Prologue: Apostate

 

Rupertsberg, 1177

 

THE MOST ANCIENT and enduring power of women is prophecy, my gift and my curse. Once, centuries before my existence, there lived in these Rhineland forests a woman named Weleda, she who sees. She took no husband but lived in a tower. In those heathen times, her people revered her as a goddess, for she foretold their victory against the Romans. But the seeress’s might is not just a relic of pagan times. Female prophets crowd the books of the Old Testament—Deborah and Sarah, Miriam and Abigail, Hannah and Esther.

And so, in my own age, when learned men, quoting Saint Peter, call woman the weaker vessel, even they have to concede that a woman can be a font of truth, filled with vision, her voice moving like a feather on the breath of God.

 

Mother, what is this vision you show me? With my waking eyes, I saw it coming. The storm approaching our abbey. Soon I would meet my nemesis face-to-face.

My blistered hands loosened their grip on the shovel, letting it fall into the churned up earth. At seventy-nine years of age, I am no longer strong enough for such labors, yet force of necessity had moved me to toil for half a day, my every muscle shrieking. Following my lead, my daughters set down their tools. With somber eyes, we Sisters of Rupertsberg surveyed our handiwork. We had tilled every inch of our churchyard. Though the tombstones still stood, jutting like teeth from the rent soil, we had chiseled off every last inscription. My daughters’ faces were etched in both exhaustion and silent shock. Our graveyard was a sanctuary as holy as the high altar of our church. Now it resembled a wasteland.

Tears caught in my eyes as Sister Cordula passed me the crook that marked my office of abbess. Whispering pleas for forgiveness to the deceased, I picked my way over the bare soil until I came to the last resting place of Maximus, the runaway monk whose plight had driven our desperate act. The boy fled to us for asylum after his brothers committed unspeakable sins against him. Despite our every effort to heal his broken body and soul, the young man died in our hospice, and so we gave him a Christian burial.

But the prelates of the Archbishop of Mainz, the very men who had ignored the cruelty unfolding in the boy’s monastery, had declared Maximus an apostate. Tomorrow or the following day, the prelates would come to wrest the dead boy from his grave and dump him in unhallowed ground as if he were a dead mongrel. So we razed our burial ground, making it impossible for any outsider to locate his grave. Had the prelates ever imagined that mere nuns would take such measures to foil them, the men we were bound to obey?

Raising my abbess’s crook, I spoke the words of blessing. “In the name of the Living Light, may this holy resting place be protected. May it remain invisible to all who would desecrate it.”

My heart throbbed like a wound when I remembered the boy who died in my arms, the one I had sworn before God to protect. He had committed no crime, had only been a handsome youth in a nest of vipers. Maximus had only an aged abbess and her nuns to stand between him and the full might of the Church fathers.

The November wind crested our walls, tossing up grave dust that stung our eyes. My daughters flinched, ashen-faced in the dread we shared. What would happen to us now that we had committed such an outrageous act of sedition? The prelates’ retribution would be merciless.

Foreboding flared again, the fate awaiting us as terrifying as the devil’s giant black claw rearing from the hell mouth. Somehow I must summon the warrior strength to battle this evil. Seize the sword to vanquish the dragon. Maximus’s ordeal proved only too well what damage these men could wreak. In a true vision, Ecclesia, the Mother Church, had appeared to me as a ravished woman, her thighs bruised and bloody, for her own clergy had defiled her. The prelates preached chastity while allowing young men to be abused. In defending the boy, my daughters and I risked sharing his fate—being cast out and condemned. The prelates would crush my dissent at all costs. Everything I had worked for in my long life might be lost in one blow, leaving me and my daughters pariahs and excommunicants. How could I protect my community now that I was so old, a relic from another time, my once-powerful allies dead?

To think that seven years ago I had preached upon the steps of Cologne Cathedral and castigated those same men for their fornication and hypocrisy, their simony and greed. O you priests. You have neglected your duties. Let us drive these adulterers and thieves from the Church, for they fester with every iniquity. In those days I spoke with a mighty voice, believing I had nothing to lose, that the prelates would not trouble themselves over one old nun.

