Coming 2010!

Tracy Saunders'

new book

"COMPOSTELA"

Scroll down for a sneak peak.....

Two timelines - the first year of the 21st century, and 1000 years before - a woman finds herself torn between her love, her research, and a powerful bishop's obsessions.

Felix and Laura return to Santiago. Laura has a thesis to write and what place could be more atmospheric than the University of Santiago? The couple, who met while walking the Camino de Santiago, are deeply in love and should be blissfully happy. But as the Galician winter draws in, Laura begins to encounter strange visions in the streets of the old city. Voices tell her she should beware, but of what, and whom?  Confused and frightened, Laura becomes aware that she is pushing away the very love that she had once welcomed. Felix hits the Camino once more leaving Laura to enter the past, alone.

Against the backdrop of medieval Compostela, Diego Gelmirez  propels himself to prominence as the first archbishop of a growing diocese. Ambitious, shrewd and ruthless, Diego will go to any lengths to protect his cathedral, even to the point of challenging a queen.

In 2010, more than one quarter of a million pilgrims from all around the world are expected to make the pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. James. 

But how true is the Legend of Santiago? Who had the most to gain by promoting it? 

And who still does...?

Follow Tracy Saunders' research as she explores the making of a mythology.

www.pilgrimagetoheresy.blogspot.com

COMPOSTELA

A Novel of the Camino

Prologue

The First

“From this moment you will hear nothing outside of yourself except the sound of my voice.”

There is no more present, only the glow of the past which draws me like a lover’s smile. I am drowning in it, pleasantly.  It pulls me down, deeper, and deeper down. I am at home. I have returned…

“What are you wearing?”

“I’m not sure. It's soft: cotton perhaps?  Linen? No, soft wool. My feet are bare. The lights flicker and toss, caught up with human movement; they press close to me in the dance of shadows and fire, all around me. My feet? The packed earth is warm under them. My hands are raised up to the sky: no.  Not the sky, I don’t know… there seem to be arms above me…

“Arms? Human arms?”

“No, no. Trees!  They're the branches of trees.  They're close above and yet not close beside.  There are others around me…they are chanting, no, singing. Oh, what song! What singers! What voices from heaven could sing so sweetly and yet so sadly? Surely angels would weep in sweetest envy. Wait a minute.  I know this…I know this! Wait, wait…yes.  Yes! Of course…!

I am your door, Lord.  Open me and let me come home. ”

It is the song of Priscillian...!"

Dear Lord of our longing

Let me remove and let me be removed

Let me save and let me be saved

I want to sing; sing with me

I want to cry; cry with me

Adorn me, I crave you

I am a lamp for you,

 you who have eyes to see me

I am a door for you, who brings his spirit home…

We are few now his followers, where once we were thousands. These singers and dancers around my outstretched arms, they are my brothers, my sisters; the lovers of Priscillian who lies buried in our midst. And I feel the supporting souls of those long gone, their bodies arranged around this hill, this copse, this house of the granite of dear Galicia, this tomb of marble from far Alexandria, hidden from unfriendly and uncomprehending eyes.

The ceremony is over now. I cradle the Sacred Book in its leather wrappings.  I place it back in the stone from whence I have taken it, this time, and before, following in the ritual of those who have done so since the day our Master was brought to this place by Galla, his daughter and his faithful followers who lie sleeping beside him here too.  The night of loving prayer is drawing to a close, the torches extinguished; the songs too are packed away in secret.  We would not dare to sing them openly now, not now for almost two hundred years. Once we were tolerated.  But no more.

Wait..  What is this disturbance?  I know this girl, the daughter of  Hilderic. They are bringing her to me. Their faces are drawn with anxiety.  They are gesturing outside the wood with frantic hands and eyes. She is speaking too fast.

“She has just passed the hut of Pelayo the shepherd, not far from us here.”

“Pelayo? The hermit will not harm us; he is too afraid of the ghosts. He keeps away.”

“Not Pelayo!”  The girl is speaking, her breath almost spent for running.  “The riders! Bishops’ or King’s men. I know not which. Two of them perhaps three.... He brings them. They are coming!  Quickly!  You must all fly!  There is no time to waste. Our secret is a secret longer...”   “Five…

Four…

Three…

Two…

One...

Come to!”