Pope Joan (55 page)

Arighis tugged at Leo’s sleeve. “You must leave now, Holiness, while there’s still time.”

Ignoring him, Leo continued praying.

I’ll call the guards
, Arighis thought desperately.
I’ll have them carry him off by force.
As vicedominus he had the authority to do so. He hovered in tortured indecision. Could he bring himself to defy the Apostolic One, even to save him?

He spied the danger coming before anyone else. A great piece of silken altar cloth blew out through the burning walls of the monastery in a curling rope of fire. The wind caught it, straightening it into a blazing arrow headed straight for Leo.

Arighis hurled himself at Leo and pushed him out of the way. A moment later, the altar cloth slapped Arighis full in the face, searing
his eyes, wrapping itself around his head and body in a white-hot caress. In an instant, his clothes and hair were on fire.

Blind and deafened by the flames, he ran leaping down the basilica steps until his legs gave way and he fell. In the last terrible moments while his body burned but his brain remained sharply aware, Arighis suddenly understood: this was his destiny, this the sacrificial moment toward which his entire life had been directed.

“Christ Jesus!” he screamed as the unspeakable pain pierced through to his heart.

T
HE
cloud of smoke lifted a little, and Gerold saw the open door ahead. Beyond it, Joan’s image shimmered in the heated air, her white-gold hair a shining halo in the firelight. With a final effort, Gerold heaved himself and the children upright and lurched through the door.

Joan saw him emerge from the smoky haze and ran toward him. She helped the sobbing children down and held them close to her own body, while her eyes remained fixed on Gerold, who stood swaying, unable to speak or move.

“Thank God,” she said simply.

But the message in her eyes spoke so much more.

T
HEY
left the children in the care of a group of nuns and hurried to the basilica, where Gerold saw at once that the firefighters were stationed in the wrong place; they were battling the blaze at close range.

Gerold took command. He ordered the men to fall back a safe distance and create a firebreak by uprooting bushes, twigs, and everything that would burn, then spading over the grass and watering the earth down.

Seeing the sparks showering down upon the basilica, Joan seized a bucket of water from a passing monk and climbed up onto the roof. Others followed her: two, then four, then ten. They formed a human chain, passing full buckets up from below and returning empty buckets to be filled. Pass, pour, pass, fill, pass, pour, pass, fill—they toiled side by side, arms aching with the effort, clothes and faces smeared with grime, open mouths gasping for breath in the smothering air.

On the ground below them, the fire crept closer, flames slicking across grass that blackened in an instant. Gerold and the men labored desperately to increase the area of the firebreak.

On the steps of the basilica, Leo made the sign of the cross, his face turned imploringly to the heavens. “O Lord God,” he prayed. “Hear us now as we cry out unto Thee!”

The advancing fire reached the break line. The flames swelled, girding to leap forward over the denuded ground. Gerold and his men attacked with more buckets of water. The flames hesitated, drew back hissing angrily, then began to consume themselves.

The basilica was saved.

Joan felt the wet welcome of tears on her face.

T
HE
first several days after the fire were spent burying the dead— those whose bodies could be found. The intense heat of the fire had reduced many of its victims to charred bones and ashes.

Arighis, as befitted his high position, was laid to rest with solemn ceremony. After a funeral mass in the Lateran, his body was interred in a crypt in a small chapel near the tombs of Popes Gregory and Sergius.

Joan mourned his loss. She and Arighis had not always gotten along, especially in the beginning, but they had come to respect each other. She would miss his quiet efficiency, his uncanny knowledge of every detail of the complicated inner workings of the Patriarchium, even the aloof pride with which he had carried out the duties of his office. It was fitting that he would now rest for all eternity near the Apostolic Ones, whom he had served with such devotion.

After the required days of mourning were observed, the grim accounting of the damage done by the fire began. The Leonine Wall, where the blaze had apparently started, had sustained only minor damage, but some three-quarters of the Borgo had been completely destroyed. The foreign settlements and their churches had been reduced to little more than blackened rubble.

