Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [142]
The dream receded, and Sergius awoke. Fear, vague and undefined, crowded the edges of his consciousness, setting his heart racing before he understood why.
With a nauseating lurch, he remembered.
Lothar.
He sat up. His head throbbed, and there was a foul taste in his mouth. “Celestinus!” His voice cracked like a rusted hinge.
“Holiness!” Celestinus rose sleepily from the floor. With his soft pink cheeks, round child’s eyes, and tousled blond hair, he resembled a heavenly cherub. At ten, he was the youngest of the cubicularii; Celestinus’s father was a man of great influence in the city, so he had come to the Lateran earlier than most. Well, Sergius thought, he is no younger than I was when I was taken from my parents’ home.
“Bring Benedict,” he commanded. “I would speak with him.” Celestinus nodded and hurried off, stifling a yawn.
One of the kitchen servants entered with a platter of bread and bacon. Sergius was not supposed to break fast until after his celebration of Mass—for the hands that touched the eucharistic gifts had to be free from any worldly stain. In private, though, such niceties of form were often disregarded—especially with a Pope of such prodigious appetite.
This morning, however, the smell of the bacon made Sergius’s gorge rise. He waved the tray aside. “Take it away.”
A notary entered and announced, “His Grace the Archpriest awaits you in the triclinium.”
“Let him wait,” Sergius responded curtly. “I will speak first with my brother.”
Benedict’s common sense in this crisis had proved invaluable. It had been his idea to take money from the papal treasury in order to buy off Lothar. Fifty thousand gold solidi should be enough to assuage even an Emperor’s wounded pride.
Celestinus returned, not with Benedict but with Arighis, the vicedominus.
“Where is my brother?” Sergius asked.
“Gone, Holiness,” Arighis replied.
“Gone?”
“Ivo the porter saw him ride out just before dawn with a dozen or so attendants. We thought you knew.”
A rise of bile bathed Sergius’s throat. “The money?”
“Benedict collected it last night. There were eleven coffers altogether. He had them with him when he left.”
“No!” But even as Sergius’s lips formed the denial, he knew the truth of it. Benedict had betrayed him.
He was helpless. Lothar would come, and there was nothing, nothing Sergius could do to stop him.
A wave of nausea overtook him. He leaned over the side of the bed, spilling the sour contents of his stomach onto the floor. He tried to rise but could not; pain stabbed at his legs, immobilizing him. Celestinus and Arighis ran to help him, lifting him back and down. Turning his head into the pillow, Sergius wept unrestrainedly, like a child.
Arighis turned to Celestinus. “Stay with him. I’m going to the dungeon.”
JOAN stared at the bowl of food before her. There was a small crust of stale bread, and some gray, indistinguishable chunks of meat, threaded through with wriggling maggots; the rotten odor rose to her nostrils. It had been several days since she had eaten, for the guards, whether from carelessness or design, did not bring food every day. She stared at the meat, hunger doing battle with judgment. At last she put the bowl aside. Taking up the crust of bread, she bit off a small piece, chewing it slowly, to make it last longer.
How long had she been here—two weeks? Three? She had begun to lose count. The perpetual darkness was disorienting. She had used her piece of candle sparingly, lighting it only to eat or to prepare medications from her scrip. Nevertheless, the candle was reduced to a tiny stub of wax, good for no more than another hour or two of precious light.
Even more terrible than the darkness was the solitude. The utter and unremitting silence was unnerving. To stay alert, Joan set herself a series of mental tasks—reciting from memory the entire