Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen (6 page)

Though Jutta didn’t expect me to flagellate myself as she did, my hair shirt did it for me, nettling my back and chest until my skin bled and wept of its own accord. I thought I would never again know what it was not to hurt or ache or suffer cold and hunger.
God, take me. Just let me die.
Real death had to be better than this never-ending pretend death.

Jutta said the flesh was a thing to be abhorred. Suffering, she told me, purified the soul and purged it of sin. Indeed, our cell seemed arranged so that our bodies could be mortified every day and hour. Though we had a brazier to heat our inner chamber, I was always chilled, having to go barefoot even when snow dusted our courtyard. The Rule of Saint Benedict made us sleep in our separate pallets and forbade us to huddle together for warmth as I would have done at home, snuggling up to Walburga or my sisters on freezing nights. Hunger bit into me even more than the cold, leaving me to sob in my sleep and dream of plump pheasants crackling on the spit, of the warm honeyed wine that Walburga used to spoon into my mouth when I was ill.

“Hunger is your weakness,” Jutta said. “You are but a slave to the desires of the flesh.”

True saints, she insisted, could live on water and air alone. Fasting cured every disease. It dried up the bodily humors, put demons to flight, banished impure thoughts, cleared the mind, sanctified the body, and raised a person to the throne of God. Yet for all her lofty talk, there were bitter winter days when even she devoured every last crumb the monks gave her.

I never knew which side of herself Jutta would show me next. She could be merciless, upbraiding me for the sin of being unable to sit still through the hours of prayer. When Jutta told me I would burn in hell for fidgeting, I let out a shriek and tore through the tiny rooms and courtyard, banging around like a trapped bat until I winded myself. Yet even when I was a proper hellion, ripping in half a piece of the precious damask silk I was meant to be stitching, Jutta never raised a hand to strike me. Sometimes Jutta acted as though I weren’t even there. There were days when Jutta prayed herself into a swoon and lay like the dead for hours. Other times Jutta could act like the kindest soul I had ever met, teaching me to play her ten-string psaltery, patiently correcting my mistakes, and teaching me to sing in harmony with her so that our devotions became a thing of beauty that fed my soul even when I thought I was about to faint from hunger. Missing home in spite of herself, Jutta whispered about her life back in Sponheim—her dapple gray mare and merlin falcon—while we sewed altar cloths or mended the monks’ coarse wool habits. On the best days Jutta reached for her wax tablet and stylus, and taught me to read and write in Latin and in our native tongue, hour by hour and week by week, until at last the letters carved in wax came alive and sang inside my head.

One dark winter morning, near the beginning of the fast of Advent, when cheese was denied us and we lived on turnips, millet, and scraps of fish, Jutta refused to arise for Matins. Lauds came, and still she did not stir from her bed. I shook her shoulders, slapped her cheeks as hard as I dared, even sprinkled water on her, but Jutta only lay there, her eyes glazed and unseeing, lost in some stupor.

Panicking, I wondered if I should scream for help. What good would that do—the monks couldn’t enter the anchorage to help unless they tore down the wall. What if Jutta died and I was trapped here forever with her cold, rotting corpse?

Shrinking into the corner farthest away from Jutta’s motionless body, I made up stories in my head to keep myself from crying. Once there was an orphan. Her evil stepmother cast her out into the winter forest where the hapless child fell under the enchantment of a sorceress—a maiden of high birth who was as mad as she was beautiful. But now the witch lay bound by her own spells and if only the girl had the courage, she might escape. She must flee the enchantress’s shadowy hut and run into the farthest reaches of the forest. Deep in my heart, the path opened before me. I saw each ice-tipped branch, felt the snow crunching under my bare feet, the cold biting into my soles as I careened headlong, my arms outstretched, beseeching the angels and saints to come to my aid.
Save me. Save me.

