When Brother Wigbert had first showed me his medicines, which were all arranged along the bottom shelf, he had done so with considerable pride. They included cork-stoppered bottles of thick brown oil of valerian, vials of rose essence, lavender oil the color of a pale peach, and a flask of poppy juice of milky consistency. Next to them, an earthen jar contained gnarled sticks of ginger, which I had never seen before. It was to be used sparingly, for it came from the East and cost half a silver mark each. There were also several wooden boxes with dried leaves and flowers of rose hips, mint, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, fennel, and basil.
On the table by the window, two large glass jars kept attracting my attention. One housed a colony of leeches covered with a strip of gauze, and the other was filled with what looked like stiff black disks with whitish streaks on them. “What are these?” I asked.
“Dried goat dung,” he explained matter-of-factly.
But, on the whole, the inventory was respectable, although I quickly realized that I would probably not learn any more about herbs than what I already knew. In fact, I noticed that there was no powdered willow bark, which Uda had used to make tea for us when we had a fever. Nor did the infirmarian have a stock of yarrow flowers that could be boiled in water to bathe the foreheads of those suffering from seasonal chills. Still, when the garden would yield its first herbs in the spring, there might be opportunities for me to try new combinations for various ailments. The prospect of experimenting and learning filled me with a thrill of anticipation.
By late winter, I was Brother Wigbert’s assistant in all but name and had taken over many of Bertolf’s duties. Not only did the poor novice not have the stomach for medicine, he regularly broke the infirmarian’s precious glass. He now spent most of his time in the scriptorium, where he was happier, as were we in the infirmary.
That March afternoon, my task was to wash some dusty glass. As I was reaching for it, my gaze lingered, as it often did, on the three volumes standing on the shelf next to these lesser-used vessels. I had been intensely curious about them, though I dared not touch them.
“These are a few of my medical texts from Salerno,” Brother Wigbert said, noticing my fascination. “I keep them here for reference.”
“May I read them?” My Latin had greatly improved under Jutta’s tutelage.
“You would not understand anything, child. It takes men years to master this knowledge. Besides”—he pointed at the water basin—“there is a lot of work to be done. When you have washed these, there are also clay pots that need to be scrubbed.”
“Yes, Brother.”
These dispositions given, he set out to prepare a strengthening posset for Brother Maurice. For a while we worked in silence, then I asked, for my mind was still on the books, “Can women study to be physicians, Brother?”
“Usually, no.”
“Why?”
“It is the natural order of things,” he replied, “that women should rear children since they are the gentler and more nurturing of the sexes. Who would guard the family hearth if they were to go to schools?”
I pondered this, frowning. “But if women are better at caring for others, they should make better doctors too, shouldn’t they?”
Wigbert looked momentarily surprised, then chuckled. “You make clever arguments, Hildegard, but studying requires well-developed reasoning faculties, which women do not possess, being more impulsive and less logical then men.”
I considered pointing out the contradiction, but decided not to. “You said that women do not usually become physicians, Brother—does that mean that sometimes they do?” I asked instead.
He nodded. “There have been instances of high-born ladies who read ancient texts and claimed to have mastered the medical arts. It is said, for example, that the daughter of the emperor of Byzantium is a physician. There is also a female scholar at Salerno named Trota who lectures and writes on the diseases of women.”
“Is she a princess too, this Trota?”
“No.”
My heart leaped. “So it is possible!”
“Hers is not an easy life.” Brother Wigbert raised his considerable eyebrows as if in warning. “For there are many who claim that she is breaking God’s law by doing so.”
“And is she?”
“I am not a theologian, but St. Paul does admonish against women teachers.”
Having no argument against that, I went back to rinsing the glass as he finished the posset and poured it into a cup. “It is getting warmer, and the garden will need weeding and planting soon,” he said, wincing as he stretched his fingers. “My joints are aching again.”
I held my breath.
“Would you like to help me with it, or should I employ one of the novices?”
Did he even have to ask?
As soon as the snow was gone, I set out to work. In my mind I already imagined the garden full of color and fragrance, filled with birdsong and the drone of bees from the hives Brother Wigbert kept behind the fruit trees near the abbey wall.
The wall offered natural protection from the wind, and a boxwood hedge separated the garden from the rest of the abbey, giving it a secluded feel, but besides that there was little structure to it. A few rosebushes were planted against the convent’s chapel—I remembered their sweet scent wafting through the small window the previous spring. Next to them was a patch of poppies and, for some reason, strawberries. On the opposite side of the plot, there was a cluster of elderberry and apple trees. In between this jumble, herb beds of different sizes were covered with
