Pope Joan (49 page)

“Not at all,” Joan said quickly. “What can I do for you, Florintinus?”

“I’ve a terrible headache,” he said. “I wondered if you could prepare one of your palliatives for me.”

“I’d be happy to,” Joan said courteously.

Florintinus lingered by the door, exchanging idle conversation with Gerold while Joan quickly prepared a mixture of violet leaves and willow-bark, decocting it in a cup of rosemary tea. She gave it to Florintinus, and he left at once.

“We can’t talk here,” she said to Gerold as soon as he was gone. “It’s too dangerous.”

“When can I see you again?” Gerold asked urgently.

Joan thought. “There’s a Temple of Vesta on the Via Appia, just outside of town. I’ll meet you there tomorrow after terce.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her again, softly at first, then with an intensity that filled her with aching desire. “Till tomorrow,” he whispered. Then he went through the door, leaving Joan’s head spinning with a dizzying mix of emotions.

A
RIGHIS
peered sharply through the predawn light, checking the Lateran courtyard. All was in readiness. A lighted brazier had been placed alongside the great bronze statue of the she-wolf. A pair of
sturdy fire irons were set inside the flaming brazier, their tips beginning to glow red from the heat of the flames. Nearby stood a swordsman, sharpened blade at the ready.

The first rays of the sun crested the horizon. It was an unusual hour for a public execution; such events normally took place after mass. Despite the earliness of the hour, a crowd of spectators was already gathered—the eager ones always arrived well in advance to secure the best position for viewing. Many had brought their children, who scampered about in excited anticipation of the gory spectacle.

Arighis had deliberately set the hour of Benedict’s punishment for dawn, before Sergius awakened and changed his mind. Others might accuse him of proceeding with unseemly haste, but Arighis did not care. He knew exactly what he was doing, and why.

Arighis had held the high office of vicedominus for over twenty years; his entire life had been devoted to the service of the Patriarchium, to keeping the vast and complicated hive of pontifical offices that composed the seat of government in Rome running smoothly and efficiently. Over the years, Arighis had come to think of the papal household as a living entity, a being whose continuing welfare was his sole responsibility and concern.

That welfare was now threatened. In less than a year, Benedict had turned the Patriarchium into a center of corrupt power brokering and simony. Grasping and manipulative to the core, Benedict’s very existence was a malignant canker upon the papacy. The only way to save the patient was to amputate the diseased member. Benedict must die.

Sergius did not have the backbone for the deed, so it fell upon Arighis to shoulder the burden. He did so unhesitatingly, knowing that he acted for the good of Holy Mother Church.

Everything was in readiness. “Bring the prisoner,” Arighis commanded the guards.

Benedict was marched in. Clothes rumpled, face drawn and ashen from a sleepless night in the dungeon, he anxiously searched the court yard. “Where is Sergius?” he demanded. “Where is my brother?”

“His Holiness cannot be disturbed,” Arighis said.

Benedict whirled on him. “What do you think you are doing, Arighis? You saw my brother last night. He was drunk; he didn’t know what he was saying. Let me talk to him, and you will see: he will reverse the judgment against me.”

“Proceed,” Arighis commanded the guards.

The guards dragged Benedict to the center of the courtyard and forced him to his knees. They grabbed his arms and pulled them across the pedestal of the statue of the she-wolf so his hands rested levelly on the top.

Terror creased Benedict’s face. “No! Stop!” he shouted. Raising his eyes toward the windows of the Patriarchium, he cried out, “Sergius! Sergius! Serg—!”

The sword sliced downward. Benedict screamed as his severed hands dropped to the ground, spurting blood.

The crowd cheered. The swordsman nailed Benedict’s severed hands to the side of the she-wolf. According to ancient custom, they would remain there for one month as a warning to others tempted to the sin of thievery.

Ennodius the physician came forward. Pulling the hot irons from the brazier, he pressed them firmly against Benedict’s bleeding stumps. The smell of burning flesh rose sickeningly in the air. Benedict screamed again and toppled into a faint. Ennodius bent to attend him.

