Pope Joan (11 page)

F
OR days the village buzzed with the news of Joan’s beating. The canon had lashed his daughter to within an inch of her life, it was said, and would have killed her had his wife’s screams not attracted the attention of some villagers. It had taken three strong men to drag him away from the child.

But it wasn’t the savagery of the beating that caused people to talk. Such things were common enough. Hadn’t the blacksmith knocked his wife down and kicked her in the face until all her bones were broken, because he was tired of her nagging? The poor creature was disfigured for life, but there was nothing to do about it. A man was master in his own home, no one questioned that. The only law governing his absolute right to dispense punishment as he saw fit was one that limited the size of the club he could use. The canon had not used a club, in any case.

What was really interesting to the villagers was the fact that the canon had so far lost control of himself. Such violent emotion was unexpected, unseemly, in a man of God—so naturally everyone delighted in talking about it. Not since he had taken the Saxon woman to his bed had they had so much to gossip about. In little groups they whispered together, breaking off abruptly when the canon passed by.

Joan knew nothing of this. For an entire day after the beating, the canon forbade anyone to go near her. All that night and the following day Joan lay on the floor of the cottage unconscious. Dirt from the beaten earth floor clung to her lacerated flesh. By the time Gudrun was permitted to tend her, the wounds had corrupted and a dangerous fever set in.

Gudrun nursed her solicitously. She cleaned Joan’s wounds with fresh water and bathed them with strong wine. Then, working with utmost gentleness to avoid further damage to the raw flesh, she applied a cooling paste of mulberry leaves.

It’s all the fault of the Greek
, Gudrun thought bitterly, as she made a hot posset and fed it to Joan, lifting her head and trickling the
liquid into her mouth a few drops at a time.
Giving the child a book, filling her head with worthless ideas.
She was a girl, and therefore not meant for book study. The child was meant to be with her, to share the hidden secrets and the language of her people, to be the comfort and balm of her old age.
Evil the hour the Greek entered this house. May the wrath of all the gods descend upon him.

Nevertheless, Gudrun’s pride had been sparked by the child’s display of bravery. Joan had defied her father with the fierce, heroic strength of her Saxon ancestors. Once Gudrun too had been strong and brave. But the long years of humiliation and exile in an alien land had gradually drained the will to fight out of her.
At least
, she thought proudly,
my blood runs true. The courage of my people runs strong within my daughter.

She stopped to stroke Joan’s throat, helping her swallow the healing broth.
Get well, little quail
, she thought.
Get well, and return to me.

T
HE
fever broke early in the morning of the ninth day. Joan woke to find Gudrun bending over her.

“Mama?” Her voice sounded hoarse and unfamiliar in her ears.

Her mother smiled. “So you have returned to me at last, little quail. For a time I feared I had lost you.”

Joan tried to raise herself but fell back heavily onto the straw. Pain pierced her, bringing back memory.

“The book?”

Gudrun’s face tightened. “Your father has scraped the pages clean, and set your brother to copying some new nonsense onto it.”

So it was gone.

Joan felt inexpressibly weary. She was sick; she wanted to sleep.

Gudrun held out a wooden bowl filled with steaming liquid. “Now you must eat to regain your strength. See, I have made you some broth.”

“No.” Joan shook her head weakly. “I don’t want any.” She did not want to get her strength back. She wanted to die. What was left to live for? She would never break free from the narrow confines of life in Ingelheim. Life had closed her in; there was no further hope of escape.

“Take a little now,” Gudrun prodded, “and while you eat, I will sing you one of the old songs.”

Joan turned her head away.

“Leave such things to the foolishness of priests. We have our own
secrets, don’t we, little quail? We will share them again, as we used to.” Gudrun stroked Joan’s forehead gently. “But first you must get well. Sip some broth. It is a Saxon recipe, with strong healing properties.”

She held the wooden spoon to Joan’s lips. Joan was too weak to resist; she allowed her mother to trickle a little broth into her mouth. It was good, warm and rich and comforting. Despite herself, she began to feel a little better.

“My little quail, my sweetheart, my darling.” Gudrun’s voice caressed Joan softly, seductively. She dipped the wooden ladle in the steaming broth and held it out to Joan, who sipped some more.

