Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain

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.
    “I shall come for you there”, he promised, “as soon as Leudast has left. You know, of course,” a look of wavering complicity, “why he’s here?”
    “Yes.”
    “I”, said the bishop bitterly, “am between two fires.”
    “One is the devil’s,” Radegunda told