The Seer and the Scribe (5 page)

Volmar hung his head. The stranger's laugh had a ring of familiarity, stirring a deep-seated emotion of fear and helplessness that Volmar couldn't put reason to. Outwardly, he fumed over the man's arrogance towards Sophie and murmured a curse under his breath. Volmar hoped God would understand why it wasn't a prayer.

Sophie rose and walked silently over to him. “I don't mind, Volmar. He gave it back and only took a small bite from it. See . . .” Sophie showed him the half-eaten slice of bread. “It still tastes the same, and besides, I'm getting full anyways. Let's head back.” She waited until they were outside to take his hand again.

Volmar took a deep breath, still simmering with anger. Were all girls this confusing? With Thomas, Sophie had stood her own ground and did not hesitate to put him in his place, and yet with the older stranger, she had kept her silence, choosing instead to ignore his insult.
Maybe, he thought, she was right in turning the other cheek, realizing the stranger was a lost cause.

He led her back across the courtyard and upstairs to the guest quarters on the east side of the Infirmary, where the women and children slept. Only then did he let go of her slender hand, a small part of him fearing for her future.

Volmar clasped his hands loosely behind his back and forced himself to look into her eyes. Sophie stood before him, rigid and pale. He recognized instantly that she already knew of the enormity of the burden resting on her small shoulders. Her eyes were those of an old woman in a young girl's face.

Clearing Outside of Disibodenberg Monastery

Harvest Festival, Late Afternoon

Exhausted, Volmar felt the branch sigh beneath him as he settled his back firmly against the crook of the old yew's trunk. Over the jovial sounds of the minstrels playing at the harvest festival, he heard the distant rumblings of an approaching storm. It made the air around him taut with expectation. Vespers would be soon, but for the moment he was grateful to be in his own world, away from the reach of the studied rituals, insistent conformity, and peculiar community of the cloistered life.

From his perch, Volmar fixed his gaze on the cobbled road, thinking back to Sophie's story and her journey from Mainz. This road led to a world he only knew from the books he read and the colorful tales of strangers. Was he a mere “scribbler,” as the arrogant soldier had indicated, destined to live his life on the outskirts of the real world? How could he effect real change, if he did not know how most people suffered and lived? Although he had completed his probationary period last year, and had made his profession of faith and taken the cowl
²¹
in spring, for some reason, he still struggled with his faith and his calling to be a scribe. If only God would give him a sign, a message that he was following his true destiny.

Inside his head, the voices of his tutors echoed, rebuking his faithless questioning and his worldly need to intellectualize and seek proof of the spiritual realm. “How can you, a mere child, question the Word of Christ? Such faithless doubting would have me worried over my own salvation; my unclean, broken soul. Faith pleases God. God always responds to faith.”

Volmar fumbled for a rag from his leather pouch and started rubbing furiously at his blackened fingertips. These ink stains would always reveal his livelihood as a scribe, as the crude soldier had deduced. Even if he ran away and left the familiar fortress of the monastery of Disibodenberg to explore the unknown world beyond, these stains would always mark him like Cain. Every stranger he would encounter would know he was a faithless, condemned man who had failed the church, and ultimately, God.

“Surely, Lord,” Volmar closed his eyes and prayed, a little faintly, “by acknowledging my own weakness, I will find the faith I so ardently seek.” For how could he catch a glimpse of the one true God if he was blind to his own misgivings and sins? A boom of distant thunder answered, followed by a stark flash of lightning. The storm was fast approaching, a storm that would surely call off the evening's events at the harvest festival.

The sky darkened. Volmar imagined in its looming, shifting shadows the candle-lit Scriptorium
²²
. The clouds transformed into the humps of the backs of his fellow brothers who, like hard black beetles, clicked away in the carrels of the Scriptorium, the tips of their quills scratching against the parchments. At least, he thought with a grateful heart, his apprenticeship with Brother Paulus gave him a wider perspective of the outside world beyond the stuffy, deafening silence of the Scriptorium and the earthy smell of the stables, albeit only through the eyes of the suffering.

The wind quickened, and one of those crusty black humps rose up and changed into an illuminated
²³
beast. A jagged gash of lightning became the beast's serpent-like tongue. Slowly, Volmar watched how its body transformed into pure black from nose to tail, and with an unholy grace, the beast unfurled its large, spiny wings like a lady's fan. Of course, Volmar mused, the beast only pretended to pay him no attention, for in a moment's time it suddenly stretched its deadly talons and reared up to peer at his face more closely. Volmar expected the beast's voice to roar, asserting its masculinity, as did all of his imaginary beasts. So, when he heard, instead, a singular, melodic feminine voice carried in the brisk wind, Volmar was jarred out of his own musings. The young monk slowly loosened himself from his reverie as the voice grew louder, and he wondered if it belonged to this world or the world beyond.

Taking a deep breath, Volmar peered down through the branches of the leafless tree, half expecting to be fooled by seeing the familiar, wrathful beast of inhuman stature and demeanor glaring up at him. Instead, in its place, he saw a thin, dark-haired young woman skipping curiously towards his tree, completely oblivious to his presence.

The wind caught her plait and loosened her hair so its dark tendrils fell across her pale cheeks and forehead, softening her delicate, pretty features. She looked a couple of years younger than him, wearing a crown of woven flowers, and she was dressed in richly embroidered velvets, etched in gold thread. Her long, dark blue cape whipped about her freely, pulling against its chain and the silver clasp of filigree at the nape of her neck.