That the Basilica of St. Peter had survived the holocaust was nothing short of a miracle—as it quickly came to be regarded. Pope Leo had stayed the fire, it was said, by making the sign of the cross against the advancing flames. This version of events was eagerly taken up by the Roman people, who were badly in need of reassurance that God had not turned against them.

They found an affirmation of their faith in Leo’s miracle, fervently attested to by everyone who had been there. Indeed, the number of witnesses grew with every passing day, until it seemed that all of Rome must have been at St. Peter’s that fateful morning.

All criticism of Leo was forgotten. He was a hero, a prophet, a saint, the living embodiment of the spirit of St. Peter. The people rejoiced in him, for surely a Pope who had worked such a miracle would be able to protect them from the Saracen infidels.

The rejoicing was not, however, universal. When word of Leo’s miracle reached the Church of St. Marcellus, the doors were immediately closed and barred. All baptisms were postponed, all appointments abruptly canceled; those who inquired were told that no one could be admitted to the presence of Cardinal Priest Anastasius, for he was suddenly indisposed.

J
OAN
was working day and night, distributing clothing, medicine, and other supplies to the hospices and charitable homes in the city. The hospices were crowded with casualties of the fire, and there were too few physicians to tend them all, so she lent a hand wherever she could. Some burned and blackened bodies were past healing; there was little she could do for them but administer doses of poppy, mandragora, and henbane to ease their death agonies. Others had disfiguring burns that threatened to become corrupted; to these she applied poultices of honey and aloe, known specifics for burns. Still others, whose bodies were untouched by fire, suffered from having breathed in too much smoke. These lingered in torment, fighting for life with every shallow breath.

Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were surely not guilty of any sin?

Her heart was troubled as the shadow of her ancient doubt fell upon her once again.

O
NE
morning she was meeting with Leo to arrange for the papal storehouses to be thrown open to the victims of the fire when Waldipert, the new vicedominus, entered unexpectedly. He was a tall, bony man whose pale skin and blond hair revealed his Lombard ancestry. Joan found it odd to see this stranger in Arighis’s robes of office.

“Holiness,” Waldipert said with an obeisance, “there are two citizens without who seek immediate audience.”

“Have them wait,” Leo replied. “I will hear their petition later.”

“Pardon, Holiness,” Waldipert persisted. “I believe you should hear what they have to say.”

Leo raised an eyebrow. Had it been Arighis, Leo would have accepted his word without question, for Arighis’s judgment had been known and trusted, but Waldipert was new and untried; unfamiliar as yet with the limitations of his position, he might be clumsily overreaching himself.

Leo hesitated, then decided to give Waldipert the benefit of the doubt. “Very well. Admit them.”

Waldipert bowed and left, returning moments later with a priest and a boy. The priest was dark complexioned and squarely built. Joan recognized him as a stalwart of the faith, one of the many who toiled in honorable and impoverished obscurity in the lesser churches of Rome. The boy appeared by his dress to be in one of the minor orders—a lector, or perhaps an acolyte. He was a well-made youth, fifteen or sixteen years old, compact and comely with large, open eyes that must have normally radiated a cheerful good-naturedness, though at the moment they were clouded with grief.

The newcomers prostrated themselves before Leo.

“Rise,” Leo said. “Tell us on what business you have come.”

The priest spoke first. “I am Paul, Holiness, by God’s grace and yours priest of the house of St. Lawrence in Damasco. This boy, Dominic, came to the chapel today requesting auricular confession, which service I was glad to render. What he told me was so shocking that I brought him here to tell it to you.”

Leo frowned. “The privacy of such confessions may not be violated.”

“Holiness, the boy comes here willingly, for he is in great distress of mind and spirit.”

Leo turned to Dominic. “Is this true? Speak honestly, for there is no shame in refusing to repeat the secrets of the confessional.”

“I want to tell you, Lord Father,” the boy replied tremblingly. “I
must
tell you, for my soul’s sake.”

“Go on, then, my son.”

Dominic’s eyes blurred with tears. “I didn’t know, Holy Father!” he burst out. “I swear on the relics of all the saints I didn’t know what would happen, or I would never have done it!”