The men I’d railed against gathered like carrion crows to wreak their revenge and put me in my place once and for all. It was not my own fate that worried me, for I have endured much in my life. This year or the next, I would join the departed in the cold sod and await judgment like any other soul. But what would become of my daughters? How could I die and leave them to this turmoil—what if this very abbey was dissolved, these women left homeless? A stabbing pain filled me to see them so lost, their faces stark with fear. Our world was about to turn upside down. How could I save these women who had placed their trust in me?

“Daughters, our work here is done,” I said, as tenderly as I could, giving them leave to depart and seek solace in their duties in the infirmary and scriptorium, the library and workroom.

Leaving the graveyard to its desolation, I pressed forward to the rampart wall overlooking the Rhine, the blue-green thread connecting everything in my universe. Nestled in the vineyards downriver and just out of view lay Eibingen, our daughter house. Our sisters there, too, would face the coming storm. Then, as I gazed at the river below, an icy hand gripped my innards. A barge approached our landing. The prelates had wasted no time.

 

I was striding down the corridor when Ancilla, a postulant lay sister, came charging toward me, her skirts flapping.

“Mother Abbess! We have a visitor.”

The girl’s face was alight with an excitement that seemed at odds with our predicament. She was a newcomer to our house and, as such, I’d spared her the grim work of digging up the graveyard.

“A foreigner! He doesn’t speak a word of German.”

My heart drummed in panic. Had the prelates sent someone from Rome? Oblivious to my trepidation, Ancilla seemed as thrilled as though the Empress of Byzantium had come to call.

“The cellarer will bring up the very best wines, won’t she, Mother? And there will be cakes!”

The girl was so giddy that I had to smile at her innocence even as my stomach folded in fear. I told her I would receive our guest in my study.

 

After washing and changing, I girded myself to confront the messenger who would deliver our doom. But when I entered my study, I saw no papal envoy, only a young Benedictine monk who sprang from his chair before diving to his knees to kiss my hand.

“Exalted abbess!” he exclaimed in Latin, speaking in the soft accent of those who hail from the Frankish lands. “The holy Hildegard.”

Our visitor appeared no older than twenty, his face glowing as pink as sunrise.

“What a splendid honor,” he said, “to finally meet you in the flesh.”

“Brother,” I said, at a loss. “I don’t know your name.”

“Did you not receive my letter?” His soft white hands fluttered like doves. “I am Guibert of Gembloux Abbey in the Ardennes. I have come to write your Vita, most reverend lady.”

Lowering myself into my chair, I nearly laughed in relief. So I still had allies and well-wishers after all, though this young man could hardly shield us from the prelates of Mainz.

“My brother in Christ, you flatter me too much,” I told him. “Hagiographies are for saints. I’m only a woman.”

He shook his head. “Your visions have made you the most far-famed woman in the Holy Roman Empire.”

Guibert’s face shone in a blissful naïveté that matched that of young Ancilla, who attended us, pouring him warm honeyed wine spiced with cloves and white pepper, but he ignored the fragrant cup. His flashing dark eyes were riveted on mine.

“Tell me, Mother Hildegard, does God speak to you in Latin or in German? And is it true that you bade your nuns to wear tiaras?”

Before I could even attempt an answer, he blustered on.

“Your writings are most extraordinary! I have never read their like! Did I correctly understand that God appears to you as a woman?”

Brother Guibert was not the first to ask this question. I told the young monk what I’d told the others before him.

“In the Scriptures, God appears as Father, and yet the Holy Spirit chose to reveal God’s face to me as Mother.”

I never dreamt of calling myself holy, never presumed. Yet God, whom I called Mother, chose to grace even one as flawed as I am with the ecstasy of the Holy Spirit moving through me. And so I became the Mother’s mouthpiece, a feather on Her breath. How was I to describe such a mystery to Guibert? I never sought the visions, and yet they came. All I wanted was to know the ways of wisdom and grace, and walk them as best I could. But had I succeeded? My many sins and failings weighed on me. My superiors had only tolerated me for as long as they had because of the prophecies.