Her mother’s voice rose and fell in the sweet, lilting strains of the familiar Saxon melody. Lulled by the sound and her mother’s caresses, Joan drifted slowly into sleep.

W
ITH
the fever past, Joan’s strong young body mended quickly. In a fortnight, she was on her feet again. Her wounds closed cleanly, though it was plain she would bear the marks for the rest of her life. Gudrun lamented over the scars, long, dark stripes that turned Joan’s back into an ugly patchwork, but Joan did not care. She did not care about anything very much. Hope was gone. She existed, that was all.

She spent all her time with her mother, rising at daybreak to help her feed the pigs and chickens, collect eggs, gather wood for the hearth fire, and haul heavy bucketfuls of water from the creek. Later they worked side by side preparing the day’s meal.

One day they were making bread together, their fingers working to shape the heavy dough—for yeast and other leavenings were rarely used in this part of Frankland—when Joan asked suddenly, “Why did you marry him?”

The question took Gudrun aback. After a moment she said, “You cannot imagine what it was like for us when the armies of Karolus came.”

“I know what they did to your people, Mama. What I can’t understand is why, after that, you came away with the enemy—
with him?”

Gudrun did not reply.

I’ve offended her
, Joan thought.
She will not tell me now.

“By winter,” Gudrun began slowly, “we were starving, for the Christian soldiers had burned our crops along with our homes.” She looked past Joan, as if picturing something distant. “We ate anything
we could find—grass, thistles, even the seeds contained in the dung of animals. We were not far from death when your father and the other missionaries arrived. They were different from the others; they carried no swords or weapons, and they dealt with us like people, not brute beasts. They gave us food in return for our promise to listen to them preach the word of the Christian God.”

“They traded food for faith?” Joan asked. “A sorry way to win people’s souls.”

“I was young and impressionable, sick unto death of hunger and misery and fear. Their Christian God must be greater than ours, I thought, or else how had they succeeded in defeating us? Your father took a special interest in me. He had great hopes for me, he said, for though I was heathen born, he was sure I had the capacity to understand the True Faith. From the way he looked at me, I knew he desired me. When he asked me to come away with him, I consented. It was a chance at life, when all around was death.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It was not long before I realized how great a mistake I’d made.”

Her eyes were red rimmed, brimming with barely suppressed tears. Joan put an arm around her. “Don’t cry, Mama.”

“You must learn from my mistake,” Gudrun said fiercely, “so you do not repeat it. To marry is to surrender everything—not only your body but your pride, your independence, even your life. Do you understand?
Do you?”
She gripped Joan’s arm, fixing her with an urgent look. “Heed my words, daughter, if you ever mean to be happy:
Never give yourself to a man.
”

The scarred flesh on Joan’s back quivered with the remembered pain of her father’s lash. “No, Mama,” she promised solemnly, “I never will.”

I
N OSTARMANOTH
, when warm spring breezes caressed the earth and the animals were set out to pasture, the monotony was broken by the arrival of a stranger. It was a Thursday—Thor’s Day, Gudrun still called it when the canon was not around to hear—and the rumble of that god’s thunder was sounding in the distance as Joan and Gudrun worked together in the family garden. Joan was pulling up nettles and destroying molehills, while Gudrun followed after her, tracing the furrows and crushing the clods with a thick oaken plank. As she worked, Gudrun sang and told tales of the Old Ones. When Joan answered
in Saxon, Gudrun laughed with pleasure. Joan had just finished a row when she looked up and saw John hurrying across the field toward them. She tapped her mother’s arm in warning; Gudrun saw her son, and the Saxon words died on her lips.

“Quick!” John was breathless from running. “Father wants you at the house now. Hurry!” He pulled Gudrun by the arm.

“Gently, John,” Gudrun reprimanded. “You’re hurting me. What has happened? Is anything wrong?”

“I don’t know.” John kept tugging on his mother’s arm. “He said something about a visitor. I don’t know who. But hurry. He said he’d box my ears if I didn’t bring you right away.”

The canon was waiting for them at the grubenhaus door. “It took you long enough,” he said.

