Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [210]
Their eyes met in a look that was deeply intimate, a look of love and painful understanding. Fear gripped Joan, fear like she had never known before. “No!” she cried, and clasped him in her arms, as if by sheer physical closeness she could stave off the inevitable. “Don’t die, Gerold. Don’t leave me here all alone.”
His hand groped the air. She took it in hers, and his lips moved in a smile. “My pearl,” he said. His voice was very faint, as if speaking from a long distance away.
“Hold on, Gerold, hold on,” she said tautly. “We’ll take you back to the Patriarchium; we’ll—”
She sensed his going even before she heard the death rattle and felt his body grow heavy in her arms. She crouched over him, stroking his hair, his face. He lay still and peaceful, lips parted, eyes fixed blindly on the sky.
It was impossible that he was gone. Even now his spirit might be nearby. She raised her head and looked around her. If he were somewhere near, there would be a sign. If he were anywhere, he would let her know.
She saw nothing, sensed nothing. In her arms lay a corpse with his face.
“He is gone to God,” Desiderius, the archdeacon, said.
She did not move. As long as she kept hold of him, he was not entirely gone, a part of him was still with her.
Desiderius took her arm. “Let us carry him to the church.”
Numbly she heard and understood. He must not lie here in the street, open to the gaze of curious strangers. She must see him honored with all the proper rites and dignities; it was all that was left her to do for him now.
She laid him down gently, to keep from hurting him, then closed his staring eyes and crossed his arms on his chest so the guards could bear him away with dignity.
As she went to stand, she was taken with a pain so violent it doubled her over, and she fell to the ground gasping. Her body heaved with great spasms over which she had no control. She felt an enormous pressure, as if a weight had been dropped on her; the pressure moved lower until she felt it would surely split her apart.
The child. It’s coming.
“Gerold!” The word shuddered into a terrible groan of pain. Gerold could not help her now. She was alone.
“Deus Misereatur!” Desiderius exclaimed. “The Lord Pope is possessed of the Devil!”
People screamed and wept, cast into an extremity of terror.
Aurianos, the chief exorcist, hurried forward. Sprinkling Joan with holy water, he intoned solemnly, “Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii, omne phantasma …”
All eyes were fixed on Joan, watching for the evil spirit to issue forth from her mouth or ear.
She screamed as with one last, agonizing pain the pressure inside suddenly gave way, spilling forth from her in a great red effusion.
The voice of Aurianos cut off abruptly, followed by a long, appalled silence.
Beneath the hem of Joan’s voluminous white robes, dyed now with her blood, there appeared the tiny blue body of a premature infant.
Desiderius was the first to react. “A miracle!” he shouted, dropping to his knees.
“Witchcraft,” cried another. Everyone crossed themselves.
The people pressed forward to see what had happened, pushing and shoving and climbing over one another’s backs to get a better view.
“Stay back!” the deacons shouted, wielding their crucifixes like clubs to keep the unruly crowd at bay. Fighting broke out up and down the long line of the procession. The guards rushed in, shouting rough commands.
Joan heard it all as if from a distance. Lying on the street in a pool of her own blood, she was suddenly suffused with a transcendent sense of peace. The street, the people, the colorful banners of the procession glowed in her mind with a strange brightness, like threads in an enormous tapestry whose pattern she only now discerned.
Her spirit swelled within her, filling the emptiness inside. She was bathed in a great and illuminating light. Faith and doubt, will and desire, heart and head—at long last she saw and understood