by G. M. Dyrek
The wind quickened, and one of those crusty black humps rose up and changed into an illuminated23 beast. A jagged gash of lightning became the beast’s serpent-like tongue. Slowly, Volmar watched how its body transformed into pure black from nose to tail, and with an unholy grace, the beast unfurled its large, spiny wings like a lady’s fan. Of course, Volmar mused, the beast only pretended to pay him no attention, for in a moment’s time it suddenly stretched its deadly talons and reared up to peer at his face more closely. Volmar expected the beast’s voice to roar, asserting its masculinity, as did all of his imaginary beasts. So, when he heard, instead, a singular, melodic feminine voice carried in the brisk wind, Volmar was jarred out of his own musings. The young monk slowly loosened himself from his reverie as the voice grew louder, and he wondered if it belonged to this world or the world beyond.
Taking a deep breath, Volmar peered down through the branches of the leafless tree, half expecting to be fooled by seeing the familiar, wrathful beast of inhuman stature and demeanor glaring up at him. Instead, in its place, he saw a thin, dark-haired young woman skipping curiously towards his tree, completely oblivious to his presence.
The wind caught her plait and loosened her hair so its dark tendrils fell across her pale cheeks and forehead, softening her delicate, pretty features. She looked a couple of years younger than him, wearing a crown of woven flowers, and she was dressed in richly embroidered velvets, etched in gold thread. Her long, dark blue cape whipped about her freely, pulling against its chain and the silver clasp of filigree at the nape of her neck.
Volmar figured the young woman was play-acting as he observed her coax an invisible companion to the clearing. Curtsying to this apparition24, she then took its invisible arm and began to dance. Her movements kept time to her plaintive singing, an obscure psalm sung to music. It was beautiful and strange, a melody at once defiant and complementary to the stillness of the forest. Volmar watched, half bemused and half self-consciously, as she twirled about hand in hand with this invisible person, all the while laughing and singing, her skirts billowing out from her like a bell.
Volmar sensed an unfamiliar stirring of attraction. Unlike Sophie, whom he saw as a child, this girl was older and shapely like a woman. From where he sat he could see how her bosom rose and fell in time with her movements. Volmar’s solemn life knew little of such carefree laughter and even less of the opposite sex. His dealings with women were restricted to only those who were crippled, diseased, injured, or pregnant.
Guiltily, Volmar spied on the laughing young woman with a longing he couldn’t put into words as he watched her from a safe distance, mesmerized by her foreign and evocative ways, welcoming for once the protective cover of silence.
When at last the young woman seemed positively exhausted from her dancing and singing, she rested on a rock and urged her invisible companion to sit next to her. “Please, tell me another story,” she spoke, glowing from the exertion.
There she sat for what seemed to Volmar like an eternity. He watched her as she nodded, enthralled with what she alone was hearing and seeing. Even when the sky darkened and the wind picked up speed, she continued to sit still, unmoved by the rapidly changing weather.
In the distance, the cloistered bells started ringing. Their insistent clanging announced Vespers. Dinner would soon follow before dark. Volmar knew he would be late and also that he would be reprimanded for his tardiness. However, he feared more revealing himself to this young, evocative woman.
“It is time for me to return to the monastery,” she announced to her invisible companion. “Shall we meet again tomorrow afternoon at this same clearing?”
The apparition must have agreed, for she curtsied respectfully, lifted her skirts, and turned towards the monastery’s gates.
At that same instant, in an unguarded moment, Volmar’s grip carelessly slipped. He lost his balance, and before he knew it, he fell from the old yew tree, landing close to the young woman in a small trench between the largest roots of the tree. He scarcely recovered before she was leaning over him and spoke.
“Who are you, sir?” she said with mild surprise, noting his black robe. “Are you an angel or a demon?”
