Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen (17 page)

Reaching the courtyard where I had left Adelheid and Guda, I saw no trace of them. Sandals slapping the snow, I ran into the anchorage, my voice echoing through the abandoned cells that reeked of hopelessness and death. Had my sisters absconded while I was washing Jutta’s corpse? My heart raced, caught in a place between terror and elation. What if my girls had indeed broken free? Those brave souls. No doubt Cuno would hold me responsible and assign some unspeakable penance.

Unused to such freedom of exercise, I was soon winded, staggering through the warren of monastery buildings and courtyards in search of my sisters, part of me praying that I wouldn’t find them, that they were already miles away, never to see this place again. But in the cloister garden I found Guda, her fingers tracing the figure of a siren carved onto one of the pillars as a warning to the monks to shun the temptation of women.

“Hildegard.” She spun to face me. “I can’t find Adelheid.”

Bolder than Guda and I, Adelheid must have taken to the road. Fiercely intelligent, she had studied many a map. She would find her way, following the Nahe to the nearest hamlet where she might seek shelter. Of the three of us, she had the best chance, so practical and courageous was she. Then, as I held Adelheid’s face in my heart, another possibility occurred to me.

A novice monk came down the cloister walk, took one look at us, and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Brother, can you take us to the library?” I asked him.

The boy seemed flustered. I doubted that he had stood face to face with a woman, much less been addressed by one, since he’d arrived in this place. Though I was old enough to be his mother, Guda was lovely enough to make him blush. Stammering and blinking, he reeled off the directions to the library before backing away, beating his retreat without giving me a chance to thank him.

“He might be shy, but he’s not bad looking,” Guda whispered with a smothered giggle.

Turning a corner, we mounted a stairway. I felt as weak as a convalescent, my muscles wasted from the confines of my prison. How could I even contemplate life outside this place if I could barely manage to climb a single flight of stairs?

At last we reached the door to the sanctum that housed the many books that had kept me from going mad. Guda opened the door and stepped through, tugging me behind her as she flew to the glassed window that looked over the abbey walls to the winding Nahe River below. Tears moved down my face at my first glimpse of the outside world in three decades. How my eyes feasted on the forested hills stretching as far as I could see. The emperor himself wouldn’t have been able to pry me from that window, but finally Guda did.

“Hildegard, there’s Adelheid.”

Our sister sat with Herodotus’s
Histories
open before her. Oblivious to everything else, she was in the transports of ecstasy, her mind wholly engaged.

Brother Matthias, the librarian, appeared content to let her read to her heart’s desire while he contemplated the miracle of the woman at his table.

When the bells rang for None, we dragged ourselves back over the shattered threshold of our anchorage to observe the Divine Office, the three of us kneeling behind the screen as though nothing had changed. But as we sang the psalms, Guda’s voice rang out with an exuberance that reminded me of a reeling lark.

Adelheid elbowed her. “Careful,” she whispered. “We’re meant to be mourning.”

Afterward, as we shared our sparse meal, I told my sisters of my discussion with Cuno.

“So after Jutta’s buried, they’ll just brick us up again?” Adelheid’s voice shook.

When I saw the fury on her face, I feared she would indeed run away, but this time the picture of her exodus was far from romantic. How easily she could freeze or starve in that winter forest.

“I’ll find a way, I promise you,” I told them.

“You’re powerless,” Adelheid said. “Cuno will do what he likes.”

“We must elect a new magistra,” said Guda, as though anxious to keep us from quarreling.

I looked at Adelheid, her face alight with brilliance going to waste. “I would vote for you, sister. At a real nunnery, you might have become a great abbess.”

“No, Hildegard,” she said. “You are our magistra. Who else is there?”

Guda took my hand and kissed it. I quaked to see the trust in her eyes—she seemed to truly believe I had the power to end our cap-tivity.

O
N
J
UTTA’S FUNERAL
day, my hammering heart awakened me long before Lauds. This was to be our last day of freedom before they bricked up the anchorage once more.

