Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [130]
“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.”
SURROUNDED 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.”
BENEDICT 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.
“Villains! Ghouls! I’m not dead yet!” There was a loud crash, as of something thrown.
Benedict opened the door. Sergius was sitting up in bed, crimson faced with fury. Halfway across the floor,