Women in the Wall

by O'Faolain, Julia

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What about the others?” he challenged her. “Will they follow?”

  Again her chin jerked waywardly up with the movement of a restive mare’s. “Do the limbs”, she asked, “refuse to follow when the head commands?” Without a further look at her companions, she put a foot into the cupped hands of one of Childeric’s men and swung herself up behind the duke.

  *

  “You thought the king was in Avignon!” Childeric had been drinking heavily through and since dinner. His thick diction and tangled thinking astounded the nuns who, having almost all entered the convent at the age of seven, had no experience of drunkenness. “Avignon!” he repeated and laughed stupidly. “So that’s what they told you in Tours! What ignorant people! Avignon! Ha!” He drank some more wine and the nuns stared anxiously at his wife. But she too was drinking and seemed unconcerned. Her eyes were swimmy and she had a pleased, lazy smile on her face.

  Childeric belched contentedly. “Andelot is where the kings are,” he said. “Both of them. Not Avignon! Andelot! It’s the other side of Gaul. This is the south-west and Andelot is in the north-east, see?” He made laborious marks on the table with his knife. “See what I mean?” He pulled at Chrodechilde’s sleeve and gushed a blast of breath heavy with wine, garlic and coriander into her face. “The kings”, he told her, “went there on very important business. They discovered a plot to oust them and they are meeting to sign a pact at Andelot. Yes,” Childeric screwed his face up portentously and nodded it at Chrodechilde, “it’s in the north! Beyond Dijon. Beyond Langres. It’s in Austrasia. You’d never get there. There are mountains between here and there, forests, wolves, brigands, bears—and bishops.” Childeric began to laugh. “Bishops are the worst of all, aren’t they, little nunlets? Don’t they make your holy hair stand on end, eh?”

  “Did you say there was a plot?” Chrodechilde asked.

  But Childeric had begun to sing an interminable Frankish song and took no notice of her. His wife had fallen sideways in her chair. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open and she was beginning to snore.

  *

  The next day, however, the duke was sober.

  “Tell me about your convent,” he asked Basina and Chrodechilde. “It’s rich, isn’t it? Radegunda was very rich. She got a lot of gifts I’m sure? Eh? Gold ornaments? Embroidered cloths? Jewelled chalices?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s probably the richest convent in Gaul?”

  “Yes,” said Chrodechilde. “I think so.”

  “Hm!” said Childeric.

  *

  “Some of the others”, Basina told Chrodechilde, “are likely to slip into sin if we don’t leave here. At night the men …” She lowered her voice and whispered. “The sin”, she told her cousin, “will be on your soul.”

  “Mine? Why on mine? Why not on their own?”

  “Can anyone blame a limb for acting as the head commands?”

  “Oh, you’re angry because I said that. But you know I didn’t mean I commanded you! You know I think of you as my twin, my second self!”

  “A two-headed body can hardly be well regulated. I’ll not divide the guilt with you,” Basina retorted. She stared angrily at her cousin. “I rue the day …” she began.

  “Sweetheart,” coaxed Chrodechilde, “I know things will come right in the end. I have a secret weapon, a relic. Look.” She lifted her outer tunic, opened her bodice and produced a small bag from between her breasts. It was tied with a string which she quickly unknotted. She emptied the bag into her palm.”

  Basina screamed. “God’s blood! Where did you get that?”

  “It’s Radegunda’s! I took it just before the bier left the convent. Nobody knows. The body was covered with bayleaves and herbs so nobody noticed what I’d done. It’s the most powerful relic. I cut it off with a sharp knife from the kitchen while Fortunatus was out of the room and I was alone with the bier.” Chrodechilde held up the sawed-off finger which was already darkening and had begun to dry out. She pressed it to her lips as Basina winced. “It’s her right index finger,” she whispered. “It’ll bring me her power.”

  *

  “When you get back,” Childeric the Saxon told the nuns, “it will be thought that you are all whores.”

  The nuns, whom he had summoned, saying he had important news for them, were sitting in a row along his trestle table. Their hands were folded in front of them just as they had been used to folding them when listening to Radegunda or the abbess. Most of them were looking down. Childeric’s wife was sitting beside him on the other side of the table. She kept casting quick glances at her husband then at the nuns or carrying a goblet to her mouth and holding it there as though to mask it.

