Chapter 49 Protectress of the Black
Mountain
There's a
notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no
ordinary person. – Alan Moore
Regenulfa
found herself increasingly popular, both among her wild friends and her new
human friends. Once a week she would go
to the small mountain glade that overlooked one of the Montagne Noire’s many
river valleys, though most were little more than streams by more modern
standards. Here the mountains were not
so hard to climb and had few rocky bluffs and steep cliff faces, but was far
enough from most human settlements being half a day’s journey from Carcassonne,
and close enough for her to disappear into the woods if the need should
occur. But, that became less and less
likely for two reasons. The first being
that her cousin, the Duke of Carcassonne had married her sister, two years her
younger, and the second was her growing fame among the people of Languedoc as
the Healer. No one in all of the Occitan
country, or any holdings of the Merovingians, or the Romans had a greater
reputation for treating the sick and infirm with miraculous results. No patient left unhappy, or unhealed.
And
her fame had spread through the animal kingdom as well. Sick birds and beasts would flutter or drag
themselves to her in the wild for aid.
The birds would spread the word of her whereabouts, among the forest
creatures, and soon any sick animal in Europe that could make its way into the
Montagne Noire and Regenulfa’s healing grace, would do so. Once, a mountain lion carried its dying cub
from the Black Forests of the German lands for her ministrations. On more than one occasion her patient might
seem no longer among the living, but after a few moments of her loving touch,
was quickly restored to the prime of health.
It
was on a sunny July 22, in the year 647, the Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalene,
nearly three years since Regenulfa’s hasty flight on the eve of her wedding,
that her status took a more permenant standing.
She was at her mountain overlook, about two thirds up the mountain,
awaiting her first human patient of the day.
She sang with the wrens which fluttered about her, occasionally
alighting on her outstretched arm as she waited. No one in the world was happier or freer than
Regenulfa, formerly of Incourt in Brabant.
She
was caught completely unawares as her sister’s voice impinged itself upon her
consciousness in a jarring and surprising manner. “Regenulfa!
Sister!”
She
looked up to see her younger sister approaching on horseback, with another
rider, hunched over and cloaked. Her
sister, Jocelyn, was frantic and greatly distraught.
“Regenulfa! You must help us! My husband Carde’ is wounded badly from a
hunting accident. You must help him.”
Regenulfa
ran to her sister at once, and touched her lightly on the leg as her passed her
horse, pausing only long enough to flash her a welcoming smile. Jocelyn’s face was full of worry and
Regenulfa did not like her sister’s sad face.
She had always protected her, and her one great concern in her flight
had been for Jocelyn’s welfare. She
turned her attention to the Duke, the man who would have been her husband if
she had remained in the Cite’ one more day.
His
cloaked hood all but hid his face, but its pallor was evident even in shadow,
as was the anguished curl of his lips.
“Quickly,”
she said to Jocelyn without looking at her, “Help me get him off the horse.”
The
younger sister immediately dismounted and rushed to Carte’s side. The Duke slid off the horse into the waiting
women’s arms, but they did little to break his fall. With a painful grunt he hit the grass.
Regenulfa
pulled back his cloak and hood and made a make shift pillow for Carte’s
head. She gently stroked his cheek with
her soft hand, “Greetings, Cousin Carte’.
Fear not, you are safe here. I
will tend you by the Grace of God.”
The
duke from hollow, fevered eyes, allowed the slightest of smiles play about his
lips, and closed his eyes, falling into unconsciousness.
As
she pulled open his blood stained shirt and saw the crimson bandages that bound
his innards from spilling out, she calmly asked Jocelyn, “What happened, and
when?”
“Two
days ago, he was hunting with a small party to the southwest of Carcassonne
half a days journey on horse in the forested lowlands. A giant boar burst out on the trail and
gouged his horse out from under him, causing his stead to fall upon him and
breaking his leg. Then the enraged beast
swung back, I am told, and gorged my husband.
It was all his friends could do to bring him back to the Cite’. He has not been coherent since then.”
As
Regenulfa pulled away the bandages, she shook her head, “No boar did this. This is a sword wound. One of the Duke’s men ambushed him, when he
was out of sight of the others, most likely.
Thought the wounds would be enough, and they would have been. You husband has a great will to live. He is strong.”
Blood
quickly covered Regenulfa,s hands and arms as she worked. “We need water,” she said in complete calm.
“Where’s
the spring?” asked Jocelyn.
“There’s
water quite close beneath the ground, here”, answered Regenulfa placing her hand
on the grass. At her touch, water
bubbled up from the ground, creating a small spring that ran then down the
mountain. She cupped her hands and
poured the water over Carte’s wound.
Jocelyn’s
eyes filled with amazement and wonder.
“How?”
“As
I said, the water was just under the surface, there was a spring here from the
winter rains that only stopped a month ago, it is no marvel.”
At
that moment, an apparition of a woman clothed in the sun itself appeared over
the three. Only the two sisters could see
it, and surely, they both knew it to be a vision of Mary herself hovering above
their heads. Regenulfa was only
distracted from her charge for a second or two, but Jocelyn gasped, “Holy
Mother of God!” And fell to her knees in
prayer. There was a loud buzzing sound,
then silence and the vision of gone.
As
Regenulfa washed the wound she closed her eyes and began to recite the Lord’s
Prayer over her royal patient. To
Jocelyn’s eyes the deep red of blood, and yellow of oozing pus were slowly
diluted by the water of the new spring, until it appeared that the wound itself
had been washed away. The entire
procedure took no more than ten minutes.
Jocelyn
gasped in joy and awe. “God in Heaven!”
“He
will be fine, sister. Fear not.” The
wren who had been previously playing and singing with Regenulfa alighted on her
shoulder.
It
was to this sight that the duke awoke, his eyes slowly opening and focusing on
his green clad savior. He smiled with a
warm kindness.
“Thank
you cousin,” he said simply.
“You
are most welcome.”
It
was never an awkward scene, Regenulfa’s very presence and deep sincerity and
love for both Jocelyn and Carte’ dispelled and such possibility. Regenulfa moved away to allow her sister a
place by her husband, as the running spring now occupied the other side of the
prone duke.
“It
was Hurrs,” he said to his wife. “He
ambushed me in the woods during the hunt.”
Jocelyn
looked to her sister to acknowledge the correctness of her surmise and then
back to Carte’. “She did it, my love,
she healed you when our doctors said you were beyond all hope of medicine.”
“I
was,” he answered, “Regenulfa did not use medicine. I felt the very power of the Lord moving
through me, through the deepest core of my being, her love is His Love, her
healing is that of the Lord.”
As he spoke his shifted his vision
from his wife to her sister, and propped himself up on the grass.
“Regenulfa,”
he said. “Know this: That I now understand the calling which kept
you from being my bride, that I found a great love with your sister, Jocelyn,
and that from this day forward, I declare you the protectress of the forests of
the Montagne Noire, and that these woods beyond this point are to be free from
hunters. And that you will ever be under
my protection and ever welcome in our home.”
After
a few hours of catching up with her grateful sister and cousin, the happy
couple departed. The next week, Ugar
brought the news the Duke and Duchess of Carcassonne had declared that as they
realized that all beasts and fowl were God’s children, they would no longer
partake of their flesh, eskewing meat for a diet of fruits and vegetables, and
commanding that their court do likewise.
copyright 2017 Diana Hignutt