Guda and Adelheid’s faces revealed that they, too, had hardly slept. From Compline to Matins, the three of us had held vigil, stitching by candlelight, at work on the secret plot I had hatched. This was to be the gamble of our lives. In preparation for this day, our one and only chance, I had implored Cuno to let us open Guda’s dowry chest, filled with damask, brocade, and golden wire.

“My lord abbot, allow my sisters and me to sew a banner to honor Jutta, our magistra who is now a saint in heaven.”

Outside our broken doorway, the courtyard brimmed with dignitaries. As our many visitors squeezed into the church for High Mass, I searched the crowd for Meginhard. Would he show himself? Part of me, I confess, longed to see Jutta’s tormentor brought low in shame, a wasted stick of a sinner. Let him cower under the glares that Volmar, Cuno, and I would hurl at him, we who knew his crime. Let him take that spiked penitent’s chain he had given his sister and wind it around his own neck to strangle himself. But the hypocrite kept out of sight, pleading ill health and hiding in his castle, though he had sent Cuno the gold to pay for Jutta’s burial.

Peering through the screen, I located my brother in the archbishop’s train. During his last visit, Rorich had revealed how Adalbert had come increasingly to rely upon him, making my brother one of his most trusted men. I prayed that this would work to my advantage, though I’d neither the opportunity nor the courage to confide to Rorich what I would do this day. For now, I remained hidden behind our screen, not daring to set foot outside. No, my sisters and I must appear as meek as mice until we made our move. Only an hour or two remained.

The Margravine von Stade approached the screen, her arm entwined around her only daughter, a girl with black hair rippling to her waist. Now widowed, the lady was richer than ever and her own mistress with no husband or master. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth betrayed her age of forty-one, but her ice-blue eyes were as piercing as I remembered them.

“Sister Hildegard, please accept my condolences.” She sounded restrained, no doubt owing to the somber occasion. How was she to know that her Christmas visit would coincide with Jutta’s funeral? She had set sail down the Elbe and the Rhine before the news of Jutta’s passing could reach her. “Your magistra was fortunate to have so loyal a disciple.”

“Lady, I am unworthy of your praise.” I bowed my head lest she read in my eyes how disloyal I truly was.

“This is my daughter, Richardis.” She drew the girl at her side closer to the screen.

In her younger days, the margravine had been a beauty, but this thirteen-year-old was a jewel. She stood slim and straight, and her dark blue eyes had depths in them, like the starry sapphires encircling her white throat. No cloistered life for her, I reckoned. Her beauty and title, coupled with her family’s riches, would make her the most desirable bride in Saxony.

“It was good of you to come so far to meet your kinswomen,” I said to the girl.

She only stared at me and said nothing.

As if to cover her daughter’s discourtesy, the margravine spoke in a rapid, breathless voice. “Her brother, my second son, Hartwig, is the newly elected Archbishop of Bremen.”

“What an honor,” I murmured.

Her son couldn’t be much older than twenty, which left me to wonder what role the margravine’s money and influence had played in his appointment. At that, I withdrew from the screen so that Guda and Adelheid could greet their godmother. Though my sisters offered their warmest greetings to their beautiful young cousin, Richardis remained silent, her eyes downcast. The girl was either painfully shy or dreadfully rude.

“Sister Hildegard!” The margravine called me back to the screen.

The lady’s eyes couldn’t quite meet mine, but her daughter gawked at me shamelessly, in harsh examination, as if to uncover what sort of person I was. Could she tell that I was less grieved at Jutta’s passing than terrified about my sisters’ future? Could she sense that my stomach filled with ice when I thought what my sisters and I must do in the next hours? That child had the eyes of an inquisitor. What a strange young person. With her youth, beauty, and good fortune, she should have been sanguine and light of heart.

“There is a private matter I must discuss with you,” the margravine told me.

“Tomorrow, noble lady.” I bent my head in apology. “We must make ready for our magistra’s last rites.”

When my sisters and I emerged from our prison to join the procession of mourners, the margravine and her daughter gaped, their hands cupped to their mouths. Cuno froze, as if God had turned him into a statue. Prior Egon’s face purpled, his neck thickening like a mastiff’s. Archbishop Adalbert’s eyes flamed with astonishment. When my brother’s gaze met mine, it was as though he were staring at another woman, for I had become a brand-new person.

