Women in the Wall

by O'Faolain, Julia

  Clotair is laughing.

  “I am your god,” he whispers. “You were on your knees praying to me! You couldn’t help it, Radegunda! You are as proud as the boar in the forest but you can’t resist me any better than it can! I can feel your pleasure,” he says with lordly confidence. “I feel it as surely as my own.”

  “I do my conjugal duty.”

  “No, my pet, you do much more! Much, much more!” He caresses her and she lies rigid in the dark, hating her own response to his caress.

  Hating it still in memory, she is glad to remember what happened next.

  When he was asleep, she sat up very, very quietly, edged to the side of the bed and was stealing out of the room when he called:

  “Radegunda!”

  “My lord?”

  “What is it? Where are you going?”

  “I have to go outside a moment.”

  “Even the saints piss!” He laughed. “Even my nun-like wife! Ha!”

  A moment later he was snoring.

  The man lying across their door was asleep. Radegunda stepped over him and walked downstairs and out through the hall where more men and serving-girls were lying about, many of them in each other’s arms. She opened the outer door and the black wind struck her body like the blow of a club. She stepped outside, pulling the door behind her with difficulty. She removed her heavy fur coat under which she wore nothing. Then she rolled naked in the snow, moving quickly lest the skin freeze to the hard, frozen ground underneath and be torn from her body. When she could stand it no longer, she put on her fur coat and crept back into the palace and through the hall. She was stiff with pain and her body was shaking violently. She did not return to where Clotair was sleeping but let herself into a small room containing a wooden kneeler and a chest. Opening the chest, she took out a folded garment, shook it out and, again removing her fur cloak, put it on. It was made of haircloth. She knelt on the kneeler.

  But she was not alone for long. Her prayer was interrupted by a knock and a whisper from beyond the door.

  “Radegunda, it’s Chlodecharius.”

  “Come in.”

  A young man wearing woollen breeches and a fur tunic slipped quietly in, kissed her, then sat on the chest.

  “I saw you just now”, he whispered, “trying to freeze the memory of his touch from your skin. You still hate him.”

  “He is my husband. I owe him obedience.”

  “You owe him a short sword between the ribs. Or a poisoned stirrup-cup. Who chose him for your husband? Not you. Not your family.” The young man’s face was pale. His eyes were flecked like a trout’s belly. His hands twitched as he talked and there was a tic in his cheek. “The bloody murderer,” he whispered. Trembling and trying not to, he gripped the edges of the chest and his knuckles went white as ivory dice.

  “God will judge his murders,” whispered Radegunda. She shivered.

  “You’ll get a fever from these nightly outings of yours! That’ll be another murder God will have to judge.”

  “He treats me well.”

  “Well! I’ve seen the marks of a whip on your back. It was striped like a slave’s just now when you were out there! My sister’s! And I …” The young man trembled furiously.

  “I whipped myself.”

  “You must think I’m a moron if you think I’ll believe …”

  Radegunda took a discipline from behind the kneeler and lashed herself with it on the back. Peeling down the haircloth dress, she showed the mark. The young man groaned.

  “Why?”

  “To subdue my flesh.”

  Chlodecharius laughed without amusement. “A nun! They all say it! Washing beggars’ feet. Distributing alms, praying all night—and now this! Ha!” His sour laugh swelled cautiously. He didn’t want to be overheard. He whispered in a voice gasping with emotion, coughed, tried to stifle his cough and was shaken by dry, soundless, probably painful convulsions. It was clear that his own weakness maddened him. “You,” he managed at last, “you commit ad-adultery with Ch-Christ! You deceive your earthly husband with a heavenly one. The king with God! Nice, I suppose, the perfect slap to his pride—but, well, that’s no solution for me!”

  “You?”

