Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [141]
“How dare you interrupt this sacred procession?” Eustathius, the archpriest, demanded indignantly. “Guards, strip this man and flog him. Fifty strokes will teach him a better respect!”
“He … is coming …” The man was so out of breath that the words were scarcely distinguishable.
“Hold.” Sergius stayed the guards. “Who is coming?”
“Lothar,” the man gasped.
“The Emperor?” Sergius said in astonishment.
The man nodded. “At the head of a large army of Franks. Holiness, he’s sworn a blood revenge against you and this city for the grievance that’s been done him.”
A murmur of dismay came from the crowd.
“Grievance?” For a moment Sergius could not think what this could mean. Then it came to him. “The consecration!”
After Sergius’s election, the city had gone ahead with the consecration ceremony without waiting for the Emperor’s approval. This was a manifest breach of the charter of 824, which granted Lothar the right of imperial jussio, or ratification of an elected Pope prior to consecration. Nevertheless, the move had been widely applauded, for the people saw it as a proud reassertion of Roman independence from the distant Frankish crown. It was a clear and deliberate slight to Lothar, but as the jussio was more symbolic than substantive—for no Emperor had ever failed to confirm an elected Pope—no one believed Lothar would do much about it.
“Where is the Emperor?” Sergius’s voice was a dry whisper.
“In Viterbo, Holiness.”
Cries of alarm greeted this news. Viterbo was part of the Roman campagna, no more than ten days’ march from Rome.
“My lord, he is a scourge upon the earth.” The man’s tongue was loosed now he had caught his breath. “His soldiers plunder all before them, ransacking the farms, carrying off the livestock, pulling up the vines by their roots. They take what they want, and what they do not want, they burn. Those who get in their way they kill without mercy— women, old men, babes in arms—none are spared. The horror”—his voice cracked—“the horror of it cannot be imagined.”
Terrified and uncertain, the people looked to their Pope. But there was no comfort to be found there. Before the Romans’ horrified eyes, Sergius’s face went slack, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he toppled forward senseless onto his horse.
“O, he is dead!” The cry of lamentation found an echo on a dozen other tongues. Quickly the papal guards surrounded Sergius, plucking him from his horse and bearing him away into the Patriarchium. The rest of the procession followed close behind.
The frightened crowd thronged the courtyard, threatening to break into a dangerous panic. The guards rode in among them with whips and drawn swords, sending them scattering along the narrow, dark streets to the solitary terror of their homes.
ALARM and agitation grew as refugees thronged through the city gates from the surrounding campagna, from Farfa and Narni, Laurentum and Civitavecchia. They came in droves, their meager possessions bundled on their backs, their dead piled in carts. All had similar tales of Frankish depredation and savagery. These terrifying accounts spurred the city’s efforts to strengthen its defenses: day and night the Romans toiled energetically to remove the layers of debris that had accumulated against the city walls over the centuries, making them easier for an enemy to surmount.
The priests of the city were kept busy from prime to vespers, saying Mass and hearing confession. The churches were filled to bursting, the ranks of the faithful swelled with a multitude of unfamiliar faces—for fear had goaded many a fainthearted Christian into newfound faith. Piously they lighted candles and raised their voices in prayer for the safety of their homes and families—and for the recovery of the ailing Sergius, on whom all their hopes depended. May the strength of God be with our Lord Pope, they prayed, for surely he would have need of great fortitude to save Rome from the devil Lothar.
SERGIUS’S voice rose and fell in the fluid melodies of the Roman chant, truer and sweeter than that of any of