The rebel nun, p.7
The Rebel Nun, page 7
“What made him such an ogre?” she interrupted me. “You would not believe the things he said about your founder, Radegund. I had no idea he hated her so! Why has the church allowed this cloister to exist if she was so sinful?”
I thought her questions were fair, and I considered giving her my thoughts about them. As I saw things, Maroveus had never enjoyed the friendship that Radegund had established with the Bishop Pescentius, his predecessor, or with bishops from other sees. Maroveus was staunchly committed to the local cult of Saint Hilary, and with Radegund’s reputation for miracles and saintliness continuing to blossom even after her death, she was a serious rival for the town’s affection for the saint. His allies, however, argued that his only concern was that the relic be accessible to all who worshipped Christ, and as it was sequestered in the monastery, the Regula prohibited others from entering and beholding it. I had seen the hatred in his eyes, though, and I believed his affliction was simple envy that Radegund had achieved a status in Poitiers that far surpassed his own.
Marian was new to the Holy Cross, and she did not know about the bishop’s refusal to celebrate the arrival of the relic at the monastery. And there was still more to Maroveus’s animosity that I could have told her. At a saint’s day celebration a dozen years before, when Maroveus was a local priest and before he had been named our bishop, Radegund provided a seat of honor to a foul-smelling hermetic monk named Junian, treating Junian as Maroveus’s priestly equal. To anyone else, it would have seemed a minor oversight or a generous gesture, certainly not something to hurt Maroveus, but he chastised her for it. It was one thing for Radegund to continually upstage Saint Hilary in town. But upstaging Maroveus battered his self-esteem. Anyone who remembered that incident knew that if someone was guilty of arrogance, it was not Marian—it was Maroveus.
But answering Marian’s question about Maroveus required far more background than we had time for in that moment. Marian needed comfort, not explanations, and comfort was in short supply in the new Holy Cross. I decided the best thing for her would be a quiet cry in the dormitory. I pulled a hand from her face and led her off the stool. “Please go to your cot for the rest of the afternoon,” I said. “I will tell the cook you are ill. Do not come down for None or Vespers. Lebover or Justina may look for you, but I will distract them.”
As soon as Marian shuffled down the hallway toward the dormitory, I went to find Basina. She was in the sewing room with a dozen other sisters, and I beckoned her to follow me into the hall.
“Marian has been reprimanded by Maroveus.”
Basina squeezed her eyes closed. “I am not surprised.”
“I wonder if you could go to the dormitory and sit with her for a while.” Still concerned about Lebover’s spies amongst us, I whispered what had happened. Even then, in the late afternoon stillness of the monastery, I could not be sure no one could hear me.
Basina glanced up and down the hallway, lowered her eyes, and headed for the dormitory.
Back in the kitchen, I channeled my anger into punching and kneading the bread that was Marian’s regular afternoon responsibility and wondered how to explain Bishop Maroveus to a newcomer like Marian. Given that she had already become victim to the disregard with which the church now beheld women, I thought it would be easy for her to see Maroveus in that context.
But my immediate concern was not explaining Maroveus’s behavior. It was how to distract Justina from looking for Marian at None. The bell had rung for the Hour, and I was certain the prioress would be watching Marian for proof that she had taken her chastening seriously. I had to keep her from noticing our new sister’s absence.
I need not have worried. Just as we gathered in the chapel, the big brass bell at the front door rang, and Bertie ran in to pull Justina away. Apparently, we had another visitor.
Ten
My Aunt Brunhilde had arrived at the monastery, and by the time Justina accepted her at the door and pulled me out of None, Lebover had limped out to the reception room to chaperone us.
Brunhilde—Hilda, as I had always called her—was first married to my father’s brother, Sigibert, who had been King of Austrasia. Hilda and my mother had much in common, and even though my aunt was much younger, they had grown close. They had both been born outside the kingdom—my mother in Thuringia and Hilda in the Goth’s territory south of Gaul—and were hauled to Merovingian courts by Clothar. They both ended up in royal beds, although Hilda’s bedding had been with the benefit of marriage, while my mother’s had been as a slave and concubine.
