Pope Joan (32 page)

When the stones were hot, Joan wrapped them in thick layers of flannel cloth and carefully placed them all about Gottschalk. Two of the largest stones she positioned under his feet, so that they were slightly elevated, following Hippocrates’ recommendation. She finished by laying a light woolen blanket over all, to hold in the warmth.

After a short while, Gottschalk’s eyelids fluttered; he moaned and began to stir. Brother Benjamin went to the bed. A healthy pink tinge had returned to Gottschalk’s skin, and he was breathing more normally. A quick check of his pulse revealed a strong, regular heartbeat.

“God be praised.” Brother Benjamin breathed in relief. He smiled at John Anglicus across the bed.
He has the gift
, Brother Benjamin thought with an almost paternal pride, slightly tinged with envy. From the beginning the boy had shown brilliant promise—that was why Benjamin had asked for him as his assistant—but he had never expected him to come so far so fast. In just a few years, John Anglicus had mastered the skills it had taken Brother Benjamin a lifetime to acquire.

“You have the healing touch, Brother John,” he said benevolently. “Today you have surpassed your old master; soon I will have nothing left to teach you.”

“Do not say so,” Joan responded with chagrin, for she was fond of Benjamin. “I still have much to learn, and I know it.”

Gottschalk groaned again, his pinched lips drawing back to reveal his teeth.

“He begins to feel the pain,” Brother Benjamin said. Working rapidly, he made a potion of red wine and sage, into which he infused a few drops of poppy juice. Such a preparation required the greatest care, for what could, in small doses, provide blessed relief from insupportable pain could also kill, the difference depending solely on the skill of the physician.

When he was done, Brother Benjamin handed the brimming cup to Joan, who carried it to the bed and offered it to Gottschalk. Proudly, he pushed it away, though the sudden movement caused him to cry out in pain.

“Drink it, Brother,” Joan chided gently, and held the cup to Gottschalk’s lips. “You must get well if you are ever to win your freedom,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

Gottschalk flashed her a surprised look. He took a few sips, then drank rapidly, thirstily, like a man who comes upon a well after a hot day’s march.

An authoritative voice sounded unexpectedly behind them. “Do not place your hopes in herbs and potions.”

Turning, Joan saw Abbot Raban, followed by a score of the brethren. She put down the cup and rose.

“The Lord grants life to men and makes them sound. Prayer alone can restore this sinner to health.” Abbot Raban signaled the brothers, who quietly surrounded the bed.

Abbot Raban led them in the prayer for the sick. Gottschalk did not join in. He lay unmoving, eyes closed as if asleep, though Joan could tell from his breathing he was not.

His body will heal
, she thought,
but not his wounded soul.
Joan’s heart went out to the young monk. She understood his stubborn refusal to submit to Raban’s tyranny, remembering, too well, her own fierce struggle against her father.

“All praise and thanks to God.” Abbot Raban’s voice sounded clear above the rest of the brethren.

Joan joined in praising God, but in her mind she also gave thanks to the pagan Hippocrates, worshiper of idols, whose bones were dust
many centuries before Christ was born, but whose wisdom had reached across the distant years to heal one of His sons.

“T
HE
wound’s mending nicely,” Joan reassured Gottschalk after she unwrapped the bandages and laid his back bare for inspection. Two weeks had passed since the day of his scourging, and already the broken rib had knit and the jagged edges of the wound sealed neatly together—though, like her, Gottschalk would bear the marks of his punishment for life.

“Thanks for the trouble you’ve taken, Brother,” Gottschalk replied, “but it will all be to do over, for it’s only a matter of time till he has me scourged again.”

“You only provoke him with open defiance. A milder approach would serve you better.”

“I will defy him with the last breath in my body. He is evil,” he cried passionately.

“Have you thought of telling him you’ll forgo your claim to the land in return for your freedom?” Joan asked. An oblate was always offered to a monastery along with a substantial gift of land; if the oblate subsequently left, the land presumably would revert as well.

“Don’t you think I’ve offered that already?” Gottschalk replied. “It’s not the land he’s after; it’s me, or rather my submission, body and soul. And that he’ll never have, though he kill me for it.”

So it was a contest of wills between them—one that Gottschalk could not possibly win. Best to get him away from here before something terrible happened.

“I’ve been giving some thought to your problem,” Joan said. “Next month there’s a synod in Mainz. All the bishops of the Church will attend. If you submitted a petition for your release, they would have to consider it—and their ruling would supersede Abbot Raban’s.”

Gottschalk said bleakly, “The synod will never contravene the will of the great Raban Maur. His power is too great.”

“The ruling of abbots, even of archbishops, has been overturned before,” Joan argued. “And you’ve a strong argument in the fact you were offered as an oblate in infancy, before you had reached the age of reason. I searched the library and found some passages from Jerome that would support such an argument.” She pulled a roll of parchment from under her robe. “Here, see for yourself—I’ve written it all down.”

Gottschalk’s dark eyes brightened as he read. He looked up excitedly. “It’s brilliant! A dozen Rabans could not refute so well made an argument!” Then the dark clouds rolled in again. “But—there’s no way for me to present this before the synod.
He
will never grant me permission to leave, even for a day, and certainly not to go to Mainz.”

“Barthold, the cloth merchant, can take it for you. His business brings him here regularly. I know him well, for he comes to the infirmary to fetch medicine for his wife, who suffers from headache. He’s a good man and can be trusted to bear the petition safely to Mainz.”

