The Greenest Branch

by P K Adams

  I let out a breath of relief as Volmar looked from me to her, puzzled. I was surprised too, for although Griselda ran occasional errands to pick up fish from the fishermen who worked the stretch of the river belonging to the abbey, she usually took a path well west of there. Besides, she was not carrying a fish bucket—or anything else.

  I was in a bind; I could hardly ask Griselda what she was doing without letting on that we knew each other. That Griselda was known as a boy made it trickier. I cast a quick glance at Volmar and saw the look of tense concentration on his face that comes just before recognition lights up the darkness of confusion. It made my decision easier.

  “You have probably seen Christian before.” I said. Volmar nodded. I added, “Her real name is Griselda. She is from a village across the Nahe.”

  Griselda’s eyes widened in alarm, but I walked up to her and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry. Volmar is my friend, and he will keep your secret.” I turned to him. “Won’t you?”

  He gazed at us steadily for an exaggerated moment, then the corners of his mouth lifted and broke into a broad grin. The boy recognized good mischief when he saw it. “You can count on it! It is too amusing to put an end to it,” he added appreciatively.

  We breathed a sigh of relief, although Griselda’s was much louder. I felt she trusted my judgment.

  “But I want to know why you are pretending to be a boy.” Volmar’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. “It looks like there is a lot going on around here that Father Abbot has no idea about, and I wonder if your reasons are as good as ours.”

  “They are,” Griselda spoke for the first time, softly but firmly. “I am sure Hildegard will tell you all about it, but now I have to speak as to my reason for seeking her out.” She turned to me. “Sister Jutta is fallen gravely ill, and Brother Wigbert is looking for you everywhere.”

  11

  August 1118

  The infirmarian’s grave countenance welcomed me at the door of the workshop. I had already decided to offer no explanation for my absence unless he asked, but he had other things on his mind.

  “Sister Jutta is delirious with a fever but will not be brought to the infirmary,” he spoke in a clipped tone of urgency. “The anchoresses are asking for a medicine to restore her.” He held out a stoppered flask which I knew contained diluted oil of valerian, most likely not what she needed.

  “I will go right away. I will need some wine,” I added, for the convent did not keep a store of its own.

  “I already sent a flagon.”

  I took the flask and hurried to the enclosure. I had been expecting this for a while, what with Jutta’s sleepless nights, poor diet, and harrowing spiritual regimen. In fact, I was surprised that whatever it was—and it had to be serious for the sisters to seek outside help—had not happened years before.

  I found her in the dorter, lying on Juliana’s pallet. When I approached, Juliana, who had been bathing Jutta’s forehead in cool water, rose silently and moved back. A layer of perspiration covered the magistra’s face, and her skin was flushed and warm to touch.

  “What other symptoms does she have?” I asked.

  “Nothing more than this sudden weakness and fever. She was with us in the chapel but faltered at the end of nones and never rose from her knees.”

  Hearing our voices, Jutta opened her eyes and a grimace of discomfort crossed her emaciated face. I leaned closer. “Sister, can you speak to me about what’s ailing you?”

  But there was no recognition in her eyes. They were glossed over with the unnatural shine of the fever. She closed them again, and her features relaxed in a sign that her senses had left her once more, taking the pain with them.

  I rubbed my forehead. This was no ordinary fever. The season of chills had not arrived yet. Besides, they came with coughs and congestion. As I pondered this, I became aware of the stifling air inside the chamber. I moved to open the shutters. It was late August and still light out despite the evening hour. A fresh breeze wafted in, scented with the earthy aroma of the approaching autumn.

  “You can go,” I said to Juliana as the vesper bell rang out. “I will keep watch over her.”

  When she was gone, I pulled down Jutta’s blanket to allow her feverish body to cool. It was then that the faintly sweet, unmistakable odor of a festering wound assailed my nostrils. I surveyed the sackcloth-clad figure and found nothing immediately amiss, but of course I knew what her back was regularly subjected to. It had to be the source of the infection. It would also account for the high fever, which could be deadly given her weakened condition.

  After vespers I went back for a bottle of diluted vinegar and some leaves of betony, sorrel, and lovage—Uda’s old remedies—I had collected by the river and kept in a clay jar in a corner of the workshop.

  When I returned, Juliana and Adelheid were keeping a vigil together at the sickbed. They raised inquiring eyes to me, and I wondered if they knew about our superior’s nocturnal activities.

  “The fever is likely from an infection of a cut . . . or cuts. I have brought vinegar and fresh plasters to dress them.”

  Their faces expressed no great alarm or surprise, which answered my silent question eloquently enough. I could not help wondering if either of them, or both, also practiced mortification of the flesh. But I dismissed the thought and focused on the task at hand.

  “We must turn her over and strip her back bare,” I said.

  They stood in silence, unsure how to proceed, so I slid my palms under Jutta’s left flank. It was so meager that I could feel every rib as if the only thing that stood between them and my fingers was the coarse fabric of her robe. “If you take hold of her hip”—I motioned to Juliana “and you her shoulder”—I turned to Adelheid—“we should be able to turn her.”

