Heresy as Historical Fiction?

A strong gust penetrates the window coverings, stirring loose sheets of vellum and causing my candles to flicker, bringing with it small snowflakes that settle and melt on the palimpsest before me. December cold seeps from the stones of the scriptorium, and I can write only a few words here or a short phrase there before I must warm my hands in my cassock. A fire would be wasteful, and would surely draw attention and I risk enough by writing this. Yet I must leave this place soon, and it is probable that I will lack access to the tools and the time for writing for some long while. Auxerre, this place of my exile, has never been home and although I cannot return to my native Orléans, nor can I stay here. The truth must be known and I have written enough lies in this place, beginning with lies about myself and ending with lies about God.

Perhaps it is December that leaves me feeling this way, for it was in this month a decade ago that I abandoned truth to save my skin, the truth that others pursued to their graves. Once there was not a day that passed without the memory of shame, but like all scars it faded with time, until I seldom thought of those I betrayed. But Etienne and Lisois and all of the other ten have come to the forefront of my memory recently. It may be the late visitor from the East and his fanciful talk of Manichaeans. It would be fitting if this were so. We, too, have been accused of being Manichaeans, by a monk in Limoges who knows only his own fantasies and the lies I myself spread about us. And using the recollections of Simeon I have crafted one final piece of misdirection. I hope that, wherever they are, my friends are smiling as I convince the deluded fools who persecuted us to chase phantoms.

I remember the last time I saw Etienne, his beautiful face marred by the pit where his eye had been an hour before, facing the flames with complete calm. There were fourteen of us, shown the place of our execution just beyond the city walls, the jeering mob that had pelted us with dirt and shit waiting for the spectacle of our immolation. They had cheered when Queen Constance had had Etienne pinned by the soldiers and had struck out his left eye with her staff. Etienne, who had been her trusted advisor and confessor, the most pious man, was now a political liability, a traitor for endangering the king’s plans and like all traitors sentenced to die. Yet his love of God carried him through the crisis and, when called upon to recant or to burn, he chose the fire willingly and entered wordlessly into the holocaust, offering himself as a sacrifice.

The others followed without hesitation, beginning with Etienne’s beloved friend Lisois, who ran into the flames headlong. They had been closer than brothers, raised together from childhood in the love of the Church and educated in divine wisdom by the clerics at the Church of the Holy Cross. Though in their aspect they could not have been more different—for Lisois was dark where Etienne was fair, Etienne was patient and otherworldly while Lisois was rash and very much of this world; both were fearless and endless in their love for God—it was as though they were twins born of different mothers. Before rushing to his death, Lisois cursed the assembled masses, singling out his former patron, King Robert, for special scorn. Others ranged somewhere between the equanimity of Etienne and the enthusiasm of Lisois, but each submitted to the purgation that awaited.

Not me. The heat of the flames caused me to swoon and I was overwhelmed by the smell of burning flesh. The screams of my fellow, however brief, rang in my ears. I did not feel God’s love in that moment. In my cowardice, when I was offered a chance to repent, even with the noble examples before me, I seized the chance offered me. I cried out that yes, yes, I was guilty of heresy. Their spy, I stated, had learned only a little of our practice, of our false and malicious denial of the holy Trinity and of the sacraments and of the Eternal Church. All of the things they had accused us of I admitted, and I proffered the promise of more. Our practices, I lied, were not only followed here in the city of Orléans, but throughout the king’s land and far abroad. Spare me, I pled, and lead me back into the divine light and love of God the Father, of Jesus Christ his Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Allow me the opportunity to face my creator with a clean soul, that I might not face the temporal torment of the fire and the eternal torments of Hell. God damn me for it. The king, in his magnanimity, ordered me spared and sequestered. I shall always love him for his mercy. God damn him, too.