The Mirror of Simple Souls

by Aline Kiner

Genres: General Fiction; Feminist; Historical Fiction; Medieval; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

“A rich, surprising, and devastating story of a female institution long-forgotten.”  — Marj Charlier, author of The Rebel Nun

A captivating story of love, jealousy and faith, set amid a community of independent women in medieval Paris — the perfect summer read for fans of historical fiction

This thrilling, sensual evocation of medieval Paris sold over 100,000 copies in France and offers a fascinating insight into the world of the beguines — communities of women who lived independently of men and successfully managed their own affairs all the way back in the Middle Ages.

A heretical text, a vengeful husband, a forbidden love...

It's 1310 and Paris is alive with talk of the trial of the Templars. Religious repression is on the rise, and the smoke of execution pyres blackens the sky above the city. But sheltered behind the walls of Paris's great beguinage, a community of women are still free to work, study and live their lives away from the domination of men.

When a wild, red-haired child clothed in rags arrives at the beguinage gate one morning, with a sinister Franciscan monk on her tail, she sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter the peace of this little world-plunging it into grave danger...

This rich historical drama makes a great summer read for fans of Hamnet, The Lost Apothecary, The Wolf Den, and The Yellow Bird Sings.

Release date: June 25, 2024

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Print pages: 320

Sample

Preface
 
 
In the area of Paris called the Marais rises a broken tower at the corner of the rue Charlemagne and the rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul. It marks the northern edge of an ancient wall more than eighty yards long that is punctuated by a second tower. These are the vestiges of the enclosure built at the end of the twelfth century by King Philip-August, a curtain wall to protect the city. Centuries later, the buildings of the Charlemagne lycée were erected upon this souvenir of medieval wars. At its southern border, the wall joins the rue Ave-Maria, named after the convent that occupied the site long before the school. But in the fourteenth century this street had another name: it was called “rue des Beguines.”
Surrounded by grey-paved alleyways, this quadrilateral now muffles the sounds of the city, leaving the air free for the trills of birds, the cries of children playing ball, the laughter of adolescent girls and boys mingling uninhibited voices. But few people are aware that this site once contained an institution unique in France: the great beguinage of Paris that was founded by King Louis IX, known as Saint Louis.
For almost a hundred medieval years, a succession of remarkable women lived on this site and in its surroundings. Unclassifiable and hard to categorize, these women had refused both marriage and the nun’s cloister. Here they prayed, worked, studied, and had a haven from which they could roam the town as they pleased, hosting some friends and traveling to visit others, disposing of their wealth as they wished, and even being allowed to bequeath it to their sisters. These had a freedom and independence that women in the Middle Ages had not known before - and would not know again for centuries. At the time, not all of them were aware of how special this freedom was, but some fought hard to preserve it.
For years I walked the streets of the Marais looking for the traces they had left behind. Day after day, they came back to me. I saw their shadows on the ground – now strong, now faint I heard their laughter and their songs, the sound of their footsteps on the cobblestones, I felt on my skin the same sun that warmed them, breathed the scents of the nearby Seine. We dreamed, trembled, and strolled alongside each other, like companions whom time has separated but whose desires, fears, and rebellions come together in a single echo.
 

 

 
 
Prologue
1st June, 1310
 
 
If not for the silence, you might think it was a festival day.
There is a crowd in the place de Grève on this Monday before Ascension. All the people of the city are there. Merchants and clerks, citizens and craftsmen, school children and clerics, rakes and vagabonds, those who will do anything for the smallest coin and laborers who come to sell their manpower at the port. The heat of bodies pressed together, their smell. Grimy skin and fetid breaths mingle their exhalations with stenches from the street belonging to the tanners and slimy odours from the river. At the balcony windows of the fine dwellings around the square stand ladies and gentlemen dressed in vivid colours.
Shouts and cries, the shanties sung by boatmen and porters, all suddenly lapse into silence in a long wave rippling out from the river bank. All that can be heard above the murmuring of the spectators are the bang of wood on stone as boat keels clatter against the quay and the anxious lapping of the Seine.
Everyone’s eyes are trained on the centre of the square, where stands a pyre similar to those that have been erected on the same site for carnivals and for the Feast of Saint-Jean. But instead of masqued dancers and young apprentices jumping through the bonfire flames, now you see only a woman walking up the pyre, her bare feet stepping over the fagot bundles, with black hair and a long chemise stuck to her body.
She is tall but also frail, her gnarled neck protruding from the pierced sailcloth they have stuck over her head. She stands erect, unchanged by the long months of captivity, the many interrogations, the silence she has maintained. The authorities took this for arrogance. But she simply had nothing to say, or anyway, nothing they could understand.
A little farther off is a second pyre. Tied to the stake, a man with a battered face is sagging on his legs, a Jew accused of having spit on images of the Virgin.
But she is the one everybody is watching.
 
Humbert finds himself a few yards away from her, his broad shoulders towering above the crowd. He wants to get closer, close enough to see the shut eyelids of the condemned woman and her knees showing below the shroud covering her. He jostles the shoulder of the matron pressed against him and slips between spectators whose unconscious surges bring them to the heart of the square.
Suddenly, on his right, he notices another figure pushing forward through the press. A slender silhouette enveloped in a grey cape eases its way between the spectators.
Now both of them are a few steps from the pyre.
The executioner is waiting, torch in hand. Close by stands a Dominican in his white robe and black mantle: William of Paris, the Inquisitor. Another man is wearing a sword and feathered cap; the provost steps forward and places a book on the straw at the woman’s feet. She bends her head slightly, opens her eyes wide, as if in surprise. At that moment a breeze sweeps up the river. The silhouetted figure that was advancing in parallel to Humbert pushes back the crowd, advances resolutely to the pyre and lets her hood fall.
A mass of red hair tumbles over the dark cape, ruffled by the breeze.
The tormented woman turns her head. She seems to gaze at the young girl who has just revealed herself and to recognize her.
Humbert also stares at the girl, stupefied. Never would he have expected to find           her here, nor in that habit.
The executioner takes a step towards the stake. Humbert lowers his head and turns away. He follows the redhead with his eyes as she covers her head with the hood again; another girl, similarly garbed, grabs her by the hand and pulls her away. Then he shoulders his way back to the wharf.
Soon the smell of wood and of flesh consuming each other overcomes all other odours. And the cries of the crowd, excited and compassionate, cover the cries of the man at the stake. Perhaps also the cry of the woman who is being burnt alive. For nobody could expect her to remain silent until the end.