Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [32]
Joan tried to raise herself but fell back heavily onto the straw. Pain pierced her, bringing back memory.
“The book?”
Gudrun’s face tightened. “Your father has scraped the pages clean, and set your brother to copying some new nonsense onto it.”
So it was gone.
Joan felt inexpressibly weary. She was sick; she wanted to sleep.
Gudrun held out a wooden bowl filled with steaming liquid. “Now you must eat to regain your strength. See, I have made you some broth.”
“No.” Joan shook her head weakly. “I don’t want any.” She did not want to get her strength back. She wanted to die. What was left to live for? She would never break free from the narrow confines of life in Ingelheim. Life had closed her in; there was no further hope of escape.
“Take a little now,” Gudrun prodded, “and while you eat, I will sing you one of the old songs.”
Joan turned her head away.
“Leave such things to the foolishness of priests. We have our own secrets, don’t we, little quail? We will share them again, as we used to.” Gudrun stroked Joan’s forehead gently. “But first you must get well. Sip some broth. It is a Saxon recipe, with strong healing properties.”
She held the wooden spoon to Joan’s lips. Joan was too weak to resist; she allowed her mother to trickle a little broth into her mouth. It was good, warm and rich and comforting. Despite herself, she began to feel a little better.
“My little quail, my sweetheart, my darling.” Gudrun’s voice caressed Joan softly, seductively. She dipped the wooden ladle in the steaming broth and held it out to Joan, who sipped some more.
Her mother’s voice rose and fell in the sweet, lilting strains of the familiar Saxon melody. Lulled by the sound and her mother’s caresses, Joan drifted slowly into sleep.
WITH the fever past, Joan’s strong young body mended quickly. In a fortnight, she was on her feet again. Her wounds closed cleanly, though it was plain she would bear the marks for the rest of her life. Gudrun lamented over the scars, long, dark stripes that turned Joan’s back into an ugly patchwork, but Joan did not care. She did not care about anything very much. Hope was gone. She existed, that was all.
She spent all her time with her mother, rising at daybreak to help her feed the pigs and chickens, collect eggs, gather wood for the hearth fire, and haul heavy bucketfuls of water from the creek. Later they worked side by side preparing the day’s meal.
One day they were making bread together, their fingers working to shape the heavy dough—for yeast and other leavenings were rarely used in this part of Frankland—when Joan asked suddenly, “Why did you marry him?”
The question took Gudrun aback. After a moment she said, “You cannot imagine what it was like for us when the armies of Karolus came.”
“I know what they did to your people, Mama. What I can’t understand is why, after that, you came away with the enemy— with him?”
Gudrun did not reply.
I’ve offended her, Joan thought. She will not tell me now.
“By winter,” Gudrun began slowly, “we were starving, for the Christian soldiers had burned our crops along with our homes.” She looked past Joan, as if picturing something distant. “We ate anything we could find—grass, thistles, even the seeds contained in the dung of animals. We were not far from death when your father and the other missionaries arrived. They were different from the others; they carried no swords or weapons, and they dealt with us like people, not brute beasts. They gave us food in return for our promise to listen to them preach the word of the Christian God.”
“They traded food for faith?” Joan asked. “A sorry way to win people’s souls.”
“I was young and impressionable, sick unto death of hunger and misery and fear. Their Christian God must be greater than ours, I thought, or else how had they succeeded in defeating us? Your father took a special interest in me. He had great hopes for me, he said, for though I was heathen born, he was sure I had the capacity to understand the True Faith. From the way he looked at me, I knew he desired me. When he asked