Pageturners: A Castle in Canada Part 2
I was possessed by a murderous madman who seemed to be revelling in every moment of it. ‘How does it make you feel?’ asked Alora. That’s when I had my second really stupid idea. To tell the truth
Welcome to Pageturners, a book I’m writing in which I share what I’ve learnt – and am still learning – about comic writing, film writing, novel writing and how new writers can sell their stories. I’ll publish a chapter or a section per week, available for free here on Iconoblast. And I welcome your feedback or questions, so do leave a comment below!
Missed the Pageturners intro? Read it here.
If you missed A Castle in Canada Part 1 read it here:
The next day, we nervously drove through the creepy town of Montréal. It felt really dark and sinister. Particularly its gloomy church. We were not so much Barbie and Ken, more like Brad and Janet out of the Rocky Horror Show. Montréal church was famous as the centre for a debate in 1206, between the anti-materialist Cathars and the decadent and corrupt Catholics, led by St Dominic, who tried to persuade the Cathars to renounce their heretical ways.
St Dominic was renowned for his rigorous self-denial. He wore a hairshirt and ‘an iron chain around his loins,’ which doubtless helped his self-denial
On the Cathar side there was a great noblewoman known as the Lady Esclarmonde of Foix, but she was admonished by the Catholics, ‘Go to your spinning, madam. It is not proper for you to speak in a debate of this sort’.
To test which beliefs contained divine truth, St Dominic and a representative of the Cathars each threw their writings into a fire. The Cathars’ dissertation was consumed by the flames, but St. Dominic’s writings were – according to Catholics who believe it even today – miraculously saved and expelled from the fire three times. As the fame of the miracle spread, St Dominic was seen as a champion of truth.
To celebrate, this holy man joined forces with the burly and fanatical Crusader Simon De Montfort, and led the crusade to exterminate the Cathars throughout the south of France. Thousands died, many burnt alive, which, even though this grieved St Dominic greatly, he knew was a ‘loving act’ necessary to save their souls. Later, his holy order of the Dominicans formed the Inquisition to torture and kill more heretics, even though their cruel fate continued to grieve him greatly.
Somehow the horrors of the Crusade – condemned by historians as an act of genocide, in which up to a million Cathars were massacred – left its mark on Montréal. I can still remember shuddering as we drove past its church.
But the dark history of the Cathars was very far from our minds. We just needed to find that Castle in Canada.
As we drove on, Alora started directing me. ‘Turn right here, turn left there. Keep going and then there’s a crossroads up ahead. ‘She had seen this countryside before in her sleep, she told me, but from above, looking down through the forests onto the road. Finally, at last, we found a castle! It was at Foix and it was a classic fairytale castle. Actually, it even looked a little like Barbie’s Dreamtopia castle. But, disappointingly, it was not the castle of her dreams.
It was not her Castle in Canada.
We talked a little about our experience to the British owner of the next gite that we stayed at near Foix. ‘Oh, yes,’ he yawned, a bored expression on his face. ‘It happens all the time here. Because this is Cathar Country, you see? We sometimes have guests screaming in the night as they beat out imaginary flames on their bodies. Would you like full English breakfast tomorrow?’
Because the Cathars, aka the Pure Ones, it appeared, believed in reincarnation, they thought the Earth was actually Hell and may have practised ritual suicide. They didn’t want to incarnate any more souls into Hell, so sexual intercourse was seen as a grave sin, although I’m sure they could have found ways around that. There had been one terrible massacre at Béziers when 20,000 townsfolk were butchered by De Montfort and his heroic Crusaders. But there was just a small problem: some of the citizens of Béziers might not have been Cathars. However, the brave knights had a good solution– ‘Kill them all, let God sort them out’.
With such a terrible history of genocidal terror it is believed the veil between the worlds is perilously thin in the land of the Cathars.
Despite this, we actually had an uneventful night and drove on the next day, heading back to Montpellier and her flight home. Then I had a really stupid idea. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a really great idea.’
We stopped to buy a photo guide to Cathar Castles at a gas station next to the péage.
We leafed through its glossy colour pages and there it was … Najac! The castle of her dreams. A Castle in Canada.
The distinctive Château de Najac, built on the remains of an earlier castle, is another classic medieval castle. And the Cathars had been here all right. So had the Crusaders. The town had been the focal point for two savage battles. In fact, as a punishment for the townsfolk’s Cathar beliefs, the Holy Inquisition, in its great wisdom, had made them build a church, so they had somewhere to repent their terrible sins. Those whom the Crusaders hadn’t killed, of course.
But Najac was north of Toulouse and was just too far away to visit in the time. ‘Never mind that,’ snapped Alora. ‘How does it make you feel?
Looking at the castle, with cars whizzing by on the péage, probably wasn’t the most atmospheric place for a séance but it actually worked. I could feel the most powerful sensations of self-righteous anger and violence. Visuals of savage medieval battle flashed before my eyes. I was possessed by a murderous madman who seemed to be revelling in every moment of it.
‘How does it make you feel?’ repeated Alora.
That’s when I had my second really stupid idea. To tell the truth.
Now you would think after observing Alora’s reaction to Tarantino movies, with Vincent accidentally shooting Marvin, that I would know the right thing to say here. Something along the lines of ‘Awful. Terrible. Oh, God, I feel so bad for what I did in this past life.’ That would surely have earned me a few brownie points.
But instead I growled, ‘It feels fucking great. Those heretic bastards got what they deserved. I only wish I could have killed more of them.’
Actually, I wasn’t quite that strong. I toned down the Crusader’s bloodthirsty rant. A bit. But it still did not go down well.
Our final night we spent in a robotel, one of the French ‘Mr Bed’ chain of hotels near Montpellier. Everything was automated and we didn’t meet another human being. But when the security code number to enter our room appeared as ‘666’, I kid you not, you can imagine how I felt.
I wondered what would happen next. Would the automatic sprinklers suddenly turn on in a reprise of her wedding day? Or a French Crusader movie appear on our TV screen with a further Torquemada-style sermon of hate? Thankfully, no, that was it.
The relationship was over and even at the time I saw the funny side. It’s not every day you get dumped for something you did eight hundred years ago! She left her job running the wine bar and decided to be a ‘trolly dolly’ next (to use her words): a female flight attendant.
But the Muse had not finished with me yet. She really wanted me to visit Najac and I was having none of it. Whatever the strange adventure meant, I could figure it all out from the comfort of my house in Colchester. Najac was a town in the middle of nowhere, it would be very expensive to get there, and I had far better things to do with my time, so there was absolutely no way I was going there.
Guess who won?