The Crossway Page 5

  In the final days of January, I followed the river upstream. The water was high, with the rubbery look of storm surge. At one point I watched a school of plastic canoes pull loose in the current and wheel away. Otherwise I remember little of the drenched villages that lined the valley, but I remember how the hillsides became steeper and more thickly wooded, and how, when the rain ceased, the bare tree branches glistened.

  Hiking to the source of the Loue I met no one and started talking to myself in strange accents, anxious to fill the quiet. I was in hermit country now.

  The Jura have attracted solitaries since the earliest days of the faith. In the first century the range was home to St Beatus, the mythic apostle of Switzerland. In the fifth century it was the brothers Romanus and Lupicinus, known as the Jura Fathers. And in the seventh century saints Imerius, Ursicinus and Fromundus settled here. To the medieval mind the mountains were godless places, where creation had been rent open by the sin of man. And they were dangerous too, for despite the conversion of the local Alemanni tribes, the Jura still held pockets of witchcraft and heresy. But, by making a home in these mountains, the hermits made them holy.

  Switzerland’s most popular pilgrimage site – Einsiedeln Abbey – was founded on the cell of a ninth-century anchorite called St Meinrad. The country’s patron saint, Brother Klaus, was also a solitary: a soldier and judge who left his wife and children in the year 1467 to live alone in the Ranft Gorge, where he preached peace to visiting noblemen.

  Many of these hermits – Beatus, Imerius and Brother Klaus – realized their calling while on pilgrimage. As I walked through the Loue Valley, I began to understand why. Approaching the heights, my damp, despondent state turned into enchantment. In the early hours of the morning, I watched sunlight catch in webs of frosted bracken, while frozen puddles scattered the dawn like smashed gemstones. Later that day, nearing the Swiss border, I saw the snow layering into script, writing letters and words on the mountainside. If I stared at the inscriptions for long enough, they spelt out the names of people I knew. The winter was lonely, yes, but the solitude was also a spell, and deep in the mountains it consecrated the days.

  Then I climbed into a snowstorm and these thoughts fled.

  It was the first day of February, a Friday. That morning, when I left Pontarlier, the snow was falling fast. I walked on cross-country skiing routes, but made little progress in the knee-high powder. The stitching on my left boot was loose, the lip letting in water and the skin on my toes sponging. Also, my waterproofs were leaking where the fabric had ripped, back in the Champagne region.

  After two hours I turned out of the woods and onto a road. The tarmac was gritted and the traffic light, but now there was no protection from the weather. As I approached the border, the snow came down harder, corridor villages of hotels and chalets disappearing in the flurry.

  An empty road led to the border, where a sign welcomed me to Switzerland. A second sign, an hour on, marked the highpoint of the pass: Col des Étroits, Alt. 1153m. Then the road dipped, the wind droned, and great bursts of powder filled the sky. What a storm it was, what a spectacle! Never have I seen the air so dense with snow, so many thousands of flakes, like a rabbling mob, like a revolution. L’Auberson, Sainte-Croix – where were these villages? I glimpsed only confused masses of grey, which I guessed were wide-roofed houses, and big, blurred outlines that might have been apartment blocks, and clocks with yellow faces beaming through the blizzard, and distant headlights moving this way and that – and otherwise nothing but the dancing air.

  Beyond Sainte-Croix the storm lifted. As the weather cleared, the landscape reassembled. Six hundred metres below lay the Swiss Plateau, a patchwork of dark soil and green shoots. Two days’ walk away the plateau sank towards Lake Geneva, but up here its chequered farmland seemed to hang from the horizon. Standing there, I felt a sudden rush of victory, as if I had triumphed in a race. France was finished. Nine countries to go.

  A footpath led off the pass, switching back and forth as it descended through pine forest. Snow wadded the forest floor, which meant it was possible to slide between the switchbacks, catching at branches to slow myself. A few times I skidded and tumbled into the underbrush. Halfway down I tripped and had to run to keep my balance. Once I started running, I could not stop, so I ran and I ran and I ran off the mountain.

