The Vanishing Point (47 page)

Catching my eye before turning her back on Mother, Walburga's contempt for my parent filled the room like a bad smell, as though my nurse had let out a fart. I wondered if Mother was terribly wrong, if she was making a mistake so enormous that even the servants saw through her.

 

The following day Mother rode off to the court of Sponheim to discuss my future with Jutta's mother, the countess. Blessing of blessings, she whisked away my six beautiful sisters, still unbetrothed owing to their paltry dowries, and left me alone with Rorich and Walburga. The first thing Rorich and I did after solemnly waving good-bye was to sneak out the gate and through the vineyards where the grapevines grew tall enough to hide us. When we reached the forest, we tore around like heathens, beating down nettles with hazel sticks.

“They'll be gone for weeks!” I shouted, delirious with happiness.

What joy could be greater than spending the summer days with Rorich, just the two of us? Rorich was my most beloved sibling. Ten years old, he was close enough in age to be my friend. He hadn't changed like my sisters had, turning to women before my eyes, abandoning our childhood games as they set their sights on marriage.

“They'll be feasting on roasted swan every night in Sponheim,” Rorich said, leading the way to the brook, where he slipped off his shoes, leaving them to lie on the mossy bank.

“And they'll dance!” I kicked off my deerskin slippers.

My brother and I joined hands and threw our noses in the air to mimic the counts and countesses, margraves and margravines. Humming courtly dance tunes, we reeled through the shallow stream, our feet splashing and prancing, until my skirt and my brother's tunic were soaked.

“Dancing is forbidden in the monastery.”

I shrugged to prove to Rorich that I'd never much cared for such fripperies anyway.

“They won't really send you away.” My brother flung himself on the bank to laze in the sun. “Not for a long while yet. That girl in Alzey who went to the nuns in Schönau—they wouldn't take her until she was twelve. That gives you five years, Hildegard.”

Gratitude tingled inside me as I waded in the brook, savoring the gentle click of water-washed agates between my toes. Five years! It seemed a whole lifetime. Anything could happen in that stretch of time.

“Mother will change her mind,” Rorich said. “She always does. Remember how Father wanted Roswithia to marry that fat widower with the gouty leg?”

This had transpired before I was even born, but it was Walburga's favorite story and Mother's finest hour and bravest deed. Father was about to give our Roswithia to someone old and hideous, but Mother had overruled him just as he was about to set off for the Holy Lands. The minute he was gone, Roswithia had thrown herself at Mother's feet and wept in relief.

“At least you don't need to worry about who they'll make
you
marry.” I snapped a wand off a willow. “You're the youngest son— you'll have to be a priest.”

Rorich kicked in the water, splashing me in the face. “I'll run away first.”

“I'll come with you. We'll be bandits.”

“We'll be poachers and hunt the Count of Sponheim's deer. We'll feast on venison and hide in the trees.” Rorich eyed me critically. “But you wouldn't be sturdy enough to survive that kind of life, Hildegard.”

“I've been well,” I insisted. In this warm and dry tide of summer, my lungs were clear, my breathing easy. “Not sickly at all.”

“Prove it.” He pointed to the weeping willow. “Show me how high you can climb.”

First I hitched up my skirts, knotting them over my knees to free my legs before I launched myself onto the first low bough. Grabbing the trunk, I worked my way up, placing one bare foot and then the other on the next highest limb till I ascended to the upper branches. There I swayed, clinging white-knuckled lest I fall, while Rorich howled with laughter. A dizziness filled my head as the orbs spun around me. Gulping for air, I slithered to the ground with as much bravado as I could muster.

“I did it.” I looked my brother in the eye.

He only lifted my arm to study the yellow bruises, the fruit of my grappling with the tree.

“Walburga will murder me,” he said. “Let's go back before she skins us.”

“We'll be bandits.” Grasping his hands, I clung to our daydream. “We'll live on berries and wild mushrooms. We'll find the white hart that lives in the deepest forest! Except we won't kill him. We'll build a pavilion for him, and I'll weave my hair into a collar for him.”

Rorich wrapped his arm around me. “Maybe Jutta will take Clementia instead of you. Jutta's so crazy she probably can't tell one girl from another.”

 

Filthy and bedraggled, Rorich and I crept through the kitchen garden then darted through the low door leading into the cavernous undercroft beneath the burg. Here we parted ways, hoping to escape the servants' detection. Hiding behind sacks of barley, I watched my brother melt into the darkness like some renegade Saracen. After counting to twelve, I tiptoed between the barrels of beer and wine, my plan being to steal up the stairs to my chamber and put on a clean shift and kirtle before Walburga pounced on me. But echoes of sobbing made me freeze.