  But as we moved to heave the left side of her body—surprisingly light even for one as thin as Jutta—her eyes flew open so suddenly that we gasped and let go. Juliana took a step back and Adelheid clung to my side, and I realized that in the last three years I had grown taller than the diminutive anchoress.

  Jutta stared at us. Although there was no telling if she recognized us, she looked terrified.

  “Sister,” I ventured. “You are ill and you need medicine. We must take off your robe.”

  “No!” Jutta protested, firmly enough. “No!”

  “It is necessary, otherwise you will not heal.” I touched her shoulders, hoping that there might be persuasion in action.

  “No!” she cried. Her voice, suffused with pain, stopped me in my tracks.

  Adelheid fell to her knees and started praying.

  “You will die if you don’t let me treat you.”

  But Jutta crossed her hands over her hips and thighs in a protective gesture that might have been virginal modesty had there not been something wild in her face. The alarm that had brought her out of her stupor was beginning to take its toll; her lips quivered and her eyes swelled with tears.

  I felt a surge of pity. “As you wish, Sister.” I reached for the blanket and covered her again, then brought a cup of wine to her lips. Jutta took a small sip and fell back, closing her eyes. “I think we should take turns watching over her.” I turned to the anchoresses. “I will start while you get some rest.”

  We sat at Jutta’s bedside during the night and the following day, trying in vain to persuade her to accept treatment. At most, she allowed her feet, hands, and forehead to be bathed with yarrow water to bring down the fever, which did not help much. Most of the time she seemed insensible, and it was only then that her features would smooth out and the traces of her former beauty emerge in the delicate oval of her face and the fine shape of her cheekbones.

  But there were also periods when she was shaken by agitation and spoke unintelligibly, often ending with this warning: “God looks on our deeds, and His anger is great! If we don’t undertake penance, our pun
ishment will be a thousand-fold . . . Oh, it will never end!”

  On the morning of the third day, I helped her to some wine and put a cloth soaked in yarrow water on her forehead.

  “You are wasting your efforts. Better pray for my soul,” Jutta said with surprising lucidity.

  “I can pray for your soul while I bring you relief and offer a cure. Will you let me?”

  She shook her head. “God sends suffering, and it is for us to bear it till it pleases Him to release us. Health, life, and death can only proceed from Him.”

  “But I may be the instrument through which He acts,” I suggested.

  “We have no right to reverse the course of God’s plan. I am happy He has chosen to try me in this way, for it is by being steadfast and meek in the face of adversity that we can obtain forgiveness and hope for salvation.”

  I remained silent as I realized that for Jutta, this was yet another opportunity to repent for the sins of the world and make a sacrifice on the altar of its redemption. Indeed, what offense could she be guilty of?

  “This body,” she resumed after a while, laying her hand on her sunken belly, “is not mine to tend to as if it were a garden plant. The body is but a shell that carries our soul on this dreary journey. It will be discarded at the end as we ascend to the true life.”

  This was followed by several hours of fitful sleep, during which the fever rose once again, and the odor of the infection became more pronounced. Even the sisters, accustomed though they were to the smells of the enclosure, noticed it. I had to bring in freshly cut fir branches that Brother Wigbert used in such cases. Fortunately, the heat had finally broken. It started to rain, which helped the balsamic fragrance to spread more effectively and purify the air.

  But time was running out for Jutta. As I contemplated this, I felt angry at what I believed to be a distortion of faith, perhaps a sin in itself.

  Finally, a solution dawned on me. When Jutta opened her eyes and asked for a drink of water, I took advantage of the sisters’ absence to reason with her one last time. “I have thought much about what you said, Sister, and it has stirred me so!” Something akin to contentment flickered in her eyes. It lasted only a moment, but her body relaxed a little. “Yet I fear that if you die, we who remain in this convent will lose the beacon that shines so brightly for us.” I paused. “Please, Sister, stay with us for our sakes. Your mission is not yet complete!”

  The plea made the desired impression, for Jutta’s eyes focused more clearly and something—was it disbelief?—flashed across her face. She must have thought me beyond retrieve. “But if this is what God wills?” she asked with effort.

  I grasped at it. “How can we know what God intends for us? We won’t until we are no more. And it is a grave sin to bring about one’s own demise.” I was conscious of the risk of speaking thus to my superior and the possibility of losing any chance of convincing her to accept treatment.

  Jutta closed her eyes, but her breathing showed that she was not asleep. After a while, she opened them again. “What medicines have you?” Her voice was resigned, and I was astonished at this unnatural inclination to see a cure as an unpleasant necessity rather than welcome relief. But there was no time to lose; I moved swiftly to the table where the vinegar, the jar of moist leaves, and a quantity of fresh linen had been laid out for four days.

  “The vinegar will cleanse the wounds,” I explained in the same tone I used with infirmary patients, “and the plasters will speed up the healing. When I change the dressing later, I will rub honey on the broken skin to protect it from malignant influences.”

  But when I made a move to help Jutta turn over, she raised her hand to check me. “I will do it myself.”

  “You cannot reach your own back.” I shook my head as if I were taking to a child.