I was torn. Honestly, I should warn Guibert away, send him back to Gembloux. The good man was wasting his time here. What use was there in writing the Vita of a woman soon to be condemned?

Then something niggled at the back of my head. What if the key to saving my daughters from the coming tempest lay in my past, in examining my life from its genesis? Past and future were connected in an eternal ring, like the circle of holy flame I’d seen in my visions, that ring of fire enclosing all creation. If I allowed myself to go back in time, to become that graceless girl again, perhaps I might find a way to preserve us.

 

 

 

I

 

The Tithe

 

GREEN LEAVES DANCED in the gardens of Bermersheim, my parents’ stone-built burg. Five years old, I sat on the grass with my wooden doll. Beyond the hedge, my older sisters played with our brother Rorich, still too young to join our father and older brothers in the Crusades. How my siblings’ shrieks and laughter pierced the air, and how my loneliness stabbed me. My wheezing lungs, still clogged after a long bout of grippe, stood in the way of my joining their games. When Rorich or my sisters, Clementia, Hiltrud, Odilia, Bertha, Roswithia, and Irmengard, so much as squeezed my hand, I bruised as though I were an overripe pear.

Cradling my doll, I wondered if my longing would be enough to turn the dull wood into living flesh. A shadow passing overhead made me glance up to see an orb come floating out of the sunlight. A ball of spun gold, yet as clear as glass. Inside grew a tree adorned with fruits as dazzling as rubies. The tree breathed in and out, as a living creature would. My doll tumbled from my arms as I reached out to clasp the heavenly orb when, like a bubble, it burst.

“Where did it go?” I demanded, turning first to Walburga, my nurse, and then to Mother. “Where did the ball with the pretty tree go?”

Mother and Walburga whispered behind their hands. What could be wrong with the child? Is she mad, or simply bad?

After I told my mother about the floating tree, a crippling headache struck her down. She staggered to her bed, commanding Walburga to draw the draperies fast around her, and there she lay, moaning in darkness, until the following afternoon. The stony looks my sisters threw me sent me cowering behind the sacks of oats in the undercroft. How horrible I was, bringing down this illness on Mother. Deep inside I must be wicked. Good children did not see the invisible. Walburga accused me of telling false stories to vex the poor woman.

Afterward I tried my best to earn my mother’s favor so that she might love me as she loved my sisters. I learned to pretend that the floating golden orbs weren’t there. If I had succeeded in forever banishing that otherwhere, I might have grown up to lead the life Mother wished for me—to marry some high-ranking knight and to bear his sons.

 

Every night, huddled in Walburga’s arms, I prayed to be spared the visions. Yet there was no escaping the orbs. By night, they lit up the darkness. In the clear light of day, they whizzed close by my head, echoing with music that sounded like the harps of angels. I kept it secret, not breathing a word. My happiness lay in pretending to be a girl as uncomplicated as my sister Clementia, beautiful and always smiling, our mother’s darling.

When I was seven, I was content, walking hand in hand with Walburga through greening April fields past the village left half-deserted with every able-bodied man, and a number of women, off with the Crusades. Only the children, the elderly, and the lame remained behind.

“Did the girls really go off to fight?” I asked my nurse, never tiring of the story of how some young women, caught up in the same fervor as their menfolk, had disguised themselves as warriors and marched away under the banner of the cross.

“Disgraceful,” Walburga huffed. “Women dressing up like men, sleeping in the same camps as the soldiers. May God forgive them.”

I dared to smile at her slyly. “You’re jealous! They got to go off and see the Holy Lands while you’re stuck here.”

“War isn’t a pretty ballad, child. Have you ever seen a razed village? Crops set to fire?”

“But, Walburga! Whoever fights will be saved from hell.”

