David Flusfeder, John the Pupil (Harper 2015)
Franciscan novice John is tasked by his master Roger Bacon to deliver a parcel to Pope Clement IV in Viterbo. In a wooden box is the master’s Great Work, full of his discoveries and inventions, which John is on no account to open. Another parcel, wrapped in linen, he is to open ‘only when he has given up all hope’. He is to travel from Oxford with two companions, Brother Andrew and Brother Bernard, and to write about their journey. Brother Andrew is beautiful; Brother Bernard is strong; John is ‘merely clever’.
Along the way they meet Simeon the Palmer, who undertakes pilgrimages for hire. He betrays them to a band of thieves, eager to seize their treasure, but the brawn of Brother Bernard and the wily precautions of Master Roger prevail. They encounter the master gardener Father Gabriel, by whose herbs and wisdom John is ‘exalted’. John meets a living saint, who sees into his future. They abide for a while in the kingdom of the epicurean Cavalcante de Cavalcanti and his son Prince Guido, where riches seem endless.
The brothers preach along their way, and, as well as confronting the dangers of the mediaeval road, they are tempted by the sins of pride, greed, lust, ambition.
This ‘mediaeval road movie’-cum-morality play is fairly chaotic in structure, as if it were, indeed, as stated in the foreword, composed of loosely bound fragments of parchment found in a box in the attic of some manor house, and, according to my googling of saints’ days, it’s not even in chronological order. Each section is dated by the saint’s day on which the events transpired, with a brief story about that saint. As well as the Gospels and lives of the Saints, theologians—Sedulius, Caesarius of Heisterbach, Boethius—are quoted—and are explained eruditely in an appendix at the back. I didn’t understand the ending, despite rereadings.
The mediaeval feel of the tale is undeniable.
Susie Helme 
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