The bones are wrapped again, and again. The final, outer silk shroud is white as the clouds which obscure the white sun; white as the clothes of the crowd of mourners that surround the bier, waiting to take Andrianmihaja home. The women’s hair is loose. The men’s feet are white with dust from the thin trail that winds through the grassy hills.
The Royal Weaver cradles the package of bones. She remembers Andrianmihaja as a swaddled child. She kisses him, now, as she did then, with the same affection, and places him on the bier, joining the procession back to the excavated earth tomb, where he must be reinterred and the tomb sealed before daylight fades.
Birds twitter. Grasses sigh in the wind. The Royal Weaver sighs with them. She is the last to leave. She will close the west-facing door in the hillside.
The others are already distant, returning to the river to wash their feet in running water to cleanse themselves of the pollution of death, when the Royal Weaver notices the shadow by the east side of the hill.
“Who is there?” she calls sharply. The white-wrapped figure has the edge of its worn, rafia-palm lamba pulled up and over the face. Only the wet, weepy eyes are showing.
“There is daylight, still,” croaks a voice that is unmistakeably the queen’s. “Please, let me enter.”
The Royal Weaver falls to her knees, stricken. She can summon no protest as the disguised, amorphous shape of Ranavalona enters the hill, reaches for Andrianmihaja’s bundled bones and whispers something to them in the gloom.
There is daylight, still, but now the very life and light of the Sacred Red Island has been mingled with the darkness of the dead. Who can say what will happen?
On her old knees with her head bent, the Royal Weaver senses blood and pain running into the molten gold of the Great Glory’s royal vintana as the queen walks in stiff silence away from the tomb.
~VIII~
What do I see,
Queen of the Merina
with a god’s eyes?
With a god’s eyes?
I have done as you bade
my late husband to do,
O Andrianampoinimerina,
my father.
The borders of my rice field
are the seas.
Yet, the French come!
The French desire my rice field!
French oak slices red coral waters!
Let them come
in their winged villain’s ships.
I have eaten their god.
I was born on a Friday.
“Vintana” by Thoraiya Dyer
HALLOWED GROUND
Juliet Marillier
~Year of Our Lord 1178: Autumn~
I am digging a grave. Not my own, though I am eighty years old and my joints ache. Not, indeed, a resting place for the mortal remains of any man or woman. If it were necessary to bury the departed, I would call upon one of the younger, fitter sisters, or upon one of our lay assistants. Berthe, for instance, has the brawny arms of a countrywoman and can carry a pair of milk pails as if they weighed no more than a couple of breviaries.
I am digging to hide the grave of a repentant sinner. Matthias was his name. Yes, he was excommunicated for his wrongdoing. But he died repentant. He received absolution. So he lies, as he should, in hallowed ground within our convent walls at Rupertsberg. We laid him to rest in the shade of a yew and sang a psalm.
May God rest his soul. If the church authorities in Mainz have their way, his bones will not lie tranquil long.
My blood boils at the thought. I pause in my labours to pray for a quiet heart, for self-discipline, for humility. Around me the garden rings with birdsong. And now, beneath those high avian voices weave those of my sisters from the chapel, singing a hymn to the Virgin; a hymn of my own composition. Ave generosa, gloriosa et intacta puella. This is a place of peace; Our Lady walks here. I pray for a spirit free from anger, and for the ability to know with certainty which decisions are God’s and which my own.
A voice within me whispers, Did you ever know that, Hildegard? Surely you thought it unlikely that God would choose a frail woman—a sickly child, you were when it began—to be the recipient of His divine wisdom. Did you not sometimes wonder if the visions and messages and ideas sprang, not from Heaven, but purely from your own imagination?
“Begone,” I mutter aloud, driving in the spade with all the vigour I can summon. “You are the voice of the devil, and you must know by now that I am too old and stubborn to listen to you. Besides, I’m busy.”
“Sister Hildegard?”
I start as one of the young novices appears on the pathway beside me. It’s hard to straighten up. My body does not obey me as it once did.
“Let me help,” says the girl, reaching for the spade. What is her name, Agnes? Mathilde? I cannot recall. “You should rest—you should go in and sit down—”
The voices float out from the chapel, high and true. The girl looks at me; I look back at her.
“We’re missing Terce,” she says.
“God will be content to hear our prayers under the trees, with earth on our hands.” Ah! I’ve remembered her name. “Shall we kneel, Sister Barbara?”
We lift our voices in song. I can no longer reach the high register required by this hymn; I did not compose it for old women. I restrict myself to the final, providing a sort of drone. Barbara surprises me. She tackles the melismatic chant with perfect confidence, every note clear and accurate despite the wide range of the melody and the particular challenges of the third mode. The birds continue their distinctive contribution.
I had a good voice once. God has many ways of teaching us humility.
The hymn over, we rise to our feet. Our habits are muddy, our sandals clogged with earth.
“You are something of a musician,” I tell my companion.
Sister Barbara blushes and holds her silence. Instructed, no doubt, to avoid prideful thinking. We have many talented women here; if our reputation for piety and scholarship does not draw them to this particular convent, our music surely does.
