“The trouble with Frankish laws”, he had tried to explain, “is that they have no unifying spirit at all, no concept of equity. They’re like a housewife’s repair kit: so many patches for applying here and there to stop the more obvious holes, to keep disorder in check. But they have no guiding principles, not even a concept of honour. Look at the laws protecting women. If I violate a girl, the Frankish laws don’t consider I have offended honour. They consider I have offended against property because she belonged to someone and whoever it is, guardian, betrothed or husband, will want monetary compensation according to her worth. If she is an embroidress or of child-bearing age, I pay more. If I only picked up her dress and uncovered her, I pay less. A little more if I uncovered her backside than if I only looked at her thigh and less again for the knee. But a Roman would have either killed me or closed his eyes to the matter. The offence is absolute. Honour is not measured in inches of leg.”
Clovis’s interest had noticeably sharpened with the mention of backsides and legs. “I think our laws are more humane,” he said. “Fancy killing a man for violating a girl, who maybe liked it.”
“Well that has fallen into disuse,” Fortunatus admitted.
“The Church’s laws are like ours,” Clovis had argued. “Sins are graded, aren’t they, by the amount of flesh one makes free with?” His hand stroked fat air.
No power to conceptualize! A Frank. Still, the boy was bright enough. Fortunatus had a feeling he didn’t believe in much—which was what came of keeping him inactive and making him think. Bad? Good? Better than making him a bigot probably. And how inactive was he in fact? There had been a trace, a smear of femininity about the cottage sometimes when Fortunatus came. Something impossible to pin down: a bunch of wild flowers in a cup, some oaten or spelt bread which had not come from the convent kitchens, an air of tidiness, something.
“I want to see my sister,” Clovis had said recently. “If the plot is ever coming off it’ll be soon, from what you tell me. I should see her before I leave here. After all, I might be killed.”
“All the more likely if you let people know you’re alive.”
“Five years you’ve had me boxed up here like a monk,” the boy complained. “How much longer?”
“Do you know how Gundovald died?”
“Do you know how often you’ve told me?”
“I thought you might have forgotten.”
“I’m not a coward. I’d rather die than live another year—another half year in this place.”
“It’ll be soon now,” Fortunatus had promised. It had better be. The boy was impatient. Radegunda was impatient. Chrodechilde was, in her own way and for her own reasons, a danger. She had come to him again, complaining about her mistreatment at Agnes’s hands. She had been half hysterical, threatening to run off and enlist the help of the kings—“my royal uncles”, as she called them. They were unlikely to take any notice of her but he couldn’t take a chance on this. It was no time for a royal inspection. He had managed to calm her, promising—he had no idea what. She was twenty-one years old or thereabouts, a lusty, violent creature at the top of her energies. The whole convent was a tinder-box. The long, over-long gestation of this plot must come to some sort of outcome fast. There was Ingunda too … What a time that rider was taking. The road wound back and forth below the town and they had sighted him when he was only a blob of dust, but still … Impatiently, Fortunatus stood up and began to walk in the direction from which the man must come.
The rider, masked in surrounding clouds of dust like some descending Olympian, almost ran him down.
“Fortunatus! The man I’m looking for. Have you had the news? What are you doing on the road?”
The rider was Palladius himself.
“I haven’t,” said Fortunatus, “but I can see it’s bad.”
“God save us, but it’s bad!” The bishop looked right and left, back then forth again. The country was flat and open. “Everything’s over,” he said in an exhausted voice. “Disaster! God, but I’m tired. I can hardly breath. And saddle-sore. This dust.” He began to cough. “I came alone,” he managed to say between coughing and spitting and wiping his chapped mouth. “Mad! I might have been killed twenty times on those roads, but …”
“Don’t try to talk,” Fortunatus told him. “We’ll get you a drink at the convent. We’ve got to go there. Radegunda saw you arrive.” He wondered whether to warn Palladius about her but decided not to. He would see for himself. She might be cooled by the look of him. The bishop looked wild-eyed. His face was streaked with filth and his horse probably not long for this world. A shawl of froth covered its withers and blood streamed from its mouth. Fortunatus led it slowly towards the convent gate. “Are we in danger?” he dared to ask. “The prince I mean?”
