Christina the Astonishing

Christina the Astonishing

work in progress

21 May 2003

32 years old

November 1219—Brusthem, Belgium.

Christina scratched at the bare earth. Her fingernails were cracked and bled where they had torn from her flesh. The earth was hard, nearly frozen, and her breath plumed from her mouth. She felt something smooth beneath fingers nearly numb with cold and she bent forward, peering closely into the hole she had dug. A round blue bead lay in the bed of dirt. Christina yelped in joy and triumph and dug frantically until a string of wooden beads was exposed. She gently extracted it, and the rosary swayed from her fingers. Worn smooth by decades of handling, it caught the dim November light above the battered, worm-eaten crucifix that hung from it. She sat back on her heels and pushed limp brown hair from her face with a bony hand.

“Ahh,” she sighed and clutched it tightly to her chest. She rose and limped to her rock beside a small stream, ignoring the shelter Martin had built for her a few days ago: branches woven through two frames of larger branches, propped against each other in a low, inverted vee. The single thing she owned she buried for safekeeping. Settling herself on the flat rock she used as her bed, Christina rubbed at the crucifix with the tattered hem of her skirt until some of the silver shone through. She looked at it one more time, then closed her eyes and fingered the rosary, mumbling softly.

A branch snapped on the path that lead to the clearing. Christina turned her head sharply, her body stiffened, ready to jump into the spring and to the other side, if need be. Martin slowly appeared through the mist, his brown frock a dark smudge, his tonsure glistening from the moist air. Christina relaxed and bent over the rosary again.

When Martin reached the clearing, she heard him sigh and snick his tongue with irritation. “Christina,” he said in a low voice. “Why don’t you use your shelter?”

She turned away, grunting in reply.

Martin sighed again and began gathering twigs for kindling. He’d be lucky to get a fire going in this weather, he thought. No rain, but mist enough to drown in. Still, he scratched a shallow fire pit in the dirt with his sandaled foot, clearing away the damp dead leaves, and hunkered down with his flint and went to work. Before long, he had a small flame going and gently fed it tinder until the fire was large enough to share its warmth. He stood and walked to Christina.

She watched him. She knew Martin well and respected him. He was the only person whose smell she could stand. Like her, he shunned meat, and needing no spices to mask the flavor of rotting flesh he ate no garlic or onions. The stench of meat eaters sickened her, and she avoided them at all costs. She remained on her stone as he drew near, clutching her rosary.

“What have you got there?” he asked her.

She looked at him, her gaze searching the trees around them before holding steady on his face. She hesitated a moment, and held the rosary out to him. He reached for it slowly, afraid to startle her, afraid she would pull her hand, and her treasure, away before he could see. He held his hand steady, and Christina placed the object in it. He stepped closer and looked. “Ahh. Your mother’s rosary. It’s a bit tarnished, I’d say.” He started rubbing at the silver crucifix, but Christina snatched it away again. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you found it. Maybe you should sell it for some food. It does you little good in that tin, buried in the ground. What good is faith if you have nothing to sustain yourself? Xxx the body only works when you have a body to xxx.”

“I’ll never sell it,” she said. “It’s all I have of her. And it’s for the souls of others that I suffer. Not my own.”

Martin nodded and began unwrapping a small bundle of food. He placed a wedge of cheese on the stone at her feet, and took the bread to the fire, picking out a long stick from the forest floor as he did so. He hunched before the fire and speared chunks of the oiled bread on the stick and toasted them over the flames, handing them to her as they browned. She grabbed them from his hand, stuffing the bread and cheese in her mouth hungrily.

“Thank you,” she said. “You are always so kind to me.”

Martin laughed, a loud and booming sound that was surprising from one so humble. “Ah, Christina. What else am I to do with you? Let you starve out here in the woods? We’ve known each other too long for such formality between us, and it pains me to see you begging on the streets, throwing seizures for the sins of those who feed you.” He reached for the leather flask that hung from his belt and handed it to her.

She drank deeply from it, wiping her mouth on her dirty sleeve when she was done. “You Franciscans make the best wine around, you know.”