  “Tonight”, Childeric said, “will be your third night under my roof. Now I, as my wife will tell you, have a very bad reputation throughout Gaul. My men are known to be scum: drunken, lecherous devil’s spawn. Did you know that the devil’s semen is said to be cold? I don’t know whether these fellows’ is. Maybe some of you could tell me?”

  He gazed about with a great show of keenness. A nun blushed. Chrodechilde glared furiously at her.

  “I”, said Childeric, “don’t care what you’ve been up to. What I’m telling you is that you’ll be taken for whores and bawds even if you’re pure as the driven snow. Seeming, in these matters, is as bad as being. You might get the death penalty.”

  The nuns’ eyes, which had been downcast, jumped to scrutinize his. He nodded at them. “Oh, indeed. Adultery and playing the harlot are punishable by death in almost all the law codes. Burgundians smother the adulterous woman in mire. Any Burgundians among you? No. Well, the Franks have similar provisions, I’m sure. I realize that you holy ladies come under Church jurisdiction and I’m not too well versed in Church law. I would imagine though that a nun who cuckolds her Divine Spouse is much the same as an adulteress. That’s how I would expect churchmen to reason. But you needn’t take my word for it. You’ll have a chance to find out for yourselves before long. You disobeyed three bishops, did you say?”

  Several nuns were now loudly sobbing. Childeric waited to let his words take effect, then leaned forward.

  “I might be able to help you,” he said and paused again. “Your case is desperate and desperate cases call for desperate remedies.” Another pause, then he began to speak with urgency. “My proposal”, he told them, “is this. Let me and my fellows come back to your convent with you, capture the abbess and her advisers and force them, at sword’s point if necessary, to agree to whatever it is you want. I don’t pretend to make head or tail of your woes.” He was addressing himself now to Chrodechilde. “But we can get her to sign anything you want. Better still, if, as you say, the abbess has a paramour concealed in the convent, we can get the other nuns to tell us what they know. Then she will be completely in your power. You can force her to intercede for you with the bishops, force her even to give you her place if that is what you want.”

  The nuns were moaning like a funeral chorus. Chrodechilde jumped to her feet.

  “Stop that!” she shouted to her nuns. “Why”, she asked Childeric, “would you do this for us?”

  He shrugged, grinned. “Sport,” he suggested. “You could call it ‘sport’! And the convent is rich. Maybe when you’re abbess you will reward me? Maybe your royal relatives will? Or—I could pay myself!”

  “No!” said Chrodechilde.

  “Are you mad?” Basina had leaped from her bench and thrown herself like a wild cat on her cousin. Nails flailing, eyes stark, she lunged. Her fists closed on Chrodechilde’s shoulders. “Has the devil taken your wit?” she screamed. “This is our one chance. Our last. You said yourself we have no hope of reaching the kings. Neither can we stay here without disgrace. You heard what he said, didn’t you?” She turned to Childeric. “It’s ‘yes’,” she told him. “Our answer is ‘yes’. They all agree.” She pointed at the other nuns. “Yes, yes and yes! Don’t you?” she harangued the dejected w
omen.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s our only hope.”

  “May the saints defend us!”

  “He’ll tear the place apart!” Chrodechilde shouted. “He’s a pirate, a cut-throat. He says it himself. You fool!” she slapped Basina’s face and gave her a push which sent her down on her back. “We’ll be in far worse trouble if we take up with him!” she screamed. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you?” she challenged the nuns. But they were hunched into themselves, too depressed to take any position on anything; timid and accustomed to being directed, they were waiting for someone to take control of their destinies this time too. Suddenly, Basina was on her feet again.

  “You got us into this trouble,” she yelled at Chrodechilde. “You’ve got to let him help us now!”

  Cautiously, she dodged away from her cousin, keeping the trestle table between them.

  “Have you any other plan?” challenged Basina. “Have you?” She kept circling away from her cousin, bent in her direction, challenging her with her words and stare but afraid to come too close. “Well?” she cried. “Have you.”

  “No,” Chrodechilde admitted wearily. “I have no more plans.”

