A candle burned placidly on a low shelf next to the bed, and I wondered if things would have turned out differently, all those years before, if I’d had the ability to relieve Jutta’s suffering with similar readings? To counter the passages of doom with those of hope? But I had been too young and inexperienced, with nothing to guide me but my instinct, and it had told me that healing the physical pain would soothe the mind. Now I knew that sometimes it had to be the other way around.
“My parents are great admirers of Sister Jutta.” Angmar’s words shocked me with their correspondence to my thoughts. “Ever since I can remember, hardly any day passed without them mentioning her,” she continued as if to herself. “They called her ‘the holy lady.’ Following her example, we live in fear of the sin in whose shadow we are all born, and of the damnation that awaits all but those who are strong enough to resist the Devil.”
I closed the book gently. “Tell me more about it.”
She was quiet for a long moment, then resumed. “When I was a child, there was a priest in Brauweiler who liked to quote the Book of Revelation . . . all those prophesies of God’s wrath, the plagues, the eternal fire . . .” She rubbed her forehead with a frantic gesture that, for a moment, made me worry that she would relapse. But then she dropped her hand in her lap. Gazing at the small wooden crucifix of the sort commonly carried by pilgrims that she was clutching, she said, “Father would repeat them to us when we misbehaved, and though my brother was not much bothered by those images, they terrified me, especially the prospect of being thrown into hell.”
“And why would that happen? You are a good person. You have nothing to fear.”
“Am I, Sister? Am I?” She spoke with sudden passion, and her lips quivered as she drew a loud breath. “Devotion, charity to the poor, chastity—that is easy enough. The body can be controlled, but thoughts are more fickle; it is not always possible to master them as we would wish.” She looked down again and her cheeks flushed.
“There is a young man, isn’t there?” I put my hand on hers.
The flush rose higher. “A neighbor’s son. Even though I don’t want to, I cannot always stop myself from thinking about him.” She wrung her hands.
“God is forgiving, especially with weaknesses of that nature!” I assured her with a zeal that made her look up.
Suddenly my cheeks were burning too, but before I had a chance to be embarrassed, Angmar’s look melted back into the familiar despair. “God is vengeful!”
I squeezed her arm in what I hoped was a comforting gesture. “Is that what terrified you when you came here on your pilgrimage?”
“Mother and Father had always wanted us to visit Sister Jutta’s grave.” Her voice was flat again. “Simon had already made one pilgrimage when he had turned sixteen; this was his second time, and he came to accompany me. Both times he had looked forward to it, but I had grown more and more worried as the day approached. And when I was finally here, I felt as though the prophesy would be fulfilled at any moment—my belly would not tolerate any food, my lungs refused to inhale the air, and the ground seemed to sway under my feet.”
“And yet nothing happened.”
“I don’t know why!” Angmar looked around, bewildered, as if she expected the walls to cave in.
“Nobody knows when He will come again; what we do know is that He is loving and merciful.”
“Was Sister Jutta wrong, then?”
She was a clever girl. Sensitive and clever. The former made her more prone to a breakdown like the kind she had suffered; the latter gave me hope that she might yet be helped. “Sister Jutta had a selective way of interpreting God’s word,” I said. “There are apocalyptic passages in the Holy Scriptures, but there are even more joyful ones. I have given you some of them so you may feel fortified in the promise of salvation.”
Angmar watched the rain silently for some time. “So the sin we are born with does not condemn us?”
“Some in our Church are greatly concerned with it, but we must not forget that baptism washes it away.” I said. “Then we are left only with the gifts bestowed on us at birth—the capacity to love, to know justice, and to feel compassion—and we must decide what to do with these blessings.”
A flicker of light animated Angmar’s eyes. “Blessings,” she repeated wonderingly. “They are original, just like the sin.”
I still remember the satisfaction that leading Angmar—leading both of us, really—to that realization gave me. “Yes, let us call them original blessings,” I said. “And instead of looking back at what you have been freed from, direct your gaze to the future, and nurture these seeds so they may reach their fullest expression in the time you have.” I reached for the cup with the fennel draft, which she accepted with what came as close to a smile as I had yet seen on her face. “Now drink this and rest. This has been a lot for you.”
She looked toward the window again. “The night is falling early with this storm, but tomorrow the sky will be clear again.”
And those words, more than anything else, showed me that she was back.
I stayed with Angmar until her breath softened and steadied, listening to the rain lashing against the stone of the cloister. I tucked
