Pope Joan (16 page)

“Did you call on me, sir? Pardon me; I was concentrating on my work and did not hear you,” Joan said politely.

She acts her part well
, Odo thought.
But I am not deceived.
Oh, she pretended respect and submission whenever he addressed her, but he read the truth in her eyes. In her soul, she mocked and challenged him. That Odo would not tolerate.

He bent to examine her work, shuffling the pieces of parchment in silence.

“The hand,” he said, “is not sufficiently fair. See here—and here”—he stabbed at the parchment with one long, white finger— “you do not round your letters sufficiently. Child, what explanation can you offer for such sloppy work?”

Sloppy work! Joan was indignant. She had just glossed ten pages of text—far more than any of the other students could have done in twice the time. Her explanations were accurate and complete—even Odo did not try to deny that. She had seen his eyes flicker as they scanned the passage with her elegant handling of the subjunctive.

“Well?” Odo prodded her. He wanted her to defy him, to answer him boldly.
Arrogant and unnatural creature.
He knew she sought to violate the God-given order of the universe by usurping men’s rightful authority over her.
Go ahead
, he willed her.
Speak your mind.
If she did, he would have her where he wanted her.

Joan fought to keep her emotions under control. She knew what Odo was trying to do. But no matter how hard he provoked her, she would not oblige him. She would not provide him with a reason to dismiss her from the schola. Keeping her voice flat, she replied dryly, “I have no excuse, sir.”

“Very well,” Odo said. “As punishment for your indolence, you will copy out the passage from First Timothy, chapter two, verses eleven and twelve, twenty-five times in a
good
hand before you leave.”

Dark resentment boiled inside Joan. Nasty, narrow-minded man! If only she could tell him what she thought of him!

“Yes, sir.” She kept her eyes lowered, so he could not read her thoughts.

Odo was disappointed. Still, the girl could not keep this up forever. Sooner or later—the thought made him smile—she would give herself away. When she did, he would be waiting.

He left her and went to check on his other students.

Joan sighed and picked up her stylus. First Timothy, chapter two, verses eleven and twelve. She knew it well enough; it was not the first time Odo had levied this punishment. It was a quotation from St. Paul: “I do not permit a woman to be a teacher, nor must a woman domineer over a man; she should be quiet and listen with due submission.”

S
HE
was halfway through the writing when she first sensed something wrong. She looked up. Odo was gone. The boys were standing in a knot by the door, talking. That was odd. Usually they rushed from the room as soon as lessons were over. She watched them warily. John stood on the outer fringe of the little group, listening. She caught his eye, and he smiled and waved.

She smiled in return, then went back to her writing. But a tiny prickle of alarm raised the hairs on her neck. Were the boys planning something? They frequently teased and tormented her—Odo did nothing to stop them—and though she had steeled herself to their abuse, she still dreaded it.

Hurriedly she finished the last few lines and rose to leave. The boys were standing by the door. She knew they were waiting for her. She lifted her chin determinedly. Whatever they had in store for her, she would walk past quickly and have done with it.

Her cloak hung on a wooden peg near the door. Making an elaborate gesture of ignoring the boys, she retrieved it, fastened it carefully round her neck, and pulled up the hood.

Something heavy and wet pooled on the top of her head. Immediately she tugged at the hood, but it would not come off. The sticky wetness oozed downward. She reached up and touched it; her fingers came away coated with a thick, mucousy substance.
Gum arabic.
A common material in schoolrooms and
scriptoria
, it was used, with vinegar and charcoal, to make ink. She wiped her hand on her cloak, but the gum arabic clung stickily. Frantically, she pulled at the hood again and yelped as her hair was yanked painfully by the roots.

Her cry elicited a shout of laughter from the boys. She walked quickly toward the door. The group parted as she drew near, forming a line on either side.

“Lusus naturae!”
they taunted her. “Freak of nature!”

Halfway down the line she saw John. He was laughing and shouting insults along with the others. She met his eyes; he flushed and looked away.

She kept walking. Too late she saw the flash of blue cloth near the floor. She tripped and fell clumsily, landing heavily on her side.

John
, she thought.
He tripped me.

She got to her feet, wincing as a sharp pain shot down her side. The disgusting slime oozed from under the hood onto her face. She wiped at it, trying to keep it out of her eyes, but it was no use. It slid glutinously over her eyebrows onto her lids, gumming her eyelashes, making it impossible to see clearly.

Laughing, the boys crowded in, shoving her back and forth, trying to make her fall again. She heard John’s voice among the others, calling out insults. Through the thick film that covered her eyes, the room spun dizzyingly in alternating patterns of light and color. She could no longer make out the door.

She felt a sudden sting of tears.

Oh no
, she thought. That was what they wanted—to make her weep and plead for mercy, to show some weakness, so they could mock her as a coward of a girl.

They shall not have that. I will not give them that.

She held herself straight, willing herself not to cry. This display of self-control only inflamed them, and they began to hit harder. The biggest of the boys struck her forcefully on the neck. The blow staggered her, and she fought to keep her feet.

A man’s voice shouted in the distance. Had Odo come at last to put an end to this?

“What is happening here?”

This time she recognized the voice. Gerold. There was a tone in his voice she had never heard before. The boys backed away from her so suddenly she almost fell again.

