Pope Joan (41 page)

Benedict would have preferred to have the title and honor of the papal office as well, but he had always known this to be beyond his reach. He had neither the education nor the polish for so great an office. He was a second son, and in Rome it was not the custom to divide property and title among heirs as in Frankland. As the firstborn, Sergius had been lavished with all the privileges the family could provide—the expensive clothes, the private tutors. It was terribly unfair, but there was nothing to be done about it, and after a while Benedict had left off sulking and sought consolation in worldlier pleasures, of which, he quickly discovered, Rome had no shortage. His mother had grumbled about his dissolute habits but made no serious attempt to curtail them; her interest and hopes had always been centered on Sergius.

Now, at last, the long years of being overlooked were at an end. It had not been difficult to get Sergius to appoint him papal missus; Sergius had always felt guilty about the preference he had been given over his younger brother. Benedict knew his brother was weak, but corrupting him had proved even easier than anticipated. After all the years of ceaseless study and monkish deprivation, Sergius was more than ready to enjoy life. Benedict did not try to lure his brother with women, for Sergius clung adamantly to the ideal of priestly chastity. Indeed, his feelings on this point approached obsession, so that Benedict was hard put to keep secret his own sexual adventuring.

But Sergius had another weakness—an insatiable appetite for the pleasures of the table. As he consolidated his own power, Benedict kept his brother distracted with an unending parade of gustatory delights. Sergius’s capacity for food and wine was prodigious. He had been known to consume five trout, two roast hens, a dozen meat pasties, and a whole haunch of venison in a single sitting. After one such orgy, he had come to morning mass so gorged and bloated that he vomited up the Sacred Host onto the altar, to the horror of the congregation.

Following this shameful episode, Sergius resolved to reform, resuming the simple diet of bread and greens on which he had been raised. This spartan regimen restored him; he again began to take an
interest in affairs of state. This had interfered with Benedict’s profitable schemes. But Benedict bided his time. Then, when he judged Sergius had had enough of pious self-denial, he resumed tempting him with extravagant gifts: rich and exotic sweetmeats, pasties and pottages, roasted pigs, barrelfuls of thick Tuscan wine. Soon Sergius was off on another feeding binge.

This time, however, the bingeing had gone too far. Sergius became ill, dangerously ill. Benedict felt no compassion for his elder brother, but he did not want him to die. Sergius’s death would spell the end of Benedict’s own power.

Something had to be done. The physicians attending Sergius were an incompetent lot who attributed the Pope’s sickness to powerful demons, against whose malignancy only prayer could avail. They surrounded Sergius with a multitude of priests and monks, who wept and prayed beside his bed day and night, raising their voices stringently toward Heaven, but it made no difference: Sergius continued to decline.

Benedict was not content to let his future hang upon the slender thread of prayer.
I must do something. But what?

“My lord.”

Benedict was roused from his reverie by the small, hesitant voice of Celestinus, one of the papal
cubicularii
, or chamberlains. Like most of his fellows, Celestinus was the scion of a rich and aristocratic Roman family that had paid handsomely for the honor of having their young son serve as chamberlain to the Pope. Benedict regarded the boy with dislike. What did this pampered child of privilege know of life, of the hard scrabble to raise oneself up from obscurity?

“What is it?”

“My lord Anastasius requests an audience with you.”

“Anastasius?” Benedict could not place the name.

“Bishop of Castellum,” Celestinus offered helpfully.

“You dare instruct me?” Furious, Benedict brought his hand down forcefully on Celestinus’s cheek. “That will teach you respect for your betters. Now be off, and bring the bishop to me here.”

Celestinus hurried away, cradling his cheek tearfully. Benedict’s hand stung where it had contacted the boy; he flexed it, feeling better than he had in days.

Moments later Anastasius swept regally through the doors. Tall and courtly, the epitome of aristocratic elegance, he was well aware of the impression he made on Benedict.

“Pax vobiscus,”
Benedict greeted him in mangled Latin.

Anastasius noted the barbarism but took care not to let his contempt show.
“Et cum spiritu tuo,”
he responded smoothly. “How fares His Holiness the Pope?”

“Poorly. Very poorly.”

“I grieve to hear it.” This was more than politeness; Anastasius truly was concerned. The time was not yet right for Sergius to die. Anastasius would not be thirty-five, the minimum age required in a Pontiff, for more than a year. If Sergius died now, a younger man than he might be elected, and it could be twenty years or more before the Chair of St. Peter stood vacant again. Anastasius did not intend to wait that long to realize his life’s ambition.

“Your brother is skillfully attended, I trust?”

“He is surrounded night and day by holy men offering prayers for his recovery.”

“Ah!” There was a silence. Both men were skeptical of the efficacy of such measures, but neither could own his doubt openly.

“There is someone at the Schola Anglorum,” Anastasius ventured, “a priest with a great reputation for healing.”

“Oh?”

“John Anglicus, I believe he is called—a foreigner. Apparently he is a man of great learning. They say that he can perform veritable miracles of healing.”

“Perhaps I should send for him,” said Benedict.

“Perhaps,” Anastasius agreed, then let the matter drop. Benedict, he sensed, was not a man to be pushed. Tactfully, Anastasius shifted the discussion to another matter. When he judged a reasonable amount of time to have passed, he stood to leave.
“Dominus tecum, Benedictus.”

“Deus vobiscus.”
Benedict mangled the form once again.

Ignorant oaf
, Anastasius thought. That such a man could rise so far in power was an embarrassment, a stain upon the reputation of the Church. With a bow and an elegant sweep of his robes, Anastasius turned and left.

