by Kate Mosse
Tightly plotted and packed with suspense, Labyrinth sets a new benchmark for adventure writing and gives precursors such as The Da Vinci Code more than a run for their money.
About the author:
Born in 1961, Kate Mosse was educated at Chichester High School for Girls and read English at New College, Oxford. On graduating, she started as a secretary at Hodder and Stoughton and went on to become an editorial director of Hutchinson, Random House. Kate is both the author of four previous books and a broadcaster – she presented BBC Four’s flagship Readers and Writers Roadshow, is the book reviewer for BBC Two’s The Culture Show, and is a guest presenter of Radio 4’s Saturday Review Open Book. The co-founder and Honorary Director of the Orange Prize for Fiction, Kate is additionally a trustee of Arts & Business, and was the first ever female Executive Director of the Chichester Festival Theatre.
In 2000, Kate Mosse was named European Woman of Achievement for her contribution to the arts. Together with her husband Greg Mosse, Kate runs courses for writers as well as the writers’ internet resource www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk. They have two children and divide their time between West Sussex and Carcassonne, southwest France.
Themed questions for discussion:
HISTORY
1. ‘History is a novel that has been lived; a novel is history that could have been.’ Discuss this quotation from E & J de Goncourt with reference to Labyrinth.
2. In the novel’s prologue, there are glimpses of the two time periods. Do you think it is important that, after the prologue, the author starts the novel proper with ten chapters set in the medieval past? How well do you think the twin storylines worked throughout the whole of Labyrinth?
INHERITANCE
3. ‘Last night’s ceremony had been exhilarating . . . she had felt transformed, fulfilled by the ritual and seduced by the power inherited from her grandfather’ (page 205). Consider Marie-Cïcile’s words and discuss the nature of inheritance with reference to other characters in Labyrinth. Can good or evil be inherited or must it be nurtured?
CHARACTERISATION
4. How quickly did you discover that some of the modern characters mirror or echo characters from the past? Which ones did you spot first? What were the clues?
5. ‘Guilhem shook his head. “Can’t you see what she’s doing, Alaïs? She’s trying to turn you against me”’ (page 503). Do you see Guilhem as an unhappy character, who never fully atones for his betrayal of Alaïs, or does he finally put things right?
6. Some of Labyrinth’s medieval characters are real. People with those names lived and breathed in the circumstances narrated 800 years ago. Did you notice anything different about the ‘real’ characters? (For example, Raymond-Roger Trencavel, Agnès de Montpellier, the papal legate and others.)
SETTING
7. Have you ever experienced, like Alice, such an affinity with a place that you seem to know who must have previously lived there and the emotions they enjoyed or endured? How did the novel’s setting(s) contribute to your enjoyment as a reader?
VIOLENCE AND ADVENTURE
8. ‘He raised his arm a second time and plunged his sword into the top of the old man’s skull, splattering red pulp and grey brains into the straw’ (page 196). There are very few scenes of violence in the novel, but those few are very graphic. Do you think they were ‘too much’, ‘not enough’ or ‘just right’?
9. In interviews, Kate Mosse has said that she wanted to tell an adventure story in which active women shaped their own destinies. One journalist called her ‘Wilma Smith’! Is this aspect of the adventure important to your enjoyment of the novel?
RELIGION
10. The 13th century Cathars were surprised by the extent of persecution against them. Although the Labyrinth story and the trilogy of special books have a spiritual element, they exist alongside Catharism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, not as part of any of these faiths. How do you think the novel handles questions of religion? Can you draw any parallels with more recent religious conflicts?
To find out more about the characters and places in Labyrinth, visit www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk.
Suggested Further Reading:
Massacre at Montségur by Zoë Oldenburg
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars 1290–1329 by René Weis
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Boudica series by Manda Scott
Les Femmes Cathares by Anne Brenon
Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir
Audiobooks:
Read by Emilia Fox and Anton Lesser, the Labyrinth audiobook is available on CD at £16.99.
