Women in the Wall (13 page)

“I am! I
am
honest about Chramn! I’m sick about Chramn, sick but not sorry, can’t you see that, you cow? I vomit, I bring up my guts when I think of my own son turning on me and of all the things he did and how I had to fight a battle to vanquish him! It was him or me! And how can I be sorry it wasn’t me? How? Huh? I’d kill him again if I had to and I’d be right. What kind of a king would I be else? The bishops agree with me, do you know that? They know how the world is run! They said it was like God’s judgement on Absalom! Absalom, have you heard about him?”

“Yes,” said Radegunda wearily. “But you still went to Tours to try to repent.”

“Because,” howled Clotair, “God is unreasonable.”

“His reason …”

“I know. I know. It’s beyond us. That’s what the priests say, damn them. Well then it’s beyond us and I can’t be expected to repent! I’m stifling. I can’t breath! How can I live? I have all of Gaul to govern and every town is full of conspiracy. Traitors spring up like ragweed in a field. I have to have eyes in the back of my head. Whom can I trust? Tell me that. My men assault me. My brother and son conspire against me. I have to survive, don’t I? Gaul needs a king—any king is better than a pack of smaller men tearing at the kingdom like dogs at a carcass!
How
can
I
survive
and
repent!
How? How?”

“My lord, you’ve been shouting. People are frightened. Look!”

Clotair turned and saw a row of nuns’ heads along the top of the garden wall. Terrorized eyes peeped.

“Ha!” he roared in amusement. “Frightened, are they? Frightened for you?” He walked over to the wall, stared silently at the veiled heads for a moment then suddenly let out a yell: “Boo!” he cried and the heads bobbed down and up again like gulls on a wave. Clotair laughed and slapped the wall. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “I’m an old dog now. I bark. I don’t bite.” He turned back to
Radegunda.
“See,” he said, “they were anxious about you. The protective instinct survives, even in a convent.”

“All the instincts, my lord.”

“All? Would they kill for you?”

Radegunda closed her eyes.

“All right, all right. I’m sorry. Now, you see, to you I can say that. I really am sorry I upset you. You can go,” he shouted to the nuns. “Your foundress is safe. I’m not going to take her off. Go off now. Shoo!” The heads disappeared. Clotair laughed more quietly, nodding his head. “It’s an old feeling,” he said, “one I hadn’t felt since you left. You were always making me sorry! Do you know, Radegunda, why I remember you more fondly than other women? Not for the reasons you might think.” Clotair sat back down beside her on the stone bench. “No, the reason, Radegunda, is because you had no children. Are you surprised? I am. I was so proud of my children. Once. I was like a farmer who plants seeds and sees them come up: a good feeling. It doesn’t last though. The seeds turn into plants. The plants are alien. They’re not you, not the farmer and not the old plant. They’re a new thing: a rival and they claim the mother’s love. I knew that long before Chramn turned on me. I knew my children were my enemies. A woman who has no children mothers her husband. Even you, Radegunda!”

“I”, said Radegunda, “have my nuns. They are my children.”

“Then they’re my enemies. I’ve been robbed again! You took my morning gift and made rivals for me! Ah, the sour old joke! What a lot of gifts I gave you. I suppose you remember none of them. Mostly I gave them to you to make up for some row—when I was feeling sorry. Every sort of gift. But you’ve forgotten them! You don’t remember where they are! I can tell you about one. It is in the Church at Tours. I saw it when I was there on my pilgrimage. On the high altar. I was trying to pray, standing, trying to collect my thoughts, feeling wrong, somehow, out of place. And then, right in front of me, I saw something familiar. It was a gilt lace altar-cloth hung with pearls and bits of gold, very intricate, very costly and it brought something back, some memory of years back. Where had I seen that lace? There couldn’t be two pieces like it. It was of very special workmanship—and then I remembered. It was a tunic I’d given you and which you’d offered the saint. I suppose your dresses are hung on half the altars of Gaul? My gifts! Think of the memories if I were to go on a pilgrimage along your track, Radegunda! Well, maybe they’ll do me some good when the time comes that I need it.”

“Clotair,” Radegunda spoke gently. “Why don’t you stay here a while. If I can truly help you make your peace with God, I will see you as often as you like. You have villas in the Poitou. Stay on here and you can visit me. Every day.”

“You won’t come out?”

“This is my life.”

“
Why
is it your life? You were married to me. You lived with me fourteen years. How do you know God doesn’t want you to come back to me now when I need you? Doesn’t he demand sacrifices from people like you? His special people?”

“Clotair,” even more gently, “you yourself saw the sign the last time you came. At Saix. Don’t you remember?”

A shyness, a kind of humility prevented her saying the word ‘miracle’. But she was sure he did remember.

“What?”

“God showed us both that my place was not with you,”

He shrugged, frowned. Did he really not understand?

