The Greenest Branch Page 7

  The man stared at me.

  “I have some warm wine with which I’d like to wash your wound. Will you let me?”

  Arnwald nodded slightly and closed his eyes. He remained motionless as I gingerly unwrapped his dressing, although he groaned when I pulled a piece of cloth that had stuck to the flesh. I caught my breath at the sight of the wound and had to steady myself. It was not until I dipped a cup and poured the wine over the arm that my self-control returned. I could hardly recognize myself; my motions were spare and precise, assured yet gentle, so that Arnwald had no cause for complaint. He winced at the first sting of the spirit, then smiled weakly. Perhaps the last of the wine, which was getting cooler, provided some relief from the fever that was gripping his body.

  “The wound is no longer fresh, so it may take a bit,” I said, scooping up some honey and dabbing it onto the flesh. Then I wrapped the arm so it looked exactly as before, and rolled up the wine-soaked linen. “Perhaps we should not mention this to Brother Wigbert for now,” I added, clearing my throat. “It is a folk remedy, and he does not approve of such methods.”

  Arnwald smiled and winked. He was of a peasant stock, after all.

  “I will save more wine tomorrow,” I promised.

  I returned the cup to the tray and was about to go back to the workshop with the honey and the dishes when Arnwald’s voice sounded hoarsely behind me. “Thank you, young lady. You have a talent.”

  I turned and gave him a conspiratorial smile. I had begun to suspect as much.

  Again through Brother Wigbert, I learned the details of Abbot Kuno’s consultation with Sister Jutta regarding my new arrangements. He had gone to the enclosure armed with my father’s response. The messages between him and the magistra were carried by Sister Juliana, for Jutta never came out to speak with outsiders.

  “We hope it pleases God to restore Hildegard to health and return her to us swiftly,” Juliana told him through the small opening for provisions in the door, the usual way the sisters communicated with the world.

  “She is recovering well,” the abbot informed her. “However, together with her parents, we have decided that she should not return to the convent permanently. At least for a while.”

  Juliana gazed at him apprehensively. “What are you saying, Father?”

  “It appears that Hildegard’s health is being affected by the rigors of your chosen life.”

  She lowered her eyes and remained silent.

  “It may be that she is too young,” the abbot resumed. “Whatever it is, things have to change if you are to be able to conduct your holy mission without further disruption.”

  “Am I to tell Sister Jutta that Hildegard is leaving us?”

  “No. Her parents have not asked for it. But we must find a different arrangement, and I want to ask Sister Jutta’s leave to make new dispositions.”

  “Let me confer with her, Father, if it pleases you to wait.”

  Kuno folded his arms into the sleeves of his robe and assumed a posture of patient expectation. After a while, Juliana returned. “Sister Jutta is greatly saddened by your news.” Her tone was more official. “She is, as we all are, praying for Hildegard’s deliverance both from bodily suffering and from the spiritual weakness that has caused her to reject our sacrificial way of life.”

  The abbot stirred uneasily. It would greatly complicate matters if the magistra were to cast me out and declare me unworthy.

  “But we are ready to accept her back with compassion, even if she only spends part of her time with us,” Juliana added. “And we will continue to pray for her to be delivered from this turmoil.”

  Kuno tried to hide his relief. “I applaud you for this most Christian attitude, Sister. I am hopeful we can find a solution that will allow Hildegard to pursue her calling with a serene heart.”

  When he returned to his lodgings, the abbot sent for Brother Wigbert to present him with his plan: I was to become the infirmarian’s helper and work from midday until vespers every day but Sunday.

  After five days of the wine-and-honey cure, Arnwald’s injured flesh began to lose its crimson flush. We both heaved a great sigh of relief, though for different reasons, for I had begun to have doubts about my memory of these remedies. But the deterioration had stopped. The wound was still tender, but the pus was gone and the fever had gone down. When I took the bandages off, it was no longer soft, and the first scabs had started to form. Arnwald said it was itchy, and we looked at each other hopefully; itchiness meant it was healing.

  Brother Wigbert examined the arm and announced that it was finally on the mend and that Arnwald could return home. I handed Brother Wigbert clean pieces of linen as he bandaged it for the road. “A week ago, the wound was festering and you were consumed by fever, but today you are on your way to health,” he said, shaking his head. “No earthly force has brought this about. God willed it, and it happened. Praised be his name!”

  “Amen.” Arnwald winked at me over the monk’s tonsure. “It will be good to be back home, Brother. The first thing I will ask my good wife to do is warm up some wine.”

  I turned my head away to hide a smile.

  Moments later, I watched Arnwald walk toward the abbey gate with more spring in his step than he’d had in days. I was about to close the infirmary door as the gate swung open to let him out, when I saw a boy. He had evidently just come up from the town. He approached the porter with what seemed like palms joined in supplication. But he was no beggar—his clothes were plain but neat, and he looked well-fed—and there was something familiar about him. I stood gazing a moment longer but could not think of where I might have seen him before. After all, the only boys I had ever known were my own brothers.

  Then I closed the door and ran back to Brother Wigbert, for I was eager for my new life to begin.

