Pope Joan (3 page)

Joan was indignant. “I was four in Wintarmanoth!”

Gudrun’s eyes lit with amusement as she looked at the pudgy baby face. “Ah, yes, I forgot, you are a big girl now, aren’t you? Four years old! That does sound very grown-up.”

Joan lay quietly while her mother stroked her hair. Then she asked, “What are heathens?” Her father and brothers had spoken a good deal about heathens before they left. Joan did not understand what heathens were, exactly, though she gathered it was something very bad.

Gudrun stiffened. The word had conjuring powers. It had been on the lips of the invading soldiers as they pillaged her home and slaughtered her family and friends. The dark, cruel soldiers of the Frankish Emperor Karolus. “Magnus,” people called him now that he was dead. “Karolus Magnus.” Charles the Great. Would they name him so, Gudrun wondered, if they had seen his army tear Saxon babes from their mothers’ arms, swinging them round before they dashed their heads against the reddened stones? Gudrun withdrew her hand from Joan’s hair and rolled onto her back.

“That is a question you must ask your father,” she said.

Joan did not understand what she had done wrong, but she heard the strange hardness in her mother’s voice and knew that she would be sent back to her own bed if she didn’t think of some way to repair the damage. Quickly she said, “Tell me again about the Old Ones.”

“I cannot. Your father disapproves of the telling of such tales.” The words were half statement, half question.

Joan knew what to do. Placing both hands solemnly over her heart, she recited the Oath exactly as her mother had taught it to her, promising eternal secrecy on the sacred name of Thor the Thunderer.

Gudrun laughed and drew Joan close again. “Very well, little quail. I will tell you the story, since you know so well how to ask.”

Her voice was warm again, wistful and melodic as she began to tell of Woden and Thor and Freya and the other gods who had peopled her Saxon childhood before the armies of Karolus brought the Word of Christ with blood and fire. She spoke liltingly of Asgard, the radiant home of the gods, a place of golden and silver palaces, which
could only be reached by crossing Bifrost, the mysterious bridge of the rainbow. Guarding the bridge was Heimdall the Watchman, who never slept, whose ears were so keen he could even hear the grass grow. In Valhalla, the most beautiful palace of all, lived Woden, the father-god, on whose shoulders sat the two ravens Hugin, Thought, and Munin, Memory. On his throne, while the other gods feasted, Woden contemplated what Thought and Memory told him.

Joan nodded happily. This was her favorite part of the story. “Tell about the Well of Wisdom,” she begged.

“Although he was already very wise,” explained her mother, “Woden always sought greater wisdom. One day he went to the Well of Wisdom, guarded by Mimir the Wise, and asked for a draft from it. ‘What price will you pay?’ asked Mimir. Woden replied that Mimir could ask what he wished. ‘Wisdom must always be bought with pain,’ replied Mimir. ‘If you wish a drink of this water, you must pay for it with one of your eyes.’”

Eyes bright with excitement, Joan exclaimed, “And Woden did it, Mama, didn’t he? He did it!”

Her mother nodded. “Though it was a hard choice, Woden consented to lose the eye. He drank the water. Afterward, he passed on to mankind the wisdom he had gained.”

Joan looked up at her mother, her eyes wide and serious. “Would
you
have done it, Mama—to be wise, to know about all things?”

“Only gods make such choices,” she replied. Then, seeing the child’s persistent look of question, Gudrun confessed, “No. I would have been too afraid.”

“So would I,” Joan said thoughtfully. “But I would
want
to do it. I would want to know what the well could tell me.”

Gudrun smiled down at the intent little face. “Perhaps you would not like what you would learn there. There is a saying among our people. ‘A wise man’s heart is seldom glad.’”

Joan nodded, though she did not really understand. “Now tell about the Tree,” she said, snuggling close to her mother again.

Gudrun began to describe Irminsul, the wondrous universe tree. It had stood in the holiest of the Saxon groves at the source of the Lippe River. Her people had worshiped at it until it was cut down by the armies of Karolus.

“It was very beautiful,” her mother said, “and so tall that no one could see the top. It—”

She stopped. Suddenly aware of another presence, Joan looked up. Her father was standing in the doorway.

Her mother sat up in bed. “Husband,” she said. “I did not look for your return for another fortnight.”

The canon did not respond. He took a wax taper from the table near the door and crossed to the hearth fire, where he plunged it into the glowing embers until it flared.

Gudrun said nervously, “The child was frightened by the thunder. I thought to comfort her with a harmless story.”

“Harmless!” The canon’s voice shook with the effort to control his rage. “You call such blasphemy harmless?” He covered the distance to the bed in two long strides, set down the taper, and pulled the blanket off, exposing them. Joan lay with her arms around her mother, half-hidden under a curtain of white-gold hair.

For a moment the canon stood stupefied with disbelief, looking at Gudrun’s unbound hair. Then his fury overtook him. “How dare you! When I have expressly forbidden it!” Taking hold of Gudrun, he started to drag her from the bed. “Heathen witch!”

Joan clung to her mother. The canon’s face darkened. “Child, begone!” he bellowed. Joan hesitated, torn between fear and the desire somehow to protect her mother.

Gudrun pushed her urgently. “Yes, go.
Go quickly.”

Releasing her hold, Joan dropped to the floor and ran. At the door, she turned and saw her father grab her mother roughly by the hair, wrenching her head back, forcing her to her knees. Joan started back into the room. Terror stopped her short as she saw her father withdraw his long, bone-handled hunting knife from his corded belt.

