Chunsind was laid to rest in the sarcophagus beside Ingund’s. Chram refused to let himself cry, but his face was wild with grief. Chlothar brooded, his thoughts impenetrable.

A month later, Guntheuc asked to be allowed to retreat to a convent. The King seemed relieved to see her go.

Radegund was now the only queen, and all eyes were on her.

Celsa’s first wonder at Soissons and the great palace gave way to concentration as Radegund saw that she learned to read and gently instructed her in the ways of Court. Her eyes widened when she saw Radegund’s jewelry, so many rings and wedges and squares of silver and gold, colored glass of every sort, as wondrous to her as the precious stone set beside it on brooches, belts and crowns. She ran her hand slowly over the embroidered cloth in Radegund’s trunks, enchanted by the geometric patterns and interlocking figures of fierce animals.

Once Radegund allowed her to dress her, to put up her hair with the long decorated pins, to gingerly place gold earrings on her ears, to fasten a shimmering robe of silk with a fibula of gold, to close a gold mesh belt with finely worked figures of eagles. She gaped at the effect, entranced. But then Radegund had her take it all off and put it neatly away. “These are vanities,” she said, “and we must not let ourselves be seduced by them,” as Celsa helped her into a plain woolen robe a dull shade of rust and set her hair in simple braids.

Sometimes they would stroll the city, always with two or three guards, trailed by a ripple of people kneeling. One day they went as far as the market, along the lower city wall, and found a man hanging by his arms from a tree, being whipped. Both women cried out in horror, as one of the guards said, “A thief, Your Piety.” A crowd had gathered, murmuring and snickering. Radegund started to look away, but thought of the suffering of Jesus, who had also been punished as a common criminal. If He had chosen to suffer as a man, how could she turn her eyes away from another man’s suffering?

The guards let the prisoner down, then led him to a rectangular wooden frame set erect in the middle of the market. Wooden projections, curved like horns, jutted on alternate sides of each vertical beam. One guard stood the prisoner on a stool beneath the crossbeam as another climbed the curved projections, throwing a noose over the crossbeam and fitting it on the prisoner’s neck. Climbing back down, he watched with the crowd as his companion kicked the stool out from under the man.

Radegund forced herself to watch his death throes, as she would have those of Christ on the Cross. Though others cheered, she and Celsa bent their heads to pray for the dead man’s soul.

That night, she told Chlothar, “I saw an awful sight today. They whipped and hanged a man in the market.”

“A thief. I know; I condemned him.”

“For theft? Must a man die for taking possessions?’

“It discourages others.”

She knew better than to oppose his view. But from then on, when she heard a criminal had been brought before the King, she would plead for his life. Some such men were sent to monasteries, others made slaves; others she had taken to Athies. And some, despite her efforts, were hanged.

She understood more and more that she had power, however uncertain, and reasons to use it.

What surprised her the most was that she had power over the King. This was in part because she was the last of his queens still at Court. Perhaps too it was because she was so much younger. She would have thought it vain to consider her own beauty, but she could not help noticing a certain deference from men, even low-born men, that went beyond her rank; their interest troubled more than flattered her.

Whatever Chlothar’s reasons, she was touched by his willingness to please her, not least because she had so displeased him. He still tried from time to time to take what he considered his right and she her duty. But the result was always the same and his humiliation the plainer. She knew he had not lost all that power; once she came upon him, pressed against the back of maid facing a wall. He glared at her triumphantly over the woman’s shoulder, even as she hurried on. But with Radegund he had no rod of flesh, no manly force, and she thanked Jesus nightly, kneeling on the hard floor of the latrine, breathing in the smell of the place as that of the odor of human sin.

His courtiers no longer made ribald jokes, nor spoke of how the Queen’s belly would soon swell. Only Ragingot dared to tell him what many whispered, how shocked they were the Queen was not yet a mother. “It is her fault,” snapped Chlothar. “I have not married a wife, but a nun!” Ragingot repeated this to his own aide, who repeated it to others, and soon all the Court said, “The King has not married a wife, but a nun!”

A daughter in Christ -->