He smiled at her and rose. “What else have we to do with our time?” He walked toward her and took her arm, surprised she let him touch her. He held his breath, shocked by the feel of her, so thin and delicate he thought the wind must run through her bones. Her teeth chattered softly, and he lead her to the fire. “Sit,” he said, drawing the end of a fallen log closer to the flames. She did and he sat beside her, wishing he’d brought a blanket for her. “I’m going to ask you again. Will you please consider accepting the prioress’s invitation? She is willing to take you in, providing you…behave yourself. Winter is coming on harsh this year, and I fear for you, Christina. You’re too old, too frail. I’m afraid to find you dead frozen in a tree somewhere, or to have to pry your icy corpse from that damned stone you use for a bed—”

“I have considered it.”

He stopped and stared at her. He’d been asking her for years to take refuge at St. Catherine convent. “Yes?”

“I will go. I can feel the cold in my bones and they cause me much pain. I’m too old. I’ve suffered long enough that I can take some comfort in my old age. I’ve spoken with the Lord, and he has given his consent.”

Martin exhaled sharply, releasing the fear he’d held for her health and safety for thirty years or more. She looked at him, his joy and relief bringing a rare smile to her lips. “Will you come with me tonight and stay in the priory?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes,” she said, tucking the rosary back into its metal box and taking another bite of cheese. “I will go with you.”

They finished their meal in silence. Martin dropped clumps of dirt over the fire, dirt taken from the heap Christina had made digging for her heart’s treasure, and lead her down the path to the priory. The monks there watched them approach with a fevered silence, their fears and desires whispered in the air around them as the Abbott showed Christina to her room. They wondered what she would do in their midst, affected by their concealed lusts and sinful thoughts, but Christina remained calm. She looked at each of them with her piercing grey gaze, as if reading their souls, and that was enough.

In the morning, she refused their food, knowing her reaction to it was what they half-feared, half hoped for, and she and Martin started off on foot toward the convent of St. Catherine.

June 1165.

I was fifteen years old when my parents died. It was late at night, and our house had caught fire. My mother woke me and my sisters and rushed us out. My mother and father hurried back inside to get the animals, but the rafters had burnt through and fell, trapping them inside. I ran after them, but my sisters held me back. “We can’t save them,” they said to me. I broke away and rushed toward the flames, but the intense heat stopped me, searing my face and outstretched hands. My sisters drew me away and held me. I sobbed, and they rocked me. “It’s too late,” they said, “hush, now.” We three held each other tightly as the house burned, crying softly in each other’s hair, listening to the screams of the cow and pigs, and mother and father, as the flames consumed them.

By sunrise, the fire had died down, and my sisters, Clara and Johanna, left me to sleep beneath a tree while they picked among the ruins of our home to see what could be salvaged. Very little remained of our life, and I awoke to find them weeping softly by my side.

“Did you find the lamb?” I asked when they told me we had nothing.

“What lamb?” Johanna asked, glancing at Clara, then back to me.

“I dreamt we were to find sheep and tend them,” I said, “I dreamt that God would send us sheep.”

They looked at me and sneered. “God has taken all away from us, and wants to give us sheep in return? Why then did He not simply bestow a pair of sheep to our father in payment for the help he’d offered others, rather than a sheaf of wheat, or the rare coin?” Their laughter echoed in the little valley that was our home. They swiped at the tears in their eyes, tears of mirth borne of loss and sorrow.

I laid my hand gently on Johanna’s arm—she was the middle sister, but the more sensible of us. “Then who is that coming?” I asked, and pointed to where a brown-clad figure had crested the hill and walked toward us. He held a bundle of white in his arms.

Johanna pulled in her breath and grabbed Clara by the hand, squeezing hard.

“Owwa!” Clara cried. “What are you…?” But Johanna’s stare stopped her.

“It’s Martin,” Johanna said.

“And he’s carrying a lamb,” I finished, trying hard to keep the note of triumph out of my voice.

We three watched in silence as Brother Martin approached. He smiled at us, then faltered when he took in the charred remains of our croft. “There was talk of a fire in these parts,” he said. “The Abbott sent me to see if I could help.” He set the lamb at my feet and smiled again. We were of an age, and his hazel eyes danced behind the concern in his face, when he looked at me. He was a novice at the monastery in town, and had known my father well, who’d helped tend the monks’ sheep at shearing time.