“Forsachistu diabolae?”
he asked Gudrun in Saxon, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. When she did not respond, he placed the point of the knife against her throat. “Say the words,” he growled menacingly.
“Say them!”

“Ec forsacho allum diaboles,”
Gudrun responded tearfully, her eyes blazing defiance,
“wuercum ende wuordum, thunaer ende woden ende saxnotes ende allum …”

Rooted with fear, Joan watched her father pull up a heavy tress of her mother’s hair and draw the knife across it. There was a ripping sound as the silken strands parted; a long band of white gold floated to the floor.

Clapping her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, Joan turned and ran.

In the darkness, she bumped into a shape that reached out for her. She squealed in fear as it grabbed her. The monster hand! She had forgotten about it! She struggled, pummeling at it with her tiny fists, resisting with all her strength, but it was huge, and held her fast.

“Joan! Joan, it’s all right. It’s me!”

The words penetrated her fear. It was her ten-year-old brother Matthew, who had returned with her father.

“We’ve come back. Joan, stop struggling! It’s all right. It’s
me.”
Joan reached up, felt the smooth surface of the pectoral cross that Matthew always wore, then slumped against him in relief.

Together they sat in the dark, listening to the soft, splitting sounds of the knife ripping through their mother’s hair. Once they heard Mama cry out in pain. Matthew cursed aloud. An answering sob came from the bed where Joan’s seven-year-old brother, John, was hiding under the covers.

At last the ripping sounds stopped. After a brief pause the canon’s voice began to rumble in prayer. Joan felt Matthew relax; it was over. She threw her arms around his neck and wept. He held her and rocked her gently.

After a time, she looked up at him. “Father called Mama a heathen.”

“Yes.”

“She isn’t,” Joan said hesitantly, “is she?”

“She
was.”
Seeing her look of horrified disbelief, he added, “A long time ago. Not anymore. But those were heathen stories she was telling you.”

Joan stopped crying; this was interesting information.

“You know the first of the Commandments, don’t you?”

Joan nodded and recited dutifully, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

“Yes. That means that the gods Mama was telling you about are false; it is sinful to speak of them.”

“Is that why Father—”

“Yes,” Matthew broke in. “Mama had to be punished for the good of her soul. She was disobedient to her husband, and that also is against the law of God.”

“Why?”

“Because it says so in the Holy Book.” He began to recite, “‘For the husband is the head of the wife; therefore, let the wives submit themselves unto their husbands in everything.’”

“Why?”

“Why?” Matthew was taken aback. No one had ever asked him that before. “Well, I guess because … because women are by nature inferior to men. Men are bigger, stronger, and smarter.”

“But—” Joan started to respond, but Matthew cut her off.

“Enough questions, little sister. You should be in bed. Come now.” He carried her to the bed and placed her beside John, who was already sleeping.

Matthew had been kind to her; to return the favor, Joan closed her eyes and burrowed under the covers as if to sleep.

But she was far too troubled for sleep. She lay in the dark, peering at John as he slept, his mouth hanging slackly open.

He can’t recite from the Psalter and he’s seven years old.
Joan was only four, but she already knew the first ten psalms by heart.

John wasn’t smart. But he was a boy. Yet how could Matthew be wrong? He knew everything; he was going to be a priest, like their father.

She lay awake in the dark, turning the problem over in her mind.

Toward dawn she slept, restlessly, troubled by dreams of mighty wars between jealous and angry gods. The angel Gabriel himself came from Heaven with a flaming sword to do battle with Thor and Freya. The battle was terrible and fierce, but in the end the false gods were driven back, and Gabriel stood triumphant before the gates of paradise. His sword had disappeared; in his hand gleamed a short, bone-handled knife.

   2   

T
HE wooden stylus moved swiftly, forming letters and words in the soft yellow wax of the tablet. Joan stood attentively near Matthew’s shoulder as he copied out the day’s lessons. From time to time he stopped to wave a candle flame over the tablet to keep the wax from hardening too quickly.

She loved to watch Matthew work. His pointed bone stylus pushed the shapeless wax into lines that held for her a mysterious beauty. She longed to understand what each mark meant and followed every movement of the stylus intently, as if to discover the key to the meaning in the shape of the lines.

Matthew put the stylus down and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his eyes. Sensing an opportunity, Joan reached over to the tablet and pointed to a word.

“What does that say?”

“Jerome. That is the name of one of the great Fathers of the Church.”

“Jerome,” she repeated slowly. “The sound is like my name.”

“Some of the letters are the same,” Matthew agreed, smiling.

“Show me.”

“I’d better not. Father wouldn’t like it if he found out.”

“He won’t,” Joan pleaded. “Please, Matthew. I want to know. Please show me?”

Matthew hesitated. “I suppose there is no harm in teaching you to write your own name. It may be useful one day when you are married and have a household of your own to manage.”

Placing his hand over her small one, he helped her trace the letters of her name: J-O-H-A-N-N-A, with a long, looped
a
at the end.

“Good. Now try it yourself.”

Joan gripped the stylus hard, forcing her fingers into the odd, constricted position, willing them to form the letters she pictured in her mind. Once, she cried aloud in frustration when she could not make the stylus go where she wished.

Matthew soothed her. “Slowly, little sister, slowly. You are only six. Writing does not come easy at that age. That is when I started also, and I remember. Take your time; it will come to you in the end.”