Late in Madeleine’s pregnancy, Mother Hersend sought her out in the garden to discuss the “miracle of birth.” The widow of Lord Guillaume de Montsoreau, Hersend de Champagne had been among the noble women who had donated to the Abbey in the difficult early months. Not long after, she had taken orders following her husband’s death. A non-judgmental, kind-hearted woman, she was tiny, barely five feet tall, with deep dimples and a rollicking laugh better suited to a milkmaid than a learned woman of authority. Even before she began speaking, Madeleine could see why Robert had appointed her Abbess. Something in her delicate but assertive manner simultaneously soothed and challenged. Hersend called out Madeleine’s name just as she finished weeding a row of lima beans.
“Madeleine, you’ve worked wonders! And in such short time!”
“It’s nothing,” Madeleine said, blushing. “Gardening is my passion.”
“When the Lord marries passion to need,” Hersend said, “wonders may transpire. We’ll have altar flowers and vegetables well into winter!”
“Brother Moriuht has been most helpful.”
“I must remember to thank him,” Hersend said. After a pause, she assumed a more purposeful tone. “You know, there are similarities between what you are doing here,” she said, lifting her hand to take in the whole of the garden, “and here,” she said, taking a step closer to Madeleine and touching her fingertips to the thrust of her belly. “Both germinate from seed and depend on warmth, fertile soil, and the goodness and grace of Our Lord to come into fruition.” She examined Madeleine’s face with a maternal scrutiny, and Madeleine wondered if Robert had prompted the abbess to speak with her. “Of course,” Hersend said, “there are differences as well. The growth of a child is much more complicated. After the seed of the child is planted, it develops in stages.”
Madeleine leaned on her hoe, eyes locked with Hersend’s as she listened.
“At first, the child is like a vegetable feeding and growing…”
Madeleine thought of the lazy expansion of heavy orange pumpkins and plump red tomatoes.
A sudden breeze ruffled Hersend’s habit. She spread her small hands (hardly bigger than a child’s!) against her thighs, holding the robe in place until the gentle wind settled.
“And then?” Madeleine asked.
“Next it assumes the characteristics of an animal—feeling, moving, full of fledgling desire,” Hersend said, rolling her tiny hands, one over the other.
The wild tumbling motion reminded Madeleine of Brother Benoît’s young hound, whose devotion made his unbridled energy bearable.
“Finally,” Hersend said, smiling a beatific smile and looking upward, “it acquires a rational mind and takes on human form.” Her voice was turquoise, full of comfort and hope. “Only then does God endow the child with an immortal soul.”
These last words struck Madeleine with pain, like deadly nightshade spreading its wild branches and sprouting poisonous berries deep inside her belly. She thought of Evraud, a soulless devil if ever there was one.
“You are thinking of the child’s father,” Hersend said, reaching out to smooth Madeleine’s brow. “It might help you to think of the man’s mother instead,” she said, softly. Taking both of Madeleine’s hands in her own, Hersend looked deeply into her eyes. “Consider the woman whose body nourished and cradled your child’s father. She must have hoped, as all mothers do, that her son would grow into a man of kindness and worth. Perhaps you can feel compassion for this woman destined to become your child’s grandmother?” Hersend squeezed Madeleine’s hands, and for a brief moment, Madeleine felt sorrow that was not her own.
“Do not fear, my child. God will grant your child a holy soul.” Rising up on tiptoes, Hersend kissed Madeleine’s cheek just as the babe stretched and tumbled against her ribs.
By late autumn Madeleine could no longer work comfortably in the garden. Whenever she stooped to sweet talk an ailing plant or uproot a pesky weed, the babe kicked and flailed about as though she intended it great harm. Bertrad and Florence took over her duties, and Madeleine spent her days sorting beans, soaking lentils, and measuring ingredients for Marie’s breads and pastries.
Madeleine worried that Robert might imagine she had abandoned her work in the garden rather than chance another private conversation with him. In fact, after he asked for her forgiveness, she felt newly drawn to him and would have welcomed such an encounter. But Robert, consumed with abbey business, had no time for garden conversations.
Around this same time Mother Hersend arranged for Brother Girard, an efficient if reluctant scribe, to teach Madeleine and the twins their Latin letters so that they might read holy hymns prior to singing them. Though it would be years before the buildings were completed, Robert insisted that the work of the abbey begin immediately and that no one’s spiritual life be put on hold.
