Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

by Mary Sharratt

  When Countess von Sponheim visited and spoke to Jutta through the screen, my magistra shrank inside her veil, as if tales of worldly life now galled her. She no longer asked about family, old friends, or life at court, but only how her mare fared in her absence. Sometimes her voice caught when speaking of the horse she had loved so much.

  After her mother retired to the guest lodgings, Jutta swept me up, hugging me tight. “On warm summer days, Silvermoon used to doze off with her head in my arms. I taught her to curtsey like a lady. She gave me kisses and took sweetmeats from my lips so delicately. She was always so good and brave on the hunt. Once, when we were cantering around a tight corner, I lost my balance and would have come off, only she slowed down so I could right myself again. She’s such a big, powerful creature, Hildegard, but so gentle. She looked after me.”

  “Did your mother have any news of my mother?” I asked, but the answer, as always, was no.

  Days and weeks, months and seasons dragged past in dull procession, but I received no visitors, not a single letter from my mother. At first I counted off a litany of spiteful excuses for Mechthild to ease the pain of that gaping silence. She can’t write. She’s ignorant and unschooled. But Mother could have asked her chaplain to write a letter, even a short one, a few sentences to tell me that she loved me and kept me in her thoughts. Was even this too much trouble for her?

  I knew it was a sin to hate, to refuse to forgive, but the raw and hurting place inside me grew and grew until I feared it would swallow my heart. Just when I thought I would never hear another word from any of them at Bermersheim, those cold strangers whose blood I shared, who had abandoned me to these two dusty cells, a letter came from Rorich.

  Ripping open the seal, I devoured his words as though they were bread. My brother’s essence filled the lonely rooms, his laughter and gibes, his smell of dusty summer leaves and healthy sweat. Two years had gone by since I’d last seen him. Now I was ten and he was twelve, only two years older than I was, and yet he no longer sounded like the boy I had known. Now he sounded older than Volmar and Jutta.

  Hildegard, you must hate me for not writing earlier. Mother would not allow it. She said we must leave you in peace while you grew used to your life in seclusion. Any distractions from us would only make it harder for you and make you yearn in vain for what you could no longer have.

  Sister, now it is my turn to say good-bye to my freedom, for I, too, must go to the Church. Mother is sending me to study with the prelates of Mainz. The youngest son must become a priest—even you knew that. Everyone, says Mother, must face their lot.

  As for Mother herself, her health has been poor ever since she sent you away, but she has at last succeeded in finding Clementia a husband, although I confess I don’t like him and, if I were her, I would rather be a nun than marry a man who smelled like a goat.

  Remember, Hildegard, when we used to dream of running away and becoming outlaws? Can you keep those happy days alive in your memory? Keep me in your prayers.

  I remain your loving brother.

  I will remember, Rorich. Running through the tunnel of memory into that light-filled forest, I raced with him once more, beating down nettles with hazel sticks.

  One baking September afternoon, I busied myself in the courtyard, moving my wilting plants into the shade and offering them water, fussing over them and telling them stories as though they were tiny children who depended on me, body and soul.

  “Now drink your water! Soak it up! You have to grow up big and strong,” I admonished my potted Saint-John’s-wort, “because I might not always be here to look after you. One day,” I whispered, “my brother will come for me.”

  Jutta had accused me of the sin of stubbornness and now I allowed my contrary streak to carry me along in its sweeping torrent. Surely Rorich wouldn’t let them force him into the priesthood. He would escape, my brother who was always so courageous and strong-willed.

  “He’ll come cantering through the forest on a snow-white stallion,” I confided to my saxifrage plant, “and he’ll take me far away from here.”

  I refused to let my childhood dreams die, even though each month in the anchorage took me further and further away from the barefoot seven-year-old who had once raced at her brother’s side. I was growing taller, bursting the seams of my habit, my sleeves riding up to my elbows. Prior Cuno had promised to procure cloth for me to stitch a new one, but he lectured that it would do me no harm to learn some patience in the meantime.

