Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen (3 page)

“Dancing is forbidden in the monastery.”

I shrugged to prove to Rorich that I’d never much cared for such fripperies anyway.

“They won’t really send you away.” My brother flung himself on the bank to laze in the sun. “Not for a long while yet. That girl in Alzey who went to the nuns in Schönau—they wouldn’t take her until she was twelve. That gives you five years, Hildegard.”

Gratitude tingled inside me as I waded in the brook, savoring the gentle click of water-washed agates between my toes. Five years! It seemed a whole lifetime. Anything could happen in that stretch of time.

“Mother will change her mind,” Rorich said. “She always does. Remember how Father wanted Roswithia to marry that fat widower with the gouty leg?”

This had transpired before I was even born, but it was Walburga’s favorite story and Mother’s finest hour and bravest deed. Father was about to give our Roswithia to someone old and hideous, but Mother had overruled him just as he was about to set off for the Holy Lands. The minute he was gone, Roswithia had thrown herself at Mother’s feet and wept in relief.

“At least you don’t need to worry about who they’ll make
you
marry.” I snapped a wand off a willow. “You’re the youngest son— you’ll have to be a priest.”

Rorich kicked in the water, splashing me in the face. “I’ll run away first.”

“I’ll come with you. We’ll be bandits.”

“We’ll be poachers and hunt the Count of Sponheim’s deer. We’ll feast on venison and hide in the trees.” Rorich eyed me critically. “But you wouldn’t be sturdy enough to survive that kind of life, Hildegard.”

“I’ve been well,” I insisted. In this warm and dry tide of summer, my lungs were clear, my breathing easy. “Not sickly at all.”

“Prove it.” He pointed to the weeping willow. “Show me how high you can climb.”

First I hitched up my skirts, knotting them over my knees to free my legs before I launched myself onto the first low bough. Grabbing the trunk, I worked my way up, placing one bare foot and then the other on the next highest limb till I ascended to the upper branches. There I swayed, clinging white-knuckled lest I fall, while Rorich howled with laughter. A dizziness filled my head as the orbs spun around me. Gulping for air, I slithered to the ground with as much bravado as I could muster.

“I did it.” I looked my brother in the eye.

He only lifted my arm to study the yellow bruises, the fruit of my grappling with the tree.

“Walburga will murder me,” he said. “Let’s go back before she skins us.”

“We’ll be bandits.” Grasping his hands, I clung to our daydream. “We’ll live on berries and wild mushrooms. We’ll find the white hart that lives in the deepest forest! Except we won’t kill him. We’ll build a pavilion for him, and I’ll weave my hair into a collar for him.”

Rorich wrapped his arm around me. “Maybe Jutta will take Clementia instead of you. Jutta’s so crazy she probably can’t tell one girl from another.”

Filthy and bedraggled, Rorich and I crept through the kitchen garden then darted through the low door leading into the cavernous undercroft beneath the burg. Here we parted ways, hoping to escape the servants’ detection. Hiding behind sacks of barley, I watched my brother melt into the darkness like some renegade Saracen. After counting to twelve, I tiptoed between the barrels of beer and wine, my plan being to steal up the stairs to my chamber and put on a clean shift and kirtle before Walburga pounced on me. But echoes of sobbing made me freeze.

Wishing Rorich was still there, I inched forward, deerskin slippers padding the dust until I came upon Walburga behind stacked crocks of cheeses and honey, her hands clutching her face.

“What is it?” I asked, petrified, for I’d never seen Walburga weep, never even thought it possible that so stalwart a woman could break down and bawl as though she were a child no older than I.

Blinking through her tears, Walburga hugged me so hard, as if she’d never let me go. As if she were my true parent and I her beloved daughter.

“Your mother is cruel. How can she do this?”

My heart swelled at Walburga’s devotion. At what my nurse risked by standing up to Mother and taking my side. Mother could cast her out, send her back to her village to grub in the fields like the lowest serf. Still, it was my duty to defend my blood kin.

“There are other oblates. That girl from Alzey,” I said, remembering what Rorich had told me. “She went to the nuns at Schönau, but she had to wait till she was twelve. Besides, Mother says it isn’t so bad. You learn to read and write, and to play the psaltery, and you sit and stitch silk like the ladies at court, except the nuns have to wear plain clothes.”

