I rubbed my forehead. “How long can you pretend to be someone you are not? And how is this going to help you accomplish your goal?”
“I don’t know,” she replied miserably. “I thought I would be able to earn enough for my dowry, but I am paid two silver pfennigs a week. I mainly just wanted to come here, and I knew they would not admit me if I showed up as a girl.”
That was true enough. But this situation was bound to cause a scandal sooner or later, and then what would happen to her?
“Please don’t give me away,” Griselda repeated her plea. “I am happy here. The church is so beautiful, and Abbot Kuno gives such stirring sermons.” Her face brightened as if a cloud had lifted.
The sense of kinship I had already felt during our first encounter more than two years before came back to me. I understood Griselda. “Of course not,” I said softly, my hand still on hers, when the door opened and the frame filled almost completely with Brother Wigbert.
On impulse, we jumped apart.
“Welcome.” He did not seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. “I see you are getting acquainted. What is your name, son? I think you told me when you were here last, but I am getting old and things escape me.”
That was a good question.
“Christian, Brother,” came the ready reply, and I had to stifle a smile. The girl was certainly resourceful; too bad she had not thought the plan through. I gathered the herbs and handed them to her.
“Give our best wishes to the brother kitchener. We hope he will find these to his liking.”
Griselda smiled. “Thank you.” She bowed to Brother Wigbert.
“God be with you, my son.”
When her steps died down on the gravel outside, the infirmarian frowned. “What an unusual boy. Quiet. So unlike those urchins who work around the stables. Sometimes we can hear them in the church, and those walls are thick.”
“He seems nice.”
“He does.” Wigbert replied, giving me a curious look.
I made another friend that spring. It happened when the season had reached that stage just before summer when nature was brimming with its most lively viriditas, pleasing the senses with the yellows, reds, and violets of late-blooming flowers and their heady scents.
There were still times when I felt sad about not being able to study in the monastery school, but the sight of the anchoress’s chapel, its faded wood rising above the pink flowers of the rose bushes that separated it from the herb garden, was a constant reminder that I had avoided a worse fate. So I spent every moment I was not tending to patients in the garden, always thinking of better ways to organize it so as to maximize the yields.
I was working in the corner near the beehives when I made a curious discovery. It was the hottest hour of the day, the kind that intensifies the droning of the bees as they search for the last of the golden powder inside the fading blossoms. These hardworking creatures had always fascinated me, and I stopped my work to observe them as they came in and out of the beehives. I noticed two in particular that were climbing up one side of the hive, now turning toward each other and agitating their little wings, now moving apart, but always trudging in the same direction, which gave them the appearance of two quarreling friends. Then one of them took off and its companion, momentarily motionless as if stunned by this sudden departure, followed suit and both flew in their peculiar undulating fashion toward the abbey wall.
I followed them with my gaze and paused as I noticed something odd just opposite of where I stood: the wood of a section of the wall about three feet tall was darker and strangely shimmering, and the overhanging vines swayed gently even though the day was windless. I stepped closer and pushed the green tendrils aside, and saw that the bottom part of two beams had rotted through and crumbled to the ground while two others were in the process of doing so. That was what gave them a blackened appearance and caused moss to grow on them, resulting in a glossy veneer that glimmered when the occasional shaft of sunlight struck through the leaves. The hole that had formed allowed a draft that explained the swaying and rustling of the vines. As I contemplated my discovery, the nones bell rang out and I returned to the workshop, but, insignificant though the finding seemed, it tumbled about it my head for the next few days.
Until I understood why.
I chose the day carefully. The monks were spending the morning in Chapter to debate the progress of the renovation works, and Brother Wigbert would be away until after sext, which gave me ample time. I had told Jutta I was needed in the infirmary in his absence, and after checking on a few cases—and hoping there would not be any more for a while—I ran to the breach, lifted the vines, and examined the two rotten beams that still stood. They were too sturdy to push out by hand, so I fetched the garden hoe to break them, which allowed me to slip through.
A wave of exhilaration swept over me as if I had broken out of a cage. I twirled and threw my hands up in the air until I felt dizzy and had to stop. It had been so long!
I looked around. The breach gave onto a narrow path that ran alongside the outer abbey wall. It must have been well maintained once, but now it was overgrown with weeds. A few paces from the wall, the forest began and almost immediately sloped gently down toward the Glan. To the west I could see the rooftops of Disibodenberg below. I knew the abbey vineyards were on
