Pope Joan (2 page)
Authors: Donna Woolfolk Cross
The fire sparked and flickered; it was burning low. Hrotrud crossed to the pile of wood stacked in the corner, chose two good-sized logs of birch, and put them on the hearth. She watched as they settled, hissing, into the fire, the flames licking upwards around them. Then she turned to check on Gudrun.
It was a full half hour since Gudrun had taken the shavings of rabbit bone, but there was no change in her condition. Even that strong medicine had failed to take effect. The pains remained erratic and ineffectual, and Gudrun was weakening.
Hrotrud sighed wearily. Clearly, she would have to resort to stronger measures.
T
HE
canon proved to be a problem when Hrotrud told him she would need help with the birthing.
“Send for the village women,” he said peremptorily.
“Ah, sir, that is impossible. Who is there to send?” Hrotrud raised her palms expressively. “I cannot go, for your wife needs me here. Your elder boy cannot go, for though he seems a likely lad, he could get lost in weather such as this. I almost did myself.”
The canon glared at her from under his dark brows. “Very well,” he said, “I will go.” As he rose from his chair, Hrotrud shook her head impatiently.
“It would do no good. By the time you returned, it would be too late. It is
your
help I need, and quickly, if you wish your wife and babe to live.”
“
My
help? Are you mad, midwife? That”—he motioned distastefully
toward the bed—“is women’s business, and unclean. I will have nothing to do with it.”
“Then your wife will die.”
“That is in God’s hands, not mine.”
Hrotrud shrugged. “It is all one to me. But you will not find it easy, raising two children without a mother.”
The canon stared at Hrotrud. “Why should I believe you? She’s given birth before with no trouble. I have fortified her with my prayers. You cannot know that she will die.”
This was too much. Canon or not, Hrotrud would not tolerate his questioning her skill as a midwife. “It is
you
who know nothing,” she said sharply. “You have not even looked at her. Go see her now; then tell me that she is not dying.”
The canon went to the bed and looked down at his wife. Her damp hair was pasted to her skin, which had turned yellowish white, her dark-rimmed eyes were hollow and sunken into her head; but for the long, unsteady exhalation of breath, she might have been already dead.
“Well?” prodded Hrotrud.
The canon wheeled to face her. “God’s blood, woman! Why didn’t you bring the women with you?”
“As you said yourself, sir, your wife’s given birth before without a speck of trouble. There was no reason to expect any this time. Besides, who would have come in weather such as this?”
The canon stalked to the hearth and paced back and forth agitatedly. At last he halted. “What do you want me to do?”
Hrotrud smiled broadly. “Oh, little enough, sir, little enough.” She led him back to the bed. “For a start, help get her up.”
Standing on either side of Gudrun, they grabbed her under the arms and heaved. Her body was heavy, but together they managed to lift her to her feet, where she swayed against her husband. The canon was stronger than Hrotrud had thought. That was good, for she would need all his strength for what came next.
“We must force the babe down into position. When I give the command, lift her as high as you can. And shake hard.”
The canon nodded, his mouth set grimly. Gudrun hung like a dead weight between them, her head fallen forward on her chest.
“Lift!” shouted Hrotrud. They hoisted Gudrun by the arms and began to shake her up and down. Gudrun screamed and fought to
free herself. Pain and fear gave her surprising strength; the two of them were hard put to restrain her.
If only he had let me give her the henbane
, Hrotrud thought.
She would be half-sensible by now.
Quickly they lowered her, but she continued to struggle and cry out. Hrotrud gave a second command, and again they hoisted, shook, then lowered Gudrun to the bed, where she lay half-fainting, murmuring in her barbarous native tongue.
Good
, Hrotrud thought.
If I move quickly, it will all be over before she regains her senses.
Hrotrud reached into the birth passage, probing for the opening to the womb. It was rigid and swollen from the long hours of ineffectual labor. Using her right index fingernail, which she kept long for just this purpose, Hrotrud tore at the resistant tissue. Gudrun groaned, then went completely limp. Warm blood poured over Hrotrud’s hand, down her arms, and onto the bed. At last she felt the opening give way. With an exultant cry, Hrotrud reached in and took hold of the baby’s head, exerting a gentle downward pressure.
“Take her by the shoulders and pull against me,” she instructed the canon, whose face had gone quite pale. Nevertheless he obeyed; Hrotrud felt the pressure increase as the canon added his strength to hers. After a few minutes, the baby started to move down into the birth passage. She kept pulling steadily, careful not to injure the soft bones of the child’s head and neck. At last the crown of the babe’s head appeared, covered with a mass of fine, wet hair. Hrotrud eased the head out gently, then turned the body to permit the right shoulder, then the left, to emerge. One last, firm tug and the small body slid wetly into Hrotrud’s waiting arms.
“A girl,” Hrotrud announced. “A strong one too, by the look of her,” she added, noting with approval the infant’s lusty cry and healthy pink color.
She turned to meet the canon’s disapproving stare.
“A girl,” he said. “So it was all for nothing.”
“Do not say so, sir.” Hrotrud was suddenly fearful that the canon’s disappointment might mean less for her to eat. “The child is healthy and strong. God grant that she live to do credit to your name.”
The canon shook his head. “She is a punishment from God. A punishment for my sins—and hers.” He motioned toward Gudrun, who lay motionless. “Will she live?”
