Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain Read Free Book Online Page A

disembodied above its mossy coping, “pray for me.”
    She smiled with an openness which astounded him until he recalled that she, after all, knew nothing of his lust. She was separated from him now not only by the wall but by wreaths of vegetable fibre which criss-crossed between his eye and her creamy, sunlit habit, weaving her into the garden foliage, withdrawing her from his private speculation as a nymph or dryad might be withdrawn and dissolved into the pagan forests which spawned them. Aroused a second time by this memory of old verse about which he, like so many Christian poets, felt ambiguous—it represented civilization and pagan immorality —Fortunatus had the flashing certitude that he would never feel the same again about this woman.
    “My homage and greetings to Mother Radegunda,” he called.
    “I’ll tell her.”
    As he left, she was still smiling, still standing among the greenery, looking appealing, vulnerable, dangerously soft.
    *
    [ A.D 552]
    “Soft! that child is soft all through!” complained Agnes’s wet-nurse. “I worry about her,” she told the other women in the work-rooms of the women’s quarters. “She’s my responsibility. Who else will look after her? The queen?” She made a sign to ward off the evil eye. “Look at her crying now!” she nodded at Agnes, “crying her eyes out for that boy who, when all’s said and done, was only a German. Let the Germans kill each other I say!” The nurse lowered her voice. “And the Franks too,” she whispered. “Let their blood manure the earth of Gaul. It’s thirsty for it. Not for our tears. It’s had too many of them! Come along now, Agnes.” The woman walked over to where the little girl was sitting in the winter sunlight which fell like coins through the pitted marble window-panes. “Keep those eyes fresh for live young men. Let’s go and have a bath in the stream since there are no heated baths in this place. We’d better go while the sun’s high or we’ll be chilled to the bone.”
    Agnes said she wanted to stay in the palace.
    “Palace!” said the nurse with contempt. In the old days the slaves on Agnes’s father’s estate were better lodged, she could tell her that. All show here and no comfort ! “What could you expect”, again she lowered her voice, “of Franks?” Constantly moving from one ramshackle “palace” to the next! Why couldn’t they stay put in one properly appointed villa? But no: they were like wild oxen! They ate the harvest on one royal estate then moved on to the next. Nomads! “Where’s the German queen?” she wanted to know.
    “Washing his body. Preparing it,” said Agnes. She was playing with a piece of string, making knots and nets with her fingers and would not look up.
    “People are whispering about her!” the nurse said. “She won’t be in favour long. It’s dangerous to be friendly with her now. Mark my words!”
    Agnes plucked loops off the fingers of her left hand with those of her right, twisted, then plucked them back, making a kind of hammock. “She’s leaving,” she said, “She is going away to be a deaconess. She wants me to come with her.”
    “ What ’ s that ?” The nurse grasped the child to her, anxiously putting a hand over her mouth. “Speak quietly. Your voice is … So she’s running away then? It’s worse than I thought?”
    Agnes continued weaving and reweaving her cat’s cradle. It was a protection. A kind of screen against the alarm her nurse was so eager to pass on to her.
    “Revenge”, the nurse was saying in a misty whisper, “is a meal that’s as tasty cold as hot. Tastier cold sometimes . And no man, especially a king, likes to be rejected. Clotair’s arm is long. He can bide his time. You remember that, Agnes. When lightning strikes a tree the cattle that shelter under it get killed. Keep away from the queen. She’s whetting a knife for her own throat. She’s contemptuous of happiness,” said the nurse, “and you, my pretty, are