“No. I don’t know.” Palladius coughed again, swallowed with difficulty and leaned forward over the horse’s neck to whisper, “Rauching was taken: butchered. But he had no time to talk. Someone talked but we think whoever it was knew only about the nobles—the laymen—not about us. He knew, whoever it was, that King Childebert was to be murdered by Rauching and tipped the king off. When Rauching came for an audience, he found Childebert surrounded by a bodyguard. The audience went off quickly. Neither Rauching nor the king said anything of note. We know this from a man of ours who was there. Then, when Rauching walked out the door, he was tripped up, swordsmen leaped on him and hacked his head into a smear of brains. ‘Like spilled porridge,’ said our spy.” The bishop’s whisper was hoarse but level. He showed no feeling. Weariness, sustained shock and perhaps sheer repetition had taken the nerve out of his voice. “The body”, he went on, “was stripped and thrown out of the window. The king’s venom saved us. His anger. He should have had Rauching tortured and tried to get names out of him. Instead, he had him butchered on the spot. Our allies, Ursio and Berthefred, who were to have moved in with troops and taken over the palace, were warned in time and managed to flee. They’ve withdrawn to the town of Woevre. Meanwhile King Childebert has gone to Andelot to strengthen his alliance with his uncle, King Guntram. There’s going to be a purge among the dissident nobles. With any luck, our connection—the Church’s—won’t even be known. But your prince had better be kept out of sight. What was your message about ‘weak security’ for? What’s been happening here?”
“Nothing. Nothing that matters now,” Fortunatus told him. “Don’t mention the murders to Radegunda. She couldn’t take that.”
“The news”, Palladius told him, “is common knowledge along the trade routes by now. It wasn’t my intention, I assure you, to have so much blood. The thing got out of hand. Once Rauching was brought in…” He broke off again to cough. “The dust,” he coughed.
“Leave your horse here,” Fortunatus told him. “We’ll get you a drink.”
*
Radegunda and Palladius faced each other: two white figures. Hers was the vertical whiteness of her habit which fell in flat folds from her shoulders. The bishop was white from road-dust which clung like a fungus to his surfaces, buried his eyebrows, disappeared in the chapped pallor of his lips. He had told her his story—less than he told Fortunatus but enough, it was clear, to shock her into realizing that the endeavour to which she had lent herself was not only defeated but had been impure from the start.
The bishop sighed, groped for a bench, remembered he had not been invited to take one and straightened up. A moment later he was sagging again. His hands foundered. “Unity”, he said wearily, “is the bloodiest word in the lexicon. One makes … concessions to it. It becomes … the main end. And then, nothing cements like blood. Literally speaking. Masons tell you that. When one starts making … concessions, the extremists take over. I tried to hold out, …” His hand fell in discouragement. “You ask why we chose Rauching. We didn’t. We all said we would not have him and then, somehow, I don’t know … it became accepted that there was dirty work to do … someone dirty needed to do it. Rauching …”
Radegunda held herself
as stiff as a stake. Her nose menaced the bishop like a knife-blade badly sheathed in its aged and thinning skin.
“Bishop Palladius!” She summoned and quelled his glance. “You deceived me and are now attempting to deceive yourself. You talked to me of the City of God. Now you talk of having dirty work to do.”
His hands flew, froze.
“No!” She quashed their implications. “Things are and must be clear. They must be right or wrong. I blame myself. I should have known when Bishop Bertram asked us to violate our cloister that sin leads to more sin. You have been so busy brewing and stewing in the hope of distilling good from evil that you no longer know one from another. I can see that. You and your fellow-bishops are now the devil’s workers.”