The
Laybrinth Walk
One of the reasons I wrote Labyrinth was because I was inspired by the amazing fortified medieval Cité of Carcassonne. I have written this guided tour – The Labyrinth Walk – so that you can see for yourself some of the sights that greeted my heroine, Alice Tanner, when she first stepped within the battlements. And, of course, the places that Alaïs Pelletier called home.
I think the tour should take about two hours. If you are tired, there is a short cut about two thirds of the way round. Of course, if you stop for lunch in the middle, who knows if you will ever finish it!
Carcassonne, January 2006
1 ‘The Cité was set on top of a grassy hill. The slopes swept down to streets filled with red-roofed houses. On the flat land at the bottom there were fields of vines, fig and olive trees, wigwams of heavy ripe tomatoes in rows.’
The best view of the fortified medieval Cité is from the Pont Vieux, the old bridge that links the Bastide Saint-Louis on the north bank of the River Aude with the citadel on the south. The Pont Vieux is closed to traffic so take it on foot. At night, the Cité is floodlit and looks like a movie set. The outer ring of walls was built in the middle of the 13th century, as additional fortifications, and was not there in Alaïs’ day.
On Tuesday 5 July 2005, the elusive Audric Baillard walks this way in Chapter 23 en route to Jeanne Giraud’s house.
2 ‘The Pont Vieux led straight into the Quartier de la Trivalle, which had been transformed from a drab suburb into the gateway to the medieval Cité. Black wrought-iron railings had been set at intervals along the pavements to stop cars from parking. Fiery orange, purple and crimson pansies trailed out of their containers like hair tumbling down a young girl’s back.’
At the end of the Pont Vieux, turn sharp right into rue Barbacane – which follows the ancient path of the River Aude – past the Pharmacie. You will pass rue de la Gaffe on your left, before you arrive in Place Saint-Gimer.
To the left of the church – which was built in 1854 by Viollet-le-Duc, the man responsible for the restoration of the medieval Cité – are the ruins of a stone barbacane that replaced the two wooden palisades between which Alaïs threads her way to the hidden glade by the river in Chapter 2 to gather herbs.
3 ‘The path down to the barbican was steep and rocky. It ran between the two high, protective wooden palisade walls and it was hard to see anything. But Alaïs had taken this route out of the Cité many times, knew every dip and rise of the land, and she climbed down without difficulty.’
In the top right hand corner of the Place Saint-Gimer, is a long, steep cobbled ramp, signposted Grande Caponière. The Château Comtal, built into the western fortifications of the Cité, looms above you. Look up at the distinctive Tour Pinte watchtower – some 28 metres high – which points like a finger to the sky and belongs to the earliest phase of building of the Château. Taking it slowly, climb to the top of the ramp. Turn sharp left, then right, doubling back on yourself between the two sets of walls in the space between the outer and inner ring, known as the Lices.
Just before you go through the Porte d’Aude into the heart of the Cité itself, turn and look away northwest through the battlements. The flat land of Lauragais stretches
before you towards Toulouse. The Montagne Noire National Park is to the right. Further west – if you are lucky – in winter and spring you will see the snow-capped Pyrenees. The Pic de Soularac – the site of the Labyrinth cave – is one of the highest you can see.
4 ‘Every major city had an Inquisitional Court, from Tolosa to Carcassona. Once condemned, the Inquisitors turned their victims over to the secular authorities to be imprisoned, beaten, mutilated or burned. They kept their hands clean.’
Once inside the walls, turn right into a narrow cobbled alleyway with a stone arch above it. The house on the corner here is the Maison de l’Inquisition. It used to have a footbridge from the first floor onto the ramparts, giving access to the Tour de la Justice where the Inquisitors kept their régistres – the records of their interrogations. On the stone walls inside, the twelve iron hooks – where the Dominican Friars hung the leather bags containing these forced testimonies – are still there.
