Kuonrat had cut Brandeis’ head from his body without a thought, and had ordered your death with a laugh. I knew that when I was caught, as you had explained, I’d be killed quickly only if I was lucky. Rape seemed far more likely.
The thin sheet of ice on the river started to look much better. The odds were against a safe crossing, but I had to attempt it. If I did make it somehow, the soldiers couldn’t follow. They would be forced to let me go, because even the smallest man in the troop would certainly break through. Why should they risk it? The mercenaries didn’t know who I was, other than some tramp who’d been living with an ex-soldier, and what difference would it make to them whether I lived or died? Kuonrat had proved his point, and two dead deserters were already one more than he’d anticipated. This had to have made him happy.
The bag containing my Morgengabe and books would be unnecessary weight to carry across the river, but I could not stand to lose such precious items. So I hid my bag in the crevice of a nearby pile of rocks, determined that if I lived I would return to retrieve it.
I took my first steps onto the ice and it seemed relatively solid, but ice is always thickest close to shore. Just downriver, I could see exposed areas of water that looked like black blankets laid out on the white surface. A few more steps, and I heard a slight creak. Blowing snow swept wildly in front of me, and I was now maybe fifteen feet from shore. If the ice broke, would my feet still be able to touch bottom?
I continued with tiny steps, sliding one foot in front of the other. I moved as quickly as I dared, but it was not fast enough. I heard the mercenaries riding ever closer, so I forced myself to shuffle faster towards the center. Distance from the shore was safety, I told myself, and the single most important thing was to get out of range of their arrows.
I felt the ice give, a little bit, more than before, and my arms instinctively circled my belly. I looked back to see the soldiers approaching the shore, where they’d found my lame horse. When they saw me, they lifted their bows in my direction and I knew that I hadn’t gone far enough yet. A few arrows were let go but the wind was strong and they flew wide. I knew the soldiers would learn from this first volley and adjust their aim for the second round. There was little doubt that I would be hit.
The second volley never came. Kuonrat gave a signal and the archers lowered their bows. It struck me as unlikely that he was worried about wasting ammunition; while it might have been that he thought I would deserve to live if I made it across, I doubted that as well. Most probably, he just enjoyed the sport of watching a woman on thin ice.
The way the soldiers stood made it clear that they’d wait me out for as long as it took. Knowing that I couldn’t return the way I’d come, I took another step towards the far shore. The ice underneath me buckled and I went down on my knees, throwing my hands out so that I landed on all fours. I told myself that if I could just make it past the middle of the river, I’d survive, because that should be the thinnest point of the ice. I told myself that if I could only make it over that imaginary line, my unborn child would live.
The question was the best way to proceed. Should I spread myself out on my belly and slide slowly? This idea, distributing my weight as evenly as possible, made sense. But then I wondered if this would simply increase the possibility that I’d find a thin spot which would collapse the ice in a chain reaction that would swallow my entire body—and, of course, I feared putting any weight on my stomach regardless. So should I sprint, hoping speed would carry me over the ice? My body said no, but my faith argued that I should. After all, it was the breath of God that had carried my arrow with perfect precision to your heart. Wasn’t it possible that the same breath would be at my back, lifting me past the danger? If there was ever a moment to surrender to the protection of God, this was it.
I looked across the river, to the other side, imagining myself as an arrow and the path in front of me as my trajectory. I lifted myself slightly and felt the ice swell. I tensed my legs, and jabbed my rear foot into the ice to gain as much traction as I could. I lifted one knee and curled my shoulders forward. I said a quick prayer and looked to the freedom on the far shore, concentrating on it as my target. And then I pushed off, surrendering to the Lord’s protection.
I only made it a few steps before the ice gave out and I fell forward as if breaking through a window. The watery chill cut through me completely and the weight of my soaked clothing began pulling me down. My first thought was of the baby and my arms went out frantically, to grab at anything. If I could latch on to the edge of the hole, I thought, I would be able to pull myself out. But the ice I grabbed at only broke away, and the hole grew larger with my every attempt to escape it. I could feel my heat being drained from me. From my baby. After a few minutes my mind was still racing, but my body stopped reacting.
The river’s current pulled me down and away. Although I knew that it was I who was moving, the hole seemed to be slipping away from me overhead until there was no opening, only a hard tile of ice above me. It couldn’t have been very thick, but when I pushed my palms against it, nothing happened. There was nothing below me to brace my feet against, only water. My only hope was to hold my breath and pray for the current to sweep me to another opening.
It’s a strange feeling when one’s body shuts down completely. This vessel that has carried you, that has served you faithfully for an entire life, stops reacting to the commands of your soul. It’s almost as if someone has flicked a switch to cut the electricity. I soon understood that even if the river’s current did bring me to an opening, it would be too late. My hands would not be able to hook onto its edge and, even if they did, I would lack the strength to pull myself out of the freezing water.
