Women in the Wall (32 page)

“We like to remind them what the chase is about lest they forget the function for which nature made them,” Childeric’s grin widened, “as happens to women in convents!” He roared with laughter and the men around him took up the roar. Through his laughter, the duke kept trying to outstare Chrodechilde. The nuns watching felt the two glances lock like fists. Chrodechilde’s nostrils flared. Her eyes were pale, wide and steady. The duke stopped laughing. “Proud,” he remarked. “Sinfully proud for a holy nun. Well, we may have interests in common. We’ll have to look into that. If you’ll forgive the impetuosity of my men just now and agree to ride one with each of them, we may just have enough horses to get you back to my villa. What do you say? You needn’t be afraid. You said you were seeking sanctuary. My wife and her women are there. Will you come with me?” he asked Chrodechilde.

She scrutinized him, trying to understand what was behind the noisy challenge of these men and what value they put on her. It was Basina whose title had impressed the duke but it was herself he had invited to mount his horse.

“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 women.

“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.”

[
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 …

Suddenly, kneeling numbly in the ignominy of all fours, a thought struck her like a blow: earlier, a soldier had shouted something about the ‘randy abbess’. What could he have meant? Surely he … How? No, it must, could only be a chance word from a foul-mouthed thug? Unless God had put that word into his mouth? And for God there was no chance. For God there were slow, unfolding
patterns
, unpardoning scrolls of which the living only saw a measured stretch. These thugs could be his punishing instrument, this invasion a penalty for Agnes’s sin. She had never welcomed religion’s bleak arithmetic any more than she had looked for its disembodying flights. But now, here, caged under the marble altar-slab like an answer under the line of a sum, God’s book-keeping began to look inescapable. She should have prayed but suddenly couldn’t. The guilt to be repented was too old, dead and detached from herself: like cut nail-parings. Was her conscience dead then? Gone insensible as her breasts had after the infant, Ingunda, had been taken from her and her milk dried up? They had been her most sensitive bodily organs and had lost all sensation so that now she could twist or pinch them and feel as little as if she were twisting the ends of her hair. Ingunda, she thought. The name shot giddily through her mind. Was the girl to be punished too? Had she perhaps already been hurt? How could the men have found her? But there
had
been a shriek? Then again, she sometimes shrieked for no reason—or for some reason private to her dark loneliness.

It was evening and pink reflections were falling on the mosaic floor where emblematic animals—peacocks, fish—were framed in squares scarcely smaller than her own hiding-place, when the chapel door was once again flung open. Agnes dropped the hem of the altar-cloth. Feet tramped up the nave and this time right to the altar. A man leaned on it and his toe intruded into the space where she was crouched. It landed on her skirt, pinning it so tautly that she could not move. If the foot were to come a thumb’s breadth closer it must touch her body and discover her. Hampered and muffled by the intervening altar-valance, the toe’s snout probed and menaced.

“What about taking this cloth?” a voice wondered. “It’s fine heavy linen.”

“Are you thick? This is no farmhouse. It’s
rich
! Full of gold! We can’t carry the lot, so leave the trumpery and take only the best!”

“Well, then, what about this cross here? Solid gold. Is that choice enough for you?”

“Too conspicuous. Anyone can tell it’s church property. It’s too big, too—hard to break up. Come on. There’ll be better stuff in the sacristy. Gold cups. More negotiable …”

The foot withdrew. Agnes fainted.

When she recovered it was pitch dark. Night again and the altar-lamp had been allowed to go out. Had the men left? She listened for a long while, heard nothing and eased herself out from under the altar. Hobbling with difficulty, for she had a cramp, she groped her way out of the chapel and into the cold, starlit cloister. Before she knew it she was at Ingunda’s slit. She listened. The girl’s breath was rougher, louder and more uneven than usual. It could have been the wall itself breathing.

“Ingunda,” Agnes whispered.

A scream burst shockingly from the wall: “Wa-a-ater!”

“Shsh!” Agnes felt as though the breath had been knocked from her own body. She gasped for air, listened, heard nothing. Were the nuns still locked up then? And the men? “Shsh!” she repeated. “For God’s sake, be quiet. I’ll get you water.”

