Pope Joan (61 page)

And still the rain came down. The waters of the Tiber rose dangerously, overrunning the embankments from the city to the sea, flooding the fields of the campagna, destroying the croplands, carrying off the cattle.

Within the city walls, the first region to be inundated was the low-lying Campus Martius, with its teeming population of poor. Some fled to higher ground as soon as the water began to rise, but many remained behind, unaware of the consequences of delay and reluctant to leave their homes and meager possessions.

Then it was too late. The waters rose above the height of a man, preventing any attempt at escape. Hundreds of people were trapped inside the rickety insulae; if the waters continued to rise, they would drown.

In such circumstances, the Pope usually retired to the Lateran cathedral and held a solemn litany, prostrating himself before the altar and praying for the city’s deliverance. To the surprise and consternation of the clergy, Joan did no such thing. Instead, she summoned Gerold to discuss plans for a rescue.

“What can we do?” she asked. “There must be some way to save those people.”

He replied, “The streets surrounding the Campius Martius are completely flooded. There’s no way to get there except by boat.”

“What about the boats moored at Ripa Grande?”

“They’re only light fishing skiffs—flimsy vessels for such rough waters.”

“It’s worth an attempt,” she argued urgently. “We can’t just stand by idly while people drown!”

Gerold felt a rush of tenderness toward her. Not Sergius, not even Leo, would have showed such concern for the wretched population of the Campus Martius. Joan was different; seeing no distinction between rich and poor, she made none. In her eyes, all people were equally deserving of her care and attention.

“I’ll call up the militia at once,” he said.

They marched to the dock at Ripa Grande, where Joan used her authority to commandeer every dinghy in seaworthy condition. Gerold and his men got into the boats, and Joan spoke a few quick words of blessing over them, raising her voice to make herself heard over the pelting rain. Then she astonished everyone by clambering down into the boat with Gerold.

“What are you doing?” he asked in alarm.

“What does it look like?”

“You don’t mean to come with us!”

“Why not?”

He gazed at her as if she were mad. “It’s far too dangerous!”

“Where I am needed, I will go,” she replied determinedly.

Eustathius, the archpriest, frowned down from the dock. “Holiness, think of the dignity of your position! You are Lord Pope, Bishop of Rome. Would you risk your life for a group of ragged beggars?”

“They are God’s children, Eustathius, no less than you and I.”

“But who will lead the litany?” he asked plaintively.

“You will, Eustathius. Do it well, for we have good need of your prayers.” She turned impatiently to Gerold. “Now, Superista, will you row, or must I?”

Recognizing the look of stubborn determination in those gray-green eyes, Gerold took up the oars. There was no further time for debate, for the waters were rising quickly. He pulled on the oars, rowing strongly, and the boat drew away from the dock.

Eustathius shouted something after them, but his words were lost in the wind and driving rain.

The makeshift flotilla headed northwest toward the Campus Martius. The floodwaters had risen. The Tiber was coursing through this lower part of the city as if in its own channel. From the Porta Septimania to the foot of the Capitoline Hill, every church and house was flooded. The column of Marcus Aurelius was half submerged; waves lapped at the upper doorsills of the Pantheon.

Nearing the Campus Martius, they saw evidence of the terrible
damage the flood had wreaked. Wooden debris, remains of the collapsed insulae, drifted swiftly by; bodies floated on the surface of the water, turning with every shift of the current. The terrified inhabitants of the remaining tenements had retreated to the upper stories. They leaned from the windows with outstretched arms, crying piteously for help.

The boats spread out, one or two to a building. The waves made it difficult to hold them steady. Some people panicked and jumped too soon, missing the bobbing, circling vessels. Others landed too far to the front or side of one of the boats, overturning it. There was a melee in the water as those who could not swim tried desperately to cling to those who could while the oarsmen cursed roundly and tried to right their flimsy craft.

Eventually all the boats were righted and they set off, following a route to the Capitoline Hill, where they let off their passengers. From this point, it was an easy climb to the safety of dry ground. Then the flotilla turned back to rescue more people.