“If they were only sending you to live with ordinary nuns, love, I wouldn’t be crying my eyes out.” Walburga’s tears drenched my hair. “That Jutta wants to be an anchorite and she’s dragging you down with her.”

My mind was a blank. “A what?”

“An anchorite.” Seeing the confusion on my face, Walburga rocked me in her arms and keened as though an unspeakable wrong had been done to me. “Poor child, you don’t even know.”

During that long, happy summer, Walburga turned a blind eye as Rorich and I ventured out in the forest day after day, tumbling through the undergrowth, coming home grubby, with spider silk in our hair. I caught toads and salamanders, cupping their wriggling bodies in my hands before freeing them. Rorich snared rabbits. With his bow and quiver of arrows, he stalked deer while I shadowed him and watched, my heart in my throat as the arrow went singing through the air only to miss the hind as she dashed away. What would it be like to escape so easily, to just vanish into the green?

He was never much of a marksman, my brother. That was why Mother was content to let him stay home with the women instead of sending him away to join Father and our elder brothers in the Holy Lands and learn the arts of war. Besides, everyone but Rorich himself saw his future chiseled in stone—the boy was not destined to be a knight but a cleric, as bound to the Church as I would be if Mother had her way.

In September the anniversary of my birth came and went. I turned eight and still Mother did not return from Sponheim. She and our sisters stayed away so long that Rorich decided they had forgotten about sending me to the monastery.

“They’ll spend the rest of their days at court,” he said. “Preening before the countess and fighting to dance with her son.”

I discovered a cave in the forest, its opening just wide enough for us to squeeze through. It opened into a dry cavern big enough for us to light a fire.

“This is where we’ll live,” I told Rorich. “This is our hideaway. They’ll never find us.”

The moon waxed and waned. The vines covering the keep wall turned blood red. One evening at twilight, Rorich and I straggled back from the forest to find Mother awaiting us in her chamber.

“Rorich, leave us,” she said. “I must speak with your sister in private.”

Cold and trembling, I dragged myself forward to take my mother’s hand and kiss her knuckles.

“Welcome home, Mother.” I gazed into her eyes and wondered where my sisters were, why they were so quiet. I expected the silent rooms to explode with their gossip.

Mother smiled, running her hands through my snarled hair. “My wild child. You have elf locks.”

I tried to speak, but my throat silted up, the unhappy knowledge rising in my gorge.

“Irmengard and Odilia are to be married next spring. The countess is paying their dowries.” Mother’s eyes gleamed with the joy of answered prayers, burdens lifted. “Walburga must pack your things at once, my dear. Tomorrow at first light we leave for Disibodenberg.”

M
Y DAMP CLOAK STANK
like a wet dog as I shivered on the barge. A death shroud of fog clung to the Nahe River’s wooded banks—anything could be lurking out there, just waiting to strike. Guards, both on the barge and marching along the shore, scanned the glowering hills for brigands.
Let them come.
I willed bandits to burst from the trees and pelt us with arrows, slaying everyone aboard, until the river ran red with blood. Only Rorich and I would be spared. My brother and I would then flee home to Bermersheim and live in our secret cave. What would happen if I spoke this unholy fantasy aloud? With any luck it would convince everyone that I was unfit for the religious life.

“May God send the Saracen hordes to slaughter us,” I said, my voice strained and pinched. The wind carried away my words and no one paid me any mind.

Rorich traded jokes with the countess’s seventeen-year-old son, Meginhard von Sponheim. How my brother’s eyes shone as he basked in the attention of his new hero. Rorich acted as though this journey were the greatest adventure of his life. He was far too busy enjoying himself to plot our escape.
Traitor.

I narrowed my eyes at Mother, who seemed flushed with happiness, sitting only inches away from the countess. She cozened so close that anyone would think they were sisters or bosom friends.

“You’ve seen for yourself how delightful our Clementia is.” Mother practically purred. “My most beautiful daughter. Would you not consider taking her on as your handmaiden, countess? Clementia is our jewel.”

I wanted to stop my ears. If
I
was beautiful, Mother would not be shunting me off to a bunch of moldy old monks in the hinterland. Too wretched and lost to even cry, I decided that I despised everyone except Walburga, but Mother hadn’t allowed Walburga to come along, probably because Mother knew that if she had
,
my nurse would have put a stop to this. She would have upended the barge and drowned everyone to save me.