  “Reaching the Kingdom of Heaven is difficult,” Jutta replied in a tone that precluded further argument. “This is not.”

  “Let me do this for you to ensure that the entire area is treated,” I persisted.

  Jutta looked straight at me with the same desperate expression I had already seen before. “I will manage.” After a pause for breath, she added, “Trust me!”

  I was puzzled but also astonished at this plea. Trust me! They were the first words of such power and intimacy Jutta had ever spoken to me. I said no more and withdrew from the dorter, closing the door behind me.

  There was nothing to do but wait, and the strain began to take a toll on Adelheid, who barely ate and often fell asleep during her vigils. Fearing oncoming exhaustion, I began to relieve her of the duty. I sat for hours by Jutta’s bed, watching anxiously for signs of improvement or deterioration, spending more time inside the convent than I had done in more than two years.

  But my mind was often on the questions that animated Jutta’s unbending spirit and had taken her to the brink of self-destruction: the purpose of life, the meaning of suffering, and the route to salvation. They were terribly complicated, but I had already begun to understand that the way to make at least some sense of them was to pay attention to the signs through which God communicated His design.

  Outside, the summer had turned into autumn, and my gaze often wandered to the window. On the far side of the herb garden, the trees stood in mature majesty, their tops already flaming with the gaudy splendor of the season. Even the birds nesting among the branches had lost their urgent chirruping notes, and their songs assumed mellower, reflective tones. As always, this contrast between the expansive life outside and the withdrawn, almost resentful existence of the convent oppressed me so much that sometimes, for a few heartbeats, I was unable to draw breath.

  Once I gasped so loudly that Adelheid looked up from her breviary. I lowered my head apologetically, but my thoughts drifted back to my earlier preoccupations. The image of God as a severe judge who keeps a score of transgressions—prone to anger, hard to placate, and harsh in punishment—to which Jutta was so devoted did not satisfy me.

  To me, God was inextricably linked to those warm afternoons bathed in the sunlight that streamed through the windows of my family’s chapel. He was the source of the viriditas that breathed life into every creature from a blade of grass to man—a loving, benevolent force. God the Creator communicated with us through His work, and that work—all of nature—showed that He was generous and kind. All we needed to live a healthy, wholesome life was to accept that gift.

  As if to prove it, Jutta opened her eyes that afternoon, and for the first time in many days, they did not shine with fever.

  When I returned to the infirmary, it was beginning to fill with the first cases of seasonal chills and coughs. I warmed elderberry wine, boiled fennel in water, and made a mint-based ointment to be rubbed onto the chest, where the body’s heat caused the pungent vapor to release and relieve congestion. I also made horehound lozenges, which the patients reported soothed their throats and made them cough less. Brother Wigbert left most of the herbal work to me and only cautioned me not to talk to the monks about it, so they were the only ones who did not experience the benefits of my remedies.

  All through this I cared for Jutta, until one day I was able to report that she had risen from her bed to attend the service of prime.

  “Father Abbot will be glad to hear that.” The infirmarian regarded me with pride. “You have done a fine job, better than any of my previous apprentices would have.”

  Under any other circumstances, I would have basked in the compliment and in his reference to me as ‘an apprentice’ rather than a mere helper, but I had other things on my mind. “I have been asking myself these last few weeks whether Sister Jutta really does follow The Rule as it was laid out by our founder,” I ventured.

  “What do you mean?” He looked curious, but his curiosity was tinged with the concern I had already seen. “She may be an anchoress, but she is also a Benedictine nun.”

  “She is, without a doubt, but . . .”
I searched for the right words. “She seems to have her own version of the monastic life. We live very differently from the monks, though we follow the same daily routine of services.” I paused, unsure if I should go on, but since I had already started I might as well finish. “The life in the enclosure is based on The Rule only very generally; it is much stricter than the Blessed Benedict demanded.” By then I had read and memorized the whole of the Regula Benedicti.

  Brother Wigbert set the flask of poppy juice he had been mixing with wine aside and turned to me. “What you should understand,” he said after a momentary hesitation, “is that the women of St. Disibod are strongly attached to the doctrine formulated by St. Augustine, one of the Church Fathers.”

  I had heard of that saint but did not know much about him, so he explained, “Augustine, who lived eight centuries ago, found God late in life and became converted to our Catholic faith after a dissolute youth. He believed that humanity inherited the sin of Adam, and a Christian life should be dedicated to atoning for that sin to achieve redemption. Augustine also taught that although body and soul are both essential elements that constitute a human being, they are in constant struggle with each other on account of the original sin, with the soul being morally superior to the weak and corruptible body.”

  That certainly sounded like Jutta. “Did he mean, then,” I wondered, “that we are all born sinful, even before we have the mind to turn to vice?”

  “Yes, in principle. And some of his followers have interpreted that as a suggestion that the only way to salvation is through perpetual penance and bodily mortification, so the soul can soar toward God pure and holy and untainted by passions.”

  “That is such a bleak view!” The image of the knotted whip streaking Jutta’s back with blood at the darkest hour of the night flashed before my eyes.