The Emperor had the Holy Cross. Literally.

She heard this now from several travelers, that in Constantinople the Emperor had obtained a section of the True Cross, the very wood which had once held Our Lord. The idea itself filled her with wonder and reverence: that that object was still in the world, that it was possible to touch it. To almost touch the Christ Himself.

For a long time, she prayed and meditated on this mystery, on the physical presence of One who was intangible, unknowable. She lamented now that she would never go to the Emperor’s capital, that she had no relation in that far-off place. Then, in the midst of her prayers, she remembered what Berthefred had told her – that Amalfred, their cousin whom they had thought slaughtered, lived by the Emperor’s side and served him.

She had already viewed his survival as miraculous. Now she saw it as a sign.

Weeks later, she met with Fortunatus and handed him a roll of papyrus. “Please read this privately, and do not hesitate to correct any faults. As you will see, it is of the utmost importance.”

He took it cautiously, unaccustomed to her showing such gravity. Having given him the scroll, she left and he returned to his house.

Nothing she had ever told him, none of the verse she had written so far, had prepared him for the flood of images he found before him. In awkward, but eloquent, verse, she recalled all the horror of the sacking of Erfurt, the murder of her aunt and servants, the enslavement of her people, the destruction of the once-magnificent palace; the complete loss of everything, everything she knew. The piles of bodies, the smell of death, the enduring sorrow; all this gripped him as he read.

Yet all this, this litany of horrors, was only a prelude to her appeal to Amalfred, to her recalling their childhood together, to her plaintive lament about the distance between them. She had barely spoken to Fortunatus of this far-off cousin, but now all the pain of their separation, of her yearning for her one surviving relative out of all those she had lost, poured over him, stunning him with its intensity. With this, something she had never told him: that she blamed herself for her brother’s death, for delaying him in his plans to leave. And that the anguish of having not been able to bury him still burned in her, still made her suffer in a way he had never suspected.

And so she begged Amalfred to write her, to give her some sign of life from a last surviving relative.

When he was done, Fortunatus stared at the letter, too weak to move. In the intimacy, all the hours together, he had shared with Radegund, he had never dreamed she suffered so, that all those horrors from so long ago still tormented her, still rose vividly before her eyes. Not even her prayers, her love of Christ, her relentless service to the poor and sick, had driven them away.

When Radegund came in to see him at his next visit, he barely rose to greet her. His face was pale, his lips trembling. She did not ask why; she knew the weight of what she had put to paper. But then he looked up at her piteously. “Do you think it was the same in Trevino? Do you think the Lombards did as the Franks?”

She could only look at him. Even charity did not allow her to lie.

He collapsed into tears. “I tried to tell myself it was not so bad, that they would only take what they could and impose their rule...”

“It may be,” she said softly. “It may be that they did no more than that.”

He shook his head. “How evil and ugly a place is the world!”

“Which is why we must always turn our eyes towards Heaven.”

It took him a moment to add, weakly, “Amen”. At last, he pulled himself up firmly and unrolled the papyrus. “My compliments on your work, Holy Mother. You have learned your lessons well. Still, there are weaknesses we must correct.” And so, soothed by craft, together they set to work.

As moved as he was by her poem, he had a question. “Why now, Holy Mother? Your brother already wrote this cousin when he was still alive. Yet for years now you have not done the same. Why now? Why do you remind him, in such impassioned terms, what he meant to you when you were children?”

“Because I need him.” Her tone was so matter-of-fact, for an instant, it chilled him. She was his Holy Mother, his compassionate caregiver, the person he saw tending to the poor and the sick. He forgot too easily that she had been a queen, and still wrote other kings and queens as an equal. That however holy her present life, she had spent years at Court. “Oh, do not mistake me, Venantius. I do indeed miss him and treasure the thought that one of my relations survives. But my life since my brother’s death has been devoted to the Lord and it is for the Lord I write my cousin.”

“For the Lord?”

“For a relic of His Life on Earth. Of His final sacrifice.” She looked intently at her friend. “The Emperor possesses some part of the True Cross. I hope to obtain a piece for the convent.”

“The True Cross? Here in Poitiers?” He trembled at the idea. He had never thought to see so holy a relic.

“My cousin, who serves the Emperor, might be of some help in that regard. But first we must restore our relations.” And so Fortunatus became part of a plan, a plan to be put into place slowly and across a long distance.

Months passed before a letter came, not from Amalfred, but from Artachis, Amalfred’s nephew, who sent the sad news that his uncle had died. She responded, again with Fortunatus’ help, and again recalling the tragedies never far from her mind:

After my country’s ruin, and collapse of my relatives’ palace,

The hostile acts Thuringia suffered,

If I spoke of the awful combats by which all this ended,

How many tears would I find here to shed?

Whom am I still to mourn, my stricken nation,

Or my dear family’s various fallen?

She outlined, lest this younger man not know it, the story of her father’s death, of two uncles’, the wounds these left in her heart, and then of the one brother she had had left, his bones now scattered. And now Hamelfred too was no more.

Artachis answered with a gift: spools of silk. She asked if it was in weaving this that she was to find comfort. “Can so little water calm the burning of my spirit?” She asked rather that he do all that her cousin now could not and that he write her after. He did so, and over a year she learned that he too was well placed at the Byzantine court and asked him at last to speak on the convent’s behalf.

But his gift of silk left her uncertain. Did he think her just a frivolous woman, to be satisfied with pretty gifts? Did he truly understand the gravity of her concern?

What if he hesitated to broach the subject; what if in fact he lacked the required influence? Perhaps she might expect more from a king. Of Chlothar’s various sons, Sigebert seemed to her the most devout; she still recalled him as that good-natured but observant boy. Poitiers had fallen to him as part of his inheritance; he was her king now. Though she still wrote Artachis, she also sent letters to Sigebert.

Sigebert, who had always felt tenderly towards her and prized her piety, responded with due respect to her request. He agreed to dispatch an embassy to officially ask the Emperor to send a piece of the True Cross to the convent.

Months went by. She heard nothing of the embassy, and no more from Artachis. Convent business kept her busy. Among her many other prayers, she prayed daily that the convent might receive this most holy of relics.

Then came word that the Emperor had granted her request. Or, more likely, the Empress; for everyone said it was Sophia who truly ruled. Radegund and Agnes, ecstatic, led the nuns in prayers of thanks, praying too for Sigebert and the Emperor and Empress. They began to plan for the day. They sent a message to Meroveus, asking that he preside over the reception of the relic.

He came to the convent in a fury. “Did I not say that no saint’s relic was to outshine St. Hilary’s?”

“This is not,” said Radegund mildly, “the relic of a saint.”

He turned bright red, his lean face swelling as he struggled lest he speak sacrilege. Radegund waited for him to compose himself, then asked, “Will you preside at the ceremony, Holy Lord?”

He glared at her. “I will not.” He took a deep breath. “I find I have other business on that day.” With that, he left. Radegund was stunned. That Poitiers’ own bishop would not welcome this holiest of relics was unthinkable, as was the thought of installing the relic with anything less than the most august ceremony.

She wrote Sigebert, who in turn wrote Euphronius, the bishop of Tours, asking him to preside. He was so moved by the honor he ignored the displeasure it would cause his brother bishop.

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