They made trip after trip, drenched to the skin, clothes plastered to their bodies, aching from effort and fatigue. At last it seemed they had everyone. They were headed back toward the Capitoline Hill when Joan heard a child’s voice crying for help. Turning, she saw a small boy silhouetted in one of the windows. Perhaps he had been asleep and only just awakened, or perhaps he had been too frightened to come to the window before.

Joan and Gerold looked at each other. Without a word, he turned the boat around and rowed back, pulling up beneath the window from which the boy now leaned and fanning the oars to hold the boat steady.

Joan stood, holding out her arms. “Jump!” she said. “Jump and I’ll catch you!”

The boy stayed where he was, round eyes staring down in terror at the heaving boat below.

She fixed him with a compelling stare, willing him to move. “Jump now!” she commanded.

Timidly the boy slung one leg over the windowsill.

She reached for him.

At that moment there was a deafening roar. The ancient Posterula St. Agatha, northernmost gate of the Aurelian Wall, had given way under the pressure of the rising water. The Tiber came bursting into the city in a tidal wave of terrifying force.

Joan saw the boy’s face framed in the window, his mouth forming a tiny O of terror as the entire building began to break apart. At the same moment, she felt the boat beneath her lift and shudder as it was sent spinning wildly on the onrushing flood.

She screamed, clinging desperately to the sides as the flimsy boat careered down the rapids, threatening at every moment to overturn. Water gushed over the sides; she raised her head, gulping for air, and caught an instant’s glimpse of Gerold crouching near the bow.

There was a stunning jolt as the boat suddenly came to a halt, sending her crashing into the side.

For a while she lay dazed and uncomprehending. When at last she looked about her, she saw walls, a table, chairs.

She was indoors. The stupendous force of the flood had driven the little boat straight through an upper window of one of the insulae into the room within.

She saw Gerold lying in the front of the boat, facedown in several inches of water. She crawled over to him.

When she turned him over, he was limp and unresponsive, not breathing. She dragged him from the boat onto the floor of the room. Rolling him onto his stomach, she began pressing down on his back to force water out of his lungs. Press and release, press and release.
He can’t die
, she thought.
He mustn’t die.
Surely God could not be so cruel. Then she recalled the doomed young boy in the house and thought:
God is capable of anything.

Press and release. Press and release.

Gerold’s throat heaved, bringing up a great rush of water.

Benedicite!
He was breathing again. Joan examined him carefully. No broken bones, no open wounds. But there was a large blue-black swelling just below his hairline, where he had received a nasty blow. This must have been what had knocked him senseless.

He should be coming round now
, she thought. But Gerold remained sunk in his unnatural sleep, his skin pale and moist, his breathing shallow, his pulse faint and dangerously rapid.
What’s wrong?
she wondered anxiously.
What else can I do?

“The shock of violent injury can kill a man with a penetrating chill.” The words of Hippocrates, words that had once saved Gottschalk’s life, came back to her now.

She must get Gerold warm, and quickly.

Blasts of wind and rain were coming through the gaping hole left
by the passage of the boat. She rose and began to explore the small tenement dwelling. Behind the front room there was a second, smaller one, windowless and therefore warmer and dryer. And—
Deo gratias!
—in the middle of the room there was a small iron brazier stacked with a few pieces of wood. On a nearby shelf she found a flint and some kindling. In a chest in the corner, there was a blanket of heavy wool, tattered but mercifully still dry.

Returning to the front room, she grasped Gerold under the shoulders and half-carried, half-dragged him into the back room, setting him down beside the brazier. Taking up the box of kindling, she struck the flint against the iron. Her hands were shaking so hard she had to try several times before she drew a spark. At last she got the little pile of straw to catch. She placed the flaming kindling in the brazier, and it flared upwards, licking at the logs above. The damp wood hissed and spat, reluctant to take. At last a tiny core of red glowed in one of the logs. She fanned the fragile fire, nursing it along with practiced skill. Just as it began to take hold, a breeze swept in from the other room and extinguished it.

She looked despairingly at the cold logs. There was no more kindling, no way for her to start the fire again. Gerold still lay unconscious, his skin an ominous bluish white, his eyes sunk in their sockets.