Now came the Office of Prime and still Jutta didn’t move. She breathed, but her skin was clammy to the touch, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. I tore open the shutters and knelt at the screen to perform my devotions, the prayers tumbling dull and wooden off my tongue. My every muscle trembling, I clung to the screen and dared myself to break one of Jutta’s innumerable rules. After the office ended, instead of closing the shutters, I kept them wide open and gawked at the men as they shuffled out of the church. One novice monk remained behind to trim the candlewicks, moving on sandaled feet to each side altar. For a long while he lingered at the Lady Altar before going to that of our patron, Saint Disibod. He looked about Jutta’s age. My loneliness and desolation rising in a pure white flame, I stared fiercely, my eyes burning a hole in his back until he turned and made his way toward the screen. With a start, I recognized him as the same boy who had glanced back at the screen our first morning at Lauds when Jutta’s lovely voice rang out to join the monks’ song.

Every part of my brain screamed at me to slam those shutters, yet I gaped at the boy in unholy curiosity. His face was mild but inquisitive. He was tall and slight, with light brown hair and gray eyes. He stood so close that I could smell the wool of his habit.

“Little girl, why are you crying?” he asked. “Where’s your magistra?”

“My what?”

“Your magistra. Your mistress. The holy Jutta.”

“She’s in bed. She won’t get up.”

“Is she ill? I can send for medicine from the infirmary. Special rations, too. A tureen of turtle soup. Never fear. Brother Otto is the best of physicians. For every ailment under heaven, an herb grows to cure it.”

My mouth watered at the thought of soup.

“She’s sick from melancholy,” I whispered, choking on my fear that Jutta would suddenly come to and berate me for betraying her.

“That’s the hardest thing to cure.” The boy looked crestfallen. “Brother Otto might even say there’s no cure but prayer.”

“She prays all the time and it only makes her
worse,
” I hissed.

At home, Mother would have slapped me for such irreverence, but the boy regarded me with thoughtful gray eyes.

“How old are you, child?”

“Eight.”

“You sound melancholy yourself.”

I couldn’t stifle my sobs. “I’m hungry and cold. This hair shirt is so scratchy it makes my skin bleed. I want to go home. It’s awful here. Jutta says we can’t even talk because the demon Tutivillus will write down every word we say.”

For a moment the novice monk was silent, as though searching for words.

“My parents sent me here when I was five,” he said. “There were too many of us to feed. They thought me girlish and my father knew I would never make a good warrior. The first year I missed my mother so much that I thought I would die. I was sick in body, sick in my soul, practically living in the infirmary under Brother Otto’s care. Then they discovered I was clever, and Brother Ulrich taught me to read and write in a good hand. When I was as old as you, they put me to work cutting quills. From my very first day in the scriptorium, I learned that I could be happy here. When they were satisfied that my handwriting was good enough, they let me copy my first manuscript. As for Tutivillus, the demon you mentioned, he’s the patron of scribes. If our attention wanders, he causes us to smudge our ink and misspell our words, even miscopy the Scriptures.”

“What’s the scriptorium like?” I asked, anxious to keep him there, talking to me.

“It’s a wide and airy room, with a ceiling nearly as high as the church’s. It has windows on three walls. New windows made of glass,” he added, “thanks to the endowment we received from your magistra and her family. The place is flooded with light, even in winter. There are long tables and benches where we copy texts.

“Our library is huge, Hildegard, with every sort of book, not just writings of the Church, but the wisdom of the pagans,” he said, dropping his voice a notch, “of ancient Rome and Greece, whose knowledge has never been surpassed. And we have the books of the Saracens, Persians, and Arabs, whose physicians and mathematicians are far more advanced than any in Christendom.”

So the infidels that Father and my two eldest brothers had gone to kill were civilized people. The damask silk, woven by Saracen hands, that Jutta and I sewed into priestly vestments, might have clothed some great scholar of the East if Jutta’s father hadn’t seized it in the spoils of war.

“I don’t know if your melancholy can be cured, but it might be eased,” the boy said, “if you could only find your place here. Your way will be harder than mine because you’re an anchorite and so restricted. But you’re very clever, I think. You must find your skills, the vocation within your vocation. What do you love to do?”

“I miss the forest. Do they ever let you out of the abbey gates?”

“On long summer days, when Brother Ulrich can spare me in the scriptorium, Brother Otto sends me out to gather wild herbs. In autumn I pick mushrooms. Because I’m a scribe and have read all the herbal and botanical texts, they trust me to pick the right ones so I don’t poison the whole monastery.”

I smiled at the first joke I’d heard since entering Disibodenberg, but I managed not to laugh since it was forbidden here.