Even I had heard how Pope Urban II had promised instant salvation to all who joined the Crusades. Ignoring Walburga’s mutterings, I allowed myself to sink into a daydream of Rorich and me in armor, riding forth with Father and our two eldest brothers, Drutwin and Hugo. I pictured us arriving victorious before the gates of Jerusalem, that city covered in gold where seraphim sang beneath the sun.

Meanwhile, a cow, escaped from her pasture, ambled across our path. White with brown spots, she feasted on the rich new grass. As I stepped close, the animal lifted her head, her huge moist eyes locking on to mine.

“I’ll have a word with the bailiff,” Walburga said. “Those dunderheads from the village should know better than to let a cow run loose.”

“She’s not running anywhere,” I pointed out.

She had merely broken through the flimsy fence of her overgrazed enclosure to reach the better grass. I patted her soft flank and giggled when she swung her head around to nuzzle my hair. Her breath was as sweet as the milk she must give.

“What a splendid calf!” I blurted out, forgetting myself, forgetting that my safety lay in silence.

“What calf?” Walburga shook her head.

“A bull calf.” I saw it as clearly as I saw Walburga’s face. “With brown and black spots, and four white legs.”

Our shadows disappeared as a cloud veiled the sun. With one last snuffle through my hair, the cow strolled on, the bell tied to her neck singing and ringing. Walburga grabbed my shoulders.

“You’re making up stories again.”

Spinning around, I bolted for home as fast as my shaking legs would allow, but Walburga soon caught up, seizing my arm, leaving a bruise as big as her fist.

“Don’t tell your mother.”

Jagged sobs racked my body as I made my vow not to say a word.

 

A month later, Mother learned from Walburga what I, her tenth child, had foretold. The cow had borne her bull calf, his markings exactly as I had described them.

“The girl sees true,” my nurse told my mother, while I peeked around the edge of the drapery I was hiding behind.

Mother’s face was white and pinched, as though someone had just delivered the news that Father, Hugo, and Drutwin had been slain by the Saracens and left to rot in unhallowed graves.

But Walburga went on beaming like a simpleton. “My lady, you should give the calf to Hildegard. She’s blessed by God, that child.”

 

Walburga’s thunderstruck proclamations soon spread as swiftly as the pox. Much to my mother’s mortification, my prophecy regarding the calf was all anyone in Bermersheim and the surrounding villages could talk about.

I shrank from Mother’s gaze and sought refuge in Walburga’s lap, in her engulfing embrace. Walburga hugged me close, her heart beating against my ear. My nurse loved me more than my own mother did—this I knew to be a fact. Yet Walburga had sealed my doom. Mechthild von Bermersheim’s youngest daughter saw true—what would people say about our family? Either I was touched by God or possessed by Satan. How was Mother to know which?

 

That evening after Compline in our family chapel, Mother made me stay behind with her after my siblings, the servants, and even the chaplain had quit the place. Mother drew me into the chilliest corner, near the shriving bench where we knelt to confess our sins. Unsteady candlelight sent Mother’s shadow rearing against the painted walls. Walburga had told me that Mother was thirty-five, an ancient age, and indeed my parent looked like an old woman—toothless, a few wisps of sparse gray hair poking out from where her wimple slid back, her spine buckled from bearing so many babies. At least with your father away in the Holy Lands, Walburga had confided, your poor mother can take comfort in the hope that there’ll be no more.

“Hildegard.” Mother stared down at me. Even with her stoop, she was a tall woman. “You are the tenth child. You know that.”

An awful tightness clutched my throat. Unable to look at Mother, my eyes slipped to the fresco of Eve with the apple cupped in her palm. Naked and glowing, the first sinner lingered beneath a tree that was nearly as exquisite as the one that had appeared in the golden sphere. Her softly rounded belly, almost like that of a pregnant woman, revealed the lust and corruption lurking inside her beautiful flesh—this was what our chaplain had told us. Eve lifted her face to the serpent, whose sinuous body boasted a woman’s head and breasts—the creature was none other than Lilith, Adam’s first wife, whispering wicked knowledge in Eve’s ear while Adam just stood there like a dullard.

