Chilperic, the Frankish king, controlled northern France
and had ambitions for north-west Germany.
He was heading home one evening, gloomy and exhausted,
his men were heavy laden with golden crosses,
enameled silver ciboria and suchlike treasures
looted from rich abbeys on land his brothers owned.
He saw, crouching at the side of the road,
barefoot, her chin on her knees, with red mane,
a motionless maiden. She seemed to be asleep.
Standing watch beside her, was an old bald man
dressed in the rough apparel of a peasant.
The sun, from a pitlessly pure
blue and cloudless sky, made the woman’s hair
glow like iron heated in a fire.
The wheat fields around them shone golden
in the brightness.
There was something uncanny about her,
this still woman whose tawny locks blazed.
Chilperic reined his horse. At his signal
the lords and retainers who followed him halted
with a crash of armor and loot. He made a sign
to the woman to rise and approach him.
She only knelt, he face half hid
behind her hands and the hair that hung to her waist.
She didn’t see him or hear his troop.
The old man turned to the king whose face
was already pale with impatient rage.
With a palsied tremor of his head, he said,
“She’s in a trance.”
The king saw then that before this rag-clad
woman was a brass bowl in which a strange light
danced like fire, but it was not flame.
Like a will ’o the wisp, it flickered weird and pale
as a captive soul. Chilperic’s men
were ready to head away, they were scared,
so was Chilperic, still, he had to find out
who she was. He gaped as he watched
the man set aside the basin with its flame
and help her up. Her thin face didn’t lack
a certain sweetness beneath the grime.
Her arms were nicely shaped, though bruised;
had she hurt herself in some convulsion?
Her hair had captured several nettles,
her eyes were dull, saw nothing, even so
she had a certain solemnity. The king
leaned forward in his saddle to look,
and couldn’t look at her enough.
“She’s an orphan, sire. I pitied her.
She’s followed me now for many a year.
We wander and beg together.” “She’s dumb?”
“Yes—well, no—sometimes she goes a year
without speaking, then she regains her senses
and says astounding things for days on end.
Folk follow us then, to hear her oracles.”
“Make her say something,” said Chilperic
with a look admitting of no demur.
The man said, “Speak, Ennoia,
tell us your dreams.”
Then, slowly, in a voice as eerie
as night wind whining along the shore,
she spoke. The voice didn’t seem to be hers,
it sounded so far away, so sad,
like a doleful echo, a memory
of ancient pain. The child said,
“Eden, dear lying paradise,
with that tremendous tree. After dark its fruit
glowed like gentle round lanterns. Tigers
and wolves slept tamely together in its roots.
Angels perched among its branches;
when they flew off, they left a streak of light
behind them fading slowly to the night.
I listened, enchanted, to the voice of one invisible
who gave me secret sweet advice.
My ears were drunk with its peculiar music.
That golden voice! In the perfumed forest,
so dense it muffled all other sound,
I drank in his powerful, romantic words
which thrilled my pounding heart.”
“But, that’s Eve!”
cried the Frankish king.
“Don’t disturb her dream
or the spirit will fall silent,” said the man
and raised two fingers to his lips.
She continued to dolefully intone.
“Our sail bellied out, our galley cut the waves,
hurling foam. I smiled for him, looking
into his eyes, in dread lest I displease him,
and he said to me. ‘What do I care
for the grudging favor of the gods?
What’s it to me, whether there’s peace
between my people and the Greeks?
You’ll live in my palace, you will be mine.’
“It was a sweet existence. A tower room,
an ivory bed spread with panther skins,
the way he knelt at my feet
on the thick rich Turkish rugs.
The war forgotten, inaudibly far off,
and he spent the days telling me stories
and stroking my hair.
“At night we would climb to the parapet,
exhausted and dreamy from making love,
we’d peer through the crenels
between the massy merlons
at the Greek camp’s sentries and watchfires
in misty distance—Ulysses addressing
the assembly before the tents, or Achilles
in his golden helmet, racing his chariot
over the sands.”
The Frankish king remembered then
an ancient poem recited at his table
by a wandering bard. He’d sung of these things,
astounding the vassals, who plied him with wine
and made him harp those ballads till dawn.