Hilda’s higher status, however, had not gone to her head. She was kind to her nieces, including Basina and me, and loved my mother, but she hated her sister-in-law, Fredegund—the woman married to my Uncle Chilperic, my cousin Basina’s father and King of Neustria, the northern region of Gaul. We called her Freda.
My extended family’s story was as complicated and intriguing as could be expected, given royal proclivities for polygamy, murder, and war. Our kings’ alliances were brittle and short-lived, and their rivalries vicious and long-standing. My great-grandfather Clovis slaughtered his sibling rivals to the Merovingian throne and united much of Gaul under his reign, only to have his sons tear it apart and start their warring—and whoring—all over again. Out of that nasty nest, my grandfather Clothar rose to vanquish his brothers and assume sole authority over the Merovingians, at his death leaving my father and his brothers to once again claw at each other’s throats over territory. Their queens, more often than not, were just as guilty as their husbands of homicidal, if not adulterous, behavior, and deaths of Merovingian relatives were nearly as common as births. Sustaining the family legacy in progeny relied on the contributions of concubines and the influx of foreign-born wives.
Most of my own half brothers had been murdered, mostly by their stepmothers, and my cousins had thinned out considerably since I had entered the monastery.
Freda had killed my Uncle Chilperic’s first two wives—Hilda’s sister, Galswinth, and Basina’s mother, Audovere—out of jealousy and avarice, coveting the inheritance of the kingdom for her son. Not yet done with her mischief, Freda ordered Chilperic’s soldiers to rape Basina, her stepdaughter, who then fled to Hilda’s villa.
I had not seen Hilda in years, not since the day she escorted Basina to the monastery for protection. As always, she was well dressed and groomed, her hair piled impeccably atop her head, as if she had not spent days traveling the mean highways of the kingdom, although she looked much older than I remembered, and her posture betrayed her fatigue. She had sent no message that she was coming, and once I heard what she had to tell me, I knew she had kept her visit a secret—again because of Fredegund.
Despite the ongoing prayer Hour of which she should take part, the abbess insisted on sitting with us. I could hear the sisters singing and reading the prayers and Psalms of the Hours in the chapel, and I kept glancing in that direction and then at Lebover, hoping she would join them, but once she settled her bulk between my aunt and me, I knew she would stay with us unless the monastery caught on fire.
After we exchanged cheerful greetings and sat down on the wooden benches along the wall, a more serious Hilda led me through the news of the kingdoms as they affected our families. “A decade ago, after your father died, my husband consolidated your father’s kingdom with his,” she began in vulgar Latin, an emerging dialect of the country that most in the convent understood but was discouraged within our walls. “It was not easy, and I fear it cost the lives of many men and their wives and children, who starved when they never returned home. My husband was murdered too, just hours after he was raised on his shield by his soldiers to celebrate his military victories in Paris.”
So Fortunatus had told me. “God bless his soul,” I said, bowing my head.
Hilda acknowledged that with no more than a sad smile. Such murders were commonplace, almost to the extent that they were expected. Her voice was steady as she talked. I considered how brave she had to have been in the face of all she had suffered. She was only a few years older than I was, but now I noted how the web of wrinkles around her eyes and the deep frown lines in her olive skin made her look much older. I despaired for her once strong, handsome face.
“I am sorry you have lost so many and so much,” I said. “I have prayed daily for Sigibert, my father, and their men. Surely, they are with God.”
Hilda brushed off my ersatz religious sentiments and continued, but now in the German of my father and her husband. “Once my husband was killed, I was imprisoned at Rouen, but Basina’s brother Merovech rescued me, and we were married there.”
This was news to me.
“Sigibert was Merovech’s uncle, so it is considered incestuous to some, although we were not related by blood.”