Clara sniffed. “Of course we need help.” She gestured to the wreckage behind us, still smouldering in places. Her tears overwhelmed her again.

 Johanna held Clara’s hand and said to Martin, “We have nothing.”

He looked around the valley. “Where are your father and mother?”

Johanna turned away and lowered her eyes. “They were consumed,” she said quietly.

Martin looked at her sharply, then at the lamb nibbling the grass at my feet. I reached out to pet its new white fleece and returned Martin’s stare.

“We must do something,” he said. “You’ve lost all, but I can help you get what you need to carry you through the winter. Come with me.” We stood and followed him out of the valley to the edge of town.

Spurred on by the Abbot, and Martin’s own enthusiasm, the townspeople had rallied together to donate clothing, a pig, some hens and a rooster, a little seed for a garden. The men built a new house over the foundations of the old for the three orphaned sisters. And one by one, they collected from their neighbors enough sheep for a small flock, by which they were meant to support themselves. And in time, the flock increased their number.

By summer’s end, Clara married Stefan, a local man whose wife had died the previous autumn after bearing their only child. The sisters’ mother, who had been a midwife and meant to attend the birth, did not receive word quickly enough that the woman was in labor. By the time Christina’s mother arrived, the baby had been born. Stefan’s wife hemorrhaged, and her life trickled away, pooling in the straw-filled bedding between her legs. She lay dead when Christina’s mother arrived, and Stefan clutched her body to his, sobbing.

Stefan’s sister had stayed on to care for the child, but married the following spring, and was now expecting her own child. Stefan needed a wife, and Clara was there to fill in.

Christina and Johanna did well on their own. In time, the flock of sheep grew. They culled lambs when too many were born for one mother, raised them as orphans, sold them, slaughtered them for meat. The others grew to breed more sheep, and as their wool grew full, the two sisters sheared them as they were taught by their father, and sold the wool on market day in town.

In their new life, Johanna, only seventeen, assumed their mother’s place. She made sure Christina was fed, clothed, that they had enough to eat. She made sure the sheep were fed, culled, tended, slaughtered, sold, shorn. She did everything it took to make sure they—and the animals—remained healthy and alive. She put Christina out in the field with the sheep, to move them from one pasture to the next as they cropped the grass short, and to see they didn’t wander too far.

While Johanna managed their lives, Christina wandered among the sheep, pulling up rocks and stacking them in fence rows to divide the fields into pastures.

Martin visited Christina regularly. Together they dug rocks and built fences, talking of life, love and God. He was Christina’s only friend, but she could never forget that he lived the life of a novitiate.

One day, shortly after Christina’s eighteenth birthday, three years after the fire, he came to her to wish her glad tidings. She invited him to sit beside her. They fell into silence, not at all unusual for them, but this time it possessed a heavy quality.

“You have something to say,” Christina prompted. “Please tell me.”

Martin looked at her and her heart raced. He reached for her hand and Christina tried to withdraw it, for it had become damp and cold from the dread that had draped over her soul. But Martin held firm, pulling her hand to rest on his raised knee.

“Christina.” He spoke her name softly. In the distance, a ewe bleated as one of her lambs suckled. “Christina,” he said again, as if savoring the words. He breathed deeply, looking at her small white hand against the dark nubby fabric of his monks’ habit. “Tomorrow I must take my vows.”

Christina closed her eyes, and a tear squeezed from between her lashes. She raised her face to the sky and felt the breeze caress her skin. When she opened her eyes again he brushed away the tear and bent toward her. He touched his lips to the place the tear had fallen, then to her lips. He kissed her tenderly, and then more passionately. She opened her mouth to his and their breath mingled, scented by the cloves he chewed for freshening.

“I love you, Christina,” he said. “I will always love you. You are my heart.”

“Then stay,” she said. She felt feverish and desperate. “Stay with me!”

