Chapter 1 The Curse
I.
The Curse
The curse was in me from the moment of my birth, when my father drowned both me and my mother in the icy Ills. The midwife, Valerie, plucked me out of the water by my heel, snatching me out of Death’s foaming mouth. But she was too late to save my mother.
Valerie and her hut smelled of fir and sharp, medicinal herbs. She adopted me and my older sister, Rochelle. Her hands, though rough, were never rough with us. She was a midwife, a healer. A witch. That’s what the villagers said when they burnt her.
It seemed impossible to me. Valerie was a deeply rooted tree, the kind that might be burnt by fire, charred and black, but still living.
It did not seem possible that she could be wiped away like a soft seed blown over the grass.
Turned into ashes floating like soft snow in the oily roil of August smoke.
I first became aware of the curse when Death took her.
A dark figure arrived in the shimmer of heat, its shape, so long and thin, more like an opening that peered into a void than a true shadow or earthly darkness.
It reached into the fire for Valerie’s spirit, folding Valerie’s agonized soul inside itself.
With its long fingers firmly gripping her hand, they turned inward into that unreachable void.
That was when I understood she was gone.
I flung my head into Rochelle’s shoulder and cried.
“Sister,” Rochelle said to me softly. “Sister.”
Afterward, the village elders delivered us over to the convent, the smell of burnt flesh still clinging to our clothes and hair.
A grievously grim nun closed us up in the chapel and scurried away to consult privately as to what was to be done with us.
I stared at the altar, where the spirit of a priest hung languorously against the stone cross.
He opened his mouth and dragged a shriveled and lecherous tongue against the stone, making my stomach rise in my throat, though I was only ten, too young to understand why.
“Sister,” Rochelle said again. Though she stood beside me, I heard her as if she were calling from far away, across the mountains. I glanced at her. “You must promise me something.”
My gaze drifted back to the priest.
Rochelle turned me with a sudden, forceful jerk as only an older sister can do. “Salomé,” she whispered sharply, lowering her ash-stricken face close to mine. “Promise me you will tell no one about what you can see. What you can do.”
“The priest?” I asked, thinking she meant I might offend the nuns to mention that a man was in their chapel.
She shook her head. “Your silent friends.”
At that moment I realized she could not see them. I’d always assumed my sister shared my sight, same as we shared the story of our sad mother, our wretched father, and the blanket on our bed. She never seemed surprised when I talked about them.
But now she explained, her voice low and urgent as she clutched my thin shoulders. “The nuns will think these are dark gifts, Salomé. You must keep these things inside yourself. Or it will be you they …” She trailed off, a sick look of grief and agony crossing her face.
Despite the heat and sweating chapel stones, I went cold.
A prickling sense of awareness of myself as fragile flesh crept over me.
The girl I’d been—feral and free, tripping after Valerie in the woods as she searched for roots, flowers, and other medicines—also died that day.
They’d called Valerie a witch, and she was gone in a roil of afternoon smoke.
I understood I must stay silent so they would not burn me too.
So that Rochelle and I might stay together.
And so my first name for this curse was witch.
“I promise,” I said to Rochelle. She gripped me to her side, only two years older than me, but braver and stronger. We faced the door together.
When the nuns returned, they took us and questioned us for days with little food or water, until we were delirious with fear and exhaustion.
But I knew Rochelle would not break, so neither could I.
Eventually, they determined us children innocent of any unholy treachery, and we were sent to join the other novices.
The nuns were a Cistercian order—determined to separate themselves from the worldliness of the Benedictines by way of their solitude, work, and austerity.
Valerie had been the only mother I’d ever known, and she was nothing like these sour-faced old women.
Their god was as stern and sour as they were.
Every day with the nuns was the same. We were dragged out of our hard cots for Matins Laud in the darkest part of the night, then again at dawn for a breakfast that was somehow exactly three bites less than satisfying.
We worked until the midday meal, which I enjoyed when I was sent into the gardens with Rochelle.
Another service, more work, and then finally Vespers, the tortuous service before dinner, and afterward the tolerable Compline, since bed followed.
Rochelle’s natural sweetness shone in such a dour setting, and in the long, undyed tunic and veil, she looked the very picture of an innocent bride of Christ. I tried to be just as sweet as Rochelle, but in the same undyed tunic and veil, I looked sallow and sullen and did not have a natural eagerness to please.
Worse, I wasn’t graceful, my voice sounded like a rasping crow heckling from the oak limbs in the fall, and I asked too many questions.
But just when I might truly hate them, the nuns would bestow some grace.
They thought Rochelle’s influence might save me, so they allowed us to remain close.
When I grew frail and they discovered Rochelle sliding me her share of bread, they gave us both extra food.
And rather than raise us as the washerwomen peasants we were, they taught us both to read and write.
These acts of generosity left me feeling drowned in guilt, always at war in my heart between gratitude and resentment.
And so my second name for this curse became sinner.
We grew alongside each other, under a watchful, strict gaze, pruned carefully and guarded against all manner of unruliness. I kept my secret as I promised my sister, fearful of the word witch, even when it was said in passing, even as it grew more difficult with age.
By the time I was fifteen, the Abbess realized I had a talent for Latin and writing and my education was taken over by her directly.
Instead of the lush gardens where one might have a moment of peace, warm up in the sun, or find an extra mouthful of food, I was now sent daily into her dark quarters to assist in her many transcription projects.
It was an honor, but I felt it more as a horror.
The Mother Superior’s quarters were just as austere as our own, excepting for her two prized possessions—a crucifix fixed to the stone wall above her bed and an illumination of the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen that sat in the square window, so that the sun might light it every afternoon.
She should not have either—none of the other nuns were allowed sentimental things, but I knew enough by then not to comment.
I did not know who the woman in the picture was at first, but nearly every day Mother Superior referenced her in some way.
I thought she loved Hildegard more than Jesus, and even in my youth I could see the Mother hoped that with her own writing and her own work, she might be remembered as an Abbess like Hildegard.
One day, she set me to transcribing Hildegard’s account of her umbra viventis lucis:
From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision.
I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open. So I have never fallen prey to ecstasy in the visions, but I see them wide awake, day and night.
I stopped writing, my heart pounding, unable to stop myself from reading ahead.
Thwack. The Abbess smacked me with the supple rod she kept just for this purpose across the back of my shoulders. “Do not stop,” she scolded.
“Forgive me, Mother,” I said, dipping the quill into the ink. “I was only taken by her testimony.”
“Yes, it is miraculous,” she said. “But we must not get carried away from our work by any feeling.”
I tried to phrase my question very carefully, equally as careful in the ink on my page. “Does God … does God appear to others in this same way? Does he gift others?”
Usually, the Mother Superior hated my questions—I believed it was because she either did not know the answers or did not like to think about the implications.
She saw me as an instrument in her hand and found it exasperating when I showed any signs of being human—down to even using the pot.
But today she pursed her thin lips in consideration and stared at the illumination of Hildegard.
“If one is pure in spirit, pure in heart, and God wills it to be so, then yes. But most of us fall far short. I myself have prayed and postulated for many years, and yet God has not seen fit to answer in such a way.”
“How does one tell the difference between a holy vision and an evil one?”