by Anne Boileau
Marienthron was a Cistercian house, and we lived, or endeavoured to live, by the Benedictine Rule; each day is divided by bells into separate tranches of three distinct activities: devotion, reading or study and manual labour. We must attend six offices, during which we sing through all the psalms once each week; we pray and listen to the Abbess preach or read to us; every Sunday the village priest comes in and says mass. Now and then the Bishop calls in with his entourage to make an inspection of the convent and ensure that things are running smoothly and standards are being maintained. Each one of us has the opportunity to report to him in confidence if anything is not to our liking or standards are slipping in some way.
I seem to have moved about in a sort of daze during my first few years at Marienthron, seeing my circumscribed world through a butter muslin. I was always playing the tune a beat behind: in the Chapel at Lauds I would long more than anything to be back in bed. Then at Prime, early in the morning, I felt so sleepy and knew it was a sin to yawn during the office. Before breakfast, we had to do two hours’ domestic work; our duties would vary; we might be put to sweeping floors or polishing brass in the chapel; or we would help Cook in the kitchen, plucking a fowl, cleaning rabbits or fish or kneading the dough; or we might be assigned for a week to the scullery, dipping candles, boiling bones for glue or scraping pelts before they went to the tannery; at other times I worked in the dairy: milking or churning butter, or washing out the churns and cleaning the parlour. Or the hated laundry.
Our chores had to be done by breakfast, by which time we were really hungry; after Sext we had a two hour period of study in the library: reading the Bible or doing Latin to German translations or copying out religious texts in our best writing. The convent used our skills to produce fine books, copied onto best parchment; some of us, me included, had learnt the art of illuminations; this was lucrative business for the convent at that time. I never seem to have time to do such work now.
Our main meal was at midday, when one of the senior sisters sat up on a balcony overlooking the refectory and read us a chapter from Benedict’s Rule. After a short rest on our beds we went outside to work in the fields or walled garden, or in inclement weather we would work in the tapestry room or the sewing room instead.
On the whole I enjoyed the farm work best. We became absorbed in whatever we were doing: singling beets or hoeing between rows of carrots or pulling out weeds; while my hands worked my mind wandered to quite other things. All too soon, the bell in the chapel tower would summon us for the next office, giving us half an hour to put away our tools, wash our hands and hurry to our allotted seats in the chapel. As I knelt and sat and stood, through the readings and chanting and praying, the Latin words flowing automatically from my lips, images of what I had just seen flickered in my mind: the freshly turned soil, a robin hopping around my hoe, pouncing on worms; a flock of doves wheeling in circles above us. As the day unfolded, each activity seemed to be coloured by the one that went before, rather like feathers on the wing of a chicken, neatly folded one upon another. More often than not I found each task ended too soon: when I was singing I wanted to continue singing, when I was studying I was reluctant to put away my books at the bell ringing: “Time for Chapel and then outside.” Strange to say, though, once out of doors with my rake or hoe I was happy to stay there, and didn’t want to be dragged back indoors to prayers. You might think this strict routine would be boring, but it wasn’t. I think it helped us avoid small-mindedness and guarded against sloth.
After the evening meal of bread and cheese and beer we had one hour free and were allowed to talk, make music – most of us played an instrument, I play the lute and Ave plays the fiddle; we sang folk songs and played games. Also every Saturday afternoon was set aside for recreation: we played ball or took a boat-trip on the river or went for a picnic in the park. Now and then we younger ones had a sports day, with running races and jumping competitions. Sometimes a group of us rehearsed and put on a little play for the other sisters and the Abbess was very encouraging of such things.
Because our days were so similar, following the same routine, those out of the ordinary events stand out with the greatest clarity in my mind. These memories can be triggered by particular stimuli: the baked bread aroma of ripening rye gently popping on a warm evening in July; the plash of water against the side of a rowing boat; a recorder playing a jig; the smell of blood and offal. We nuns could not do everything, not only because we were women, but because the farm was large – we must have had a hundred acres within the walls to manage. Orchards, the walled vegetable garden, strip fields, a small vineyard and water meadows for hay and pasture. So outside labour had to be called in for certain tasks. A man came every week to clean out the privies. A blacksmith fired up the forge on Thursdays to shoe horses and oxen, mend ploughshares or do other metal work.
