Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain

slanting glances around her. Experimenting. If Chlodecharius enjoyed her company, why didn’t they? Usually, they laughed and told her she was too young for such games and that she should run back to her nurse. Once though—just a few days ago—one of them said:
    “Well, let’s see then, little flirt. Let’s see just what you’ve got there!” He drew her into a corner where he began to do things which made her kick and scream until he put his mouth over hers—his tasted horribly of stale wine—and held her thighs and arms. As this kept both his hands busy, he was unable to go on doing what he had been doing before, but Agnes’s terror only increased as his body bore down on her with its menacing, uneven shape. She managed to bite his tongue, then his lip, tasted his blood and, as he wrenched away from her, screamed for Chlodecharius. Suddenly she was released. Chlodecharius was there and the two young men were fighting while the rest of the palace students stood around shouting and laying bets. The one Agnes had bitten was younger than Chlodecharius but bigger and much tougher. Chlodecharius took a bad beating. At the end of the fight he had to be taken to Fridovigia who applied poultices and gave him a specific against headaches consisting of wine in which she had dissolved eleven grains of pepper and several crushed worms.
    “No need to bleed him. He’s done that himself.”
    It was two nights later that he came to Agnes’s bed. Although it was dark she recognized his step and was neither surprised by his coming nor by the lurching hesitancy of his gait. If Chlodecharius came at all it would be hesitantly. She whispered his name to encourage him and show that she was neither asleep nor afraid.
    “Ag … nes!”
    “Yes? . . What is it?”
    He stood swaying by the edge of her bed then lowered his weight heavily on to it and rolled bumpily towards her.
    “Are you all right, Chlodecharius?”
    He was heavy. Hoping to shift some of his weight, she got her arms around him. Clasping him, she felt one of her palms filled by a hard smooth protrusion. It took her several moments to realize what it was.
    “Listen!” Agnes’s nurse was shaking her. “You’re contaminated too! The king doesn’t like to be blamed. You’re the one who went rushing about shouting the news so the death couldn’t be passed off as natural.”
    “A knife,” said Agnes glassily, “it was a knife!”
    People had said—even to her face—that she had now been ‘marked for life’ as a bad day is marked by a black stone. She didn’t feel marked, not connected at all really to the dead man. People thought he had been her lover but he hadn’t been.
    “How could he?” Fridovigia had shouted, raging against the gossips, shooing them away. “She’s a child. Leave her alone. She’s not eleven yet,” Fridovigia had lied, making her sign against the evil eye. “She’s eight years old, young, young, just grown quickly, that’s all.”
    “And don’t you cry”, she said to Agnes now, “too much at his funeral. Don’t cry at all.” She would have shooed his memory out of Agnes’s head.
    In songs sung by the royal harpist, girls’ hearts stopped at the same moment as their lovers’ even when those lovers died in distant battles. Death found a quick and parallel path in each love-twinned body. But Fridovigia’s grasp on reality was clearly superior to the harpist’s. Agnes felt nothing at all. Like a drawing on sand rubbed out by the tide, like writing on a scraped tablet, Chlodecharius’s memory was already almost gone. Agnes, faced by the insignificance of any—and so of her own—life, again began to cry.
    Her nurse could have slapped her.
    “Now why?” she asked furiously. “Why?”
    “Because I didn’t love him. Nobody did.”
    “What rubbish! What do you know? His sister did, didn’t she? If she’s capable of love. That sort turn their eyes to heaven and their thoughts to themselves. You’d do well to do the