Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.
I find myself pacing, worrying, contemplating emptiness while Ana sleeps here.
Here in our house by the hearth is Ana’s shelf of precious things. It is where she keeps the icon Greg brought as a gift – the treasure that sent Brandell off to find the master of this craft and learn about the pigments. He came home with the art-master’s daughter for his bride, so this object has taken him more places than anyone would suppose.
Some things here are shaped into gifts by the hands of our grandchildren. These beeswax candles Ana uses to read by after dark, shaped into columns around wicks by tiny fingers. And here a raw clay vase and a little bowl are pressed from creek clay, still poked like a pattern with little fingerprints. They hold precious remnants of seasons past: dried flowers and lavender stalks in the vase, and a small collection of bird feathers and dragon fly wings to give bones to dreams of soaring.
Something resembling a bookshelf has all of our collections of parchments bound in bows of wool that are known to this family as books. Some are tied up pages of our own thoughts and writings.
And here among these “books” are pages remembered of Ana’s teacher, Eve’s, medical book. This book was the healing lessons for generations from Eve’s own teacher who took her in as a young child after the first round of a plague, unknown in that time, left Eve and her brother orphans. In Eve’s generation she took in Ana — little Anatase – who had been given over to a Pagan tribe by Christians, because she seemed possessed with a demon observed by illiterate people when a girl child seems to be learning to read. She was named for a useless blue stone mined in these mountains. She learned the warmth of family with Eve and when I found that child again, she was nearly a woman, in the care of the monks of Annegray known then by the name of Ana. [Footnote]
Ana’s own little clay flutes are here. The one with the five holes is the one she plays now, sometimes she plays with our harps and the singing at the church. And she still has this little flute she learned to play as a child’s toy. It was hearing that music, the few practice notes on that flute, which was my first awareness of the child Anatase — inquisitive and wise for a small child.
[Footnote]Dear readers, to follow this story is not necessary to go back, but Ana’s life story is told in blogs #19 (April 2021) and on. and stories of Eve begin in blogs #2 (November 2019)
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 