The bishop let his hands fall. He opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged and drooped. He had been through bad days and nights and expected to go through some more. His horse was perhaps dead. Only a fraction of his attention was alert. “It is more complex,” he pleaded.
“Complexity,” she told him, “is of the devil.”
Palladius coughed. “You lack charity, Mother. You are not humane.” He coughed again, so that tears came to his eyes, fell on his dusty chest and rolled down carrying the dust with them and making lines like long black cuts. He had not been given the drink which Fortunatus had promised. “Perhaps”, he said, “I had better take my leave.”
Radegunda closed her eyes. Palladius started to go.
“I’ll come with you, Bishop Palladius,” Fortunatus offered.
“No!” she stopped him. “I need you!” She looked impatient. “Send the steward with the bishop.” With an obvious effort she turned her attention back to Palladius. “Extremism was not your mistake,” she told him. “Impurity was, and that comes from worldliness. You should have purified yourself in the furnace of terror and solitude. But you wanted the support of a crowd, a … crowd of Rauchings. Where was your faith? With faith you would not have used human methods. You would not have become—as you have, my lord bishop—indistinguishable from your enemies. It was because your methods were human that this all took so long, so long!” Her voice rose. “Where was the fountain of strength which explodes in a man’s soul when God has touched him with his grace? If we’d had that, we would have moved long ago, sped by the winds of holy impetuosity. Even now …” Her voice lightened. “If you could rely on God’s strength, we, the faithful among us,” she was cajoling, coaxing, almost smiling at the astonished Palladius, “by ourselves,” she begged, “we might act. If God gives us a sign. Shall we ask for one? Fortunatus!” She pointed to a chest on which lay a gold box. “Take out the Epistles. We shall give God a chance to speak to us. We shall consult the auguries. Bishop Palladius,” she cried to him, “will you consent to consult Holy Writ? To be led by it? Will you?” She was suddenly mobile, alert, almost quivering and the opalescent transparencies of her aging face—blue-veined, green-bruised, flecked with brown and chillblained with pink—were suffused by a girlish flush. Radegunda was aflame again with hope and urgency. “You must open it, since it is you,” she told the bishop, “who have need of reassurance.”
Her excitement crackled in the air after she had stopped speaking. The two men were very quiet, hunched into themselves as though waiting for thunder. Fortunatus held out the Epistles. Palladius half shrugged, then spoke in a quick, cautious voice:
“You want me to do this?”
“I do. I do.”
“Well…” He opened the book Fortunatus was holding “1 Thessalonians,” he read in a speedy, reluctant tone. “Chapter five, verse three,” he gabbled, “… they shall say Peace and Safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” Then, as though the meaning of what he had read had just caught his attention, he repeated it: “and they shall not escape.” His mouth slipped sideways and he released a sound which might have been on its way towards laughter. “. .not escape,” he said again.
Radegunda walked over, read the verse herself and turned away. After a moment she turned back: “Forgive my keeping you, Bishop Palladius. I realize you must be tired.” She nodded his dismissal.
The bishop left.
“Fortunatus!”
“Mother Radegunda?”
“The bishop’s comfort”, she told him, as though answering some protest, “is not important. Neither is mine nor yours. Small things must be sacrificed to greater. Bring the prince.”
“Here?”
“Yes. We must not be fussy about breaking a small rule now. We—through those associated with us—have broken big ones. The blood of the wretched Rauching and of who knows how many others will be on our consciences. All right,” she made an impatient gesture, “dress him in something—anything. Women’s clothes, a priest’s, whatever you can so as not to give scandal. But bring him.”
She turned from him, stiff as a board, upright as the leg of the great crucifix in the convent garden, moved two paces from him and collapsed. Fortunatus ran to her and raised her head. Her mouth was edged with froth, her eyes emptily dark like the holes sparks burn in cloth. “Go,” she told him. “Justina will look after me.”
He went. On the stairs he met Agnes. “Keep the nuns away,” he told her and explained quickly why.