Volmar looked up, spitting out a mouthful of wet leaves. There she was, staring down at him with interest. “What? Uh, I-I am neither,” he stuttered, finding the nearness of her presence and her insightful gaze more disarming than he could ever have anticipated. He couldn’t even remember his own name to introduce himself.
The young woman stared over Volmar’s shoulder; her grey eyes were unusually dilated and appeared as large black pebbles. “I know of Virgil’s warning, ‘fear does betray unworthy souls,’ but this young man wears a tonsure25 and shows me no fear, only concern.”
Volmar hesitantly turned and peered over his shoulder, confirming that the young woman was in fact talking to no one else.
Overhead, the dark clouds finally opened and a cold, harsh rain began to fall. Fiercer winds blew in from the north, mercilessly tearing at the dying leaves still clinging to the trees. “The storm is upon us. Come with me,” the young woman said, seizing his hand and helping him to his feet. She raced forward towards a low hillside running along the outside edge of the forest, dragging Volmar behind. Above the wail of the winds, she cried to him, “Brother Arnoul said there’s an entrance here to an underground tunnel. We will be dry there.”
“A tunnel? I’ve never heard of it, you must be mistaken. There are no tunnels around here,” Volmar answered as he tried to keep up with her, realizing for the first time he was holding her hand. He let go hastily, and tried to compose himself. The winds had now sharpened the raindrops to the point where they stung through his clothing. He could barely make out her solid form through the curtain of rain even though he knew she was an arm’s length away. He slipped both of his hands inside the opposite hand’s sleeve and said skeptically, “Since you know this place so well, where is this tunnel? Where does it lead to?”
“Brother Arnoul says it leads to behind an altar, the altar of Saint Peter, inside the church. Come on . . .” The young woman waved for him to follow her before ducking and disappearing into what must have been the cave’s entrance, fully concealed by thick relentless vines of ivy that hung down like ringlets of hair.
“Humph,” Volmar grunted, resisting the urge to follow her blindly into what appeared to be a hole in the ground. His hair whipped about his face in every direction. The rain came down in torrents, soaking his coarse wool cassock. A branch suddenly wrenched from a nearby tree, followed by another, then another. Volmar shut his eyes, said a prayer, then crawled in.
CHAPTER 6: INVISIBLE THREADS
Underground Tunnel Outside of Disibodenberg Monastery
Harvest Festival, Early Evening
“You can stand up,” the young woman said with a curious smile. She stood several paces ahead, her face surprisingly illuminated by a burning oil lamp. Somewhat embarrassed, Volmar opened his eyes and rose from his crouching position to his full height. The young monk stared at the flickering flames of the pottery lamp, welcoming its light and warmth but clearly confused. “Where did the lamp come from?”
“I don’t know. I found it already lit on the wall in that bracket over there.” The young woman pointed to a rough-hewn iron bracket nailed into a finely finished and heavily carved wooden arch. The arch framed an entrance which emptied into a moderately sized cave about ten feet in height, rounded with maybe fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, which then narrowed into a long black tunnel.
“May I?” Volmar asked as he reached for the lamp. He turned it slightly to one side. “Judging by the amount of oil remaining in its flask, whoever left it did so less than an hour ago. There is probably still four hours’ worth of oil left.”
The girl’s lips turned up in a smile. “Earlier, I thought you a simpleton, because you were so slow to speak.”
Volmar grimaced; his voice was thick with emotion. “I could say the same of my first impressions of y
our faculties when I saw you conversing with no one in the clearing.” He held the lamp high to hide his embarrassment and pretended to be studying the finer intricacies of the heavily carved wooden arch.
There was no reproach in her voice as she answered. “His name is Brother Arnoul. He’s a Benedictine monk . . . or rather was. He died about ten years ago.”
Volmar turned to her in disbelief, meeting her eyes. “You mean, my lady, you are exchanging confidences with a dead monk?”
“Yes.”
Volmar stood speechless a moment before turning his back to her and muttering under his breath. “Now I am certain you’ve lost your mind.” He circled her, illuminating the darkness all around them, determined to frighten away any unwanted spirit. “Is your dead monk in here with us?”