I had no comment. What could I say that would not sound like pandering or accusing?
“My news today is that Merovech has committed suicide,” Hilda added.
I swallowed hard and blinked. “Oh! God bless his soul.” This was shocking. It would be horrible news for Basina, and I grimaced, thinking that I would have to be the one to deliver it.
“Everyone knows that Freda plotted Sigibert’s death and was also the cause of Merovech’s suicide, yet she continues to escape sanction. Then she murdered her own husband, Chilperic, as well, and now she rules as regent for her son Clothar, who will be king when she thinks he is ready.”
I sat back to take it all in. The violence and murders kept multiplying in the kingdoms of Gaul as if we Merovingians were, as a people, bent on our own annihilation. “Why are our kings never satisfied with their own territory, their own good fortune?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “Why do they each think they need to reign over all of Gaul?”
“It is not just our kings, my dear niece,” Hilda said, her face as sad as her tone. “It is the way of the world of men. Mortality is nothing to them—especially the mortality of others.”
“Sigibert was well regarded by his troops,” I said. “I had been certain they would protect him.”
“Humph.” Hilda shook her head. “It is easy to find spies and traitors in a kingdom where a few Roman coins or even a Celtic broach will buy enough loaves of bread to allow a soldier to slip away from the garrison and back to his family before starving.”
“True. So now only my Uncle Guntram stands between Freda and her son’s dominion over all of Gaul.”
“My son Childebert rules Sigibert’s old territory of Austrasia,” Hilda corrected me. She shifted on the hard wooden bench. “But you are right; Freda will never lose her imperial sieges. Before his death, Chilperic had been pursuing military adventures in Burgundy and Thuringia—as far as Noricum and Pannonia. Likewise, her ambitions have no limits.”
I noticed Lebover was starting to fade, her chin dropping lower with every nod, her eyes closing and barely opening again in slow rhythm. The fraternal battles of the Merovingians probably would not have held her attention, even if she could have understood my family’s German. She had never demonstrated much interest in what was happening among the Franks, as she had entered the convent from the Celtic region of Breton.
For a moment, I reflected on my good fortune to be inside a cloister—however claustrophobic it had become under Lebover and Maroveus—where physical contact, let alone physical violence, was unthinkable. Even when our rations were small, we were better off than those in the countryside where disease and hunger were more common than good health or long lives. I was safer now than I had been in my childhood.
Lebover exhaled a deep snort, drawing me from my thoughts. She had lost the battle to keep her heavy eyelids open, and her chin was resting against her chest.
Hilda lowered her voice to a whisper and reached for my hand. “And how is your cousin Covina? I must find time to visit her as well someday.”
“Covina is strong and healthy. She is a wonderful sister in all ways.”
“But you look very thin, my dear niece,” she said. “Is the cloister running out of food? Should we order the bishop to send you more supplies?”
“We have plenty of food,” I replied. “It just does not always get to the table.”
“Why?”
I nodded toward Lebover. “She does not understand our German, but we must be careful. I will write to you when I can find a way to send a letter that she does not have Justina read first,” I whispered. “But I cannot imagine you made the hard journey from Metz just to bring me up to date on Gaul’s endless turmoil, and to see if I am eating well. Is there news from my family? Is my mother well? My grandmother?”
“Ah, yes. It is not your family that brings me here.”
“What then?”
“Basina.”
I was momentarily confused. If the news was for Basina, why had Hilda asked for me? “What about Basina?”
“We hear that Freda has arranged for Basina’s marriage to a chieftain in Burgundia—someone she supposedly wants in an alliance against the Goths in Aquitaine.”
“Where did you hear this?”
“From an emissary within Neustria. As you can imagine I have spies in all corners of Gaul.”
“But Chilperic tried this before. He wanted her to marry the Goth Reccared, remember? Back when he wanted the Goths as allies?” I said. “Radegund refused to let her go.”
