The Gargoyle (41 page)

When I finally asked Marianne Engel on whose authority
Die Gertrud Bibel
was being produced, I was hoping to get either a definitive answer or a clear contradiction that would disprove the story once and for all. But her answer was neither.

“I was so young I never thought to ask, and Gertrud never said. But she was always very secretive about it and none of the nuns were allowed to talk about the work outside of the scriptorium.”

“Wouldn’t they have rebelled,” I asked, “if they believed it wrong?”

“Perhaps they might have to answer in Heaven for what they had done,” she said, “but I think they were more scared of Gertrud and Agletrudis here on earth.”

Marianne Engel seemed quite pleased that I was so carefully considering these aspects of the story she had been telling, and it prompted her to ask whether I would like to hear more.

“Of course,” said I.

B
ehind me lay the only life I had ever known, and ahead of me stretched a life I could not even imagine. As we walked, I looked over my shoulder to see Father Sunder’s figure disappear into the night. He’d been in my life since my first memories, and now he was gone. Only then did I realize that neither you nor I had any idea where we were going.

You led the way, pretending that you knew what you were doing, putting distance between us and Engelthal. I doubt you were worried about a posse of nuns chasing us down; you were probably more concerned that I’d lose my nerve and turn back. So you kept moving forward, despite the fact you were still suffering from your burns, and I had to struggle to keep up. My feet slid in the mud but I was determined to show that I could keep any pace that you set. I suppose it was important to me because I didn’t know if it was true.

I could see that your battles had taught you to forget the physical body and push forward on willpower alone. I had assisted in your recovery, I knew this effort was far beyond anything you’d attempted since being brought to Engelthal, and I was amazed by your endurance—until, all at once, it failed utterly.

Your feet slipped in the mud and you went down awkwardly. You tried to jump up immediately, but it did not work: as soon as you were upright, you lost your balance again. This time, while falling, you put out your arms to brace yourself, but the contracted skin across your chest caused you to cry out in pain. You withdrew your arms instinctively and dropped face first into the mud.

I reached out to assist you and your first instinct was to push me away. Then, perhaps realizing that we needed to work together if we were to proceed, you allowed me to help you upright. You said, trying at a joke, “I think the devil pushed me down.”

After a few moments, you had recovered enough that we could move together under a tree. There we sat, covered in mud, as the rain continued to fall. We huddled together for heat and it was the closest I had ever been to another body, a male body no less, but it was nothing like I had imagined. I knew this moment would eventually arrive and I had expected it to be thrilling and terrifying, but I only felt anxious fear that I had made the wrong decision in leaving Engelthal.

This was the start of our life together: in freezing rain, unable to move forward, waiting for the morning to arrive and perhaps—
perhaps
—bring some warmth with the sun. Maybe, I thought, this was the sign for me to turn back. I might arrive before anyone even knew I was missing, and I could feign illness in my cell. In a day or two, I could resume my duties, and life would be as it always had been.

But no. Agletrudis would not allow my actions to go unreported, and I could not leave a sick man at the side of the road, especially a man for whom I felt such great responsibility. Still, I could not help but think about the calmness of the monastery and my place there. I was at home in the scriptorium, among the books. But under a tree, in a storm, with a man I barely knew but upon whom I had pinned my future: how could that be the direction of my life?

And there was nothing to do but wait out the night.

When the morning broke into a dull gray, the rain slowed but did not stop. We started moving again, but all your pretense of vigor was gone. Each attempted step was a trial, and each completed step was a small triumph. I was at your side for each of these little victories, my arm wrapped around you, worried that if you fell again you would not get up.

Then came our first bit of luck, in the guise of a farmer’s cart. The horse clopped up to us, and you waved for the man to stop. You asked where he was headed—the answer was Nürnberg, to market—but when you requested a ride, the farmer denied us. No room with the pigs, he said, pointing out the cargo with which his cart was loaded.

“How much for two of the animals?” you asked.

