Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [119]
One day, poring over a section of Oribasius, she found what she needed. She was copying the crucial passage out in translation when she began having difficulty scribing; her head ached, and she could not hold the pen steady. She shrugged this off as the natural consequence of too little sleep and went on working. Then her quill inexplicably slipped from her grasp and rolled onto the page, scattering blobs of ink across the clean vellum, obscuring the words. Curse the luck, she thought. I will have to scrape it clean and start over. She tried to pick up the quill, but her fingers trembled so violently she could not get a grip on it.
She stood, holding on to the edge of the desk as dizziness swept over her. Stumbling to the door, she thrust herself outside just as the retching hit hard, doubling her up and thrusting her onto all fours, where she heaved up the contents of her stomach.
Somehow she managed to stagger to the infirmary. Brother Odilo made her lie down on an empty bed and put his hand to her forehead. It was cold as ice.
Joan blinked with surprise. “Have you come from the washing trough?”
Brother Odilo shook his head. “My hands are not cold, Brother John. You’re burning with fever. I fear the plague has you in its grip.”
The plague! Joan thought woozily. No, that can’t be right. I’m tired, that’s all. If I can just rest for a while …
Brother Odilo laid a cool strip of linen, steeped in rosewater, on her forehead. “Now lie quiet, while I soak some fresh linen. I won’t be a minute.”
His voice seemed to come from a long distance away. Joan closed her eyes. The cloth felt cool against her skin. It felt good to lie still with the sweet aroma around her, sinking peacefully into a welcome darkness.
Suddenly her eyes flew wide. They were going to cover her in a sheath of wet linen to bring the fever down. To do that they would have to strip her bare.
She had to stop them. Then she realized that no matter how strenuously she resisted—and in her present condition she would not be able to put up much of a fight—her protests would be dismissed as mere feverish ravings.
She sat up, swinging her feet off the bed. Immediately the pain in her head returned, pounding and insistent. She started for the door. The room whirled sickeningly, but she forced herself to keep going and made it outside. Then she headed quickly toward the foregate. As she drew near the gate, she took a deep breath, willing herself steady as she walked past Hatto, the porter. He looked at her curiously but made no move to stop her. Once outside, she headed straight for the river.
Benedicite. The abbey’s little boat was there, moored with a single rope to an overhanging branch. She untied the rope and climbed in, leaning against the grassy bank to push off. As the boat swung away from the bank, she collapsed.
For a long moment the boat hung motionless in the water. Then the current took it, spinning it around before propelling it down the swiftly moving stream.
THE sky revolved slowly, twisting the high, white clouds into exotic patterns. A dark red sun touched the horizon, its rays burning hotter than fire, scorching Joan’s face, searing her eyes. She watched fascinated as its outer edges shimmered and dissolved, forming human shape.
Her father’s face floated before her, a ghastly, grinning death’s-head stripped of flesh beneath the dark line of its brows. The lipless mouth parted. “Mulier!” it cried, but it was not her father’s voice, it was her mother’s. The mouth opened wider, and Joan saw that it was not a mouth at all but a hideous yawning gate opening into a great darkness. At the end of the darkness, fires burned, shooting up great blue-red pillars of flame.