Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen Read online

  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 lift
ed 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.”

  “Nothing blooms in the middle of winter!”

  “Keep it in a warm place. Wait and see.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Jutta came in, shivering and rubbing her arms.

  “Volmar. He’s gone now.” I listened to his sandals slapping against stone as he hurried off, probably to his sanctuary, the scriptorium, which, trapped in this place, I would never see.

  “He gave us a stick?” Jutta picked it up, examining it from all sides.

  “It’s for Saint Barbara, the holy virgin martyr!” I cried, afraid that she might snap it in half and burn it in the brazier.

  Instead she found a beaker of water. We kept the branch in the warmest and brightest corner of the anchorage.

  “Now we must pray to holy Barbara,” my magistra instructed, “on this, her feast day.”

  Barbara, the patron saint of prisoners.

  In the pool of sunlight pouring through our window of polished horn, Jutta and I curled up side by side. Open in Jutta’s lap lay Volmar’s herbal. Breathless, I leafed through the illuminations he had painted himself.

  “Patience,” Jutta said, speaking more like an older sister than my magistra. “Don’t tear through it all at once. Let us read it page by page.”

  In her voice, which was as beautiful in speech as it was in song, she read aloud, beginning with the admonition on the very first page, penned in bold black letters.

  If anyone steal this book, let him die the death. Let him be

  fried in the pan. Let the falling sickness and fever seize him.

  Let him be broken on the wheel and hanged. Amen.

  We burst into smothered laughter as we imagined gentle Volmar penning such wrath. I pictured him cracking a grin while he wrote it, following some older and less sweet-tempered monk’s dictation.

  The herbal was written not in Latin but in German, and it described the worts and weeds that grew in the woodland and meadows around the abbey. Jutta read out Volmar’s words as I followed along, my finger on the page.

  Vervain promoted felicity. Marjoram was good for treating bruises. Saint-John’s-wort, which bloomed at Midsummer Day on the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, was ruled by the sun. The monks used it to treat pain and infection. Wormwood cleansed the gut of parasites. Iris root healed dog bites. Blessed thistle, which grew in every monastery garden in the Holy Roman Empire, guarded against plague. Cowbane, though poisonous to cattle, banished lust in men and women.

  “Do they grow all these things here?” Closing my eyes, I tried to envision having the freedom to walk through the snowy plots, if only to see the dormant stalks. Beside us in the fragile midwinter light, the Barbara Branch seemed to come alive, touched by an invisible hand, its flat, hard buds swelling.

  Although the Twelve Holy Nights of Christmas were still three weeks off, Volmar’s gifts kept appearing in our hatch day after day.

  One morning a pair of sandals and a child-size linen shift and woolen habit appeared to replace the sackcloth that turned my skin into a mass of sores. He had only been able to find a boy’s habit, but Jutta helped me alter it into something suitable for a girl. Jutta, however, would not be parted from her own hair-shirt shroud.

  The herbal had only been in our anchorage a week when we finished it. Volmar brought another book, even more wondrous—a bestiary with illuminations and descriptions of every known beast, from the common to the exotic and rare.

  The manticore, we learned, boasted a man’s face, a lion’s body, and a scorpion’s stinging tale. Swordfish, with their great pointed beaks, could sink ships. Most terrifying of all was the basilisk, whose smell, voice, and glance could slay. Some creatures brought joy. Whenever the halcyon bird laid her eggs, the weather was fine and clear. The swan sang most exquisitely before he died. The lynx’s urine hardened into precious amber. Some animals were tender. The pelican, like Christ, fed her brood from her own flesh. Bear cubs were born unformed, but their mothers devotedly licked them into shape.

  Next Volmar lent us a lapidary, which revealed the miraculous properties of gemstones. Once these jewels had adorned Lucifer, in the days when he was the brightest of angels. But when he was cast into hell, the precious and semiprecious stones rained down upon the earth. Since they had their origin in heaven, they could only be used for good, for healing.

  “If a diamond is brought into a house,” Jutta read aloud, “then no demon may enter that dwelling.” Her brow furrowed. “A pity my mother never possessed a diamond, although Father gifted her with rubies and jasper.”

  “The monks don’t possess one either,” I suggested.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Volmar talked about Tutivillus interfering with the scribes. He makes them spill their ink and copy things wrong!”

  “There are scores of demons, Hildegard. Not just Tutivillus.” Jutta juddered, as though a specter had laid its icy hands on her spine. “And they are strongest at this time of year when there’s so little light.”

  Volmar’s gifts, as enchanting as they were, only made me long even more for the outside world. After Vespers, I went to see if our Barbara Branch still had enough water. Though the buds had once seemed to swell, the branch now felt like a dead twig I could snap between my fingers. The forest would not stop haunting me. How the wild places c
alled out to me in the face of Jutta’s direst warnings. Again and again she told me that I must dread everything dark and untamed.

  Demons ruled the nocturnal hours, she insisted. On stormy nights, outside our anchorage walls, trees writhed, tossing their branches against the moon-drenched sky. As I lay in my narrow bed, my ears rang with the shrieking wind, the cries of owls and wolves in search of prey.

  Little did it matter that Christmas was fast approaching. For centuries before the Irish missionaries brought the faith of Christ to this land, before Carolus Magnus toppled the Irminsul, the idolatrous pillar of the heathens, my ancestors had held the Rauhnächte, the Twelve Nights of Yuletide, in awe—time out of time when fate hung suspended, when secrets were revealed and fortunes could be reversed. This I knew from Walburga’s tales. The servants and peasant folk back home had muttered stories of the Old Ones roaring across the midwinter skies: the Wild Hunter of a thousand names in pursuit of his White Lady with her streaming hair and starry distaff, the whirlwind before the storm.

  Leaving the dreaming Jutta to choke in her sleep and sob her brother’s name, I crept out of bed and stole into the courtyard where I pranced barefoot in the swirling snowflakes like the mummers who came to Bermersheim every Yuletide in their fearsome wooden masks to frighten away harmful spirits.

  A gale howled overhead, and the cold stung my soles, sending me spinning as the Wild Hunt of Walburga’s nursery stories raged overhead, that endless stream of unbanished gods and the souls of the unchristened dead. Anyone who dared venture out on a night such as this risked being swept along in that unearthly train.

  But did I cross myself and flee inside to safety? No, I raised my face to the clouds racing across the full moon and I begged those invisible riders to take me with them.

  Clouds shrouded the moon. Everything went black. I plummeted, down and down, as if there would be no end to my falling. De profundis clamavi ad te. Gazing up from the depths, I saw a circle of sky, now emptied of moon and stars. Had I been cast into hell for my sin? From out of that murk came a white cloud bursting with a light that was alive, pulsing and growing until it blazed like a thousand suns.