This was our gamble, our way of engraving ourselves forever in the assembly’s memory, so that we could never be forgotten, never again be consigned to dust and a quiet, slow death. Even if we lost the battle, this moment would live forever. The legend of our deed would endure.

My sisters and I had shed our black Benedictine habits and donned the jewel-colored damask from Guda’s dowry trunk. As well as sewing the banner in Jutta’s honor, thus keeping our promise to Cuno, we had wrought gowns for ourselves grand enough to grace the margravine’s court. We were brides of Christ—why should we not adorn ourselves for our Bridegroom? Like the maidens of Saint Ursula, we processed unveiled, our hair flowing long and free, crowned in circlets of woven gold wire that Guda had fashioned into the shapes of lambs and doves. I will never forget how lovely Guda looked with her golden hair and emerald gown, or how Adelheid shone with her wise brown eyes and her gown of deepest garnet. Even I was majestic, clad in amethyst, my flaxen hair falling nearly to my waist.
We are daughters of the King.
I smiled at Volmar’s transfixed face.

My vision of the consecrated virgins rejoicing in the arms of Ecclesia was made real, my two companions radiant, their faces glowing in the December chill. The revelation of their beauty left the monks reeling, unable to utter a word of censure. Looking at the men’s awestruck faces, I sensed they saw their dead Jutta restored. They beheld the vision of that lovely maiden who had come to their lonely abbey three decades ago. Jutta’s resurrection blazed before their eyes.

The assembly hardly seemed to breathe as my sisters and I gathered around Jutta’s coffin, lined with lead so none could smell her corruption and decay. While Adelheid and Guda joined hands, I held aloft the banner that we had sewn and embroidered with roses and lilies, doves and hinds, apples and pomegranates, rivers and trees. Our breath turned to mist in the cold air.

To mark our magistra’s death, we three sang the songs of life that I had composed during our endless captivity. At the pounding center of my heart, I held my image of the Lady at the axis of the wheel of creation, the Virgin and matrix from whose body our salvation proceeded.
I bore you from the womb before the morning star.
Everything she touched greened and bloomed, even in this corpse-cold end of the year. The verdant branch that awakened all life, she unveiled my eyes to the eternal paradise that had never fallen.

This was our song for Jutta’s passing.

O viridissima virga ave
Hail, greenest branch,
brought forth on the breeze of prayers.

You flourish among your fronds,
hail, hail to you,
The warmth of the sun keeps you moist
like the scent of balsam.

A beautiful flower flourished in you
and gave odor to all scents
that were barren.

You are the reason the heavens bestowed dew upon the turf,
and the whole earth was made joyful
because its flesh
brought forth grain,
and because the birds of heaven
made their nests on it.

Then there grew food for us mortals
and great rejoicing at the banquet.
O sweet Virgin,
no joy is lacking in you.

Eve rejected all these things.
Now again be praised to the highest.

With my entire soul I embraced the living, nourishing power that Jutta had scorned.

As the last note of our song died down, the enchantment ebbed. Suddenly I was standing in the cold, dressed only in thin silk and linen, my jaw clenched to keep from shivering. Guda looked pale and uncertain, while Adelheid’s face was unreadable. What we had done—making a mockery of the Rule of Saint Benedict and humiliating our abbot in front of the Archbishop of Mainz—could never be undone. We would have to face the consequences, whatever they might be.

Regaining his composure, Cuno led our procession into the church, where he sang his beloved’s Requiem Mass, his voice stretched high and thin in grief. The monks bore Jutta’s coffin to the chapter house where they laid her to eternal rest beneath a carved stone slab.

Seizing my only chance, I stood before Cuno, my head unbowed, and spoke my will before the Archbishop of Mainz. Before my brother, Canon of Mainz Cathedral. Before the Margravine von Stade, aunt and godmother to my sister nuns and the abbey’s greatest living patron, her donations exceeding even those of Meginhard von Sponheim.