  Midday. The churches in Lausanne rang twelve. I listened to the sound settle over the city: a thud before each strike, a high-pitched clanging, a clatter like falling crockery, and then the bass-note chime.

  The city was built on the northern slopes of Lake Geneva, its streets sinking downhill in ridges and gullies and ending with a broad terrace that looked out onto the port. From the terrace I could see sailing boats moored in neat little lines, their tarpaulin deck covers coloured like bunting. Every boat seemed to shiver with the ringing of bells. The villages on the coast were also ringing, and I heard the churches of Saint-Prex and Saint-Sulpice, of Pully, Lutry and Bourg-en-Lavaux – a wall of bellchime sweeping across the water. Soon the water was quaking, its surface rippled with sound. When the chiming reached the far side of the lake, it echoed off the Chablais Alps, and they too seemed to quake, bells pealing from chambers deep inside each summit.

  I remained on the terrace until the churches were quiet and the water at rest. Then I walked east along the shore.

  The next two days were the most beautiful of the winter. The mountains surrounding Lake Geneva reminded me of theatre galleries: the scenery a painted backdrop, the water a polished stage. But, as I circled the lake, I grew more and more eager to start climbing. The Alps were near; Italy was near; I could imagine skipping the hundred kilometres to the border in an hour or so.

  There were parks beside the port, their footpaths rimed and their playgrounds pillowed with snow. There were villas as well, mock-Second Empire mansions with clipped lawns gliding towards a beach or private jetty. Some gardens had pavilions for summer parties – brick cabins with leaded windows, or carved temples with fluted domes – but everything was shut for the off season.

  Leaving the city, I rose into a steep region called the Lavaux. Nine centuries ago an army of Cistercian monks terraced these hillsides, creating the Swiss wine country. In places the terraces were no wider than a double row of vines, clamped by walls of close-cut stone. Stone gutters carried the snowmelt off the upper slopes, and the paths between the villages were paved. The villages themselves resembled cakes, each house a slab of pink or cream sponge, their gables layered in icing and their windowsills dusted with sugar. A railway track divided the villages from the lake, and every fifteen minutes a train slid by in a puff of snow, robin red and quiet as a sleigh.

  That afternoon I came off the vineyards and walked by the shore, stopping at the resort town of Vevey and sleeping in the basement of the Église Notre-Dame. Snow fell through the night, and it was snowing when I woke to leave, but at seven o’clock the sky cleared. Then I stepped out into a cloudless dawn. The air was so fine, the water so still, that the laketop looked like metal sheeting, while the mountains were shining plates of armour.

  In Montreux old ladies wearing sunglasses and fur tottered down the promenade, past snow-blown palm trees and the forecourts of expensive hotels. The doors were locked at the Grand Hôtel Suisse-Majestic and the curtains drawn at Le Montreux Palace, but a woman in a blue gown stood on the balcony of the Hôtel du Grand Lac, staring at the silver light.

  From here the Via Francigena turned south, leaving Lake Geneva on the banks of the Rhône. All day I followed the river, and by teatime it was snowing again. Come evening thick flakes battered my hood. The bursting impatience I had felt in Lausanne was now a reluctant resolve, pressing on in spite of myself.

  Eleven hours after leaving Vevey, I limped into the abbey town of Saint-Maurice. The guest master, Fr Pélissier, greeted me in the abbey’s entrance hall. He was tall and gaunt, wearing black robes and a braided belt. When I asked if I could stay the night, he winced and spoke in a whisper. The br
others were on retreat for the first weekend of Lent, he said. No one was allowed to stay. I told him that I was crossing the Alps on foot, hoping to make Rome for Easter. Just one night. Please.

  He winced a second time and said that there might be a bed in the guesthouse.

  I was given a small room on the second floor and went straight to sleep, but around eleven I woke to a brassy, woozy noise. An orchestra was tuning in the square opposite the abbey, and coloured lights teased my curtain. Looking from the window, I saw the town hall wrapped in banners and bows, and tables laid out below. Families stood at the tables, tubby in too many jumpers, their faces pinched with cold. Most of the children wore costumes, and I counted a fairy, a vampire, two princesses and a small team of superheroes. Then I remembered the date: Friday 8 February. This weekend was carnival.

