Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen Read online

  Our shadows disappeared as a cloud veiled the sun. With one last snuffle through my hair, the cow strolled on, the bell tied to her neck singing and ringing. Walburga grabbed my shoulders.

  “You’re making up stories again.”

  Spinning around, I bolted for home as fast as my shaking legs would allow, but Walburga soon caught up, seizing my arm, leaving a bruise as big as her fist.

  “Don’t tell your mother.”

  Jagged sobs racked my body as I made my vow not to say a word.

  A month later, Mother learned from Walburga what I, her tenth child, had foretold. The cow had borne her bull calf, his markings exactly as I had described them.

  “The girl sees true,” my nurse told my mother, while I peeked around the edge of the drapery I was hiding behind.

  Mother’s face was white and pinched, as though someone had just delivered the news that Father, Hugo, and Drutwin had been slain by the Saracens and left to rot in unhallowed graves.

  But Walburga went on beaming like a simpleton. “My lady, you should give the calf to Hildegard. She’s blessed by God, that child.”

  Walburga’s thunderstruck proclamations soon spread as swiftly as the pox. Much to my mother’s mortification, my prophecy regarding the calf was all anyone in Bermersheim and the surrounding villages could talk about.

  I shrank from Mother’s gaze and sought refuge in Walburga’s lap, in her engulfing embrace. Walburga hugged me close, her heart beating against my ear. My nurse loved me more than my own mother did—this I knew to be a fact. Yet Walburga had sealed my doom. Mechthild von Bermersheim’s youngest daughter saw true—what would people say about our family? Either I was touched by God or possessed by Satan. How was Mother to know which?

  That evening after Compline in our family chapel, Mother made me stay behind with her after my siblings, the servants, and even the chaplain had quit the place. Mother drew me into the chilliest corner, near the shriving bench where we knelt to confess our sins. Unsteady candlelight sent Mother’s shadow rearing against the painted walls. Walburga had told me that Mother was thirty-five, an ancient age, and indeed my parent looked like an old woman—toothless, a few wisps of sparse gray hair poking out from where her wimple slid back, her spine buckled from bearing so many babies. At least with your father away in the Holy Lands, Walburga had confided, your poor mother can take comfort in the hope that there’ll be no more.

  “Hildegard.” Mother stared down at me. Even with her stoop, she was a tall woman. “You are the tenth child. You know that.”

  An awful tightness clutched my throat. Unable to look at Mother, my eyes slipped to the fresco of Eve with the apple cupped in her palm. Naked and glowing, the first sinner lingered beneath a tree that was nearly as exquisite as the one that had appeared in the golden sphere. Her softly rounded belly, almost like that of a pregnant woman, revealed the lust and corruption lurking inside her beautiful flesh—this was what our chaplain had told us. Eve lifted her face to the serpent, whose sinuous body boasted a woman’s head and breasts—the creature was none other than Lilith, Adam’s first wife, whispering wicked knowledge in Eve’s ear while Adam just stood there like a dullard.

  “Do you know what a tithe is?” Mother asked me.

  I nodded, fighting tears.

  “Tell me,” she commanded, her voice as cool as her fingers gripping my shoulders.

  “Every good Christian”—I gulped and swallowed—“must give a tenth of all he owns to the Church.”

  Mother knelt before me so that our faces were level. Her hazel eyes seemed as huge as the orbs that swam across my vision.

  “You are the tenth child,” Mother said again.

  I was the tithe.

  “It’s not a bad place, Disibodenberg,” Mother told me the following morning, as if to soften the blow.

  She allowed me to perch in her lap as she worked the bone teeth of her comb through my flaxen hair while Walburga held up the mirror of polished silver to reflect my face. Though my eyes were swollen from crying, I gazed greedily into the mirror for as long as I was allowed because this might be my last chance. Mirrors were forbidden to those in holy orders. Mother wants to be rid of me. What would happen if I threw my arms around her neck and begged her to let me stay? I twisted in Mother’s lap, but she told me to sit still.