“No. Brother Arnoul cannot leave the clearing where he died. There are rules in the spiritual world just like there are rules in our world.” The young woman twirled her fingers through her long entangled ringlets. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve had the ability to see and speak with spirits still attached to this world.”
“You expect me to believe such nonsense?”
“I expect you will believe only what you see and nothing more.” The young woman answered dismissively.
Taken aback by what he interpreted as a slight, Volmar responded. “I see nothing wrong with being dubious. When a storyteller tells me he’s met dog-faced humans in a faraway land, I realize that he has merely stumbled onto a leper’s colony. Reason and facts are my guides, my lady, not my imagination.” Volmar frowned, hearing in his own voice the peculiar authoritarian voices of various monks speaking through him. Why did he turn everything into a theoretical lesson? Why couldn’t he simply relax with this young woman and be himself? He let out an exasperated sigh.
The young woman, however, did not seem annoyed by his intellectual postulations26. “Our Lord is not one to be limited by human understanding. Think about it, we learn to see and not to see.”
Volmar turned to her and raised his eyebrow with suspicion, “What do you mean . . . not to see?”
“Do you have dreams at night?” The young woman asked while tracing her fingers over the raised relief of a winged man carved into the wooden archway.
“Of course. We all dream at night. If we do not, we would go mad.”
“That is so. And when you dream at night, your eyes are shut and what you see is not physically present in your bedchamber, right?”
Crossing his arms, Volmar nodded, “Very well, I see your point. Your visions are like dreams.”
The young woman tilted her head to one side and thought for a moment before responding. “These visions are more like waking dreams. I am not asleep but awake when they come to me sometimes in a fiery light of exceeding brilliance.”
“A fiery light? Are you sure you are not witnessing the flames from Hell licking the caverns of Purgatory27?”
She blushed more from annoyance than embarrassment. “Humph, I should never have told you.”
Volmar put his fingers to his lips and said plaintively, “Please tell me that you don’t believe that good and evil come from a creature such as a raven or a cat? Or that you know people who’ve turned into wolves.”
“You are no longer speaking with your mind. Now the conversation has turned from thoughts to fears.”
This time Volmar raised both of his thick eyebrows; clearly he had difficulty accepting this bizarre assertion. “If I were you, my lady, I would leave this region at once. The villagers will not welcome a bewitched or demon-possessed young woman, no matter how pretty she may be.” He blushed as he realized what he let slip.
“I know. It is why I do not talk of such things with strangers.” The young woman turned her back to him and stood gazing thoughtfully into the blank eyes of a stone-carved winged man holding the portico on his shoulders.
Perplexed over her insinuation of their familiarity, Volmar sputtered, “I didn’t mean it like that. Surely you must be careful who you share such spiritual revelations with.”
She extended her arms out expressively. “There is nothing more than a mere veil that separates the spirit world from our own.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you, really?” She answered, turning to him with enthusiasm. “I knew you were the one when our eyes first met. See,” she said, touching Volmar’s sleeve, “you wear the humble black robes of a young Benedictine monk and have on your hands the black ink stains of a scribe, my scribe.” She turned his free hand over in hers, lightly touching his blackened fingertips and smiled warmly up at him. “We are all connected, the world of the unseen and the seen.”
Volmar took a step back, fearful of her sudden intimacy towards him. “Yes,” he muttered, slipping his hand from hers and burying it inside the sleeve of his habit. “But where do these invisible threads or connections originate? The Devil has many disguises and often invades souls weakened by grief or innocence.”
The young woman sighed deeply. “It may be too soon. I assure you, sir, that though I am young, I am as respectful and fearful as I should be of the wiles of the Devil. If you must know, I am in training for the veil of virgins. I was my parent’s tenth child and was given to the church as a tithe.”
