Women in the Wall (26 page)

“Fortunatus …”

“Blasphemy? Forgive me, my lord bishop. It was my horror at what I took to be in your mind that troubled mine.” His hands were trembling, his pulse stampeding. Angrily, he wiped his face.

“You have a poet’s imagination,” observed Palladius. “I mentioned assassinations only to point out that the monarchs fear them and, fearing, become themselves dangerous. I did not mean that we should engage in such business.”

“I am relieved.”

“The trouble with talkers”, Palladius’s tone, now that he had upset Fortunatus, had grown level and cold, “is that their own rhetoric convinces them. They also think that once they’ve mentioned the need to do something it’s as good as done. A while ago you mentioned the woes of Poitiers and, having deplored them, poured yourself some more wine and changed the subject. When I urged you to join in practical action you were shocked. But the men of Poitiers are none the better for your talk, Fortunatus. And don’t think that I don’t know precisely why you’ve been spinning this fantasy about my wanting you to commit a triple regicide. Rhetoricians are first cousins to magicians. You were weaving your jokes and blasphemies, your magic formulae, around me so as to prevent my making a request it might embarrass you to refuse. You know I will not ask you to commit murder. You fear I may ask you to do something more feasible. You’re trying to gag me—but I won’t be gagged. I will ask and you will have to answer with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

“What is it you want, Palladius?”

“Two things. I’ll tell you the second first: you are to tour the courts, spend time in each, hear the gossip, sift the rumours, take the royal pulse. You can write a few more panegyrics. Praise Fredegunda’s chastity,
Brunhilde’s
meekness, Guntram’s loyalty. Create a
counter-truth
; it may confuse them. Caught like metal between magnets, in the tug between your praise and their passions, they may let down their guard. Be watching. Report to me.”

“Then?”

“Come back to your nuns. Stay a while. Go back to the courts. To and fro. As often as may prove useful. Your mission is less to spy than to become commonplace. People must say ‘Here’s Fortunatus returned with the swallows,’ and think no more of it. When the moment comes for action, you will be told what to do. You see your value lies in the fact that men of words are not taken seriously today in Gaul. A Roman ruler would have known better. So would an Ostrogoth. Think of Theodoric! Words, he would have realized, have meanings and, sooner or later, the man who plays with them hits on a dangerous one and becomes inconvenient. Such thoughts do not trouble our kings. Your verse beguiles their digestive hours. Doesn’t this provoke you?”

“I am more provoked to find a man I respect trying to manipulate me!”

Palladius mimed conciliation. “Fortunatus,” he coaxed, caressing curvacious air—no identifiable curves as far as the poet could see, unless perhaps a dog’s head and neck?—“I respect you. I envy you. I would have preferred to live like you. I believe you have found the perfect formula: poetry, pottering, a little prayer, chat with your nuns, wine from admirers like poor Bishop Theodore. It’s ideal: a Christian version of Horace’s Sabine farm. For his courtesans you substitute holy virgins. Your soul is safe.”

“But there’s a ‘but’!”

“Indeed!” The bishop leaned off his seat. “How dare you, Fortunatus, enjoy this bliss and safety in today’s world? In a world where bishops … but we’ve been into that. The point is”, Palladius was forceful, “that when Horace withdrew to his farm there were plenty of others to offer civic service. Who is there today? And yet you, a man trained in one of the last Roman schools, devote your talents to writing about milk puddings and making acrostics on the name of Christ—a virtuous activity, Fortunatus, but insufficient to stem the tides of chaos.”

“I do not write ordinarily about milk puddings, that was …”

“It was unworthy to mention it. I know you have written rousing religious verse, truly committed verse. I would quote it to you if I thought you needed convincing that I could. And, having quoted it, I would ask: ‘How can a man who writes like that refuse his rôle in the army of the Cross?’”

“Army? Who else is with you? Is anyone, Palladius?”

Palladius’s eyeballs shifted. Firelight bounced off them, giving his already compelling glance a livid edge. “We are not divulging more than two names to any one supporter. I am assuming you are a supporter, Fortunatus! The risks are high. Torture. We have to take tight security measures. I’ll give you one name now: Gregory.”

“Bishop Gregory?”

“Yes. He is your most generous patron, isn’t he—within the Church I mean? I know you and Maroveus …” Palladius made a dismissive gesture.

