by P K Adams
I was working in the corner near the beehives when I made a curious discovery. It was the hottest hour of the day, the kind that intensifies the droning of the bees as they search for the last of the golden powder inside the fading blossoms. These hardworking creatures had always fascinated me, and I stopped my work to observe them as they came in and out of the beehives. I noticed two in particular that were climbing up one side of the hive, now turning toward each other and agitating their little wings, now moving apart, but always trudging in the same direction, which gave them the appearance of two quarreling friends. Then one of them took off and its companion, momentarily motionless as if stunned by this sudden departure, followed suit and both flew in their peculiar undulating fashion toward the abbey wall.
I followed them with my gaze and paused as I noticed something odd just opposite of where I stood: the wood of a section of the wall about three feet tall was darker and strangely shimmering, and the overhanging vines swayed gently even though the day was windless. I stepped closer and pushed the green tendrils aside, and saw that the bottom part of two beams had rotted through and crumbled to the ground while two others were in the process of doing so. That was what gave them a blackened appearance and caused moss to grow on them, resulting in a glossy veneer that glimmered when the occasional shaft of sunlight struck through the leaves. The hole that had formed allowed a draft that explained the swaying and rustling of the vines. As I contemplated my discovery, the nones bell rang out and I returned to the workshop, but, insignificant though the finding seemed, it tumbled about it my head for the next few days.
Until I understood why.
I chose the day carefully. The monks were spending the morning in Chapter to debate the progress of the renovation works, and Brother Wigbert would be away until after sext, which gave me ample time. I had told Jutta I was needed in the infirmary in his absence, and after checking on a few cases—and hoping there would not be any more for a while—I ran to the breach, lifted the vines, and examined the two rotten beams that still stood. They were too sturdy to push out by hand, so I fetched the garden hoe to break them, which allowed me to slip through.
A wave of exhilaration swept over me as if I had broken out of a cage. I twirled and threw my hands up in the air until I felt dizzy and had to stop. It had been so long!
I looked around. The breach gave onto a narrow path that ran alongside the outer abbey wall. It must have been well maintained once, but now it was overgrown with weeds. A few paces from the wall, the forest began and almost immediately sloped gently down toward the Glan. To the west I could see the rooftops of Disibodenberg below. I knew the abbey vineyards were on the other side, sloping toward the Nahe, although I could not see them from there.
I pondered the implications of my discovery; now that I could come out, I should explore the woods to see which herbs grew in them. But, of course, I had to avoid being seen. With the forest on three sides, it would be easy enough to avoid the monks who went to the abbey mill to check on the work or to the riverside to collect fish for supper, for they never strayed from the direct path through the town. But my gray oblate robe would doubtless be familiar to any lay people who might be encountered in the forest.
I waited for Griselda’s weekly visit and told her my secret. We were excited to share it, and she offered to procure a pair of trousers, a linen shirt, and a leather tunic for me. There were several servant boys around the abbey, and putting together an outfit should not be a problem. Indeed, I was in possession of a disguise of my own two days later.
I wore it under my robe and, once on the other side, hid the outer garment in the bushes. My first excursion took me away from the town and down toward the Glan, but I did not dare go as far as the riverbank. Instead, I ran and walked through the woods, rediscovering the delightful juiciness of a mouthful of fresh blackberries and the earthy taste of walnuts that satisfied a half-forgotten craving. Every now and then, I would stop to put my face to the rough bark of a tree and breathe its warm scent. I made careful note of the herbs I found, which were similar to those around Bermersheim. I spotted foxglove, angelica, wormwood, chamomile, yarrow, and many others, and was happy to find an abundance of horehound.
When I returned to the edge of the forest, I became aware of the sound of steps nearby. Light but deliberate, it was a person, not a beast. I stopped with bated breath, but the noise continued; in fact, it was growing closer. Small stones sprayed and dry twigs cracked under those unseen feet, and before I had time to lunge behind a nearby trunk, a boy emerged onto the path in front of me.
He looked to be about twelve and was a head shorter than I. He did not wear a robe, either, but I knew immediately that he was the one I had seen outside the church on the day of Brother Maurice’s funeral. But this time he had a small bow slung across his chest, a few makeshift arrows stuck in his belt, and he carried a dead rabbit in his hand.
After a momentary look of surprise, he broke into a grin. He bowed and made an elaborate gesture with his free hand as if I were a high-born lady. But even as he leaned forward, his hazel eyes, flecked with green spots and shining with mischief, never left my face.
So much for the disguise. I was momentarily annoyed at what seemed like a mockery on his part, but his face, under a ruffle of brown hair, looked so friendly and his grin was so good-natured that I could not help but laugh.
“I am Volmar,” he said gaily, straightening up. “And what do they call you?”
I hesitated. “Hildegard.” The less said, the better.
He frowned, then recognition dawned on his face. “I knew you looked familiar! You are the oblate girl who helps Brother Wigbert in the infirmary.”
I was mortified. No doubt he would tell the abbot, and I would be sent back to the convent.