Gudrun stared at him coolly. A tiny spark of anger ignited in the canon’s eyes; he drew himself up importantly. “An emissary is coming. From the Bishop of Dorstadt.” He paused for effect. “Go and prepare a suitable meal. I will meet him at the cathedral and lead him here.” He dismissed her with a wave of the hand. “Be quick, woman! He will arrive soon.” He left, slamming the door behind him.

Gudrun’s face was rigidly expressionless. “Start with the pottage,” she said to Joan. “I’ll go collect some eggs.”

Joan poured water from the oaken bucket into the large iron pot the family used for cooking and set the pot over the hearth fire. From a woolen sack, almost empty now after the long winter, she took handfuls of dried barley and threw them into the pot. She noticed, with surprise, that her hands shook with excitement. It had been so long since she had felt anything.

But an emissary from Dorstadt! Could it have anything to do with her? After all this time, had Aesculapius finally managed to find a way for her to resume her studies?

She cut off a slab of salt pork and added it to the pot. No, it was impossible. It was almost a year since Aesculapius had left. If he had been able to arrange anything, she would have heard long ago. It was dangerous to hope. Hope had nearly destroyed her once; she would not be so foolish again.

Nevertheless, she could not still her excitement when the door opened one hour later. Her father entered, followed by a dark-haired man. He was not at all what she had imagined. He had the blunt, unintelligent features of a
colonus
, and he carried himself more like a
soldier than a scholar. His tunic, bearing the insignia of the bishop, was rumpled and dusty from travel.

“You will do us the honor of supping with us?” Joan’s father indicated the pot boiling on the hearth.

“Thank you, but I cannot.” He spoke in Theodisk, the common tongue, not Latin, another surprise. “I left the rest of the escort at a
cella
outside Mainz—the forest path is too slow and narrow for ten men and horse—and came ahead alone. I must rejoin them tonight; in the morning we begin the return journey to Dorstadt.” He withdrew a parchment scroll from his scrip and handed it to the canon. “From his Eminence the Lord Bishop of Dorstadt.”

Carefully the canon broke the seal; the stiff parchment crackled as it was unrolled. Joan watched her father closely as he squinted to make out the writing. He read all the way to the bottom, then began again, as if searching for something he had missed. Finally he looked up, his lips tight with anger.

“What is the meaning of this? I was told your message had to do with me!”

“So it does.” The man smiled. “Insofar as you are the child’s father.”

“The bishop has nothing to say about my work?”

The man shrugged. “All I know, Father, is that I am to escort the child to the schola in Dorstadt, as the letter says.”

Joan cried out in a sudden rush of emotion. Gudrun hurried over and placed an arm protectively around her.

The canon hesitated, eyeing the stranger. Abruptly, he came to a decision. “Very well. It’s true that it is a fine opportunity for the child, though it will be hard enough for me without his help.” He turned to John. “Gather your belongings, and be quick. Tomorrow you ride for Dorstadt, to begin studies at the cathedral in accordance with the bishop’s express command.”

Joan gasped.
John
was being called to study at the schola? How could this be?

The stranger shook his head. “With all respect, Holy Father, I believe it’s a girl child I’m supposed to bring back with me. A girl by the name of Johanna.”

Joan stepped out of her mother’s encircling arm. “I am Johanna.”

The bishop’s man turned to her. The canon stepped quickly between them.

“Nonsense. It’s my son Johannes the bishop wants. Johannes, Johanna.
Lapsus calami.
A slip of the pen. A simple mistake on the part of the bishop’s amanuensis, that is all. It happens often enough, even among the best of scribes.”

The stranger looked doubtful. “I don’t know …”

“Use your head, man. What would the bishop want with a girl?”

“It did strike me as odd,” the man agreed.

Joan started to protest, but Gudrun drew her back and placed a warning finger over her lips.

The canon continued. “My son, on the other hand, has been studying the Scriptures since he was a babe. Recite from the Book of Revelation for our honored guest, Johannes.”

John paled and began to stammer.
“Acopa … Apocalypsis Jesu Christi quo … quam dedit illi Deus palam fa … facere servis—”