At times Fortunatus grew thoughtful, sadness filling his graceful face. “When I left Italy, I thought I would return. But now the barbarians have made that impossible. I am a wanderer, an exile, and I have no news at all from home. I have tried to write more than once, but who is to say if my letters made their way across the Alps? For my part, I have received no news.”

Though Radegund had been torn from her own home, she had been given another, if not of her choice. What must it be like to have no home at all, to wander across a foreign land? And at that, Fortunatus had his words to make him welcome, to earn him the patronage of princes and kings. What must it be like when one truly had nothing, not even talent?

Radegund and Agnes had a new house built, a small one with a garden, one that was now his own. He dined at the convent several times a week, even as he made new friends among the local nobility. As always, they watched him eat with pleasure, but barely ate themselves. He begged them now, in verse, to share his food:

In the name of piety, of He who commands the stars,

By He whom the mother loves, the brother desires

That as we dine, you allow yourself some food.

For if you do, I will be twice satisfied.

Such gracious verse and sweet solicitousness were unfamiliar pleasures to the women. As queen, Radegund had heard ample pompous, high-flown praise, but nothing like the simple care in these words or their delicate wit. One morning after they had sent him gifts of simple foods, he wrote;

Such a delicious variety swells my stomach,

I eat it all, milk, greens, eggs, butter.

But now come other foods of other sorts,

Such a mixture, a pleasure, a sweet.

Beside the butter comes the milk,

Recalling the food from which it was made.

They thought this silly and witty at the same time, to note the relation in such a way. Fortunatus brought a lightness into their lives, one neither had ever known nor even sought. His infant pleasure in food, his love of clever conceits, amused them in a new way. With this, they felt protective of him; they knew he had suffered and been alone, and it pleased them to give him comfort and a home.

He was very unlike the men they had known, most either warriors or priests. Neither sort of man, they knew, would have approved of Fortunatus, whose weaknesses were both physical and moral. Once they asked him to write them some verse and he promised to do so, but then went off to a feast. The next day he wrote them:

Among such a mix of flavorful pleasures,

I half-slept even as I sat.

Sometimes opening my mouth, sometimes closing my eyes,

Eating all the while.

Believe me my dears, I was too confused

To speak comfortably and with ease,

Neither my fingers nor my plume could write verses,

My drunken muse made my hand unsure.

I and the others drank so much,

The table seemed to swim in wine.

Still, to respect my sister and mother,

Today I write these verses as best I can,

Though sleep assails and impedes me,

Love draws writing from my uncertain hand.

Neither woman had ever seen Fortunatus drunk. But Radegund, reading these words, recalled her brother’s love of revelry, the tenderness she had felt in seeing him bleary-eyed and pale after a night of hard drinking. Sometimes, she knew, this is what men did, and the fact that Fortunatus had struggled through his morning fog to send them these verses only made them all the more precious.

Whatever his penchants for pleasure, the soft voiced poet took his convent duties seriously. He carefully reviewed suppliers’ bills, closely examined the grain, flax and wool, the wax, the papyrus they brought. He knew how to haggle and did not hesitate to return what he found wanting. “I have something of the peasant in me,” he said with a smile, “despite my family’s rank.”

He began to travel when convent business required it, sometimes just to find new buyers for the goods from its many estates, sometimes to acquire relics. Often these trips were perilous. The women trembled, reading of how his boat had been caught in a storm that stirred up the winding rivers:

The banks could not contain the waves.

These invaded the land, bearing away

The fields, the meadows, the woods, the harvests,

As I was the plaything of the unbridled torrents.

The wind and the rain raged.

The boat by turns rose with the waves and fell in the hollows.

He painted a chilling portrait of the landscape he crossed:

Ice encloses everything.

The supple grass lacks strength to rise.

The Earth is covered with a hard crust.

Tree branches sink under thick, soft snow.

Radegund and Agnes prayed fervently that he survive these terrible frosts.

When Radegund read these accounts of the hardships and the dangers he faced, she felt like the mother he considered her, full of worry and tender concern. She had two children now, two of her own to hold close to her heart.

Maroveus -->