“The other name? You said two. Bertram, I suppose?”

Palladius shrugged. “Bertram is ill, said to be dying. God have his soul. He was a wretched Churchman and unreliable for this sort of venture. No. The second name brings me to my other request. You remember I said I had two? The first—in time merely: it is a very minor service to ask—is that you should procure an interview for me with Radegunda. Tomorrow. She, if she joins us—and I am counting on her doing so—will be your second name. Apart from my own.”

“Radegunda—you’re counting on Ra–, Palladius, you must really and truly be out of your mind! As to your seeing her, that’s out of the question. She’s in retreat. She sees no one, she …”

“I know she is in retreat. That is why I need your help. Just to let her know about my mission. Once she hears of it, I don’t doubt that she will be ready to waive her arrangements. We have already had some contact with her.”

“You have?”

Palladius smiled. His black-opal eyeballs sparkled. With what? Glee? Energy? Scorn? Fortunatus had begun to feel acutely uncomfortable. “Why else”, Palladius asked, “do you suppose I would have been so unguarded with you?” Laughing, his teeth glistening, his tongue lolling insolently between the rows, the bishop held up his goblet, “Maybe I will have some more of that wine of poor Bishop Theodore’s,” he said.

*

“No!” said Agnes, “I won’t allow it!”

They were all looking away. Scandalized. What possible motive could she have? She saw Radegunda’s
bewilderment
, Fortunatus’s mild surprise. The girls—
Chrodechilde
, Basina and their band—were slyly jubilant. The nuns were divided into camps: her own and
Chrodechilde’s
. How or even when this had come about Agnes could not have said. Too taken up by her own anxieties, she had hardly noticed the start of the little cabal. Now, with the age of its members, it had matured.

“They’re waiting for the foundress to die,” Justina had warned her. “There will be trouble then, mark my words. That Chrodechilde has ambitions. She wants to be abbess. She could stir up support for herself inside and outside the convent!”

“Abbess!” Agnes had scarcely listened, but the word echoed later in her skull. Eyes were looking at her now with malice. Sharp, avid, they drilled their suspicion through the murky light.

“Is there”, Radegunda had to ask, “some reason we don’t know?”

Minutes ago, Ingunda had announced her decision to the community. She wanted to become an anchoress. She would not be the first at Holy Cross. A nun called Disciola had been immured for several years already. Such seekers after exceptional grace brought a convent prestige and—if one had the faith to believe this—spiritual wealth.

“I am asking permission from the abbess and Mother Radegunda”, Ingunda had said, standing in front of the altar, staring ahead with glassy eyes which refused to meet Agnes’s, “to withdraw into a cell as small as may be allowed. I wish to be immured and live as a recluse.”

A tremor had shaken the congregation. This rare feat, a stroke of bravery with which a girl played her whole life, was as chilling and marvellous to them as the sight of gladiators fighting had been to their great-grandparents. Indeed the exploit derived from the circuses where early Christians had been martyred. It was a form of death willingly embraced. The hundredfold reward was granted to martyrs, according to the Church fathers, the sixtyfold to virgins and the thirtyfold only to the virtuous married. What more reasonable than that a girl who had aspired to the second prize should now desire the first? The nuns gazed on the prodigy their convent had produced. Hands were clasped, gasps stifled. Through Ingunda, all were briefly caught up on a cresting wave of excitement. The younger ones, her contemporaries, swayed with exaltation. A single grin splashed their faces. Unrepressed, apparently spontaneous, the accolade burst from them: “
Gaudeamus
—let’s rejoice!”

Agnes jumped to her feet. “No! I won’t allow it!”

Silence. Astonishment.

“Is there some reason?”

“The girl has been ill.” Agnes blundered, groping for words. Tears were pricking from her eyes, blinding her and she daren’t be seen to wipe them. “Her foster-sisters”, she tried to explain, “were—had an … accident. She is not herself. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. We mustn’t keep her to this!”

“Well, of course,” Radegunda agreed, “she must be given time to think. Her resolution is a noble one and must be free.” Radegunda smiled tranquilly. She might have been a mother whose daughter was unsure whether to trim her gown with fur. Agnes felt a sensation of
hardness
in her chest as though something were pressing its way out. Did she, she wondered for a half second, hate Radegunda?