“The oats,” she prompted. “The oats that sprang up and hid us from sight when you came by on your horse! That was why you turned back! They grew up in the space of a few moments and you …” She waited, “you
knew
then, you understood, didn’t you, that it was”, again she paused, “a sign!”

He was staring at her distrustfully. “Do you often get dreams like that? Are you talking clever priests’ talk—parables and such—or do you really believe oats sprang up and hid you? I mean real, vegetable oats out of the earth?” He had withdrawn into himself, pulled back, shrivelled a bit and was looking at her intently.

“Why did you turn your horse around then, Clotair? Why did you ride off instead of trying to speak to me? You had come to speak to me, hadn’t you? And I was within a few ells of you, two perches at most, with Agnes and Disciola!” In her memory’s eye she could still see the thick-jointed stems of the oats, their surprising size. She could see the delicate clusters of green-sheathed grains on top, quivering like water in a breeze, yet forming a screen opaque enough to blot out the horrifying image of Clotair. “Why then,” she challenged in triumph, “if what I say isn’t true?”

He spread his hands. “I was sorry for you. I knew you would be no good to me. I knew it when I saw you huddled between those two children and when I saw you kneel up to pray.”

“You saw me kneel up?”

“Of course I saw you! You were like mice waiting for the falcon to swoop. If you’d been a virgin it wouldn’t have stopped me. I’d have thought, ‘Well, she’s shy. She doesn’t know me. I’ll reassure her.’ As one does with a cub one takes home to tame. But I’d been married to you for fourteen years. If you weren’t tame yet …” He threw his hands out again. “So, I turned my horse and left.” He gave her a long look. “Did the other two see oats spring up?”

“Yes, yes. Of course. So did the peasant.”

Clotair nodded. “Well, it’s like repentance. I can’t talk to God and he doesn’t talk to me.”

“I don’t believe you,” cried Radegunda angrily. “You saw the oats the same as all the rest of us but you won’t admit it! You won’t because, if you did, you would have to admit that you were wrong to try to see me again after receiving a sign like that! It’s easier to say you didn’t receive it, to cheat God and try to cajole me into going back to you! I don’t know why you want me. You think I can teach you some trick to get you into heaven. But there are no tricks, Clotair. Not for that. You killed all my relatives, you used my body and abused my spirit for fourteen years. You let me have this convent for politic reasons. The Church is powerful in Gaul and it suits you to keep in with the bishops. I owe you nothing.”

Clotair stood up. “You are not generous, Radegunda. You care more for your own salvation than mine. Maybe holy people are never generous that way. I won’t trouble you again.”

He walked away. It was the last she saw of him. Four months later he caught a fever while hunting, died and was buried in the church he had built in honour of Medardus who had died some years before and was now recognized as a holy man and perhaps a saint.

[
A.D
569]

That spring Agnes was half mad and knew it. Her sane self kept the other going. Sometimes it seemed a near thing. She felt her skin must erupt dreadfully like the fruit trees which had broken out in a disease of bright pallor, easing themselves in lavish foamings.

“We must be discreet, Agnes. Agnes, are you paying attention?”

She smiled.

He accused: “You look mad!”

“I am.”

“Has anyone noticed? Said anything?”

“No. I’m only mad when I’m with you—and when I’m alone.”

Madder when alone: Fortunatus constrained her.

“Prudence …” he recommended.

She managed it, subduing impulses to destroy herself in a number of ways. One would be scandal. Religion no longer hampered her. Everything it promised she had reached in the teeth of it. Since she was happy, God, rising above his own rules, must be approving her. She was not afraid of him. Only of Radegunda who would not understand and for the nuns who wouldn’t either. One had to think of them.

“I am prudent,” she assured him.

*

“You”, said Radegunda to Agnes, “are my justification. You are happy. I see it in your face.”

Agnes said nothing. The two were combing wool. She bent over hers. Yes: the happiness was bursting out of her. Explosively. Shamelessly. She tried to hide it.

“I have visions,” Radegunda confided. “But I have doubts too. Supposing my messages from Christ were figments of a mad mind? I don’t believe this but I have no proof other than my own belief. The real ratification of our enterprise here”, said Radegunda, “is your
happiness
.” She smiled at Agnes with affection.

Agnes worked, pulling thick handfuls of wool through the iron comb.

*

[
A.D.
587]

I have been asleep.