  “Don’t fret, my little one,” I crooned to the heartsease, pinching off its wilted blooms. “When I leave, you won’t die. Volmar will plant you in the garden. It will be much better for you there.” I strode over to the greater Solomon’s seal, rising majestic in its tub. “Imagine sinking your roots into the earth instead of a pot. Think how much you’ll grow!”

  With a glance toward the anchorage door where all seemed peaceful, Jutta being occupied with her pilgrims, I kicked up my bare feet and pranced around the courtyard pretending I was on horseback, galloping away from Disibodenberg. My fists closed around imaginary reins, I careened in circles. Offering my face to the sun, I let it scorch me, let it soak into me, its warmth sinking into my muscle and bone, so that it would shine forever inside me, even on the darkest days of midwinter.

  The courtyard door banged open. I jumped out of my skin to see Jutta collapse on the cobbles. Despite the heat, she shivered violently, her face white, her eyes frozen as though she had beheld the maw of hell. Her hands clutched a sweeping skein of coarse silvery hair. Lifting it to her lips, she sobbed and choked, then doubled over as though someone had gutted her with a fish knife.

  “What is it?” I ran to her.

  Jutta moaned and wept, making no sense, until I tried to lead her back inside out of the sun. Then she snatched her hand free and shrieked out three words.

  “Send him away.”

  The horror in her voice drove a spike of terror through me. Be strong. I pictured Margaret of Antioch, steadfast and brave, even when imprisoned in the dragon’s belly. Creeping into the shadowy anchorage, I shrank to think what I might find awaiting me at the screen. Perhaps the monks had mistakenly let in some madman, or a murderer, or an awful beggar bearing blooming pustules of the plague. My bones knocked together. But then the figure lurking beyond the wooden slats hailed me in his warmest voice.

  “Is that you, little Hildegard? God’s teeth, you aren’t so little anymore. A few more summers and you’ll be taller than my sister.”

  The last time I’d laid eyes on Meginhard von Sponheim, he’d been a strapping lad of seventeen, horsing around with Rorich. Now he was a man—a handsome one—with a beard to match his fine head of curly brown hair. His smile was as blinding as the late summer sun.

  “I’ve brought gifts,” he said. “An ell of linen and fine embroidery thread. Isn’t that how you ladies spend your days, praying and stitching?”

  I blushed to have someone as noble as Meginhard von Sponheim calling me a lady. But my thoughts roved back to the courtyard where his sister sobbed and shrank.

  “Jutta wants you to go away.”

  Sorrow seemed to tear at his face. “I brought sad tidings, that is true. My sister’s old nag broke its leg and I had no choice but to slit its throat. It was the most merciful thing I could do. I didn’t expect a religious woman would take the death of a beast so tragically.”

  I remembered how Jutta had pined for Silvermoon, her mare. That hank of silvery hair in her hands—it could only be horsehair.

  “You brought her the dead horse’s tail?”

  “A keepsake. I meant no harm, child. Can you fetch her back to the screen for me? I’d hate to just leave her in tears after coming all this way.”

  His face was as beautiful as a man’s could be, and Cuno preached that a fair face mirrored an even finer soul. Then why did Jutta dread him so much?

  “She wishes you to go away. She is a recluse. Even the abbot doesn’t disturb her when she wants to be alone.”

>   Meginhard laughed, grinning as though he wanted to reach through the screen and pinch my cheek.

  “My sister has made you her creature, I see. Her faithful little lapdog.”

  The mocking tone that came through under the cloak of his charm left me cold. Instead of smiling back, I stared at him, the muscles of my face hardening.

  “The bells are ringing for Vespers. The hour of visiting is over.”

  “But I must say goodbye to her.” He laughed, as though I’d only been jesting. “I’m her brother, her only living sibling. There’s a chain that binds us.”

  His words made my skin creep. I imagined an invisible chain stretching from him to Jutta’s slender throat, fettering her in a stranglehold. For nearly two years, I had awakened to Jutta’s nightmares, her voice shrieking out his name in the dark. I’d been privy to the way Jutta beat herself over and over. To the pains she took to hide her wounds from the monks. My stomach twisted at the memory of how Meginhard had once held me in his lap, his hands strumming through my hair as he bellowed out his tales of heathen gods just to make his sister cry. What had he done to make Jutta so afraid of him? What kind of brother brought his sister her dead mare’s tail?