She continued,
“I remember, I was painted and perfumed
and set out on the street for the pleasure of anyone,
however he wanted, for a handful of coins.
I ended up in a tavern, playing a zither
for drunken sailors. A sudden storm
made the roof resound with heavy rain,
high wind blew out the candles. A brawl began.
Fists were swung and curses hurled.
I crouched in a corner and wept for terror.
Someone came in and took me by the hand.”
“That was me. I found her where the dregs and jetsam
of a great port collect. I took her with me,
poor little creature, wee being of the pit,
wicked and innocent, virgin and whore.
Simon Magus and Gnostics called her Ennoia,
Barbelos, and Prounikos: the fallen female
aspect of God. The ancient Greeks
knew her as Eros. In Tyre and Sidon
she was worshipped as Astarte.
Homer and Stesichorus
called her Helen of Troy, the course
and scourge of Hellas’ heroes, the death
of her fancy-man Paris.
“At Rome a plebeian yanked her head back
by the hair and slit her throat
because she’d made him love her just for fun.
Prince Tarquin raped her: she was Lucrece,
and also that Delilah who shaved Samson’s head,
the new bride who slew besotted old Attila
on a wedding be of furs in a tend made of hides
while his dogs howled outside. She was Judith
who hoisted Holofernes’ severed head,
nor was he the last man she butchered like a steer.
“Liar, infidel, prostitute,
where didn’t she go relentless after pleasure?
She plied her trade in taverns, in alleys.
In Syria she was queen of the thieves,
delightedly they drank their winnings with her.
More than one holy priest shared her bed
still warm from the last man to lie there. I
ransomed her from the guild of thieves,
paid heavily in gold for her well-fed flesh
and pink health. I set her up as a courtesan.
Noble youths, old misers, those who wore jewels
and those who hoarded them followed us around
with desperate looks, holding out crammed purses.
“Nero was obsessed with her,
so much so that he had her killed
lest he fall in love. Caligula
had her poisoned. She was exiled by Titus.
The people adored her pale and perfect face,
they thought she must be the goddess of the moon.
“This is what I do. I bring her to kings,
to any man with real power. All that crimes
of passion or anger can accomplish, comes with her.
There isn’t a throne she’s approached
that wasn’t stained by the shedding of blood
or the spurting of seed. This is my victory,
this is my goal. To destroy everything.”
The Frankish king was distressed by this confession,
though not in quite the way one might expect.
There dawned in his soul, and rose
with a more than solar fire, the longing
to take his turn with this woman, the body
he’d glimpsed through her rags, the bruised arms
of a helpless girl, the sleepy-stupid eyes
in her dazed pained face, her verge-of-tears smile,
inflamed him strangely. He wanted to degrade her
for days, to wallow as he wanted
in his dirtiest dreams. He slid off one thick gold
arm-band and passed it to the old man, who gravely
accepted it. The king, with dry mouth and shining eyes,
said, “Bring her to my palace tonight.
My serf will meet you at the gate.”
The king’s weary retinue followed him home
on the road between the wheat-fields, glad
to be moving on at last. The horses, taken from their grazing,
walked on, no longer interested in anything.
That night, after three jugs of mead
and two of red wine, the king called in his man
Hildebert, explained the situation
which seemed to amuse the serf, for he smiled
as he headed for the gate.
Just then a man leading a pale young girl
took off his sandal and struck the great door
thrice with the flat of it. The heavy portal,
all big iron nail-heads and curlicued hinges,
opened noiselessly. The man at the gate
shoved the girl inside with a mirthless laugh.
That’s how the woman whom history knows
as Fredegond found her way into the bedroom
of the Merovingian kings. With her came war,
hatred between Christian peoples,
the dagger, poison and adultery—
all found a home beneath those gothic vaults.
Fredegond stood there with crossed arms, heard
with satisfaction the eager footsteps
of the approaching king. Contented, she foresaw
the crime and disaster soon to be,
from the murder of Audovere
to the final doom inherited
by the last of Chilperic’s line,
and her eyes blazed with joy.