She decided to make Saix her home, but only after a great pilgrimage. In all of Gaul, no saint was so holy as St. Martin. She had yearned for years to go to Tours, to see the many places blessed by his presence. After two days’ travel, escorted by guards, she and Agnes came to the outskirts of the city. Already the roads were crowded with the sick and the maimed. Many struggled on crutches or were carried on litters. Blind men tapped their way with sticks, some guided by helpers. Shrines to the saint’s memory stood at places where he had stopped long ago. The women fell to their knees in tears, overwhelmed by the aura of this holiest of saints. At each stop along the way, Radegund left jewelry and silk robes to be sold for the benefit of the poor.

As they neared the walls, St. Martin’s basilica appeared: first its tall square wooden tower, inlaid with gold, then the gleam of its tin-covered roof and its massive front entrance, looking down on a large square.

Radegund saw that she would not be able to arrive in royal robes and freely step up to the altar, and so she stopped her horses and ox-drawn wagons, and had Agnes lay out a linen cloth as she took one of her finest robes from a trunk, carefully choosing jewelry she would have worn with it, then set it all neatly on the cloth, which Agnes folded into a package.

The two left their escort to join the long line of pilgrims winding towards the saint’s tomb in hopes of being healed. Seeing their simple but fine clothes, those before them would have let them pass, but Radegund insisted they keep their proper place. The woman in front of them, her clothes almost rags, wore a linen bandage on one breast. It overflowed with pus and the stench was terrible. For an hour, Radegund and Agnes stood behind her, softly praying for her recovery, as the long line worked its way into the church.

Before the line grew straighter, Radegund made out rows of columns along the side of the church. Above these, shorter ones supported a series of small arches, set below widely spaced casement windows. The tin on the roof was hammered with biblical scenes. At the front, blue and gold mosaics sparkled around three entrances.

At last they entered the middle door. Windows high above lit white, red and green marble. At the far end, a bulls-eye window, set in the half-bowl of the ceiling, lit the gilt beams overhead. Looking back at the entrance, they saw a painting above it, flanked by verse on either side; it showed St. Martin with a widow. Before them, two rows of columns ran up the nave towards the altar, set directly beneath the opening for the tower. Behind the altar, a curtained entrance led to an enclosure where four columns held a marble canopy over St. Martin’s sarcophagus.

As they reached the middle of the nave, Radegund saw a painting above the northern entrance of Jesus leading St. Peter on the waves; verses flanked this, as they did images from St. Martin’s life on the opposite side. Soon they could see the bottom edge of the tower, inlaid with verses exhorting visitors to come with holy hearts. Beyond it, blue windows lit the canopy. They came to the curtain that led into the alcove before a low balustrade, curving around St. Martin’s tomb. Stepping in behind the woman with the suppurating breast, they saw the sarcophagus, lit by a hanging candelabra. Piles of offerings lay all around it; from time to time, a priest came by to clear some away.

Many objects of value swelled the piles: hairpins, pendants and fibulae; clearly some pilgrims were people of rank. But it was the offerings of the poor that most touched Radegund – a hand-woven cloak, tin ornaments, combs made of reeds, even what she knew to be pagan offerings of animals carved in wood and a pair of figures she recognized as Odin and Thor. Several wooden bowls held pieces of flat bread – the coarse barley flat bread of the poor. The woman before them had set down a crude carving of a breast, showing St. Martin what she needed cured. Others had left carvings of arms, feet, ears, eyes, even male and female organs. Normally, Radegund would have been horrified to see such pagan pleas for cures, but she understood that simple spirits thought these most meaningful to the saint.

She bent to unfold her simple linen package. Some around her gasped, seeing the ornate silk she set down, the exquisite jewelry of silver and gold. But she thought only of St. Martin and all he had done for the faith, as she knelt with Agnes for a few brief moments and prayed. In no other place had she felt such holiness, the sense of being so near a saint; the sure knowledge that her chosen path brought her ever nearer to sanctity and bliss.

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