The most damning realization was that I could no longer expect our baby to be unharmed. With this, my spirit surrendered. I closed my eyes, because this is what one does when underwater and dying. My body dropped, and all my fear just left. There was a moment of startlingly beautiful acceptance. It’ll be easier this way, I thought with some relief, in the final moments before everything went black.
What happened next—I can tell you about it, but I can’t explain it. Not properly, not in a way that you could understand. At birth, I was given the gift of languages and I’ve been perfecting that gift for seven hundred years, but the words to describe what happened on that day do not exist. Not in English, nor in any other language I know.
When I woke, it wasn’t really like waking, because I hadn’t been asleep. It was more that I’d been in a state without any consciousness, and now I was returned into awareness. But not awareness in the way that we perceive the world around us: it was something greater, something sidelessly wide and endlessly deep. I was still under the ice, still being swept by the Pegnitz, but at the same time I was not in the water of a specific river. I was in the water of the entire world, the entire universe, but I wasn’t even “in” the water so much as I was a part of it. I was indistinguishable from the water itself; I had become fluid.
When people die and somehow come back, they always talk about a tunnel of light. This was not my experience. There was light but it was not a tunnel, it was all around me. Luminous air supported me, keeping me aloft even though there was no ground that I needed to be kept aloft from. It was in me and it was through me; I was the water and I was the light. I felt as though I were floating liquid radiance, a steady glow without warmth or cold. I no longer had any sense of my body.
Time does not exist when one’s body no longer exists, because there is only the body’s perception of time. We rarely notice our innate feeling for time until it’s removed. This is why amnesiacs are so confused when they become first aware of their condition. It’s not because they’ve lost memories—we all lose memories; it’s because they’ve lost time.
I became aware of presences. You couldn’t call them ghosts or spirits, because they possessed not even that much form. They existed only because I could sense them. But sense is again the wrong word, because how could I sense some
thing with no substance? Like the light and the water, they were inside me. I felt them so completely that I knew that not only were they inside me, but they always had been. I had been ignoring them, all my life, in a kind of self-defense. It’s like listening to a conversation—you can’t concentrate on the words if you’re also listening to the clock across the room and the cars outside and the footsteps down the hall and the breathing of the man sitting beside the woman sipping tea. You cannot process all this, so you concentrate only on the words of the speaker. So it is with the infinite voices of the human body. You listen to your own thoughts, and you shut out the rest.
But now I could embrace every voice within me. I could hear all those presences, and they sounded like golden circles. I could taste them, and they tasted like comfort. They touched me, and it felt like music.
See? I wish I could explain it, but I cannot. It is impossible. Anyone who believes that she can explain the Eternal Godhead has never truly experienced it.
Three presences separated themselves from the host and came forward. Although they did not assume physical shapes, I recognized them nevertheless as the humans that they had been, even though in my physical life I’d only ever met one of them, Father Sunder. The second was Meister Eckhart and the third was Mechthild von Magdeburg.
I knew this was not a trick, but a gift to be embraced. It was natural, even comforting, when Father Sunder indicated that he was pleased to be in my presence once more. Words were not used; it was more like I could feel his thoughts brushing up against mine. It was the same with Meister Eckhart and Sister Mechthild when they communicated. Our “conversation” was a kaleidoscope of brilliant vibrations.
They were not there to take me away, they explained, because I was not ready. I had not died properly and I was unfinished. They would help me achieve a state in which I was ready to die and, to this end, they had been assigned as my Masters.
Why am I not being sent to Hell? I communicated. I have killed the man I love.
That’s not the way it works. Eve’s sin was to eat fruit, and for this she was punished with the Fall of Mankind. For the transgressions of your life, what atonement is necessary?
This is not for me to decide.
But it is. Your path has taken you from the Life of God and made you the hand behind a death. Do you repent?
No. Even in the Eternal Godhead, I could remember my life with you. I may have betrayed my monastic vows and I may have betrayed my prioress and the Lord God in doing so, but I have never betrayed myself. I have remained true to my heart, and I will never repent my love. It is the one great thing I have ever done.
My Three Masters understood that I would hold to my love for you, even in my life’s end. Surely they had seen it before, and surely they would see it again.
Your heart has always been independent, your supreme and most damning gift. Therefore it is through the processes of the heart that your penance will occur.
So be it.
You learned to give your heart over completely to the one, but you have not yet learned to share the heart beyond the self and the other.
I confess this as true.
You shall be returned to the world, and your chest shall be filled anew with thousands of hearts. You must give each away, until all are gone but one.
How shall I achieve this?
These hearts must be given out of your chest and die for you, while finding life in others. This is so you can overcome your earthly nature and be made ready for Christ.
I do not understand the method of releasing these hearts.
You will learn the method.
And when only my final heart remains?
That one you cannot give away yourself. Your last heart must be passed over to your lover. He must accept it, but he cannot hold it. He must release it, to release you. Only in this manner may you finally be delivered to the Lord.
