Fortunatus welcomed each saint’s relic with a poem. Radegund and Agnes delighted in these, but no more than in those he wrote on the treats – wine, cheese, fruit, even milk – they offered him. Though neither ever wearied of being with other women – for Radegund, it was a welcome relief after Court –, the small leavening of his masculine presence, manly enough to be different, yet not so much as to overwhelm, brought them a welcome, if unacknowledged, pleasure.

Neither had ever been courted; they knew nothing of love poems. Yet his small gifts of poetry pleased them, as if the words themselves were perfumed and seducing them with their scent. Only the psalms seemed to them more beautiful and those of course came from God.

One day, Radegund asked shyly, “Do you think you could teach me to write verse?”

Her friend threw his hands up in delight. “Holy Mother! How it would please me to do so!” This was only the heartfelt truth. He missed Ravenna, the disputes, the critiques, the careful attention to a misplaced syllable. Like many craftsmen, he worked to hide his art, yet yearned to reveal its intricacies to a kindred soul. And so they set aside time after morning Mass – just as Radegund had for Father Elias – and Fortunatus slowly began to dismantle his carefully constructed words, to introduce his student to the mysteries of verse.

“Do you know any verse at all?”

“Apart from the psalms? Only yours, and what I heard as a child from the bards.”

“Ah yes. I heard much of that when I was traveling. It is very different, you know. The German verse is quite simple – several words in each line begin with the same sound.”

Radegund nodded. She had noticed that much herself.

“In Latin, we call that ‘alliteration’.”

“It has a name?”

“Oh yes. In Latin verse, a word exists for every element – every type of measure, every type of technique, everything that makes up a poem.”

“But… but your images, the sounds… They are so beautiful. Surely you do not think of such things when you write?”

He beamed. “I revel in them! I am like a jeweler, with his gold and silver and precious stones, and all his tools, laid out before him, patiently assembling necklaces, pendants and crowns. And you too will come to love the spondees and the trochees, the stressed and the unstressed feet.”

She felt now as she had that first day when Father Elias began to teach her. So much to learn!

“And do you use alla… alli...”

“Alliteration.”

“Ah. Alliteration. Do you use it in Latin as well?”

“Only sometimes, as a cook might use clove in a sauce. It is one seasoning among many others.”

“But if not that, what gives your verse its shape?” For in fact, she had noticed: his verse had a form. But how it was achieved, she had never considered. “Above all,” he said, “in Latin, we use long and short syllables. Two long, followed by one short, for instance, is quite common. But there are many other combinations.”

She took a deep breath. This was going to be harder than she had imagined. Yet the very thought of the difficulty made her feel young, as if she were again that little barbarian girl, first learning the Lord’s Prayer.

She had always been a quick study and soon she was sending him little poems, poems he would correct and return. She delighted in correction as she always had – it only brought her closer to perfection. Not that she hoped to write anything so lovely as Fortunatus’ own poems – it would have been vanity to desire as much. But to understand something of his craft, to unravel the mysteries of measured feet… This delighted her as once had the revelation of words in the black rhythmic marks she now knew as letters.

The relic -->