Historical ‘Labyrinth’

The author is the respected co-founder of the Orange Prize for fiction, a Trustee of Arts and Business, Arts and Kids and the Arts Council of England, South East and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was named European Woman of Achievement for her contribution to the arts – and the presenter of various BBC arts programmes.

Bearing all that in mind, one can be reasonably sure Kate Mosse knows her subject inside and out, especially since, for part of each year, she lives in Carcassonne where this adventure quasi-historical novel is set.

Labyrinth can’t help being compared to the world-wide best-seller and film The Da Vinci Code because it, too, is partly concerned with the search for the Grail. The book begins in the present with Alice Tanner, a volunteer spending part of her holiday in France in an archaeological dig in the Pyrenees. She is alone, high on the mountainside, digging and scraping away when she spots something glinting under a large boulder. Ignoring the professional archaeologist’s rule that should she find anything of interest, she should call a trained archaeologist, she digs away under the boulder – which rolls down the mountainside, revealing a passage into a cave.

At this point any sensible person would have called on colleagues at the dig further down the mountain to explore the cave with her. She doesn’t. She explores with the help of a cigarette lighter, discovers a large chamber with a labyrinth pattern incised on the stone roof, two skeletons lying in a shallow grave, one wearing a ring with the same labyrinth pattern incised on the inside. She hears someone coming, panics, drops the lighter, trips, falls and passes out.

Alice dreams – hallucinates? – falling through time to the Thirteenth Century, to 17-year-old, young bride Alais, living in the Cathar stronghold of Languedoc, who, like her namesake of 2005, disobeys her father’s orders to never venture out of the castle alone to pick herbs by the river in the early morning. She discovers a dead body floating in the river. While on her way back to the castle, she is hit on the head and passes out – and not for the last time, since both Alice and Alais seem determined to flout all warnings that what they are doing is dangerous – with predictable results. Indeed, I wondered how they survived so many knock-out blows in the course of this mammoth 693-page novel.

But, back to the Grail. Her father gives Alais a book, one of a trilogy that, brought together, will unmask the secrets of the Grail. But no – this is not the Holy Grail of the Dan Brown book – that legend says was guarded by the Cathars. This Grail is much older, pre-dating the Christian era.

The Cathars, or Albigensians, as they were also known, were a Christian sect opposed to the corruptions of the Catholic Church – as it was at that time. Pope Innocent III preached a Crusade against the Cathars to restore the authority of the Church. The Crusade of Christians against Christians was bloody. Kate Mosse spares us few horrors of the campaign against a background of betrayal and misplaced trust.

Oriane, Alais’ evil sister, seduces her brother-in-law who allows her into Alais’ bedroom where she steals one of the Labyrinth books and takes off for Chartres in the North, returning, some years later with a new husband and the Crusaders.

Meanwhile back in the 21st Century Alice has troubles of her own. First she’s accused of stealing the labyrinth ring. Then her friend Shelagh, a professional archaeologist who invited her to take part in the dig, is missing. Next Alice is hounded from pillar to post by the sinister Authi? in pursuit of the missing ring. The suave, influential Authi? is a power in local politics, and the Church; he may, or may not, be in cahoots with the equally sinister Marie-C?cile de Oradore in Chartres . . .

No, no, the plot is too complex, time travelling from the 21st to the 13th Centuries and back, too intricate for one to do more than hint at the story. On the plus side, the historical details in Labyrinth are well-researched, the writing, as one would expect from such a distinguished author, is very good. The characters lack depth, but that’s only to be expected in a book of this nature.

If you’re into Dan Brown, enjoy historical mystery thrillers spanning eight centuries – plus one character surviving from the Albigensian Crusade to the present day – you’ll find Labyrinth by Kate Mosse at Nigel Khan, bookseller, PricePlaza, Ellerslie Plaza, Gulf City and The Falls, Westmall.