I feel weak. They have forgotten to bring me food. I have some from before but the lettuce leaves are limp and rotting and the bread is hard. They have forgotten. Something unusual is happening. The bells have not rung. Blessed Virgin, you who succour the lowly, give me strength. Grant me calm. Blessed Radegunda who heard my vows, help me. I am agitated. I cannot pray. My leg is stiff. A pain runs up the bone. Move it up and down. Crouch and rise, crouch, rise, crouch, rise. The pain is worse. Again. Again. Count: six, seven, eight … Try to reach a hundred. Pain!
Pain!
The movement keeps the leg from growing stiff and the pain may be offered up.
Twenty-seven
, twenty-eight … Keep it up. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four … Holy Angels! What was that? What? What can that be? That noise? Surely no one—a demon must be troubling my mind. Pray. St. Martin help me. Help me holy St. Denis! Could the convent be under attack? No, no one would dare. In all their wars, the kings respected the convent. Only once the outlying farms were attacked. But that was a mistake. The soldiers swore that they hadn’t known where they were. They were punished, moreover, not that … Don’t think! I mustn’t think of that now. I grow agitated when I remember that and I am trying to stay calm. Calm. But I can
see
the blood, the charred wood …
Don
’
t
think of it. Think of what happened afterwards. Yes. Afterwards the blessed Radegunda mortified her flesh for forty days and nights. She heated a metal blade shaped in the shape of Christ’s initials and, when it was at white heat from the coals, impressed it on her flesh, branding herself a member of Christ’s flock forever. Or did she do that some other time? I forget. I know what she said to us. “Sisters,” she said, “when you hear what happens out in the world and even on our own estates, can you feel that our cloistering here is a great sacrifice? Is it not perhaps an act of selfishness? Of self-love?” The nuns were confused by that question. What did it mean, they wondered. Did the foundress want to open the convent and send us back to our homes—those of us who had homes? There was a lot of agitation. Nuns wept and questioned the chaplain and the abbess and prioress until, finally, Agnes, the abbess, called us all together to explain. The foundress, she said, was only asking us to consider our own good fortune and reflect on how we must try to merit it by accurate and joyful observance of our Rule. The Rule itself, she reminded us, was not harsh but gentle as a linen robe. The abbess could always restore serenity.

It is dark now. The cracks of light have gone.

There
is
something wrong. The bells have not rung for several days. I am sure of that. Besides, my bread … Why are they not bringing me fresh food? The noises I heard before were … Were? No, I cannot be sure. Demons play tricks on me. Maybe I was asleep or unconscious and let my food go stale? But where is the fresh food then? Eat. It is when I am weak that the demons grow strong. Suck the hard bread. Chew a little garlic and swallow the rotting lettuce. Maybe it is not rotting? I cannot trust my senses. Sometimes I have seen monsters, felt their hairy, scaly touch or the bite of their teeth. Those were figments and devilish artifices. Oh Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit!

[
A.D.
569]

Maroveus, Bishop of Poitiers and Radegunda’s spiritual overlord, was talking to his secretary. The bishop was in his habitual state of gentle inebriation, having been drinking Chian wine for several hours.

“Who am I?” he asked his secretary. “Do I exist at all? Is Radegunda bishop? It looks like it. Being queen wasn’t to her taste. She prefers to be Bishop of Poitiers. She is her own carver and
I
might be dead for all the notice she takes of me. Dead! I can taste the charred coal in my grave. My mouth is dry with it. Give me another glass of that wine. My saliva has stopped flowing. Have one yourself. You’ll be better company.”

“My lord, she has sent asking you to officiate. This time you can’t …”

“I can’t what? I can’t refuse? Is that it?”

“She needs you now, Monseigneur. She needs you to receive the procession bringing the fragment of the True Cross back from Constantinople. It
is
a historic occasion. She wants you to be there.”

“She wants me the way she’d want a man’s head stuck on a pole outside her convent. She’s a head-huntress like her ancestors. She wants my presence to complete her own glory. Not my active participation. Not my advice. Let’s not even mention my authority: just my head on a pole.”

“My lord, she’s a holy lady … Known for her purity, esteemed …”

“Holy, pure!” the bishop groaned. “Lucifer was pure! Purity is a dangerous virtue. It engenders pride. That woman is stiff with both. And, in case you were thinking of it, don’t mention miracles. You don’t believe in that sort of thing, I hope. It’s useful. It’s inevitable. We can’t do without miracles. We have to compete for people’s minds, hearts, etcetera. We’re all agreed on that. We don’t have to be too credulous ourselves. You are a Gallo-Roman, my secretary, and a man with a career to make in the Church, so don’t talk to me about miracles.”