“I am an oblate too,” he announced matter-of-factly. “I saw you in the church. I remember because we never see girls there”—that impish smile again—“except for a few from the town on feast days.”
The words came out of my mouth before I could check myself. “So what are you doing here?”
We gazed at each other for a few moments, then burst out laughing.
“Same thing as you, by the look of it!” Volmar appraised me from head to foot. “Though my disguise is not nearly as clever.”
“I found a gap in the wall,” I explained, feeling a surge of trust in my new acquaintance. “I missed the forest. It is the only place where one can find such perfect, pure green.” I ran my fingers over the leaves of a nearby ash. “Besides, there are many more herbs growing here than in our garden.”
He nodded. “We both have our reasons, then.” He lifted the rabbit up for me to admire. “I used to hunt with my father before I came here.”
“How long have you been sneaking out?” It was probably a while, I guessed, given his tanned, freckled face and obvious familiarity with the forest.
“Since Easter.” Volmar waved toward the abbey. “The breach I come out through is near the kitchen. I discovered it not long after I arrived here, a year ago this summer.” He paused as if marveling at that fact, but the smile soon returned to his face, where it seemed to be a frequent and natural guest.
It was getting late, and I took a step toward where my robe was hidden. I had to pass by him, and he moved aside. “Say,” he called after me. “Maybe we could go together sometimes?”
I turned, surprised. I enjoyed these solitary excursions, but I realized it would be good to have company. “I would like that.” I said, suddenly feeling shy.
He laughed again, then disappeared down the path.
10
August 1118
“I think I prefer this to the Bible,” I said out loud before I had a chance to stop myself, so impressed was I by an erudite passage in a translation of Galen. Having finished Lucretius, I had turned to the famous Greek’s anatomical drawings, the humoral theory, and the ways of reestablishing bodil
y equilibrium.
“You shouldn’t say that,” Brother Wigbert admonished me dutifully. “It is a sacred text from which all human wisdom proceeds, and it takes precedence over anything written by physicians and philosophers.” But while his words were meant to refocus me on the proper hierarchy of knowledge, his tone was indulgent, and I thought I even heard a smile in his voice.
“Of course, Brother.” I corrected myself. “I did not mean to suggest that human knowledge is above the word of God, only that the way this is written speaks to me so . . . clearly.”
“And why is that?”
I thought about it. “Maybe because it is not composed of stories that must be explained by a priest.” I paused, searching for the right words. “Galen writes about what causes disease, which we always ask ourselves when we become sick but often cannot answer. For example, he explains that pestilence is spread by corrupt air, and I understand that because I once travelled with my father to Bingen to sell the salt from our mine, and we passed by a large swamp that smelled so foul we had to change our route to avoid taking ill from the vapors.”
“Miasmas are one of the six factors that tip the balance of humors toward disease.” Brother Wigbert took the opportunity to move the lesson along. “The other ones are inappropriate nourishment, excessive rest, lack of sleep, retention, and passions of the soul.”
“Only six?” I was surprised.
“Yes. Why?”
“Because the Bible mentions other causes too. It says that disease is God’s punishment for sin and only those who obey Him will be spared.” I searched my memory for the exact phrasing of one of Sister Jutta’s favorite psalms. “‘Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked . . .’” I stopped for a breath. “If that is the case, why did Galen not include God’s punishment among the causes?”
The monk scratched his tonsure. “The Bible’s wisdom is immutable and thus not subject to scientific study. Galen based his writings and his practice on the works of Hippocrates, another Greek who had investigated natural phenomena, to draw his conclusions.”
“Of course!” I struck my forehead. “They were pagans, and therefore the word of God was not known to them.” Then I frowned. “So who do we believe?”
“The Greeks were keen observers of nature and wrote of causes that we have come to accept as self-evident. But as Christians, we see them as the tools with which God chastises his people.” It was an issue, I realized later, that he and his fellow students at Salerno must have pondered many times. And the answer he gave me must have been their way of reconciling their sources.
There was another contradiction that bothered me. “If God punishes the wicked with sickness, why do so many babes die still in their mothers’ arms when they have not yet committed a sin?”
“That, my child, is a great mystery of our faith,” Brother Wigbert replied in the same tone Jutta employed when I persisted in my inquiries, and I knew there was no point in arguing. Besides, my thoughts were already wandering. I had not been outside in days and wanted to go down to the riverbank.
As soon as the bell rang and the infirmarian left for the church, I changed into the shirt and trousers and went to the back of the garden, wondering if I would meet Volmar.
He had joined me on one outing three weeks earlier. I had just left my robe in the shrubbery when I saw him sitting under a nearby oak, chewing a blade of grass. He had extended a palm full of hulled walnuts and flashed his customary grin. “Finally! I have come here three days in a row and was beginning to think you’d given up.”
“Of course not!” I took a few nuts and we walked down the slope away from the abbey. “I have been busy, and I don’t have a set time for this anyway. I come out whenever I can.”
“You are lucky. Our days are so planned out that I can only do it during the hour of rest.”