  When the orchestra started playing, I got dressed and stepped outside. Men with glowing cheeks stood in the streets. One of them – a middle-aged man in Alpine folk dress – took my hands and began mumbling. At first I thought he was speaking Italian. Then I wondered if it was Romansh. Finally I realized it was Latin.

  I nodded and laughed, as though I understood, until the man smiled and sprawled off. When he came to a bench, he stretched out on the seat, pulling snow over himself like a blanket. ‘In manus tuas, Domine,’ he repeated. ‘In manus tuas, Domine.’

  Fr Pélissier did not believe my story about the carnival. Instead he glared at me without speaking. This was during breakfast, while we sat together in the refectory. Three or four abbey staff had gathered at the end of our table, but otherwise we were alone. Each time I finished a piece of bread, the guest master pushed one more towards my plate, a look of suffering on his face. The brothers were fasting for the day.

  I was onto the last piece when a second priest arrived. He was the same height as Fr Pélissier, but twice the width, with squashed eyes and a teddy-bear grin. ‘Fr Claude is ill,’ he said, piling a tray with food. ‘He is sick. He must have breakfast.’ When the priest noticed me, he put down the tray and introduced himself. His name was Max. He asked where I was from and began speaking English with a regal accent: ‘Welcome, welcome, how do you do? You are here to see our treasures, the secrets of St Maurice?’

  ‘He’s leaving,’ said Fr Pélissier, standing from the table.

  I asked if there was time to see the abbey treasures, but the guest master gave another suffering smile. Too hard, he thought. Not possible. Then, without waiting for a reply, he took my arm and marched me from the refectory.

  In the entrance hall Fr Pélissier asked the weather forecast from the woman at the front desk. Snow today, snow tomorrow, perhaps snow all week, she replied. The guest master winced and warned that I would not be able to make Italy on foot. However, there was a bus twice daily through the tunnel under the pass.

  I told him that I would wear snowshoes and use the ski routes instead.

  ‘Too hard,’ Fr Pélissier repeated, turning back towards the refectory. ‘Not possible.’

  When I opened the door, snow was frothing in the square outside. But, as I picked up my rucksack, I heard my name being called. It was Max, glancing over his shoulder and hurrying into the hall. Then he raised a finger to his lips and motioned me to follow, leading the way across a stone courtyard and up a stone staircase.

  ‘I’m sorry about Fr Pélissier,’ Max said when we came to his cell. ‘He doesn’t like guests.’

  ‘I thought he was the guest master.’

  ‘The abbot doesn’t like guests either. So he puts Pélissier in charge – you see?’

  Max made coffee from the chrome machine on his desk. It sat between a pair of designer speakers and an Apple desktop. More Apple products were stacked on a table, as well as a gleaming stereo and the breakfast tray claimed for Fr Claude. Meanwhile, gadgets blinked from the bookshelves of German literature and snow battered against the windows.

  ‘This is my idea,’ Max went on, handing me a cappuccino. ‘You stay here until the storm is finished. You eat in my room, you sleep in the dormitories, and in the afternoon, when Pélissier is praying, then you can see the treasures.’ His face ballooned into a smile. ‘Take the day off! Rome will still be there tomorrow.’

  So that’s what I did.

  Max’s cell was a box of tricks. His bed folded away to give space for a kitchen worktop, with a microwave, fridge, and miniature hotplate. The members of St Maurice were canons rather than monks; Max insisted he had not taken a vow of poverty. Nonetheless, his deep-fat fryer was definitely against the rules. ‘The other priests don’t know! When they ask how I have chips, I say that I prayed very hard.’

  The abbey was also a boys’ boarding school, and the two institutions were connected by a glass passage. Half-term coincided with carnival, meaning the school was currently closed. After coffee we went to look for a bed, Max telling ghost stories as he tiptoed upstairs. When we came to a deserted dormitory, he whipped open the cupboards of clean sheets, shouting: ‘Pélissier!’

  At lunchtime my host fetched another tray of food. Returning to the cell, his face was flushed. ‘The guest master wants to know why Fr Claude is so hungry. He suspects!’

