The Miracle Thief

by Iris Anthony

  Robert had many titles: Count of Poitiers, Marquess of Neustria and Orléans, and Count of Paris. Later, he took the crown from Charles the Simple and gave himself the title Robert I. For the sake of simplicity and consistency, I chose to refer to him as the Count of Paris. His brother, Odo, also Count of Paris and Marquess of Neustria, had been appointed King of France during Charles’s minority but refused to relinquish the throne without a fight. The agreement between the two rival kings left Robert with Odo’s lands, but bereft of the royal crown.

  The boy, Hugh, may very well have been in love with Princess Gisele, as he fancied himself to be. His father, Robert, Count of Paris, took the crown from King Charles in 922. When Robert died, just a short year later, the throne was offered to Hugh, his son. He refused it, and it was given to his brother-in-law (his sister’s husband, the Duke of Burgundy) instead. And when that king died in 936, Hugh was instrumental in bringing Gisele’s half brother, Louis d’Outremer, to France to claim the throne. Though he and Louis subsequently had a falling out, after the king’s death, Hugh was the first noble to support Louis’s son, Lothair. What better reward, then, for a faithful subject to become the founder of a royal dynasty himself. Hugh’s son was Hugh Capet, from whom sprang the Capetian kings that shaped the destiny of modern France.

  As so, we come to Andulf. What can I say about this knight who was so noble and true, but that he, more than any other character in the novel, was a product of my imagination? During that time of tumult and turmoil, there were no knights in shining armor. There were no castles as we think of them today, and there was no code of chivalry. There was only survival. If you imagine the world existing within the decaying moldering ruins of ancient Rome, you are closer to a picture of the times than if you read a fairy tale. The story of woe he recounted to the princess, however, was true. If you read Handbook for William by Dhuoda, you will hear, in his mother’s own words, the tragic tale of his family, and you will discover just how closely faith was woven into daily life. Though it was written a generation before the events in this book, and though more than a thousand years have passed since the words were first penned, you can hear the longing and the fear and the pride of a woman who sought to give her two sons all of the wisdom she could think of. She probably never saw her youngest son after he was wrenched from her arms shortly after his birth.

  Author’s Notes

  Chroniclers of this age were few, and there are no contemporary histories that remain from the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Those who later recorded the events sometimes relied on unproven oral histories or bent the facts to fit their biases. Some historians of this period claim relationships between historical figures, which other historians take great pains to disprove. And while some ancient records are quite clear on the existence of certain people, other records claim the same person never existed at all. This period is rife with kings named Louis and Charles and usurpers named Robert, all of whom played a part in the dismantling of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire. Any given name from the period might be referenced in modern histories by three or four different spellings (Latin, Frankish, Germanic, and old English) according to the author’s preference. Place names sometimes suffer a similar fate.

  I went cross-eyed tracing family trees, trying to figure out who was related to whom and to what sort of degree. Like nearly everything about the Dark Ages, family lines are rather obscure, with genealogies sometimes skipping entire generations and mixing up those of the same name but of different eras, for who knows what reason, which quite vexingly leads to claims of relationships that are ridiculous upon further investigation.

  One thing is clear: the great Charlemagne left many descendants, both legitimate and illegitimate. It was not unheard of for second or third cousins to marry in that tightly knit court, and what might merely raise eyebrows in our time would have been scandalous in an age that would not tolerate marriage within seven degrees of kinship. (Which simply means the bride and groom could not share a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent.) I hope you will understand—and quite possibly sympathize!—when I admit that when I did not know for certain, I cherry-picked the facts I wanted, or I made things up where they didn’t exist. I only hope for those not acquainted with the era that my fiction mixes seamlessly with the historical record.

  In one of those strange coincidences that sometimes befall historical writers, after I had decided which saint should be the focus of Anna’s pilgrimage and which part of her body I wanted the reliquary to hold, I discovered that Saint Catherine’s finger was in fact brought to Rouen in the eleventh century. It was placed in an abbey that sat atop a hill on the east side of the city. Though the abbey was destroyed in the fifteenth century, the hill is still called by Saint Catherine’s name. In the fifteenth century, Saint Catherine was one of the saints who urged Joan of Arc to fight the English, and it was in Rouen where Joan was tried and executed for heresy.

  Although in the modern age wolves are not generally known to attack people, the Middle Ages recorded many accounts of wolves preying upon people. With all of the famines and diseases and wars that swept the continent, generations of wolves were raised to believe humans were easy prey. And although no bears currently exist in Europe, there were plenty back then.