The village butcher drove in with his tumbril on Tuesdays to slaughter a beast or a couple of goats and then in November he would bring his four sons along to fetch home the bacon: what a noise! Young pigs, knowing full well their time had come, squealing and rushing about, often escaping and having to be caught again; we had to carry endless buckets of blood and offal to the kitchen, where Cook worked frantically with her team at the range cooking up blood pudding and liver sausage and Wurst. Pork sides were soaked in brine tanks then hung in the smokery for several days. We had to scrape bristles off the fresh pig skins and they were sold to brush makers while the skins went to the tanners. Trotters, snouts, ears, lights and tripe, all had a value. We felt nauseous at slaughter time and our clothes stank of blood and death, but it had to be done. Of course for the dogs it was the most wonderful time in the year; and we all ate more meat than usual, growing nice and fat against the lean months ahead.
Harvest time in August was much more fun than the blood month. For six weeks the whole farm was buzzing like a hive – men scything, swish swish swish, working in staggered rows, one man slightly to one side behind the next, felling the standing corn. Every two minutes each mower would stop, pull a whet stone from his belt and sharpen the blade. They wiped their sweaty brows and went back to the swing and swish. Behind the mowers, women swept up the fallen corn into sheaves and bound it up with raffia. We provided them with gloves for this task. Sweep up, bind together, tie: three deft movements, which at the harvest festival, would be re-enacted in a folk dance. Younger women and children followed them, lifting the sheaves and building them into stooks while little boys dashed about with sticks, killing rabbits as they darted out of the dwindling patch of standing corn. Towards the end of the six weeks, carters came in with their own horses and carts to bring the harvest home to the stack yard. Loading the carts was a skill left to the older men: the stooks had to be packed just so, end to end, so that the load was stable. Some of the corn would be threshed straight away and the sacks of fresh grain carted down to the water mill; the rest of it was stacked to be dealt with later. How delicious it was, the first batch of bread baked with fresh flour! We had grown used to the slightly mouldy taste and smell of last year’s flour; indeed, we were grateful to have any grain left at all by July. That is the leanest month of all.
Of course the peasants had to be fed and watered. It fell to the younger nuns to bring them their dinner: rabbit stew and turnips or pigeon pie; rye bread (made with fresh flour, they wouldn’t stand for the stale stuff!) and goats’ cheese; a basket filled with plums or nectarines. From the kitchen we loaded two panniers on a donkey, food on one side, a barrel of beer on the other. The labourers brought their own wooden plates, pewter mugs and spoon.
I picture the scene so clearly: the men sitting under one elm tree, the women and children under another. Their easy talk as they ate and drank, their voices rising and falling like the murmuring of a flock of starlings. The lazy somnolence afterwards as they dozed in the midday heat, their arms thrown across their eyes, their boots discarded beside them. Small children lay asleep against their mothers’ thighs and some women fed babies at their brea
sts. Dogs lay panting in the heat snapping at flies. Sparrows hopping about looking for crumbs.
I remember looking at these country people before we turned home with the donkey, feeling a stab of envy and regret that I would never know this easy bonhomie, the suck of a baby at my breast, a toddler asleep on my thigh. Maybe I was affected by the strong smell of men as I handed out their food. Sweat, leather, male pungency. Some of them looked at us in a way you should not look at nuns. We lowered our gaze, but once, by mistake, I caught the eye of a handsome young man as I was offering round a basket of plums and he winked at me and drew his tongue across his lips, saying he liked plums, especially when they were soft and sweet. My face burned as I blushed up to my hair and down my neck in shame.
