Kate Mosse Adds A Fictitious Place to Real Places in The Winter Ghosts

Summary: Kate Mosse adds a fictitious place to real places in The Winter Ghosts, historical fiction novel about Good Christians in 14th-century southwestern France.

"God talks to human beings through many vectors: through each other, through organized religion, through the great books of those religions, through wise people, through art and music and literature and poetry, but nowhere with such detail and grace and color and joy as through creation. When we destroy a species, when we destroy a special place, we're diminishing our capacity to sense the divine, understand who God is and what our own potential is." Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., April 19, 2023, Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts.

“And there’s many people out there who want us to move to the next planet already and I’m like, hang on, let’s not give up on this planet yet," William, Prince of Wales, July 31, 2023, Sorted Food food truck, London, England, United Kingdom.

Languedoc ("language of [Occitan oc for] yes") accommodates one fictitious place, Nulle village, and quite a few real places in The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. Graphic art by Brian Gallagher accommodates the fictitious Nulle and real places, such as la Tour du Castella in the chapter Tarascon-sur-Ariège. That chapter acknowledges other real places addressed by central character Frederick Watson with its Montebello 1915 champagne bottle and glass.; 1747 map of Languedoc: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kate Mosse adds a fictitious place to real places in The Winter Ghosts, historical fiction novel about Good Christians, as Albigensians and Cathars (from Greek καθαροί, “pure ones”), in 14th-century southwestern France.

Front pages bear south, east, west of Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, as first-broached places Ax, Foix, Tarascon eastward from Ariège river and fictitious Nulle, real Toulouse westward. Toulouse configures Place du Capitole (“Square of the Capitol”), rue des Pénitents Gris (“Street of the Repentant Grays”) and rue du Taur (“Street of the Bull”). Pink-bricked Toulouse domiciles cathedral of Saint-Sernin (“Saint Saturnin [died 257]”), fictitious Librairie Saurat (“bookstore smoke”) and ruelles (“streetlets”) northwest of Tarascon (“dragon”) in Pyrenees (“fruit-stone”) foothills.

Tarascon entertains Avenue de Foix (“Avenue of Fox”); boulangerie (“bakery”), café, Grand Hôtel de la Poste, mercerie (“haberdashery”), pâtisserie (“pastry-shop”) businesses; and Pont Vieux (“bridge old”).

Quai de l’Ariège (“wharf of the gold-bearing [river]”) figures before quartier Mazel-Viel (“neighborhood slaughterhouse old”), cloche-mur (“bell tower-wall”) and place des Consuls (“Square of the Consuls”).

La Tour du Castella (“the Tower of the Fortress”) guides Frederick Watson to quartier Saint-Roch (“neighborhood of Saint-Rock” [1295?/1348?-Aug. 15/16, 1327?/1376?/1379?) and Château Piquemal (“castle proud-one?”). Saint-Rock neighborhood houses quartier de la Gare (“neighborhood of the train-station”) even as Faubourg Sainte-Quitterie (“outside-town Saint-Red-One”) has bar crowds whose future focus heads Freddie Vicdessos-ward. Saint-Rock neighborhood houses quartier de la Gare (“neighborhood of the train-station”) even as Faubourg Sainte-Quitterie (“outside-town Saint-Red-One”) has bar crowds whose future focus heads Freddie Vicdessos-ward.

Kate Mosse in The Winter Ghosts joins fictitious place Nulle (“nobody”), with place de l’Église, bistro-café, pharmacie, tabac, and such real places as Vicdessos (“village above”).

Telegraphlessness kindles message-carrying keeping hotel M & Mme Galy (“Mr. and Mrs. Rooster”) boarders in Vicdessos knowing about Ax-les Thermes (“water-the hot springs”) and vice versa.

The place de l’Église leads, for la fête de Saint-Étienne (“the feast of Saint-Stephen” [AD 5-34]), to Nulle Ostal (“townhall”), whose below-ground tunnel leads westward outside. Real Montaillou (“mount of the springs”?), southward of Loire Valley (“sediment, silt”), mandates one-day move from fictitious Nulle and to real Pamiers (“latest, nestling, youngest”?). Eastward from Nulle village the Pyrenean foothills niche the Lombrives (“shadowy”) and the Niaux (“snow”?) caves, from which Fabrissa and Frederick Watson note Roc de Sédour.

Two paths overlap on Nulle-area westward ledging, observable from an eastward dewpond and orientable to caves offering Cathars sanctuary, in The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse.

Miglòs (“country of fox[es]”?), as a place that perseveres amid mining-punished mountainsides, preserves no path to the cave that provides Frederick Watson an ancient OccItan parchment.

Vicdessos valley quarters such villages as the real Allat, Capoulet-et-Junac and Lapège even as it queues between the fictitious Nulle village and the real Foix hospital. No caves relieved Flanders’ Passchendaele, Ypres; France’s Arras, Loos, Somme; France’s Boar’s Head Hill, Ferme du Bois, Richebourg-l’Avoué; France’s Le Vernet; France’s Pas-de-Calais, upper-Loire Valley, Verdun. Subverted sanctuary saddens Freddie sheltering Chichester Cathedral, East Dean, Eastgate Square, Fortnum & Mason’s, Lavant, London East End, Lyric Theatre, Midhurst, Piccadilly, Savile Row, Sussex souvenirs.

The fictitious place Nulle tells for 14th-century real places, still 20th-century real 600 years later, the true tragedy that Kate Mosse transmits in The Winter Ghosts.

Lombrives, Niaux and Sabart caves affirm themselves as allied within an ancient cave system even as only Lombrives and Niaux caves allow back-and-forth access to one another since ancient times. Ancient human access never allowed anything antagonistic to that access even as The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse memorializes what amounted to fatal antagonism to Cathar access in the 14th century; Brno Museum's replica of bisons from the Black Hall (Salon noir) of the Niaux cave: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Languedoc ("language of [Occitan oc for] yes") accommodates one fictitious place, Nulle village, and quite a few real places in The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. Graphic art by Brian Gallagher accommodates the fictitious Nulle and real places, such as la Tour du Castella in the chapter Tarascon-sur-Ariège. That chapter acknowledges other real places addressed by central character Frederick Watson with its Montebello 1915 champagne bottle and glass.; 1747 map of Languedoc: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1747_La_Feuille_Map_of_Languedoc,_France_-_Geographicus_-_Languedoc-lafeuille-1747.jpg

Lombrives, Niaux and Sabart caves affirm themselves as allied within an ancient cave system even as only Lombrives and Niaux caves allow back-and-forth access to one another since ancient times. Ancient human access never allowed anything antagonistic to that access even as The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse memorializes what amounted to fatal antagonism to Cathar access in the 14th century; Brno Museum's replica of bisons from the Black Hall (Salon noir) of the Niaux cave: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niaux,_bisons.JPG

For further information:

Dictionnaire de l’Occitan Médiéval. DOM en ligne. Munich, Germany: Bavarian Academy of Sciences..
Available @ https://dom-en-ligne.de/dom.php?lhid=4dqN83calp4xbiz5Nsx8Wu

Lepage, Denis. 2024. Avibase – Bird Checklists of the World France.” Avibase – The World Bird Database > Checklists > Avibase – Bird Checklists of the World > Europe > France.
Available @ https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=FR

Marriner, Derdriu. 19 January 2024. "Kate Mosse Assembles Fictitious and Real People in The Winter Ghosts." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2024/01/kate-mosse-assembles-fictitious-and.html

Mosse, Kate. October 2009. The Winter Ghosts. London UK: Orion Publishing Group.