Cathedral

by Ben Hopkins

  That was the story that Uto was telling when I came to the Burning Ground. The fire in the ditch was already hot, and behind the ditch a pyre had been set a-flaming. As I arrived, the vintners of Engiskirch were there, delivering their old barrels and timbers as their contribution to the fire. Their serving boys were out in the crowd, selling leather tumblers of their last year’s wine.

  From the streets by the Rheintor tower where the poorer folk live, from the Brüdergass that leads to the Cathedral Square, and from across the fields beyond the walls the people were coming, beckoned by the rising grey smoke. Most were peasants dressed in black, and the fire had charred and wizened the grass and so it made me think of a murder of crows on a wheatfield after the harvest, all black, brown and burned yellow.

  Priests from the town churches arrived, and some of the Lord Canons of the Cathedral. Noblemen trotted up on their horses, watching from the back of the common crowd. Children gathered on the ramparts of the town walls. Mothers shouted at them to leave, but they were not heeded.

  The Rhine Gate opened and the first cartload of heretics came in. They were weavers from a village on the far bank of the river. Manfred had been in the troop that brought them to irons. And now he himself had been taken.

  I looked round for someone to ask how to find him, but I was still just a girl from Lenzenbach. How did I know who was a magistrate, who was on the Council, which of the Fathers was an Inquisitor? I chose a Dominican who had a kind-seeming face, and was trying to summon the courage to approach him, when Uto started up again, shouting out the names of those who were to die.

  He said they were Cathars or Satan-lovers or something, I don’t rightly know, but whatever they were, they weren’t Christian. They had confessed their hatred of Rome, derided Communion, denied the power of the Pope and his Bishops. They never attended church, did not eat meat, and swore that this world belonged to the Devil and not to God.

  Some of them tried to say something, to shout to the crowd, to give us some final words, but you could hardly hear them, as the crowd was shouting back. Some people threw things at the heretics, dung, pottery shards, pebbles.

  Then one by one they were taken by the soldiers and thrown to the pit or the pyre.

  How they would scream when they went on the fire. Just think how you snatch your hand away from the flame when you mistakenly reach over a candle, think of the throbbing, piercing pain that comes from a burn when you’re clumsy with the fire and burn your wrist, and then think of that pain, all over your body, and lasting for a good long long time. And all that time they are screaming as if they’re already in Hell.

  And you can see. You can see what the flames are doing to their flesh. See it charring, smoking, cracking, peeling, you can see the fat, juice and blood running . . .

  Sometimes the heretic would manage to scrabble from the pit or leap from the pyre, his or her body a smoking red-black weal from head to foot, and run like a flaming demon from Hell. Then the guards would prod her, him, with their halberds and push them back to the flames. And the crowd would laugh.

  I looked around at the faces. Some were like me, pale and sick, but most were mirthful, laughing, like this was a parade, some kind of Saint’s Day spectacle, the End of Carnival.

  It’s when they brought the girl out that I couldn’t take it anymore. She was about my age, and had the looks of an angel. She was dressed in white, in a white shift. To humiliate her, the soldier cut the shift with his dagger, so that she stood there naked before us all. The men in the crowd went quieter when they saw her like that. Probably they all wanted her then. They were thinking they’d rather take her a-bed than watch her burn.

  Some older women shouted some insults at her, and the soldiers remembered what they were there to do, and started to prod her towards the fire.

  In the crowd someone started screaming, and I recognised Dombaumeister Achim, my brother’s Master, him with the nice brown eyes and the soft, sweet voice. But now there was something wrong with him. There was froth at his mouth, like a dog with the rage, and his face was all twisted and he was screaming and screaming, “Odile! Odile!” He seemed to be attacking the others in the crowd, trying to run at the pyre himself, but the men at the front jumped upon him and held him down, shouting out, saying, “there’s a lunatic here,” and “the young Lord needs help.”

  Now my eyes flicked back from Master Achim to the fire, and I saw what had driven him mad.

  And I swear I saw that girl burn like a candle. Silent she was. Her face looking up at heaven, with her eyes now all burned away and sightless. But no scream came from her. And around her, somehow, a rosy purple flame, like the colour of the setting summer sun. And its shape, the shape of the flame, like an iris. Like a tall, slender flower, holding her silently.