“Why so glum, little one?”

Jutta von Sponheim swept down beside me. Pearls of moisture beaded her long, loose hair where it flowed free from her cap of white marten fur. The cold wind stinging her cheeks only made her lovelier. She petted me until I wriggled away.
I’m not your lapdog.

“Have I told you the story of holy Ursula? A princess from Britain.” Jutta spoke of the distant kingdom as though it were as wondrous and unreachable as fairyland. “A heathen prince asked for her hand in marriage, but she spurned him.”

Jutta’s brother Meginhard burst out laughing. He was telling my brother some bawdy joke not meant for female ears. I perked up, hoping to eavesdrop, but Jutta enveloped me in her cloak, trimmed with white marten fur and lined with sheepskin. Her voice was insistent in my ear.

“Ursula chose ten companions, all of them virgins of noble birth, and then Ursula and her ten maidens each chose one thousand virgins to join them. Eleven thousand virgins, Hildegard! They boarded eleven ships and sailed over the sea and down the Rhine. They crossed the Alps and rode to Rome to visit the graves of the apostles.

“
I
desired to go to Rome,” she added. “
And
Jerusalem. Why should I not, now that it’s in Christian hands? I longed to visit the holy sepulcher, but Meginhard said it was too perilous a journey for a girl.”

She seemed to spit venom when she spoke her brother’s name. With their father and his knights, my father among them, still in the Holy Lands, Meginhard acted as head of the family and Jutta had no choice but to obey him as she would her father. I wondered what I would do if Rorich started bossing me around. Tickle his feet and taunt him until he turned red in the face was what I’d do.

Jutta bit down on her lip till I feared it might bleed. The girl’s huge blue eyes threatened to spill tears and her nails were bitten down to the quick. Jutta was so pretty and rich, yet she seemed fragile, as helpless as a baby bird cast out of its nest. She reminded me of the blackbird chick with the broken wing I’d once held in my skirt, coaxing it to feed out of my palm. Taking Jutta’s hand, I hoped to give her some comfort. She rewarded me with a blinding smile before continuing her story.

“Ursula and her virgins were returning from Rome. They sailed up the Rhine. When they reached Cologne, the Huns descended on them. The king of the Huns demanded that the holy Ursula marry him. Naturally she refused, for he was heathen. Then the Huns murdered her and all her eleven thousand maidens.” Jutta recited the mystical number as though it were a charm that carried great power. “Not one survived. Clematius discovered their skeletons in a field near Cologne.”

Jutta stared straight ahead as though she saw that field of hacked-up virgins, as though that corpse stink filled her nose.

“I can hardly wait,” she said, “till we reach our holy enclosure.”

At that, she knelt and began to pray, her eyes squeezed shut as if to block out this sinful earthly realm. Only heaven seemed to interest her. Leaving Jutta to her prayers, I joined the others who spoke of the worldly things that gave me courage, or at least distracted me from what lay ahead.

“My husband sent home bolts and bolts of damask silk,” the countess told my mother. “I would have used it for Jutta’s wedding dress had she not chosen this life.”

“Save it for the girl Meginhard marries,” Mother said. “He’s such a fine young man.”

Meginhard was tall and curly-haired, muscled and sturdy looking. He was betrothed to some highborn girl, yet he acted as carefree as Rorich. The two of them were casting fishing lines into the churning green water.

“Even the holy Jutta is allowed to eat fish,” Meginhard said.

His booming voice sent a quiver through his sister’s body, seeming to shatter her prayers, but only for an instant. She lifted her palms in the
orans
position, as if willing us all to vanish. Meginhard made a face, handed his fishing line to Rorich, and strode over to his sister, his heavy footfalls causing the barge to lurch and sway. Jutta raised her voice, praying as though she were halfway to heaven already, but he forced a kiss on her.
He’s just teasing her, the way brothers do.
I couldn’t understand why his attentions made her cry and shake. She screamed her psalms at him as if warding herself from Satan. The fuss only ended when the countess stepped between them and took the heaving girl in her arms.

“Hush, don’t be a fool. That’s only your brother.”