Pope Joan (59 page)

A
NASTASIUS
and his party were camped outside Perugia, some ninety miles from Rome, when the courier arrived with the news. Anastasius barely finished reading the message before he let out a cry of pain. Without a word to his bewildered companions, he turned and reentered his tent, tying the flaps to prevent anyone from entering after him.

From inside the tent the men of his escort heard wild and unrestrained sobbing. After a time the sobbing became a kind of animal howling that went on through most of the night.

R
OBED
in scarlet silk woven with gold and seated on a white palfrey also clothed and bridled in gold, Joan rode in ceremony toward her coronation. From every door and window along the Via Sacra, streamers and banners fluttered in riotous color; the ground was strewn with sweet-smelling myrtle. Throngs of cheering people lined the street, pressing forward to catch a glimpse of the new Lord Pope.

Lost in her own reverie, Joan scarcely heard the noise of the crowd. She was thinking of Matthew, of her old master Aesculapius, of Brother Benjamin. They had all believed in her, encouraged her, but none could have dreamed of such a day as this. She could scarcely believe it herself.

When she had first disguised herself as a man, when she had been
accepted into the Fulda brotherhood, God had not raised His hand against her. But would He truly allow a woman to ascend the sacred Throne of St. Peter? The question spun round in her mind.

The papal guards, led by Gerold, rode escort around Joan. Gerold kept his wary gaze fixed on the crowds lining the road. Now and again someone broke through the ranks of guards, and each time Gerold’s hand strayed to the sword at his side, ready to defend Joan against attack. There was no occasion to draw his sword, however, for each time the interloper wanted only to kiss the hem of Joan’s robe and receive her blessing.

In this slow and interrupted fashion, the long procession wound its way through the streets toward the Lateran. The sun was at midpoint in the sky when they drew up before the papal cathedral. As Joan dismounted, the cardinals, bishops, and deacons fell into place behind her. Slowly she climbed the steps and entered the shimmering interior of the great basilica.

R
EPLETE
with ancient and elaborate ritual, the
ordo coronationis
, or coronation ceremony, took several hours. Two bishops led Joan to the sacristy, where she was solemnly vested in alb, dalmatic, and paenula before she approached the high altar for the singing of the Litany and the lengthy ritual of consecration, or anointing. During the recitation of the
vere dignum
, Desiderius the archdeacon and two of the regionary deacons held over her head an open book of the Gospels. Then came the mass itself; this lasted a good deal longer than usual because of the addition of numerous prayers and formularies befitting the importance of the occasion.

Throughout it all Joan stood solemn and erect, weighted down by the liturgical robes, as stiff with gold as those of any Byzantine prince. Despite the magnificence of her attire, she felt very small and inadequate to the enormous responsibility being laid upon her. She told herself that those who had stood here before her must also have trembled and doubted. And somehow they had carried on.

But they had all been men.

Eustathius, the archpriest, began the final benediction: “Almighty Lord, stretch forth the right hand of Thy blessing upon Thy servant John Anglicus, and pour over him the gift of Thy mercy …”

Will
God bless me now?
Joan wondered.
Or will His just wrath strike me down the moment the papal crown is placed upon my head?

The Bishop of Ostia came forward bearing the crown on a cushion of white silk. Joan’s breath caught in her throat as he raised the crown above her. Then the weight of the gold circlet settled upon her head.

Nothing happened.

“Life to our illustrious Lord John Anglicus, by God decreed our chief Bishop and Universal Pope!” Eustathius cried.

The choir chanted
Laudes
as Joan faced the assembly.

E
MERGING
onto the steps of the basilica, she was greeted by a thunderous roar of welcome. Thousands of people had been standing for hours in the blistering sun to greet their newly consecrated Pope. It was their will that she should wear the crown. Now they spoke that will in one great chorus of joyous acclamation: “Pope John! Pope John! Pope John!”

Joan raised her arms to them, feeling her spirit begin to soar. The epiphany, which only yesterday she had striven in vain to achieve, now came unlooked for and unbidden. God had allowed this to happen, so it could not be against His will. All doubt and anxiety were dispelled, replaced by a glorious, glowing certainty:
This is my destiny, and these my people.

She was hallowed by the love she bore them. She would serve them in the Lord’s name all the days of her life.

And perhaps in the end God would forgive her.

S
TANDING
nearby, Gerold stared at Joan in wonderment. She was aglow, transformed by some unspeakable joy, her face a lovely shining lamp. He alone, who knew her so well, could guess at her inner hallowing of spirit, more important by far than the formal ceremony which had preceded it. As he watched her receive the acclamation of the crowd, his heart was torn by an unbearable truth: the woman he loved was lost to him forever, yet he had never loved her more.

   27   

J
OAN’S first act as Pope was to undertake a walking tour of the city. Accompanied by an entourage of optimates and guards, she visited each of the seven ecclesiastical regions in turn, greeting the people and listening to their grievances and needs.

