The writing and research for this book stretched over a decade, during which I consulted many books. Standout texts included Antonia Fraser's The Weaker Vessel, David Hackett Fischer's monumental Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, and Frauen in der Geschichte, volumes 2 and 3, edited by Annette Kuhn and Jörn Rüsen. Much of the herb lore comes from Nicholas Culpepper's Complete Herbal. The recipes Hannah discovers in her mother's receipt book are taken from Eliza Smith's The Compleat Housewife—an admitted anachronism, since that book wasn't published until 1742. Perhaps the most valuable information was imparted by the good people at Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown Settlement, who answered in detail my many questions about life in the colonial Chesapeake. The Sequose River, which appears in this book, exists only in my imagination. At a storytelling retreat at Ty Newydd in Wales, Hugh Lupton's inspired telling of the tale "Glamoury Eye" had a powerful impact on my story.
My thanks go out to all who read this manuscript in draft form, especially to Susan Ito and everyone at Readerville, Cathy Bolton and everyone at Womenswrite, Jane Stubbs, Margaret Batteson, and Susan Stern. My friend Cath Staincliffe, the acclaimed crime writer, taught me much about advanced plotting and how to weave multiple narrative threads together to achieve maximum impact and suspense.
I wish to express my profound gratitude to my agent, Wendy Sherman. This book would have taken much longer to see the light of day without her belief and commitment. My foreign rights agent, Jenny Meyer, worked hard to bring this book to an international audience. I am deeply indebted to my editor, Jane Rosenman. The Vanishing Point would be a much poorer book without her insights and critique.
Prologue: Apostate
Rupertsberg, 1177
THE MOST ANCIENT and enduring power of women is prophecy, my gift and my curse. Once, centuries before my existence, there lived in these Rhineland forests a woman named Weleda, she who sees. She took no husband but lived in a tower. In those heathen times, her people revered her as a goddess, for she foretold their victory against the Romans. But the seeress’s might is not just a relic of pagan times. Female prophets crowd the books of the Old Testament—Deborah and Sarah, Miriam and Abigail, Hannah and Esther.
And so, in my own age, when learned men, quoting Saint Peter, call woman the weaker vessel, even they have to concede that a woman can be a font of truth, filled with vision, her voice moving like a feather on the breath of God.
Mother, what is this vision you show me? With my waking eyes, I saw it coming. The storm approaching our abbey. Soon I would meet my nemesis face-to-face.
My blistered hands loosened their grip on the shovel, letting it fall into the churned up earth. At seventy-nine years of age, I am no longer strong enough for such labors, yet force of necessity had moved me to toil for half a day, my every muscle shrieking. Following my lead, my daughters set down their tools. With somber eyes, we Sisters of Rupertsberg surveyed our handiwork. We had tilled every inch of our churchyard. Though the tombstones still stood, jutting like teeth from the rent soil, we had chiseled off every last inscription. My daughters’ faces were etched in both exhaustion and silent shock. Our graveyard was a sanctuary as holy as the high altar of our church. Now it resembled a wasteland.
Tears caught in my eyes as Sister Cordula passed me the crook that marked my office of abbess. Whispering pleas for forgiveness to the deceased, I picked my way over the bare soil until I came to the last resting place of Maximus, the runaway monk whose plight had driven our desperate act. The boy fled to us for asylum after his brothers committed unspeakable sins against him. Despite our every effort to heal his broken body and soul, the young man died in our hospice, and so we gave him a Christian burial.
But the prelates of the Archbishop of Mainz, the very men who had ignored the cruelty unfolding in the boy’s monastery, had declared Maximus an apostate. Tomorrow or the following day, the prelates would come to wrest the dead boy from his grave and dump him in unhallowed ground as if he were a dead mongrel. So we razed our burial ground, making it impossible for any outsider to locate his grave. Had the prelates ever imagined that mere nuns would take such measures to foil them, the men we were bound to obey?
Raising my abbess’s crook, I spoke the words of blessing. “In the name of the Living Light, may this holy resting place be protected. May it remain invisible to all who would desecrate it.”
My heart throbbed like a wound when I remembered the boy who died in my arms, the one I had sworn before God to protect. He had committed no crime, had only been a handsome youth in a nest of vipers. Maximus had only an aged abbess and her nuns to stand between him and the full might of the Church fathers.
The November wind crested our walls, tossing up grave dust that stung our eyes. My daughters flinched, ashen-faced in the dread we shared. What would happen to us now that we had committed such an outrageous act of sedition? The prelates’ retribution would be merciless.