But Martin shook his head. “You are my heart, but my soul belongs to God. The monks have cared for me all my life. I owe them a debt of gratitude. And to God. If they hadn’t found me as a child, I surely would be dead now.”

She held him close, thinking how they were two orphaned souls, whose parents had both died in fires, and both rescued by the monks. They both owed debts of gratitude to God. How alike we are, she thought to herself. How we belong to one another.

Christina lay back, pulling Martin beside her. “You are my heart, too,” she said to him.

He smiled beatifically and kissed her. They lay together and she gave herself to him.

As Martin later slept in her arms, Christina looked at him. His dark curly hair lay in damp waves against his brow. The hazel of his eyes moved slowly against his closed lids, fringed by dark lashes. He had a long straight nose and high cheekbones, a wide mouth set off by a strong square jaw. What a shame, she thought, surprising herself, that such a man should waste himself in a monastery, when his whole life—strong of body and mind and soul—lay before him. She kissed his closed eyes and whispered, “Your soul belongs to God. But mine belongs to you.”

Christina didn’t see Martin again for many years. He had lived in solitary silence after taking his vows, and then the Abbot sent him away to do work for other monasteries. She lived her days in the fields among the sheep, her only companions. One day, she told Johanna that she wanted to join the convent of St. Catherine—if Martin would devote his soul to God and the good deeds of the Franciscans, so would she—but Johanna would not hear of it.

“I need you here,” she insisted. She was angry. “After all I’ve done to keep us alive, this is how you repay me? You want to leave me alone with the pigs and chickens and these godforsaken sheep? You may as well kill me in my sleep and have done with it!” Tears filled Johanna’s eyes and she seemed to fold into herself, sinking into a puddle of skirts on the dirt floor of their small cottage.

Christina ran to her sister and held her, as Johanna had held her the night their mother and father had perished. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into Johanna’s hair. “I’m so sorry.” Like Christina, Johanna smelled strongly of lanolin. How she hated that smell! She smoothed Johanna’s hair from her wet face and noticed for the first time how haggard her sister looked. At twenty-one, Johanna was already an old woman.

Christina returned to the fields again with no one to speak her thoughts to. She turned inward. She came to hate not just her life, but God for what He’d made of it. She hated Him for taking away all that she’d loved—her mother, father, their home, turning her sisters into old hardened women before their time. For taking away Martin. For making her love a barren wasteland. She hated God for all the hateful things He’d done to her and those she loved.

Consumed by her hate, she stopped eating, nourished by her desire and longing for Martin and a life of love and hope. She watched her flesh waste away with grim satisfaction, reveled in her gauntness, evidence of her suffering.

And thus Christina lived her life, tending, shearing, culling, killing, selling. Hating. She and Johanna seldom spoke, going about their chores, godlike, among the sheep.

August 1171.

Christina was twenty-one years old the first time it happened. She had gone into town on Market Day with Johanna to sell off their wool and a few lambs. While Johanna haggled, Christina stood off to the side, silent and brooding. She watched the pattern of light and shadow made by the leaves of the tree under which they had set up their wares. The wind blew, the leaves above her danced and the trees waved their limbs to and fro. As she watched the ever-changing patterns of light against dark, the world flipped. Her body grew rigid and she fell to the ground. Her fingers grappled in the dirt as her feet drummed against the earth. She heard her sister cry out for help, and then her head was in Johanna’s lap. Someone tried to force a strap of leather between her teeth, but they were too tightly clenched together. Christina thought her body would break for its rigid spasming, her jaw muscles to snap, and all the while light and shadow played over her.

While her body jerked, Christina’s mind stilled and filled with a wondrous light. A face appeared before her. It was the face of Christ! God’s voice spoke to her and showed her things. As she listened and watched, Christina’s hate dissipated, leaving her empty and weak. Warmth filled the emptiness, and God said to her, “Christina, I need you. Will you help me?” And she listened to what he offered. “It will not be easy,” he said finally, “and you will despair. But it is for the greater good, and reward will come in time. Will you do this thing, Christina?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes!”

“Then rest, for you must conserve your strength and will. In three days’ time you will wake and astonish those around you into Salvation. Rest now, Christina, and take your fill of the Light. It will warm you and protect you. Use it, draw from it, and let it cradle your soul.”

