As at Athies, palisades at Saix surrounded a small group of houses; farms and orchards stretched across the neighboring land. Here too the villa, simpler than those at Athies or Vitry, stood at the rear, behind a separate stone wall. The main building too was of stone, but had been built more recently, with no Roman murals or marble floors.

This would be her home while she thought out her future. Though she still had jewels and robes stored away, she lived simply. Since Médard had consecrated her, she no longer ate, not only meat, but fish, eggs or even fruit, only beans and gray peas, and greens from the garden behind her villa. Still, when guests came to her table, she had the cook serve elegant meals. But while others enjoyed the cook’s flado – a honeyed flat cake –, she secretly slipped barley flat bread, baked beneath the coals in her room, under this treat. Though her guests enjoyed excellent wines from Gaza and Greece, she drank no strong drink at all – no undiluted wine, no mead, no beer – but only honeyed water or weak perry.

St. Germain of Auxerre, she had heard, ground his own grain for the forty days of Lent; she began to do the same. Workers brought her a hand mill. She poured grain down the hollow in the middle of the top stone, turning this with a stick set in the side, crushing the grain into flour which spilled out the sides into the flat box that held the mill. When she broke her fast at the end of the day, she took quiet satisfaction in knowing she ate the fruit of her own labor.

As at Athies, too, she soon discovered how many were in need; not only those who lived on the estate, but beggars wandering between Poitiers and Tours. She housed the most needy, noting down their names in a register as members of her estate. Twice a week, on Thursday and Saturday, she had a large wooden tub filled with hot water and washed them one by one. What horrors she found on the heads of many: lice, scabs, even pus. Untroubled, she would pluck away lice and scrub putrid flesh. Lovingly, she would comb out their hair with a freshly tied comb, until the filthiest beggar looked fresh and neat. Many had suppurating sores, which she would gently anoint with fragrant oil, not flinching or fearing contagion.

She let male servants see to the men, but when women went into the tub, she would take the lye soap made on the estate and scrub them from head to toe. When they stepped out, if their clothes were in rags, she had them taken away and replaced with new ones. However ragged, soiled and disheveled they arrived, each, when she was done, was clean and freshly dressed.

She treated their meals as formally as banquets at the palace. She brought out water and napkins for each and washed the hands and mouths of those unable to clean themselves. Servants brought them three courses, platters richly laden with beef and mutton, flavored with fragrant sauces and accompanied by white, leavened bread. All the rich delicacies she refused herself she eagerly fed to the poor, as she had long ago at Athies, cutting up the meat and tearing the bread, feeding the blind with a spoon. It gave her real pleasure to see them eat; easing their sufferings distracted her from her own.

For she still suffered. Since her brother’s death, those old visions – of her aunt’s head being split open, of the babies savagely slaughtered, of the murder of the princes, of her brother’s body being torn apart – all returned, over and over, along with her confused sense that it was her own sinful nature, her own original stain, which had brought all this on herself and those she loved. And when she deprived herself of food, when she gladly watched others devour what she refused herself, it was with the hope that somehow she would purge herself of that corruption.

A wooden clapper sounded outside the gate. The sound was faint and far off, but many who heard it fled at once from the road, cowering behind bushes or trees as the clicking grew louder. A group trudged slowly into sight, most wearing simple gray robes and carrying packs, the man who led them clicking two small boards together. His face was covered with leathery swellings, his nose and lips lost beneath them. Behind him, several of the others too had faces covered with thick, shapeless bumps. One very pretty woman seemed untouched – until one saw her hands, twisted and swollen with the same hideous masses. A man who had lost both feet was carried by two others. Some were missing hands, or ears, or other parts of their bodies. The clothes of one man, still deep blue though worn with travel, showed he had once been someone of rank.

As the tenants looked out fearfully from their hiding places, they were shocked to see one of the servants from the main house come out and, not without hesitation, invite the group inside. Carefully keeping her distance, she asked how many they were and where they had come from, as she led them to the inner gate of the main house. In the small courtyard, other servants set baskets full of bread and pitchers of water beside them, with tin cups, and brought out benches for them to sit on.

Inside, in the main hall, Radegund gave orders to set up trestles and boards across them, then helped lay each place with a bowl, spoon, small knife, a cup for water, a goblet for wine, and benches on each side of the table.

Lentils and beans were already boiling in the kitchen. She had cold meat from the night before browned on spits. As all this was being prepared, she ordered the lepers shown in. She kissed each of the women as they entered, untroubled by the swellings on their faces. She embraced each warmly, as her horrified servants and Agnes looked on. Once all were seated, she went around with a napkin and a bowl of water and washed their hands and faces, exactly as if they had been the most exalted guests, and when she found open sores, poured ointment from a glass vial and herself rubbed it in. When the food was served, after a fervent prayer, she saw whose hands were too contorted to hold a knife or spoon and went to serve each herself.

Once the meal was done, she had simple robes of strong cloth given to those wearing rags. She gave each a triens, a gold piece of great value. As they gathered their packs and prepared to leave, she again embraced each woman warmly, kissing her face, however disfigured.

When she rejoined her servants to watch the group leave, one said softly, “Holy lady, who will kiss you now that you have embraced a leper?” Lightly, Radegund answered, “What is it to me if you choose not to kiss me?”

The truth was, she felt purified by the touch of the lepers, brought closer through their decay to the true corrupt nature of the world. All the rest of it – her magnificence as a queen, the beauty others remarked in her, the silk and jewels still stored away – was a sham, a distraction from the horrors and the suffering at the heart of the world. Open sores, rotting skin, the smell of the latrine where she had so often prayed – these were the true features of the world, the hideous reality from which only Christ could save us.

Her reputation spread, around the estate and beyond. Some of the poor came simply knowing they would get a meal and perhaps a new suit of clothes. But others had heard she was holy. The sick came, sometimes on litters, in hopes she might heal them. Seeing an open wound, a servant would bring her a vine leaf and ask her to bless it. With no more than that, some claimed, many were healed. An invalid came with a candle and gave it to her attendant, saying he had dreamed of how to be cured. As his candle burned down, it was said, the invalid was healed.

Much she did was not miraculous, but made more effective by her presence. And so she would hear of some bedridden person and take them pears or a hot dish of peas. People who had refused to eat let her feed them and rose from their beds, their strength restored.

Each cure she knew eased the world’s suffering, if only in the slightest degree. More than one of the sick had been close to death. With all the loss she had known, seeing a child restored to his mother, a sister to her brother, a husband to his wife gratified her with the thought of tears which would not be shed, of mourning spared their loved ones. Still, with all the good she did, the growing number of those who came to seek her help, she felt ever more oppressed by the world. She recalled the peace she had found in the convent, the wonderful purity of a life among women and prayer, and yearned for such a refuge.

HOLY MOTHER -->