The farmer named his price and you drew out the coins necessary, handed them over, and slowly climbed up into the cart. You tried to lift out one of the pigs but found you were not quite able, so you beckoned me and our combined strength was enough. As soon as the pig’s hooves hit the ground, it ran squealing into the forest, and then we unloaded a second animal to the same result. You turned to the bewildered driver and said, “Now you have room for us.”

The farmer begrudgingly admitted that he supposed he did. I could tell he was not happy about having human companions, but he must have known you would not allow him to drive off without us. Since he already had the money, consenting was easier than arguing.

The pigs jostled for position the entire ride, curiously bumping into us, carrying out inspections with their snouts. At first I tried to shoo them away, but the effort was doomed by the fact they had nowhere to go. If I managed to force one to move, another immediately slid into its place. They squealed incessantly but the sound was inconsequential compared with the smell, and by the time we finally arrived at the outskirts of Nürnberg, I was certain that God had resorted to sending His messages through pig excrement.

The farmer dropped us at an inn, where I might speculate he had a personal dislike of the keeper. We were certainly a strange sight, and smell, as we tried to negotiate a room. The keeper was hesitant to take us in, having no idea what to make of a burned man and a nun who traveled with livestock, and intended to share a room. But you slipped him extra coins and I offered to say a few words of blessing for him, assuring him that despite my appearance God would hear my prayers all the same. Reluctantly he found us a room at the very back, far removed from his own lodgings, and we were only allowed that if we would first wash ourselves in a nearby stream, clothes and all.

There was only one bed in the room and this emphasized what I’d been trying desperately not to think about. There’d obviously been something sexual between us through all our conversations at Engelthal. I knew I was not running off to live as your sister, but I had no idea about the ways of men and women. The look on my face must have been obvious. You walked to the middle of the room and laid down some cloth, saying that you were used to sleeping on the ground from your mercenary days. You did not look upon me as I climbed out of my wet habit and into the bed, and I will always remember that kindness.

Despite how tired I was, I still could not sleep. Perhaps you heard the way my leg was jittering, or maybe it was that my breathing did not relax. Whatever the clue, after a few minutes you spoke again. “Marianne?”

I was almost afraid to answer, but I did. “Yes.”

“It has not been a very good start, but it is a start nonetheless,” you said. “I promise that it will get better. For tonight, just sleep and know that you are safe.”

Those words reassured me in a way that you cannot imagine, and in return I did the one thing that I could do. I handed over the arrowhead necklace—lacking even the courage to slide it over your neck myself—and said that Father Sunder had blessed it for your protection.

“Then I shall wear it always, and proudly,” you said, “and I thank you.”

We slept until early the next morning, and decided to stay one more night to recover before setting out again. We still needed to set our destination and even this scared me, because we had the freedom to choose what would happen next in our lives. Choice was something you had not had since entering the condotta, and it was something that I had never known.

The innkeeper prepared dinner for us and I was stunned that food could be so tasty. Remember, the nuns always thought their humility was measured by the blandness of their cooking. You and I talked while we ate. We both wanted to go to a place of some size, to blend into the crowd as much as we could, for obvious reasons. The two large cities in the region were Nürnberg, on whose edge the inn sat, and Mainz. There was a great deal of construction occurring in Mainz, mostly on new churches, so that was an advantage. Your only training other than archery had been in stonework, so this was what you’d attempt for a living. It wouldn’t be easy, as you’d been out of the craft for over a decade and were still recovering from your burns, but we lacked any better options. You had some money from your mercenary days and Brother Heinrich had forced some coins into my palm before we left, so we could hold out for a while.

There was another reason for choosing Mainz: it had a strange balance of the religious and the secular. The citizens had earned the right to elect their own government and manage their own financial affairs, rather than have the Church do it for them. Though my place in Engelthal hadn’t been particularly important, I’d feel better knowing we were in a city that maintained a certain autonomy from the Church. Nürnberg was too close to Engelthal both geographically and historically—after all, it was from Nürnberg that Adelheit Rotter had led the Beguines to establish the monastery.

