The Burning Stone

“‘I have sinned once, and greatly,’” murmured Rosvita, recalling the scene: the door made of branches lashed together, his refuge a poor hovel so crudely made that the winter winds must have whistled through its gaps day in and day out. The butterfly whisper of his voice. “‘For lying with a woman.’” The thought was almost too blasphemous to utter, but Rosvita had never shied away from wells and ditches when her curiosity led her through rough country. “You were his lover, the one he sinned with.”



Obligatia went white, as if she had been slapped, and then she chuckled. “You are well suited to history writing.”



“I beg you, I meant no insult! He said he still thought of her with affection.”



A single tear budded at the corner of her eye, but it was so dry that the air wicked it away. Obligatia went on with perfect composure. “We did not sin. He did not touch me until he forswore his own vows as a monk, until we spoke the pledge of marriage before a witness, under the eyes of God. We should have left to start a life elsewhere. But we were both foundlings. We had known no place but the cloister. He thought we could remain on the estate as laborers. I see now how innocent we both were.



“Of course it was all discovered when my pregnancy became advanced. The abbess was furious, because she wanted no stain to mar the sanctity of the convent founded by the saintly queen so recently deceased. Ai, Lady, the pain of my labor was as nothing to the pain of being separated from him. They took the child away from me as soon as it was born, but not before I saw that it was a girl. They never spoke of the child again. I never saw Fidelis again either. He was sent away, or locked away. I never knew. I was so terribly alone. Solitude is always worse once you have known companionship.



“I was taken to a convent in Wendar and placed under a vow of silence in a hermit’s cell, but I ran away from there because my heart had broken and I could not bear to be alone with my thoughts as one day ran into the next. I could no longer hear God even in the songs of the birds. I wandered destitute for a week or more, eating berries and onion grass. I finally came to a manor house at an estate called Bodfeld. I was taken in because they wanted someone to teach their daughters Dariyan. The nearby convent dedicated to St. Felicity was run by an abbess from a family they had long feuded with, so they refused to ask her help in finding a tutor, but I had enough education to teach the girls how to read and write and figure.



“There was a nephew, the son of the lady’s dead brother. He became infatuated with me. I was like any plant starved for water. Events progressed as they will with the young. He insisted on marrying me, and because they were kindhearted and had a plot of land somewhat away from the main house, because he mattered little in terms of their succession and I had the manners of a noblewoman and the education of a nun, they let us marry. In time, I gave birth to a boy-child. We called him Bernard, after my husband’s dead father. Then both my husband and his aunt died, and her sister came into the estate. She did not like me. She took the baby from me and gave it to a monastery to raise, since she didn’t want the expense of feeding us.”



“How cruel,” murmured Rosvita, but Obligatia went on steadily, as if she were afraid she would not get it all out of her heart, confined there for so long in silence as she had herself been confined within the rock walls of this convent.



“I was forced to retire to the convent of St. Felicity; but I was ill-treated there because they resented the work I had done at Bodfeld. God willed that an educated man, an Eagle who was the favorite of King Arnulf, sheltered one night at the guesthouse of the convent. It was my duty at that time to bring food for guests, although I had to slide it under a screen, for I wasn’t allowed to see them. But I was curious, and he was talkative. Four months later the abbess received a letter from the king’s schola, requesting that I be sent to study at the schola in Mainni.



“I studied at Mainni for one year. Then that same Eagle came by the schola on his way to Darre with a party of clerics. I was taken south with them so that I might come to the attention of the skopos. I was badly injured in a fall on the passage over St. Vitale’s Pass and the party brought me here to recover. Mother Aurica took me in with the promise to send me on once I had healed. But poor Sister Lucida was left as a foundling at the ladder not two months later, and I was given the care of her, such a small, sickly child. I could not bear to leave her, and I no longer trusted the world. Mother Aurica agreed to the deception: We sent word that I had died of blood poisoning. I gave up the name Lavrentia, given me by the abbess at St. Thierry, and I took the name Obligatia, to show that I understood that God had forgiven me for my sins by giving me a child to care for. That was forty years ago.”