She moved cautiously into the bright middle of the cloister. No sounds. She managed to reach the well and draw water from it without making more than a few faint, rustling noises, paused, ladled some liquid silently down the side of the pitcher which was kept there, and carried it back to the shadow. The girl’s water-pouch was
dust-dry
. Even before the invasion, the sister in charge of her rations must have forgotten to fill it. But maybe that sister was one of the renegades? No, their duties had been reapportioned. But, undeniably, order at Holy Cross was breaking down. She slid the the filled pouch into the slit.

“Ingunda,” she whispered, “this is Agnes. You
must
be more quiet. It’s dangerous to scream. I haven’t time to explain, but … do you understand me, Ingunda?”

Silence. But the breathing had grown quicker. Feverish wall. Who had said ‘Priests, not stones, are the foundation of the Church’? Ah, Justina.

“Ingunda. You have been screaming, haven’t you? You realize that, don’t you? Are you feverish, Ingunda?”

Again she waited. Then: “I absolve you from your vow of silence. Answer me, Ingunda. This is the abbess.”

“Demoness!” It was a rasping crumble of sound.

“Ingunda …”

“Tonight demons are abroad. They try the righteous.”

Agnes tried to sound matter-of-fact. “Yes,” she agreed. “The convent has been broken into. But by men, Ingunda, men, not by demons. You mustn’t let them hear you. They’re dangerous. I think they’ve gone for the moment. But they may come back. So please, Ingunda, be quiet.”

The breathing in the wall was almost a rattle. She’s ill, thought Agnes, and remembered Fortunatus’s plan to get the girl out. Had she time to do it now? Could she? She tried to rock the stone immediately below the slit but it was firm. She’d need help. Some of the younger nuns were strong. Besides, she should release them. She ran quietly over to the tower where she had heard the men say they were going to imprison them. The door was nailed up. She would need some sort of a lever to remove the boards which had been nailed across it. She walked back into the cloister and was making for the kitchens when she heard sounds at the outer gate. Her way was cut off. She backed into a leafy thicket which rose next to the well. By daylight, it might not have hidden her, but in the darkness she would be safe enough. After her day’s terrified hiding, Agnes was beginning to develop the selective listening-techniques of a blind woman. She sensed the men’s arrival in the cloister before she heard them. They were being more cautious than last night. There were only two or three of them and they had taken off their shoes. A mule brayed and a man cursed softly.

“Tie him up here. Give the bastard some hay or
something
. Where’s that barrel of pitch? Roll it over near the well. No, keep it away from those bushes. We don’t want to burn the convent down. And keep the loot at a safe distant. Right? Set a light to it then.”

“Keep that mule quiet, can’t you?”

There was a spark, then a flare as the pitch barrel took fire. Agnes pressed deeper into her bushes for the flames were so close that a spark fell on her and the middle of the cloister was suddenly as bright as day. The men, too, seemed dazzled for a moment. There were four of them, she saw now, and two mules. Agnes recognized the animals as convent property. Bags had been tossed across their backs and two of the men had started loading them with gold cups.

“Hey Droctulf, why not flatten these? They’d take up less room. We’ll be selling them for the gold anyhow. They’re no good this way: all covered with crosses and Latin. Might as well have the word ‘stolen’ all over them. We can do it quietly. Wrap the mallet in cloth.”

A straw-haired fellow had been standing all this time beside Ingunda’s slit. “Hey, let up a minute, will you?” he called to his mates. “I hear something. In this wall.”

The one addressed as Droctulf made a smart reply but stopped hammering. The straw-head raised a hand and leaned his head towards the slit.

“Anyone in there?” he called.

Agnes felt her body freeze. There was a thundering in her ears and she heard—did she
hear
?—Ingunda’s voice. Yes. Yes, the voice was coming from there. It was lilting. “Dung,” Ingunda chanted, “Ding, dong, dung. No bells today. I expiate my mother’s sin. What’s that light? The demons are come. Their eyes are red. Shitty fingers are bright too. Pearl-and diamond bright. I am rich and I can pay. Pay the demons for my mother’s sin. Come, demons, I can pay. I am Mother Agnes’s bastard. I have rings on my fingers …”