We balanced the weight of the sword between us, then she let me stand on the stool to put it back myself. Her tears glistened on the silver scabbard, making the sword feel lighter. My face was also wet, but my tears were for Madame, who scarcely recognized me anymore. The abbess drew me towards her map of Christendom with the pilgrimages and holy sites. The cathedral with the word
Rome
showed that it was the proper home of the popes, not Avignon.
“Where did Hildegarde live?” I asked, though I knew it as well as the abbess did now.
Her pointer tapped over to the little abbey labelled Bingen-on-the-Rhine, where popes as well as emperors had consulted the saint. I
would never tire of hearing how she had been given to the abbey as an oblate, as I had been.
“From the age of three,” the abbess said, “Hildegarde saw visions with her immortal soul. A Voice addressed her from the sky,
O homo fragilis. O fragile man, ashes amongst ashes and dust amongst dust, say and write what you see and hear
. One day, Solange, you will be as great as Hildegarde, the sibyl of the Rhine. I have decided that you will take the veil at fifteen, as she did.”
The abbess arranged herself in her chair to begin the lesson and I moved my stool to its usual place beside her. Despite the abbess’s faith in me, I knew I was not living up to my promise. I was nine now, but had heard little from on high, only a faint croaking from inside her wall, where Elisabeth and I had trapped a frog. The abbess unlocked her great psalter. Together we marvelled at the miniature of the Last Judgement. The illuminator had well captured the rapture of the saved flying up to join the cherubim and the agony of the damned sinking into the murky depths of hell.
A fear struck me like one of Elisabeth’s belly punches. “Will Madame die?”
The abbess’s cheeks became red and shiny. “Per fretum febris. Through the straits of fever she will attain God.”
But what about Madame’s arm? What if Cook had tossed it on the dung heap behind the kitchen? If so, the grey mongrel might have carried it off, with wasps still clinging on it, to devour the flesh and scatter the bones. This dog was so desperate to get a taste of meat that I had seen him chewing on parchment shavings outside the scriptorium.
“How will her soul know where to find her arm?” I asked.
“The soul will know where to go, like the dove returning to the dovecot.” The abbess dipped a cloth in lavender water to cool her temples. “The soul will bring the arm to the body and Madame de Fores will be whole in paradise.”
“But God said,
Ashes amongst ashes and dust amongst dust
. What if Madame turns to dust before her soul arrives?”
“This is a good question,” she said, stroking my hair, “for the prophet Ezekiel wondered the same thing.
Son of man, can these bones live?
And lo, God breathed into the bones and they stood up and walked.”
Still, she was not addressing the problem of how body parts could get out of a man-eating crocodile or a cannibal or a starving dog. Patting me on the head did not help. I was tired of being put off with flimsy answers. After all, my mother had not come to collect me, although I had slept with her perfume bottle for almost four years. I had added so many tears to that small bottle that my grief had run over the rim.
“But what if it is only dust from worms or moles, not from Madame?” I asked. “How is the soul to know? What then?”
“The soul will know,” she said, locking the hasp on the psalter. “That is enough for today. Do not trouble yourself any further, my daughter, for the health of your soul is in my hands. Since you appear to have mastered grammar and rhetoric, in the next lesson we will work on logic. I am persuaded you have much need of it.”
Eight
F
OUR YEARS AFTER
Madame’s death, the Orsini psalter-hours were finally completed. On the day the last quire was entrusted to the bookbinder, the nuns started the pruning of the vines and snow appeared on Mont Ventoux to the north.
At Epiphany, Elisabeth dug her thumb into the hollow of my shoulder, urging me awake for nocturns. Now that I was twelve, our cloaks were the same length, though mine was new and made of finer wool. I flung it on to follow her down the night stairs into the church. The abbess began by consecrating the bound psalter-hours. She prayed that it would meet with Cardinal Orsini’s approval and acknowledged the toil of all the scribes and monks. Even I was thanked, though I had only ferried supplies to the scribes. After the first psalm had stirred and lifted me, I escaped into numb sleep until the sacristan’s roving lamp attacked my eyes.
“Where is she?”