Volmar figured the young woman was play-acting as he observed her coax an invisible companion to the clearing. Curtsying to this apparition
²⁴
, she then took its invisible arm and began to dance. Her movements kept time to her plaintive singing, an obscure psalm sung to music. It was beautiful and strange, a melody at once defiant and complementary to the stillness of the forest. Volmar watched, half bemused and half self-consciously, as she twirled about hand in hand with this invisible person, all the while laughing and singing, her skirts billowing out from her like a bell.

Volmar sensed an unfamiliar stirring of attraction. Unlike Sophie, whom he saw as a child, this girl was older and shapely like a woman. From where he sat he could see how her bosom rose and fell in time with her movements. Volmar's solemn life knew little of such carefree laughter and even less of the opposite sex. His dealings with women
were restricted to only those who were crippled, diseased, injured, or pregnant.

Guiltily, Volmar spied on the laughing young woman with a longing he couldn't put into words as he watched her from a safe distance, mesmerized by her foreign and evocative ways, welcoming for once the protective cover of silence.

When at last the young woman seemed positively exhausted from her dancing and singing, she rested on a rock and urged her invisible companion to sit next to her. “Please, tell me another story,” she spoke, glowing from the exertion.

There she sat for what seemed to Volmar like an eternity. He watched her as she nodded, enthralled with what she alone was hearing and seeing. Even when the sky darkened and the wind picked up speed, she continued to sit still, unmoved by the rapidly changing weather.

In the distance, the cloistered bells started ringing. Their insistent clanging announced Vespers. Dinner would soon follow before dark. Volmar knew he would be late and also that he would be reprimanded for his tardiness. However, he feared more revealing himself to this young, evocative woman.

“It is time for me to return to the monastery,” she announced to her invisible companion. “Shall we meet again tomorrow afternoon at this same clearing?”

The apparition must have agreed, for she curtsied respectfully, lifted her skirts, and turned towards the monastery's gates.

At that same instant, in an unguarded moment, Volmar's grip carelessly slipped. He lost his balance, and before he knew it, he fell from the old yew tree, landing close to the young woman in a small trench between the largest roots of the tree. He scarcely recovered before she was leaning over him and spoke.

“Who are you, sir?” she said with mild surprise, noting his black robe. “Are you an angel or a demon?”

Volmar looked up, spitting out a mouthful of wet leaves. There she was, staring down at him with interest. “What? Uh, I-I am neither,” he stuttered, finding the nearness of her presence and her insightful gaze more disarming than he could ever have anticipated. He couldn't even remember his own name to introduce himself.

The young woman stared over Volmar's shoulder; her grey eyes were unusually dilated and appeared as large black pebbles. “I know of Virgil's warning, ‘fear does betray unworthy souls,' but this young man wears a tonsure
²⁵
and shows me no fear, only concern.”

Volmar hesitantly turned and peered over his shoulder, confirming that the young woman was in fact talking to no one else.

Overhead, the dark clouds finally opened and a cold, harsh rain began to fall. Fiercer winds blew in from the north, mercilessly tearing at the dying leaves still clinging to the trees. “The storm is upon us. Come with me,” the young woman said, seizing his hand and helping him to his feet. She raced forward towards a low hillside running along the outside edge of the forest, dragging Volmar behind. Above the wail of the winds, she cried to him, “Brother Arnoul said there's an entrance here to an underground tunnel. We will be dry there.”

“A tunnel? I've never heard of it, you must be mistaken. There are no tunnels around here,” Volmar answered as he tried to keep up with her, realizing for the first time he was holding her hand. He let go hastily, and tried to compose himself. The winds had now sharpened the raindrops to the point where they stung through his clothing. He could barely make out her solid form through the curtain of rain even though he knew she was an arm's length away. He slipped both of his hands inside the opposite hand's sleeve and said skeptically, “Since you know this place so well, where is this tunnel? Where does it lead to?”

“Brother Arnoul says it leads to behind an altar, the altar of Saint Peter, inside the church. Come on . . .” The young woman waved for him to follow her before ducking and disappearing into what must have been the cave's entrance, fully concealed by thick relentless vines of ivy that hung down like ringlets of hair.

“Humph,” Volmar grunted, resisting the urge to follow her blindly into what appeared to be a hole in the ground. His hair whipped about his face in every direction. The rain came down in torrents, soaking his coarse wool cassock. A branch suddenly wrenched from a nearby tree, followed by another, then another. Volmar shut his eyes, said a prayer, then crawled in.

Underground Tunnel Outside of Disibodenberg Monastery

Harvest Festival, Early Evening

“You can stand up,” the young woman said with a curious smile. She stood several paces ahead, her face surprisingly illuminated by a burning oil lamp. Somewhat embarrassed, Volmar opened his eyes and rose from his crouching position to his full height. The young monk stared at the flickering flames of the pottery lamp, welcoming its light and warmth but clearly confused. “Where did the lamp come from?”

“I don't know. I found it already lit on the wall in that bracket over there.” The young woman pointed to a rough-hewn iron bracket nailed into a finely finished and heavily carved wooden arch. The arch framed an entrance which emptied into a moderately sized cave about ten feet in height, rounded with maybe fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, which then narrowed into a long black tunnel.

“May I?” Volmar asked as he reached for the lamp. He turned it slightly to one side. “Judging by the amount of oil remaining in its flask, whoever left it did so less than an hour ago. There is probably still four hours' worth of oil left.”

The girl's lips turned up in a smile. “Earlier, I thought you a simpleton, because you were so slow to speak.”

Volmar grimaced; his voice was thick with emotion. “I could say the same of my first impressions of your faculties when I saw you conversing with no one in the clearing.” He held the lamp high to hide his embarrassment and pretended to be studying the finer intricacies of the heavily carved wooden arch.