Having decided upon Mainz, we now had to get there. I couldn’t travel any farther in my nun’s habit, because I would feel as if I were lying. Although I didn’t yet know how to define myself, I knew I was no longer a sister. We found a place that sold the current fashions, and that was an education in itself. I tried on a surcot with large openings at the arms, the kind that I’d been taught were “windows to Hell” because they’d tempt men to reach inside. Such a garment was not for me. In the end I decided upon woven tights and a simple tunic. I packed my nun’s robes into my rucksack rather than throw them away. Even if I wanted to, there was no way I could toss them as garbage.

We entered Mainz on the east side, through the gates that opened onto the Rhine. You would not believe how fascinating it was for me. There were people shouting! I know that doesn’t seem like much, but remember that I’d lived my entire life in a monastery. We pushed through the crowds by the food stalls, and past the drunks stumbling out of taverns. Not a single person bowed in my direction, as they’d always done when I was in my habit. I was just another citizen.

We headed for the poorer areas of town, in search of the cheapest accommodations we could find. Eventually we found decent lodgings in the Jewish section behind a shop run by an older couple. They were a little puzzled by why we’d want to live there, because it didn’t take the woman long to place me as Christian. I assured them that the last thing I wanted to do was press for converts, and this was good enough. I suppose our sincerity was obvious and they could see that we were nothing more than an anxious couple in love. Whether we were or not was another story altogether—I certainly wasn’t sure yet—but so we appeared to our landlady. We paid our first few months in advance and they even gave us some bread in welcome.

We took some time to explore the town, as you weren’t ready to immediately throw yourself into the hunt for work. I had my fingers crossed during that entire first week, hoping that we’d like the city and, more important, that we’d continue to like each other. Mainz was only a kilometer or two across, not so large, but there must have been twenty thousand people. A good size at the time. There was a citizens’ center with a market in the northeast corner, and the first time we visited we encountered a lively festival. The city hall was there, as well as the hospital dedicated to the Holy Spirit, the one that I’d suggested when you were first burned. There was an orchard on the west side, and a pig farm run by the Antonite monks. For some reason, they believed that raising swine perfectly complemented their other work of caring for the sick.

The sheer number of religious orders in Mainz was remarkable. There were the Franciscans, the Augustinians, the Teutonic Order, the Carthusians, and the Magdalens, and…I don’t know, too many to remember. But I was most interested in the Beguines, who were essentially nuns without any formal orders. Given my situation, you can imagine that I felt a kind of kinship with them—they were not quite of the Church but not quite of the world, either. They seemed to be everywhere on the streets and it lifted my heart a bit. Even though I had deserted Engelthal, I had no intention of deserting God.

The Cathedral of St. Martin towered over all the other churches in the city. It was built under the direction of Archbishop Willigis around the year 1000, because he needed someplace grand after securing the right for German kings to be crowned in Mainz. But on the day before its official consecration, St. Martin caught fire. It seemed to develop a taste for flames, in fact, because by the time that we arrived it had burned twice more. I always thought that there was something appropriate about that. Burned three times, resurrected three times.

St. Martin was a thing of great beauty. There were bronze doors and a stunning carving of the Crucifixion, and beautiful tracery windows that flooded the nave with amazing colors on sunny days. There was a main choir loft behind a transept and a secondary choir loft in the east. It contained the tombs of some of the archbishops—Siegfried von Epstein, I think, and Peter von Aspelt. During our years in Mainz, a tomb for Archbishop von Bucheck was added. You couldn’t step into the place without feeling the weight of its history.

After we finished our exploration of the city, you set about finding work. You knew that you’d have to start at the bottom, but you were certain your work ethic would ensure that good things would follow. Every morning you got up early to visit all the churches under construction, and every day you’d be turned away by them all. Then you started visiting private houses being built, commercial buildings, and new roads, but all these worksites turned you away as well. You became as well known around the construction sites as a colorful dog, but no matter what you did, no one would offer you a job.