“It’s been quiet the last few minutes,” Ancilla said. She went to the fireplace and poured hot water into a copper bowl, sending up the scents of rosemary and thyme. She dipped a cloth in the infusion and held it out to Brother Arnold.
Hildegard put down her soup spoon. “You are injured.” She hadn’t seen the gashes running down the right side of his face until he turned to take the cloth. The edge of his pink cheek was marred with dark blots of clotted blood.
“They burst into the cottage. I got away, but they followed me.”
“Who?”
Brother Arnold squeezed his eyes shut tight and clamped the cloth over his wounds. “The workmen.”
“They’re not men anymore,” Richardis spat. “I barely got the door shut on them. Their fingers are like claws, their faces like beasts’.”
Hildegard forced down another bite. She needed the strength. “The man from the river is like them,” she said. “Long ago he was a man: a man named Robold. The father of St. Rupertus.”
“But Robold died when Rupertus was only a child,” Richardis exclaimed. The lives of the local saints provided the material for popular songs and nursery tales around the region. All the nuns knew the stories. “After his death, Berta raised Rupertus to be a good and Christian man.”
“Yes,” Hildegard agreed. She pushed aside her bowl. “Robold fell into the river Nahe and drowned. I saw him go below the water in my vision.”
“But he’s not dead any longer.” Sister Richardis rubbed her face. “I wish I could remember my nightmares when we first came here. I know they had something to do with the dead and their return to the Earth, but my mind was not made to hold such horrors.”
“This resurrection is a mockery of the one promised to us all by the Lord. Robold’s life was given back to him by something that does not belong in our Creation. He has returned here because this place is somehow sacred to him or some infernal being.”
“A demon?” Brother Arnold shook his head. “ Could he be a demon?”
“I believe he is possessed or in servitude to such a foul creature.” Hildegard looked around the table. “Sister Richardis knows that God warned me this place would be a great sanctuary to all women who wish to serve Him — but only after we had faced a great test. This is the test. I don’t know what Robold plans to do here, but I do know that we cannot allow him to take Rupertsberg from us. The fate of all people everywhere hinges on us today.”
These were peaceful men and women of God. They looked back at her with blatant terror, for none of them were fighters. Not a one of them had trained for anything more dangerous than embroidery or cheese-making or playing the psaltery. But God’s ways worked themselves out on a scale far larger than human reason, Hildegard reminded herself, and she had an idea, given to her by her enemies. Because these weren’t just peaceful men and women of God. These were members of the Benedictine order, and though they did not know it, they possessed all they needed to face this evil.
Outside, something howled with a voice colder and crueler than a wolf. The forests of the Rhine and Nahe river valleys were places with dark legends and terrifying tales, and Hildegard knew every person in the room was now recalling them. Her time with God had made her certain there was truth in such tales. She had to show them that they belonged in a different kind of story.
She slapped her palms down on the table. “We are Benedictines. We are an order of virtue and holiness, a force of good in the world. And we shall not let these demons shake our faith.”
Marten stood up from his seat beside the fire. “God is with you, Mother Hildegard.”
She looked around the table and saw the fear fade from their eyes. “God is with all of us.”
“Can you go now?” Sister Guda hissed in pain. “Your heel is digging into my shoulder.”
“Have strength, Sister,” Hildegard encouraged her. Guda’s already florid face flushed darker. Sister Richardis slipped over the windowsill and disappeared into the darkness.
“I’m next,” Marten piped. He scrambled up onto the bench and then onto Guda’s broad shoulders. He hesitated only a moment before going over the edge.
“I mislike sending him out there,” Brother Arnold whispered.
“You next, Sister Diemud.” Hildegard gave the youngest of the nuns a squeeze on the shoulder. She turned back to the brother. His cuts had begun to scab, but they looked swollen and red. They would soon need a poultice lest they become septic. “They’re the only ones small enough to get through the gardening shed window,” she reminded him. “We need weapons.”
The workman’s hoe had inspired the idea. Benedictine rule decreed that all communities must strive for self-sufficiency, and Hildegard’s first order of business building her priory had been the establishment of a large garden. Just as importantly, she had made sure her people had all the necessary tools to maintain an orchard and small farm.
“I am a man of peace,” he began, but Hildegard hushed him with a wave of her hand.
“At times, peace must be defended. Today we will be warriors of God. Tomorrow, we can repent.”
“If there is a tomorrow,” a sister whispered, and someone else shushed her.
Hildegard felt for her rosary. Her parents had given it to her before she had been shut away as an anchorite with Sister Jutta in Disibodenberg, a lifetime ago. It had been the only dependable comfort in her childhood. Loneliness had subsumed her in that quiet, closed up place, and it would have eaten her alive if she hadn’t had God by her side. His words had given Jutta a reason to educate the little girl. His words had changed her life.
She rolled a bead between her fingers. Time and hard use had worn it smooth. Sometimes she still felt like that young girl, cloistered from the world. How little she knew about things like weapons and fighting. She could only pray she was doing the right thing.
Silence lay over the priory’s muddy grounds. She tried to envision where Robold and his creatures might be, but nothing came to her. Construction had torn open the entire hillside, gouging open pits in the ground for harvesting sandstone and the usable remains of ancient ruins. Outside of this house, the other completed buildings were far too small to contain a group of any size. She closed her eyes and listened hard, her lips moving in silent prayer.
“Mother Hildegard! We’ve the tools!”
Marten’s voice came from far away. Hildegard opened her eyes and saw the others already moving around her. She squeezed her eyes shut again. She had seen something for a moment, a tiny hint of a vision. But now it was gone.
“Mother, hurry!”
She followed Ancilla out the door. The nuns’ temporary quarters sat on the flattest flank of the hill, and the ground here was much trammeled by carts and workers. Above, the night sky hung heavy, the clouds swollen and black over the distant gleaming of the stars. Nothing interrupted the priory’s stillness save for the slight clinking of her nuns distributing hoes and scythes and loppers.
Hildegard’s preparations had served her nuns well. There were tools enough for all. As Sister Richardis stepped forward with her small hand scythe in one hand and a sharp trowel in the other, the clouds pulled away from the nearly full moon and gleamed on the makeshift weapons. Demon or not, Robold’s creatures wouldn’t care for a face full of good steel.
“Mother Hildegard. I see you’ve come out to enjoy the night air.”
Hildegard turned to face the man from the river. He stood on the other side of the broad work site, balanced on an outcropping of sandstone, with a mass of tentacled things crawling about his shoulders. His followers had dressed him in their garb, but he wore their cast-off hose and tunic as if they were ermine and cloth-of-gold. He grinned down at her, smug and certain.