There was only one thing left to do now. Quickly she removed his wet clothes, baring his taut, slenderly muscular body, marked here and there with the fading scars of battle. Then she covered him with the blanket.

She stood and, shivering in the frigid air, began to take off her own soaked clothes: first the paenula and dalmatic, then the undergarments, the alb, amice, and cingulum. When she was stripped to the skin, she crawled under the blanket and lay full length against Gerold.

She held him close, warming his body with her own, willing her strength, her life into him.

Fight, Gerold, my dearest. Fight.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on making the link between them. All else was apart. The little room, the quenched fire, the boat, the storm outside—none of it was real. There was only the two of them. They would live joined, or perish.

Gerold’s eyelids fluttered, then opened. His indigo eyes regarded her without surprise; he knew she had been with him.

“My pearl,” he murmured.

For a long while they lay silent, joined in wordless communication. Then he raised his arm to draw her closer, and his fingers brushed against the raised scars on her back.

“The marks of a lash?” he asked quietly.

She flushed. “Yes.”

“Who did this to you?”

Slowly, haltingly, she told him of the beating she had received from her father when she refused to destroy Aesculapius’s book.

Gerold said nothing, but the muscles in his jaw tightened. He bent over her and began to kiss each jagged scar.

Over the years, Joan had trained herself to rein her emotions in, to hold tight against pain, not to cry. Now the tears slid down her cheeks unchecked.

He held her tenderly, murmuring endearments, until her tears stopped. Then his lips were on hers, moving softly with a skill and tenderness that filled her with surging warmth. She slid her arms around him and closed her eyes, letting the sweet, dark wine of her senses rush over her, mind’s will yielding at long last to body’s desire.

Dear God!
she thought.
I didn’t know, I didn’t know!
Was this what her mother had warned her against, what she had run from all these years? This wasn’t surrender; it was a wondrous, glorious expansion of self—a prayer not of words but of eyes and hands and lips and skin.

“I love you!” she cried at the moment of ecstasy, and the words were not profanation but sacrament.

I
N THE
Great Hall of the Patriarchium, Arsenius waited with the optimates and members of the high clergy of Rome for news. When he had first received word of what Pope John had done, Arsenius could scarcely believe it. But then what else could one expect from a foreigner—and a commoner at that?

Radoin, second in command of the papal militia, entered the hall.

“What news?” Paschal, the primicerius, asked impatiently.

“We managed to rescue several score of the inhabitants,” Radoin reported. “But I fear His Holiness has been lost.”

“Lost?” Paschal repeated thinly. “What do you mean?”

“He was in a skiff with the superista. We thought they were following us, but they must have turned back to rescue another survivor.
That was just before the gate of St. Agatha collapsed and sent a wall of water crashing into that area.”

This news was followed by scattered cries of alarm and dismay. Several of the prelates crossed themselves.

“Is there any chance they survived?” Arsenius asked.

“None,” Radoin replied. “The force of the flood swept away everything in its path.”

“God have mercy upon them,” Arsenius said gravely, using all his control to conceal his elation.

“Shall I give the order to sound the bells of mourning?” Eustathius, the archpriest, asked.

“No,” Paschal replied. “We must not be precipitate. Pope John is God’s chosen Vicar; it is yet possible that God has worked a miracle to save him.”

“Why not return and search for them?” Arsenius suggested. He had no interest in a rescue, but he did need to assure himself that the Throne of St. Peter was again vacant.

Radoin replied, “The collapse of the northern gate has rendered the entire area impassable. We can do nothing more until the flood-waters subside.”

“Then let us pray,” said Paschal.
“Deus misereatur nostri et benedicat nobis …”

The others joined in, bowing their heads.

Arsenius recited the words by rote, while his mind ranged to other matters. If, as it now appeared certain, Pope John had died in the flood, then Anastasius had a second chance at the throne.
This time
, Arsenius thought determinedly,
nothing must go wrong with the election.
This time he would use all his power to make certain his son’s candidacy did not fail.