<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">The coolness of the February evening bites like ice through Bridget’s flesh. Had she been living, she would have trembled and shivered, seen the fog of her breath on the night air, felt the erection of her delicate nipples in response to the cold. But she is not alive or experiencing these things; she quietly disrobes as Elisabeth fills her private bathing tub with steaming hot water.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Her eyes linger over Elisabeth’s frame. The servant is young, strong—better muscled than Bridget herself was able to become in her time at the monastery. Her sleeves rolled up to allow her to pour the heated water into the tub, Elisabeth is oblivious to Bridget’s gaze as she mops her forehead with the back of her hand and turns back to the chapel’s kitchen for another bucket of warm water. Watching Elisabeth’s stride, the sway of her hips, Bridget’s mind turns to the not far distant past.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Her mind in a fog of memory, Bridget glides over to her tub, and delicately slips one foot and then the other into the warm bath. The pallor of her skin does not change in the heat of the water as it once had, and sinking into the tub, allowing the heat to slowly work its way into her benumbed body, Bridget recalls with a smile the bustle of the monastic bath house. The sisters and novices used a row of six baths. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">One of her favorite duties had been to help bathe the noble women, either those who were there solely for pre-marriage education or the widows who had taken vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience in their post-married life. The work that Elisabeth was doing now had always been invigorating for Bridget. It made Bridget sweat and feel the pull of her muscles, but there was always something mysteriously wonderful about the ladies’ bath day. Perhaps because they were allowed to perfume their water the way the oblates and full sisters were not.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">The air in the bath house would be thick with steam, clammy with the scent of lavender and full of women’s bodies. Some young ladies, some older. Each of these held their treasures. Bridget wondered at the widows’ bodies; most of them did not have the perfectly rounded breasts and slender thighs of the younger nobility. Their nipples tended toward dusky rose hues, and their bodies all had a greater roundness about them. Yet these older women knew the pleasure of carrying a child within their wombs, just as Mary had carried Christ. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">The young ladies’ bodies filled Bridget with a giddiness she didn’t fully understand, and perhaps still does not fully understand. Their nakedness, their tender flesh, suggested the form of angels to Bridget. She could imagine nothing more beautiful than Fraulein Hadewijch reclining in her tub or pressing a towel gently to her delicate skin, soaking up the moisture of the bath from her be-pinked flesh:</span>(http://www.modelsblog.info/content/2010/11/Natalia-Vodianova-7.JPG)<br/>(http://www.area-59.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/natalia-vodianova-hot-wallpaper-07_thumb.jpg)<br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Bridget was responsible for gathering the towels and clothing from the bath house as well. Though all the ladies would have been gone by then, their curving hips long since slipping beneath their woolen habits, their hair carefully tucked away beneath wimples, Bridget would sometimes linger with her pile of fabrics. They were full of the smell of lavender and something else—something delicate and feminine and that Bridget was at a loss to define. This scent always helped her to remember the passage of the bathing time for the given day. What loveliness had she witnessed? What more proof of God’s omnipotence could one need than the sight of a full, creamy breast, half hidden by flowing locks of amber hair? These days always made her feel best about humanity; how could such grace or beauty be fallen? Be a mark of temptation? Surely Fraulein Hadewijch was nothing if not made in the image of God. Yet she knew the faults of these undisciplined theological meanderings, and later in the week, when she was stern at her prayers of deep in contemplation, she recognized the frailty of her thoughts. Despite this realization though, the bath house always brought such susurrations, such whispers about the divinity of man, nay of woman.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">The sound of water pouring into her tub rouses Bridget back to the present, calls her attention to Elisabeth again. With more water in the tub, Bridget sinks down into the water, letting her eyes slip shut the way she remembers the eyes of Fraulein Hadewijch slipping closed. Moments later Elisabeth is massaging at Bridget’s cool flesh, working more heat from the water into her body, and tracing circular patterns over her calves, her fuller thighs, the softness of her belly. Leaning forward, Bridget lets her back be scrubbed and thinks of the angelic Hadewijch, wondering if the Fraulein has since been married, has been seen and touched by more than just girls’ hands. She wonders if those hands are half as gentle as Bridget’s had been with the Fraulein: the delicate massage of the lady’s small breasts, the gentle rubbing at her silken sex. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">The mysteries of men and some women’s attraction to them have remained a mystery to Bridget. She remembers her father, bearded and tall, strong. Her brothers were merely boys when she was taken to the monastery where her only contact with men came at communion and meals when Abba Heinrich—with corpulent frame and tonsured head—graced the sisters with his presence. Surely Abba Heinrich was to be admired for his learning, but she found him, like most men, altogether emotionally uninspiring.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Her grandsire, Venantius, had been kind in his looking after her, that was to be sure. Yet she beheld him with only a terrible fear, and yet she knew she must speak to him soon in order to acquire his help for her travels. She would need horses, palfreys at the least, and supplies for her journey. These thoughts buzz around in Bridget’s mind as she exits from the tub, dripping, and allows Elisabeth to dry her before wrapping herself in a warmed garment. </span>