Pope Joan (12 page)

The stranger impatiently signaled a stop to the unsteady flow of words. “There is no time. We must leave immediately if we are to reach the cella before dark.” He looked uncertainly from John to Joan. Then he turned to Gudrun.

“Who is this woman?”

The canon cleared his throat. “A Saxon heathen whose soul I am laboring to bring to Christ.”

The bishop’s man took note of Gudrun’s blue eyes and slim form and the white-gold hair peeking out from under her white linen cap. He smiled, a broad, knowing, gap-toothed grin, then addressed himself directly to her.

“You are the children’s mother?”

Gudrun nodded wordlessly. The canon flushed.

“What do you say, then? Is it the boy the bishop wants, or the girl?”

“Disrespectful dog!” The canon was furious. “You dare to question the word of a sworn servant of God!”

“Calm yourself, Holy Father.” The man emphasized the word
holy
ever so slightly. “Let me remind you of the duty you owe to the authority I represent.”

The canon glared at the bishop’s man, his face purpling.

Again the man asked Gudrun, “Is it the boy? Or the girl?”

Joan felt Gudrun’s arms tighten around her, drawing her close. There was a long pause. Then she heard her mother’s voice behind her, musical and sweet, filled with the broad Saxon vowels that still marked her, unmistakably, as a foreigner. “The boy is the one you want,” Gudrun said. “Take him.”

“Mama!” Shocked at this unexpected betrayal, Joan could only utter the single, startled cry.

The bishop’s messenger nodded, satisfied. “Then it is settled.” He turned toward the door. “I must see to my horse. Have the boy ready as quickly as possible.”

“No!” Joan tried to stop him, but Gudrun held her tight, whispering in Saxon, “Trust me, little quail. It is for the best, I promise you.”

“No!” Joan struggled to free herself. It was a lie. This was Aesculapius’s doing. Joan was certain of it. He had not forgotten her; he had found a way at last for her to continue what they had begun together. John wasn’t the one being called to study at the schola. It was all wrong.

“No!” She twisted sharply, broke loose, and made straight for the door. The canon reached for her, but she evaded him. Then she was outside, running swiftly toward the retreating messenger. Behind her, in the cottage, she heard her father shouting, then her mother’s voice, tense, tearful, raised in reply.

She caught up with the man just as he reached his horse. She tugged at his tunic, and he looked at her. From the corner of her eye, Joan saw her father advancing toward them.

There wasn’t much time. Her message had to be convincing, unmistakable.

“Magna est veritas et praevalebit,”
she said. It was a passage from Esdras, obscure enough to be recognized only to those well versed in the writings of the Holy Fathers. “The truth is great, and it will prevail.” He was the bishop’s man, a man of the Church, he would know it. And the fact that she knew it, that she spoke Latin, would prove that
she
was the scholar the bishop sought.

“Lapsus calami non est,”
she continued in Latin. “There is no error in the writing. I am Johanna; I am the one you want.”

The man looked at her, his eyes kind. “Eh? What’s this, bright eyes? What a mighty stream of words!” He chucked her under the chin. “Sorry, child. I speak none of your Saxon tongue. Though having seen your mother, I begin to wish I did.” He reached into a pouch tied to his saddle and withdrew a honeyed date. “Here, have a sweet.”

Joan stared at the date. The man hadn’t understood a word. A scion of the Church, the bishop’s emissary, and he had no Latin. How was it possible?

Her father’s footsteps sounded close behind her. His arm gripped
her painfully around the waist; then she was lifted off the ground and carried back toward the house.

“No!” she screamed. Her father’s large hand covered her nose and mouth, pressing so hard she could not breathe. She kicked and struggled. Inside the cottage he released her, and she fell to the floor, gulping air. He raised his fist over her.

“No!” Suddenly Gudrun was between them. “You will not touch her.” There was a tone in her voice that Joan had never heard before. “Or I will tell the truth.”

The canon stared in disbelief. John appeared in the doorway, carrying a linen sack stuffed with his belongings.

Gudrun nodded toward him. “Our son needs your blessing for the journey.”

For a long time the canon held her gaze. Then, very slowly, he turned to face his son.

“Kneel, Johannes.”

John knelt. The canon placed his hand on his bowed head. “O God, Who didst call Abraham to leave his home and didst protect him in all his wanderings, unto Thee we commit this boy.”

A thin stream of late afternoon sun filtered through the window, illuminating John’s dark hair with a rich light.

“Watch over him and provide all things needful for his soul and body …” The canon’s voice assumed a singsong rhythm as he prayed.

Keeping his head bowed, John looked up and met his sister’s gaze, his eyes wide and frightened, eloquent with appeal.
He doesn’t want to go
, Joan realized suddenly. Of course! Why had she not seen it before? She had not given a thought to John’s feelings.
He is afraid. He cannot keep up with the demands of a schola, and he knows it.

If only I could go with him.

A plan began to formulate in her mind.

“… and when life’s pilgrimage is over,” the canon finished, “may he arrive safely at the heavenly country, through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.”

The blessing over, John rose to his feet. Stolid, unresisting, like a sheep before the sacrifice, he endured his mother’s embraces and his father’s last-minute admonitions. But when Joan approached and put her arms around him, he clutched her and began to sob.

“Don’t be afraid,” she murmured reassuringly.

“Enough,” the canon said. He placed an arm around his son’s shoulder, shepherding him toward the door. “Keep the girl inside,” he commanded Gudrun, and then they were gone. The door swung shut with a hollow thud.

Joan ran to the window and peered out. She saw John mount behind the bishop’s emissary, his plain woolen tunic contrasting with the rich red of the stranger’s robes. The canon stood nearby, his dark, squat figure outlined against the budding green of the landscape. With a last shout of farewell, they rode off.

