Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

by Mary Sharratt

  The only thing Jutta said to me that week was one stark sentence.

  “Trutwib is no prophet but a fool.”

  What could Jutta do with me, then? The sullen truth dawned that there was no way she could be rid of me, for like my magistra herself, I had made my vows before God. When she knelt at the screen to chant the Holy Office, she left no room for me but blocked my view into the church, my only glimpse of the outside world. Crouched behind her, I murmured my psalms in a whisper too choked to disturb her.

  I turned my face to the wall, my head swimming, my entire body gone numb. My last chance of escape had turned to dust. I will grow old and wither and die here. This was my living death. I was but a ghost. I had become nothing.

  To further escape my presence, Jutta sank even deeper into her sufferings, haunted as ever by Meginhard, whose crime remained etched on her body, racking her. When she awakened screaming from her night terrors, she beat me away if I dared to comfort her. By day, she fasted, scourged herself, moved through the anchorage rooms on her bare knees until they bled and festered, as if this could finally purge her of her brother’s stain. If she couldn’t make him vanish from this earth, she would make herself disappear, starving herself until her skin went gray and her teeth were stained brown, till her shorn hair began to fall off her scalp and down grew upon her face. Until her eyes, as huge as medallions, were her only beauty that remained.

  Stirring inside my breast, the whisper grew into a roar until I was forced to admit that I mourned the Jutta I had loved. Once, like Eve, she had been as innocent as that white cloud full of stars, but then the serpent’s poison sank into her, sickening and corrupting her. Now I could only watch, powerless to plead or help, as she grew more and more distant, shrinking deep inside herself to a place where even Volmar could no longer reach her.

  “If only I knew what to do,” Volmar whispered from his side of the screen.

  Over and over again, he called Jutta’s name until his voice grew as hoarse as an old man’s. A few feet away, she knelt, her eyes open but unseeing, her soul flung into some other world.

  “She used to trust me.” He sounded so heartbroken that I longed to reach through the screen and clasp his hands.

  “She despises me,” I told him. “She’d get rid of me if she could and, by God, I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Don’t be disrespectful. She’s still your magistra.” Volmar sighed. “At least we know she’ll remain safe and undisturbed. Her brother”—he merely mouthed the words lest Jutta hear them and fly into a panic—“has gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands seeking penance.”

  I roiled with hatred for Meginhard. How easy for him to play the penitent, jaunting off to Jerusalem with the sun on his face and a fine horse to carry him, while I remained trapped in this hell with the fruit of his mortal sin, this shattered woman who would never be right again. My old love for Jutta brimmed, bringing tears to my eyes.

  “It’s melancholy,” I said. “I told you from the beginning. One day it will kill her.”

  “She’s so much more than a melancholic.” Volmar’s undying adoration illumined his face. “Jutta’s a saint. Cuno appointed me to write her Vita, but how can I if she no longer speaks to me?”

  Jutta would deny herself every last comfort, even Volmar’s chaste, unselfish devotion. If only he would cherish me that way.

  “Ask me.” I grew bold. “I’ll tell you anything you need to know.”

  Cuno appeared at the screen daily, not speaking but only kneeling to gaze at Jutta as she prayed, her face hidden in her veil. Like Volmar, his love for her remained steadfast. It was as though the sainted anchorite were some tragic maiden locked in a tower. Though Cuno could never touch her, he guarded the ground beneath her citadel, pledging himself as her champion, determined to protect her till her dying day.

  You foolish man, I wanted to scream. If only you knew. Now that my magistra had withdrawn from the screen, the men who adored her couldn’t smell her rancid breath or see how her once-white teeth had rotted to black stumps. Only I was privy to that.

  As Jutta wasted away, the miasma of her unspoken resentment filled the room until I thought I would gag on it. My magistra had never forgiven me for Trutwib’s prophecy. The one who lives under your wing shall grow and grow until she outshines you. You will die, forgotten and obscure, and she shall blaze like the sun. I wished Jutta would listen as I struggled to persuade her that I, too, thought Trutwib was mistaken. I am no saint. I am full of sin. I will never be your equal.