“Lift that voice of yours only in praise of God,” I say, “and there’s no more personal pride in you than there is in those birds up in the trees. Like yours, their song is a song of joy. Joy in God’s creation. Joy in being alive and free.”
“Sister Hildegard,” says Barbara, “please let me do the digging.”
I sit on the bench and watch her awhile. She understands the task. Word has got around, no doubt, of my fury at the letter from the bishops: a letter ordering me to have poor Matthias’s earthly remains dug up and removed from hallowed ground. A letter stating in blunt terms that if I refuse, they will send someone to do it for me.
So we are turning a gravesite into a vegetable garden. Seedlings await their places; stakes and cord lie ready for neat bean-rows. We may even fashion a clerical scarecrow. Matthias had farms, crops, animals. He’ll forgive us a cabbage or two.
I measure out my breathing. Slowly, my calm returns. I close my eyes, considering the difficult question that never quite leaves my mind: Did you ever lie about your visions? Once they were credited by the Holy Father as true, did you ever interpret them in ways that would serve your own ends? There’s no denying they were often convenient. I let myself drift back into the past. Many, many years…almost a lifetime of years…
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
I was seven when they enclosed me with Jutta in her cell at Disibodenberg monastery. It was meant to be for life. I thought the anchoress looked like an angel, and on that first day I told her so. Jutta chided me, gently, for presuming to know how an angel might appear. I told her I did know; I had seen them. It was not a lie.
When I was a little older, and understood what the life of an anchoress was, I realised that my mother and father, in their decision to commit me to enclosure at such a tender age, had not been cruel and unfeeling as some might have thought. They had done me a great service. In locking me away, they granted me the lifelong gift of freedom. Freedom to learn; freedom to t
hink; freedom to create. Freedom to love God with all I had to give.
By the time I was seventeen, there were twelve of us sharing the cell. I no longer spoke of my visions. Among my sisters, and even among the monks of that foundation, there were some who believed that what I told them was self-aggrandisement or the product of an undisciplined imagination. Others thought I suffered from a disorder of both body and mind. True, when the visions came I had a kind of fit, or so folk told me. My body went rigid or fell into trembling spasms, and although my eyes were open, I did not see what was before me in the real world. I looked into God’s world; I saw what He wished me to see. I was indeed an unlikely vessel for His wisdom. But there it was. In the beginning the visions came unsought. They overtook me; they left me much weakened in body. But in spirit, much refreshed and full of wonder. Full of the need to share my new insights.
But I learned to keep silent, knowing I would be misjudged. Hildegard is in frail health, they said. She has never been strong. With the wisdom of my eighty years, I believe that they were only half right.
When I was twenty-seven, our number had grown to sixteen and the confines of the cell, even with its two chambers, became intolerable. I had by then negotiated access to the monastery garden at certain times of day, though Jutta held firm in her vow of seclusion and would not go out. A new door was made, with its bolt on the inside, and we had the freedom to come in and out at our own choosing. A privy was constructed for our exclusive use; the old system with the buckets was abandoned. The general health of the sisters improved greatly with the increased sunshine and fresh air. We grew vegetables. We kept chickens. On the subject of my visions I held my silence.
By the time I was thirty-seven, Jutta’s health was uncertain; the beautiful young woman of my childhood had become worn and weary. There were five-and-twenty sisters living in the cell; I had persuaded Abbot Kuno to extend our quarters when other parts of Disibodenberg were rebuilt. But the requests kept coming, for another girl to join us, and another. They were drawn by Jutta’s piety.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
“Sister Hildegard?”
Young Barbara’s voice breaks into my thoughts. I sit up with a start, and see on her face that she thinks I have fallen asleep.
“Shall I begin putting in the seedlings?” she asks.
She has done a good job of preparing the garden; she’s dug over three times the area I could manage in the same time. Who would know, now, where the repentant sinner Matthias lies? Under this fertile soil rest both nuns of our convent and local folk of noble family, buried since we made the move to Rupertsberg. A contentious move, opposed by Abbot Kuno and the brethren, since our departure from their foundation meant the loss not only of our good selves, but of the endowments we brought with us when we entered the religious life. But God had shown me what I must do. The vision was powerful. It was plain that God intended me to take my sisters over the river where we would form our own foundation in order to provide succour and ministry to the community at large. We were to leave the comforts of Disibodenberg and fend for ourselves in far poorer surroundings. And we would offer burial within our walls to worthy Christian folk of the district.
I explained this to the Abbot. I told him we would take our few possessions, the wherewithal to establish a small scriptorium, a library, an infirmary where we might treat both our own sick and those of the community. We would take what was required to maintain ourselves in simple fashion, and we would uplift ourselves to Rupertsberg in the district of Bingen.
Abbot Kuno refused outright. Having expected this, I did not engage him in a war of words. I did not accuse him of venal motives. Instead I wrote letters to folk who could help me, folk of influence. Letters had long been my strength, my way of reaching out to make change in the world from within my convent walls. Through letters, as much as through the books I have written, I have been able to pass on the wisdom God has given me, as to how a life should best be lived, how a church or a monastic foundation should best be governed, how God might wish us poor men and women to act and speak and deal with one another during our brief span on earth.