As she neared the end of her tour, Desiderius, the archdeacon, directed her up the Via Lata away from the river.

“What about the Campus Martius?” she said.

The others in the papal entourage looked at one another in consternation. The Campus Martius, the marshy, breezeless, low-lying region abutting the Tiber, was the poorest part of Rome. In the great days of the Roman Republic, it had been dedicated to the worship of the pagan god Mars. Now starving dogs, ragged beggars, and thieves wandered its once-proud streets.

“We daren’t venture in there, Holiness,” Desiderius pro tested. “The place is rife with typhus and cholera.”

But Joan was already striding toward the river, flanked by Gerold and the guards. Desiderius and the others had no choice but to follow.

Rows of
insulae
, the narrow tenements of the poor, crowded together along the filthy streets edging the riverbank, their rotting timbers bending alarmingly. Some of the insulae had collapsed; the heaps of rotten timber lay where they had fallen, blocking the narrow streets. Overhead stretched the ruined arches of the Marcian aqueduct, once one of the engineering wonders of the world. Now its broken walls dripped filthy water that collected underneath in black, stagnant pools, breeding grounds for disease.

Groups of beggars huddled over pots of foul-smelling food simmering on little fires made from twigs and dried dung. The streets were covered with a layer of slime left behind by repeated floodings of the Tiber. Refuse and excrement plugged the gutters; the stench rose unbearably in the summer heat, attracting swarms of flies, rats, and other vermin.

“God’s teeth,” Gerold muttered darkly beside her. “The place is a pesthole.”

Joan knew the face of poverty, but she had never seen anything to equal this appalling, brutish squalor.

Two small children crouched before a cooking fire. Their tunics were so threadbare Joan could see the whiteness of their skin beneath; their bare feet were wrapped with strips of filthy rags. One, a little boy, was obviously sick with fever; despite the summer heat, he was shivering uncontrollably. Joan removed her linen paenula and tucked it gently around him. The boy rubbed his cheek against the fine cloth, softer than anything he had felt in his life.

She felt a tug on the hem of her robe. The smaller child, a round-eyed cherub of a girl, was looking up at her questioningly. “Are you an angel?” the small voice chirruped.

Joan cupped the child’s dirty chin. “You’re the angel, little one.”

Inside the pot, a small piece of stringy, unidentifiable meat was beginning to brown. A young woman with lank yellow hair came lumbering wearily up from the river hauling a bucket of water. The children’s mother? Joan wondered. She was scarcely more than a child herself—surely no more than sixteen.

The young woman’s eyes lit hopefully as she saw Joan and the other prelates. “Alms, good fathers?” She held out a grimy hand. “A bit of coin for the sake of my little ones?” Joan nodded at Victor, the sacellarius, who placed a silver denarius in the girl’s outstretched palm. With a happy grin, the girl set down the water bucket to pocket the coin.

Raw sewage was floating in the water.

Benedicite!
Joan thought. The filth in that water was doubtless what had made the boy sick. But with the aqueduct in ruins, what choice did his mother have? She must use the polluted water of the Tiber or die of thirst.

By now, others had begun to notice Joan and her entourage. People crowded around, eager to greet their new Lord Pope. Joan reached out to them, trying to touch and bless as many as she could. But as the crowd grew, the people packed round so closely she could scarcely move. Gerold gave commands; the guards shouldered the crowd back, opening a path, and the papal entourage retreated back up the Via Lata to the open sunshine and breezy, healthful air of the Capitoline Hill.

“W
E MUST
rebuild the Marcian aqueduct,” Joan said during a meeting with the optimates the next morning.

The brows of Paschal, the primicerius, lifted with surprise. “The restoration of a Christian edifice would be a more appropriate way to begin your papacy, Holiness.”

“What need do the poor have of more churches?” she replied. “Rome abounds with them. But a working aqueduct could save untold lives.”

“The project is chancy,” Victor, the sacellarius, said. “It may well be that it can’t be done.”

She couldn’t deny this. Rebuilding the aqueduct would be a monumental, perhaps an impossible, undertaking, given the sorry state of engineering of the day. The books which had preserved the accumulated wisdom of the ancients regarding these complicated pieces of construction had been lost or destroyed centuries ago. The parchment pages on which the precious plans were recorded had been scraped clean and written over with Christian homilies and stories of lives of saints and martyrs.

“We have to try,” Joan said firmly. “We cannot allow people to go on living in such appalling conditions.”

The others kept silent, not because they agreed but because it would be impolitic to offer further opposition when the Apostolic One’s mind was so obviously set upon this course.

After a moment Paschal asked, “Who do you have in mind to oversee the building?”

“Gerold,” Joan replied.

“The superista?” Paschal was surprised.

“Who else? He directed the construction of the Leonine Wall. Many believed that could not be done, either.”