Joan turned from the window. Gudrun stood in the middle of the room, watching her.

“Little quail …,” Gudrun began hesitantly.

Joan walked past her as if she did not exist. She took up her pile of mending and sat by the hearth. She needed to think, to prepare. There wasn’t much time, and everything had to be worked out very carefully.

It would be difficult, probably even dangerous. The thought frightened her, but it made no difference. With a certainty at once wonderful and terrifying, Joan knew what she must do.

IT
’S not fair
, John thought. He rode sullenly behind the bishop’s man, scowling at the insignia on the red tunic.
I don’t want to go.
He hated his father for making him. He reached inside his tunic, searching for the object he had secretly placed there before he left. His fingers touched the smooth handle of the knife—his father’s bone-handled knife, one of his treasures.

A small, vengeful smile touched John’s lips. His father would be furious when he discovered it missing. No matter. By then John would be miles away from Ingelheim, and there was nothing his father could do about it. It was a small triumph, but he clung to it in the misery of his situation.

Why didn’t he send Joan?
John asked himself angrily. Black resentment simmered inside him.
It’s all her fault
, he thought. Because of Joan, he had already endured over two years of lessons from Aesculapius, that tedious and evil-tempered old man. Now he was being sent away to the schola at Dorstadt in
her
place. Oh, it was Joan the bishop wanted, John was sure of it. It had to be Joan.
She
was the smart one,
she
knew Latin and Greek,
she
could read Augustine when he still hadn’t mastered all the psalms.

He might have forgiven her that, and more besides. She was, after all, his sister. But there was one thing that John could not forgive: Joan was Mama’s pet. He had overheard them often enough, laughing and whispering together in Saxon, then breaking off abruptly when he joined them. They thought he didn’t hear them, but he did. Mama never spoke the Old Tongue with him.
Why?
John asked himself bitterly for the thousandth time.
Does she think I’d tell Father? I wouldn’t—not for anything, no matter what he did, not even if he beat me.

It isn’t fair
, he thought again.
Why should she prefer Joan to me? I’m her son, which everybody knows is better than a useless daughter.
Joan was a sorry excuse for a girl. She couldn’t sew or spin or weave half as well as other girls her age. Then there was her interest in book learning, which everyone knew to be unnatural. Even Mama saw there was something wrong there. The other children in the village constantly mocked Joan. It was embarrassing, having her as a sister; John would gladly disclaim her, if he could.

Immediately after he had the thought, he felt a twinge of conscience. Joan had always been good to him, had stood up for him when Father was angry, even done his work for him when he couldn’t understand. He was grateful for her help—she had saved him from many a beating—but at the same time, he resented it. It was humiliating. After all, he was her older brother.
He
was the one who should look after her, not the other way around.

Now, because of her, he was riding behind this strange man toward a place he did not know and a life he did not want. He pictured his life at the schola, trapped inside some dreary room all day, surrounded by piles of boring, awful books.

Why couldn’t Father understand that he didn’t want to go?
I’m not Matthew; I’ll never be good at book studies.
Nor did he mean to be a scholar or a cleric. He knew what he wanted: to be a warrior, a warrior in the Emperor’s army, battling to subdue the heathen hordes. He had gotten the idea from Ulfert, the saddler, who had gone with Count Hugo on the old Emperor’s campaign against the Saxons. What wonderful tales the old man told, sitting in his workshop, his tools temporarily forgotten by his side, his eyes lit with the memory of that great victory! “Like the thrushes that fly over the autumn vineyards, pecking at the grapes”—John remembered every word exactly as old Ulfert had spoken them—“we flew over the land,
a holy canticle on our lips, ferreting out the heathens hiding in the woods and marshes and concealed in the ditches, men and women and children alike. There was not one of us whose bucklers and swords were not red with blood that day. By sunset, there was no soul left alive who had not renounced their godless ways and sworn eternal allegiance on their knees to the True Faith.” Then old Ulfert had brought out his sword, which he had wrested, still warm, from the dead hand of one of the heathens. Its handle shone with glassy gems; its shaft was a gleaming yellow. Unlike Frankish swords, which were fashioned of iron, it was made from gold—an inferior material, Ulfert explained, lacking the solidity and bite of Frankish weapons, but beautiful nonetheless. John’s heart had swelled at the sight of it. Old Ulfert had held it out to him, and John had grasped it, feeling its balance, its weight. His hand fit the gemmed handle as if it were made for it. He swung the sword over his head; it sliced the air with a thrumming sound that kept rhythm with the singing in his blood. He had known then he was born to be a warrior.

There were rumors, even now, of a new campaign in the spring. Perhaps Count Hugo would answer the Emperor’s call again. If so, John planned to go with him, no matter what Father said. He would be fourteen soon, a man’s age—many had gone to war at that age, even younger. He would run off, if necessary, but he would go.

Of course, that would be difficult now that he was to be imprisoned in the schola at Dorstadt. Would word of the new conscript even travel so far? he wondered. And if it did, would he be able to get away?

The thought was upsetting, and he put it out of his mind. Instead, he called up his favorite daydream. He was in the front ranks of the battle, the silver banners of the count gleaming before him, drawing him forward. They were driving the scattered and defeated heathens before them. They flew from him, desperate and frightened, the women’s long, white-gold hair waving in the wind. He ran them down, wielding his long sword with great skill, slashing and killing, offering no mercy, until finally they submitted to him, repenting their blindness and showing themselves willing to accept the Light.

The corners of John’s mouth lifted in a drowsy smile as the steady beat of the horse’s hooves signaled their progress through the darkening forest.

T
HERE
was a whirring sound, followed by a heavy thud.

“Unnhh.” The bishop’s man jolted backward. His shoulder rammed into John, jarring him from sleep.