I did not speak to Abbot Kuno on the matter again, for very soon after he refused me I was overtaken by another vision, this time so strong that it lasted from one evening’s Vespers until the next day’s Prime. They told me, afterwards, that my body had lain rigid on my bed, and that my eyes had remained open but unseeing as first my sisters, then my dear mentor and friend Brother Volmar—oh, how I still miss him—then the monastery’s Infirmarian, and lastly the Abbot himself came to my cell to witness it. That was a remarkable visitation, so powerful that I was not able to write of it with any clarity until much later. A divine correction, Kuno called it. He had no choice, afterwards, but to relent in the matter of our move to Rupertsberg.
We raised the funds to buy our chosen land—many of our sisters are from wealthy families—and removed ourselves as promptly as we could to Bingen, and to the then somewhat dilapidated accommodation here at Rupertsberg. Our convent grew; it is no longer the makeshift establishment of those early days. I will die within these walls. Perhaps next winter, perhaps the one after; my bones grow weary. Will my sisters plant cabbages on my grave? I believe I would prefer herbs. Rosemary, for a strong woman. Sweet alyssum, to moderate anger. Bay for healing. Chamomile to bring me peaceful sleep.
My mind has been wandering again. Sister Barbara has been joined by two others, and the cabbage seedlings are going in, row on neat row. They’ll be bedded in straw to keep out both the chill and the caterpillars. God willing, I will see them grow full and healthy; I will be here to enjoy a hearty cabbage soup. We have good cooks among our lay helpers.
“Sister Hildegard?” Barbara holds my little sack of herb roots and seedlings, ready for planting. Cress, winter purslane, sorrel, parsley. In spring I will add comfrey, a herb that not only forms a fine basis for compost, but also deters insects fond of a leaf diet. Have I time to write a new book on herbs, an extension of my Natural History? My hands are crabbed with age; I can no longer hold a steady quill. If only Volmar had lived a little longer… I have Guibert, of course, and Guibert has his uses. But there is nobody like Volmar. If not for that kind and clever man, I would never have had the courage to speak out about my visions. Not once did he doubt me; not once did he patronise me. He guided me as no other ever did, for Jutta, well-meaning soul as she was, was limited in her scholarship. Were it not for Volmar, I would never have recorded in writing the divine secrets God had shown me since I was a little child. I would not have reached out to the world through my books and my letters, and the world would not have come to me. Who would have believed, when Volmar first took on the duty of teaching me a scholar’s Latin, that in time the Holy Father himself would hear of my writings, and would read parts of Scivias, and would officially declare my visions genuine?
“Sister Hildegard, would you like to plant these yourself?”
Sister Barbara brings me back to the here and now once more. This girl may be young, but her instincts are sound. She does not know me well; cannot, as her time in the convent has been short. But she sees that I am no doddery old woman, content to sit by and watch while others work. Busy hands keep the mind alert. I will not let my faculties wither and fade away. Barbara recognises that within the carapace of a wrinkled ancient, I am still the same woman I was when young. But wiser. I hope I am wise enough to deal with whatever may come from this day’s work. One thing I know: the bishops will be much displeased.
The herbs go in at each corner of the new garden plot. I tuck the last seedling in place, dust off my hands then rise with some difficulty to my feet. Barbara hovers; she will not help me up unless I ask her to.
“A good job, Sister,” I say. “Tell me, can you read and write?” Her voice and manner indicate she is of good family; her singing suggests a young lady’s education.
“Yes, Sister Hildegard. My Latin is rather limited, but I can read it quite well, and I can read and w
rite in German.”
“Good. I’ll arrange for Brother Guibert to give you some further tuition in Latin; he may grumble a little, but we need scholarly women here as well as pious ones. What about the notation of music? Have you ever learned that?”
Her cheeks have turned pink again. “I can read music, Sister Hildegard. I have not had the opportunity to write it. I would like that very much—that is, if I can help the work of the convent by learning that skill, I would be glad to do so.”
I recognise a kindred spirit; she is struggling for humility as I have done on more occasions than I can count. “This must be with Sister Elisabeth’s permission, of course.” Elisabeth is our Mistress of Novices; she will do as I bid her.
“Of course.” Barbara is trying to suppress a grin of pure delight. “Thank you, Sister Hildegard.”
“The best thanks you can give me will be to work hard, learn quickly, then use your gifts in the service of God. And to be brave, Sister. Brave in the face of those who doubt you; brave in the face of those who mock you; brave in the face of those who consider you weak, unworthy or ignorant. Brave in the face of those who do not believe a woman can have her own voice.”
“But you—” she starts, then holds back her words. What was she going to say? But you surely never had to deal with that? You are so highly regarded—who would ever have doubted you?
“Best go now and wash your hands,” I say. “I will speak to Sister Elisabeth later today. No point in wasting time.”
~Year of Our Lord 1179: Spring~
Cranky Ladies of History Page 34