Gerold’s arm was around her shoulder, steadying her. She leaned into him gratefully.

“Well, Bernhar.” Gerold addressed the biggest boy, the one who had hit her on the neck. “Wasn’t it just last week I watched you at weapons practice, trying so desperately to keep out of range of Eric’s sword that you could not manage a single strike? Yet I see that you have no difficulty fighting when your opponent is a defenseless girl.”

Bernhar stammered an explanation, but Gerold cut him off.

“You may tell that to His Lordship the bishop. He will send for you when he learns of this. Which he will, this very day.”

The silence around them was absolute. Gerold lifted Joan in his arms. She felt with some surprise the rippling power of his arms and back. He was so tall and lean, she had not realized he was so strong. She tilted her head away so the disgusting slime that covered her would not mar his tunic.

Halfway to his mount, Gerold turned. “One thing more. From what I have witnessed, she is braver than any of you. Yes, and smarter too, for all that she is a girl.”

Joan felt the start of tears in her eyes. No one had ever spoken for her like that save Aesculapius.

Gerold was—different.

The bud of a rose grows in darkness. It knows nothing of the sun, yet it pushes at the darkness that confines it until at last the walls give way and the rose bursts forth, spreading its petals into the light.

I love him.

The thought was as startling as it was sudden. What could it mean? She could not be in love with Gerold. He was a nobleman, a great lord, and she was a canon’s daughter. He was a mature man of
twenty-eight winters, and Joan knew he thought of her as a child, though in fact she was almost thirteen and would soon be a woman grown.

Besides, he had a wife.

Joan’s mind was a whirl of confusing emotions.

Gerold lifted her onto his horse and mounted behind. The boys stood huddled before the door, not daring to speak. Joan leaned back into Gerold’s arms, feeling his strength, drawing upon it.

“Now,” Gerold said, spurring the horse into a canter, “I will take you home.”

   9   

C
OUNT Gerold,
grafio vir illuster
of this far northeastern march of the imperial realm, flicked his new chestnut into a gallop as he neared the motte on which his manor stood. The horse responded smartly, anticipating a warm stable and a pile of fresh hay. Beside him, the horse carrying Osdag, Gerold’s venery servant, also lengthened its stride, though the weight of the slaughtered stag tied across its back caused it to lag.

It had been a good day’s hunt. On a whim, for usually a hunting sortie consisted of six or more men, Gerold had gone out with only Osdag and two of the brachet hounds as companions. Luck had been with them; almost immediately they found deer’s spoor, which Osdag scooped up in his hunting horn and scrutinized with a trained eye. “A hart,” he announced, “and a big one.” They tracked him for the better part of an hour until they sighted him in a small clearing. Gerold lifted his ivory oliphant to his lips and blew a series of soft, one-pitch notes, and the brachet hounds leapt eagerly to the chase. It had not been easy bringing the beast to bay with only two men and two dogs, but they had cornered it at last, and Gerold had dispatched it with one quick thrust of his lance. It was, as Osdag had predicted, a fine, large beast; with winter coming on, it would make a welcome addition to the Villaris larder.

Some distance away, Gerold spied Joan sitting cross-legged on the grass. He sent Osdag ahead to the stables and rode toward her. He had grown surprisingly attached to the girl over the past year. She was a strange one, there was no denying it—too much alone, too solemn for her years, but with a good heart and a keen intelligence that Gerold found very appealing.

Drawing near to where Joan sat still as one of the reliefs on the cathedral door, Gerold dismounted and led the chestnut forward. Joan was so deep in concentration that he got within ten yards of her before she saw him. Then she rose to her feet, blushing. Gerold was amused. She was incapable of disguise—a trait Gerold found quite
charming, as it was so different from … what he was used to. There was no mistaking her childlike infatuation with him.

“You were deep in thought,” he said.

“Yes.” She rose and came over to admire the chestnut. “Did he handle well?”

“Perfectly. He’s a fine mount.”

“Oh yes.” She stroked the chestnut’s shining mane. She had an excellent appreciation of horses, perhaps because she had grown up without them. From what Gerold had been able to make out, her family had lived as poorly as any coloni, though her father was a canon of the Church.

The horse nuzzled her ear, and she laughed delightedly. An attractive girl, Gerold thought, though she would never be a beauty. Her large, intelligent eyes were set deep, her strong jaw and wide, straight shoulders gave her a boyish appearance, heightened now by the short white-gold hair that curled around her face, reaching barely to the tops of her ears. After that episode at the schola, they had been obliged to cut her hair down to the scalp; there had been no other way to remove the gum arabic smeared through every strand.

“What were you thinking about?”

“Oh. Just something that happened at the schola today.”

“Tell me.”

She looked at him. “Is it true that the cubs of the white wolf are born dead?”

“What?” Gerold was accustomed to her odd questions, but this one was stranger than usual.

“John and the other boys were talking. There’s going to be a hunt for the white wolf, the one in the forest of Annapes.”

Gerold nodded. “I know the one. A bitch, and a savage one—it hunts alone, apart from any pack, and knows no fear. Just last winter it attacked a band of travelers and carried off a small child before anyone could lift hand to bow to stop it. They say it now has a belly full of kits—I suppose they mean to kill it before it gives birth?”