Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [174]
JOAN was working day and night, distributing clothing, medicine, and other supplies to the hospices and charitable homes in the city. The hospices were crowded with casualties of the fire, and there were too few physicians to tend them all, so she lent a hand wherever she could. Some burned and blackened bodies were past healing; there was little she could do for them but administer doses of poppy, mandragora, and henbane to ease their death agonies. Others had disfiguring burns that threatened to become corrupted; to these she applied poultices of honey and aloe, known specifics for burns. Still others, whose bodies were untouched by fire, suffered from having breathed in too much smoke. These lingered in torment, fighting for life with every shallow breath.
Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were surely not guilty of any sin?
Her heart was troubled as the shadow of her ancient doubt fell upon her once again.
ONE morning she was meeting with Leo to arrange for the papal storehouses to be thrown open to the victims of the fire when Waldipert, the new vicedominus, entered unexpectedly. He was a tall, bony man whose pale skin and blond hair revealed his Lombard ancestry. Joan found it odd to see this stranger in Arighis’s robes of office.
“Holiness,” Waldipert said with an obeisance, “there are two citizens without who seek immediate audience.”
“Have them wait,” Leo replied. “I will hear their petition later.”
“Pardon, Holiness,” Waldipert persisted. “I believe you should hear what they have to say.”
Leo raised an eyebrow. Had it been Arighis, Leo would have accepted his word without question, for Arighis’s judgment had been known and trusted, but Waldipert was new and untried; unfamiliar as yet with the limitations of his position, he might be clumsily overreaching himself.
Leo hesitated, then decided to give Waldipert the benefit of the doubt. “Very well. Admit them.”
Waldipert bowed and left, returning moments later with a priest and a boy. The priest was dark complexioned and squarely built. Joan recognized him as a stalwart of the faith, one of the many who toiled in honorable and impoverished obscurity in the lesser churches of Rome. The boy appeared by his dress to be in one of the minor orders—a lector, or perhaps an acolyte. He was a well-made youth, fifteen or sixteen years old, compact and comely with large, open eyes that must have normally radiated a cheerful good-naturedness, though at the moment they were clouded with grief.
The newcomers prostrated themselves before Leo.
“Rise,” Leo said. “Tell us on what business you have come.”
The priest spoke first. “I am Paul, Holiness, by God’s grace and yours priest of the house of St. Lawrence in Damasco. This boy, Dominic, came to the chapel today requesting auricular confession, which service I was glad to render. What he told me was so shocking that I brought him here to tell it to you.”
Leo frowned. “The privacy of such confessions may not be violated.”
“Holiness, the boy comes here willingly, for he is in great distress of mind and spirit.”
Leo turned to Dominic. “Is this true? Speak honestly, for there is no shame in refusing to repeat the secrets of the confessional.”
“I want to tell you, Lord Father,” the boy replied tremblingly. “I must tell you, for my soul’s sake.”
“Go on, then, my son.”
Dominic’s eyes blurred with tears. “I didn’t know, Holy Father!” he burst out. “I swear on the relics of all the saints I didn’t know what would happen, or I would never have done it!”
“Done what, my son?” Leo asked gently.
“Set the fire.” The boy broke into a torrent of violent sobs.
There was a stunned silence, broken only by the sound of Dominic’s crying.
“You set the fire?” Leo asked quietly.
“I did, and may God forgive me!”
“Why would you do such a thing?