Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [155]
“Holiness!” Joan spoke sharply into his ear. “Sergius!”
He kept on rocking, blind and deaf in an extremity of grief. Clearly there was no way to reach him in his present condition. Taking some tincture of henbane from her scrip, Joan measured out a dose and held it to his lips. He drank distractedly.
After a few minutes, his rocking slowed, then stopped. He looked at Joan as if seeing her for the first time.
“Weep for me, John. My soul is damned for all eternity!”
“Nonsense,” Joan said firmly. “You acted in just accordance with the law.”
Sergius shook his head. “‘Be not like Cain, who was of the Evil One and murdered his brother,’” he quoted from the First Letter of John.
Joan countered with an answering passage. “‘And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.’ Benedict was not righteous, Holiness; he betrayed you and Rome.”
“And now he is dead, by my own word! O God!” He struck his chest and howled in pain.
She had to divert him from his grief or he would work himself into another fit. She took him firmly by the shoulders and said, “You must make auricular confession.”
This form of the sacrament of penance, in which one made private and regular confession ad auriculam, “to the ear” of a priest, was widespread in Frankland. But Rome still held determinedly to the old ways, in which confession and penance were made and given publicly, only once in a lifetime.
Sergius seized on the idea. “Yes, yes, I will confess.”
“I’ll send for one of the cardinal priests,” she said. “Is there someone you prefer?”
“I will make my confession to you.”
“Me?” A simple priest and a foreigner, Joan was an unlikely candidate to serve as confessor to the Pope. “Are you sure, Holiness?”
“I want no other.”
“Very well.” She turned to Arighis. “Leave us.”
Arighis shot her a grateful look as he left the room.
“Peccavi, impie egi, iniquitatem feci, miserere mei Domine …” Sergius began in the ritual words of penitence.
Joan listened with quiet sympathy to his long outpouring of grief, regret, and remorse. With a soul so burdened and tormented, it was no wonder Sergius sought peace and forgetfulness in drink.
The confession worked as she had intended; gradually the wild passion of despair subsided, leaving Sergius drained and exhausted but no longer a danger to himself or others.
Now came the tricky part, the penance that had to precede forgiveness of sin. Sergius would expect his penance to be harsh—public mortification, perhaps, on the steps of St. Peter’s. But such an act would only serve to weaken Sergius and the papacy in Lothar’s eyes— and that must be prevented at all costs. Yet the penance Joan imposed must not be too light or Sergius would reject it.
She had an idea. “In token of repentance,” she said, “you will abstain from all wine and the meat of four-footed animals from this day forward until the hour of your death.”
Fasts were a common form of penance, but they usually lasted only a few months, perhaps a year. A lifetime of abstinence was stern punishment—especially for Sergius. And the penance would have the added benefit of helping protect the Pope from his own worst instincts.
Sergius bowed his head in acceptance. “Pray with me, John.”
She knelt beside him. In many ways, he was like a child—weak, impulsive, needful, demanding. Yet she knew he was capable of good. And at this moment, he was all that stood between Anastasius and the Throne of St. Peter.
At the end of the prayer, she rose. Sergius clutched at her. “Don’t leave,” he pleaded. “I can’t be alone.”
Joan covered his hand with her own. “I won’t leave you,” she promised solemnly.
ENTERING through the crumbling portals of the ruined Temple of Vesta, Gerold saw with disappointment that Joan had not yet arrived. No matter, he told himself; it