  *

  A fine rain fell, darkening and cooling the air. The procession of riders moved briskly along the road between Bordeaux and Poitiers. The horse in front of Chrodechilde raised its tail, paused and dropped a shower of golden manure. Hot air billowed from his hindquarters and a sweetish, grassy smell reached her nostrils. Gold. A good omen. She was determined to take all omens henceforth as good. Even Basina’s revolt—silly, tremulous Basina, who had never dared oppose her cousin before in anything—even that must be a nod from Fate, a kind of humorous wink meant to remind Chrodechilde that help could come from the oddest quarters. She had scrupled to accept it from Childeric. Basina, the weakest of mousy cowards, had managed to force her into accepting it. All right then. That was a sign, a sign that Chrodechilde was meant, by hook or crook, to be abbess.

  A small hard object pressed and pained her inner arm when she tightened her grasp on the reins: Radegunda’s finger which she had inserted into a slit in the flesh just above her elbow. She had cut a deep flesh wound, buried the finger in it and, closing the lips of the wound, strapped a swathe of linen round her arm to hold it until it should heal. It would bring her force. Like it or not, some of the dead saint’s power and virtue was now imprisoned in Chrodechilde’s body. She was determined to use it well. She would manage somehow to restrain Childeric and his men. She had no doubts about their intention which must be to rob the convent. But perhaps she could buy them off? Offer them some of the convent’s wealth in return for a promise not to pillage? They were uncomfortable allies but having found even such allies as they was so near miraculous that she felt confident that her luck must hold. Experimentally, she pressed her wounded arm to her ribs and felt the hard, painful, thrilling pressure of the relic. Yes, she would be a great abbess. She would be as energetic as Radegunda had been but she would direct her energies into administration. She would keep a tighter rein on the male monastery founded by Radegunda at Tours and on the basilica of St. Mary’s Outside the Walls, both of which had hitherto been allowed to run themselves. She would be an administrator, judge and planner worthy of her kingly ancestry. She would preach sermons, too, and make sure that the convent was run properly as it had not been up to now. She would be famous—not as Radegunda had been but in another way. She would not give herself up to private communings with God but to establishing a great institution. Noble young women from all Gaul would come there to seek a haven from the savage world of Childeric and his kind. Chrodechilde’s breath swelled excitedly in her chest as she thought about all this. Excitedly, she tapped the horse’s sides with her heel and it bounded forward. She tightened her reins and the horse began to dance angrily.

  Childeric the Saxon looked back over his shoulder and laughed at her.

  “You’re giving contradictory signals,” he warned. “Look out or your horse will throw you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  [A.D. 587]

  Agnes was awoken by a shriek then briefly sucked back into dream. Ingunda was screaming. Her face hung, bloated, on dark waters like a weed-anchored lily. Rotting. Another shriek. In the dissolving dream, Agnes started to knock the wall down stone by stone, then woke up and climbed on her bed to stare out the dormitory window. Lights were moving below in the cloister. Other nuns had been roused.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Is it time for the office?”

  “Sh! I think the convent has been broken into?”

  “Who . .?”

  “Shh!”

  “Could it be Chrodechilde and the others come back? They had a key.”

  “They wouldn’t use lights …. Did you hear that? A man!”

  “We’ll take sanctuary in the chapel.”

  Down the dark, turning staircase, groping as they groped every night, recognizing irregularities in the plaster as they always had when making their way down for the nocturnal offices which were chanted while the mind half slept.

  Justina and the nuns from her dormitory were in the chapel before them. They had come through a passage which gave onto the cloister and overheard the invaders as they passed.

  “Roaring”, whispered an agitated Justina, “at the top of their voices. Drunk. Making no effort to be quiet. There must be hordes of them. They’re Childeric the Saxon’s men from south of the Garonne. They’ve come to rob—and”, she told Agnes, “to kidnap you. We heard them say it. Several of us. They were sent”, Justina’s teeth were chattering, “to capture the abbess. By Chrodechilde! … Yes. I’m sure. Sister Gunsildis heard it too. And Gerberga. Didn’t you, Gerberga? She did. Listen, you must hide.” She caught Agnes’s elbow. “No time for talk,” she told her. “Come …”

  Agnes hung back. “I shall never …” Her mind rattled like a broken weathercock. Had she heard that shriek—Ingunda’s shriek—really this time? She lurched towards the cloister. Several hands caught her.

