Pope Joan (21 page)

Gerold didn’t speak. They walked together in silence, Joan quickening her pace to keep up with his long strides.

He is angry
, she thought, her high spirits quenched as suddenly as a smothered hearth fire.

What was worse, she knew he was right. She had acted recklessly with the merchant. Hadn’t she promised to be more careful? Why did she always have to question and challenge things? Why couldn’t she learn it:
Some ideas are dangerous.

Maybe I
am
woodly.

She heard a low rumble of sound; Gerold was laughing.

“The look on the man’s face when you lifted the vial and drank! I shall never forget it!” He pulled her close in a warm hug. “Ah, Joan, you are my pearl! But tell me, how did you know that it wasn’t the Virgin’s milk?”

Joan grinned, relieved. “I was mistrustful from the first, for if the thing were truly holy, why would it fetch so small a price? And why did the vendor keep his goat tethered behind the stall, where it couldn’t be seen? If it was received in barter, surely there was no need to hide it.”

“True. But to actually
drink
the stuff”—there was another burst
of laughter from Gerold—“surely you must have known something else.”

“Yes. When I uncapped the vial, the milk was uncurdled and perfectly fresh, as if produced this morning, though the Virgin’s milk would be over eight hundred years old.”

“Ah”—Gerold smiled, his eyebrows arched, testing her—“but perhaps its great holiness kept it pure and uncorrupted.”

“True,” Joan admitted. “But when I touched the milk, it was still warm! So holy a thing might perhaps remain uncorrupted, but why should it be warm?”

“A pretty observation,” Gerold said appreciatively. “Lucretius himself could have done no better!”

Joan beamed. How she loved to please him!

They had walked almost to the end of the long row of stalls, where the huge wooden cross of St.-Denis marked the boundary of the fair, protecting the holy tranquillity of the abbey brothers. This was where the parchment merchants had set up their stalls.

“Look!” Gerold spied them first, and they hurried over to inspect the merchandise, which was of very high quality. The vellum, in particular, was extraordinary: the flesh side of the skin was perfectly even, the color whiter than Joan had ever seen; the other side was, as usual, somewhat yellower, but the pittings where the calf’s hair had been rooted were so tiny and shallow as to be almost invisible.

“What a pleasure it must be to write on such sheets!” Joan exclaimed, fingering them gently.

Gerold immediately called one of the merchants over. “Four sheets,” he ordered, and Joan gasped, overwhelmed at his extravagance. Four sheets! It was enough for an entire codex!

While Gerold paid for his purchase, Joan’s attention wandered to a few sheets of ragged-looking parchment scattered untidily toward the rear of the stall. The edges of the sheets were torn, and there was writing on them, very faint and obliterated in places by ugly brown stains. She bent close to read the writing better, then flushed with excitement.

Seeing her interest, the merchant hurried over.

“So young, and already a fine eye for a bargain,” he said unctuously. “The sheets are old, as you see, but still good for their purpose. Look!”

Before she could speak, he took a long, flat tool and scraped it quickly across the page, effacing several letters.

“Stop!” Joan spoke sharply, remembering a different piece of parchment and a different knife. “Stop!”

The merchant looked at her curiously. “You needn’t worry, lass, it’s only pagan writing.” He pointed proudly to the page. “See? Nice and clean and ready to write on!” He lifted the tool to demonstrate the trick again, but Joan grabbed his hand.

“I’ll give you a denarius for them,” she said tersely.

The man feigned being insulted. “They’re worth three denarii, at least.”

Joan took the coin from her scrip and held it out to him. “One,” she repeated. “It’s all I have.”

The merchant hesitated, searching her face assessingly. “Very well,” he said testily. “Take them.”

Joan thrust the coin at him and gathered up the precious parchment before he could change his mind. She ran to Gerold.

“Look!” she said excitedly.

Gerold stared at the pages. “I don’t recognize the letters.”

“It’s written in Greek,” Joan explained. “And it’s very old. An engineering text, I think. See the diagrams?” She pointed to one of the pages, and Gerold studied the drawing.

“Some kind of hydraulic device.” His interest was kindled. “Fascinating. Can you provide a translation of the text?”

“I can.”

“Then I might be able to rig it up.”

They smiled at each other, conspirators in a fine new scheme.

