Women in the Wall (8 page)

“Look,” she said. “I could hate beauty. It is a mockery, a comforting lie told to a sick man since it will wither in his hands. It is like the grain we mix with poison to kill slugs. I would truly hate it if I did not see it as as an image of permanent beauty. If I didn’t see this flower as a reflection of a heavenly flower, I would crush it.”

Her voice was cold, almost bitter. The shadows in her face were the colour of the flower. Her own beauty was at that most poignant stage: almost gone, returning at brief moments to flood and replump her face. Like an after-image. A turn of her head and it had disappeared. It was surely growing rarer in its returns. I looked at the flower. Had she been vain? Her intensity had worn out her body before its time.

“Have you”, I risked, “no appetites?”

“They are my torments. I stifle them. I delight in tormenting them as they would me. They come from the devil.” She laughed. She could have been describing a sport.

“Don’t you enjoy life at all?”

“Oh, indeed. This life is a trial. One must face one’s trial with gallantry. Here we live our life gaily but without becoming attached to it. The balance is delicate.”

She gave me a great foaming splash of smile,
spontaneous
and humourless. I looked at her suspiciously.

“Gaily? Is the convent gay?”

“Very. Stay with us and you’ll see. My nuns are my plants. I delight in their growth. When our community expands, I am almost sorry since it means we know each other less well. But it is a sign of our success. And we can’t refuse women who need to come here. You know what dangers women face in Gaul today! I don’t mean sin!” A shrewd narrowing of the lips. “One can commit that in a convent. I mean quite brutal dangers.”

I forget the rest. She has made this speech so often since, I may even be remembering things she said some other time to a new batch of novices or to some visitor. Radegunda is a balanced person. Her life is neatly divided into the mundane and the transcendent. Mine is not. Listening to her I found her rejections of the body had the effect of conjuring it up for me in its quintessential fleshiness. As if I had been reading Ausonius’s lament for his roses, my limbs tingled for some speedy mortal embrace. Curiously, she had, without meaning to,
performed
the same trick as he. By reminding me of the
death-laden
canker common to all human flesh, she had set my own exhilaratingly on fire. The herbal fragrances around me, relief after my journey, the young women I could sense behind the cloister wall, Radegunda’s own renunciatory passion, all combined had set my head boiling in a red curdle of excitement not at all free of religious emotion. I was aware that I had lost the balance she had recommended. I had fallen off the thin line
between
a stoically gay acceptance of life and wanton
revelling
in it: fallen neither to one side nor the other but, like a novice walker of tight-ropes, had slipped astraddle so that the thin sharp line had me by the balls.

“Let me stay here,” I begged Radegunda. “I am a light and frivolous man, undirected but eager. I feel that here with you I might achieve unity of thrust.”

She agreed and my last memory of that occasion is holding her cold, dry, disciplined hand and staring at a sky which was pale grey, tinged with salmon like old Gaulish ceramics, while I came as near as I ever do to mental prayer and assured God that it was up to him now to save me from the contradictions he has put into me.

[
A.D.
552]

News of the queen’s coming had preceded her.

Bishop Medardus was in his vestibule wearing his robes and accompanied by the two deacons without whom a bishop might not receive a woman’s visit.

“I hope”, Radegunda greeted him, “that one day, with Christ’s help, the dung of my soul may be cleared by the mystic rake of your prayers.”

He began to talk about her reputation for virtue. “Happy the husband,” said he, “who …”

“I have left him,” said Radegunda. “I am renouncing my worldly family to enter the family of the Church. I am counting on you, my lord bishop, to consecrate me as a deaconness.”

“Your Highness”, the bishop’s voice had changed pitch, “is surely speaking in metaphor.”

“No. I have left Clotair. I must beg your grace to spare me the sound of a title I have renounced. I am your grace’s most devoted daughter in Christ, Radegunda.”

The bishop shot a glance at his deacons. “Oh God,” he shouted, “You have sent me a trial.”

Radegunda smiled.

“Did you”, he asked, “mean what you said just now? You have left the king?”

“I have.”

“Then it
is
a trial! Madame—you must allow me to call you that. Anything less would be … Does the king know you are here?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?” The bishop clasped his hands and unclasped them again. “You have quarelled.” He nodded. “Is he following you?”

“No. He gave me permission to come and money and attendants for the journey. They are resting in your kitchens.”

The bishop sighed. “May we sit down? Is there anything I may do for your bodily comfort before we discuss this matter further?”

She said there was not.

“Very well,” said the bishop in a brisker tone. “You have, naturally, considered the vow you took on entering the holy state of matrimony, its indissoluble nature and the Church’s maternal concern for weaker souls who might be scandalized and led into sin by the sight of a royal lady running away from her husband? I am,” he raised a repressive hand, “for the sake of saving time, prepared to believe the circumstances are exceptional. Has the king established a concubine under the conjugal roof?”

“No, my lord.”

“Threatened your life?”

“No.”

“It is, forgive me,
you
who are leaving
him
?”

“It is.”

“I can do nothing for you.” The bishop looked anxious. “I’m sorry.”