I do not understand the purpose of my lover’s involvement.
Your lover will know the purpose.
This is where it was left. I was pulled from the Godhead, the light and water stopped flowing through me, and I was violently plunged back into the cold dark currents of the Pegnitz.
When I awoke, I was lying on my back and could not open my eyes. They were fused shut with ice and it must have taken five minutes of effort before I could blink them unglued. It was early morning and the storm had stopped. I tried to speak but was unable to produce any sound, because all my body was paralyzed. I was so much colder than I had ever been.
I began by wiggling my toes and fingers, until I managed to force entire limbs into action. I compelled myself to stand, tottering unsteadily. I was behind a shed of some sort, and a farmhouse was a hundred feet away. I stumbled towards it, hampered not only by frozen limbs but also by the fact that my clothing was stiff with ice. Smoke was rising from the chimney and I don’t know if I could have made it without that promise of heat. I thumped on the door a few times until a farmwoman answered and her eyes peeled back in horror at the sight of me. To her, apparently, I was the dead coming to call.
When she realized that I was not quite dead yet, she called out to her husband and began stripping me of my frozen garments. The old man fed me soup, while the woman wrapped me in blankets and massaged my limbs to get the blood circulating. When I was sufficiently recovered, we tried to piece together what had happened. I’d been washed some miles down the river and had come to rest in an open spot that was not frozen over. It was only by chance that the old farmer had come across my body and dragged me out. My eyes were staring straight ahead, my hair was frozen into stiff fingers, and my body showed not a trace of life.
The farmer believed that everyone deserved a proper burial, and that was why he had pulled me from the river. The ground was frozen too hard to be opened for a grave so, with little choice, he decided to leave me behind their shed and bury me come spring. He couldn’t bring a dead body into their home, of course, but for practical reasons rather than superstitious. It would simply thaw and start to smell. We supposed, together, that the water had been so cold that it made me appear dead. Such things had been known to happen; there were many stories of people immersed in cold water and revived long after they should have died.
I stayed with them a few days, but never told them how I came to fall into the river. I just said that I was out for a walk when the ice gave out underneath me. There was no need to recount the story of Engelthal, or of the mercenaries, or my Three Masters. My survival alone was difficult enough for them to accept.
When I was well enough to travel, I returned to the shore of the Pegnitz to retrieve my hidden bag, and then proceeded to Mainz. Where else would I go? I moved into a beguinage and adopted the life of contemplation and prayer. It was a partial return to the life I had before I met you, but I was changed so fundamentally by your love that I could not return fully to what I had once been. I did not continue in bookmaking, although in time I did finish my translation of Inferno. My reason for doing so was selfish—not that I thought I was creating a masterpiece to outlive me, but that working on the translation made me feel closer to you.
The rest of my story is unimportant. My years have been spent giving out hearts but I could never imagine an end to my penance until recently, because I always knew that I could never give away my final heart until we met again.
XXXII.
Vast and black, the ocean stretched away from the shore until its horizon disappeared into the night. I spoke with as much gentleness as I could manage. “I know you believe that story is true, Marianne. But it’s not.”
She looked down into the sand. Her breath caught in her throat, then came rushing out in a confession. “Our baby didn’t survive.”
She looked up, out over the ocean, and then back down at the sand again.
“When I woke up the child was…”
She covered her face with her hands; it was clear she could not look at me.
“Just gone,” she said. “As if I had never been preg
nant, as if God’s hand had reached into my womb and pulled out my child as punishment.”
“You can’t believe that.”
“I try not to. I try—I want to believe that it was a mercy. That the baby…” Her voice was so soft that I could barely make out the words. “That the baby died because of the freezing water, and God removed the child from me so I wouldn’t have to confront the truth in the living world.”
“If you believe in God,” I said, restraining my natural inclination to add that I didn’t, “you should also believe in His kindness.”
“I’ve always wanted to believe it was a mercy,” she went on, weeping. “If it was a punishment, that would be too much.”
“Marianne, there was no—”
“Our child did not survive,” she insisted. “This is not a thing that one forgets, no matter how old one lives to be.”
I knew better than to keep trying to convince her it was only her imagination. This was another argument that I simply could not win.
It was clear that she was not speaking to me, but for herself, when she added, “It was a mercy, it had to be. It had to be.”
Since I could not persuade her this medieval child had never existed, I decided to concentrate on our current lives.
“You’re not going to die, Marianne. There are no Three Masters.”
“All my hearts are gone.”
“Feel this.” I took her hand in my own, and I pressed it to her chest. “Your heart is still beating.”
“For now. What comes next depends on you.” She looked out over the ocean for a few moments before finally whispering, even though the nearest people were dozens of yards down the beach, “Do you remember what you said when I was leaving Brother Heinrich’s house before the mercenaries arrived? You promised that our love would not end.”