  While I ate the meal, Max listed the abbot’s injustices, complaining about how many classes he had to teach and how often he had to pray. He also asked me to say odd words in English – mushroom or peculiar – and, as I rolled my mouth round the vowels, his features puckered pink with laughter.

  When lunch was finished, Max showed me round. We looked at the church, the cloister, the sacristy and the library, my guide pulling down pristine copies of Nietzsche and Marx from the restricted shelves. I learnt that the Abbey of St Maurice was the oldest religious house in the Alps, but in the seventeenth century it was flattened by an avalanche. Although a new abbey – the current one – was built next door, the remains of the original were still there, forming a maze of pitted foundations. Metal nets hung from the cliffs above, protecting the site from rockfall and forming a sheltered space, a no-man’s-land, neither sacred nor profane. The plain of a thousand martyrs, Max called it, the earth flinted and full of bones.

  At the centre of the site was a chapel to St Maurice. The saint was born in Thebes in the middle of the third century and commanded a legion of Christian soldiers in the Roman Army. The legion was posted to the Chablais Alps to drive out the local tribes, but before fighting they were ordered to make a sacrifice to the Emperor Maximian. They refused, because it was blasphemy, so as punishment the legion was decimated. The soldiers remained defiant, however, and so they were decimated again, and again – yet still they would not submit. In the end every one of them was executed.

  Ever since, St Maurice has been popular throughout the Carolingian kingdoms. Holy Roman Emperors were anointed in front of his altar at St Peter’s, while his sword and spurs were used in coronation ceremonies for Austria’s royal family, and his lance was said to be the same spear that pierced the side of Christ – now lying on a crushed red cushion in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace. A first abbey was established at the site of the martyrdom in the year 515, guarding a pinch-point in the Rhône Valley. Pilgrims stopped off here as they climbed towards the Great Saint Bernard Pass, the grandest bringing gifts. These gifts were now kept in a vault, along with the relics of the martyred legion.

  ‘We are very proud of our treasures,’ said Max, opening the cylinder lock and the metal-clad door. ‘In September we parade them round the town and bishops come all the way from Egypt to join us. But each year they are disappointed, because there is no skiing in Saint-Maurice.’

  Inside were ten or twelve display cases with glass screens. My host pointed out a jewelled pitcher given to the monks by Charlemagne, a thorn from Christ’s crown left by the saint king Louis IX, a carved chest where St Sigismund’s bones were preserved with those of his children, and a silver bust holding St Candide’s skull.

  Before we left, Max peered into the corners of the room. ‘In case anybody is hiding,’ he said. ‘Once a man w
as locked in here and we forgot all about him.’

  ‘He died?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘But that’s terrible.’

  ‘Oh no.’ His face puckered pink again. ‘You see, he was a martyr.’

  That evening my host made too many chips. After the meal, while I sat around feeling fat and content, he searched online for video clips of the Proms. Then we watched recordings of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, Max humming the tune and waving an imaginary Union Jack. He had always wanted to see London, yet when I told him to visit me one day, he went quiet, saying that he was un pantouflard – a word I did not know. ‘Here is my home,’ he explained. ‘I don’t like to leave my home.’

  At ten Max accompanied me to the dormitories. We did not risk the lights, using a torch instead. When I realized I had left my notebook in his cell, I jogged back to collect it, but on my return Max was nowhere to be seen.

  The passage to the school was at the end of a corridor, forming a wing of the main courtyard. The moon was up, and panes of moonlight silvered the flagstone floor. Approaching the passage, I heard footsteps coming in my direction – not from the school, but from where the corridor turned a corner. At first I thought it was Max, though he moved with a bustle, and these paces were clipped. As I listened to the footsteps echoing forwards, my mouth dried out and my heart began to hammer. The closer they came, the more certain I was who they belonged to. Yet there was nowhere to hide, so I kept going.

  The guest master moved out from the shadows, his face pale, his hands white. He walked forwards, wincing, but did not say a word, and we passed one another in silence.

  My host had already crossed to the school. I found him in the games room, crouching behind a pool table. ‘Pélissier is here,’ he hissed. ‘He’s looking for us.’