  INTO THY HANDS

  (ANNO 1232. ODILE III)

  i am sorry for many things

  i am sorry i have not tasted mulled wine and meat

  i am sorry i have not tasted the spiced Christmas candied fruit that

  they make into round cakes in the winter markets

  i am sorry i did not take the invitation of the girls at Speyer

  when they asked me to come and play

  i am sorry, at Bacharach in the burning summer, i did not jump into the cool

  water, and swim

  i am sorry i have not tasted love

  it was offered me by gentle Master Achim

  but i could not take it

  i am sorry that i will not know

  if just for one night

  how man and woman become lovers

  i am sorry that i will never bear a child

  children are brought forth in sorrow into this world of lies

  but—who can deny it?—they smile at a gentle touch

  and gurgle with life at the shine of their mother’s eyes

  i am sorry

  that i will never bring my own human child to smile

  i am sorry for many things, but sorry to whom?

  not to God, whom i have well served

  not to my Father, whom i have well obeyed

  i am sorry to that Judge who resides in Me

  and weighs the balance of my life

  and finds it short

  and lacking

  i will be, they tell me, a blaze of light

  i will be, they tell me, a star in the firmament

  glinting at night

  sign of the Light

  guide to the Truth

  in the Darkness

  . . .

  our sister has been lost to us

  she repented

  she turned to the Whore and will keep her life in the world of lies

  her hair will be shorn

  she will be paraded like a Saracen’s slave through the markets

  she will be used by the Roman abomination as an example

  and she too will be sorry

  and yet alive

  do i envy her?

  no

  i shall be a blaze of light, a star of the heavens

  Achim, i did love you, forgive me

  i thank you for my only taste of honey cake

  they are taking me now

  father has already gone before me

  by now his earthly frame

  this shirt of flesh our souls must wear

  will be made of ash and smoke

  the soldier tells me

  the fire is now so hot it needs no more wood

  the human fat from heretic flesh has become its own fuel

  we are the fuel that feeds the fire

  we are as firewood, as coal, as charcoal,

  the stuff of the world

  shouting, braying

  the crowd’s faces are twisted in hatred

  but some soften upon seeing me />
  i try a smile

  he is cutting my linen shift to show me naked

  could this not have been spared me?

  i can feel the fire on my back, on my buttocks, on my calves

  already from here it is too hot

  o, i am sick

  i will be a point of light, i will be a star, i will be in heaven

  o i am sick

  o i am scared

  i cannot tell Thee why, my Lord,

  but i do not want to lose these clothes of flesh

  not in agony like this

  they are pushing me towards the fire

  it is written

  can i run?

  it is too late

  into Thy hands my Lord, receive me

  † Odile 1216–1232

  BREAD AND WATER

  (ANNO 1232. MANFRED GERBER III)

  Days and nights in Kronenweiler, prisoners. Former Merchants of the City, payers of tithes and taxes, donors to the Cathedral Fabric. Citizens. Now treated like the Bishop’s dogs, curled on the floor of the Bishop’s castle kitchen, trying to keep warm under stinking sheepskins.

  Father’s seniority has earned them a place near the fire, but even there, in relative warmth, Manfred can’t sleep. He wanders the restless castle courtyard, full of prisoners huddled by braziers, terse, anxious groupings, discussing their fate, asking the same question that Manfred asks himself: Who has branded them as heretics? Who has named their names?

  Is it Wolfram, owner of twelve boats on the Rhine, killing his next-in-line competition? Michael of Müllhausen, whom they refused to pay for his third-rate leather? The once-merry Widow Rosamunda of Mayenzer Gass, now jilted for Grete? Rettich Schäffer, in revenge for shaving his sisters’ heads? A childhood enemy? Grünlein, whom he used to bully with Bertle for his clubfoot, his stumbling walk?

  Manfred tosses and turns, thinking, thinking again. Who? The heretics of Honau? Revenge for their capture? They were being taken to the Burning Ground just as Manfred and his father arrived, passing each other on the road. The girl was amongst them. She looked straight through him. She was pale, absent, clothed in white.

  Who?

  † † †

  On the morning of the third day, they take his Father to be questioned. All four rooms in the castle keep are being used as courtrooms. Two Inquisitors for each court, all on the Bishop’s shilling. A profitable business.

  Manfred waits for his Father at the castle door. When he comes out from the interrogation, he’s trembling. Son puts a blanket around his shoulders, but he throws it off. It’s not from cold he’s trembling, but from anger.

  “What, Father?”

  “I denied the charges, I said I was a good Christian and had no heresy on my conscience.”

  “This is dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “If you confess and repent, you go free. Your hair is shorn, a yellow cross is sewn onto your coat. It is bad, I grant you, but you go free and live. But if you deny, you are still under suspicion.”

  “Should I lie?”

  “And? What did they say?”

  “They asked me why they should believe me and not the witnesses who have accused me.”

  “There. You see.”

  “I said, ‘Tell me who these witnesses are, or bring them here before me, and let them testify to my face, and then you shall judge the truth of it.’ They said that this was not necessary, that the witnesses had already proved their commitment to the truth.”