  “He is going to have me killed.” Chlodecharius slipped off the coffer and began to walk silently about. His breath came in nervous gasps. “On the sly. An accident? A brawl? A highwayman? Poison? What do I know? I’ve been tipped off. I talk too much, it seems. My anger irks him. My silence too. I lurk. I look morose. My humiliation gives him no pleasure but some anxiety and Clotair doesn’t suffer any irk at all for long. I suppose he suffered as he did because you please him. He likes to violate your white, unwilling flesh. It must be a novel enough sensation to sleep with a would-be nun: cuckolding the creator as it were. It’s kept you in favour and me alive for fourteen years. Perhaps it’s losing its novelty? Anyway I’ve been tipped the wink. The thing is: where do I go? To Constantinople to join Hamalafred? It’s a longish journey in mid winter with the roads under ells of mud. But the danger is urgent. Also, there’s another matter …”

  “Chlodecharius! You wouldn’t leave me?”

  “It may be a matter of method, sister: whether I go feet first or with them firmly under me. From what I’ve been told I’d be unwise to delay. We both know Clotair. Not just a killer in war but—well, though there’s no need to go back so far, remember how he butchered his infant nephews!”

  “Take refuge in a church or with his brother. There’s no love between them.”

  “Radegunda, help me kill him.”

  Radegunda made the sign of the cross. “Chlodecharius, you’re a Christian!”

  “So’s Clotair. It’s never stopped him, has it? It won’t stop him killing me! Radegunda, you’re the last of my family. You’re my only ally here. Give me your fur cloak. With it on—we look enough alike—I can slip into his bedroom and avenge our family! Put an end to your martyrdom. Even,” he was leaning over her, gripping her shoulder, hissing with excitement, “even if they kill us both afterwards, Radegunda, we will die with honour!”

  “Honour!”

  “Listen, we needn’t die at all.” His breath was beery on her face. His eyes flickered like fish. Suddenly rigid, he listened for a sound at the door. Nothing there? “Radegunda!” tightening his grip on her shoulder-bone, “we can saddle horses and escape to the court of Metz or Paris or Brittany. The three of us.”

  “Three?”

  “Agnes …”

  “Agnes?” Radegunda’s voice rose imprudently. “Little Agnes—you’ve been …”

  “No! I’m in—I want to marry her. She wants it too.”

  “She’s only … Agnes is only eleven! How could you? A child!”

  “Almost twelve: the canonical age for matrimony. We could get married now. An understanding priest …” The flickering eye. He was irresolute. She daren’t trust him. Soft lower lip and besides … No.

  Radegunda stood, gripping the arm-rest of the kneeler with fingers fierce as claws. “You’d take Agnes from me! You’d sully her flesh. Make her … into a … female! Chlodecharius, Agnes is my pupil. I was teaching her noble things. How to live alone! I spend hours with her every day, I trusted her and all the time you were insinuating yourself, worming in. How come she never spoke to me of you? Why was she ashamed?”

  Chlodecharius let go her shoulder, stepped away. “There’s nothing wrong with loving, Radegunda. Or being shy about it. You chose Agnes because you were lonely, because she is innocent, gay … We are brother and sister. Is it so odd we should have the same tastes?”

  “Taste!” Radegunda spat the word with contempt and a spray of spittle as though cleaning her mouth after it.

  “In friendship …”

  “Friendship, Chlodecharius! Do you truly mean ‘friendship’? ‘Amicitia’? How come then that she is ashamed of yours and hides it from me. You’ve aroused her senses, haven’t you? You’ve made her ashamed? How far have you gone? Tell me.”

  The young m
an’s face was lean and pointed: a hound’s face. Now its pallor was unevenly suffused with pink. He stared angrily at his sister: “Radegunda, are you making a jealousy scene?”

  “Jealousy?”

  “What else?” He walked to the window, pulled back a shutter and peered out. “Dawn. I told you my life is in danger. There’s something going on in Thuringia. I’ve been waiting for news. But the roads are impassable. Maybe next spring—unless Clotair has intercepted a message? Listen, the matter of Agnes is unimportant. I wish to God I’d never mentioned … look, she’s just a child I’m fond of.” Chlodecharius spun round and hissed bitterly in his sister’s ear, “Don’t you suppose I get lonely in this court? I am kept under surveillance, spied on, expected to be in sight. Absence is interpreted to mean plotting, silence to mean bitterness. I must be seen to enjoy myself, to laugh, hunt, chase women …”

  “So you choose my pupil, a girl whose spirit I have been trying to protect …”

  “You are ungenerous, Radegunda! Maybe that was why I liked her. After all you brought me up too, remember? You infused a little of your sadness into us both. We console it in each other. You don’t ask what I meant about Thuringia. Now that something’s finally moving, after all these years, don’t you care? There may be a war!” Snapping his fingers in front of her eyes. “Radegunda! Are you listening?”

