Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (420 page)

“
All
men?” said Thorvald Einarsson with his head to one side, and it came to me that he had been drinking, though he seemed sober.

“Thorvald,” said the Abbess, “what you want with this middle-aged wreck of a body I cannot imagine, but if you lust after my wrinkles and flabby breasts and lean, withered flanks, do whatever you want quickly and then for Heaven’s sake, let me sleep. I am tired to death.”

He said in a low voice, “I need to have power over you.”

She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “Oh Thorvald, Thorvald, I am a weak little woman over forty years old! Where is the power? All I can do is talk!”

He said, “That’s it. That’s how you do it. You talk and talk and talk and everyone does just as you please; I have seen it!”

The Abbess said, looking sharply at him, “Very well. If you must.
But if I were you, Norseman, I would as soon bed my own mother.
Remember that as you pull my skirts up.”

That stopped him. He swore under his breath, turning over on his side, away from us. Then he thrust his knife into the edge of his pallet, time after time. Then he put the knife under the rolled-up cloth he was using as a pillow. We had no pillow so I tried to make mine out of the edge of the cloak and failed. Then I thought that the Norseman was afraid of God working in Radegunde, and then I thought of Sister Hedwic’s changing color and wondered why. And then I thought of the leaping whales and the seals, which must be like great dogs because of the barking, and then the seals jumped on land and ran to my pallet and lapped at me with great icy tongues of water so that I shivered and jumped and then I woke up.

The Abbess Radegunde had left the pallet—it was her warmth I had missed—and was walking about the room. She would step and pause, her skirts making a small noise as she did so. She was careful not to touch the sleeping Thorvald. There was a dim light in the room from the embers that still glowed under the ashes in the hearth, but no light came from between the shutters of the study window, now shut against the cold. I saw the Abbess kneel under the plain wooden cross which hung on the study wall and heard her say a few words in Latin; I thought she was praying. But then she said in a low voice:

“‘Do not call upon Apollo and the Muses, for they are deaf things and vain.’ But so are you, Pierced Man, deaf and vain.”

Then she got up and began to pace again. Thinking of it now frightens me, for it was the middle of the night and no one to hear her—except me, but she thought I was asleep—and yet she went on and on in that low, even voice as if it were broad day and she were explaining something to someone, as if things that had been in her thoughts for years must finally come out. But I did not find anything alarming in it then, for I thought that perhaps all Abbesses had to do such things, and besides she did not seem angry or hurried or afraid; she sounded as calm as if she were discussing the profits from the Abbey’s beekeeping—which I had heard her do—or the accounts for the wine cellars— which I had also heard—and there was nothing alarming in that. So I listened as she continued walking about the room in the dark. She said:

“Talk, talk, talk, and always to myself. But one can’t abandon the kittens and puppies; that would be cruel. And being the Abbess Radegunde at least gives one something to do. But I am so sick of the good Abbess Radegunde; I have put on Radegunde every morning of my life as easily as I put on my smock, and then I have had to hear the stupid creature praised all day!—sainted Radegunde, just Radegunde who is never angry or greedy or jealous, kindly Radegunde who sacrifices herself for others and always the talk, talk, talk, bubbling and boiling in my head with no one to hear or understand, and no one to answer. No, not even in the south, only a line here or a line there, and all written by the dead. Did they feel as I do? That the world is a giant nursery full of squabbles over toys and the babes thinking me some kind of goddess because I’m not greedy for their dolls or bits of straw or their horses made of tied-together sticks?

“Poor people, if only they knew! It’s so easy to be temperate when one enjoys nothing, so easy to be kind when one loves nothing, so easy to be fearless when one’s life is no better than one’s death. And so easy to scheme when the success or failure of the scheme doesn’t matter.

“Would they be surprised, I wonder, to find out what my real thoughts were when Thorfinn’s knife was at my throat? Curiosity! But he would not do it, of course; he does everything for show. And they would think I was twice holy, not to care about death.