The newly designated scriptorium, where Agnes, Arsen, and Madeleine met every day after prime for their lesson, was a rustic, temporary structure with pine walls and a thatch roof that smelled of newly hewed wood, honey, bees wax, and acacia gum. Two large cutouts served as windows, allowing natural light to fall on a half dozen small tables, each with a little bench, lining the walls.
Arriving early one morning, Madeleine and the twins interrupted Peter, who was sitting at one of the tables with his back to the three women, singing softly and writing musical notes on vellum pinned with knives to a triangular block of wood. His robe spilled over the bench and puddled onto the plank floor. While the twins lingered near the door, Madeleine, dizzy with anticipation, hurried to Peter’s side.
“What is it you’re working on?” she asked.
“Hymns,” he said simply, without meeting her eyes. He held his brush politely aloft, but his tapping foot revealed he was impatient to return to his manuscript.
The twins, a step behind Madeleine, stretched their hands towards the gold paint, their fingers trailing the air as though poised to caress. They had grown plump on Philippa’s rations. Their hair returned to its former luster and their skin assumed a pale radiance.
“Do not touch!” Peter said. “The notes are wet!” He shielded the unfinished page with the curve of an arm.
“We’re only looking, Brother Peter,” Agnes said. “It’s alright to look, isn’t it?” She arched one brow and slid her tongue across her upper lip.
Peter frowned, motioning that they might step closer.
The twins glided into place beside Peter who began a new song, placing his brush on the page and shading the bulbous tip of one spindly note.
Madeleine, intent on watching Peter’s progress, did not realize Girard had entered the room until he spoke. “I am here to teach you,” he said and walked to a small table across the room from Peter where he nudged aside the stool with one stout leg. Ignoring Agnes and Arsen, he tugged at the rope cincture girdling his waist and waved for Madeleine to join him. His halo, which waffled fitfully in Robert’s presence, scorched fiery red.
“Shall we begin, then?” Girard said, brushing a crumb from his sloping belly. Madeleine recalled when she had last seen him, fleeing from the garden and wondered how much of her conversation with Robert the troubled monk had overheard. Abruptly, he turned to face her. She smelled bacon in the greasy folds of his robe and garlic on his breath. A wave of nausea left her light headed. She grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself.
Girard, seemingly oblivious to Madeleine’s discomfort, slid his crippled hand into the drape of his robe. Leaning forward, he placed his other hand onto the vellum. His body relaxed, and he began to trace the letters with a sensuous slide. “Some are curved, others capped, still others ornamented with fat bellies and big feet,” he said. “You must feel their variations in your fingertips before you can hear them in your heart and know them in your head.” With a nod he indicated that Madeleine’s hand should replace his on the manuscript. She obliged, tracing the very same letters his fingers had just touched. Girard’s features softened even as his breathing quickened. Madeleine ignored Girard and focused on the letters.
What attracted her most in the beautifully ornate manuscript were the large letters decorated with fantastic gilded figures.
“This is a b,” Girard said pointing to a vegetable-green letter collaring a blue dog’s head. “And this one,” he said, touching the elongated neck of a rose-colored musician, “is a p.”
“And this?” she asked, touching the curved tail of a majestic yellow lion.
“The letter y,” he said, placing his hand over hers and guiding her fingers the length of the trailing loop again and again until his colors blistered like the burnt edge of bacon and his breath puffed ragged and foul against her cheek. She pulled her hand free and stepped back, toppling the small stool in her haste.
The twins, sleek, voluptuous, and curious as crows, turned their heads towards the sound of the stool thumping against the plank floor. Holding hands, they crossed the room.
Before Girard uprighted the stool, he glanced the length of Madeleine’s body, his eyes lingering on the swell of her belly. His expression was one she had seen on the faces of men who had something to hide—a limp organ or a perverse desire. Often they were angry afterwards, tossing down coins with violent, dismissive gestures.
He motioned for the twins to move nearer the manuscript. “The letters are what’s important,” he said, his voice raspy and too loud. “The rest is for ornamentation. The dog, the musician, the lion are drawn for beauty’s sake, for aesthetics.”
“Aesthetics,” Madeleine whispered, savoring the velvety roll of the word against her tongue. How like a garden the page appears, with each flowery letter arranged to form a bouquet of meaning!
The twins bumped hips and rolled their eyes. “Aesthetics,” they said in high fluty voices.
Madeleine ignored their mimicry, for she had already determined that nothing would interfere with her learning to read.
“Do not act like children!” Girard scolded.
The twins muffled their giggles with the palms of their hands and backed away from the manuscript.
“Shall we resume?” he said to Madeleine.
He moved to her side. A great heat vapored off his body, and the air between them webbed with something ominous.