  “Listening! Your mind stinks, Chlodecharius. I may have brought you up but you have escaped me! It stinks of sex and death: the double curse God inflicted on man when he threw him out of Eden. Fallen Man is subject to death and so must reproduce himself by sexual means. That is the meaning of the serpent that grows out of man’s loins and plunges itself into women: rot, Chlodecharius, puncturing, blood, pain! Our family is sensual, Chlodecharius! We must restrain our nature!” She licked the lathering anger on her lips.

  Chlodecharius shrugged. “Is it life or death you hate? Are you reproaching me with wanting to kill Clotair or marry Agnes? Which?”

  She turned away, sank back to the kneeler, let her face fall into her hands. “Both,” she whispered. “I want Agnes to be pure as I can never be again. Ever.”

  Chlodecharius’s voice came from behind her back, cold now and very steady: “What about me, Radegunda?”

  She raised and turned her head. He was trembling and his mouth was set in a mean, sour line. Hating her. Poor Chlodecharius! Twenty-four years old and nothing to be proud of. Weak in a place where weakness was shame. She loved him but her love was like lava inside a volcano. It did not easily emerge. “You must”, she said, “be patient. Listen, I will intercede with Clotair for you. If I ask him a direct favour he will never deny me. I will do this when he wakes tomorrow!”

  Her brother walked back to the shutter. “It’s tomorrow now,” he said. “No use arguing then: you ask the favour on your knees and I get a reprieve—for the moment. His humour changes with the wind and we are at its mercy. We are like leaves stripped from a tree. We have no root, no place, no nourishing sap. Exiles. Is there any difference between us and slaves? I will talk to you of this again. Meanwhile be thinking. Think what it would mean if we could get away and reach Constantinople. To Hamalafred and Amalaberg!”

  Radegunda walked over to him. She ran a finger down the hollow of his cheek. It was as much of a gesture of affection as she could manage. “We would be exiles still, Chlodecharius!”

  “How can you say that?” The young man was congested. “Hamalafred”, he urged, “has made himself a position there. He has received titles from the Emperor. We would have a family there! Blood-ties, affection, security! My God, Radegunda, what else makes life worth living? Land, Radegunda, is not what makes a home! It’s kin, kin to defend you and back you up! Kin, Radegunda, kin! Blood-kin. If someone maims me or kills me to whom is compensation due? To my next-of-kin. And if I have none to demand it, am I not the most vulnerable man alive? Am I not weaker than a slave since a slave’s master will defend him? In his own interests! That’s what exile means, Radegunda. We’re dependent on Clotair’s whim! But in Constantinople …” His pale, mackerel-flecked eyes were sensuous with longing. “Constantinople,” he whispered urgently, “Radegunda … think!”

  She shook her head. “Life is a place of exile.”

  Suffocating with his need to convince, with his need for his own herd, his frustration at her stubbornness, he shook her: “Life”, he whispered, for caution was bred into his very passions, “is life and to deny it the refuge of slaves and frightened women! Can you be sure that this”, he plucked at the haircloth shift she was wearing, “and that”, kicking at the wooden kneeler, knocking the discipline to the floor, “are not covering up a weakening of the bowels? Cowardice?”

  “I hope I would not fear to die for my faith. Many have!”

  He sighed, dropped his hands. “You’d die all right—but would you live? Your faith is not in life. You have closed it off! You have closed me off!”

  “Chlodecharius, I pray for you every day!”

  He shrugged. “That I may have a Christian death, I suppose? You grudge me Agnes. You say my mind stinks. Oh you have Christian, dutiful feelings for me—I suppose they’re worth the ones you have for Clotair!”

  Radegunda’s teeth were chattering. Fever or perhaps cold had seized her body. “I know when someone is trying to manipulate me, brother. I am not your toy or tool. As you said: dawn is here. Let us say good-night. I shall do what I promised.” She kissed the young man on the cheek, gripped his arm and said: “Sleep well. Try to pray for the gift of peace.”