The face of Christ and the voice of God left her. Her body stilled and the light filled her soul. She fell into a deep sleep.

After three days, Christina woke to the sound of snuffling and low voices murmuring. A man near her spoke loudly. She stirred, but no one took notice. As her senses returned, she became aware of an unholy stench that surrounded her. It was the smell of sweat, garlic, sheep, stale ale, foetid breath, rancid meat, and unwashed bodies. She opened her eyes, gagging against the odors, and peered through the gauzy material wrapped about her face and body. She turned her head and looked at the priest. His arms were raised above his head, and he spoke her name and of death and rebirth, and living with God in Paradise. It came to her that she was at her own funeral. Frightened and outraged, she shrieked, pulling the shroud from her face and limbs. “No!” she yelled, jumping up and waving her arms. “No! I am alive!”

She looked a wild mess, a spirit returned from death to haunt and frighten. The parishioners—people who had known Christina in life and, if not loved her, had had affection and pity for her and her sisters—ran screaming from the church. One man lunged for her, but she jumped high, high up into the rafters and perched herself there like a bird, watching the melee below. Her sister, Johanna, remained where she stood and gazed up at Christina in amazement, as did the priest. As the villagers cleared the church, pushing and screaming, the priest continued with Mass, though why Christina could not fathom, since it was a Mass for the Dead, and she was now Quite Alive. Beside her empty coffin stood the man who had tried to take her. She recognized him as the baker.

The priest concluded Mass, the words pleasing to him, echoing his vanity through the empty church. When the sounds faded at last, he implored Christina to come down in the same exalted voice.

“No,” she said.

“Christina, please,” begged Johanna, “come down to us, so we may see you.”

“I will not,” Christina replied, coaxing a spider onto her finger. “You people smell foul. You reek of garlic and rancid meat and wool and slaughtered sheep. I will not come down. Had God warned me of the stink, I would not have returned.”

The three below looked at each other.

“You spoke to God?” asked the priest.

“No,” Christina said, “He spoke to me.”

The priest raised his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth curled. “And what do you think God said to you?”

Christina shook the spider from her hand and peered down at the priest, her eyes glittering and hard. “What He did say to me, you mean.”

The priest’s lips pressed into a reluctant smile, and he nodded. “Of course. What did God say to you?”

Christina looked at the priest for a moment before speaking. “First I saw the face of Christ. Then I heard the voice of God. He showed me things. He led me to Hell, where souls writhed in flames and screamed for mercy. I recognized many faces there, including your mentor, Father Guillaume, passed these many months now.”

Christina heard the priest’s sharp intake of breath. “Yes, I saw him. And if you are not careful, you will follow.”

The priest turned red and began to sputter. “Of all the insolence…!”

“Silence,” said Johanna. “Let her speak.”

Christina shifted on the beam, her feet designing patterns in the air. “Next He showed me Purgatory, where those poor tortured souls walked about in the mire, the air heavy and thick with endless penance. And there I knew many more faces.” She paused and stared hard at her small audience shifting uneasily beneath her.

“Finally,” she continued, “God brought me to Heaven. I knew very few faces there, but the air was warm and golden, and love was everywhere. God asked me then, ‘Do you like it here, Christina?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I felt him swirl around me, fill me with His warmth and love.

‘You have an important choice to make, then,’ He said to me. ‘You may return to the life I took you from, and agree to suffer the for the sins of those now suffering in Purgatory, so that they may be redeemed and be welcomed into Heaven. Or,’ He said, ‘you may remain with here with Me and those few you recognize from life.’

‘What about my sisters? What about Martin?’ I asked.

‘They will remain on earth until they die, many years hence, then repay their debts of sin in Purgatory, until such time as they have redeemed themselves. Unless, of course, you return to life and suffer in their stead.’ ”

Christina wiggled her toes. “I chose the greater good.”

“That’s very noble of you, Christina,” Johanna said and cleared her throat. She stretched her hand toward her sister. “Will you please come down now, and we will go home?”