“How
can
she think?”

Ingunda’s face was taut and white. It was composed but the eyelids were puffy and Agnes knew the girl had been weeping herself to sleep every night. She had visited Ingunda’s dormitory several times in the months which had passed since moving her from the sick-cell. Each time, Ingunda had pretended to be asleep but the face on her pillow had been streaky as bacon: swollen as though with welts, dingy with wiped tears. She would not talk to Agnes now at all and every time the abbess managed to catch her eye, a heavy dullness closed it quickly down.

“
How
can she think?”

Agnes’s voice leaped from her throat. Around her the nuns’ faces menaced. Featureless, like rows of maces, they armed the darkness. She blinked the wet from her eyes and focusing hard, perceived quite close to her Chrodechilde and a group of friends. Their skin was flushed and glistening, their teeth, triumphantly bared. They seemed to her carnivores who would press Ingunda to keep her promise, would make a human sacrifice to satisfy their own appetites for wonder. All these foiled lusty young women were as dangerous as an army of Visigoths. Her vision muddied. She swayed and the nun beside her had to catch her or she would have collapsed.

“Calm, Mother Agnes,” whispered the prioress, Justina. “Better discuss this some other time.”

“All right.”

She let Justina help her from the chapel.

*

But it was as she had expected. Ingunda avoided her. When summoned, she was monosyllabic. Eyes on the floor, she repeated obstinately that she felt called upon to make this sacrifice. Yes, she was sure. No, she did not think she was being emotional or theatrical. She did not understand what the mother abbess meant by that. No one had forced her. She had thought of it herself. It was her own decision. She would obey, of course, if the mother abbess refused her permission.

Agnes did refuse but would not be able to stick to her refusal. Radegunda would not agree. Other nuns would be scandalized or ready to turn the incident to their own use. Already, she knew—reports had come in after the scene in the chapel—she was being described as ‘tepid’, ‘
unspiritual
’, ‘worldly’ and ‘lacking in vision’.

The girl maddened her. She could have struck her—the Rule allowed whipping—but the absurdity of that impulse brought her back to her dilemma: what she wanted to exchange with Ingunda was not blows but love or at the very least, words. Besides, the girl, in her present state, might have welcomed the punishment—and she was within her rights. It was her own life, now, to throw away. Suicide had been condemned a century before at the Council of Arles, but reclusion was not suicide. It was only a living death.

“
Why
, Ingunda? Tell me. Please. I beg you. I am worried … for your sake. Are you unhappy here? This is such an extreme decision.”

“Sister Disciola made it. She chose that way.”

“Yes. She had visions. She was a little … strange. I didn’t think you were like that.”

“Must one have visions?”

“No. There are no ‘must’s. It’s just that sometimes one is so close to something that one can’t see it. It blots out the light and talking it over with someone else might make it look quite different. Couldn’t you talk—just
talk
about this with me, Ingunda? I thought we were friends. Have you forgotten? Can’t you trust me? Look at me even?”

Silence.

“I would”, Agnes risked wildly, “help you leave the convent if … if you wanted?”

Ingunda glanced swiftly at her: a furtive, astounded glance.

Leaving the convent was impossible on pain of excommunication. But Agnes would have risked that. Would have … oh how absurd, how hopeless and helpless not to even know the rub which was driving Ingunda to this folly! Yes, Agnes had to suppose, ‘I
am
unspiritual. For me it
is
pure, witless folly and self-destruction. And she gets that desperate impulsiveness from me. I, too, persist doggedly for years and then, quite suddenly, am ready to bolt. Is that timidity?”

Aloud, she accused: “You are not really drawn to this. It horrifies you. I can tell. You want to force yourself into a position from which there is no retreat. But why? Why
must
you punish yourself, Ingunda? You are not responsible for what happened your sisters!”

For, of course, that was the source of this madness. Ingunda had not been the same since the day she had returned from visiting them. Her fever had lasted only about a week, but the aftermath of her sickness was still with her: a kind of hibernation in which her blood seemed colder, her eye duller, her face paler. She seemed somehow stunned. Agnes, watching her as a cat stalks a bird, had not seen her laugh or joke with the other novices; she took part in no recreations and she had not again visited her
foster-family
.