At the end of harvest the convent laid on a feast for all the workers. The carters who had managed not to tip over a load were presented with a harvest goose. All the men and women and boys and girls ate and drank and danced and revelled well into the night, but we sisters had to leave for Compline and were forbidden from returning to the dance. We lay awake in our little beds listening to the distant sound of their singing and pipe playing, the tramp of dancing feet, the whoops of laughter which erupted occasionally, raucous voices raised in drunken song. My heart felt heavy as, too late, I realised what I had renounced in taking my vows as a Bride of Christ. I twisted the ring on my finger in resentment; my feet twitched, longing to fall into step with the dancers; for the first time I wished, guiltily, that I could renounce my vows and join the village people in their revelling. They seemed to be more alive than we nuns, and more in touch with what it means to be human. These were the first seeds of rebellion in my heart, which would lead to nine of us escaping the confines of the convent walls.
Chapter 5
The Fragrance of Cloves
Viel tun und wohl tun schickt sich nicht zusammen.
Being very busy and doing good are not necessarily compatible.
It was during harvest after my taking the veil that I experienced my first monthly bleeding. It came as a shock, such red blood, without warning; of course I knew about ‘special days’ and most of the other young sisters had already begun theirs, but still it took me by surprise. I sought out Ave for help, and she made me some pads and showed me how to make my own and the little backyard where we could wash them and hang them up to dry in private. She made me an infusion of dried gooseberry leaves to soothe my pains; Ave was learning all about herbal remedies and making up medicines. Little did she know how useful that skill would be when we were seeking employment Wittenberg!
My friend Brigitte in the bed next to mine made me a friendship band as consolation. For some reason, I was filled with misery and wept into my pillow that night. My breasts were tender, my abdomen ached; my heart was heavy and I felt lonely; in my mind’s eye I kept seeing the face of the young man under the elm tree and the insolent way he looked at me; or was it a look of longing more than insolence? I tried to work out whether I was insulted or flattered by his look; then I realised with regret how I would never experience the love of a man, or have babies of my own.
That night I slept fitfully and had a vivid dream. It was my wedding day. I was standing in the church waiting for my bridegroom to arrive. Then I looked round at the church door, and there he stood, in the porch, silhouetted against bright, bright light. He came into the church and walked towards me down the aisle; it was Jesus! He took his place at my side, smiling sadly at me. His mother, in a blue gown, was watching us encouragingly, her arms outstretched. But when I looked again it was not the Virgin but the Abbess. Puzzled, I turned again to my bridegroom and realised I was mistaken, that he wasn’t Jesus at all, but the young peasant who had looked at me so lewdly the day before. He made as if to kiss me on the mouth and then I woke up in great confusion.
The weeks, the months, the years went by, season following season. Looking back on those days now, I tend to remember the good times and forget the petty irritations, the frustration. I miss aspects of that life, now that I am so busy and surrounded by people demanding and expecting my time and attention. More than anything else about life at the convent, I miss the silence; yet ironically, when I was a nun we had too much of it and I felt frustrated! I was always thinking about all the things I could be saying, conversations we might be having, if only we could speak. At study, we sat at our desks, studying, reading, translating a passage into German, or practising calligraphy or illumination.
On other occasions we would sit in the studio, working on the great tapestry for the Prince Bishop. At work in silence in a group of sisters, our minds were free to roam while our hands were busy. After selecting the necessary colour threads from the table in the corner, we took our accustomed places on a bench, in a row. The silence was one of concentration; if a mouse ran across the room you could hear his feet; we heard our needles pulling yarn through the canvas, our scissors snipping. We heard our steady breathing, an occasional cough or sneeze, a shoe shifting on the stone floor. The fire in the grate might crackle or a log shift and then one of us would get up and put more wood on it. You could, literally, hear a pin drop. We enjoyed a sense of warm co-operation when stitching the tapestry, of slowly, oh so slowly, bringing the picture to life. Our minds were able to wander at will, but we felt a fullness in our hearts because we were all working together, creating something beautiful.
