particular whom we need to catch and punish, because he is a thief. He has taken something very dear to the Holy Mother Church and the Church is keen for its safe return, you understand, young man? We have a mandate from His Holiness to find it. Now, you wouldn’t have seen a wooden bowl like that, would you?”
I shook my head.
Shortly after that, it was Gregory who was shaking his head, as a pyre in the courtyard was lit by torches. Only then was there a strange dignity to the proceedings. The soldiers had brought him round by pissing on his face. They wanted him to be wide awake, so that he would appreciate the flames.
As the fiery tongues surrounded him, Gregory was still bellowing that he was an innocent man – it was all such a terrible mistake. Why did nobody believe him? He was loud and eloquent, even then; but to his eternal credit, he did not betray my father and he did not betray me, despite his unfathomable suffering. I would like to describe how he sang from the flames while his face was untouched by heat, and while it shone with a heavenly light. If you want me to say so, I will say so. I will say this. In this world, my friend, believe what you wish. It seems to me that none of it is true.
Early next morning, half-crippled and hurting, I slipped away and left my father’s world behind forever. From the grain store I took Gregory’s staff and bowl. Like him, I kept the bowl concealed in its leather pouch. Like him, I tied the ragged string about my waist.
I set out not knowing my destination, and I will not state my route, for I met many friends along the way, and my footsteps must be silent to protect the Good Christians who sheltered me. They saw me as my uncle’s successor, because I carried his staff and his bowl. They spotted me on the road, with eyes that had watched for Gregory’s approach, and I found I was loved and trusted, because I was Gregory’s kin. From them I learned to chant the Holy Vowels with conviction. Due to their kindness, I learned to forgive Gregory for his transgression, for they always spoke his name with love.
Finally, as was required of me, I crossed the sea to England, where Cathars are not burned. For forty years now I have lived in this comfortable little cell, facing east over a cold, grey and alien sea.
I am fed and given enough wine for my needs. I am respected too by my solemn companions, for I am the Keeper of the Bowl. They say I was chosen by Christ, and perhaps that is true.
When my companions are sick, they come to my cell. I pour wine into the bowl and I let them drink. Sometimes they recover and sometimes they do not, for such is the will of God. It is strange to see them tremble as I raise the bowl to their lips, because to me it is still Gregory’s old bowl, first and foremost. If this is doubt, then so be it. Let me die in doubt, for show me a truth where I can place a nail.
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