Liars, Rogues and Thieves

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland—a specialist in psycholinguistics, whatever that may be—is a chilling account of a group of strangers forced to flee together from the ravages of the Black Plague that struck England in 1348. Advertised as a reinterpretation of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, it has little in common with that great chronicle other than being structured as a journey during which some of the travelers tell their tales. In this instance, however, the tales are primarily a fictional device for filling in their backgrounds. That said, the novel is a fascinating narrative of what the arrival of the plague on England’s shores signified. A large portion of the population died and abject fear took over the country. Maitland creates a believable portrait of life in a country still largely rural in nature that does not make one long for the past, which she portrays as brutal, diseased and filthy. The novel puts paid to the myth of the medieval world as a place of minstrels, castles and Christmas feasts. Although it uses some of the same devices, Company of Liars is head and shoulders above the usual “medieval world come to life” novel.
The travellers’ tale is told by Camelot, a seller of relics who ends up leading the disparate group of pilgrims, most of whom either dislike or distrust each other, as they wend their way across England, the plague always on their heels or even ahead of them, always forcing them to rethink their route. His fellow travelers include a young couple expecting a baby, two Italian musicians, a young man with a swan’s wing for an arm, and a distinctly unsettling very blond little girl with a nasty habit of knowing what is about to occur, usually something terrible, usually death. Every one of these refugees from the mainstream has a secret to keep, all of which are divulged in time. Many of them come to a bad end so all in all it’s a grim tale, but very readable. Camelot’s secret is told only at the end, and is the least convincing in that it seems like too handy an end to the novel’s journey, a journey which, like Chaucer’s before it mimics man’s progress through life. A pilgrimage is a very handy metaphor around which to build a novel and Maitland makes good use of it.