Read Online Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain - Free Book Online
Authors: Julia O'Faolain
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vague, a chameleon word which sometimes meant ‘me’—as in “give yourself to God, love God”—and sometimes very elusive matters indeed.
“You are beautiful, Radegunda!”
“Yes!” Radegunda touched her own body quickly, fingers light and splayed, skimming it in the same gesture which she had used on Agnes’s. “I am astonished to find my flesh still fresh. When I am not looking at it I imagine it rotting off my bones like the flesh of game which has been hung too long in kitchens. It has been too long in human embraces. When I come from the bath I am tempted to go to the stables and roll my body in the dung. Its cleanness is so illusory.”
“Radegunda, don’t be unhappy! I’ll do whatever you want.”
Radegunda touched her cheek to Agnes’s. “My doe, my frail plant! All I want”, she whispered, “is to protect you. Can you trust me?”
“Oh, yes.” Caught up now in a thrilling fellowship.
The queen stood up. Other women must be invited into it, she declared. “Think how many are sacrificed to the brutish lusts of men! You”, she promised, “will be our first abbess when we found the convent I am planning. It may not be for some years, so you will be older but still pure. You, my dove, will have made the whole sacrifice. You will have come unsullied to Christ’s love so it is only fair that on earth as in heaven your place should be above my own!”
Agnes jerked her hand from the queen’s. “I don’t want to, Radegunda. I spoke too quickly. I’m sorry.”
The queen chuckled. She lifted her face to the ceiling, flinging up her chin so that all Agnes could see from below was the white trumpet of her neck rising in the lamplight like the corolla of a St. Joseph’s lily. “You are afraid,” cried the queen. “You are beset by regrets and doubts!”
“Yes, yes I am.”
“Don’t you see?” Radegunda fixed Agnes with an ecstatic eye, “don’t you see that that proves you have chosen the noblest and bravest course? Your doubts come from the prince of this world,” said Radegunda, “the devil, Agnes. It is when he is nearest defeat that he makes his strongest assault on God’s chosen ones! You will have regrets, but you must not look behind you. What lies behind? Nature. Natural love and that, I don’t have to remind you, is cursed by the curse God put on our first parents. Sexual love is linked with death. The dying creature leaves the product of its sexual couplings to take its place and so the race is continued—but why should it be, Agnes?”
“There is … happiness, Radegunda. People are happy sometimes!”
Agnes felt the weakness of her response, feeling the words which the queen had released into the air hanging still just beyond earshot. Their energy reverberated. Their conviction. They had come at her like swarms of palpable things, like insects perhaps, projectiles or small, fierce birds. She had paid only vague attention to their meaning—familiar, heard before—but an animal pulse in her quickened to the feeling behind them registering it as sustained and hard to resist. She could sense it building up in the small room, accumulating and surging in a wave destined to carry her off. The queen was flushed. She held her body tautly as though seeking to stretch and dip into herself to find stored inner powers. Agnes felt she was being treated to a display worthy of a larger audience, as though the queen had been trying out a new persona and Agnes had happened to be there and to see. But no: it was not as deliberate as that. Radegunda was driven, illumined by forces which Agnes could only know through her and at second hand. Maybe God spoke through her?
Radegunda was speaking again but more gently now. “Let us pray for guidance, child.” She drew the girl towards a jewelled reliquary in a corner of the room.
Standing in front of it, their hands stretched forward in the old Roman way, they prayed.
Chapter Four
[ A.D. 569]
Help!
Daniel whom the Lord
“You are beautiful, Radegunda!”
“Yes!” Radegunda touched her own body quickly, fingers light and splayed, skimming it in the same gesture which she had used on Agnes’s. “I am astonished to find my flesh still fresh. When I am not looking at it I imagine it rotting off my bones like the flesh of game which has been hung too long in kitchens. It has been too long in human embraces. When I come from the bath I am tempted to go to the stables and roll my body in the dung. Its cleanness is so illusory.”
“Radegunda, don’t be unhappy! I’ll do whatever you want.”
Radegunda touched her cheek to Agnes’s. “My doe, my frail plant! All I want”, she whispered, “is to protect you. Can you trust me?”
“Oh, yes.” Caught up now in a thrilling fellowship.
The queen stood up. Other women must be invited into it, she declared. “Think how many are sacrificed to the brutish lusts of men! You”, she promised, “will be our first abbess when we found the convent I am planning. It may not be for some years, so you will be older but still pure. You, my dove, will have made the whole sacrifice. You will have come unsullied to Christ’s love so it is only fair that on earth as in heaven your place should be above my own!”
Agnes jerked her hand from the queen’s. “I don’t want to, Radegunda. I spoke too quickly. I’m sorry.”
The queen chuckled. She lifted her face to the ceiling, flinging up her chin so that all Agnes could see from below was the white trumpet of her neck rising in the lamplight like the corolla of a St. Joseph’s lily. “You are afraid,” cried the queen. “You are beset by regrets and doubts!”
“Yes, yes I am.”
“Don’t you see?” Radegunda fixed Agnes with an ecstatic eye, “don’t you see that that proves you have chosen the noblest and bravest course? Your doubts come from the prince of this world,” said Radegunda, “the devil, Agnes. It is when he is nearest defeat that he makes his strongest assault on God’s chosen ones! You will have regrets, but you must not look behind you. What lies behind? Nature. Natural love and that, I don’t have to remind you, is cursed by the curse God put on our first parents. Sexual love is linked with death. The dying creature leaves the product of its sexual couplings to take its place and so the race is continued—but why should it be, Agnes?”
“There is … happiness, Radegunda. People are happy sometimes!”
Agnes felt the weakness of her response, feeling the words which the queen had released into the air hanging still just beyond earshot. Their energy reverberated. Their conviction. They had come at her like swarms of palpable things, like insects perhaps, projectiles or small, fierce birds. She had paid only vague attention to their meaning—familiar, heard before—but an animal pulse in her quickened to the feeling behind them registering it as sustained and hard to resist. She could sense it building up in the small room, accumulating and surging in a wave destined to carry her off. The queen was flushed. She held her body tautly as though seeking to stretch and dip into herself to find stored inner powers. Agnes felt she was being treated to a display worthy of a larger audience, as though the queen had been trying out a new persona and Agnes had happened to be there and to see. But no: it was not as deliberate as that. Radegunda was driven, illumined by forces which Agnes could only know through her and at second hand. Maybe God spoke through her?
Radegunda was speaking again but more gently now. “Let us pray for guidance, child.” She drew the girl towards a jewelled reliquary in a corner of the room.
Standing in front of it, their hands stretched forward in the old Roman way, they prayed.
Chapter Four
[ A.D. 569]
Help!
Daniel whom the Lord
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