“My brother”, said Radegunda slowly, “died with a knife in his back scarcely an hour after warning me that Clotair was planning to kill him. He was my last surviving blood relation. That was not ten days ago.”

“Allow me to extend condolences, heartfelt condolences. I understand your grief. And I know the rest of your family too were … Yes …” The bishop inhaled a deep breath then expelled it. He did not look at his deacons but his body seemed to have sharpened into an organ sensitive to their least blink or tremor. He held this perceptive pose for moments, then: “Unfortunately, Madame, assassination,
even
if
proven
,” he began to gabble, expelling the words speedily and as though with distaste, “cannot provide,
is
not
recognized
by the Church as providing grounds for …”

“Grounds,” Radegunda exploded, “grounds are not hard to find. Clotair has never lacked for grounds. Or cared for them. He does somersaults on them. Dances all over them! I am his fifth wife. He kept two of my predecessors concurrently and
they
were sisters. The impediment of consanguinity was overlooked then, my lord bishop. You know that I myself was dragged by force to the altar. The impediment of constraint was overlooked.” She spoke sharply but without heat and as though the case she was stating had not been her own.

“I see”, said the bishop, “your reputation for learning is well grounded. Your reputation for charity—readiness to forgive—may be less so.”

“The king gave me a free permission to leave.”

“He may change his mind.”

“If your lordship consecrates me as a deaconess I shall belong to the Church. He will be unable to claim me back.”

“That is precisely what would create … complications,” said the bishop. “The Church is not a home for runaway wives.”

Radegunda bowed her head. “It was not my intention”, she said, “to blacken my husband. If you had welcomed me as a sheep hungry for the comfort of the fold I would have shown a gentler side of my nature.” She lifted her head and looked at him. “Of a nature which I long to suppress, Oh, my lord, if you know how I yearn to lose myself in God!”

The bishop looked away. “In God … yes,” he said. “You are tired of yourself and of your marriage and looking for a new fold to belong to. A new start. And
I
am to be the Good Shepherd and welcome you in. I know. I know.”

He looked at his deacons. This involved him in turning his head and looking over first one shoulder, then the other. Abruptly, as though annoyed by this, he beckoned them forward. He then turned his stare towards Radegunda for several minutes: an astute, hard stare. “You”, he said at last, “are trying to use the Church as a convenience.”

“My lord …”

He raised a hand. “You are a grown woman,” he challenged, “not young, the wife of a king, you cannot be as naïve as you pretend nor can you expect
me
to pretend to be.”

“You are afraid of Clotair?”

The bishop brushed the notion off as though chasing a fly. “No. I believe what you told me. Am I right to do so?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“So the immediate impediment is removed. We are left with the principle.” Again he stared at her, his frown forbidding her to speak. A little wearily he proceeded. He was not a young man and had probably said all this before—or perhaps disliked having to say it at all? He was a strong-faced man—all bone, jaw and cheek-bone with a jagged crag of nose—and compromises may not have agreed with him. But then he was a prince of the Church, whose function was neither quite spiritual nor quite temporal and he must have known what it was to dance from one foot to the other. He told Radegunda about this at some length, gabbling at times, rushing along, occasionally lifting a shoulder or twitching his fingers as his river of reasoning balked then frothed past some
repellent
obstacle. They were, he said, sitting in a vestibule and the world too was a vestibule leading to eternity. Agreed? Agreed. But while one was in a vestibule one
was
in
it
, was one not? The bishop sighed angrily and the deacons jumped nervously. Radegunda wiped travelling dust from her face with a cloth.

“Yes,” she said soothingly. “Yes, my lord!”

“So we have to cope with the given and the given is human nature. Laws will not be perfect, governments can only be as just as fallen human nature can make them. To expect more would be to deny the fallen nature of Man. Yet we must have government; we must have rules or that fallen nature will break into anarchy. So, there will be hard cases, contradictions … it is our Christian duty to accept them. To refuse them and go off looking for perfection is to fly in the face of God. The Church has given thought to cases like yours. Two centuries ago, the Council of Gangres … Criadus,” the bishop shouted at one of his deacons, “what did the Council decree? About married women … Wake up, boy. The Council of Gangres—or was it some other Council? About them leaving their husbands—Criadus!”

The deacon began to recite in a singsong scholar’s lilt: “Canon Fourteen, your grace, of the Council of Gangres rules that ‘If a woman abandon her husband and spurn the nuptial state in which she hath lived with honour on the plea that she who hath been joined in wedlock shall have no part of the glory of the celestial Kingdom, let her’”, the boy hesitated, got a nod from Medardus and finished quickly, “‘be accursed’.”

“Thank you, Criadus. We must, you see, preserve the family. Extraordinary conduct is disruptive. Obviously, people cannot be encouraged to leave their station in life on the pretext of a call from God. Coopers must make barrels, cobblers shoes or the farmer would have nowhere to put his wine and we should all go barefoot. Women were created to bear children and care for their husbands. Those whom their parents dedicate at an early age can pray for the rest. Widows too. Everyone to their place. What would happen to humanity if serfs deserted the land and wives their husbands? We are all equally bound, my lady, priests and bishops, kings and counts. The foot supports the body and the brain thinks for all. This is elementary but you oblige me to spell it out.”

