A thin disk of gold, a thumb’s length wide, bore the image of the Emperor. But Chlothar’s mint had struck the coin. “Why not put your own image on it?” Radegund asked. “As if I were equal to the Emperor?” His eyes narrowed. “Yes, I hold all the power here and the Emperor, far off in Constantinople, does not dare intervene. But each of us, Childebert and Theudebert as well, hold it in his name, as if all the weight of the Empire were behind us. Which makes us,” he smiled, “all the more powerful.”

Radegund, who had been a child among kings, considered this idea – that power was best held in another’s name. Despite herself, she admired its subtlety.

Childebert had in fact struck his own coin, but one of bronze and little value. And even that did not bear his portrait, only, in three lines, his name in Latin: Il-deber-ti. On the reverse, he claimed, not the Emperor’s power, but Christ’s: what looked like a P imposed on an X was in fact the Greek letters chi and rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name. The sign Constantine had been told in a dream to put on his soldier’s shields.

No one in the countryside used these, but at the market one could buy goods with them. Only the rich used the thin gold coins and, despite herself, Radegund was now rich; the purse she wore on one of the rings of her belt was filled with gold coins. As precious as Athies was to her personally, it also produced grain, wine, honey and even cloth from its workshops. Her agents took these to Noyon or traded them with other estates and monasteries. Some of the goods came to Soissons unchanged; others were converted to gold.

Each year now she received wagons of wine, grain and honey, and a trunk full of these fragile gold disks. At first Ragingot offered her help in using and storing these, assigning his own accountants to the task. But now that Radegund had been queen and mistress of Athies for two years, she began to ask more questions, to instruct herself in counting and noting coins, and understanding what each could buy. Agnes was happy to learn along with her and soon they had their own accountants, who answered only to them.

It was a wonder to her that the same monotonous image, stamped over and over again on these wisps of gold, could buy so many silks, bracelets, earrings, fibulae, so much pepper – as costly as that was –, cumin, nard and costus. She needed none of these however. When she looked at the latest trunk piled high with the thin disks, the crude tracing of the Emperor’s face on every one, she thought of her hospital at Athies. She thought of houses inside Soissons itself. She thought of the sort of people she had never seen in the country, the ragged, pleading beggars kneeling or sprawling by the road. She exchanged a few gold coins for beer, bread, bacon and a handful of Childebert’s bronze coins, coins one could use in the market, and hired carpenters and masons to repair the poorest houses. She had the beggars washed and nursed and clothed, and bought some empty houses where they could live, granting them a daily ration of food. When Chlothar sent agents to Marseilles to buy spices, she added her own orders for those and medicines, some to use in Soissons, some to send on to her hospital at Athies.

Agnes helped her in all this and soon enlisted helpers of her own, women who could go to the market and the shops and not be cheated, but get the best price for the broad beans, peas, turnips, wood, linen and other needed items. It pleased Radegund to see that Agnes too, so sweet and endearing, could drive a hard bargain when she had to.

A deacon held Mass in the exiled bishop’s place. But Radegund yearned for the comfort of a true spiritual guide. And so she began to visit Noyon, where she had first come into the arms of the Church, and to turn for guidance to Bishop Médard.

He was now past eighty, yet his lean, lined face was still florid with good health. He hunched a little with age and his step was hesitant, but his eyes were alert and he listened with intelligence and understanding to her concerns. She never allowed herself to critique Chlothar, but he understood that she was looking ever more beyond this marriage to the grandeur of Christ. Gently he would remind her of her wifely duties, but without calling her to task for looking to a higher purpose. When she told him tearfully of Bishop Bandry’s words, he said softly, “Christ understands what your duty requires.”

But often they did not talk of her at all, only of the poor and what could be done for them, agreeing that it was in their faces one most readily found reflected that of the Lord.

As all her new wealth poured in, Radegund’s own way of living only became more frugal. She wore some jewelry out of deference to Chlothar, sometimes silks or finer linen, but she preferred her plainest robes and the simple cylindrical cap instead of a crown. Chlothar continued to frown at her failure to put herself on display, but he understood that none of his sulking or raging, or even beatings, would overcome Radegund’s quiet determination to live a humble life.

At meals, always so copiously and ornately served, she would discretely eat beans or peas from a wooden bowl, ignoring the fragrant stew of pheasant, hare, boar or wild ox set on her silver dish. She no longer drank wine, or even beer, but had perry – pear juice only slightly fermented – brought especially for her, when she did not simply drink water.

All this maddened Chlothar, but he could not dwell on it. Theudebert was too great a distraction. First, his nephew did something unthinkable – he struck a gold coin with his own face on it. “Is he mad?” cried Chlothar, “to defy the Emperor so openly?” Chlothar knew full well the Emperor would not dare attack the Franks, but an open conflict was in no one’s interest. Worse, it was plain to him that Theudebert thought of him as an old man, stuck in the past, and took no notice of his dismay.

With this, Theudebert and Childebert had now become allies. Whatever rancor Theudebert may have held towards his other uncle for trying to take his kingdom had now yielded to practicality. The two were stronger together and had decided to make common cause – against Chlothar. Word came they were preparing to invade his kingdom. He gathered his own troops, but knew he had no chance against their combined forces.

Clothild's last miracle -->