I sat up straight. Nocturns were still underway, but Elisabeth was gone. What perverseness had made Saint Benedict put the longest service at the darkest time of night? As soon as the office was over and
the nuns had gone up the stairs to their beds, I crawled through the broken wall in the chapel to search for Elisabeth. The snow was thin and old, a crust that made noises underfoot. The owl had left his perch in the yoke of the pine to hunt for prey. I knew him by his call,
who-looks-for-you, who-looks-for-you-all
, though sometimes he barked like a dog to fool the nuns.
A light emerged from the sacristy—Mother Agnes fastening the door behind her, her gilded crosier spraying lamplight into the dark as she set out along the path towards the woods. She paused near my hiding spot beside the pine to look for something. When the snow crunched, she deposited her lamp so she could grip her crosier with both hands. A twig snapped and a moving shape sank into the darkness of the outbuildings.
“Quo vadis?” the abbess called, brandishing her weapon.
Whither do you go?
Then, more imperiously, “Who?”
This much Elisabeth understood, for she stepped out of the shadows with a knife in one hand and a carcass dangling from the other. A stoat, but I had seldom seen one this colour—white except for its black-tipped tail. A deep scratch ran from Elisabeth’s thumb up her forearm. Her cloak was also torn, probably from the barbed thicket near the garrigue.
“Why are you scavenging in the woods?” the abbess asked.
Elisabeth swung the carcass, admiring the drops of blood fanning across the snow. “Ermine for the Florentine. He said it makes the finest brushes.”
“Your work is in the kitchen and almshouse, not waking men at night.”
The wind rose, dusting up the snow, which allowed me to shift without being heard. I had come out in my inside shoes, no better than gloves on my feet. The stoat’s blood had already frozen on the snow and I could no longer feel my toes.
“I will be sixteen soon.”
“Too old to be crawling through the hole in the north chapel. I am surprised you can still get through it. I trust my familia to obey me
without locks and chains.” When Elisabeth swore in the old tongue, the abbess’s response was swift. “If you talk like a servant, I will put you outside the wall to eat and sleep with them.”
“Why not, since you refuse to let me become a novice?”
“You scarcely know a single psalm.”
This was not true, as I had discovered by sitting beside Elisabeth in church. She could chant many, though she could not read or write them.
“I have read my Latin book from Lent.”
“You mean that Solange read it to you. You spend your time skulking about the woods while she copies the church fathers for her own instruction. In a few years Solange will be made a master scribe and take her vows as Sister Marie-Ange.”
Elisabeth swung the carcass again. “She has not had a vision since that one about the unicorn.”
There was a whiff of envy about Elisabeth tonight, but as the moonlight touched the abbess, I saw no surprise on her round face. She turned away, and planted her crosier firmly with each step towards her flickering lantern. Elisabeth reached it first, blocking the abbess’s route.
“You said I would be Sister Martha.”
“So you will.” The abbess was staring at the crimson snow, as if just realizing that the blood was dripping as much from Elisabeth’s wrist as from the dangling stoat. “Perhaps you
are
ready for new duties in the abbey. You may begin your year’s novitiate as a lay sister. You need not study Latin or concern yourself with the business of the abbey.”
Elisabeth made a rude sound through her nose. “The lay sisters are no better than servants. I wish to be a choir nun and attend meetings in the chapter house.”
As much as I knew Elisabeth, slept and ate beside her, I had not guessed the heat of this ambition within her.
“You must do as you are best fitted, Elisabeth.” Mother Agnes was calm, yet resolute. “Tomorrow I will travel to Avignon to claim the final payment from Cardinal Orsini. The cart would get mired in the snow,
so I must ride the mare. I need someone to accompany me and you are the only one who can cling to the mule. Put that knife away. Your skill with it may prove useful if thieves should beset us. First light will be upon us soon and we will be better for some rest.”
At this welcome news, Elisabeth was quickly gone, and the abbess poked her crosier into the long shadow beside the pine where I stood.
“You may come out, Solange.”
I moved into the light. “How did you know I was here?”