Wishing Rorich was still there, I inched forward, deerskin slippers padding the dust until I came upon Walburga behind stacked crocks of cheeses and honey, her hands clutching her face.

“What is it?” I asked, petrified, for I'd never seen Walburga weep, never even thought it possible that so stalwart a woman could break down and bawl as though she were a child no older than I.

Blinking through her tears, Walburga hugged me so hard, as if she'd never let me go. As if she were my true parent and I her beloved daughter.

“Your mother is cruel. How can she do this?”

My heart swelled at Walburga's devotion. At what my nurse risked by standing up to Mother and taking my side. Mother could cast her out, send her back to her village to grub in the fields like the lowest serf. Still, it was my duty to defend my blood kin.

“There are other oblates. That girl from Alzey,” I said, remembering what Rorich had told me. “She went to the nuns at Schönau, but she had to wait till she was twelve. Besides, Mother says it isn't so bad. You learn to read and write, and to play the psaltery, and you sit and stitch silk like the ladies at court, except the nuns have to wear plain clothes.”

“If they were only sending you to live with ordinary nuns, love, I wouldn't be crying my eyes out.” Walburga's tears drenched my hair. “That Jutta wants to be an anchorite and she's dragging you down with her.”

My mind was a blank. “A what?”

“An anchorite.” Seeing the confusion on my face, Walburga rocked me in her arms and keened as though an unspeakable wrong had been done to me. “Poor child, you don't even know.”

 

During that long, happy summer, Walburga turned a blind eye as Rorich and I ventured out in the forest day after day, tumbling through the undergrowth, coming home grubby, with spider silk in our hair. I caught toads and salamanders, cupping their wriggling bodies in my hands before freeing them. Rorich snared rabbits. With his bow and quiver of arrows, he stalked deer while I shadowed him and watched, my heart in my throat as the arrow went singing through the air only to miss the hind as she dashed away. What would it be like to escape so easily, to just vanish into the green?

He was never much of a marksman, my brother. That was why Mother was content to let him stay home with the women instead of sending him away to join Father and our elder brothers in the Holy Lands and learn the arts of war. Besides, everyone but Rorich himself saw his future chiseled in stone—the boy was not destined to be a knight but a cleric, as bound to the Church as I would be if Mother had her way.

 

In September the anniversary of my birth came and went. I turned eight and still Mother did not return from Sponheim. She and our sisters stayed away so long that Rorich decided they had forgotten about sending me to the monastery.

“They'll spend the rest of their days at court,” he said. “Preening before the countess and fighting to dance with her son.”

I discovered a cave in the forest, its opening just wide enough for us to squeeze through. It opened into a dry cavern big enough for us to light a fire.

“This is where we'll live,” I told Rorich. “This is our hideaway. They'll never find us.”

 

The moon waxed and waned. The vines covering the keep wall turned blood red. One evening at twilight, Rorich and I straggled back from the forest to find Mother awaiting us in her chamber.

“Rorich, leave us,” she said. “I must speak with your sister in private.”

Cold and trembling, I dragged myself forward to take my mother's hand and kiss her knuckles.

“Welcome home, Mother.” I gazed into her eyes and wondered where my sisters were, why they were so quiet. I expected the silent rooms to explode with their gossip.

Mother smiled, running her hands through my snarled hair. “My wild child. You have elf locks.”

I tried to speak, but my throat silted up, the unhappy knowledge rising in my gorge.

“Irmengard and Odilia are to be married next spring. The countess is paying their dowries.” Mother's eyes gleamed with the joy of answered prayers, burdens lifted. “Walburga must pack your things at once, my dear. Tomorrow at first light we leave for Disibodenberg.”

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MARY SHARRATT is an American writer who has lived in the Pendle region of Lancashire, England, for the past seven years. Her inspiration for
Daughters of the Witching Hill
arose directly from the wild, brooding landscape: the true story of the Pendle witches unfolded almost literally in her backyard. All the major characters and events portrayed in the novel are drawn from court clerk Thomas Potts's account of the 1612 Lancashire witch trials, in which seven women and two men from Pendle Forest were hanged as witches. The author of the critically acclaimed novels
Summit Avenue,
The Real Minerva,
and
The Vanishing Point,
Sharratt is also the coeditor of the subversive fiction anthology
Bitch Lit,
a celebration of female antiheroes, strong women who break all the rules.