“Do you know what a tithe is?” Mother asked me.

I nodded, fighting tears.

“Tell me,” she commanded, her voice as cool as her fingers gripping my shoulders.

“Every good Christian”—I gulped and swallowed—“must give a tenth of all he owns to the Church.”

Mother knelt before me so that our faces were level. Her hazel eyes seemed as huge as the orbs that swam across my vision.

“You are the tenth child,” Mother said again.

I was the tithe.

 

“It’s not a bad place, Disibodenberg,” Mother told me the following morning, as if to soften the blow.

She allowed me to perch in her lap as she worked the bone teeth of her comb through my flaxen hair while Walburga held up the mirror of polished silver to reflect my face. Though my eyes were swollen from crying, I gazed greedily into the mirror for as long as I was allowed because this might be my last chance. Mirrors were forbidden to those in holy orders. Mother wants to be rid of me. What would happen if I threw my arms around her neck and begged her to let me stay? I twisted in Mother’s lap, but she told me to sit still.

“You won’t be alone, child.” Her voice was gentle and soothing. “You are to accompany Jutta, the Count of Sponheim’s daughter, as her chosen handmaiden. Think of the prestige!”

My family swore fealty to the Sponheim dynasty. On feast days in their hall, I had seen Jutta dancing in a circle with the other girls. At fourteen, Jutta was ripe for marriage, the most beautiful young noblewoman in the Rhineland, so everyone swore, with her auburn hair and cornflower eyes, her slender grace, the necklace of seed pearls and garnets adorning her white throat. But there were rumors—even I had heard the gossip. Jutta von Sponheim is as mad as a box of frogs. According to my sister Odilia, this was why Jutta’s family could find her no husband, despite her stunning looks and huge dowry. To make matters worse, Jutta fancied herself a holy woman. Nothing but the religious life would do for her.

“But why Disibodenberg?” Walburga dared to ask Mother, forgetting her place. “Two young girls given to the monks—it doesn’t seem proper. Surely they’d be better off with the nuns at Schönau.”

Mother’s reply was icy enough to make me shiver. “Don’t offer your opinions on things you know nothing about.”

She snatched her prized mirror from Walburga’s hand and set it down on the table.

“Sweetheart,” she said, turning me in her lap so that we faced each other. “It is a great honor to be chosen as Jutta’s companion. You will bring glory to us all. Your father will be so proud when he hears.”

I ached to tell her that I had no wish to spend the rest of my life with a mad girl no one wanted to marry, but my tongue turned into a plank and I said nothing.

“You and Jutta von Sponheim.” The smile on Mother’s face allowed me to glimpse the ghost of the lovely woman she had been ages ago, before she had all the babies who had left her as swaybacked as an old plow horse. “The pair of you will be holy virgins who take no husband but Christ Himself. You are lucky, my girl. The chosen one. You know, I wanted a religious life. I begged my parents to let me join holy orders, but instead I was given to your father when I was only thirteen.”

My eyes prickled in confusion. Was Mother doing me a kindness, then, by banishing me to the monastery? Was this truly a better fate than being married off like other girls?

“But I don’t want any husband,” I told her. “Not even Jesus.”

“Every girl must take a husband, either mortal or divine,” Mother replied, as though she were stating the plain truth to an idiot.

“Walburga didn’t!”

“Walburga is a peasant,” Mother said, with Walburga only a few feet away. “Does a noble falcon share the same destiny as that of a barnyard goose? You were born to grander things than she was.”

Catching my eye before turning her back on Mother, Walburga’s contempt for my parent filled the room like a bad smell, as though my nurse had let out a fart. I wondered if Mother was terribly wrong, if she was making a mistake so enormous that even the servants saw through her.