“Father!” Gisla’s voice pierced the noise of the crowd. Gerold turned, searching for her. He was taller by a head than anyone around him; in the sun his thick, red hair gleamed like colored gold. Joan’s heart jumped unevenly in her chest as she watched him.
You are my pearl
, he had said. She grasped the papers tightly as she watched him, holding on to the moment.

“Father! Joan!” Gisla finally appeared, pushing her way through the crowd, followed by one of the household servants, his arms laden with goods. “I’ve been looking everywhere!” she remonstrated good-naturedly. “What have you got there?” Joan started to explain, but Gisla waved her aside. “Oh, just more of your silly old books. Look
what
I
found,” she enthused. She dangled a length of multicolored cloth. “For my wedding dress! Isn’t it
perfect?”

The cloth shimmered as Gisla displayed it. Examining it more closely, Joan saw that it was woven through with slender, perfect threads of gold and silver.

“It’s astonishing,” she said sincerely.

Gisla giggled. “I know!” Without waiting for a reply, she grabbed Joan’s arm and started toward a stall some distance ahead. “Oh, look,” she said, “a slave auction! Let’s go see!”

“No.” Joan hung back. She had seen the slave traders passing through Ingelheim, their human cargo bound together with heavy ropes. Many of them were Saxons, like her mother.

“No,” she said again, and would not budge.

“Aren’t you a goose!” Gisla tweaked Joan playfully. “They’re only heathens. They don’t have feelings, at least not like us.”

“I wonder what’s in here?” Joan said, anxious to distract her. She led Gisla toward a tiny stall at the end of the row. It was dark and sealed, every panel closed. Luke circled it, sniffing curiously at the walls.

“How strange,” Gisla said.

In the bright afternoon sun, with business in full swing all around, the quiet, darkened stall
was
an oddity. Her curiosity piqued, Joan tapped gently on the closed shutter.

“Come in,” a cracked voice spoke from within. Gisla jumped at the sound but did not back away. The two girls circled to the side of the stall and pushed cautiously on the planked timber door, which creaked and groaned as it opened inward, spilling slanting rays of light into the gloom.

They stepped inside. A strange smell pervaded the stall, cloying and sweet, like fermented honey. In the center of the enclosure, a tiny figure sat cross-legged—an old woman, dressed simply in a loose, dark robe. She appeared unbelievably ancient, perhaps seventy winters or more; her hair was gone, save for some fine white strands at her crown, and her head shook constantly as if she were afflicted with the ague. But her eyes shone alertly in the darkness, focusing on Joan and Gisla with shrewd assessment.

“Pretty little doves,” she croaked. “So pretty and so young. What do you want of Old Balthild?”

“We just wanted to—to—” Joan faltered as she searched uneasily for an explanation. The old woman’s gaze was unsettling.

“To find out what is for sale here,” Gisla finished boldly.

“What’s for sale? What’s for sale?” The old woman cackled. “Something that you want but will never own.”

“What?” Gisla asked.

“Something that is already yours though you have it not.” The old woman grinned at them toothlessly. “Something beyond price and yet it can be bought.”

“What
is
it?” Gisla said sharply, impatient with the old woman’s riddles.

“The future.” The old woman’s eyes glittered in the dimness. “Your future, my little dove. All that will be and is not yet.”

“Oh, you’re a fortune-teller!” Gisla clapped her hands together, pleased to have deciphered the puzzle. “How much?”

“One
solidus.
”

One solidus! It was the price of a good milking cow, or a pair of fine rams!

“Too dear.” Gisla was in her element now, confident and assured, a shrewd customer looking to strike a bargain.

“One
obole,”
she offered.

“Five denarii,” the old woman countered.

“Two. One for each of us.” Gisla withdrew the coins from her scrip and held them out on her palm for the woman to see.

The old woman hesitated, then took the coins, motioning the girls to the floor beside her. They sat; the woman clasped Joan’s strong young hands in her shaking grasp and fixed her odd, disquieting gaze upon her. For a long time, she said nothing; then she began to speak.

“Changeling child, you are what you will not be; what you will become is other than you are.”

This made little sense, unless it meant simply that she would soon be a woman grown. But then why had the old woman called her a “changeling”?

