and ashes, slave and king, blood and bone, tree and leaf.
Richardis: How is she today, Mother Hildegard?
Hildegard: God save her, not at her best. Yet even in her dark hours, she sings God’s praise. Maybe we should all be so ill.
Keunegard: O do sing, O pulchrace facies, O pulchace.
To please God and Keunegard, the nuns sang, and Sister Clementia guided them outside, leaving Hildegard and Sister Richardis alone to talk. Fast friends since the day the younger woman’s wealthy family had placed her under Hildegard’s instruction, they often sat or walked together in the garden to talk and solve the world’s problems.
Nuns: O pulchrace facies,
Deum aspicientes et in aurora aedificantes,
O beatae virgines, quam nobiles estis.
Hildegard and Richardis watched Keunegard as Clementia led her out.
Hildegard: I believe she will be all right now that she is singing. She does love to sing. Please keep an eye on her, my dear. (Richardis followed Keunegard and Clementia, and Hildegard worries aloud.) Poor Keunegard, she suffers so with doubt and longing, doubting what she hears, longing for confirming visions. Lord, I believe; help now my unbelief. How can we know the source of our visions, self or God? If self, even then they draw me to God, thus surely not Infernal. Finally, we know only God and dust. The rest is empty as air.
Richardis (returning, smiling): Keunegard seems fine now. We may leave her under Clementia’s watchful eye, who would scare a lion into soft hymns.
Hildegard: I wish I knew what to do to help her. I do not want to discourage: her voices may come from God, and how well I know the silencing eye of authority and the choking muzzle of self-doubt.
Richardis: And yet you know your own visions, know them true. Do they not give some guide in hers?
Hildegard: I believe . . . I believe in my own visions because they burn upon my inner eye. How can I judge the burning of another’s eye or the ringing in another’s ear? Because I am an abbess, am I also a judge? I would open my heart to compassion and leave judgment to the Lord.
Richardis: But we must live holy and praise God, not defame Him among ourselves or others.
Hildegard: Maybe we praise by being. How can I silence another when I cannot silence myself, and would not? We must risk the voice of Satan to hear the voice of God. Prophecy weighs soul and body, circumscribes itself and pierces the heart—and damn the ill consequence. An hour after, I may not know myself what I have really seen, what may be God and what disease.
Richardis: Dearest Abbess and friend, you do know the truth of your visions. I have seen you in their midst, and I have seen them burn you, coming as they will, at His will. Do you not feel them even now, for poor Keunegard’s sake? Can you offer her no respite from ill dreams?
Hildegard: Perhaps I would deny mine for my sake even as I would deny Keunegard’s for hers. Believe me, they burn. But you are right: a moment’s memory turns them noonday clear. Hotter to hold than a fire-tongs, noisier than a dawn sky trumpeting spring rain they come, and sometimes ease thereafter. I see them now. The hand of God dips into my heart, and ever as the eye pants after His glory, He speaks: “Know the ways of the Lord; know His beauty.” And the trembling soul wakens with the beating of His voice to see the earth give birth to the morning sun, for so His spirit rises, a living fire, till my heart explodes in waves of embers that flood the paling sky, take shape, and fall again as God’s joyous tears.
As Hildegard fell silent, allowing herself a moment’s freedom to enter into the passions and sorrows of vision, footfalls pattered along the walkway, and Volmar, Hildegard’s secretary, burst upon them breathless, his feet pattering rapidly on the stones.
Volmar: News from Rome, holy Abbess: the Pope has graciously approved your work and would have you complete it. God be praised! You should have seen his face, lean and grave as a death mask, fit to grace a cathedral door to admonish all to holiness, and Kuno, of course, the old crab, scuttled about humphing and wishing for himself a cardinal’s robe and red enough in the face to match it when the Pope himself praised and blessed your visions.
Hildegard: Dear Brother, please slow down and catch your breath. We have time to hear about Rome and your travels. But you look thin. Are you well?
Volmar: Thin from joy and pale from awe at the holy city, a city such as you have never seen, Sister, splendid, bright with gold, churning with pomp: who could eat in such a place? And the caravans of pilgrims, constant as the rush and flood of the Tiber!
Hildegard: Then praise be to God you are free again of gold and pomp, and we have pilgrims enough here among the poor and sick who need our care.
Volmar: You are a little Rome in yourself, Sister. You open eyes with faith and hearts with love, seal wounds with weeds, sooth harms with herbs, and move the slack soul with music. My pilgrimage was not there, but here, to serve God by serving you.
Hildegard: Serve God, not me, and we will all win His praise. Welcome home, my friend. Has the Abbot arrived also?
Volmar: Yes, and I have no doubt you shall see him soon.
Hildegard: Well, be that as it must. Brother, I have more to dictate soon and letters to write. Please come tomorrow.
Volmar: At your pleasure, Abbess. Oh, Abbess, one more thing. How can I say this? We should arrange for secretarial duty for you when I am gone.
Hildegard: Richardis serves me in your absence and can do so again when you travel.
Volmar: I thought to make provision for after my death, Abbess.
Hildegard: Surely we need not. You will outlive me. You had better, Brother.
Volmar: The work is too important to take a chance that no one will be here to replace me.
Hildegard: Let us not talk of that now. Life goes as it will, and God has given me you and Richardis as help and friends. For now let us attend to the present and its visions.
Volmar: Yes, Abbess.
The dutiful secretary bowed to both women and left them. Richardis’ blue eyes shone, and her smile showed healthy white teeth unusual in those days of the world.
Richardis: Voluble he is as the creeks when the snow melts in spring, and flitting as a sparrow.
Hildegard: But kind and chaste, faithful and good.
The two women heard a rustle of voices and many feet coming up the pathway. The nuns led the folk of the town, who carried Datta, injured in his fall, and brought him before the abbess.
Hildegard: How can we help you?
Dayadva: Dear Lady, poor Father is hurt from a fall performing in the marketplace. Please help him. He is our life and living. We have heard you can heal. Help him, please.
Hildegard: (She looks at him, then speaks to Richardis.) Boil water and bring cloth and ashes of blackthorn, also apple salve. Take Irmengard to assist you. Clementia, clear some space for us here. Adelheid, prepare a bed of soft rushes in the infirmary. (To Datta:) How are you? Can you speak?
Datta: Foolish, as old men often are.
Dayadva: He took a fall upon his head. I fear the arm and shoulder broke, too.
Dall: Do help him, Lady. Dear old father.
Hildegard: I’ll do all I can. God willing, we shall find healing for him, or at least some ease for his pain. Let us try the arm. A slight pull here. Yes. (He yells. Irmengard enters with cloths and bandages. Hildegard takes one of the cloths and binds and slings his arm and shoulder. Richardis enters with a pot of water and medicines.) Here, apply a poultice of the blackthorn to his head after you clean the wound. I will use the salve on his face and eyes. How are you, Old Father?
Datta: I think the world will put up with me somedeal longer.
Hearing that, the crowd cheered, partly for the old acrobat’s well-being, partly out of relief