“I see you are awake.”
The man in the sickbed waved to her. “Mother Hildegard. How very good of you to check on me.” He spoke in cultured tones, his accent suggestive of the far north. If he was the reborn soul of St. Rupertus, he had traveled far since his time as the mystic hermit of the Rhineland.
“You are my patient.” As her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, Hildegard noticed the four workmen of varying age crouched on the floor around the sickbed. They looked as ill-mannered as the lot outside. “I need a moment alone with you.”
The men looked up at her, their eyes flat and unreadable. As far as Hildegard could tell, those orbs held no intelligence, showed no sign of thought at all. She gripped her walking stick tighter.
“Go,” he commanded. “She will not trouble me.”
They stood as one, and she waited until they had filed out the door before she crossed to the false Rupertus’s side. “You know I have hired these men to build my church. They should be working.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “You speak as if such worldly pursuits are of any interest to me. These men are like the two of us: they seek to honor God.”
“They honor God with their labor, not sitting on the floor staring at you.”
“You too shall sit and stare. Sit, Mother Hildegard. Sit and see my wonders.”
He sat up straighter in the bed. All the weakness and illness she had seen the night before had vanished. She had never seen such vitality in a man. She leaned against the wall, the small hairs on her arms and neck prickling. Despite his mundane appearance, some inner sense warned her Rupertus was nothing like an ordinary man.
He stretched out his hand, palm up, spreading his fingers as if holding an invisible ball. His eyes focused intently into space. A sound began, a tingling, whining buzz that she felt more than heard. It made her skin itch and crawl.
A faint purple glow appeared over his palm.
“A cheap mummer’s trick.”
He laughed, but did not take his gaze away from the purple gleam. A sheen of sweat appeared on his upper lip.
The purple light intensified and became a ball of colored fire, bright enough that Hildegard had to squint against its brilliance. A wriggling black line appeared in the heart of the flame. Her lips began to move in a silent Hail Mary. This. This was what God had warned Hildegard of in her visions, what Sister Richardis had dreamed about. This man and whatever was worming out of that purple fireball were part of her ultimate test.
The buzzing climbed in pitch until it was the scream of a mason’s auger, chewing into her ears and her mind. Her eyes screwed themselves up against the searing purple light. A black tendril burst out of the purple flames. It stretched itself long and then it flapped and writhed, and the buzzing grew louder, and suddenly the purple light was too bright to stand. Hildegard threw her free hand over her burning eyes.
The room went dark.
It took a minute for her eyes to see again in the lesser light of the tallow lamps and the fading sunlight coming through the shutters. The man who called himself Rupertus chuckled.
“What do you think of my little friend?”
Hildegard focused her dazzled vision on him. Some thing sat on his palm. The creature was no bigger than a sparrow, or perhaps a magpie, and crouched atop a cluster of black tentacles. Two scabrous wings flapped slowly behind it, holding up its sloppy body, which was too fat and bulbous to balance neatly on its slender tentacles. The surface of its breast suddenly rippled and pulled open to reveal the damp surface of an eye. Its pupil lolled about for a moment and then settled upon Hildegard. Its iris was as coldly gray as Rupertus’s. It blinked again, and then the moist tentacles scuttled up Rupertus’s arm.
Rupertus stroked the eyeball-creature’s wing and let it settle on his shoulder. “What does your god think now, Mother Hildegard?”
“Get out,” she commanded. “Get out of my priory.”
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood upright. “Your god’s time has come to an end. You’re welcome to join me, little nun.”
Hildegard pointed her stick at the door. “Go.”
“You’ll regret this,” he said, in the same mild voice someone might use to inquire about the weather. He stepped out the door and closed it softly behind him.
The room smelled more of tar than ever.
Hildegard rapped on the door of the nuns’ quarters, harder and more frantically than she intended. She forced herself to draw a deep breath and call out: “It’s me. Mother Hildegard. Let me in, sisters.”
A rumble sounded. Then the door opened a crack, and Marten’s small face peered through. “Is it really you?”
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, I swear I am the Mother Hildegard, once anchorite of Disibodenberg and now leader of this group of sacred brides.”
He opened the door a little wider. “Demons can’t speak the holy tongue, can they Mother Hildegard?”
She pulled him to her in a sudden hug. “I hope not, my child.” She pushed him inside. Richardis hurried to shove a heavy chest back in front of the door.
“We’ve heard things outside, Mother,” she whispered. “Like the sounds of beasts in the night, but much worse.”
“Demons,” Marten whispered. The young nun beside him, Diemud of Cologne, bobbed her head in agreement.
“What of the man from the river?” Richardis asked. She moved to the large trestle table sitting before the fireplace, and the other nuns joined her on the rough-planed benches. Just a few days earlier, the biggest concern of any of these high-born women was the number of splinters rubbing off the surface of these coarse benches — and now they feared demons and their own hired laborers.
“Is he really St. Rupertus?” Sister Ancilla, the oldest of the nuns, hugged a piece of firewood defensively to her chest. Her eyes were fixed on Hildegard, begging her for a comforting reply.
Hildegard shook her head. “I’m not sure why he would claim to be the good saint, other than to appeal to the memories of the local people. But there is nothing saintly about this stranger from the river.”
Ancilla added her wood to the fire and stirred up the flame. For a moment, the ten nuns sat in silence, each too caught up in her own fears to ask any more questions. Their anxiety filled the room like a chill mist.
Hildegard stood. “Sisters Ancilla, Richardis — perhaps you can prepare a simple meal for us. Marten will help. I must pray for guidance.”
Richardis nodded. Before they had arrived at Rupertsberg, none of them knew much about cooking, but circumstances had forced them to learn. Perhaps such hardship had been good for them all. Hildegard could only hope so.
She went to the straw mat in the corner of the house’s main room and dropped to her knees. The murmurs of the women’s work did not distract her from her purpose, and soon her mind dropped into the peaceful place where she had so often found God’s words. She let her eyes sag shut and floated there, outside of time and trouble, feeling only the wonder of creation buoying her up.
Little by little her senses returned to her. Grudgingly, Hildegard brought her awareness back to the room, where the nuns now sat sipping soup. The smell of turnips and onions made her stomach growl. The hand of God rested on her for one last moment, and then she was just herself again.
Little Marten helped her up. While she had been lost in prayer, Brother Arnold had joined them. Another trunk was piled in front of the door, too. Hildegard took her place at the end of the table and took a few eager bites of Richardis’s stew. Pins prickled inside her knees from such long kneeling.