In her U.S. fiction debut, “Company of Liars,” Karen Maitland takes her readers on a dark and mysterious odyssey through 14th-century England, a trip during which nothing is as it seems.
The year is 1348, and conditions in medieval Europe are quickly deteriorating. The black plague arrives portside and creeps inland, killing almost everyone in its path. Rain falls heavily for months, leaving the ground sodden, rivers flooded, crops destroyed and travel arduous for nine strangers.
Camelot, a one-eyed relic-peddler by trade and narrator of this tale, is traveling north to St. John Shorne’s Shrine to look for work and, of course, to get far away from the plague. At an inn in Thornfalcon, he meets Rodrigo, a minstrel, and his apprentice, Jofre. Rodrigo and Jofre are also looking for work after being asked to leave their previous estate.
Preferring his privacy, Camelot reluctantly allows Rodrigo and Jofre to accompany him to the shrine, knowing that once they make it there he can quickly go about his way. Camelot soon haphazardly acquires five more travelers to outrun the plague with the rest of them. His new companions include: Osmond, a painter; his pregnant wife, Adela; a temperamental magician called Zophiel; Pleasance, a woman with healing prowess; and Narigorm, a mysterious little girl who reads the runes.
In the story, reminiscent of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” the nine strangers embark on a long pilgrimage through the countryside. Maitland vividly depicts a bleak and destroyed landscape, conjuring up images of death-stricken towns where the few remaining citizens have angrily denounced God for their ill fortune: “The bodies of those too weak and hungry to walk lay dead beside the tracks. For food, which had been scarce for months, was daily growing harder to find, and those who had it were charging a king’s ransom for a handful of mildewed grain or some fragments of weevily dried fish that last year they would not have thought fit for pigs.”
“Once, half submerged in a sodden field, we saw the statue of Saint Florian, his face battered, his millstone tied around his neck. Since their saint was unable to protect them from the rains, the parishioners had stripped his statue of his scarlet cloak and golden halo, beaten him, and cast him out to face the elements. Many of the cottagers were no longer begging God for mercy; they were angry with Him. They felt betrayed — and did they not have good reason?”
To pass time, and in an attempt to distract themselves from the surrounding death, the travelers begin storytelling and, as the title suggests, it soon becomes apparent that each character is hiding something, some token from their past that would explain who they really are. One by one, secrets begin to unravel, and with each exposed character, something mysterious and tragic happens, causing the travelers to become suspicious of each other.
Camelot is particularly wary of the young Narigorm, the diviner of the group. Before each tragic event, Narigorm reads her runes and accurately predicts what is about to unfold. Camelot is afraid there is more to her than just a gift for seeing what is to come: “I knew I couldn’t blame the child; how could she have brought it about? She merely spoke what she read in the runes. Could she help it if the runes foretold ill fortune? Yet for all that, I did blame her. I felt somehow, though I did not know how, she was the instigator as well as the messenger.”
Revolving her story around religious practice and superstitious beliefs, Maitland describes a volatile country ruled by fear. “Company of Liars,” as with any good story, employs engaging dialogue, intriguing characters and building suspense.
Maitland’s greatest attribute, however, is her ability to illustrate the setting of plague- stricken Europe during the country’s darkest days, taking the reader as close to the plague as possible, even if it means detailing some fairly macabre death scenes.
With secrets spilling out until the very last page, “Company of Liars” makes for a compelling read and an up-close look at life in 14th century Europe.
Casey Lansinger is a Denver-based freelance writer.
Fiction
Company of Liars by Karen Maitland, $24