“Who else could it be? You and Elisabeth are seldom far apart. However, that must change. What I said was as much for you as for Elisabeth, for you are destined to take different paths. You must begin to use your education to glorify the abbey.”
The abbess’s gentle wing had spanned my life all these years. Under her direction, I had completed logic and embarked on the quadrivium. Nevertheless, in all my lessons with her, the scarlet ledger had sat on her shelf above me as a silent reproach, for I had not given her what she most wished: a vision as great as one of Hildegarde’s. The time had now arrived when she would demand more from me.
Nine
T
HREE DAYS LATER
, I was keeping watch from the top of the bell-tower, when I saw the abbess and Elisabeth returning to the abbey, their cloaks as black as the ermine’s tail against the snowy fields. Elisabeth was riding in front, her head driving into the sleet, her heels digging into the mule’s flanks to keep him pushing forwards. The abbess was close behind, hunched over the mare’s pommel in the shelter of Elisabeth’s broad back.
I rang the bell to alert the abbey and met the riders at the gates. Elisabeth leapt from the mule to help Mother Agnes down from the saddle. When her feet touched the ground, she stumbled and gripped Elisabeth for balance.
The librarian hurtled towards the abbess, her cloak unhooked and sleeves flying. “Did Cardinal Orsini pay in gold?”
The abbess halted the questions. “Send for meat and drink at once, then assemble the scribes in the scriptorium. I will be there as soon as I have eaten.”
The abbess walked stiffly towards the cloister, while Elisabeth,
tired but proud, gathered the reins of the two mounts. The mare whinnied and reared up, smelling the stable, and it was all Elisabeth could do to hold her. I hauled on the mule’s reins until he settled down. As soon as we had stabled the animals and filled their buckets, their noses were buried in the oats.
I asked, “What did the cardinal say?”
“I did not hear, because the abbess sent me on an errand to the street of the goldsmiths. I found the door with the compass on it and delivered her letter to a man of science.”
“What was the message?”
She shrugged. “It was in Latin.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation. “She should have taken me! I can ride the mule as well as you.”
This outburst made her laugh. “He handed me this.” Elisabeth dug in her cloak for a tooled leather case. “The abbess said it was for you.”
I unfolded the clever instrument of bone and glass—magnifying glasses for close work on parchment! Elisabeth’s face shone with pleasure, giving me her blessing in my rôle as a scribe. Mumbling my thanks, I folded the glasses and stowed them in my pouch. I hoped she did not know how much the abbess had paid. The abbess was not only generous but also wise, for she had allowed Elisabeth to take most of the credit. Together we shut the stable doors, placed our hands on the bar, and forced it down.
As we walked arm in arm, she told me about the trip. “Avignon is full of strange customs and foreign goods. The quarters are so crowded with travellers and pigs that we could not ride. And the stench! The streets are slippery with dung. The abbess could barely keep her footing in those boots she wears.”
A bell pealed far off to the west. Was it the cathedral? A long time had passed since I had thought of Notre-Dame-des-Doms and the press of faithful on their knees inside it.
“You’ll be hungry,” I said, waiting until she was half-way to the refectory before I turned towards the scriptorium.
Mother Agnes was on a soft chair, her cloak still pinned against the cold. A lay sister lowered a basin of hot water to the floor and tugged off the abbess’s boots as anticipation built amongst the scribes and scriptorium monks. The abbess grimaced as she immersed her feet.
“We knew the Orsini livrée by the arms carved on the arch,” she began. “I gave the cardinal the psalter-hours at once. He praised the miniatures, one after another, until his tongue grew tired of praising and he began to pick out small faults. Finally his hands rested on the despoiling of Christ in the hours of the Passion.”
His eyes must have caressed Mary Magdalene, so carefully worked in crimson, gold, and purple. The Florentine had counted on another man’s appreciation of her beauty, for he had lavished his skill on the Magdalene, painting the slyness of Eve into her. To my eye, she had Blanche’s face grafted onto Ursula’s body, and stood between the Virgin and Mary of Bethany like a blood-rose between two white ones.
The librarian prompted, “How many florins did he pay?”
“Five.” The abbess leaned her head back, closing her eyes.
“So few? How can that be?”