“Yes, I know.” Hilda looked over at Lebover. “But we hear that the new abbess is easier to persuade.” I followed her eyes. As if awakened by our glances, Lebover’s lids flickered open, and she struggled to push herself upright against the back of her chair.
“I am certain our dear abbess will protect all of our sisters’ virtues, regardless of what the king wants.” I spoke in Latin now, projecting my words so that there was no chance Lebover would miss them, however sleepy she was. If there was one thing I knew she would stand behind, it was that no nun should ever leave the monastery. I spoke louder. “No one can force a cloistered nun to abdicate her vows. Basina will stay.”
“If she leaves, she will die.” Hilda had taken my cue, switched to Latin, and raised her voice as well. “I believe Basina is in mortal danger if she leaves the Holy Cross. Fredegund will employ every ruse to eliminate heirs to compete with her son. I know she will murder your cousin the moment she leaves Poitiers.”
“No one is leaving this abbey.” Lebover struggled to force a gravelly voice through the phlegm in her throat. She coughed harshly and waved a flabby hand at us. I was not sure if she wanted us to continue to talk or go away, and I threw her a puzzled look. “Go on . . . go on with what you were talking about,” she managed to say between hacking fits.
Under the cover of her wheezing, I lowered my voice and asked in German, “Why not talk with Basina herself about this?”
“I fear she would not trust me,” my aunt whispered back. “Freda has blanketed the kingdoms with lies and rumors about me, although it is hard to see how she has any credibility, given her propensity for intrigue and murder.”
“What is this gossip with which you pollute this monastery?” Lebover had caught her breath and leaned in to catch our words.
“We were just finishing with our visit,” Hilda replied, switching back to Latin. She rose and turned to me. “I hope you are finding great satisfaction in your love for Jesus Christ. I will take your blessings to Guntram, whom I visit next. He will be pleased to hear that you and Basina are thriving here under Abbess Lebover.”
I said goodbye to her, lowered my head, and walked back to the chapel.
That evening, as we stripped down to our shifts for bed, I motioned to Marian to switch places with me so I could lie next to Basina. Still stunned by Maroveus’s rebuke, Marian barely raised her head to acknowledge me and merely shuffled over to my cot. Basina looked surprised, but I put my finger to my lips. “Later,” I whispered. She nodded, and we pulled our rough blankets over us.
A few hours later, while soft snores surrounded us, I reached over to gently wake Basina.
“What is it?” she asked. “Did Hilda bring news?”
“Yes,” I whispered hesitantly. “And not all of it is good.”
“I do not expect it to be.”
“Hilda was imprisoned by Freda after Sigibert’s death,” I started. Then I told her about the marriage to Merovech, his short-lived quest for the throne, and his suicide.
Basina gasped. I could not see her face for the darkness, but I heard her choke back a sob.
Now that Merovech was dead, Basina’s only surviving sibling was her half brother, Clothar, Freda’s infant son. Freda was ruling Neustria from Soissons as his regent until he was old enough for the throne.
That was enough bad news for one night, but she had to know about Freda’s attempt to woo her away from the monastery for marriage to a Burgundian, so I continued. I reached for her hand.
“Lebover said she will not let anyone take you away,” I said in the most soothing tone I could muster. “She said none of us would be allowed to rescind our vows. And I will not let it happen either.”
But could I keep that promise? Did I have the power to resist anything Maroveus decided to do to Basina, or to any of us for that matter? I felt my failure as a leader hover over me like a dark cloud that left us all in its shadow. I saw my half brothers taunting me as I stood helpless. Most of them were dead now, killed by jealous siblings or cousins while I, a bastardis, was still alive. And I had yet to do anything to be worthy of the breath I took.
Basina did not speak, but I could feel her sorrow as I held her hand. At that point, I thought I knew her well enough to feel her strength as well. It turned out I had no idea how she would react when things got tough. But then, neither did I know how tough things were going to get before we parted ways forever.