Foreboding flared again, the fate awaiting us as terrifying as the devil’s giant black claw rearing from the hell mouth. Somehow I must summon the warrior strength to battle this evil. Seize the sword to vanquish the dragon. Maximus’s ordeal proved only too well what damage these men could wreak. In a true vision, Ecclesia, the Mother Church, had appeared to me as a ravished woman, her thighs bruised and bloody, for her own clergy had defiled her. The prelates preached chastity while allowing young men to be abused. In defending the boy, my daughters and I risked sharing his fate—being cast out and condemned. The prelates would crush my dissent at all costs. Everything I had worked for in my long life might be lost in one blow, leaving me and my daughters pariahs and excommunicants. How could I protect my community now that I was so old, a relic from another time, my once-powerful allies dead?
To think that seven years ago I had preached upon the steps of Cologne Cathedral and castigated those same men for their fornication and hypocrisy, their simony and greed. O you priests. You have neglected your duties. Let us drive these adulterers and thieves from the Church, for they fester with every iniquity. In those days I spoke with a mighty voice, believing I had nothing to lose, that the prelates would not trouble themselves over one old nun.
The men I’d railed against gathered like carrion crows to wreak their revenge and put me in my place once and for all. It was not my own fate that worried me, for I have endured much in my life. This year or the next, I would join the departed in the cold sod and await judgment like any other soul. But what would become of my daughters? How could I die and leave them to this turmoil—what if this very abbey was dissolved, these women left homeless? A stabbing pain filled me to see them so lost, their faces stark with fear. Our world was about to turn upside down. How could I save these women who had placed their trust in me?
“Daughters, our work here is done,” I said, as tenderly as I could, giving them leave to depart and seek solace in their duties in the infirmary and scriptorium, the library and workroom.
Leaving the graveyard to its desolation, I pressed forward to the rampart wall overlooking the Rhine, the blue-green thread connecting everything in my universe. Nestled in the vineyards downriver and just out of view lay Eibingen, our daughter house. Our sisters there, too, would face the coming storm. Then, as I gazed at the river below, an icy hand gripped my innards. A barge approached our landing. The prelates had wasted no time.
I was striding down the corridor when Ancilla, a postulant lay sister, came charging toward me, her skirts flapping.
“Mother Abbess! We have a visitor.”
The girl’s face was alight with an excitement that seemed at odds with our predicament. She was a newcomer to our house and, as such, I’d spared her the grim work of digging up the graveyard.
“A foreigner! He doesn’t speak a word of German.”
My heart drummed in panic. Had the prelates sent someone from Rome? Oblivious to my trepidation, Ancilla seemed as thrilled as though the Empress of Byzantium had come to call.
“The cellarer will bring up the v
ery best wines, won’t she, Mother? And there will be cakes!”
The girl was so giddy that I had to smile at her innocence even as my stomach folded in fear. I told her I would receive our guest in my study.
After washing and changing, I girded myself to confront the messenger who would deliver our doom. But when I entered my study, I saw no papal envoy, only a young Benedictine monk who sprang from his chair before diving to his knees to kiss my hand.
“Exalted abbess!” he exclaimed in Latin, speaking in the soft accent of those who hail from the Frankish lands. “The holy Hildegard.”
Our visitor appeared no older than twenty, his face glowing as pink as sunrise.
“What a splendid honor,” he said, “to finally meet you in the flesh.”
“Brother,” I said, at a loss. “I don’t know your name.”
“Did you not receive my letter?” His soft white hands fluttered like doves. “I am Guibert of Gembloux Abbey in the Ardennes. I have come to write your Vita, most reverend lady.”
Lowering myself into my chair, I nearly laughed in relief. So I still had allies and well-wishers after all, though this young man could hardly shield us from the prelates of Mainz.
“My brother in Christ, you flatter me too much,” I told him. “Hagiographies are for saints. I’m only a woman.”
He shook his head. “Your visions have made you the most far-famed woman in the Holy Roman Empire.”
Guibert’s face shone in a blissful naïveté that matched that of young Ancilla, who attended us, pouring him warm honeyed wine spiced with cloves and white pepper, but he ignored the fragrant cup. His flashing dark eyes were riveted on mine.
“Tell me, Mother Hildegard, does God speak to you in Latin or in German? And is it true that you bade your nuns to wear tiaras?”
Before I could even attempt an answer, he blustered on.
“Your writings are most extraordinary! I have never read their like! Did I correctly understand that God appears to you as a woman?”
Brother Guibert was not the first to ask this question. I told the young monk what I’d told the others before him.
“In the Scriptures, God appears as Father, and yet the Holy Spirit chose to reveal God’s face to me as Mother.”
I never dreamt of calling myself holy, never presumed. Yet God, whom I called Mother, chose to grace even one as flawed as I am with the ecstasy of the Holy Spirit moving through me. And so I became the Mother’s mouthpiece, a feather on Her breath. How was I to describe such a mystery to Guibert? I never sought the visions, and yet they came. All I wanted was to know the ways of wisdom and grace, and walk them as best I could. But had I succeeded? My many sins and failings weighed on me. My superiors had only tolerated me for as long as they had because of the prophecies.