  Behind him, the church filled with monks come to sing Vespers.

  “Volmar!” I shouted.

  But it was Abbot Adilhum who stalked toward the screen and glowered at me through the slats. “It’s hardly seemly for an oblate to caterwaul.”

  My abbot’s scrutiny made me quail. Then he turned his attention to Meginhard. If any other visitor had presumed to linger this late, causing such a stir just as the brothers assembled for the Holy Office, Adilhum would have booted the offender out of the gates. But Meginhard stood his ground, the smile never leaving his face.

  “The cloistered life certainly hasn’t robbed that child of her spirit—or her big mouth,” he told the abbot.

  Adilhum rested a fond hand on Meginhard’s shoulder. Heir to the Sponheim dynasty, Jutta’s brother was the abbey’s greatest benefactor. Judging from the amount of gold he’d given our abbot, Meginhard might as well write his name on the monastery’s title deed.

  “Come, my son,” said Adilhum. “Join us for Vespers.”

  When the two men had turned their backs, Volmar appeared at the screen.

  “Why did you call me?” he asked.

  “Meginhard made Jutta cry. She hates the sight of him. Can you make him go away?”

  Volmar’s eyes locked on to mine. “If she’s crying, go to her at once. I’ll make sure she’s not disturbed again.”

  I wondered how he, a mere novice, could hope to stand up against the abbot and Meginhard.

  “Go,” Volmar urged, before melting back to join the others.

  In the courtyard, Jutta lay stunned, a gash on her forehead. It looked as though she’d bashed her head into that unforgiving wall. Blood dripped down her face like tears. Her eyes were so still and unblinking that my heart stopped—was she dead? But when I touched her, she sobbed. I tried to hug her, but she shoved me away and crossed her fists over her breast.

  Volmar kept his word. That evening, while Meginhard and Adilhum supped on roasted swan in the abbot’s private parlor, a violent ague gripped Meginhard’s bowels. The spasms left him squatting on the privy the entire night. The next morning, he was in too much agony to sit astride his horse and he was obliged to be carried away in a litter.

  When Volmar told me this, I leaned toward the screen in excitement, as though the lives of the saints were unfolding before our eyes.

  “God smote him!” I cried, thinking of how Saint Barbara’s tyrant father chopped off her head, only to have God strike him down with lightning.

  Volmar shook his head sadly. “It was my doing. I committed a grave sin, Hildegard. Do you know the properties of senna?”

  “It loosens the bowels!”

  “Indeed. I slipped a huge dose of the tincture into Meginhard’s wine.”

  After Meginhard took his leave, Jutta sought an audience with Abbot Adilhum. Her head bowed in humility, she told the abbot that, after much reflection and prayer, she believed it was God’s will that she renounce contact with secular men, including her own brother.

  With Adilhum, Jutta was soft-spoken and poised, her veil drawn over her face to conceal the gash on her forehead. But after the abbot departed and Volmar came to the screen, she wept like a broken child.

  Banished to the other room, I huddled behind the curtain in the doorway and eavesdropped, shedding tears of my own to hear Jutta so anguished. I couldn’t help but listen to Volmar’s murmurs, pitched with such sorrow and care. Volmar, the soul of compassion. I placed my every hope in him, for he alone had the power to comfort Jutta when she wanted to beat herself.

  Jutta was just like the maiden in one of Walburga’s tales. A wizard had cast his spell upon her and she lay in a dark, enchanted sleep, surrounded by a ring of fire. Only the chosen one, the true hero, could step through the flame. Volmar was the one soul Jutta let in as close as any human being could approach her. Peeking around the curtain, I saw his face at the screen. His innocent, hopeless love for Jutta bloomed before my eyes and I could not look away.