  Poland Syndrome, exhibited by a deformed hand and an underdeveloped breast on the same side of the body, was named for the doctor who documented it in 1841, but it must have existed for centuries before that. Xylophagia is the type of Pica disorder describing those who eat paper or wood. Pica can be exhibited in children who have developmental disorders or who have been neglected. Tourette’s Syndrome, while commonly envisioned as a person uttering profanities at inappropriate moments, more often manifests itself in uncontrollable behaviors, like the young lord’s. Arm flapping is a classic symptom of autism spectrum disorders. Children with Down’s syndrome often repeat or mimic words or sounds. That the abbey at Rochemont found itself the guardian of children exhibiting these sorts of behaviors would not have been uncommon. All of these disorders would have made children unfit for normal life, and therefore unwanted, during the period. Marked malformation of the body was often viewed as a judgment from God or as a punishment for a grievous sin. Still, in contrast to the region’s pagan religions, Western Christian culture actively organized care for those who could not care for themselves.

  Reading Group Guide

  1.How do you define a miracle? Do you believe in them?

  2.Everyone puts their faith in something. What do you place your faith in?

  3.Juliana counseled her daughter not to despise the life she had been given. Do you think this was good advice? Would you have said something different to Gisele instead?

  4.Was Juliana right in leaving Charles?

  5.Juliana believed that by retreating to live at the abbey, she had left the world behind. She says, “Our abbey was not a kingdom. Our doings did not affect the world beyond our gates.” Was she right? Have you ever retreated, hoping to leave the world behind? Did it work?

  6.In some ways this book is set up as a battle between God and men. Gisele states, “My fate had already been determined by men. I did not think there was anything God could do now to intervene.” At another point the queen mother says, “God always gets his way in the end, does He not? How can you fight Providence and ever hope to win?” With which of those ideas do you agree?

  7.Contrast the descriptions of Paradise and Valhalla. How did each culture’s view of death affect their actions?

  8.When Anna is lost in the woods, she tries to find her way out. At one point she thinks, “What purpose had the boulder served but to mark the place at which I had known myself to be lost? And why should I be so set on returning there? It could do nothing for me but keep me waylaid. In order to be found, I had to be willing to leave it behind.” What did each character have to be willing to leave behind in order to move forward?

  9.Anna had been
told her disability was a curse from God. Was there any way in which it might have been a blessing?

  10.Why do you think Anna was healed when so many other pilgrims were not?

  11.At one point, Gisele states, “How easy it is to trust in God when you do not have to trust Him for your life.” Andulf replies, “On the contrary. I think it would be far more difficult to trust if nothing depended upon my faith.” Which character do you agree with?

  12.Did Gisele make the right choice in terms of her relationship with Andulf? What other ending would you have written for her?

  13.Would you rather live in a world without faith or without hope?

  14.Who was the miracle thief?

  A Conversation with the Author

  IRIS ANTHONY

  Q: Let’s get this question over with right away. Do you believe in miracles?

  A: Of course I do! Don’t you? Who wants to live in a world where the miraculous could never occur? Art critic Bernard Berenson once said: “Miracles happen to those who believe in them.” I also think it matters who you put your faith in. If you place all your faith in yourself, all of your efforts at improvement begin and end with you. If you place your faith in something beyond yourself, then the door to other possibilities swings open.

  Q: Speaking of faith, that seemed to be a prevalent theme in this book. But this isn’t the Dark Ages. Weren’t you worried you might turn some readers off?

  A: It would be difficult to write a book about the Dark Ages that didn’t involve some aspect of faith. Life was steeped in Christianity. People saw the hand of Providence everywhere. It’s often stated that a person is composed of the mind, spirit, and body. Those in the Dark Ages would have agreed. The idea that some people in the modern era deny their spirituality altogether would have been completely shocking to them. Everyone back then—pagans included—worshipped someone or something.

  People of the Dark Ages asked the same questions about life and death, purpose and meaning, that we do today. What I wanted to discover is whether we have arrived at different answers, whether an interval of a thousand years has changed anything about the way we view the interaction between what is sacred and what is secular.

  Q: I’m fascinated by this idea that novelists write to answer their own questions.

  A: It’s a rather selfish undertaking, isn’t it? Holding readers captive for a hundred thousand words and however many hours it takes to read them in order to discover the answer to a question they might never have even wanted to consider. It would be so much more efficient if I had the ability to write short stories!

  Q: So what did you discover?

  A: One of the most basic tenets of Christianity is the concept of grace—the undeserved favor of God. But one thing that seems to have remained constant across the ages is humanity’s unwillingness to accept that grace at face value. You can see that need to prove worthiness scrawled across the history of the faith. By definition, however, that undertaking is futile.

  I discovered the doors of the faith are wide open to all kinds of reprobates…but only if you’re willing to admit that you are one. You can understand how that would be a big blow to the ego. Hence the need to prove that you have somehow earned God’s favor…which brings us back to the original definition of grace. The whole concept is ingenious!

  Q: Did you do research on miracles? Or maybe the better question is how would you go about researching miracles?

  A: During the period, miracles had to be vouched for by witnesses. It was no good to show up at a church and proclaim yourself healed…or your missing ax found or your child suddenly healed. You had to have witnesses swear to the fact that your ax was actually missing or your child had truly been ill. Some of the miracles attested to back then were things that we, in our modern age, can all agree were coincidence, but some were truly inexplicable. Beyond that, in preparation for writing the miracle scene in the novel, I wanted to know what it would feel like. I talked to people who have experienced miracles, asking what it felt like and how they knew they had been healed.

