She had been educated in the art of musical notation at home. In a rare moment of confidence, she told me how she had used to listen to the minnesingers who stopped at her family’s estate on their way to the imperial court. In exchange for food, they entertained their hosts with merry melodies about hunting, or with sentimental tunes about unrequited love. Sometimes the lyrics would take a ribald turn, and her mother would send young Juliana to bed, but she would sneak back, hide in the shadows of the hall door, and listen to the performances well into the night. In turn, I confided that I had used to eavesdrop on my father discussing business and politics with his guests at Bermersheim. Juliana was the sister with whom I formed the closest bond.
She became my music instructor. Using a wax tablet and a stylus, she wrote out a stanza of a chant, and drew straight lines in sets of four between the lines of the text. Then she covered the rows with little square marks.
“Are these the letters of music?”
Juliana nodded. “You could call them that.”
“They are so different from the alphabet.” I studied the marks. Some stood separately while others were grouped in clusters or connected to their neighbors with a line, either ascending or descending. “They look simpler than letters, but I cannot read them.”
“They are called neumes. Few people know how to use them.”
“Who invented them?”
“I don’t know, but they are very useful. Writing a melody using this system can help preserve it more accurately than if it is learned by heart and sung or played from memory.”
I pointed to the sets of four lines. “What are these for?”
“They allow you to specify the pitch of the sound, so that when you write a neume between the bottom third and fourth lines, like this”—Juliana drew a square in the place indicated—“it denotes a low-pitched sound. When you write it at the top, it indicates a higher one.” By way of illustration, she sang the notes out in her well-trained voice.
“How clever!”
“It ensures that singers know how to perform without needing the composer’s explanation.”
“Who taught you these?” I asked.
“My governess, who was from Milan.” A hint of nostalgia crept into her voice, and I felt a clutch at my heart as I thought of Uda who had taught me about herbs and their healing properties. But unlike Juliana, I was unable to practice my knowledge in the convent.
As I became more proficient, I tried my hand at composing a song about airy woods and gardens rich with the fragrance of summer roses. But when I played it, Jutta declared that songs extolling the world had no place in an anchorite convent and had me kneel before the altar for the rest of the day.
Increasingly, I was unhappy. I felt isolated and confined, like a caged bird allowed only a narrow glimpse of the world from which it had come. The lingering ache of separation from my family only compounded this feeling. Contemplating the sparse vine that grew out of the gray earth and clung feebly to the enclosure’s wall, I felt a sense of kinship with the plant—neither dry nor green, neither dying nor living, its viriditas, like mine, seemingly in abeyance. I longed to see beauty and feel serenity but found only dullness and melancholy around me.
Yet I had a duty to fulfill as my parents’ gift to the Church and wanted to do everything in my power to see it through. On occasions, these conflicting feelings flared into bouts of anxiety that gave me headaches, during which light and sound seemed to pierce my body with shafts of pain. I became wan and restless, and I knew the old illness was coming back.
But this time, Uda would not be there to take care of me.
5
May 1116
I have a distinct early memory related to my recurring illness. I was six and the headache had lingered for days, forcing me to stay in a darkened room until Uda persuaded my parents to send for Herrad, her kinswoman and a healer known throughout the countryside.
Herrad took my pulse, listened to my breath, and brought a candle up to my eyes, making them hurt at the brightness. She declared that she was familiar with the symptoms, although they rarely affected children of such tender age. “These spells will likely become more burdensome as she grows,” she opined.
“Is there no hope, then?” My mother was crestfallen.
“I can lessen her discomfort, but there is no permanent cure that I know of.”
She left and returned some time later with a linen bundle and a container of greenish paste, which was a mix of mint, rosemary, and lavender. She scooped a bit of the paste and rubbed it gently on my temples, filling the room with the heady scent of a summer meadow.
“If it pleases God, she will be improving soon.” Herrad took the silver coin my mother offered her and left the bundle. It contained crushed leaves of sweet coltsfoot from which Uda would make drafts to ease my pain.
Now I had to do without them.
The days grew warmer again. The trees in the infirmary garden I could see through the chapel window burst into clouds of white and pink, but the scents of flowering blossoms that wafted in after the rain seemed only to mock my senses.
One afternoon, I felt suddenly out of breath. The glare of the slanting sunlight was too bright, and the pitch of the chant bore painfully into my head until my ears started to ring. I tried to take a