Christina shifted and pushed herself off the beam, landing on the floor with a delicate thump. Johanna, the baker and the priest looked uneasily at each other again, for the rafters were quite high, rising several feet above their heads. “You are unhurt?” Johanna asked her sister.

“Of course not,” Christina said. “I walk in the light of God. Nothing can hurt me.”

Johanna took Christina’s arm, who wrinkled her nose and drew a piece of cloth from her shroud across the lower half of her face, but said nothing. Together, they walked out of the church toward home.

When we returned home, Johanna prepared a meal for me. “You must be hungry,” she said and set about lighting the fire in the hearth. In truth, I wasn’t hungry at all, but I knew Johanna needed something to do to take her mind off the matters at hand. As she prepared a modest repast of cheese, dark bread and a thick soup, I poured some ale from a flagon on the table into two cups, and sipped from one. I, too, needed some moments to absorb all that had happened.

When she set the wooden trencher before me—filled with a broth of chopped greens that grew in our small garden, and bits of lamb meat—my stomach turned, and I pushed it away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I cannot eat this.” I reached for the bread and tore off a chunk, pushing a few crumbs into my mouth.

Johanna stared at me, her mouth full of the vile stew. “What is wrong with it?”

I shook my head. “Nothing is wrong with it. I simply cannot eat this.”

“The meat is fresh,” Joanna said, broth dripping from her chin and back into the trencher. “The lamb was slaughtered only yesterday…”

The thought filled me with unfamiliar revulsion and I swiped at the trencher, knocking it to the floor. Broth splattered the air and spilled on the ground.

“I said I cannot eat this!” I shouted, and ran to the door, banging my hip against the table and spilling Johanna’s meal, as well. Outside, I doubled over and vomited ale and bits of bread into the dooryard. What was wrong with me, I wondered, and I knew in that moment I could not stay. I could not remain with my sister and return to my old life. I could not expect to live as I had and do God’s work. It simply could not be. I knew I had to leave and live as simply as I could.

When I returned to the table, Johanna was bent over the floor, scratching at the packed earth to help it absorb the spilled soup, while the dog swallowed bits of lamb whole. She glared at me through the thin graying strands of hair that had escaped their binding. “Whatever has happened to you, I’ll not have that kind of behavior in my house,” she said. “Do you understand?”

I nodded. “Yes, sister. I’m sorry.” I looked down at my hands and shuffled my feet.

“Well and good, then. Come help me clean this up.”

I rushed over, grateful for some kind of direction, and shooed the dog away. I picked up the meat, repulsed by the oily feel of it, by the knowledge that this was once living flesh reduced to a garlic-flavored broth. I felt dizzy and held onto the bench to steady myself. When the spell passed, I rose and dropped the meat into the small cauldron that bubbled on a spit over the fire and turned to Johanna. She wiped at the table with the hem of her skirt, and sat down to her meal again. She looked at me. Weariness, disappointment, and a kind of doggedness colored her features, and I knew my decision was correct. I could not burden her with my presence, any more than I could remain here and expect to remain sane. I smiled at her. “I must go out. I’ll be back before nightfall.”

I left the cottage, breathing in the clean air of the outdoors, and wandered into to the woods. Here, I would live, I decided, between our croft and the town limits, my life a burden only unto myself, and unburdened by others. I would live simply, relying on the gifts of nature and the charity of others for survival.

I walked for some distance and when I spied a small clearing a suitable distance from the croft, but not too near the town, I piled leafy deadfall together into a bed beneath a large hazel tree, claiming this place as my own. When I returned home, Johanna was nowhere to be seen, out tending to the sheep before daylight seeped away and night fell. I shed my [dress] and wrapped myself in rags, a tattered tunic of Johanna’s much too large for me, and otherwise unwearable, securing the tattered garment at the waist with some willow branches I’d collected on the way home.

I went outside and set out across the field, my dress, stockings and shoes pooled near my pallet in the cottage. The sun was setting and the chilling air caressed my skin where it was exposed, making me shiver. As I returned to the wood, I clutched the wooden rosary with the silver cross Martin had left with me before he had taken his vows. It was now my only possession. I wondered if he would approve of my decision.