“Then why not kill yourself, impious Sister Radegunde? Is it your religion which stops you? Oh, you mean the holy wells, and the holy trees, and the blessed saints with their blessed relics, and the stupidity that shamed Sister Hedwic and the promises of safety that drove poor Sibihd mad when the blessed body of her Lord did not protect her and the blessed love of the blessed Mary turned away the sharp point of not one knife? Trash! Idle leaves and sticks, reeds and rushes, filth we sweep off our floors when it grows too thick. As if holiness had anything to do with all of that. As if every place were not as holy as every other and every thing as holy as every other, from the shit in Thorfinn’s bowels to the rocks on the ground. As if all places and things were not clouds placed in front of our weak eyes, to keep us from being blinded by that glory, that eternal shining, that blazing all about us, that torrent of light that is everything and is in everything! That is what keeps me from the river, but it never speaks to me or tells me what to do, and to it good and evil are the same—no, it is something else than good or evil; it is, only—so it is not God. That I know.

“So, people, is your Radegunde a witch or a demon? Is she full of pride or is Radegunde abject? Perhaps she is a witch. Once, long ago, I confessed to Old Gerbertus that I could see things that were far away merely by closing my eyes, and I proved it to him, too, and he wept over me and gave me much penance, crying, ‘If it come of itself it may be a gift of God, daughter, but it is more likely the work of a demon, so do not do it!’ And then we prayed and I told him the power had left me, to make the poor old puppy less troubled in its mind, but that was not true, of course. I could still see Turkey as easily as I could see him, and places far beyond: the squat wild men of the plains on their ponies, and the strange tall people beyond that with their great cities and odd eyes, as if one pulled one’s eyelid up on a slant, and then the seas with the great wild lands and the cities more full of gold than Constantinople, and then the water again until one comes back home, for the world’s a ball, as the ancients said.

“But I did stop somehow, over the years. Radegunde never had time, I suppose. Besides, when I opened that door it was only pictures, as in a book, and all to no purpose, and after a while I had seen them all and no longer cared for them. It is the other door that draws me, when it opens itself but a crack and strange things peep through, like Ranulf sister’s-son and the name of his horse. That door is good but very heavy; it always swings back after a little. I shall have to be on my deathbed to open it all the way, I think.

“The fox is asleep. He is the cleverest yet; there is something in him so that at times one can almost talk to him. But still a fox, for the most part. Perhaps in time…

“But let me see; yes, he is asleep. And the Sibihd puppy is asleep, though it will be having a bad dream soon, I think, and the Thorfinn kitten is asleep, as full of fright as when it wakes, with its claws going in and out, in and out, lest something strangle it in its sleep.”

Then the Abbess fell silent and moved to the shuttered window as if she were looking out, so I thought that she was indeed looking out—but not with her eyes—at all the sleeping folk, and this was something she had done every night of her life to see if they were safe and sound. But would she not know that
I
was awake? Should I not try very hard to get to sleep before she caught me? Then it seemed to me that she smiled in the dark, although I could not see it. She said in that same low, even voice: “Sleep or wake, Boy News; it is all one to me. Thou hast heard nothing of any importance, only the silly Abbess talking to herself, only Radegunde saying goodbye to Radegunde, only Radegunde going away—don’t cry, Boy News; I am still here—but there: Radegunde has gone. This Norseman and I are alike in one way: our minds are like great houses with many of the rooms locked shut. We crowd in a miserable huddled few, like poor folk, when we might move freely among them all, as gracious as princes. It is fate that locked away so much of the Norseman from the Norseman—see, Boy News, I do not say his name, not even softly, for that wakes folk—but I wonder if the one who bolted me in was not Radegunde herself, she and Old Gerbertus—whom I partly believed—they and the years and years of having to be Radegunde and do the things Radegunde did and pretend to have the thoughts Radegunde had and the endless, endless lies Radegunde must tell everyone, and Radegunde’s utter and unbearable loneliness.” She fell silent again. I wondered at the Abbess’s talk this time: saying she was not there when she was, and about living locked up in small rooms—for surely the Abbey was the most splendid house in all the world and the biggest—and how could she be lonely when all the folk loved her? But then she said in a voice so low that I could hardly hear it:

“Poor Radegunde! So weary of the lies she tells and the fooling of men and women with the collars round their necks and bribes of food for good behavior and a careful twitch of the leash that they do not even see or feel. And with the Norseman it will be all the same: lies and flattery and all of it work that never ends and no one ever even sees, so that finally Radegunde will lie down like an ape in a cage, weak and sick from hunger, and will never get up.

