Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen by Mary Sharratt Read Free Book Online Page A

abhorred. Suffering, she told me, purified the soul and purged it of sin. Indeed, our cell seemed arranged so that our bodies could be mortified every day and hour. Though we had a brazier to heat our inner chamber, I was always chilled, having to go barefoot even when snow dusted our courtyard. The Rule of Saint Benedict made us sleep in our separate pallets and forbade us to huddle together for warmth as I would have done at home, snuggling up to Walburga or my sisters on freezing nights. Hunger bit into me even more than the cold, leaving me to sob in my sleep and dream of plump pheasants crackling on the spit, of the warm honeyed wine that Walburga used to spoon into my mouth when I was ill.
    “Hunger is your weakness,” Jutta said. “You are but a slave to the desires of the flesh.”
    True saints, she insisted, could live on water and air alone. Fasting cured every disease. It dried up the bodily humors, put demons to flight, banished impure thoughts, cleared the mind, sanctified the body, and raised a person to the throne of God. Yet for all her lofty talk, there were bitter winter days when even she devoured every last crumb the monks gave her.
    I never knew which side of herself Jutta would show me next. She could be merciless, upbraiding me for the sin of being unable to sit still through the hours of prayer. When Jutta told me I would burn in hell for fidgeting, I let out a shriek and tore through the tiny rooms and courtyard, banging around like a trapped bat until I winded myself. Yet even when I was a proper hellion, ripping in half a piece of the precious damask silk I was meant to be stitching, Jutta never raised a hand to strike me. Sometimes Jutta acted as though I weren’t even there. There were days when Jutta prayed herself into a swoon and lay like the dead for hours. Other times Jutta could act like the kindest soul I had ever met, teaching me to play her ten-string psaltery, patiently correcting my mistakes, and teaching me to sing in harmony with her so that our devotions became a thing of beauty that fed my soul even when I thought I was about to faint from hunger. Missing home in spite of herself, Jutta whispered about her life back in Sponheim—her dapple gray mare and merlin falcon—while we sewed altar cloths or mended the monks’ coarse wool habits. On the best days Jutta reached for her wax tablet and stylus, and taught me to read and write in Latin and in our native tongue, hour by hour and week by week, until at last the letters carved in wax came alive and sang inside my head.
     
    One dark winter morning, near the beginning of the fast of Advent, when cheese was denied us and we lived on turnips, millet, and scraps of fish, Jutta refused to arise for Matins. Lauds came, and still she did not stir from her bed. I shook her shoulders, slapped her cheeks as hard as I dared, even sprinkled water on her, but Jutta only lay there, her eyes glazed and unseeing, lost in some stupor.
    Panicking, I wondered if I should scream for help. What good would that do—the monks couldn’t enter the anchorage to help unless they tore down the wall. What if Jutta died and I was trapped here forever with her cold, rotting corpse?
    Shrinking into the corner farthest away from Jutta’s motionless body, I made up stories in my head to keep myself from crying. Once there was an orphan. Her evil stepmother cast her out into the winter forest where the hapless child fell under the enchantment of a sorceress—a maiden of high birth who was as mad as she was beautiful. But now the witch lay bound by her own spells and if only the girl had the courage, she might escape. She must flee the enchantress’s shadowy hut and run into the farthest reaches of the forest. Deep in my heart, the path opened before me. I saw each ice-tipped branch, felt the snow crunching under my bare feet, the cold biting into my soles as I careened headlong, my arms outstretched, beseeching the angels and saints to come to my aid.
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