“There are other oblates. That girl from Alzey,” I said, remembering what Rorich had told me. “She went to the nuns at Schönau, but she had to wait till she was twelve. Besides, Mother says it isn’t so bad. You learn to read and write, and to play the psaltery, and you sit and stitch silk like the ladies at court, except the nuns have to wear plain clothes.”
“If they were only sending you to live with ordinary nuns, love, I wouldn’t be crying my eyes out.” Walburga’s tears drenched my hair. “That Jutta wants to be an anchorite and she’s dragging you down with her.”
My mind was a blank. “A what?”
“An anchorite.” Seeing the confusion on my face, Walburga rocked me in her arms and keened as though an unspeakable wrong had been done to me. “Poor child, you don’t even know.”
During that long, happy summer, Walburga turned a blind eye as Rorich and I ventured out in the forest day after day, tumbling through the undergrowth, coming home grubby, with spider silk in our hair. I caught toads and salamanders, cupping their wriggling bodies in my hands before freeing them. Rorich snared rabbits. With his bow and quiver of arrows, he stalked deer while I shadowed him and watched, my heart in my throat as the arrow went singing through the air only to miss the hind as she dashed away. What would it be like to escape so easily, to just vanish into the green?
He was never much of a marksman, my brother. That was why Mother was content to let him stay home with the women instead of sending him away to join Father and our elder brothers in the Holy Lands and learn the arts of war. Besides, everyone but Rorich himself saw his future chiseled in stone—the boy was not destined to be a knight but a cleric, as bound to the Church as I would be if Mother had her way.
In September the anniversary of my birth came and went. I turned eight and still Mother did not return from Sponheim. She and our sisters stayed away so long that Rorich decided they had forgotten about sending me to the monastery.
“They’ll spend the rest of their days at court,” he said. “Preening before the countess and fighting to dance with her son.”
I discovered a cave in the forest, its opening just wide enough for us to squeeze through. It opened into a dry cavern big enough for us to light a fire.
“This is where we’ll live,” I told Rorich. “This is our hideaway. They’ll never find us.”
The moon waxed and waned. The vines covering the keep wall turned blood red. One evening at twilight, Rorich and I straggled back from the forest to find Mother awaiting us in her chamber.
“Rorich, leave us,” she said. “I must speak with your sister in private.”
Cold and trembling, I dragged myself forward to take my mother’s hand and kiss her knuckles.
“Welcome home, Mother.” I gazed into her eyes and wondered where my sisters were, why they were so quiet. I expected the silent rooms to explode with their gossip.
Mother smiled, running her hands through my snarled hair. “My wild child. You have elf locks.”
I tried to speak, but my throat silted up, the unhappy knowledge rising in my gorge.
“Irmengard and Odilia are to be married next spring. The countess is paying their dowries.” Mother’s eyes gleamed with the joy of answered prayers, burdens lifted. “Walburga must pack your things at once, my dear. Tomorrow at first light we leave for Disibodenberg.”
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About the Author
MARY SHARRATT, the author of six previous critically acclaimed novels, is on a mission to write strong women back into history. Her lifelong love of classical music and her explorations into the lives of female composers inspired her to write Ecstasy. She lives in Lancashire, England.
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