“Gregory was telling me the other …”

“Gregory, you don’t need me to tell you, has the mind of a nine-year-old and that’s all right. He doesn’t have to be intelligent. I forget how many of his uncles are bishops? Half a quorum in most councils. His career is assured and his mental processes barbaric. His mother must have got him off a serf. It’s the only explanation. A man of his descent! Well, they tell me he’s writing a history of the times! It would be doing posterity a good turn to burn it. If they judge us on poor Gregory’s evidence, God help our image. If I had the energy myself, I’d scratch down a few aphorisms, but our blood is tired. Tired, Florius. We’ve been in the saddle too long, men of our race! We have saddle-fatigue. Except for Gregory. His energy is another sign his mother got him on the wrong side of the sheet. Off some Frank no doubt. The Franks are roaring with energy. They’re like the pirate bird that terrorizes other predators into disgorging prey then eats it ready chewed. That’s what they did to the Visigoths. To the Burgundians. Terrible people. Fatiguing. Like all the Germans. Like Bishop Radegunda. She even wore out Clotair. Ha, that must have taken doing! They say he slept with six kitchen-maids a night trying to replace her. Now she wears God out with her antics. Oh well, I suppose
his
energies are tireless too. Eugh! I’ve made myself tired thinking of all those energetic people, all those little battering rams. Where’s that wine? You know, I think I need a rest. A trip to my country estates to taste the new vintage and mark the casks that are worth keeping. That always does me good. Besides, if I don’t go, the serfs drink it up before I can get the casks counted. Tell Proculus we’ll be leaving tomorrow early. I’ll ride the silver mare: a Thuringian like Bishop Radegunda. I can imagine I’m riding
her
, driving my spurs into her flanks. Gee up, Bishop Radegunda!”

“And the True Cross, my lord?”

“Florius, I am going to my country estate. I am as good as gone. You can think up any excuse you like. I even give you permission to tell Bishop Radegunda the truth, which is the following: she has consistently acted as though I and my office did not exist. I and my office—and it is the office which matters, Florius, the office, not the man! She saw fit when she first installed that abbess of hers to go over my predecessor’s head and have the blessing administered by the Bishop of Paris. Since then she has been sending her agents back and forth to the four corners of Christendom collecting relics without any inquiry as to what I thought of this practice.”

“A holy one, surely?”

The bishop moaned. “A form of high-class butchery. She sends—thanks to her money and connections—to Eastern churches for her relics because she knows that here in the West we do not hack up saints’ bodies to give out ears and fingers and less mentionable parts to passing pilgrims. She has collected the most imposing charnel heap in Gaul. Really, when one sees what the Germans make of Christianity, one wonders was it worth converting them. Each trophy has a story, of course. St. Mamas’s finger flew off its metacarpus when her agent turned up in Jerusalem. Other relics transported themselves to her convent from a villa where she happened to have left them. God has obviously nothing better to do than to go round picking up after Radegunda! Smug—oh my God! That I should have have to deal … Here—pour me some more wine.
And
yourself. I shall believe you are insensitive if you don’t take the odd dose to blur the edges of
perception
! The sheer triviality of it—why did
you
enter the Church, Florius? Silly question. Ignore. What is it you’ve been trying to say to me?”

“You
did
grant the pilgrims your permission to go to the Emperor Justin and ask, in her name, for a fragment of the True Cross!”

“Oh, I did. I did. I granted my permission because,
before
she
’
d
even
asked
me
, her son-in-law and my temporal lord, King Sigibert, had already granted his. How could I refuse? But I will not turn up and applaud her having gone over my head and forced my hand. She doesn’t respect my authority so let her do without it.”

“But who will take your place?”

“Nobody will. The city gates will remain closed and the procession may proceed where it likes. Florius, don’t argue with me. I’m within my rights. This is my diocese, I believe? Yes. And, as you were so usefully reminding me a moment ago, several councils and synods have laid it down that “the government and direction of monasteries and their inmates are the responsibility of the bishops of the diocese in which the monasteries happen to be.” The words of the Council of Arles, I believe? Held in 554. Similar stipulations were made by the Councils of Agde and Epaone, if my memory does not deceive me. In case it does, I’d like you to look up the relevant canons. A letter will be going off to our friend Radegunda, to remind her of a boring little virtue called ‘obedience’ which is not one she cultivates with enthusiasm. I am not doing this from petty motives, Florius. The Church is an institution and it is my duty, as one of its officials, to see that it survives as such, which it won’t if individualism, meddlesomeness, German anarchy and childless women are allowed to sap it. That woman does whatever comes into her head and her head is as changeable as one of those horses’ craniums pagans stick on poles with their jaws wedged open. Crows pluck out their eyes, their flesh shrivels off the grin of their teeth and the wind whirls them, yet country people think they have powers. They think the same thing about Radegunda because she too whirls and rattles in a way that strikes the imagination. Her head’s half Romanized and the body’s German still. They repel each other: hence her restlessness, her crazes and fancies. The latest is this need to send off to Constantinople to get a bit of the True Cross, to change the name of the convent to Holy Cross and to get that tame poet of hers to write a hymn to it. It’s all very close to idolatry, Florius.
Dangerously
close. The German mind likes the concrete. If it isn’t a horse’s cranium it’s a bit of the True Cross set in a bejewelled gold triptych.”