“Listen, little sister, I must go to the scriptorium before Brother Ulrich comes looking for me. But if you hear something being placed in your hatch, know that it’s from me. And think about what you love, Hildegard. Trust it. That’s where your talents lie and that’s where you’ll find happiness, even here.”

I pressed my hand to the screen. The boy briefly lifted his hand to mine before departing. Through the wooden slats, I felt his warmth, his strength.
Little sister,
he’d called me. He believed in happiness, believed that I could somehow be happy, too. I didn’t even know his name.

Closing the shutters, I crept to Jutta’s pallet, stared into her blank eyes, and squeezed her hand, calling to her until she blinked and hugged me, her tears soaking into my sackcloth.

“Forgive me,” she whispered. “Poor child, what have I done?”

She sounded so lost. I didn’t understand if she regretted what she had done to me—convincing Mother to let her drag me into this cage—or what she had done to herself.

When we sat down to sew, I heard the sound of something being placed in our hatch. Before Jutta could stop me, I sprang up, twirling it around to reveal a tureen of soup and a loaf of wheaten bread. Ladling the soup into the two wooden bowls provided, I passed one to Jutta, then broke off a chunk of bread.

With trembling hands, Jutta pushed her veil back from her face and stared as the fragrant steam wafted up.

“Turtle soup,” she said. “That’s what they feed invalids.”

“They thought you were ill,” I said between mouthfuls of the piping hot liquid. “They didn’t hear you sing at Matins, Lauds, or Prime.”

Though I ate and ate till my soul felt anchored in my body once more and my belly filled with warmth, Jutta only gazed, as frozen as a statue, at the soup until I thought it would go cold. It was up to me to act, to be Jutta’s nursemaid, as kind and resourceful as Walburga.
What do you love?
Did I love Jutta, the one who held me prisoner? Who else was there to love? I lifted the spoon to her mouth. Obedient as a tot, Jutta let me feed her.
Is this
my talent? Can I cure Jutta of her sadness?

After Prime the next morning, the novice monk, this time accompanied by an older man, made his swift way toward the screen. Jutta was about to slam the shutters when I grabbed her hands.

“They want to speak to you,” I whispered.

The older man, who introduced himself as Brother Otto, the physician, asked if Jutta was feeling quite well.

“Yes,” she said, sounding stiff and shy. “Thank you for the soup, but it was unnecessary. I can keep the Advent fast as well as any in this abbey.”

My heart sank. I wanted to twist away from Jutta, hide myself in the courtyard, and wail. No more soup, just long dark days of hunger until Christmas.

“No one doubts your resolve, magistra,” Brother Otto said, addressing her with all the deference due to the Count of Sponheim’s daughter. “But my young friend, Brother Volmar, thought that the fast might perhaps be too arduous for your companion, a child still growing. Hildegard will be provided with extra rations. If we have your permission, magistra, Brother Volmar would like to bring texts from the library so that you and Hildegard might continue your studies.”

“You are very generous,” Jutta murmured, eyes cast down to her folded hands.

As long as it was food for the mind rather than the body, Jutta would not deny herself.
Or me.
I smiled at Volmar through the screen. Now I knew his name.

Later that day, while Jutta was out pacing the courtyard, I heard footsteps approach the hatch. Quick as a rabbit, I swung it around to find an illustrated herbal, filled with pictures of every plant that grew in the forest. Accompanying the book was a branch, freshly cut, the severed wood still moist.

“Hildegard,” Volmar called from the other side of the hatch. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes!”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Tuesday?”

“December fourth. The Feast of Saint Barbara. Do you know her story?”

“Of course! Her father locked her in a tower and chopped off her head because she wouldn’t marry the heathen king! But God struck her father with lightning and he died horribly.”

It was always the same with virgin martyrs. Their willfulness made them disobey their fathers and older brothers—but because God had inspired their willfulness, their disobedience was made holy. Perhaps this was why Jutta, when she spoke at all, would never stop talking about them.

“That’s what we call Barbara’s Branch,” said Volmar. “It’s cut from an apple tree. Now you can barely see the buds that are waiting for spring. But if you place it in a beaker of water, Hildegard, it will bloom by Christmas Eve.”