As I stood staring at the ravaged thigh, a conversation I had had with Brother Wigbert came back to me. Soon after I had started working in the infirmary, I told him that Jutta, who had never indulged in any condiments with her meals, had begun to ask for more salt from the kitchen. Wigbert had seemed disturbed, and now I understood why. Salt . . . as the implication sank in, I felt sick again.
I went to the window and stared at the thick layer of snow sparkling in the midday sun, letting the sight purify my senses. I felt tainted, and the pristine landscape soothed me, but when I returned to wash the body, its contours began to blur and heavy tears spilled down my cheeks. Grief welled inside me like water filling my lungs and choking the breath in my throat. Jutta had effaced herself but she had allowed me to thrive—one word from her, and I would never have worked or studied with Brother Wigbert. And while I had shown my gratitude to the old infirmarian many times, I regretted never having properly thanked her.
Wiping my eyes with my sleeves like a child, I wrapped the body in a shroud, placed a candle by its head, and kneeled by the bier.
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Jutta was buried in a side chapel of the church because the snow had made it impossible to dig a simple grave in the cemetery that she had wanted, and where we would move her in the spring. Yet despite the snow, ordinary folk had trudged from as far as Böckelheim and Sobernheim to bid farewell to the famed anchoress of St. Disibod. I had never seen so many people in the abbey at one time, thronging both courtyards and spilling through the gate despite the cold.
The next day, Abbot Kuno summoned me to discuss the transition at the convent. For some time, I had been feeling blind in my dealings with the monks because Brother Wigbert’s increasing forgetfulness—he would miss church services without knowing it, or stare at me helplessly when presented with a complicated bone fracture—meant that I knew less and less about what went on inside the abbot’s lodging. My nerves were taut when I went to the meeting with no inkling as to what might be planned and no advice on how to handle it. Important decisions about the future of our community might be in the making, but unable to anticipate and prepare for it, I felt uncertain and acutely alone.
I did not fear for the convent’s survival because we were too profitable to the abbey, the endowments Jutta had ceded over the years having paid for various renovations and additions. The church alone had been outfitted with new statues, a gilded cross, and a reliquary containing a splinter from the Holy Cross. And those were the things I was aware of; who knew what else had been stashed away in the treasury house, which itself had been expanded only the year before?
What worried me was how the monks would treat us after Jutta’s death. Would we continue as a fief that supported their lavish spending, or would we be allowed to function as an independent entity that used its property as it saw fit? From what I had been able to gather, we were entitled to our income—as evidenced by Jutta always ceding it voluntarily—so the convent must have been founded as an autonomous house, bound to the abbey only by its common allegiance to Regula Benedicti. Under Jutta it had shifted into an obscure dependency, but there was no reason why it should remain that way when she was gone.
I entered the abbot’s parlor, where the air felt tense from Prior Helenger’s presence even before the first words were spoken. Pale winter daylight filtered through the window but failed to dispel the shadows from the chamber’s corners. The fire from the hearth provided more light, but it caused the prior’s tall shadow to hover ominously on the wall, its top breaking where the wall met the ceiling to make it seem like he was looming over us.
The first thing Abbot Kuno wanted was an account of Jutta’s last days. I told him of my discovery of the hair shirt and the cilice, which left him visibly shaken. Helenger, on the other hand, listened with avid curiosity, his eyes shining not unlike Jutta’s when she was alive. When I had finished, the abbot shook his head. “The extent of her bodily mortification was greater than we had all thought.”
“Yes.”
“Is that what caused her death?”
“Ultimately. The infection was responsible for the recurring fevers that sapped her vitality in the end.”
“She was a holy woman.” Helenger’s voice rang out, strangely thick. “We need more martyrs like her.”
I ignored him, keeping my eyes on the abbot. “I have not read the convent’s charter since Jutta became enclosed fifteen years ago,” he said at length, “and I have forgotten the details because my memory has grown weaker, as has my vision. But Brother Prior”—he gestured toward Helenger without looking at him—“took the pains to reread it, and he informs me that the document leaves it to me to choose the manner in which her successor will be selected.”
So we were not exactly an independent house. “How so?” I asked, trying to hide my disappointment.
“I can make a nomination, or I can leave it entirely to the sisters to select their magistra.”
“And I have advised Father Abbot to nominate Sister Juliana, who is the most senior member of the anchorite community,” Helenger hastened to inform me.
Of course you have, I thought, still looking at Kuno.
“It is true that Sister Juliana is the next in line,” the abbot said, “but I want to know if Sister Jutta expressed any wishes as to who should succeed her in her duties.”
“She has, Father.” I straightened my spine reflexively. “She wanted me to take over.”
Helenger gave a
