Pope Joan (35 page)

Her father caught the gesture. “My eyesight has grown thick. Is that your sister Joan’s medallion?”

Joan let go of it, cursing her stupidity; she had not thought to hide it.

“I took it as a remembrance … afterwards.” She could not bring herself to speak of the horror of the Norsemen’s attack.

“Did your sister die without … dishonor?”

Joan had a sudden image of Gisla, screaming in pain and fear while the Norsemen took turns with her.

“She died inviolate.”

“Deo gratias.”
The canon crossed himself. “It was God’s will, then. Headstrong and unnatural child, she could never have been at peace in this world; it is better so.”

“She would not have said so.”

If the canon caught the irony in her voice, he did not reveal it. “Her death was a very great grief to your mother.”

“How fares my mother?”

For a long moment the canon did not respond. When at last he did, his voice was shakier than before.

“She is gone.”

“Gone?”

“To Hell,” the canon said, “to burn for all eternity.”

“No.” Understanding crowded the edges of Joan’s consciousness. “No.”

Not Mama with the beautiful face, the kind eyes, the gentle hands that brought kindness and comfort—Mama, who had loved her.

“She died one month ago,” the canon said, “unshriven and unreconciled to Christ, calling upon her heathen gods. When the midwife told me she would not live, I did everything I could, but she would not accept the Blessed Sacrament. I put the Sacred Host in her mouth, and she spat it out at me.”

“The midwife? You don’t mean …” Her mother was over fifty,
well past childbearing years; she had begotten no more children after Joan was born.

“They would not let me bury her in the Christian cemetery, not with the unbaptized babe still in her womb.” He began to cry, great, choking sobs that shook his entire body.

Did he love her, then?
He’d had an odd way of displaying it, with his brutal rages, his cruelty, and his lust, his selfish lust that had killed her in the end.

The canon’s sobs slowly quieted, and he began the prayer for the dead. This time Joan did not join in. Quietly, under her breath, she began to recite the Oath, invoking the sacred name of Thor the Thunderer, just as Mama had taught her so long ago.

Her father cleared his throat uncomfortably. “There is one thing, John. The mission in Saxony … do you think … that is, could the brothers use my help, in their work with the heathens?”

Joan was perplexed. “What about your work in Ingelheim?”

“The fact is, my position in Ingelheim has become difficult. The recent … misfortune … with your mother …”

At once Joan understood. The strictures against married clergy, only feebly enforced during the reign of Emperor Karolus, had tightened under the reign of his son, whose religious zeal had earned him the title Louis the Pious. The recent synod in Paris had strongly reinforced both the theory and practice of clerical celibacy. Gudrun’s pregnancy, visible evidence of the canon’s lack of chastity, could not have come at a worse time.

“You have lost your position?”

Reluctantly, her father nodded. “But
Deo volente
, I have the strength and skill to do God’s work yet. If you could intercede for me with Abbot Raban …?”

Joan did not reply. She was overfull with grief, anger, and pain; there was no room left in her heart for compassion toward her father.

“You do not answer me. You have grown proud, my son.” He stood, his voice taking on something of its old commanding tone. “Remember, it was I who brought you to this place, and to your current position in life.
Contritionem praecedit superbia, et ante ruinam exaltatio spiritus,”
he remonstrated sternly. “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs, chapter sixteen.”

“Bonum est homini mulierem non tangere,”
Joan retorted. “It is well for a man not to touch a woman, First Corinthians, chapter seven.”

Her father raised his cane to strike her, but the movement caused him to lose his balance, and he fell. She put out her hand to help him, and he pulled her down to him, holding her fast.

“My son,” his voice pleaded tearfully in her ear, “my son. Do not desert me. You are all I have.”

Repelled, she pulled back so violently that her cowl slipped off her head. Hastily she pulled it on again, but it was too late.

Her father’s face held an expression of horrified recognition. “No,” he said, aghast. “No, it cannot be.”

“Father—”

“Daughter of Eve, what have you done? Where is your brother, John?”

“He is dead.”

“Dead?”

“Killed by Norsemen, in the church at Dorstadt. I tried to save him, but—”

“Witch! Mooncalf! Demon from Hell!” He traced the sign of the cross in the air before him.

“Father, please, let me explain—” Joan pleaded desperately. She had to calm him before his raised voice drew the others.

He retrieved his stick and struggled awkwardly to his feet, his whole body trembling. Joan moved to assist him, but he warded her off and said accusingly, “You killed your elder brother. Could you not have spared the younger?”

“I loved John, Father. I would never have harmed him. It was the Norsemen, they came without warning, with swords and axes.” She tightened her throat against mounting sobs; she had to keep talking, make him understand. “John tried to fight, but they killed everyone, everyone. They—”

He turned toward the door. “I must put a stop to this, to you, before you do any further harm.”

She grabbed hold of his arm. “Father, don’t, please, they will kill me if—”

He rounded on her fiercely. “Changeling devil! You should have died in your heathen mother’s womb before ever you were born!” He struggled to free himself, his face purpling alarmingly.
“Let me go!”

Desperately she held on. If he walked through that door, her life was forfeit.