  But as lacking in holiness as I knew I was, I was still everything Jutta longed to be and was not, a true virgin gifted—or cursed—with visions that came as pure gifts in their gleaming orbs, without my having to pummel or starve myself to summon them. In Jutta’s mind, I had done nothing to earn God’s favor. Little could I dispute my magistra—I hadn’t chosen any of this. But even as Jutta tried to freeze me out, she appeared unable to ignore my absences when I knelt unmoving, in thrall to the things I saw that she would never see. If these visions indeed came from God, why had God chosen me over Jutta? If I could, I’d give it all away, lay every last gift at her feet, only to have peace again.

  Jutta ignored her pilgrims. In vain they loitered beyond the screen while their holy woman huddled barefoot in the courtyard, clad only in her hair shirt, regardless if it rained or snowed or pelted down hailstones. And so it fell upon me to receive our visitors. Over the months, I grew accustomed to sitting beside the screen during the hour of visitation and listening as the matrons and widows poured out their torments, telling me such secrets that blistered my ears. They revealed the unspeakable illnesses their husbands brought home from foreign battlefields. They poured out the sorrows they could tell to no priest. Of the cancers that ate away at their very breasts, of their struggle to love their own children, those infants who died like flies, one after the other, from croup and small pox, grippe and flux.

  A fifteen-year-old bricked inside my anchorage, I knew little of the outer world in which these women struggled to survive. Their laments were my education. As my vocation demanded, I offered them my prayers, but I also told them what herbs might ease their afflictions. For those with cancers, I bade them go to the hospice and ask Brother Otto to give them yarrow, which helped prevent the growth of tumors, and violet salve, which healed existing tumors. To those maidens and matrons who believed themselves under attack from a man’s love spell, I prescribed mandrake root. For those who simply wished to curb their husband’s insatiable lust, I suggested marjoram and cowbane.

  “Tell Brother Otto you need them to cure your headache.”

  One warm June day, a young priest appeared at the screen. He was tall and beautiful, and his brown eyes were shot with flecks of gold like brook agates. Upon seeing me, his face lit up with such love and pain that I could only gape at him stupidly, my palms dripping sweat.

  “Hildegard,” he said. “Don’t you know me anymore?”

  “Rorich?” Tears clouded my vision of his beloved face.

  I threw myself at the screen, coming as close as I could to embracing him.

  “I thought I’d never see you again!” I pulled back so I could gaze into his eyes. “Have you come to take me away?”

  Hope beat so madly inside me that I didn’t care if Jutta overheard and came charging in from the courtyard to upbraid me.

  “Get me out of here, I beg you.” My fingers poked through the screen to touch his. For seven long years I had dreamt of the moment when Rorich would rescue me.

  His face crumpled. “Hildegard, you know I can’t undo your vows.”

  “Vows?” I spat the word back at him. “I was just a child!”

  He rested his brow against the screen. “Do you think your abbot will knock down those bricks even if I beg him on my knees? I had to grovel to the prelates just to get permission to visit you. I am bound by obedience just as you are.”

  Desolation swept through me and then a boiling rage.

  “Those are fine words when
you can walk out of those gates whenever it pleases you. Why did you even show your face here if you can’t help me?”

  “Mother is dead.”

  My brother’s face turned ashen.

  Mechthild. I sank to my stool. How many times had I tried to convince myself that she wasn’t really my mother, that chilly, toothless harpy who had pressed me down into the grave dust beside Jutta seven years ago? Why did the news of her passing make me shrivel up and sob?

  “The prelates allowed me to go to Bermersheim during her final weeks,” Rorich said. “She died of cancer of the stomach.”

  I winced, my hands knit over my belly.

  “Her agonies seemed endless. She struggled to form the simplest of words, yet we could tell she was trying to say something. The last word she managed to say, over and over again, was your name. She died regretting what she did to you.”