Silence at meals was less contemplative. We longed to talk to each other at table and it was here that the imposed silence was hardest to bear. It was not quiet, like in the tapestry studio. The refectory, with its high wooden ceiling and stone floor, echoed with the thud of wooden bowls on trestle tables, of pewter mugs being filled with ale by the serving sisters. Clogs rang out on the stone floor as those nuns strode back and forth from the kitchen, their long skirts swishing. From the kitchen we heard large saucepans crashing or cupboard doors banging.
Above us, on a platform, one of the older nuns would read to us but we didn’t always listen. Instead, we conversed in sign language. It’s amazing, how much information you can get across by using your hands, face, eyes and body. For instance, to say: “pass the milk please” we would pretend to milk a finger with the other hand. “It’s fish today” we would do a fish tail motion with one hand. “I’m so tired this evening” or “Are you hoeing again this afternoon?” or “I had a letter from my father today” or other such simple concepts were easy to get across. Sometimes our silent speech resulted in stupid giggles, which were hard to control, and one of the senior sisters would glide over from the high table to reprimand us, again, with body language.
The most powerful silence of all was when we sat in chapel. My favourite office was Tierce at 8am. Prime, at 6am was too early, I was still sleepy. We had already been up at 2am for Matins and Lauds. Tierce was after breakfast, but before the hard physical work began, so we were no longer sleepy from the night and not yet tired from the day. We sang a hymn, then recited our Latin prayers (I can still recite Tierce by heart) and sang another canon. I love singing, music was my greatest consolation when I was small and first arrived at the convent school. I enjoyed listening to the nuns singing, and I loved learning new songs in choir practice. After the plainsong we would sit in silence for twenty minutes until the great bell in the tower rang. The silence in the chapel was soft as velvet. Of course some sounds came in from outside; a wood pigeon cooing from the chapel roof; a pair of jackdaws squabbling; a gloomy little sparrow saying ‘cheep cheep cheep’. If it was windy the huge elm tree beside the chapel would murmur and creek its boughs. But within the security and warmth of the chapel we could listen to the rhythm of our beating hearts and sense the flow of blood in our veins. At that time, I opened my heart to the Blessed Virgin, to Jesus, to God the Father. Most often, it was the Blessed Virgin I approached and came closest to. My heart filled with her sympathy and love. I laid my troubles at her feet, not verbally, but visually, and she took them from me. I confessed my sinful thoughts or deeds to her and she forgave me. When t
he great bell rang and it was time to move, to leave the chapel and disperse to our allotted tasks, I often wanted to stay longer, stay all day in such contemplation and prayer. If only all I had to do was pray, I thought, I could get even closer to Mary, to Jesus, even to God the Father. But then I would console myself with the knowledge that Sext was only four hours away and I could immerse myself again in prayer.
Although Tierce was my favourite office, my most ardent religious experiences came to me at Compline, especially in long winter evenings. The dark roof of the chapel above us, lit up by the soft light of only a few candles. The fragrance of incense. We had eaten our last meal and drunk a little wine, though we were never inebriated; but we were tired, sometimes a little homesick or despondent or lonely. The weather was cold, the food monotonous and too little of it. It was then that I experienced most strongly the burning of God’s presence within me. It was like a glowing coal touching my inner being, almost painfully hot, like when the seraph, in Isaiah, took a burning coal from the altar with a pair of tongs – but in my case he touched, not my mouth, but my heart with the coal. This happened to me only three or four times, notably when I made my vows and took the veil.
If you were to ask me what, if anything, I miss most from our life in the convent, I would say the freedom to pray. Because in order to have time to pray, you need the structure and discipline, the pattern in the day’s timetable to allow time for prayer. Now, I have so many things to do and so many people to see, to oversee, to negotiate with, that my soul remains hidden away, like a snail whose head is shyly withdrawn. Of course we have household prayers, in the morning and evening, and one of our number will always say grace before meals. But my head is always whirring with my responsibilities, I find it hard to lay them to one side, to recover that sense of tranquillity and closeness to God which I found in Marienthron Convent in the village of Nimbschen.