“I didn’t mean to be rude but I’ve never met anyone like you before.” Volmar didn’t realize that he’d started pacing. “Where are you studying?”
“My name is Hildegard. My spiritual companion, Jutta of Sponheim, is discussing the plans for an Anchorage at Disibodenberg with the Abbot as we speak.” At that moment, Hildegard sneezed. Her clothes were soaked through as well, and the coolness of the cave made her shiver uncontrollably.
Volmar stopped pacing, noticing her distress. He removed his own cloak and hung it around her small shoulders, setting the oil lamp on high heat before placing it upright between them. “Forgive me, Hildegard.” The young monk bowed low. “My name is Volmar. Please, warm yourself by the fire,” he motioned. His mane of shaggy hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it self-consciously over his ear and added, “Like you, I am a charity child, a ward of the church. I was left on its doorsteps over nine years ago.”
“You do not remember your parents?”
“Not really.”
Her eyes searched for the answer left unsaid.
Volmar shifted his footing uncomfortably and changed the subject. “Surely the storm will be over soon and then we can leave.” Volmar motioned again for Hildegard to sit across from him, closer to the warmth of the flame. Outside they could hear the storm continue to rage.
After a long while, Volmar broke the companionable silence. “For the sake of argument, tell me why a monk who has been dead for over ten years insists on having an audience with a young woman during a rainstorm?”
Hildegard warmed her hands over the fire and spoke to the flames that danced in front of her. “Brother Arnoul shared with me a story, which bears witness to your fears and accusations. The Evil One’s misdeeds abound even among God’s own brethren.”
“Go on. I have been duly chastened.” Volmar sat down across from her. His eyes, unlike hers, were not fixed on the flame’s mesmerizing movements; they were lost in her compelling face.
“Brother Arnoul told me he was a man of courtly manner and noble birth. He was born in a small French village of Amiens and traveled to Disibodenberg to copy a particular book to bring back to his own monastery.”
Volmar nodded in agreement, “Many monks do this. It is the only affordable way to improve the collections in monastery libraries throughout the surrounding kingdoms.”
“Yes, I have heard of this practice as well. Anyway, in the Scriptorium where Brother Arnoul labored, he became friendly with another young monk who unfortunately was as greedy as he was ambitious.”
“Why would he make such an accusation?”
“Brother Arnoul apparently observed this young monk on several occasions, sneaking out of the monastery when the others were asleep. The next day, after he’d qu
estioned his friend on these nighttime adventures, Brother Arnoul was called before the Abbot and was accused of stealing the monastery’s rare copy of the Codex Benedictus28.”
“I’ve heard of this book before. It is legendary. The codex was created at the monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy back in 1070.”
“Well, this was the very book Brother Arnoul had been diligently copying for his monastery. He swears by God, he did not steal it.”
“But the book went missing.”
“Brother Arnoul was incensed. After being accused of theft, he met privately with the Abbot.”
“Abbot Burchard?”
Hildegard leaned forward, still captivated by the flames of the fire. “I believe so. The Abbot, uncertain of the circumstances, asked him to return to his own abbey in France. This angered Brother Arnoul. He tried to clear his name by confronting his friend in the very clearing where I met him.”
“The clearing by the old yew tree.”
“Yes. Their words quickly turned into a vicious quarrel. The two were evenly matched until Brother Arnoul fell from a blow to his stomach and hit his head against a rock, the same rock we sat on earlier together. He was killed instantly.”
“More like murdered, than killed,” Volmar muttered. The two allowed the horrible word to sit between them, neither one eager to continue. Outside they could still hear the steady fall of rain. The noise echoed and reechoed around them, suggesting that the tunnel went on for a considerable distance.
“I agree,” Hildegard said at length. “Brother Arnoul’s spirit is restless because this guilty brother buried him unceremoniously and in secret here in the woods outside of the monk’s cemetery. His name has been stricken from all monastery records and no one is allowed to speak of it, for many think he committed a theft. It is as if he never existed.”