  7

  March 1117

  The access to Brother Wigbert’s workshop, his inner sanctum, was from the herb garden. In the early days of March, the withered growth of the last season was poking desolately through the melting snow. Even so, the air of the workshop had that peculiar scent of dry herbs mixed with old timber that reminded me of Uda’s loft. A counter stacked with mortars and pestles, clay bowls and glass vials, chopping knifes, spoons, and cups lined one wall, below a long double shelf. Two barrels of wine and several jars of honey were stored under the counter, and a sizable stove occupied the far corner, next to a basin filled with fresh water brought daily from the abbey well.

  When Brother Wigbert had first showed me his medicines, which were all arranged along the bottom shelf, he had done so with considerable pride. They included cork-stoppered bottles of thick brown oil of valerian, vials of rose essence, lavender oil the color of a pale peach, and a flask of poppy juice of milky consistency. Next to them, an earthen jar contained gnarled sticks of ginger, which I had never seen before. It was to be used sparingly, for it came from the East and cost half a silver mark each. There were also several wooden boxes with dried leaves and flowers of rose hips, mint, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, fennel, and basil.

  On the table by the window, two large glass jars kept attracting my attention. One housed a colony of leeches covered with a strip of gauze, and the other was filled with what looked like stiff black disks with whitish streaks on them. “What are these?” I asked.

  “Dried goat dung,” he explained matter-of-factly.

  But, on the whole, the inventory was respectable, although I quickly realized that I would probably not learn any more about herbs than what I already knew. In fact, I noticed that there was no powdered willow bark, which Uda had used to make tea for us when we had a fever. Nor did the infirmarian have a stock of yarrow flowers that could be boiled in water to bathe the foreheads of those suffering from seasonal chills. Still, when the garden would yield its first herbs in the spring, there might be opportunities for me to try new combinations for various ailments. The prospect of e
xperimenting and learning filled me with a thrill of anticipation.

  By late winter, I was Brother Wigbert’s assistant in all but name and had taken over many of Bertolf’s duties. Not only did the poor novice not have the stomach for medicine, he regularly broke the infirmarian’s precious glass. He now spent most of his time in the scriptorium, where he was happier, as were we in the infirmary.

  That March afternoon, my task was to wash some dusty glass. As I was reaching for it, my gaze lingered, as it often did, on the three volumes standing on the shelf next to these lesser-used vessels. I had been intensely curious about them, though I dared not touch them.

  “These are a few of my medical texts from Salerno,” Brother Wigbert said, noticing my fascination. “I keep them here for reference.”

  “May I read them?” My Latin had greatly improved under Jutta’s tutelage.

  “You would not understand anything, child. It takes men years to master this knowledge. Besides”—he pointed at the water basin—“there is a lot of work to be done. When you have washed these, there are also clay pots that need to be scrubbed.”

  “Yes, Brother.”

  These dispositions given, he set out to prepare a strengthening posset for Brother Maurice. For a while we worked in silence, then I asked, for my mind was still on the books, “Can women study to be physicians, Brother?”

  “Usually, no.”

  “Why?”

  “It is the natural order of things,” he replied, “that women should rear children since they are the gentler and more nurturing of the sexes. Who would guard the family hearth if they were to go to schools?”

  I pondered this, frowning. “But if women are better at caring for others, they should make better doctors too, shouldn’t they?”

  Wigbert looked momentarily surprised, then chuckled. “You make clever arguments, Hildegard, but studying requires well-developed reasoning faculties, which women do not possess, being more impulsive and less logical then men.”

  I considered pointing out the contradiction, but decided not to. “You said that women do not usually become physicians, Brother—does that mean that sometimes they do?” I asked instead.

  He nodded. “There have been instances of high-born ladies who read ancient texts and claimed to have mastered the medical arts. It is said, for example, that the daughter of the emperor of Byzantium is a physician. There is also a female scholar at Salerno named Trota who lectures and writes on the diseases of women.”

  “Is she a princess too, this Trota?”

  “No.”

  My heart leaped. “So it is possible!”

  “Hers is not an easy life.” Brother Wigbert raised his considerable eyebrows as if in warning. “For there are many who claim that she is breaking God’s law by doing so.”

  “And is she?”

  “I am not a theologian, but St. Paul does admonish against women teachers.”

  Having no argument against that, I went back to rinsing the glass as he finished the posset and poured it into a cup. “It is getting warmer, and the garden will need weeding and planting soon,” he said, wincing as he stretched his fingers. “My joints are aching again.”

  I held my breath.

  “Would you like to help me with it, or should I employ one of the novices?”

  Did he even have to ask?

  As soon as the snow was gone, I set out to work. In my mind I already imagined the garden full of color and fragrance, filled with birdsong and the drone of bees from the hives Brother Wigbert kept behind the fruit trees near the abbey wall.

  The wall offered natural protection from the wind, and a boxwood hedge separated the garden from the rest of the abbey, giving it a secluded feel, but besides that there was little structure to it. A few rosebushes were planted against the convent’s chapel—I remembered their sweet scent wafting through the small window the previous spring. Next to them was a patch of poppies and, for some reason, strawberries. On the opposite side of the plot, there was a cluster of elderberry and apple trees. In between this jumble, herb beds of different sizes were covered with remnants of the last season’s growth.