The bishop’s voice had grown mild and speedy as though he were, in the old saying, saving his breath to cool his porridge. It was his duty and interest to get all this said. His eye however was wary. Radegunda was waiting. Her mouth was set, her stare stark and she was clearly not one to be swayed by common sense however cogently presented. She
was
extraordinary and would disrupt. The deacons watched her and wondered why. She knew they were wondering. No matter what she said, they would be puzzled and others would too, for people were not convinced by words. Only by acts. Acts were as real as stone walls. You could get round or over them. You could knock them down but you did not question their veracity.

“I can see”, the bishop had reached the stage for conceding, “that your case is hard but I cannot advise you to go against Church law and what may well turn out to be against the royal will, because Clotair … my best advice is for you to return to him. Can you not make the sufferings of your conjugal life into an offering which will certainly be more pleasing to God than a broken marriage-vow?”

Radegunda stood up. So did the bishop.

“Bishop Medardus,” she said, “I came to you for holy counsel and you gave me human advice. My mind was turned towards God’s kingdom, yours to Clotair’s. You quote a recent Council but I could quote the gospels’ advice that we should leave all for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. You know the texts. I will not bore you with them. Instead I shall remind you of something Clotair’s henchmen say: ‘You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. The peasants have an even clearer way of putting this: ‘You cannot,’ they say, ‘side with the cow and the clover’. I, my lord, am the clover. Will you let me be devoured? You hesitate. Very well. I shall leave. Not for Clotair’s court. I cannot return there. However the Church may view it, we have dissolved our bond. By refusing me protection, you condemn me to a lone and dangerous existence.”

She walked towards the door. The bishop moved quickly to cut her off.

“You know I cannot let you go.”

“I will stay on one condition.”

“It is unrealistic,” the bishop told her. “Deaconesses are not being consecrated any more. Church policy in the West is against it. Several Councils have pronounced on the matter. As early as twenty years ago the Council of Orléans expressly forbade it. How can
I
defy the voice of a Church Council?”

“Other Councils allowed deaconesses?”

“Earlier ones. Yes.”

“And God’s truth is one and indivisible?”

The bishop’s voice was gentle, almost seductive. “Lady, these sophistic questions are beneath us both. We are, I believe, two honest Christians devoted to our faith and submissive to God’s will. It would be unworthy if we were to examine the day-to-day measures of those entrusted with Church government with an eye to discovering contradictions. These are matters not of faith or morals but of administration. The power of all governors comes from God. We must trust their acumen. It has proven inexpedient to allow women to receive even minor orders in the Church. Moreover, how minor an order was that of deaconess? In the East, from what I hear, they are turning into priests in petticoats. Women are distributing communion and hearing confessions …”

“Is it better for men to hear women’s confessions?”

Medardus shrugged. “I see no need to confess to a particular person at all. Public penance for a great and public sin, private penance for a private sin is the tried rule of the Church.” He put his hand on the queen’s arm. “Will you not take off your cloak and allow me to extend to you the hospitality of my poor house? This matter you have brought me cannot be settled like the sale of a horse.”

“I shall show you, my lord, that I am neither rigid nor unsupple in my resolves.”

She allowed him to lead her back through his tapestried atrium to an open terrace warmed at this hour of the afternoon both by a lemony winter light and several braziers. Plants hung in pots suspended from the arches supporting the terrace roof. The walls were frescoed. She was on the point of sitting down when a clash of voices broke out in the vestibule she had just left. The bishop’s servants were trying to prevent someone entering. Radegunda returned to the atrium in time to see a tall Frankish nobleman push past, stride forward then, on seeing her, pause. He was not a dozen ells away. A tufty, high-complexioned man, brightly dressed and hung with a clutter of appendages: dagger, sword, purse, keys, a necklace, bangles, a swastika-shaped belt-buckle and a shoulder-fibula in the form of a hound whose head was turned back towards its own tail. These, like the bristling or swelling by which certain beasts express alarm or aggression, gave the man a heightened presence. Radegunda knew him. He was the local count whom she had seen several times at court. A drinker, fighter and wencher. Vigour sprang from his flesh like drops from a wet dog or sparks from an anvil. Clotair’s flesh had had the same property and, like Clotair’s too, this man’s muscles moved under his skin like bubbles under the scum of a pot of simmering soup. Radegunda could feel that the male in him was alert to her female awareness of this. She turned to the bishop.

“Your Grace, with your permission, I will go and pray in the basilica. I do not wish to meet Count Leudast.”

The bishop accompanied her across the hall so that they passed within feet of the count. Radegunda gave him a chill nod, then walked quickly behind a tapestry which the bishop had drawn back to let her pass. From the corner of her eye, she saw the count suppress a
movement
towards her. Then the tapestry fell and hid him. The bishop told her the way to the basilica which adjoined the church house.