  I covered my face.

  “She loved you. Truly. She thought to save you from a fate that might even be worse. Our sisters weren’t lucky in marriage. Clementia has taken a vow of celibacy in order to leave her husband.”

  At least no one bricked her in. But my brother’s grief forced me to acknowledge that I wasn’t the only one to suffer. What must my sister have endured in her marriage to take such a drastic measure? The sad stories of my women pilgrims came back to me. Thick-headed as an ass, I had allowed my self-pity to blinker me from the fates of others. At least I could honestly say that I had never endured a man’s violence.

  “If Clementia seeks shelter, she may find it here, with Jutta’s permission, of course.” My words came choked and wooden.

  “She has found refuge in a women’s cloister in Mainz,” my brother said. “Her health is frail. I don’t know if she would survive the journey here. Keep her in your prayers.”

  I nodded, my throat swollen up.

  “Father, Drutwin, and Hugo have returned from the Holy Lands. Father went to Mother’s deathbed, but she didn’t recognize him.” The tears glistened on my brother’s face. “She only wanted you.”

  Speechless, I remembered the times she had been tender, taking me in her lap and stroking my hair.

  “Father is a broken man,” Rorich went on. “Crippled in body and soul. I can only imagine what he witnessed—and committed—in the wars. Hugo is now acting as lord of Bermersheim. He’s thirty, but he looks sixty and still needs to find a wife. Drutwin has joined me in Mainz. He wishes to take holy orders to cleanse himself of the blood he shed.”

  All those murdered Saracens and Jews. How sheltered my life was here. I hung my head while listening to my brother’s litany of loss.

  “You must have heard of the diseases brought back from the Crusades. Bermersheim has its first lepers. Before she died, Mother donated the monies for a lepers’ squint to be built in the village church so that the poor souls can look in and follow Mass even though they may never step inside the church again.”

  “Rorich.” Again I tried to touch his fingers through the screen. “Are you happy in Mainz?”

  He was silent, his face in shadow. “The prelates seem to favor me. In a year or two, if I continue to enjoy their good graces, they might make me canon.”

  This, I knew, was the most fortunate outcome he could hope for, considering that his master, the Archbishop of Mainz, remained the emperor’s prisoner.

  “Sister,” he said, “if and when I become canon, I’ll return for you. I swear I’ll do everything in my power to take you back with me then. Your abbot might listen to a canon.”

  I looked at my brother through my tears. So much was out of our hands.

  “Give my love to Clementia and the rest,” I managed.

  “I know you aren’t allowed to keep any personal possessions,” he whispered, taking something from the pouch at his waist. “But Mother wanted you to have this.”

  After a glance around to make sure no one was watching, he slipped something shining through the screen into my palm. Mother’s ring of jasper and silver. Mechthild had possessed no rubies as the Countess of Sponheim did, no garnets such as Jutta had worn before she renounced the world. The jasper ring was the finest adornment my mother had owned, more precious than any trinket my father had thought to give her. The ring had been her own mother’s gift to her. Mother could have bequeathed it to any of my six beautiful sisters. Instead she had given it to me.

  “Forgive her.” My brother’s eyes were imploring. “Pray for her soul.”

  Holding my mother’s ring to my lips, I nodded, the tears streaming down my face.

  Before taking his leave, Rorich presented me with an ell of wool, an offering from Father and Drutwin. The fleece had come from our sheep at Bermersheim. The women in our village had carded, combed, and spun the wool before our best weaver had woven it on her loom and dyed it pale green. Fingering the fabric, I imagined the women of Bermersheim singing their spinning songs, distaff in one hand, drop spindle in the other. I could picture them at work, but try as I might, I could not summon Father, Hugo, or Drutwin’s faces, those men who were strangers to me, riding off to the Holy Lands while Mother still carried me in her womb.

  With Jutta’s and Cuno’s permission, I cut the cloth to make vestments for Rorich.