I could not help but smile. Under my special arrangement, I had almost forgotten how structured the Benedictine life was. The Rule clearly laid out the eight daily services of the Divine Office; the remaining time was devoted to study and work, and the hour before vespers was dedicated to rest. It had once been my daily life, and it would be again, one day.
“You’d better not go too far, then,” I cautioned, noting the deepening shadows under the green canopy of the trees. “I have work to finish for Brother Wigbert, but I have enough time before nightfall for a walk.”
“Are you skipping the services now too?” Volmar’s voice assumed a tone of mock severity.
I flushed, but seeing his amusement, I laughed. “Sometimes,” I admitted. “The sisters think I am too busy in the infirmary and don’t ask questions.” I felt a little guilty, so I added, “God can hear me anywhere.”
“You are right,” he said in the same matter-of-fact tone I already knew and liked. “Unfortunately, Brother Philipp would not fail to notice my absence, and I would be in trouble.”
I had enjoyed that first walk together and found myself hoping it would become our regular habit, disciplinary risks notwithstanding. Now I scrambled through the breach, looked around, and sure enough, there he was. But instead of the bow and arrows, he carried a wax tablet and stylus. “I will show you the new Latin words we learned at school today,” he announced as we started down toward the river.
We sat on the grassy bank in the shade of a white poplar. He wrote out the words, then handed the tablet to me. I took it eagerly, for I wanted to show off too. I wrote the first line of a new chant: O frondens virga, in tua nobilitate stans sicut aurora procedit. Then I sang it out.
“I like it.” He looked up into the branches swaying above our heads, the shimmering sunlight streaming between the silver-bottomed leaves and dappling the ground with ever-shifting patches of light. “O leafy branch, standing in your nobility as the dawn breaks forth,” he translated. He closed his eyes, savoring the words. “Did you compose it yourself?”
“Yes.”
“How does the rest go?”
Suddenly, I felt shy. I had been working on it in secret because Jutta disapproved of music that was not about God or the Holy Virgin. I was also not sure about my Latin. “Maybe next time.” I put the tablet aside and leaned back against the trunk. “Tell me about your family.”
Volmar was the middle of three sons, but his little brother had succumbed to whooping cough before his first birthday, and his mother had died shortly thereafter. The family had extensive lands north of Mainz, and it had been a tradition for generations for the eldest son to inherit the estate, and for the younger ones to enter the Church. As a result, Volmar’s relatives numbered among the most illustrious ecclesiastics in the Rhineland. They included a dozen abbots and bishops as well as Siegfried, the long-time archbishop of Mainz during the previous century who had sided with Pope Gregorius against the old emperor. The inheritance system ensured that the family’s wealth had remained intact, and to Volmar, that arrangement was completely natural. He had been prepared for the monastic life ever since he could remember, just like I had been.
He did, however, miss hunting with his father, riding ponies, and swimming in the ponds that dotted the estate, so he had embraced the unexpected opportunity for outdoor excursions with enthusiasm and fashioned a bow from the wood of a young yew tree. With a knife pilfered from the kitchen, he had made arrows to hunt rabbits that he then stealthily dropped off among the game and poultry waiting to be cooked for supper. Sometimes he amused himself by fishing, though he had not been able to procure enough rope to make a net and had to do it with his bare hands.
“I’ll show you.” He jumped up. The river was shallow where we were, and he waded up to his thighs, standing firm on the rocky bottom with the familiarity born of experience. For some moments all was still, and I held my breath as he scanned the current, the silence broken only by the waves lapping against the bank. He spotted something and bent slowly, arching his back, then thrust both arms into the river as swiftly as a heron going for a tadpole. There was a bit of commotion, and the water whirled and foamed. Volmar straightened up, water dripping from his arms and from the frantic creature he was gripping with such force that his knuckles had gone white. He had one hand just above the fish’s tail and the other between the head and the stomach, under the gills. That gave him enough control, for after a few more moments of thrashing, the fish started to exhaust itself. Soon it was quite still but for occasional spasms, like a final silent protest. When it ceased all movement, Volmar relaxed his grip and grinned triumphantly.
“The cook will find a random carp among the venison for tonight.”
“That was amazing!”
He waded back. “The carp are fat and slow this time of the year; that is why I could catch this one so easily.”
“Still!” My admiration was genuine.
“Do you want me to show you how to do it?”
My attempt ended with a lot of laughter and splashing as two fish escaped from under our feet, startled by my unsteadiness on the uneven bottom.
With the carp swinging on a rope between us, I pointed out various herbs on the way back and explained their applications. Volmar declared himself impressed with my knowledge. In a fit of pride, I showed him the cuts on my fingers, already healed to fading pink lines, from my first attempt at pruning the fruit trees in the spring.
Our chatter was interrupted by the sound of footsteps from the direction of the abbey. We froze. Even the wind seemed to subside for a moment. All was silent, and the hot air was still. The footsteps grew louder, then Griselda emerged around the bend straight ahead of us.
