Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain Page B

be beyond such a boy’s coveting? But she had nothing else.
    “I’ll give it to you,” she said firmly, “if you take a message to Bishop Medardus and bring me back his reply.”
    “Who says the bishop will let me in?”
    “Tell him Queen Radegunda sent you.”
    Again the stare: slow, suspicious, servile. The boy shifted his feet and gave her the passive glance which numbs fear and conceals—what? Nothing perhaps, a waiting, a calculated passivity which soaks inward from the look on the face so that appearance becomes reality. The boy was a church serf, an orphan or the son of serfs; he could not easily be moved to cause trouble or present himself at the bishop’s house. Radegunda made up her mind quickly. She went back to the sacristy, dressed once again in her own clothes and returned. She arranged her face and displayed the jewellery which she had concealed from caution during her journey. She called to the boy:
    “Now do you believe I am Queen Radegunda? All right then. Take this ring and show it to the bishop’s doorkeeper. Tell him the queen sent you and tell him to say this to the bishop.” Leaning so that her face was on a level with the boy’s, she pronounced very slowly and clearly, “Tell him that if he does not make haste the bull will have eaten the clover.”
    Pressing the ring into the child’s hand, she made him repeat the message.
    *
    [ POITIERS A.D. 569]
    Fortunatus has been questioning me. Again. I answer. Sometimes innocently. Sometimes with caution. Either way I see my past take shape in his mind, held fast there like the fish which froze last December in our pond. I tell him this and ask: what if the fish, under the pressure of the fall which feeds the pond, had been about to explode when the ice enclosed it? Your gloss is the ice. I don’t recognize my life in your Life , Fortunatus. He brushes this off. He wants to write an edifying book and tailors my past for his purpose. He doesn’t tell me the shape he intends to impose on it but his questions tell me what it is: sanctity. When I first understood this I was outraged. Now—an exercise in humility—I have resolved to let him do it. After all, why should my truth matter to anyone but God? Maybe—a knife-thrust of despair—there have been no real saints? But people need to believe there have. Still, each time Fortunatus has been questioning me, I return to my memories like a housewife to possessions which have been disarranged.
    He leaves out the play with costumes—too wily for a saint—when, like a circus actress, I played myself, the great and glittering queen, so as to cow the little serf into doing what I wanted, then changed promptly back into the haircloth habit in the hope of cowing the bishop. It smacks a little of comedy and Fortunatus doesn’t like mixing genres. He has gone off now with the scene between me and Medardus neatly set out on his tablets: an encounter between two saints. He may be half right. Medardus was a holy man: shrewd and possessed of some fortitude although in his dealings with me it took some time to show itself. Since his death he has been credited with a number of miracles. Perhaps I saw him at his worst? He was afraid of Clotair and Leudast, devoted to order and knew little of marriage. I remember how long he kept me waiting in that basilica. I was by the high altar dressed in the habit and determined not to move until he came. I knew he must come sooner or later to celebrate benediction, but he did his best to tire me out. I could not be sure he had got my message but I knew he knew I was there and what I was up to, for small boys and old women and junior clerics of every description kept pressing their noses against the grille of the rood-screen then trotting off in the direction of his palace. It was considerably past the hour established for the ceremony when he turned up with Leudast and several ruffians pushing behind him. I was half frozen for the habit was loosely woven and draughts