Benedict watched him go.
Not a bad sort, for an aristocrat. I will send for this healer-priest, this John Anglicus.
It would probably cause trouble, bringing in someone who was not a member of the society of physicians, but no matter. Benedict would find a way. There was always a way, when one knew what one wanted.

T
HREE
dozen candles blazed at the foot of the great bed in which Sergius lay. Behind them knelt a clot of black-robed monks, droning litanies in deep-voiced unison.

Ennodius, chief physician of Rome, raised his iron lancet and drew it deftly across Sergius’s left forearm, slicing into the chief vein. Blood welled from the wound and dripped into a silver bowl held by Ennodius’s apprentice. Ennodius shook his head as he examined the blood in the bowl. It was thick and dark; the peccant humor that was causing the Pope’s illness was compacted in the body and would not be drawn out. Ennodius left the wound open, letting the blood flow longer than usual; he would not be able to bleed Sergius again for some days, for the moon was passing into Gemini, an unpropitious sign for bloodletting.

“How does it look?” Florus, a fellow physician, asked.

“Bad. Very bad.”

“Come outside,” Florus whispered. “I must speak with you.”

Ennodius staunched the wound, pressing the flaps of skin together and applying pressure with his hand. The task of binding the wound with grease-coated leaves of rue wrapped in cloth he left to his apprentice. Wiping the blood from his hands, he followed Florus out to the hall.

“They’ve sent for someone else,” Florus said urgently as soon as they were alone. “A healer from the Schola Anglorum.”

“No!” Ennodius was chagrined. The practice of medicine within the city was supposed to be strictly confined to members of the physicians’ society—though in actuality a small and unrecognized army of medical dabblers plied their questionable skills among the populace. These were tolerated, as long as they operated anonymously among the poor. But a forthright acknowledgment of one of these, coming from the papal palace itself, represented an undeniable threat.

“John Anglicus, the man is called,” Florus said. “Rumor has it he is possessed of extraordinary powers. They say he can diagnose an illness merely by examining a patient’s urine.”

Ennodius sniffed. “A charlatan.”

“Obviously. But some of these medical pretenders are quite artful. If this John Anglicus can mount even an appearance of skill, it could be damaging.”

Florus was right. In a profession such as theirs, where results were often disappointing and always unpredictable, reputation was everything. If this outsider should meet with success where they had been seen to fail …

Ennodius thought for a moment. “He makes a study of urine, you say? Well, then, we’ll provide him with a sample.”

“Surely the last thing we should do is help the foreigner!”

Ennodius smiled. “I said we’d provide him with a sample, Florus. I didn’t say from whom.”

S
URROUNDED
by an escort of papal guards, Joan walked quickly toward the Patriarchium, the enormous palace housing the papal residence as well as the multiplicity of administrative offices that constituted the seat of government in Rome. Bypassing the great Basilica of Constantine, with its magnificent line of round-arched windows, they entered the Patriarchium. Inside, they climbed a short flight of stairs which let upon the
triclinium major
, or great hall of the palace, whose construction had been commissioned by Pope Leo of blessed memory.

The hall was paved in marble and decorated with myriad mosaics, worked with a degree of artistry that left Joan awestruck. Never before had she seen colors so bright, nor figures so lifelike. No one in Frankland—bishop, abbot, count, not even the Emperor himself— could command such magnificence.

In the center of the triclinium, a group of men was gathered. One came forward to greet her. He was dark avised, with narrow, puffy eyes and a crafty expression.

“You are the priest John Anglicus?” he asked.

“I am.”

“I am Benedict, papal missus and brother to Pope Sergius. I have had you brought here to cure His Holiness.”

“I will do all I can,” Joan said.

Benedict dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “There are those who have no wish to see you succeed.”

Joan could well believe it. Many in the assemblage were members of the select and exclusive physicians’ society. They would not welcome an outsider.

Another man joined them—tall, thin, with penetrating eyes and a beaked nose. Benedict introduced him as Ennodius, chief of the physicians’ society.

Ennodius acknowledged Joan with the barest of nods. “You will discover for yourself,
if
you have the skill, that His Holiness is afflicted by demons, whose pernicious hold will not be dislodged by medicines or purgings.”

Joan said nothing. She put little credence in such theories. Why look to the supernatural when there were so many physical and detectable causes of disease?

Ennodius held out a vial of yellow liquid. “This sample of urine was taken from His Holiness not an hour ago. We are curious to see what you can learn from it.”

So I am to be tested
, Joan thought.
Well, I suppose it’s as good a way to start as any.

She took the vial and held it up against the light. The group gathered round in a semicircle. Ennodius’s beaked nose quivered as he watched her with vulpine expectancy.

She turned the vial this way and that until the contents showed clearly. Strange. She sniffed it, then sniffed again. She dipped a finger in, put it to her tongue, and tasted carefully. The tension in the room was now almost palpable.

Again she sniffed and tasted. No doubt about it.

A clever ruse, substituting a pregnant woman’s urine for the Pope’s. They had confronted her with a true dilemma. As a simple priest, and a foreigner, she could not accuse so august a company of deliberate deceit. On the other hand, if she did not detect the substitution, she would be denounced as a fraud.

The trap had been skillfully set. How to escape it?

She stood considering.

Then she turned and announced, straight-faced, “God is about to perform a miracle. Within thirty days, His Holiness is going to give birth.”

B
ENEDICT
shook with laughter as he led the way out of the triclinium. “The looks on those old men’s faces! It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud!” He was deriving an inordinate amount of pleasure from what had transpired. “You proved your skill and exposed their deceit without uttering a single word of accusation. Brilliant!”

As they approached the papal bedroom, they heard hoarse shouting from the other side of the door.