“It’s their recreation time.”
“Well, change it. Keep them on the other side of the building for the next hour.”
He rushed off.
Left alone with Justina, Radegunda agreed to lie down but would not be silent. “It’s all my fault,” she groaned.
Justina protested.
“It is,” Radegunda insisted. “You don’t understand. The bishops’ was the temporal part. Mine was the spiritual. They were to plot and I was to pray. I should have swayed God, I should have charged the act with nobility and had faith for all. If there has been a murder it is because my prayers were not insistent. We are part of the same net. Pull here and it twitches there. Weaken here and the weakness spreads like rot. It’s my fault. Christendom”, said Radegunda, “is one.”
Justina brought her some water. “You can’t carry the world,” she said.
Radegunda drank and closed her eyes. “I can,” she said. “If I believe I can, I can.”
Justina went to the small cell window and looked out. The sun was going down and she could hear Agnes calling the nuns in another part of the convent. A bell was slowly ringing. She watched the light ripen from blonde to rose as the sun slipped the last fraction of its way towards the horizon. Swallows were flying around the tower. Or were they bats? The light was behind them and she couldn’t tell. Back and forth they swooped like lacemakers’ pegs, down and up, leaving black after-images on the pale, perforated sky.
A voice, quieter now, came from the bed. “Bishop Palladius”, said Radegunda with assurance, “misunderstood the text. ‘For when they say Peace and Safety,’ she quoted, ‘sudden destruction shall come upon them.’ He thought this upheld his decision to abandon our plan. But it means the opposite. Exactly the opposite! We should not have said ‘Peace and Safety’! We should have said ‘Suffer and seek the impossible’ for the gate is strait and Christ brought not peace but the sword. It was a sign”, she said calmly, “and he misread it. We should persist, you see, don’t you, Justina, don’t you see that?”
“Try to rest.”
“But you see, don’t you, that we should persevere?”
“Yes,” said Justina. She could see Fortunatus and the prince approaching. They were walking across the vineyards below the convent garden and the prince—she supposed it must be he although she had never seen him—was dressed as a cleric. Fortunatus was speaking, making gestures and the two were moving fast. When they came closer, they moved out of her view but a minute or so later emerged into it again as they crossed the convent garden beneath the tower-window. She could hear their voices now although she could not distinguish their words. Suddenly, as they passed a thick clump of bushes, two nuns skipped out from behind it as
though to head them off. Their backs were to her.
“Father Fortunatus!” a high voice challenged. Justina recognized the abrasive tone as Chrodechilde’s. “I have a complaint,” it shrilled. “You must listen this time! Our rights are not being respected here. The Rule is not respected. Our recreation just now …” Justina strained her ears but Chrodechilde had lowered her tone and she could make out no more.
Justina glanced at the bed. Radegunda’s eyes were closed. Taking a stool, Justina stepped up on it and managed to crane her neck out the small window. She saw Fortunatus push Chrodechilde quite roughly out of his way and draw the prince quickly past her. “The Foundress”, she heard him say, “is ill, possibly dying and we are bringing her spiritual succour. This is no time for trouble-making.”
But while he was addressing himself to Chrodechilde, the other nun—it was, Justina saw now, Basina—had approached the prince. “Holy St. Hilary,” thought Justina. “He’s her brother! She’ll know him!” The two were in fact staring intently at each other. The prince put his hand on Basina’s arm and must have asked her something, for Justina saw her open her mouth to reply. Abruptly, Fortunatus wrenched the young man’s hand away and propelled him ahead of himself towards the door of the tower.
“Father Marius!” Fortunatus called loudly after him, “Hurry ahead and tell our Holy Mother I am coming.” He turned to the two nuns. “Go and join your companions at once! Tell them our Holy Foundress is dying and to start singing psalms and praying for a happy release of her soul.” His voice was peremptory. “Go!” he let out a roar. “At once!”
Women in the Wall Page 28