  Volmar gave me precise instructions on the medicine I must administer to my ailing magistra. Steeped valerian root, its vile taste and smell disguised with forest honey, made the rigid mask of Jutta’s face relax. She stopped crying, surrendered to the wave of drowsiness, and let me tuck her into bed. Within moments, she sank into sleep, her face peaceful, no longer looking haunted.

  “Hildegard.” Volmar tapped on the screen.

  Even as I whispered to him in secrecy, my magistra was there, her spirit between us. When I looked into Volmar’s eyes, I saw poor tortured Jutta.

  “You must try to understand,” he said. “She can’t help what she does to herself.” His voice was more tender than I thought a boy’s could be. “A great wrong has been done to her. You must always remember that and be as gentle to her as you can, little sister.”

  “Her brother did something.” I both longed and dreaded to know what had happened.

  “May he sear in hell for the pain he caused that pure soul” was all Volmar would say on the matter. Whatever Jutta confided to him, he kept locked inside his heart.

  What would it be like to have so faithful a friend, I wondered. What would I have to do to make anyone love me half as much as Volmar loved Jutta?

  One night after Compline, as I was about to crawl into bed, Jutta pulled me close and cuddled me as though I were her doll.

  “Hildegard,” she whispered. “Have you ever carried a secret so shameful you thought you would die from it? Something too awful to tell your confessor?”

  Thinking of my visions that both dazzled and frightened me, I nodded. Jutta’s arms tightened around my waist.

  “I’ve only told Volmar. But now I must tell you because . . . because you must understand why I took you with me.”

  Between ragged bursts of weeping, she revealed what she thought to be her gravest sin. She was no virgin. Her brother had stolen away her chastity against her will.

  “He’s my mother’s darling golden boy.” She spat out the words as if they were an anathema. “Whatever he does, Mother can see no wrong in him. When . . . when I tried to tell her what he did, she thought I was making up slanderous stories. Or that I was insane. Even you must have heard those rumors—they couldn’t find me a husband because I’m madder than a cuckoo.”

  I just huddled there, limp and silent in Jutta’s lap, as her pain cinched me, winding round and round my body like the spiked chains that penitents wear.

  “She wouldn’t believe me, even when I showed her the blood—”

  Jutta clapped her hand over her mouth before going on.

  “She tried to place the blame on a boy at court, someone I’d once flirted with. She tried to force him to marry me, but I knew he would despise me. I swore I’d kill myself if they wouldn’t let me go to the monastery. But I’m soiled! Meginhard cou
ld betray my secret anytime he likes. I have nightmares about Adilhum casting me out as a whore.”

  “Cuno will protect you.” I remembered the lovesick devotion I’d seen on our prior’s face. “Besides, it’s not your sin. It’s your brother’s.” I squeezed her hands.

  How I wished Volmar was here. He would be able to offer Jutta so much more comfort than I could with my clumsy stammerings.

  “God will punish Meginhard,” I told my sobbing magistra. “God will strike him with lightning and burn him in eternal fire.”

  “Now you understand why I brought you here at such a young age,” Jutta choked out. “Before any man could do to you what Meginhard did to me.”

  I wished I didn’t know. Jutta had saddled me with such an unwelcome knowledge. That night her nightmares became my own. In the deep trough of my dreams, Meginhard clawed his way through the screen, intent on punishing us both for our defiance. He hounded Jutta, then me, through our two small suffocating rooms.

  Before, the tales of the virgin martyrs had just been stories. But Jutta’s passion brought them to bloody life. Ursula and Barbara, Catherine and Agatha had been raped and defiled. Before Jutta’s revelation, I had no idea what those words even meant. Barbara’s father had locked her in a tower, and just like the saint, Jutta and I had landed in this prison because our families had wanted to be rid of the shame of us. My own mother had cast me out because of my visions. Jutta had chosen this confinement to heal her invisible wound that never stopped bleeding. Hidden from the world, we could at least find solace in the fact that God had vindicated each and every one of the virgin martyrs. Awakened them from the dead. Clothed them in pure gold. Raised them to the throne of heaven.