The alleyway – the rue du Four Saint-Nazaire – slopes quite steeply upwards, winding first left, then right, behind the kitchens of the Hôtel de la Cité.
5 ‘It was the fin-de-siècle façade of the Hôtel de la Cité, understated but grand all the same, that caught her eye. Covered by ivy, with wroughtiron gates, arched stained-glass windows and deep red awnings the colour of ripe cherries, it whispered of money.’
The alleyway leads to the Place Saint-Nazaire. On the left are souvenir shops, on the right is the Hôtel de la Cité – which opened in 1909 on the site where the Bishop’s Palace once stood. Like her grandfather before her, it is the sumptuous accommodation that Marie-Cécile de l’Oradore chooses when she visits Carcassonne. She and Paul Authié share a meal in the impressive dining room.
6 Standing outside the Hôtel de la Cité, straight ahead is the Basilica Saint-Nazaire et Saint-Celse – ‘Sant Nasari’ as it was in Alaïs’ times. This is where Bertrand Pelletier hid the Book of Numbers, behind an unremarkable tomb. Of the 11th and 12th century church Alaïs and her father Bertrand knew, only the Romanesque nave remains. The rest was rebuilt in the gothic style on the orders of the French king Saint-Louis once the Trencavel lands had been finally subdued by the Crusaders. Today, there is even a memorial to a sermon preached by the founder of the Inquisition, St Dominic.
‘Kneeling down, Alaïs reached around behind the altar as Bertrand had shown her. She paddled her fingers over the surface of the wall. There was a soft click. Alaïs slowly, carefully, eased out the stone and slid it to one side, then stretched her hand into the dusty recess behind. She found the long, thin key, the metal dull with age and disuse, and put it into the lock of the wooden latticed door.’
7 ‘The difference in age between the inner and outer walls was most evident here. The outer fortifications, which she read had been built at the end of the 13th century and restored during the 19th, were grey and the blocks were relatively equal in size. Alice felt a sense of peace after the noise within the Cité, a feeling of belonging here among such mountains and skies.’
Keeping the Basilica to your right – and the hideously grimacing gargoyles above you – follow the path and you will come out in another open square. To your left is the rue du Plô – to your right a gate and railings, the entrance to the amphitheatre where the Carcassonne summer festival stages dramatic son et lumière dramas.
Take the rue du Plô and walk uphill on the cobbles, past the school museum, past the little well – Place du Petit Puits – and make your way towards the bustle and noise of the central square, Place Marcou.
8 ‘Alice let her feet guide her to the main square, Place Marcou. It was small and filled with restaurants and clipped plane trees. Their spreading branches, wide like entwined and sheltering hands above the tables and chairs, competed with the brightly coloured awnings. The names of the individual cafés were printed on the top – Le Marcou, Le Trouvère, Le Ménestrel.’
I have lost count of the number of times I have eaten in this square: toohot summer lunches under the lime trees, close evenings indoors with the fans turning, pizza in the hidden square by the fountain with buskers singing, bright cold winter mornings of milky coffee or sharp little black espressos and delicious butter croissants.
9 Leave Place Marcou along a narrow cobbled path in the northwest corner, next to Le Trouvère – the Occitan word for a troubadour.
‘Alice strolled over the cobbles and out the other side, finding herself at the junction of the rue Cros-Mayrevieille and the Place du Château, where a triangle of shops, crêperies and restaurants surrounded a stone obelisk about eight feet high, topped by a bust of the nineteenth-century historian Jean-Pierre Cros-Mayrevieille.’
The monument is decorated with a bronze circlet of the Carcassonne battlements. Cros-Mayrevieille, a historian and important local administrator, who became inspector of historic monuments, inspired the listing and restoration of the Cité.
10 ‘She walked forward until she was standing in front of a sweeping semicircular wall that protected the Château Comtal. Behind the imposing locked gates were the turrets and battlements of the castle. A fortress within a fortress. Alice stopped, realising that this had been her destination all along.’