 

The following day Mother rode off to the court of Sponheim to discuss my future with Jutta’s mother, the countess. Blessing of blessings, she whisked away my six beautiful sisters, still unbetrothed owing to their paltry dowries, and left me alone with Rorich and Walburga. The first thing Rorich and I did after solemnly waving good-bye was to sneak out the gate and through the vineyards where the grapevines grew tall enough to hide us. When we reached the forest, we tore around like heathens, beating down nettles with hazel sticks.

“They’ll be gone for weeks!” I shouted, delirious with happiness.

What joy could be greater than spending the summer days with Rorich, just the two of us? Rorich was my most beloved sibling. Ten years old, he was close enough in age to be my friend. He hadn’t changed like my sisters had, turning to women before my eyes, abandoning our childhood games as they set their sights on marriage.

“They’ll be feasting on roasted swan every night in Sponheim,” Rorich said, leading the way to the brook, where he slipped off his shoes, leaving them to lie on the mossy bank.

“And they’ll dance!” I kicked off my deerskin slippers.

My brother and I joined hands and threw our noses in the air to mimic the counts and countesses, margraves and margravines. Humming courtly dance tunes, we reeled through the shallow stream, our feet splashing and prancing, until my skirt and my brother’s tunic were soaked.

“Dancing is forbidden in the monastery.”

I shrugged to prove to Rorich that I’d never much cared for such fripperies anyway.

“They won’t really send you away.” My brother flung himself on the bank to laze in the sun. “Not for a long while yet. That girl in Alzey who went to the nuns in Schönau—they wouldn’t take her until she was twelve. That gives you five years, Hildegard.”

Gratitude tingled inside me as I waded in the brook, savoring the gentle click of water-washed agates between my toes. Five years! It seemed a whole lifetime. Anything could happen in that stretch of time.

“Mother will change her mind,” Rorich said. “She always does. Remember how Father wanted Roswithia to marry that fat widower with the gouty leg?”

This had transpired before I was even born, but it was Walburga’s favorite story and Mother’s finest hour and bravest deed. Father was about to give our Roswithia to someone old and hideous, but Mother had overruled him just as he was about to set off for the Holy Lands. The minute he was gone, Roswithia had thrown herself at Mother’s feet and wept in relief.

“At least you don’t need to worry about who they’ll make you marry.” I snapped a wand off a willow. “You’re the youngest son— you’ll have to be a priest.”

Rorich kicked in the water, splashing me in the face. “I’ll run away first.”

“I’ll come with you. We’ll be bandits.”

“We’ll be poachers and hunt the Count of Sponheim’s deer. We’ll feast on venison and hide in the trees.” Rorich eyed me critically. “But you wouldn’t be sturdy enough to survive that kind of life, Hildegard.”

“I’ve been well,” I insisted. In this warm and dry tide of summer, my lungs were clear, my breathing easy. “Not sickly at all.”

“Prove it.” He pointed to the weeping willow. “Show me how high you can climb.”

First I hitched up my skirts, knotting them over my knees to free my legs before I launched myself onto the first low bough. Grabbing the trunk, I worked my way up, placing one bare foot and then the other on the next highest limb till I ascended to the upper branches. There I swayed, clinging white-knuckled lest I fall, while Rorich howled with laughter. A dizziness filled my head as the orbs spun around me. Gulping for air, I slithered to the ground with as much bravado as I could muster.

“I did it.” I looked my brother in the eye.

He only lifted my arm to study the yellow bruises, the fruit of my grappling with the tree.

“Walburga will murder me,” he said. “Let’s go back before she skins us.”

“We’ll be bandits.” Grasping his hands, I clung to our daydream. “We’ll live on berries and wild mushrooms. We’ll find the white hart that lives in the deepest forest! Except we won’t kill him. We’ll build a pavilion for him, and I’ll weave my hair into a collar for him.”

Rorich wrapped his arm around me. “Maybe Jutta will take Clementia instead of you. Jutta’s so crazy she probably can’t tell one girl from another.”