  “May your handiwork bring glory to Disibodenberg,” Abbot Adilhum said, no doubt hoping that my brother would indeed rise to canon and inspire the wealthy merchants of Mainz to make donations to the humble monastery where his sister dwelled.

  While I stitched, I tried to remember Clementia, how gracefully she had danced at the court of Sponheim, once upon a time, outshining even Jutta. My magistra, had she deigned to speak, would have ordered me to embroider the vestments with angels and saints. Instead, taking threads of dyed silk and wool, I decorated the robes with leaf and flower, agate and nettle, tree and branch, recalling my time in the forest with Rorich, our dreams of running away together and living like bandits.

  My love for Rorich trumpeted inside me—all we had shared and might share again if only my abbot might soften. As I lost myself in my work, a vision shimmered before me. Trapped though I was inside the anchorage, the universe unfolded before my eyes, shaped like a great green egg brimming with life, as rich as the virgin forest with the purest streams surging through it. Encircling that wild greening like a necklace of gems were the four winds, the four elements, the sun and the moon, the seven planets, the entire starry firmament. Encirc-ling all this was a ring of flame, the holiness of God, my Mother, blazing everywhere. Our abbot and prior preached that God was above all things, and yet my vision told me that God was in all things, alive inside every stone and leaf.

  A white cloud, filled with light, opened and a voice began to sing. I am the breeze that nurtures everything green and growing, that urges the blossoms to flourish, the fruits to ripen. I am the dew that makes the grasses laugh with the joy of life.

  Joy. I was transported, a child again, barefoot and laughing, lazing with Rorich on the mossy stream bank while the trees arched above us, mighty and protecting. One day my brother would keep his promise. He would come for me and take me back into that greening world of sunlight and leaf.

  6

  AT SIXTEEN, I WAS in the full flower of my young womanhood, such as it was, and scribbling a furtive letter to Rorich.

  My abbot has told us that Adalbert, Archbishop of Mainz by the grace of God, shall soon be released from his imprisonment and restored to his rightful office. And that you, my brother, shall become canon.

  My wooden stylus scratched the words on a wax tablet before I committed them to the precious parchment I would have to beg off of Cuno.

  Don’t forget your promise, I beg you. Life has become unbearable here. Jutta is a walking corpse who stinks of the grave. Before long, I shall die of my own despair.

  My stylus hovered over the tablet. If I penned such an outrageous letter, Cuno would surely show it to Adilhum, who would not only refuse to allow it to leave the monastery gates but also inflict a severe penance on me.

  �
��What are you writing?” Jutta’s bony fingers stabbed a needle through the linen altar cloth she was struggling to embroider. Hunger and imprisonment in these dark rooms continued to exact their toll—her eyesight was fading. Her stitches, loopy and uneven, resembled the efforts of a five-year-old.

  “I’m copying out the Vita of Saint Ambrose from the book Volmar lent us,” I lied, showing her the tablet that I knew she could no longer read. “Is there anything I may copy for you, magistra?” I pitched my voice as sweetly as I could to hide the insolence that beat so hard inside my chest.

  “For that I have Volmar,” she replied, cool and aloof, holding his devotion to her over my head.

  My eyes stung and my skin burned. If only I could keep my thoughts chaste, I might have some peace. But I couldn’t chase Volmar out of my heart, my only true friend in this hell. In truth, my secret yearnings would have him become much more than a friend. The dreams I had of Volmar left me quivering like plucked psaltery strings.

  Volmar was acting as Jutta’s private secretary, for Prior Cuno deemed it fitting for a woman of Jutta’s stature to have a dedicated scribe. Volmar appeared each morning between Prime and Terce to write the letters she dictated and to attend to her every wish. Did she require fresh straw for her bed, mulled wine to ease her cough, new strings for her psaltery? Could the lay brothers launder her blankets and linens?

  During her audience with him, Jutta sat well back from the screen, hiding shadowed in her veil, so he couldn’t see her wasted face or smell the stink of her slow starvation.