Arighis leaned forward attentively. Most men died after such an injury—if not immediately from shock and pain then shortly afterward from infection or loss of blood. But some of the strongest managed to survive. One saw them on the streets of Rome, their grotesque mutilations revealing the nature of their crimes: severed lips, those who had lied under oath; severed feet, slaves who’d fled their masters; gouged-out eyes, those who had lusted after the wives or daughters of their betters.

The distressing possibility of survival was the reason Arighis had asked Ennodius and not John Anglicus to attend the condemned man, for the skill of the latter might be great enough to save Benedict.

Ennodius stood. “God’s judgment has been rendered,” he announced gravely. “Benedict is dead.”

Christ be praised
, Arighis thought.
The papacy is safe.

J
OAN
stood on line in the
lavatorium
, waiting her turn for the ritual hand washing before mass. Her eyes were swollen and heavy from lack of sleep; all night she had tossed restlessly, her mind filled with thoughts of Gerold. Last night, feelings she believed long buried had resurfaced with an intensity that astonished and frightened her.

Gerold’s return had reawakened the disturbing desires of her youth.
What would it be like to live as a woman again?
she wondered. She
was accustomed to being responsible for herself, to having complete control of her destiny. But by law a wife surrendered her life to her husband. Could she trust any man so far—even Gerold?

Never give yourself to a man.
Her mother’s words echoed like warning bells in her mind.

She needed time to sort out the turmoil of emotions in her heart. But time was one thing she didn’t have.

Arighis appeared beside her. “Come,” he said urgently. He pulled her out of line. “His Holiness needs you.”

“Is he ill?” Worriedly, she followed Arighis down the corridor to the papal bedroom. Last night’s rich food and wine had been purged from Sergius’s body, and the strong dose of colchicum Joan had administered should have staved off a return attack of gout.

“He will be if he keeps carrying on as he is.”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“Benedict is dead.”

“Dead!”

“The sentence was carried out this morning. He died immediately.”

“Benedicite!”
Joan quickened her steps. She could imagine the effect this news would have on Sergius.

Even so, when she saw him she was shocked. Sergius was scarcely recognizable. His hair was disheveled, his eyes red and swollen from weeping, his cheeks covered with scratches where his nails had scored them. He was on his knees beside the bed, rocking back and forth, whimpering like a lost child.

“Holiness!” Joan spoke sharply into his ear. “Sergius!”

He kept on rocking, blind and deaf in an extremity of grief. Clearly there was no way to reach him in his present condition. Taking some tincture of henbane from her scrip, Joan measured out a dose and held it to his lips. He drank distractedly.

After a few minutes, his rocking slowed, then stopped. He looked at Joan as if seeing her for the first time.

“Weep for me, John. My soul is damned for all eternity!”

“Nonsense,” Joan said firmly. “You acted in just accordance with the law.”

Sergius shook his head. “‘Be not like Cain, who was of the Evil One and murdered his brother,’” he quoted from the First Letter of John.

Joan countered with an answering passage. “‘And why did he murder
him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.’ Benedict was not righteous, Holiness; he betrayed you and Rome.”

“And now he is dead, by my own word! O God!” He struck his chest and howled in pain.

She had to divert him from his grief or he would work himself into another fit. She took him firmly by the shoulders and said, “You must make auricular confession.”

This form of the sacrament of penance, in which one made private and regular confession
ad auriculam
, “to the ear” of a priest, was widespread in Frankland. But Rome still held determinedly to the old ways, in which confession and penance were made and given publicly, only once in a lifetime.

Sergius seized on the idea. “Yes, yes, I will confess.”

“I’ll send for one of the cardinal priests,” she said. “Is there someone you prefer?”

“I will make my confession to you.”

“Me?” A simple priest and a foreigner, Joan was an unlikely candidate to serve as confessor to the Pope. “Are you sure, Holiness?”

“I want no other.”

“Very well.” She turned to Arighis. “Leave us.”

Arighis shot her a grateful look as he left the room.

“Peccavi, impie egi, iniquitatem feci, miserere mei Domine …”
Sergius began in the ritual words of penitence.