  For several days I pruned, dug, and weeded, and delineated the beds by marking clear paths between them. Little by little, I located the fennel bulbs, rosemary and lavender shrubs, valerian stems, and the tangled horizontal branches of mint. At the far end of the garden in the shade of the fruit trees, I found marjoram and basil. Before long, an outline began to emerge. I felt great satisfaction when I surveyed the final results even though important healing plants, like sage or oregano, were missing. But those could be planted over time. Wild herbs, on the other hand—those that grew by the roadside or in the forest—would not be available unless I found someone to procure them for me.

  Gardens bloom quickly under the sun and showers of a Rhenish spring, and the first yield comes in May. I was putting fresh blankets on the cots in the infirmary one morning, when, looking through the window, I saw a boy walking from the direction of the workshop with a basket full of fresh leaves. It was the same boy I had seen arrive at the abbey the previous autumn. I gazed after him until he vanished around the church on his way to the kitchens. He was not an oblate or a novice—he wore lay clothes—and once again I had that vague feeling of familiarity.

  When I had finished my work, I went to the workshop. I found Brother Wigbert standing on the threshold admiring the herbs. They were growing profusely in neat clusters without so much as one shoot of a weed anywhere. The buzzing bees and the bright butterflies that alighted on the blossoms only enhanced the garden’s wholesome, cheerful aspect.

  “You have a green thumb and you are diligent.” He looked genuinely pleased. “Unlike most of the novices who have had a go at this before,” he added sardonically.

  “Thank you, Brother.” I felt myself flushing with pleasure as I followed him inside. “Who was that boy I saw coming out of here not long ago?”

  “A kitchen help came for some cooking herbs. Abbot Kuno likes his fish seasoned with marjoram and rosemary.”

  We were going to prepare the season’s first batch of herbs for storage. I started cleaning the wood boxes while he cut the dried bunches down from the beams. As he did so, he asked me how the sisters were dealing with my new employment.

  “They are used to it now.” Upon my return to the convent, I had sensed a certain resentment, mainly on the part of Jutta. The magistra said that she would pray for me, then spoke not a word to me for days. But I tried to please her with my diligence, and I always stayed in the convent for the study hour.

  Eventually I regained her favor, albeit by accident. After my months-long absence, I had found myself out of practice kneeling on the floor of the chapel and took to alternating between kneeling and lying on my stomach, imitating the anchoresses. The face-down position was hardly more comfortable, but at least it prevented my limbs from going numb. So I was surprised when Jutta broke her silence one evening and whispered to me as we were leaving the chapel, “I am glad that you are humbling yourself before God by flattening your body during prayer. None of us deserve to look at our Savior’s face.”

  The next day, she selected a passage from The Book of Job in which Bildad gave this reply to Job: “How can man be righteous before God? How can he be pure who is born of a woman? If even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is a maggot, and a son of man, who is a worm!” I quickly understood that this was intended to reinforce her earlier admonition.

  Still, there was one thing that bothered me. “I am so much more content now,” I said to Brother Wigbert as I lined the boxes up on the counter, “but I fear it may be against The Rule.”

  “What may be against The Rule?” Brother Wigbert was puzzled.

  “Being happy.”

  “And why would you think that?”

  “Sister Jutta told me
about all the things we must refrain from.” I proceeded to enumerate on my fingers. “We must not provoke laughter, we must reject pride, practice fasting, love chastity . . . What’s chastity, Brother?”

  “Uh . . . hmm.” The monk was suddenly very busy with the herbs strewn on the table. “It is when a man and his wife are . . . uh . . . faithful to each other.” He bent over a stem, closely examining its flowers, though they looked fine to me.

  “Like my father and my mother?”

  “Yes.” The bald tonsure nodded without looking up.

  “But married people don’t live in monasteries.”

  Brother Wigbert straightened up, sighing. “What you need to know”—he was choosing his words carefully—“is that The Rule is above all about prayer and labor, each in sufficient measure to elevate the spirit and subdue the body. It is there to guide us and keep us on our path, but it also aims to make the monastic life a fulfilling one despite the sacrifices we must make.”

  “But Sister Jutta—”

  “She is a holy woman and an example to all of us in her capacity for spiritual elevation and self-denial.” Despite the lofty words, Wigbert’s tone was rather perfunctory. “But she lives by her own strict codex that you are not expected to follow unless you make a formal commitment in the future. Do you understand?”

  Relief washed over me. “Does that mean I don’t have to fast every day?”

  “The Rule prescribes extreme fasting only as punishment, not as daily routine.”

  That was good news, but the worried look must have lingered on my face.

  “What now?”

  “There is one other thing.” I hesitated. “Sister Jutta seems somehow . . . sadder than before I took ill.”

  “As I said, she is devoted to the ascetic life.”

  “And yet she allows herself things she did not use to.” I frowned.

  “Like what?”

  “She asks for extra salt from the kitchen. Before, she would only take a pinch with her bread.”