“Let her die now. There: Radegunde is dead. Radegunde is gone. Perhaps the door was heavy only because she was on the other side of it, pushing against me. Perhaps it will open all the way now. I have looked in all directions: to the east, to the north and south, and to the west, but there is one place I have never looked and now I will: away from the ball, straight up. Let us see—”

She stopped speaking all of a sudden. I had been falling asleep, but this silence woke me. Then I heard the Abbess gasp terribly, like one mortally stricken, and then she said in a whisper so keen and thrilling that it made the hair stand up on my head:
Where art thou?
The next moment she had torn the shutters open and was crying out with all her voice:
Help me! Find me! Oh come, come, come, or I die!

This waked Thorvald. With some Norse oath he stumbled up and flung on his sword-belt, and then put his hand to his dagger; I had noticed this thing with the dagger was a thing Norsemen liked to do. The Abbess was silent. He let out his breath in an oof! and went to light the tallow dip at the live embers under the hearth ashes; when the dip had smoked up, he put it on its shelf on the wall.

He said in German, “What the devil, woman! What has happened?”

She turned round. She looked as if she could not see us, as if she had been dazed by a joy too big to hold, like one who has looked into the sun and is still dazzled by it so that everything seems changed, and the world seems all God’s and everything in it like Heaven. She said softly, with her arms around herself, hugging herself: “My people. The real people.”

“What are you talking of!” said he.

She seemed to see him then, but only as Sibihd had beheld us; I do not mean in horror as Sibihd had, but beholding through something else, like someone who comes from a vision of bliss which still lingers about her. She said in the same soft voice, “They are coming for me, Thorvald. Is it not wonderful? I knew all this year that something would happen, but I did not know it would be the one thing I wanted in all the world.”

He grasped his hair.
“Who
is coming?”

“My people,” she said, laughing softly. “Do you not feel them? I do. We must wait three days, for they come from very far away. But then—oh, you will see!”

He said, “You’ve been dreaming. We sail tomorrow.”

“Oh no,” said the Abbess simply. “You cannot do that for it would not be right. They told me to wait; they said if I went away, they might not find me.”

He said slowly, “You’ve gone mad. Or it’s a trick.”

“Oh no, Thorvald,” said she. “How could I trick you? I am your friend. And you will wait these three days, will you not, because you are my friend also.”

“You’re mad,” he said, and started for the door of the study, but she stepped in front of him and threw herself on her knees. All her cunning seemed to have deserted her, or perhaps it was Radegunde who had been the cunning one. This one was like a child. She clasped her hands and tears came out of her eyes; she begged him, saying:

“Such a little thing, Thorvald, only three days! And if they do not come, why then we will go anywhere you like, but if they do come you will not regret it, I promise you; they are not like the folk here and that place is like nothing here. It is what the soul craves, Thorvald!”

He said, “Get up, woman, for your God’s sake!”

She said, smiling in a sly, frightened way through her blubbered face, “If you let me stay, I will show you the old Abbess’s buried treasure, Thorvald.”

He stepped back, the anger clear in him. “So this is the brave old witch who cares nothing for death!” he said. Then he made for the door, but she was up again, as quick as a snake, and had flung herself across it.

She said, still with that strange innocence, “Do not strike me. Do not push me. I am your friend!”

He said, “You mean that you lead me by a string round the neck, like a goose. Well, I am tired of that!”

“But I cannot do that any more,” said the Abbess breathlessly, “not since the door opened. I am not able now.” He raised his arm to strike her and she cowered, wailing, “Do not strike me! Do not push me! Do not, Thorvald!”