John the Pupil

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.