Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [121]
Over a week! Had she been here so long? She could not remember anything after climbing into the little fishing rig. “Wh … where am I?” she stammered hoarsely.
“You’re in the demesne of Lord Riculf, fifty miles downstream from Fulda. We found your boat in a tangle of branches along the river’s edge. You were half out of your mind with fever. Sick as you were, you fought hard to keep us from taking you.”
Joan fingered the tender bump on her jaw.
The young man grinned. “Sorry. There was no reasoning with you in the condition we found you in. But take comfort, for you gave almost as good as you took.” He pulled up his sleeve, revealing a large, ugly-looking bruise on his right shoulder.
“You saved my life,” Joan said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. It was only fair return for all you’ve done for me and mine.”
“Do I … know you?” she asked, surprised.
The young man smiled. “I suppose I have changed a good deal since last we saw each other. I was only twelve then, rising thirteen. Let’s see …” He began to figure on his hands, using Bede’s classical method of computation. “That was some six years ago. Six years times three hundred sixty-five days … why, that’s … two thousand one hundred and ninety days!”
Joan’s eyes widened with recognition. “Arn!” she cried, and was immediately swept up into his enthusiastic embrace.
THEY did not speak further that day, for Joan was still very weak, and Arn would not allow her to weary herself. After she had taken a few spoonfuls of broth, she immediately fell asleep.
She awoke the next day feeling stronger, and, most encouraging of all, ravenously hungry. Breaking fast with Arn over a plate of bread and cheese, she listened intently as he told her all that had transpired since they last saw each other.
“As you foresaw, Father Abbot was so satisfied with our cheese that he accepted us as prebendarii, promising us fair living in exchange for a hundred pounds of cheese a year. But this much you must know.”
Joan nodded. The extraordinary blue-veined cheese of repellent appearance and exquisite taste had become a staple at the refectory table. Guests of the abbey, both lay and monastic, were so taken with its quality that there was increasing demand for it throughout the region.
“How fares your mother?” Joan asked.
“Very well. She married again, a good man, a farmer with a herd of his own, whose milk they put toward making more cheese. Their trade grows daily, and they are happy and prosperous.”
“No less than you.” With a sweep of her arm, Joan indicated the large, well-kept home.
“My good fortune I owe to you,” Arn said. “For at the abbey school I learned to read and to figure with numbers—skills that came in handy as our trade grew and it became necessary to keep accurate accounts. Learning of my abilities, Lord Riculf took me for his steward. I manage his estate here and guard against poachers of game or fish—that’s how I came upon your boat.”
Joan shook her head wonderingly, picturing Arn and his mother as they had been six years ago, living in their squalid hut as wretched as coloni—doomed, so it seemed, to a life of grinding poverty and semistarvation. Yet Madalgis was now remarried, a prosperous trades woman, and her son steward to a powerful lord! Vitam regit fortuna, Joan thought. Truly, chance governs human life—my own as much as any.
“Here,” Arn said proudly, “is my wife, Bona, and our girl, Arnalda.” Bona, a pretty young woman with laughing eyes and a quick smile, was even younger than her husband—seventeen winters at most. She was already a mother, and her swelling stomach revealed that she was once again with child. Arnalda was a cherub, all round blue eyes and curly blond hair, pink cheeked and adorable. She smiled dazzlingly at Joan, revealing a set of winning dimples.
“A fine family,” Joan said.
Arn beamed and motioned to the woman and child. “Come and greet …” He hesitated. “How shall I name you? ‘Brother John’ seems strange, knowing … what we know.”
“Joan.” The word was both alien and familiar to her ears. “Call me Joan, for that is my true