  Removing the hair-cloth shift, she pulled on her fur coat, left the room, crossed the hall and again slid into Clotair’s bed. In his sleep, the king reached for her, groaned as his hand came in contact with icy skin, then, dreaming perhaps that he had come to the bed of an ice-maiden or one of those accursed princesses forced to wear scaly fish-tails, rolled his hot, confident, hairy body on top of hers. Radegunda, remembering that she had a favour to ask of him in the morning, allowed him to probe for the magma inside her frozen flesh. Again her cries were muffled in the bed-furs which were made from the skins of red foxes whose relatives were probably hunting at this moment in the snowy landscape outside.

  Afterwards they slept or rather Clotair did while Radegunda woke and dreamed in an ebb and flow so coherent that she could not tell which bits were dreams and which not. She dreamed she was embracing Chlodecharius, hotly kissing him, weeping, begging his forgiveness for her harshness of a while before. Again she held him in her arms as the four-year-old baby she had held on her lap in the wooden wain which brought them, swaying and jolting over the old Roman roads, into Gaul. It was so easy to talk to a child. She marvelled at her ease and at his crows of pleasure. She was telling him the story of the little princess in the swan’s-down coat who flew away over the frozen marshes which the wain was crossing, back across silver lakes and sighing reeds to Thuringia. Then she was telling Agnes the same story, little Agnes, a Gallo-Roman girl whose father had died in Clotair’s service and whom Clotair had given her to bring up. Wind shook the bones of the place. Branches skittered against its planks. Clotair moved towards her again and she awoke and pushed him from her, dozed and found herself caught in the middle of a hot embrace between Chlodecharius now grown distastefully to manhood and the childish Agnes. She pushed them violently apart; her hand landed in something clammy. Then she was really awake and Agnes was beside and then on top of her, shaking her and shrieking: “He is dead, Radegunda, they killed him! Wake up! He crawled into my bed to die, to die, Radegunda! Oh God, oh God! I put my arms around him like this, Radegunda, like this and I felt … Jesus, Mary, help me! I shall die …”

  Agnes’s arms were around Radegunda’s neck. She was lying on her and there was a thick clamminess between their breasts. The child’s weight pinned the fur cover down across the queen’s thighs. Agnes wailed. Clotair leaped from sleep, reared in the bed and yelled a war-cry. Henchmen rushed in the door and all was pandemonium.

  When the screams had subside
d and a shutter had been thrown open to let in the daylight, Agnes was found to be soaking in blood. At first they thought she was wounded and it was only when a wail raised in another part of the palace told them that Chlodecharius had been found in Agnes’s bed with a knife in his back that they understood what had happened. A bloody track led from Agnes’s bed to the little room where Radegunda’s kneeler and coffer were kept.

  “How did it happen?”

  “Who?”

  “Why?”

  Radegunda did not join in the panic. She held Agnes, letting the child pant out a story which she recognized almost before it was told.

  “I woke up, Radegunda, and there he was stumbling towards my bed. Chlodecharius! He had never come before but still I wasn’t surprised, because … He let out a sort of sigh. And fell down beside me. ‘Agnes!’ he said. Like that. I thought it was a game. I put my arms around him and felt the … the knife-handle. And the blood. Radegunda! I didn’t understand. Even then, I didn’t. I tried to shake him. To get him to say what was the matter. And why he wouldn’t say anything. I tried to tease him, to tickle him even, oh Radegunda, I …”

  The child fell silent. Her stomach pumped in and out and small pants were strangled in her throat. The henchmen’s exclamations were checked. Eyes slid quick glances at Clotair. Radegunda stared straight at him. He frowned. His eye dodged hers and he began to shout that this should be looked into, punished, given immediate attention, priority. The culprit would be caught. His glance winged around the room, dipping to avoid Radegunda’s. He gave orders for the moat to be examined and the palisade. Signs of strangers’ passage were to be reported. At once. His own men must be made to account for how they had spent the night. Nobody was exempt. Nobody. Let the knife be brought to him. Someone might recognize it. The clatter of his talk was like the sounds boys make with clappers to scare crows from crops. His glance sliced air like a slanty knife.