A shiver ran down my spine. Suddenly, I could not wait to be there.
“I wish I could become on oblate too,” Griselda said wistfully.
“Then why don’t you ask your father to take you there?”
She looked sideways at the inn. “Papa says girls must help their parents with their work and care for them in their old age.”
I was mystified. I knew that parents cared for their children, but the other way around? I looked at Griselda, whose face darkened as she added, “He says my dowry will be barely enough to marry me off to the baker’s son.” She jerked her chin toward the forest, presumably in the direction of the baker’s cottage, and set her jaw. “But I will never marry that oaf!”
I did not know what to respond to that, but Griselda’s thoughts were already running along a new track. “It would be so nice to spend time with only girls!”
I felt a tinge of sympathy, realizing that the innkeeper’s daughter must have had little female companionship apart from her mother. “There are monks at St. Disibod too,” I said, as if that were a consolation.
Griselda shrugged her shoulders. “They have separate cloisters and do not mingle.”
That authoritative-sounding statement made me frown. Nobody had explained to me what life would be like at the abbey, except that I would pray, work, and—this I had added myself, for it could not be otherwise—study with the other oblates and novices. The prospect of studying excited my imagination, conjuring an image of a vaulted schoolroom full of pupils.
I was about to share it with my new acquaintance when the sound of voices coming from the doors of the inn signaled that it was time to continue the journey. My mother waved, and I ran to her; together we climbed onto the wagon. As it wobbled back toward the road, I waved to Griselda, who was still standing where I had left her, a look of envy and admiration on her face. I turned again just before we entered the forest, but she was gone.
We travelled through the gray landscape, faintly illuminated by colorless sunshine, and the silence was broken only by the creaking of the wheels and the splash of the horses’ hooves on the muddy ground. My father was dozing in the saddle, lulled by the gentle rocking movement and the ale with which he had washed down his meal. My mother gazed pensively ahead, and my thoughts kept returning to the girl from the inn and the unfamiliar world I had glimpsed through her.
“When peasants’ children grow up, do they become peasants too, mother?” I asked.
“Yes.” She lifted her eyebrows, surprised at the question. “Sons usually take over working their fathers’ fields, although some become apprenticed to craftsmen to learn a trade.”
“Can they enter monasteries?”
She thought for a moment. “They can become lay brothers, I suppose, but monks need to be able to read and write.”
“What about girls?”
“They marry or remain with their parents to care for them.”
“Why?”
“Because they do not have servants to do so, and besides—” she added, anticipating my next question, “they cannot afford an endowment.”
“But what if that is what they want?” I felt myself flush. “It seems unfair!”
My mother smiled sadly. “Your indignation comes from the right place, daughter. The ability to answer God’s calling should not depend on how rich one is. After all, Jesus asked the Apostles to give up their possessions to follow him . . .” her voice trailed off, and it was not until some years later that I understood her hesitation. There is a heated dispute within the Church on the issue of the poverty of Christ and whether monks and priests should imitate the simplicity of the first Christians or be free to enjoy worldly trappings, as many of them do. And because proponents of both approaches tend to accuse each other of heresy, my mother thought it prudent not to excite my young mind.
She had been fond of telling me that I was quick, inquisitive, and—even at that age—unwilling to accept answers as givens, and I could see that that gave her satisfaction. She liked to tell the story of how, when I was four, I had asked why God, if He was all-powerful, had not defeated Satan yet? And if He was the creator all things, as the Holy Bible said, then had he created Satan too? And if He loved all of his creation, did not that mean that he should love Satan equally?
My mother did not know how to answer those questions, but she was proud of me, even if that pride was bittersweet. When I had first asked for reading lessons, she was reluctant. “Reading only makes you desire to know more and see more, but women’s lives are destined to be lived within the confines of our worlds, whether domestic or monastic,” she had told me before relenting and teaching me to read anyway.
Now she put her arm around me, and I reciprocated the gesture. From the moment she had realized that she was with child again and that monastic life would be its destiny, she had prayed every day for me to be blessed with a vocation. She had heard of women—and men—cloistered against their heart’s desire or their mind’s inclination and felt the injustice of it. That was why, even though she was gifting me to the Church, she was determined to ensure that I would have the time to make the final decision on my own.
But she hoped the vocation would come. She later wrote to me that riding through those poor hamlets, she saw enough reasons why a cloistered life was a better option. The world was harsh and dangerous with the perpetual specter of famine and threat of violence, either from outlaws or from constant skirmishes among the empire’s restless barons. And then there was Eve’s lot: the brutal cycle that compelled a woman to give birth every year for as long as her