  “You won’t be alone, child.” Her voice was gentle and soothing. “You are to accompany Jutta, the Count of Sponheim’s daughter, as her chosen handmaiden. Think of the prestige!”

  My family swore fealty to the Sponheim dynasty. On feast days in their hall, I had seen Jutta dancing in a circle with the other girls. At fourteen, Jutta was ripe for marriage, the most beautiful young noblewoman in the Rhineland, so everyone swore, with her auburn hair and cornflower eyes, her slender grace, the necklace of seed pearls and garnets adorning her white throat. But there were rumors—even I had heard the gossip. Jutta von Sponheim is as mad as a box of frogs. According to my sister Odilia, this was why Jutta’s family could find her no husband, despite her stunning looks and huge dowry. To make matters worse, Jutta fancied herself a holy woman. Nothing but the religious life would do for her.

  “But why Disibodenberg?” Walburga dared to ask Mother, forgetting her place. “Two young girls given to the monks—it doesn’t seem proper. Surely they’d be better off with the nuns at Schönau.”

  Mother’s reply was icy enough to make me shiver. “Don’t offer your opinions on things you know nothing about.”

  She snatched her prized mirror from Walburga’s hand and set it down on the table.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, turning me in her lap so that we faced each other. “It is a great honor to be chosen as Jutta’s companion. You will bring glory to us all. Your father will be so proud when he hears.”

  I ached to tell her that I had no wish to spend the rest of my life with a mad girl no one wanted to marry, but my tongue turned into a plank and I said nothing.

  “You and Jutta von Sponheim.” The smile on Mother’s face allowed me to glimpse the ghost of the lovely woman she had been ages ago, before she had all the babies who had left her as swaybacked as an old plow horse. “The pair of you will be holy virgins who take no husband but Christ Himself. You are lucky, my girl. The chosen one. You know, I wanted a religious life. I begged my parents to let me join holy orders, but instead I was given to your father when I was only thirteen.”

  My eyes prickled in confusion. Was Mother doing me a kindness, then, by banishing me to the monastery? Was this truly a better fate than being married off like other girls?

  “But I don’t want any husband,” I told her. “Not even Jesus.”

  “Every girl must take a husband, either mortal or divine,” Mother replied, as though she were stating the plain truth to an idiot.

  “Walburga didn’t!”

  “Walburga is a peasant,” Mother said, with Walburga only a few feet away. “Does a noble falcon share the same destiny as that of a barnyard goose? You were born to grander things than she was.”

  Catching my eye before turning her back on Mother, Walburga’s contempt for my parent filled the room like a bad smell, as though my nurse had let out a fart. I wondered if Mother was terribly wrong, if she was making a mistake so enormous that even the servants saw through her.

  The following day Mother rode off to the court of Sponheim to discuss my future with Jutta’s mother, the countess. Blessing of blessings, she whisked away my six beautiful sisters, still unbetrothed owing to their paltry dowries, and left me alone with Rorich and Walburga. The first thing Rorich and I did after solemnly waving good-bye was to sneak out the gate and through the vineyards where the grapevines grew tall enough to hide us. When we reached the forest, we tore around like heathens, beating down nettles with hazel sticks.

  “They’ll be gone for weeks!” I shouted, delirious with happiness.

  What joy could be greater than spending the summer days with Rorich, just the two of us? Rorich was my most beloved sibling. Ten year
s old, he was close enough in age to be my friend. He hadn’t changed like my sisters had, turning to women before my eyes, abandoning our childhood games as they set their sights on marriage.

  “They’ll be feasting on roasted swan every night in Sponheim,” Rorich said, leading the way to the brook, where he slipped off his shoes, leaving them to lie on the mossy bank.

  “And they’ll dance!” I kicked off my deerskin slippers.

  My brother and I joined hands and threw our noses in the air to mimic the counts and countesses, margraves and margravines. Humming courtly dance tunes, we reeled through the shallow stream, our feet splashing and prancing, until my skirt and my brother’s tunic were soaked.

  “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.”

  2

  MY 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.”