Balthild continued, “You aspire to that which is forbidden.” Joan started with surprise, and the old woman tightened her clasp. “Yes, changeling, I see your secret heart. You will not be disappointed. Greatness will be yours, beyond your dreams, and grief, beyond your imaginings.”

Balthild dropped Joan’s hands and turned toward Gisla, who winked at Joan with an expression that said,
Wasn’t that
fun?

The old woman took Gisla’s hands, her bent, gnarled fingers curling around Gisla’s smooth, pink ones.

“You will marry soon, and richly,” she said.

“Yes!” Gisla giggled. “But, old woman, I did not pay you to tell me what I already know. Will the union be a happy one?”

“No more than most, but no less either,” Balthild said. Gisla raised her eyes to the ceiling in mock despair.

“A wife you shall be, though never a mother,” Balthild crooned, swaying with the rhythm of the words, her voice singsong, melodic.

Gisla’s smile vanished. “Shall I be barren, then?”

“The future lies before you all dark and empty.” Balthild’s voice rose in a keening wail. “Pain shall be yours, and confusion, and fear.”

Gisla sat transfixed, like a stoat held fast by the stare of a snake.

“Enough!” Joan pried Gisla’s hands from the old woman’s grasp. “Come with me,” she said. Gisla obeyed, compliant as a babe.

Outside the stall, Gisla began to cry.

“Don’t be silly,” Joan soothed. “The old woman’s mad, pay no attention to her. There is no truth in such fortune-telling.”

Gisla would not be comforted. She cried and cried; finally, Joan led her to the sweetmeat stalls, where they bought honeyed figs and gorged themselves until Gisla felt somewhat better.

T
HAT
night, when they told Gerold what had happened, he was furious.

“What now, sorcery? Joan and Gisla, you will take me to this stall tomorrow. I have some words to say to this old woman who frightens young girls. In the meantime, Gisla, you must not give heed to such nonsense. Why did you even seek such false counsel?” To Joan he said reproachfully, “I would have thought that
you
, at least, would have known better.”

Joan accepted the chastisement. Still, there was a part of her that wanted to believe in Balthild’s powers. Hadn’t the old woman said that she would realize her secret desire? If she was right, then Joan
would
achieve greatness, despite the fact that she was a girl, despite what everyone else believed possible.

But if Balthild was right about Joan’s future, then she was also right about Gisla’s.

When they returned to the stall with Gerold the next day, it was empty. No one could tell them where the old woman had gone.

I
N WINNEMANOTH
, Gisla was married to Count Hugo. There had been some difficulty finding a date suitable for the immediate consummation of the marriage. The Church forbade all marital relations on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, as well as for forty days before Easter, eight days after Pentecost, and five days before the taking of communion, or on the eve of any great feast or rogation day. In all, on some two hundred and twenty days of the year sexual intercourse was prohibited; when these, as well as Gisla’s monthly bleeding time, were taken into account, there were not many dates left to choose from. But at last they settled on the twenty-fourth of the month, a date that pleased everyone save Gisla, who was impatient for the festivities to begin.

At last the great day arrived. The entire household rose before prime to fuss over Gisla. First she was helped into her long-sleeved, yellow linen undertunic. Over this was placed the resplendent new tunic fashioned from the shimmering silver and gold fabric purchased at the St.-Denis fair. It draped from her shoulders to the floor in graceful folds that were echoed in the wide sleeves opening out at her elbows. Around her hips was fastened a heavy kirtle set with good-luck stones—agate to guard against fever, chalk to defend against the evil eye, bloodstone for fertility, jasper for safe delivery in childbirth. Finally a delicate, finely worked silken veil was fastened on her head. It billowed to the ground, covering her shoulders and completely hiding her auburn hair. Standing there in her wedding dress, hardly able to move or even sit for fear of crumpling it, she looked, Joan thought, like an exotic game bird, stuffed and trussed and ready for carving.

Not I
, Joan vowed. She did not mean to wed, although in seven months she would be fifteen, a more than marriageable age. In three more years, she would be an old maid. It was incredible to her that girls her age were so eager for marriage, for it immediately plunged a woman into a state of serflike bondage. A husband had absolute control of his wife’s goods and property, her children, even her life. Having endured her father’s tyranny, Joan meant never to give any man such power over her again.