  Q: Was there anything that surprised you about the time period?

  A: Everything! Here’s a secret: I procrastinated in starting this novel because I had such a difficult time imagining the world about which I was supposed to be writing. The Dark Ages didn’t look like the world of the high Middle Ages, with knights in shining armor and turreted castles, but neither did it look like the world the ancient Romans left behind either. There were castles in the Dark Ages, but they were mostly motte and bailey construction of solitary wooden towers built on top of a mound of earth. There were walled estates, but often the fortifications were wooden palisades, not sturdy stone walls. And there were knights, but there was no code of chivalry. It might sound odd, but the hardest thing for me to remember was that there were no chimneys. Fires vented through holes in the roof and they were kindled at the center of rooms, not along the walls. More than one scene had to be rewritten or repositioned because I imagined the fire in the wrong place.

  Q: How did you come up with the idea for this story?

  A: Like most of my novels, the idea for this one came as I was researching a different book. I came across a mention of the book Furta Sacra by Patrick J. Geary that talked about armies of monks setting out to steal relics from each other. During this period, the concept of stealing relics was approved of and even encouraged. But odder than that was the belief that the relics themselves would decide their fate. If you were successful in your theft, then the relic wanted to go with you. If you failed, then obviously it wanted to stay right where it was. It was such an interesting belief that I began to wonder, “What would happen if…” The story developed from there.

  Q: I love History’s series Vikings. Your Danes aren’t portrayed in the same way.

  A: There were so many things I discovered about Vikings during my research that I hadn’t known and so many things I came to admire in their culture. But my Danes are the villains in this story, not the protagonists. They’re also seen through the eyes of people outside their community who don’t understand their language, their culture, or their religion. If they act like thugs, it’s because, for all intents and purposes, that’s the way they appeared to the Franks of the time.

  Q: What was the big deal about relics?

  A: Relics, which are objects used as memorials of saints, became part of the practice of the Christian faith in the first century. The church quite clearly says they are not to be worshipped, but only venerated for the purpose of commemorating a saint. The idea of the relic is foreshadowed in the Old Testament. Clothes, kerchiefs, and even the shadow of the Apostle Peter are spoken of in conjunction with miracles in the New Testament. In the Carolingian period, every church was required to have a relic for its altar. Since the supply of saints was limited, the options for acquiring relics were also limited. You could buy one from a relic dealer, you could steal one from someone else, or you could go out and look for a relic that no one else had previously found. A fairly brisk market in what I think of as “secondary” relics arose: dust from the tomb of a saint, filings from a martyr’s chains, and other objects of that nature.

  Q: So was there really a Saint Catherine?

  A: There were several Saint Catherines venerated by the Church. Like Princess Gisele, Saint Catherine of Alexandria is one of those obscure figures of the Dark Ages who may not, in actuality, have ever existed. Her feast day is in November, and she is numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In the eleventh century, one of her relics was, in fact, brought to Rouen, and a church was built to house it.

  There are several hagiographies of her life, according to which she was a pagan princess (or daughter of a wealthy man) who was martyred in the fourth century at the order of Roman Emperor Maxentius (or Maximinus or Maximian). Devoted to scholarly pursuits, she converted to Christianity at the age of fourteen. She then visited Emperor Maxentius to try to conv
ert him as well. Though he pitted the empire’s greatest philosophers against her, she confounded them with her arguments, and they converted to her faith. Maxentius promptly ordered them executed. She converted the empress as well…who was also executed. After the emperor imprisoned Catherine for her impertinence, she converted two hundred soldiers who were then immediately killed.

  Enraged, Maxentius had her tortured. When she would not denounce Christ, the emperor offered her a royal marriage (whether to himself or some other noble is disputed). When she refused, he tried to have her broken on a spiked wheel, but it mysteriously disintegrated, and she was beheaded instead. Her body, from which sprang a perpetual flow of oil, was later discovered on Mount Sinai.

  Catherine is the patron saint of maidens, students, scholars, the dying, wheelwrights, mechanics, craftsmen who work with wheels, librarians, theologians, preachers, orators, and philosophers.

  Acknowledgments

  To my agent, Natasha Kern, and my editor, Shana Drehs, who not only allowed me to write a book about miracles, but also encouraged me to do so. And to K, who never tired of asking me to tell the story of my story.

  About the Author

  PHOTO BY TIM COBURN

  Iris Anthony is a pseudonym. The writer behind the name is an award-winning author of over a dozen novels. Disguised as her alter ego, Iris has lived on three continents and traveled to five. She has given up on keeping a diary, buying a château, and liking tea. She stills hopes one day to be able to knit a sweater, play golf on the Old Course, and visit Antarctica. Iris lives in the Washington, D.C., metro area in a house decorated with French antiques and Flemish lace. Learn more about Iris at www.irisanthony.com.