Free Enoch's Device by Joseph Finley Page A

want to know?”
    Still fearful about having been caught where she ought not to be, Alais simply nodded.
    “Well, child, she was a princess of Thuringia, a kingdom near Saxony, some four hundred years ago,” the old nun said. “But being a princess is not all wonder and magic as you young girls suppose. No, a princess’s life is never her own, and when Radegonde’s father was killed by her own uncle, it was men’s lust for power, not love or romance, that came to rule her life. To kill the king, her uncle had allied with Clothaire, the Merovingian king of the Franks—a monster if ever there was one. Her uncle and Clothaire betrayed each other, but it was Clothaire who won, and as a prize he took Radegonde as his queen.
    “Now, one day, Queen Radegonde summoned the courage to flee her husband. He pursued her, of course, his rage burning like an inferno. He stormed across the land on his black steed, but she hid in a field of oats, where she prayed for God’s mercy. And do you know what happened then?”
    Alais shook her head.
    “A miracle, ” the old nun said. “The oats, which were already tall and broad, sprang up around her and grew taller yet. They covered her completely, and even the women who sowed the oats could swear they never saw Radegonde in the field. Clothaire rode on. Radegonde was free. And she came here to Poitiers and founded this convent, where she kept a shard of our Savior’s holy cross and protected the city for the rest of her days. But none of this would have happened if not for her courage—her courage and her faith in God.”
    That was how Alais came to know the abbess of Sainte-Croix and Radegonde, the “queen saint,” the patroness of Poitiers.
    Ever since that day, the abbess had invited Alais to visit the tomb and light candles for the queen saint. There Alais would pray and wish that she might live a happy and carefree life, for it was the only life she knew. And that she would marry a man for love—a romantic love, like that the poets wrote of—and live free of the sort of tribulations that Saint Radegonde had endured.
    Alais looked up at the gray sky and sighed, for those had been the wishes of a young girl. And with the passing years, she realized how foolish they were.
    *
    Carefully stepping over a pat of ox dung as she followed Thadeus up the path to the abbey, Alais thought back to the time, six years ago, when her father arranged Adeline’s marriage to Renaud, a Burgundian lord nearly twice her age. Alais would never forget the man’s arrival at the palace. He was fat and brutish, with oily hair as long as a woman’s, and a stubbly beard that collected the grease and crumbs from his hoggish eating. Alais blanched at his ill manners, for he wolfed his food as indecorously as the kitchen dogs. She shuddered when she imagined Adeline on their wedding night, spread-eagled beneath him for the first time, pinned by his rolls of fat as he ravaged her, grunting like a boar. It was as if Clothaire himself had come to Poitiers in all his monstrous barbarity.
    In the days leading up to the wedding, Alais had prayed that her sister would summon the courage of Saint Radegonde and flee. But Adeline never did. She married Renaud at the palace in Poitiers and left with him the next morning for Burgundy. Adeline had written letters since then (for their father had insisted early on that his daughters learn to read and write), but Alais found no joy in those letters, and each one troubled her more than the last. For as the years passed, Alais knew that her own time to wed was coming.
    Her time came three years later. The man’s name was Geoffrey, the lord of Selles-sur-Cher, and even though he was not rich, he was a cousin of Emma of Blois, and a supporter of the king. This made him suitable enough in her father’s eyes for the hand of his second daughter in marriage. The Lord of Selles was said to be thirty-four, more than twice her age. In Alais’ mind’s eye, he had already become