“Brother John?” A voice sounded from the doorway. It was Brother Samuel, his kindly face creased with concern. “Is anything wrong?”

Startled, Joan loosed her grip on her father’s arm. He pulled free and went to Brother Samuel.

“Take me to Abbot Raban. I must … I mush—” He broke off suddenly with a look of puzzled surprise.

He looked strange. His skin had gone an even deeper purple; his face twisted grotesquely, the right eye drooping lower than the left, the mouth crooked peculiarly to one side.

“Father?” She approached hesitantly, holding out her hand.

He lunged for her, his right arm flapping wildly as if no longer under his control.

Terrified, Joan backed away.

He shouted something unrecognizable, then fell forward like a hewn tree.

Brother Samuel called for help. Immediately five brethren materialized in the doorway.

Joan knelt beside her father and supported him in her arms. His head lay heavy and unresisting against her shoulder, his thin gray hair twined between her fingers. Looking into his eyes, Joan was shocked by the malignant hatred she saw there.

His lips worked with a ghastly determination. “M … m … m … !”

“Don’t try to speak,” Joan said. “You are not well.”

He blazed at her with savage fury. With one last, explosive effort, he spat out a single word:
“M … m … m … Mulier!”

Woman!

His head turned convulsively to the side and froze there, his eyes set in their baleful glare.

Joan bent over him, seeking any sign of breath from the stretched lips, any pulse from the wasted neck. After a moment, she closed the staring eyes. “He is dead.”

Brother Samuel and the others crossed themselves.

“I thought I heard him speak before he died,” Brother Samuel said. “What did he say?”

“He … he called upon Mary, mother of Christ.”

Brother Samuel nodded sagely. “A holy man.” To the others he said, “Carry him to the church. We will prepare his body with all due ceremony.”

“T
ERRA
es, terram ibis,”
Abbot Raban intoned. With the rest of the brethren, Joan stooped to scoop up a handful of earth, then tossed it into the grave, watching the dark, wet lumps smear unevenly across the smooth wood of her father’s coffin.

He had always hated her. Even when she was little, before the lines of battle between them had been drawn, she had never elicited anything more from him than a sour, grudging tolerance. To him, she had always been only a stupid, worthless girl. Still, she was shocked to learn how willingly he would have exposed her, how unhesitatingly he would have consigned her to unspeakable death.

Nevertheless, as the last of the heavy earth was mounded on her father’s grave, Joan felt an odd, unexpected melancholy. She could not remember a time when she had not resented her father, feared him, even hated him. Yet she felt a peculiar sense of loss. Matthew, John, Mama—all were gone. Her father had been her last link with home, with the girl she once had been. There was no Joan of Ingelheim anymore; there was only John Anglicus, priest and monk of the Benedictine house of Fulda.

   17   

Fontenoy | 841

T
HE meadow shimmered in the dim, gray light of early dawn, threaded through the middle with the sweetly curving lines of a silver creek.
An unlikely scene for a battle
, Gerold thought grimly.

Emperor Louis had been dead less than a year, but the smoldering rivalry among his three sons had already flared into full-fledged civil war. The eldest, Lothar, had inherited the title of Emperor, but the lands of the Empire were divided between Lothar and his two younger brothers, Charles and Ludwig—an unwise and dangerous arrangement that left all three sons dissatisfied. Even so, war might have been avoided had Lothar been more skilled in diplomacy. Peremptory and despotic by nature, Lothar treated his younger brothers with an arrogance that goaded them to league together in open rebellion against him. So the three royal brothers were finally come here to Fontenoy, determined to settle the differences between them with blood.

After considerable soul-searching, Gerold had cast his lot with Lothar. He knew Lothar’s flaws of character well, but as the anointed Emperor, Lothar was the only hope for a united Frankland. The divisions that had racked the country over the past year had exacted a terrible toll: the Norsemen, taking advantage of the distraction the political upheaval afforded, had intensified their raids against the Frankish coast, wreaking great destruction. If Lothar could win a decisive victory here, his brothers would have no choice but to support him. A country ruled by a tyrant was better than no country at all.

The beating of the boards began, mustering the men. Lothar had arranged for an early mass to hearten his troops before the coming battle. Gerold left his solitary meditations and returned to the camp.

Robed in cloth of gold, the Bishop of Auxerre stood high upon a supply cart so all could see him.
“Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna,”
he chanted in a ringing baritone as dozens of acolytes passed among the men, distributing the consecrated Host. Many of
the soldiers were coloni and peasants with no previous experience at arms, men who would normally have been exempt from the imperial
bannum
requiring military service. But these were not normal times. Many had been torn from their homes without so much as an hour’s leave to arrange their affairs or bid farewell to their loved ones. These last received the Host distractedly, being in no condition to prepare for death. Their minds were still firmly fixed upon the things of this world from which they had been so roughly severed: their fields, livelihoods, debts, their wives and children. Bewildered and frightened, they could not yet comprehend the enormity of their predicament, could not believe they were expected to fight and die on this unfamiliar ground for an Emperor whose name had, until a few days ago, been only a distant echo in their lives.
How many of these innocents
, Gerold wondered,
will live to see the sun set on this day?