  “You must!”

  “For the sake of the convent, Mother Agnes.”

  “There’s no reasoning with ruffians like that.”

  Bodily, they propelled her up the nave, past the cancelli and into the presbyterium. The curtains of the ciborium were drawn. Inside, beneath its canopy, was the altar on which a single oil lamp burned. The opaque folds of the altar-cloth formed a smaller tent inside the larger one and it was under here that Justina insisted on bestowing Agnes.

  “This is no time for argument, Mother Agnes. You must hide. It’s your duty to us all. I’ll say I’m abbess. They’ll want to be out of here by daylight. By the time they discover they’ve got the wrong woman it will be too late to come back. I doubt if they’d risk a return before nightfall. As soon as it’s morning, you can get help.” Justina turned to the rest of the nuns. “Get back to the nave,” she told them. “Sing and keep your eyes off the altar.”

  On hands and knees, enclosed in a space not much bigger than Radegunda’s sepulchre, Agnes crouched, doglike, and heard men burst into the chapel. The nuns’ singing wavered, stopped, took up again, then dwindled off. Agnes heard shouts, metal clashing and a nun’s voice—Justina’s—shriek that her sleeve had been slashed and she had nearly lost a hand. Then a male shout. Then Justina—firm-voiced now—demanded the invaders’ names and mission. There was no need, she pointed out, for violence since the nuns were defenceless. She, she stated, was the abbess here, Mother Agnes.

  A nun shrieked: “They’re tearing off her clothes!”

  A man bellowed that the nuns should shut their mouths. Another that he would slit Justina’s throat if she or anyone moved a finger.

  “Just like you’d wring a chicken’s neck, holy lady! I’ll wring yours the same way if you give trouble. Remember how one kills chickens, do you? Chuck, chuck, eeek! Well, keep thinking of it. I’m damned already so I’ve nothing to lose.”

  “So this”, roared another, “is the
randy abbess? Where’s her paramour? Skedaddled? Maybe she’d like a stand-in? A ready cock?”

  The noises grew unrecognizable. Agnes guessed at acts which made her stuff a corner of her skirt into her mouth to keep from crying out. She clenched her teeth on it and a flavour of fatty, unbleached yarn trickled down her throat until she needed to cough. She managed not to but her body heaved with dry spasms. Nobody came near the altar.

  Briefly the nuns began singing once more and were told to stop. A man asked where the gold ornaments were kept but did not wait for a reply.

  “We’ll find them easily enough ourselves!”

  Someone shouted an order. The nuns were to be locked up in one of the towers. More clanks, then silence. The chapel was empty. Time passed. Agnes’s joints had begun to ache. Lights seemed to flash before her eyes but she judged them to be imaginary. The heavy altar-cloth reached to the ground all around her and she did not dare lift it. She strained her ears, wondering did she hear sounds and from where. They seemed to be coming from the kitchens. The men must be eating. Drinking, too, for she heard steps make for the wine cellars. She moved her limbs with caution, feeling as though they must crack, lifted a hair’s breadth of the altar-cloth and saw a stretch of grey and later of yellow light. Day. But the noises persisted. The men had not left, as Justina had expected, before dawn. Now, they would wait until dark returned. Were any visits due from friends of the convent today? She racked her memory but could think of none. Fortunatus was on his way to Marseilles. Palladius had gone back to Saintes and Bishop Maroveus was avoiding the place. But surely the townspeople would notice the silence of the bells and guess something was up? The steward too was away on a journey—but mightn’t some of the convent tenants notice what was happening and give the alarm? Was Chrodechilde mad? Stark out of her mind? How could she hope to get away with such sacrilege? Without punishment? Mad. Yes, perhaps she was. Agnes could not now be sure the sounds she heard coming from different parts of the convent were not in fact within her own head. She shook it vigorously in an effort to rouse herself for she was numb with cramp and cold. But she could still hear the same noises: dim and teasing like those heard in dreams. But they were real enough, only muffled now since it was day and the invaders would be leery of being heard by passers-by outside the convent walls. Oh God, let them be heard! Let someone inform the count or Bishop Maroveus. Please, please God …