  “Which means that they confessed to heresy themselves. By confessing, they showed their ‘commitment to the truth.’”

  “I know it. And if they were heretics it is well that they confessed. But now I am undone. Undone by the tongues of folk who either denied our Church, or who were Christians but who have lied on oath, and damned their souls. Manfred, the world is upside-down.”

  “Let us live and set it right.”

  “How should we live?”

  “By lying like Pardoners, and saying we are heretics. Then we will live.”

  “Then, as confessed heretics, how should we set anything right?”

  “As corpses, what can we achieve? Father, confess to heresy.”

  “And lie? On oath? And damn my immortal soul?”

  “Absolution for lying can be bought later. You know how it works.”

  “You do not bargain with God, Manfred. And this is a fool’s dance I cannot join. If you confess, then you must name names. Names of those who were with you in heresy. And so it goes on and on and on, and all are damned. Doubtless some poor soul, terrified of death, has named our names and brought us to this perdition.”

  Then he turns, and his eyes are burning, but calm. His face is pale, but decided. He says, “I have made a demand to the Inquisitors.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am a merchant of this city, and all my life I have worked and paid my dues, I have left money on the Cathedral altar every Christmas, and when I die, five marks will go to the Fabric, paying for one statue of a saint. My demand was this; that if I am tried by the Church, I be tried as a citizen of the City of Hagenburg, by Canons of the Cathedral where I worship. Not by these hired Dominican vultures.”

  His voice is calm, but underneath, Manfred can hear his anger. Father says “I have sent a message to the Bishop, requesting an answer to this demand.”

  “You sent a message to the Bishop? How?”

  “I had nearly a shilling in my purse. It was considered enough money.”

  “And in your letter, you made this demand to the Bishop?”

  “I did. I requested an answer by noon tomorrow.”

  Manfred holds back tears, he has not wept before his father since he was a small child. “They will kill you!” He looks away, rubs his moist eyes. “You will die unshriven.”

  “For the salvation of my soul, I put my trust in the love of Our Saviour. Not in this pack of cassocked jackals.”

  † † †

  Some fools were trying to make light of fate, their skulls grinning in firelight, spitting out jokes which failed to spark. But most sat grimly in the gloaming of the flames, searching for the words to say to tease out clemency from their Judges’ hearts. Conversations were clandestine, whispered, quieter than the spitting of the damp firewood. But urgent; the whisper of confession, the hiss of conspiracy.

  Manfred, sleepless again, wanders around, joining familiar faces, faces he knows from the streets, from the river trade. Everyone is asking questions; whose names should I name, what should I say when the Judge asks my confession?

  “Say you met in a barn at dusk, and it was dark, and there were many people there, and they closed the doors and then their priest said some things you didn’t understand, and then candles were lit, and the big Black Cat came, the size of a dog, and danced with everyone. And say that you danced with the Cat and kissed his arsehole with your lips, and kissed the other Brethren there, and danced in the darkness.”

  “Won’t they ask for more?”

  “Yes, for some details.”

  “And?”

  “You make those up. Then they will ask who else was there.”

  “And what shall I say?”

  “Say it was dark and difficult to see, and then name names of a few people who have already died or been shorn.”

  Others rocked back and forwards, clutching their knees, thinking and thinking again . . . trying to work out why they were there. “I think I know who did it. I think I know.” It was their neighbour who always hated them, the neighbour who wanted their land, it was their half-brother who wanted their inheritance, it was a business rival, it was the priest who was in love with their wife . . .

  And he sat too, by the embers of a fire, leaning on the stone of the castle wall, wrapped in his oily sheepskin. And in the white and ora
nge flames, he saw two faces, one of Love and one of Hate. His young, pretty wife Grete, with whom he had had such short but joyful times. And the wooden carving of the Virgin he’d seen in Honau, blackening and blistering in the heretics’ bonfire.

  † † †

  Father wakes him around dawn. No message has come from Bishop or Chapter.

  “Listen my boy,” he says, sitting down next to him. “When these great Lords in the Cathedral Chapter, these von Zaberns and von Diezes and von Moders, when they let good Christian citizens of Hagenburg burn to death, then our city is at War, do you understand? Someone, somehow, some way, has to show the Lords of the Church that they cannot do just as they please with us. It is we who pay the taxes that keep them in wine and ermine. It is our money that builds their Cathedral. Do you hear me?”

  Manfred nods, “Father I hear you.” Then Manfred’s name is called from the keep doorway—it is time for his interrogation. He kisses his Father’s hand and stands. His Father looks up at him. “Good luck, my boy. I’ll be waiting for you.”