 

Filthy and bedraggled, Rorich and I crept through the kitchen garden then darted through the low door leading into the cavernous undercroft beneath the burg. Here we parted ways, hoping to escape the servants’ detection. Hiding behind sacks of barley, I watched my brother melt into the darkness like some renegade Saracen. After counting to twelve, I tiptoed between the barrels of beer and wine, my plan being to steal up the stairs to my chamber and put on a clean shift and kirtle before Walburga pounced on me. But echoes of sobbing made me freeze.

Wishing Rorich was still there, I inched forward, deerskin slippers padding the dust until I came upon Walburga behind stacked crocks of cheeses and honey, her hands clutching her face.

“What is it?” I asked, petrified, for I’d never seen Walburga weep, never even thought it possible that so stalwart a woman could break down and bawl as though she were a child no older than I.

Blinking through her tears, Walburga hugged me so hard, as if she’d never let me go. As if she were my true parent and I her beloved daughter.

“Your mother is cruel. How can she do this?”

My heart swelled at Walburga’s devotion. At what my nurse risked by standing up to Mother and taking my side. Mother could cast her out, send her back to her village to grub in the fields like the lowest serf. Still, it was my duty to defend my blood kin.

“There are other oblates. That girl from Alzey,” I said, remembering what Rorich had told me. “She went to the nuns at Schönau, but she had to wait till she was twelve. Besides, Mother says it isn’t so bad. You learn to read and write, and to play the psaltery, and you sit and stitch silk like the ladies at court, except the nuns have to wear plain clothes.”

“If they were only sending you to live with ordinary nuns, love, I wouldn’t be crying my eyes out.” Walburga’s tears drenched my hair. “That Jutta wants to be an anchorite and she’s dragging you down with her.”

My mind was a blank. “A what?”

“An anchorite.” Seeing the confusion on my face, Walburga rocked me in her arms and keened as though an unspeakable wrong had been done to me. “Poor child, you don’t even know.”

 

During that long, happy summer, Walburga turned a blind eye as Rorich and I ventured out in the forest day after day, tumbling through the undergrowth, coming home grubby, with spider silk in our hair. I caught toads and salamanders, cupping their wriggling bodies in my hands before freeing them. Rorich snared rabbits. With his bow and quiver of arrows, he stalked deer while I shadowed him and watched, my heart in my throat as the arrow went singing through the air only to miss the hind as she dashed away. What would it be like to escape so easily, to just vanish into the green?

He was never much of a marksman, my brother. That was why Mother was content to let him stay home with the women instead of sending him away to join Father and our elder brothers in the Holy Lands and learn the arts of war. Besides, everyone but Rorich himself saw his future chiseled in stone—the boy was not destined to be a knight but a cleric, as bound to the Church as I would be if Mother had her way.

 

In September the anniversary of my birth came and went. I turned eight and still Mother did not return from Sponheim. She and our sisters stayed away so long that Rorich decided they had forgotten about sending me to the monastery.

“They’ll spend the rest of their days at court,” he said. “Preening before the countess and fighting to dance with her son.”

I discovered a cave in the forest, its opening just wide enough for us to squeeze through. It opened into a dry cavern big enough for us to light a fire.

“This is where we’ll live,” I told Rorich. “This is our hideaway. They’ll never find us.”

 

The moon waxed and waned. The vines covering the keep wall turned blood red. One evening at twilight, Rorich and I straggled back from the forest to find Mother awaiting us in her chamber.

“Rorich, leave us,” she said. “I must speak with your sister in private.”

Cold and trembling, I dragged myself forward to take my mother’s hand and kiss her knuckles.

“Welcome home, Mother.” I gazed into her eyes and wondered where my sisters were, why they were so quiet. I expected the silent rooms to explode with their gossip.

Mother smiled, running her hands through my snarled hair. “My wild child. You have elf locks.”

I tried to speak, but my throat silted up, the unhappy knowledge rising in my gorge.

“Irmengard and Odilia are to be married next spring. The countess is paying their dowries.” Mother’s eyes gleamed with the joy of answered prayers, burdens lifted. “Walburga must pack your things at once, my dear. Tomorrow at first light we leave for Disibodenberg.”