I was torn. Honestly, I should warn Guibert away, send him back to Gembloux. The good man was wasting his time here. What use was there in writing the Vita of a woman soon to be condemned?
Then something niggled at the back of my head. What if the key to saving my daughters from the coming tempest lay in my past, in examining my life from its genesis? Past and future were connected in an eternal ring, like the circle of holy flame I’d seen in my visions, that ring of fire enclosing all creation. If I allowed myself to go back in time, to become that graceless girl again, perhaps I might find a way to preserve us.
I
The Tithe
GREEN LEAVES DANCED in the gardens of Bermersheim, my parents’ stone-built burg. Five years old, I sat on the grass with my wooden doll. Beyond the hedge, my older sisters played with our brother Rorich, still too young to join our father and older brothers in the Crusades. How my siblings’ shrieks and laughter pierced the air, and how my loneliness stabbed me. My wheezing lungs, still clogged after a long bout of grippe, stood in the way of my joining their games. When Rorich or my sisters, Clementia, Hiltrud, Odilia, Bertha, Roswithia, and Irmengard, so much as squeezed my hand, I bruised as though I were an overripe pear.
Cradling my doll, I wondered if my longing would be enough to turn the dull wood into living flesh. A shadow passing overhead made me glance up to see an orb come floating out of the sunlight. A ball of spun gold, yet as clear as glass. Inside grew a tree adorned with fruits as dazzling as rubies. The tree breathed in and out, as a living creature would. My doll tumbled from my arms as I reached out to clasp the heavenly orb when, like a bubble, it burst.
“Where did it go?” I demanded, turning first to Walburga, my nurse, and then to Mother. “Where did the ball with the pretty tree go?”
Mother and Walburga whispered behind their hands. What could be wrong with the child? Is she mad, or simply bad?
After I told my mother about the floating tree, a crippling headache struck her down. She staggered to her bed, commanding Walburga to draw the draperies fast around her, and there she lay, moaning in darkness, until the following afternoon. The stony looks my sisters threw me sent me cowering behind the sacks of oats in the undercroft. How horrible I was, bringing down this illness on Mother. Deep inside I must be wicked. Good children did not see the invisible. Walburga accused me of telling false stories to vex the poor woman.
Afterward I tried my best to earn my mother’s favor so that she might love me as she loved my sisters. I learned to pretend that the floating golden orbs weren’t there. If I had succeeded in forever banishing that otherwhere, I might have grown up to lead the life Mother wished for me—to marry some high-ranking knight and to bear his sons.
Every night, huddled in Walburga’s arms, I prayed to be spared the visions. Yet there was no escaping the orbs. By night, they lit up the darkness. In the clear light of day, they whizzed close by my head, echoing with music that sounded like the harps of angels. I kept it secret, not breathing a word. My happiness lay in pretending to be a girl as uncomplicated as my sister Clementia, beautiful and always smiling, our mother’s darling.
When I was seven, I was content, walking hand in hand with Walburga through greening April fields past the village left half-deserted with every able-bodied man, and a number of women, off with the Crusades. Only the children, the elderly, and the lame remained behind.
“Did the girls really go off to fight?” I asked my nurse, never tiring of the story of how some young women, caught up in the same fervor as their menfolk, had disguised themselves as warriors and marched away under the banner of the cross.
“Disgraceful,” Walburga huffed. “Women dressing up like men, sleeping in the same camps as the soldiers. May God forgive them.”
I dared to smile at her slyly. “You’re jealous! They got to go off and see the Holy Lands while you’re stuck here.”
“War isn’t a pretty ballad, child. Have you ever seen a razed village? Crops set to fire?”
“But, Walburga! Whoever fights will be saved from hell.”
Even I had heard how Pope Urban II had promised instant salvation to all who joined the Crusades. Ignoring Walburga’s mutterings, I allowed myself to sink into a daydream of Rorich and me in armor, riding forth with Father and our two eldest brothers, Drutwin and Hugo. I pictured us arriving victorious before the gates of Jerusalem, that city covered in gold where seraphim sang beneath the sun.
Meanwhile, a cow, escaped from her pasture, ambled across our path. White with brown spots, she feasted on the rich new grass. As I stepped close, the animal lifted her head, her huge moist eyes locking on to mine.
“I’ll have a word with the bailiff,” Walburga said. “Those dunderheads from the village should know better than to let a cow run loose.”
“She’s not running anywhere,” I pointed out.
She had merely broken through the flimsy fence of her overgrazed enclosure to reach the better grass. I patted her soft flank and giggled when she swung her head around to nuzzle my hair. Her breath was as sweet as the milk she must give.
“What a splendid calf!” I blurted out, forgetting myself, forgetting that my safety lay in silence.
“What calf?
” Walburga shook her head.
“A bull calf.” I saw it as clearly as I saw Walburga’s face. “With brown and black spots, and four white legs.”
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?
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