Ahead of you is the Château Comtal where Alaïs lived alongside her father Bertrand, her husband Guilhem and sister Oriane in the dynastic home of the Trencavel family. The semi-circular stone barbacane was added in the mid-13th century. The Château itself dates from the mid-12th century, constructed on the foundations of a much older castle. There are options to visiting the Château – a guided tour and the more restricted independent visit. For both, you pay at the kiosk just inside the gate.
Once inside, cross the flat stone bridge across a dry moat and enter through the Eastern Gatehouse into the Cour d’Honneur. In Viscount Trencavel’s time, a feudal elm stood in the centre of this main courtyard, mentioned in many documents and edicts of the time.
11 In the northwest corner of the Cour d’Honneur, in the shadow of the Tour de Degré, is where the chapel stood.
‘Alice looked down. Two raised bronze lines on the ground marked out the site of where a building had once stood. There was a row of letters. She crouched down and read that this had been the site of the chapel of the Château Comtal. Nothing remained.’
From the courtyard you can enter the Musée Lapidaire – the museum of stones – on the first floor of what used to be the Château’s living quarters. Walk through the museum to the third chamber. This is the Donjon Room – council chamber – or Round Room, so called because of its barrel-shaped ceiling. The beautiful 12th-century murals were only uncovered in 1926.
‘Alice looked up in admiration at the cerulean blue ceiling, faded and cracked, but beautiful still. On the panel to her left, two chevaliers were fighting, the one dressed in black, holding a round shield, destined to fall for ever more under the other’s lance.’
12 ‘We’re ready for them, Messire. The Ciutat is well stocked. The hourds are completed to protect the walls from their sappers; all broken sections or points of weakness have been repaired and blocked; all the towers are manned.’
High up on the walls you will see modern reproductions of medieval hourds. These wooden galleries were designed to allow the defenders of the Château to attack invading forces, should the Cité itself be breached, and hurl projectiles down at them.
Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration of the Cité chose slate cones instead of flatter clay-tiled roofs, which have survived on the older Gallo-Roman towers. Detractors say that the 19th-century restoration transformed the Cité in the way Saint-Louis, the French king, would have wanted it.
13 ‘Alaïs climbed up on the stone bench and reached for the lowest window of the Tour Pinte that gave on to the Cour du Midi. She hauled herself up, wriggled over the stone ledge and threaded herself in through the narrow gap. She was in luck. The room was empty.’
The Trencavels built the Château Comtal in the 12th century on Roman and Visigoth foundations as part of the western fortificat
ions. Although most of the oldest buildings are gone – their stones scavenged to build the Bastide Saint-Louis – the Cour d’Honneur, the smaller Cour du Midi and the distinctive square watchtower, the Tour Pinte, remain. The watchtower – as all the defensive towers – had no stairs, just landings connected by wooden ladders that the guards could draw up after them.
14 It would be fun to leave the Château Comtal by the Western Gate, but it is locked. You must leave the same way you came in, past the ticket office.
Once outside the castle, turn left into rue Viollet-le-Duc, lined with restaurants and shops. Follow the road uphill to the big well at the Place du Grand Puits. Follow the road round to the right and go down past the Chambre d’Hôtes guest house. Take the second left into rue Notre-Dame, a charming cobbled street that leads down to the fortifications on the north side of the city. Make your way through the Porte de Rodez into the Lices – the open space between the twin rings of battlements.
‘The guards on duty at the Porte de Rodez were nodding most local people through without question, but stopping vagabonds and beggars, gypsies, Saracens and Jews, demanding to know their business in Carcassonne.’
The Porte de Rodez originally connected the Cité to the market garden suburb of Sant-Vicens. It was the first area to be attacked by the Crusaders at dawn on Monday 3rd August. Many people died here in 1209. Now, there are just the sharply sloping grassy banks . . .