Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [180]
“Shouldn’t Leo do that?” Gerold asked.
“He’s asked me to see to it.”
Lately Leo had been delegating more and more of his daily responsibilities to her so he could devote himself to the continuing plans for rebuilding. Joan had become Leo’s ambassador to the people; she was so familiar a sight going about her charitable duties in the different regions of the city that she was hailed everywhere as “the little Pope” and greeted with some of the affection reserved for Leo himself.
As she reached for the pile of papers, Gerold’s hand brushed hers. She drew her hand back violently, as if from a fire. “I … I’d better go,” she said awkwardly.
She was immensely relieved, and a little disappointed, when he did not follow her.
BUOYED by the success of the Leonine Wall and the renovation of St. Peter’s, Leo’s popularity was soaring. Restaurator Urbis, he was called, Restorer of the City. He was another Hadrian, the people said, another Aurelius. Everywhere he went, crowds cheered him. Rome rang with his praises.
Everywhere, that is, but in the palace on the Palatine Hill, where Arsenius waited with gathering impatience for the day when he could call Anastasius home.
Things had not gone as expected. There was no way to depose Leo from the throne, as Arsenius had originally hoped, and even less hope that it would be left vacant through the happy accident of death: healthy and vigorous, Leo gave every evidence of living forever.
Now the family fortunes had suffered another blow. The week before, Arsenius’s second son, Eleutheris, had died. He had been riding down the Via Recta when a pig darted between his horse’s legs; the horse stumbled and Eleutheris fell, receiving a cut on the thigh. At first no one was concerned, for the wound was slight. But misfortune has a way of following upon misfortune. The wound became corrupted. Arsenius called in Ennodius, who bled Eleutheris profusely, but it availed nothing. Within two days his son lay dead. Arsenius immediately ordered a search for the owner of the pig; when he was discovered, Arsenius had his throat slit from ear to ear. But such revenge was cold comfort, for it could not bring back Eleutheris.
Not that there had been much love lost between father and son. Eleutheris was the exact opposite of his brother—soft, lazy, and undisciplined even as a child, he had scorned Arsenius’s offer of a church education and chosen instead the more immediate gratifications of a lay existence—women, wine, gambling, and other forms of debauchery.
No, Arsenius mourned Eleutheris not for the man he had been or might have become, given time, but for what he had represented: another branch of the family tree, a branch that might yet have borne promising fruit.
For centuries, theirs had been the first family of Rome. Arsenius could trace his ancestry back in a direct line to Augustus Caesar himself. Yet this illustrious heritage was tarnished by failure, for none of its noble sons had ever achieved Rome’s ultimate prize: the Throne of St. Peter. How many lesser men had sat upon that throne, Arsenius thought bitterly, and with what tragic result? Rome, once the wonder of the world, was sunk into ruinous and embarrassing decay. The Byzantines mocked it openly, pointing to the gleaming splendor of their own Constantinople. Who but one of Arsenius’s family, Caesar’s heirs, could lead the city back to her former greatness?
Now Eleutheris was gone, Anastasius was the last of the line, the only remaining chance the family would ever have to redeem its honor, and Rome’s.
And Anastasius was banished to Frankland.
Arsenius felt dark despair close in on him. He shook it off brusquely, like an unwanted cloak. Greatness did not attend upon opportunity; it seized it. Those who would rule had to be willing to pay the price of power, however great.
DURING mass on the day of the Feast of St. John the Baptist, Joan first noticed something wrong with Leo. His hands trembled while receiving the offerings, and he faltered uncharacteristically over the Nobis quoque peccatoribus.
When Joan questioned