Joan listened with quiet sympathy to his long outpouring of grief, regret, and remorse. With a soul so burdened and tormented, it was no wonder Sergius sought peace and forgetfulness in drink.

The confession worked as she had intended; gradually the wild passion of despair subsided, leaving Sergius drained and exhausted but no longer a danger to himself or others.

Now came the tricky part, the penance that had to precede forgiveness of sin. Sergius would expect his penance to be harsh—public mortification, perhaps, on the steps of St. Peter’s. But such an act would only serve to weaken Sergius and the papacy in Lothar’s eyes— and that must be prevented at all costs. Yet the penance Joan imposed must not be too light or Sergius would reject it.

She had an idea. “In token of repentance,” she said, “you will abstain from all wine and the meat of four-footed animals from this day forward until the hour of your death.”

Fasts were a common form of penance, but they usually lasted only a few months, perhaps a year. A lifetime of abstinence was stern punishment—especially for Sergius. And the penance would have the added benefit of helping protect the Pope from his own worst instincts.

Sergius bowed his head in acceptance. “Pray with me, John.”

She knelt beside him. In many ways, he was like a child—weak, impulsive, needful, demanding. Yet she knew he was capable of good. And at this moment, he was all that stood between Anastasius and the Throne of St. Peter.

At the end of the prayer, she rose. Sergius clutched at her. “Don’t leave,” he pleaded. “I can’t be alone.”

Joan covered his hand with her own. “I won’t leave you,” she promised solemnly.

E
NTERING
through the crumbling portals of the ruined Temple of Vesta, Gerold saw with disappointment that Joan had not yet arrived.
No matter
, he told himself;
it’s early yet.
He sat down to wait with his back against one of the slim granite pillars.

Like most pagan monuments in Rome, the temple had been stripped of its precious metals: the gilt rosettes that had once adorned the coffers of the dome were gone, as were the golden bas-reliefs ornamenting the pediment of the
pronaos.
The niches lining the walls were empty, their marble statues having been carted off to the lime kilns to be turned into building material for the walls of Christian churches. Remarkably, however, the figure of the goddess herself survived, ensconced in her shrine under the dome. One of her hands had broken off, and the lines of her garment were roughened, eroded by time and the elements, but the statue still had remarkable power and grace of form—testimony to the skill of its heathen sculptor.

Vesta, ancient goddess of home and hearth. She represented all that Joan meant to him: life, love, a renewed sense of hope. He breathed deeply, drinking in the damp sweetness of the morning, feeling better than he had in years. He had been low of late, weary of life’s stale, unchanging round. He had resigned himself to it, telling himself it was the inevitable result of his years, for he was nearing forty-six, an old man’s age.

Now he knew how wrong he had been. Far from being tired of life, he was hungry for it. He felt young, alive, vital, as if he had
drunk from the fabled cup of Christ. The rest of his life stretched ahead bright with promise. He would marry Joan, and they would go to Benevento and live together in peace and love. They might even have children—it was not too late. The way he felt at this moment, anything was possible.

He started up as she came hurrying through the portal, her priest’s robes billowing behind her. Her cheeks were rosy from the exertion of her walk; her cropped white-gold hair curled around her face, accentuating her deep-set gray-green eyes, eyes that drew him like pools of light in a darkened sanctuary. How ever had she succeeded in this man’s disguise? he wondered. To his knowing eyes, she looked very womanly and wholly desirable.

“Joan.” The word was part name, part supplication.

Joan kept a cautious distance between them. If once she let herself into Gerold’s arms, she knew her resolve would melt.

“I’ve brought a mount for you,” Gerold said. “If we leave now, we’ll be at Benevento in three days’ time.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m not going with you.”

“Not going?” Gerold echoed.

“I cannot leave Sergius.”

For a moment he was too taken aback to say anything. Then he managed to ask, “Why not?”

“Sergius needs me. He is … weak.”

“He’s Pope of Rome, Joan, not a child in need of coddling.”

“I don’t coddle him; I doctor him. The physicians of the schola have no knowledge of the disease that afflicts him.”

“He survived well enough before you came to Rome.”

It was gentle mockery, but it stung. “If I leave now, Sergius will drink himself to death within a six-month.”