Scene: An inn outside the Abbey of Cluny. Date: April 1, 1076.
With feverish urgency, desperate to kneel beside Beatrice, her mother, who lies upon her final sickbed with only weeks to live, maybe days–who knows the hour except that it is coming soon!–Matilda of Canossa, countess of Tuscany, hurries home. She begs her men to let her ride all night, but they say no, it is too dangerous, the moon is hidden by the clouds and the army of King Henry might be waiting, like bandits, around the next bend. Reluctantly she agrees to stop at the Abbey of Cluny, that pleasant vale of holiness amid the violent hills of Burgundy.
Hugh, the abbot, receives her with open arms. Matilda knows that Hugh, sometimes known as Hugo, or even Ugo, is the King’s godfather, but such is piety of the Abbot, and the Abbey, that Matilda places herself in his protection with utter confidence. Hugh then does Matilda a great honor–he takes her inside the cloister, to the altar of the great church, so that she can pray to the Lord her God that He keep her mother alive until she returns home. Throughout the cloister the monks begin to buzz, not in actual words of course, for they have all taken vows of silence, but a buzz of involuntary murmurs and surprised breaths and rustling linen, not unlike the noise and chatter that will spread among the woodland creatures when the end of world approaches, for never in the memory of these holy monks has a woman entered the cloister. Matilda does not sense the buzzing, so intent is she upon her prayers, begging God that she might be permitted, one more time, to share the Holy Eucharist with her dear dying mother.
After her vespers, with a heart reconciled to God’s plan, whatever that might be, Matilda retires to the little inn outside the Abbey, for a woman of Matilda’s holiness and nobility would never dream of making her bed inside the cloister. The inn turns out to be a most pleasant place, with simple but charming amenities, which should not be surprising, for many queens and duchesses and marquesses have stayed there, while dropping off their younger sons at Cluny to begin their monkish careers. Two young girls, daughters of the inn-keeper, help Matilda to unpack and air out her things, and as night falls they bring her a lit candle and the quill from a freshly killed goose.
Her window faces a small courtyard. Matilda opens the shutters, and the heavy tallow smoke finds its way to the gentle night air. Matilda sits down to write a letter to Pope Gregory VII. Her quill moves rapidly: she tells her great friend of the delays and vexations that have beset her urgent journey, her concern for her dying mother, the hospitality at Cluny, and the last days of her husband, Godfrey the Hunchback, Duke of Lower Lotharingia. Though her tone is sombre, here she conveys a note of joy: for the Hunchback, inspired by her tender nursing, had repented of his opposition to the Pope just moments before his death.
Outside her window the girls are sweeping the courtyard, giggling as they work, making a game of their chores. Matilda listens, and smiles for a moment at their carefree yet dutiful lives.
Turning back to her letter she tells the Pope of the Hunchback’s funeral in Verdun, and the intervention of the King in the inheritance of her husband’s duchy. How selfless it is of Matilda to forget for a moment her own personal sorrows and concentrate instead on the great struggle of the day, the contest between the Pope and the reprobate King, her cousin! Her report on these matters is mixed: she has managed to keep the bishopric of Verdun in pro-papal hands, but the King has decided that the Duchy of Lower Lotharingia will go neither to her, the Hunchback’s widow, nor to Godfrey of Buillion, his nephew and chosen heir, but to the King’s own two-year-old son, Conrad.
The giggling of the girls outside catches her ear: now it seems secretive, whispered, almost naughty. Setting down her quill, Matilda goes to the window and listens. The older girl is telling her sister a story of some kind. With a start, Matilda realizes that the story is about herself.
She is the Pope’s whore, says the older girl.
Her sister gasps.
She hired a man to kill her husband. Do you want to know how they did it? How they killed him? Do you really want to know?
From the window Matilda can see in the shadows the younger girl nodding, timid but eager. The older girl leans forward and whispers something softly in her ear. The young girl shrieks and jumps up.
No! They didn’t!
Yes, they did! The cook told me!
Matilda quietly closes the shutters, and returns to the writing table. As the heavy tallow smoke fills the room, she asks the Pope to join her in prayer that the innocent child Conrad will not be corrupted by his father’s evil ways.
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Monastic Sign Language on the Autobahn
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