Gottschalk asked with suspicion, “Why are you doing this?”

Joan shrugged. “A man should be free to live the life he chooses.” To herself she added,
And so, for that matter, should a woman.

E
VERYTHING
went off as planned. When Barthold came to the infirmary to pick up the medicine for his wife, Joan gave him the petition, which he bore away tucked safely in his saddlebag.

A few weeks later, the abbey received an unexpected visit from Otgar, Bishop of Trier. After the formal greeting in the forecourt, the bishop requested and received immediate audience with the abbot in his quarters.

The news the bishop brought was astonishing: Gottschalk was released from his vows. He was free to leave Fulda when he chose.

He chose to leave at once, not wishing to remain one moment longer than necessary under Raban’s baleful eye. Packing was no problem; though he had lived all his life at the monastery, Gottschalk had nothing to bring away with him, for a monk could not own any personal property. Brother Anselm, the kitchener, put together a sack of food to see Gottschalk through the first few days on the road, and that was all.

“Where will you go?” Joan asked him.

“To Speyer,” he answered. “I’ve a married sister there; I can stay with her for a while. Then … I don’t know.”

He had fought for liberty so long and with so little hope he had not stopped to consider what he would do if he actually achieved it. He had never known anything but the monastic life; its safe and predictable rhythms were as much a part of him as breathing. Though he was too proud to admit to it, Joan read the uncertainty and fear in his eyes.

The brethren did not gather for a formal leave-taking, for Raban
had forbidden it. Only Joan and a few other brothers whose opus manuum brought them across the forecourt at that hour were there to see Gottschalk walk through the gate, a free man at last. Joan watched him make his way down the road, his tall, spare figure growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared on the horizon.

Would he be happy? Joan hoped so. But somehow he seemed a man fated always to yearn after that which he could not have, to choose for himself the rockiest, most difficult path. She would pray for him, as for all the other sad and troubled souls who must travel roads alone.

   16   

O
N ALL Souls’ Day, the brethren of Fulda gathered in the forecourt for the
separatio leprosorum
, the solemn liturgy segregating lepers from society. This year seven such unfortunates had been identified in the region surrounding Fulda, four men and three women. One was a youth of no more than fourteen, in whom the marks of the disease were as yet very indistinct; one an ancient woman of sixty or more, whose lidless eyes and absent lips and fingers attested to an advanced stage of the disease. All seven had been wrapped in black shrouds and herded into the forecourt, where they huddled in a wretched little band.

The brethren approached in solemn procession. First came Abbot Raban, drawn up tall in full abbatial dignity. To his right walked Prior Joseph, to his left, Bishop Otgar. Behind marched the remaining brethren in order of seniority. Two lay brothers brought up the rear of the procession, pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with earth taken from the graveyard.

“I hereby forbid you to enter any church, mill, bakery, market, or other place where people gather.” Abbot Raban addressed the lepers with heavy solemnity. “I forbid you to use the common roads and paths. I forbid you to come near any living person without ringing your bell to give warning. I forbid you to touch children, or to give them anything.”

One of the women began to wail. Two dark, wet patches stained the front of her worn woolen tunic.
A nursing mother
, Joan thought.
Where is her babe? Who will take care of it?

“I forbid you to eat or drink in the company of anyone save lepers like yourselves,” Abbot Raban continued. “I forbid you ever to wash your hands or face or any objects you may use at the riverbank, or at any spring or stream. I forbid you carnal knowledge of your spouse, or any other person. I forbid you to beget children, or to nurse them.”

The woman’s anguished wailing intensified, her tears coursing down her ulcerated face.

“What is your name?” With barely concealed irritation, Abbot Raban addressed the woman in the vernacular. Her unseemly display of emotion was marring the well-ordered symmetry of the ceremony, with which Raban had hoped to impress the bishop. For it was now apparent that Otgar had come to Fulda not merely to deliver the news of Gottschalk’s release but also to observe and make report upon Raban’s stewardship of the abbey.

“Madalgis,” the woman snuffled in reply. “Please, lord, I must go home, for there are four fatherless little ones needing their dinner.”

“Heaven will provide for the innocent. You have sinned, Madalgis, and God is afflicting you,” Raban explained with elaborate patience, as if to a child. “You must not weep, but instead thank God, for you will suffer the less torment in the life to come.”

Madalgis stood bewildered, as if she doubted she had heard aright. Then her face crumpled and her crying broke out anew, louder than before, her face crimsoning from the bottom of her neck to the roots of her hair.

That’s odd
, Joan thought.

Raban turned his back upon the woman.
“De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine …”
He began the prayer for the dead. The brethren joined in, their voices mingling in deep unison.

Joan mouthed the words mechanically, her eyes fixed on Madalgis with intent concentration.

Finishing with the prayer, Raban moved on to the final part of the ceremony, in which each of the lepers, in turn, would be formally separated from the world. He stood before the first, the relatively unmarked boy of fourteen.
“Sis mortuus mundo, vivens iterum Deo,”
Abbot Raban said. “Be dead unto the world, living in the eyes of God.” He signaled to Brother Magenard, who plunged a spade into the wheelbarrow, lifted out a small pile of graveyard earth, and flung it at the boy, spattering his clothes and hair.