Free Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen by Mary Sharratt

his heart.
    “Come, child.” Jutta cupped my chin and raised it, smiling into my eyes. “This is no day for weeping. Tomorrow I want you to write the First Psalm in Latin. Do you think you can do that?”
    Swiping at my eyes, I nodded. Mechthild had never learned to write even her own name.
     
    That night after Compline, the golden orb came floating, bearing inside it that loving face I had beheld my first morning in the courtyard. The motherly face in the orb was different from the maiden I had glimpsed, but she was every bit as shining, as full of Living Light that flowed outward, wrapping around me until I quivered, hugging my knees to my chest.
Mother.
I wasn’t pining for the woman who had birthed me and then forsaken me; I was crying out to God. I turned to God and called her Mother, my true Mother who would cherish me as Mechthild never had.
    She began to speak:
I am the supreme fiery force who kindled every living spark. I flame above the beauty of the fields. I shine in the waters. I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With the airy wind, I quicken all things. For the air is alive in the greening and blooming. The waters flow as if alive.

4
    V OLMAR WAS MY SHINING sun, my guardian angel, offering me the most precious gift of all, the outside world. He fed my undying hunger with the books that I gradually learned to read on my own without Jutta’s help. He also brought me tender young plants dug up from the forest floor, wet earth still clinging to their roots. In the spring of the year, he gifted me with seedlings of medicinal herbs. Woodruff that bloomed sweetly in a cloud of delicate white flowers. Lady’s mantle that gathered raindrops resembling liquid diamonds in her pleated leaves. Chamomile with its golden flowers that soothed the stomach. Motherwort that banished nightmares. Valerian that stank like something rotten yet had the power to quieten Jutta’s nerves when she was too overwrought to sleep.
    Each plant I watered with care, shifting its pot by the hour to make the most of the sparse sunlight angling down into the anchorage courtyard. I prayed over the herbs, my voice ringing so fervently that Jutta accused me of loving those common weeds more than God. But I kept murmuring my psalms to the plants. If I couldn’t escape to the forest, I would plant this wild meadow inside our very enclosure, tend it as best I could. Such a miracle of greening unfolded before my eyes, seedlings shooting into full-fledged plants, moist and luscious, full of growing power that seemed to conquer everything empty and stale. Soon the plants outgrew their small pots, and I begged Volmar for more earth and bigger vessels, the largest he could squeeze through our hatch. How I adored the rich loamy smell of soil on my hands. How Jutta despaired of me, grubbing in the dirt like a serf. The courtyard became a lush grove with wild grapevine climbing the walls, feverfew and thyme growing between the cobbles.
    Continuing my education, Jutta taught me the Latin prayers of the Divine Office and all one hundred and fifty psalms. I kept confusing
virgo
with
virga
until virgin and branch became one and the same. Almost every day the floating orbs appeared, but I had learned not to speak of them, for they were as unwelcome in the monastery as they had been in my mother’s house.
    In August, only weeks away from the ninth anniversary of my birth, I made ready for the Feast of the Assumption. Dancing around my garden sanctuary, I prayed to Mary,
viridissima virga,
the greenest branch, who made my plants grow so tall and beautiful. In the floating orbs, I saw the shining maiden at the axis of a great wheel, sitting still and majestic at the center while the wheel spun around her. I smuggled precious crumbs to the courtyard. Holding them in my cupped palms as an offering, I hummed softly until a wild mourning dove flew down to peck the morsels from my hand, her feathers fanning my wrists. Part of me flew with her as she winged away into