Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain Page A

him. “But you are unsure which. You distrust my resolution! You think that what I take for God’s call may be a female whim!”
    There was a sound from the room they had just left. The bishop made a silencing gesture, lifted the tapestry and withdrew.
    Radegunda was now in a corridor one end of which led to the basilica, the other to the inner apartments of the palace. Behind the tapestry she could hear the count’s voice raised in vehement, half-jocular reproach. Then her own name.
    To the right was the way to the basilica. On the left, she caught sight of a small lamp burning before a reliquary: the bishop’s private oratory. She went in, stood before it and tried to pray. But her limbs were trembling. Her temples hammered. Pulling a stool against the wall, she sat and leaned back. Had Clotair sent Leudast? Surely not? His remorse should be good for a few more weeks. Days anyway. No. News of her arrival had most probably leaked out of the bishop’s kitchens where her attendants were undoubtedly eating and talking their heads off. It had reached Leudast who would feel it his duty to stop the queen running away from his lord and hers. A king with horns, even mystical ones, was a diminished king. Or was his coming here sheer coincidence? Radegunda’s mind blackened. She was hungry, tired, uncomfortable and beset by an obscure distress. Whatever had brought him, Leudast’s irruption in the place and at the moment when she was seeking sanctuary was surely a warning! His smell lingered in her nostrils. She had caught a whiff of it as she passed him and been reminded of Clotair’s. King and count were the same sort of meaty man who eats and drinks heavily and whose hair, skin and mouth smell even when freshly rinsed. Knowingly or not, Leudast was Clotair’s emissary, an emissary from the world and the flesh.
    She stood up and walked back to the reliquary. It was gold cloisonné ornamented with geometrical motifs and could not be more than a few generations old. The pagan lares would once have stood here. She held out her hand to the casket and felt the power of the dead saints whose relics were inside move like a current up her arm.
    She left the oratory. As she passed the tapestry covering the entrance to the atrium, the count’s voice arrested her. He was shouting and must have been walking up and down, for the sound ebbed and returned. She heard her own name, then: “Come down from heaven, bishop, you and I know…” She could not catch his next words. Suddenly his voice boomed so close that she could feel her heart jump. “…especially while the king is bound for Germany … political consequences. The lords will agree with me. Every man Jack … His legitimate queen. Not a concubine. If you try anything on we’ll surround the building and carry her off. What’s more, we’ll …” Leudast lowered his voice, whispered something, then finished with a roar of laughter.
    Radegunda ran towards the basilica as fast and silently as she could. Her way led through the sacristy, a small room filled with coffers. She paused here and, drawing the entrance curtain carefully behind her, proceeded to turn the keys in the coffers one after the other and to lift their lids. The first was full of sacred vessels, gold chalices, ciboria and the like. She closed that and tried another. It was full of vestments. A third held rough, sackcloth habits of the sort worn by public penitents on Ash Wednesday. Radegunda quickly pulled off her outer garments and put on one of these then walked into the basilica. A small boy was lighting tapers before the high altar. Radegunda called him but he took no notice. She walked over, pulled his arm and showed him a ring which she had not thought to remove.
    “It’s gold. Would you like it?”
    The boy gaped. Dressed in sacking, her face still dirty from the journey, she did not, she realized, look like someone capable of distributing such largesse. Besides, wouldn’t possession of a gold ring