“Done what, my son?” Leo asked gently.

“Set the fire.” The boy broke into a torrent of violent sobs.

There was a stunned silence, broken only by the sound of Dominic’s crying.

“You
set the fire?” Leo asked quietly.

“I did, and may God forgive me!”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

The boy swallowed his tears, struggling to master himself. “He told me the building of the wall was a great evil, for the money and time being squandered on it would be put to better use repairing churches and relieving the misery of the poor.”

“He?” Leo said. “Did someone order you to set the fire?”

The boy nodded.

“Who?”

“My Lord Cardinal Anastasius. Lord Father, he must have had the Devil’s tongue in him, for he spoke so convincingly that what he said seemed right and good.”

There was another long silence. Then Leo said seriously, “Be careful of what you say, my son. You are certain it was Anastasius who commanded you?”

“Yes, Lord Father. It was to be only a small blaze,” Dominic said in a strangled voice, “just enough to burn the scaffolding on the wall. God knows it was easy enough—I soaked a few rags in lamp oil and wedged them under a corner of the scaffolding, then set them alight. At first the fire stayed confined to the scaffolding, just as my lord cardinal had said it would. But then the wind came up and took it and— and—” He dropped weakly to his knees. “Oh, God!” he cried in sick despair. “The innocent blood! I’d not do it again, not if a thousand cardinals commanded me!”

The boy cast himself at Leo’s feet. “Help me, Lord Father. Help me!” He raised his tormented face. “I cannot live with what I’ve done. Pronounce me my penance; I will bear any death, no matter how terrible, for my soul would be clean again!”

Joan stood stock-still, transfixed between horror and pity. To the list of Anastasius’s crimes must surely be added the evil perversion of this boy’s nature. His simple, honest-hearted soul had never been meant to commit such a crime, nor to bear its heavy weight on his conscience.

Leo laid a hand on the boy’s head. “There has been death enough already, my son. What benefit to the world would there be in adding yours to the tally? No, Dominic, the penance I impose upon you is
not death, but life—a life spent in atonement and penitence. From this day forward, you are banished from Rome. You will take the pilgrim road to Jerusalem, where you may pray before the Holy Sepulchre for divine forgiveness.”

The boy raised bewildered eyes. “Is that all?”

“The road to atonement is never easy, my son. You will find the journey hard enough.”

That, Joan thought, remembering her own pilgrimage from Frank-land to Rome, was truer than young Dominic could possibly understand. He would have to live out his days far from his native land, separated from family and friends, from all that he had ever known. Along the way to Jerusalem he would have to brave a host of dangers— precipitous mountains and treacherous gorges, roads infested with thieves and brigands, starvation and thirst and a thousand other perils.

“Spend your life in unselfish service to your fellow men,” Leo went on. “In all things conduct yourself in such a way that the scale of your good deeds will outweigh this one great evil.”

Dominic flung himself to the ground and kissed the hem of Leo’s robe. Then he rose, pale and resolute. “I am bound by you, Lord Father. I will do all exactly as you have commanded. I swear it by the sacred Body and Blood of Christ our Savior.”

Leo made a sign of blessing over him. “Go in peace, my son.”

Dominic and the priest left the room.

Leo said gravely, “Cardinal Anastasius comes from a powerful family; we must do everything in strict accordance with the law. I will draw up a writ specifying the charges against him. John, come with me; I may need your help. And, Waldipert—”

“Yes, Holiness?”

Leo nodded approval at him. “Well done.”

“Y
OU’VE
done well to bring me this news, Vicedominus,” said Arsenius. He was in a private room of his palace with Waldipert, who had just finished reporting the details of the meeting between Pope Leo and the boy Dominic. “Allow me to express my gratitude for your help.”

Arsenius unlocked a small bronze chest that stood upon his desk, took out twenty gold solidi, and handed them to Waldipert, who quickly pocketed the coins.

“I am glad to have been of service, my lord Bishop.” With the briefest of bows, Waldipert turned and left.