Ingund took to her bed. Radegund prayed fervently for her recovery, but a week later the mother of most of Chlothar’s children died. Riding behind the wagon that held her body, wrapped in rosin-soaked bandages and covered with fragrant herbs, Radegund was surprised to see real grief contort Chlothar’s harsh face. A large stone mausoleum was set in the ground outside Soissons, just beyond the common graveyard. It was to receive them all one day. Radegund watched the workers lift Ingund’s body and carry it to one of the stone sarcophagi inside. A vision of all those left unburied at Erfurt flashed before her and she felt serene satisfaction at the thought of Ingund so securely laid to rest.

In the days that followed, Chlothar became impatient with Aregund, as if ashamed of his betrayal of her sister. Before the week was out, he sent her to a convent far from Soissons. She raged and would have refused to go, but his grief made him implacable.

Radegund felt herself strangely alone now, begrudgingly but coldly accepted by the remaining queens. The sudden loss of one who had taught and cared for her reminded her how far her role as queen was from her true self.

Without Ingund to dress her and delight in her young beauty, she lost all interest in ornament and dress. She began to wear the simplest woolen robes, putting aside the vividly patterned silk Ingund had preferred and instead of a crown wore the simple cylindrical cap of the older queens. At first, Chlothar accepted this as mourning and said not a word. But soon he asked, as he came to take her arm, “Is it not time you dressed like the queen you are?” “These things are vanity,” she said. He held his temper, but when they went in to supper, with all the Court seated around the reception hall and the two older queens proudly resplendent in richly colored silks, sparkling as the candlelight struck their wealth of jewelry, he frowned to see his courtiers’ surprise that his youngest, his most beautiful, queen was so modestly dressed.

He began to berate her, to order her to do him honor, to be a queen worthy of so great and powerful a king. She answered modestly, almost obediently, yet continued to come to supper in the simplest array.

One night, seeing her again in dark wool, with modest earrings and a simple brass fibula, he began to rage, to threaten her for defying him. She answered quietly as she always did, but made no move to change. All at once, he slapped her, hard, and she fell to the ground.

She looked up at him more in wonder than in pain. She knew men beat their wives; she had seen that often enough at both Erfurt and Athies. She also felt, at heart, that she deserved to suffer, because, after all, she was a sinner, stained with Eve’s first fault and all the disaster she obscurely felt she had brought on her own people. But Chlothar was too unworthy an instrument to inflict Divine punishment. And so she simply looked up at him, without a trace of respect, much less fear, until he turned away.

Several days later, he brought her a finely worked jacket of gold mesh, an ethereal piece of work no doubt worth a fortune. “I should not have hit you,” he muttered. “It will not happen again.” And it did not, for a long time. Until again he grew impatient with her mute defiance and knocked her to the ground or across the bed.

Each time, days later, he would bring her some gift of great price, and she would wear it once before the Court lest he be further enraged. Then she would put it in a corner of a trunk where she kept the other precious clothes she never wore. She understood in a general way that each of these objects was worth a high price, but she simply thought of each as a beating, and stored her beatings away until one day she could think how they might best serve Christ.

Sometimes she saw the children who had come to Athies. Most were grown now. Chlothar was proud to have his boys at his table. Chilperic was a warrior, equally vain of his prowess in battle and his role as a prince. She felt a twinge, hearing him speak of how he would one day be king, recalling the last two boys who spoke that way. Sigebert, still a teen, was quietly poised and polite. Chunsind’s son Chram was only fifteen, but insisted on joining the others. He was a stormy boy, given to sudden rages – exactly like his father, who sometimes rebuked him, yet clearly enjoyed his son’s unruly spirit.

The boys were respectful towards her as they were to the other queens. But sometimes Chram looked at her a little too hungrily and she was relieved to get away. Sigebert saw this and smiled. “He wants everything, my brother. Especially what is our father’s.”

The lady of Athies -->