“Yes.” Hrotrud hoped that she sounded convincing. She could
not afford to let the canon think he might be doubly disappointed. She still hoped to taste meat that night. And there was, after all, a reasonable chance that Gudrun
would
survive. True, the birthing had been violent. After such an ordeal, many a woman came down with fever and the wasting disease. But Gudrun was strong; Hrotrud would treat her wound with a salve of mugwort mixed in fox’s grease. “Yes, God willing, she will live,” she repeated firmly. She did not feel it necessary to add that she would probably bear no more children.
“That’s something, then,” the canon said. He moved to the bed and stood looking down at Gudrun. Gently he touched the white-gold hair, darkened now with sweat. For a moment, Hrotrud thought he was going to kiss Gudrun. Then his expression changed; he looked stern, even angry.
“Per mulierem culpa successit,”
he said. “Sin came through a woman.” He dropped the lock of hair and stepped back.
Hrotrud shook her head.
Something from the Holy Book, no doubt.
The canon was a strange one, all right, but that was none of her affair, God be thanked. She hurried to finish cleaning the blood and birth fluids off Gudrun so she could start back home while there was still daylight.
Gudrun opened her eyes and saw the canon standing over her. The beginnings of a smile froze on her lips as she saw the expression in his eyes.
“Husband?” she said doubtfully.
“A girl,” the canon said coldly, not troubling to hide his displeasure.
Gudrun nodded, understanding, then turned her face to the wall. The canon turned to go, stopping briefly to glance at the infant already safely ensconced in her pallet of straw.
“Joan. She will be called Joan,” he announced, and abruptly left the room.
1 
T
HUNDER sounded, very near, and the child woke. She moved in the bed, seeking the warmth and comfort of her older brothers’ sleeping forms. Then she remembered. Her brothers were gone.
It was raining, a hard spring downpour that filled the night air with the sweet-sour smell of newly plowed earth. Rain thudded on the roof of the canon’s grubenhaus, but the thickly woven thatching kept the room dry, except for one or two small places in the corners where water first pooled and then trickled in slow, fat drops to the beaten earth floor.
The wind rose, and a nearby oak began to tap an uneven rhythm on the cottage walls. The shadow of its branches spilled into the room. The child watched, transfixed, as the monstrous dark fingers wriggled at the edges of the bed. They reached out for her, beckoning, and she shrank back.
Mama
, she thought. She opened her mouth to call out, then stopped. If she made a sound, the menacing hand would pounce. She lay frozen, unable to will herself to move. Then she set her small chin resolutely. It had to be done, so she would do it. Moving with exquisite slowness, never taking her eyes off the enemy, she eased herself off the bed. Her feet felt the cool surface of the earthen floor; the familiar sensation was reassuring. Scarcely daring to breathe, she backed toward the partition behind which her mother lay sleeping. Lightning flashed; the fingers moved and lengthened, following her. She swallowed a scream, her throat tightening with the effort. She forced herself to move slowly, not to break into a run.
She was almost there. Suddenly, a salvo of thunder crashed overhead. At the same moment something touched her from behind. She yelped, then turned and fled around the partition, stumbling over the chair she had backed into.
This part of the house was dark and still, save for her mother’s rhythmic breathing. From the sound, the child could tell she was deeply asleep; the noise had not wakened her. She went quickly to the
bed, lifted the woolen blanket, and slid under it. Her mother lay on her side, lips slightly parted; her warm breath caressed the child’s cheek. She snuggled close, feeling the softness of her mother’s body through her thin linen shift.
Gudrun yawned and shifted position, roused by the movement. Her eyes opened, and she regarded the child sleepily. Then, waking fully, she reached out and put her arms around her daughter.
“Joan,” she chastised gently, her lips against the child’s soft hair. “Little one, you should be asleep.”
Speaking quickly, her voice high and strained from fear, Joan told her mother about the monster hand.
Gudrun listened, petting and stroking her daughter and murmuring reassurances. Gently she ran her fingers over the child’s face, half-seen in the darkness. She was not pretty, Gudrun reflected ruefully. She looked too much like
him
, with his thick English neck and wide jaw. Her small body was already stocky and heavy set, not long and graceful like Gudrun’s people’s. But the child’s eyes were good, large and expressive and rich hued, green with dark gray smoke rings at the center. Gudrun lifted a strand of Joan’s baby hair and caressed it, enjoying the way it shone, white-gold, even in the darkness.
My hair.
Not the coarse black hair of her husband or his cruel, dark people.
My child.
She wrapped the strand around her forefinger and smiled.
This one, at least, is mine.
Soothed by her mother’s attentions, Joan relaxed. In playful imitation, she began to tug at Gudrun’s long braid, loosening it till her hair lay tumbled about her head. Joan marveled at it, spilling over the dark woolen coverlet like rich cream. She had never seen her mother’s hair unbound. At the canon’s insistence, Gudrun wore it always neatly braided, hidden under a rough linen cap. A woman’s hair, her husband said, is the net wherein Satan catches a man’s soul. And Gudrun’s hair was extraordinarily beautiful, long and soft and pure white-gold, without a trace of gray, though she was now an old woman of thirty-seven winters.
“Why did Matthew and John go away?” Joan asked suddenly. Her mother had explained this to her several times, but Joan wanted to hear it again.
“You know why. Your father took them with him on his missionary journey.”
“Why couldn’t I go too?”
Gudrun sighed patiently. The child was always so full of questions. “Matthew and John are boys; one day they will be priests like your father. You are a girl, and therefore such matters do not concern you.” Seeing that Joan was not content with that, she added, “Besides, you are much too young.”