Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [33]
Her eyes were red rimmed, brimming with barely suppressed tears. Joan put an arm around her. “Don’t cry, Mama.”
“You must learn from my mistake,” Gudrun said fiercely, “so you do not repeat it. To marry is to surrender everything—not only your body but your pride, your independence, even your life. Do you understand? Do you?” She gripped Joan’s arm, fixing her with an urgent look. “Heed my words, daughter, if you ever mean to be happy: Never give yourself to a man.”
The scarred flesh on Joan’s back quivered with the remembered pain of her father’s lash. “No, Mama,” she promised solemnly, “I never will.”
IN OSTARMANOTH, when warm spring breezes caressed the earth and the animals were set out to pasture, the monotony was broken by the arrival of a stranger. It was a Thursday—Thor’s Day, Gudrun still called it when the canon was not around to hear—and the rumble of that god’s thunder was sounding in the distance as Joan and Gudrun worked together in the family garden. Joan was pulling up nettles and destroying molehills, while Gudrun followed after her, tracing the furrows and crushing the clods with a thick oaken plank. As she worked, Gudrun sang and told tales of the Old Ones. When Joan answered in Saxon, Gudrun laughed with pleasure. Joan had just finished a row when she looked up and saw John hurrying across the field toward them. She tapped her mother’s arm in warning; Gudrun saw her son, and the Saxon words died on her lips.
“Quick!” John was breathless from running. “Father wants you at the house now. Hurry!” He pulled Gudrun by the arm.
“Gently, John,” Gudrun reprimanded. “You’re hurting me. What has happened? Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know.” John kept tugging on his mother’s arm. “He said something about a visitor. I don’t know who. But hurry. He said he’d box my ears if I didn’t bring you right away.”
The canon was waiting for them at the grubenhaus door. “It took you long enough,” he said.
Gudrun stared at him coolly. A tiny spark of anger ignited in the canon’s eyes; he drew himself up importantly. “An emissary is coming. From the Bishop of Dorstadt.” He paused for effect. “Go and prepare a suitable meal. I will meet him at the cathedral and lead him here.” He dismissed her with a wave of the hand. “Be quick, woman! He will arrive soon.” He left, slamming the door behind him.
Gudrun’s face was rigidly expressionless. “Start with the pottage,” she said to Joan. “I’ll go collect some eggs.”
Joan poured water from the oaken bucket into the large iron pot the family used for cooking and set the pot over the hearth fire. From a woolen sack, almost empty now after the long winter, she took handfuls of dried barley and threw them into the pot. She noticed, with surprise, that her hands shook with excitement. It had been so long since she had felt anything.
But an emissary from Dorstadt! Could it have anything to do with her? After all this time, had Aesculapius finally managed to find a way for her to resume her studies?
She cut off a slab of salt pork and added it to the pot. No, it was impossible. It was almost a year since Aesculapius had left. If he had been able to arrange anything, she would have heard long ago. It was dangerous to hope. Hope had nearly destroyed her once; she would not be so foolish again.
Nevertheless, she could not still her excitement when the door opened one hour later. Her father entered, followed by a dark-haired man. He was not at all what she had imagined. He had the blunt, unintelligent features of a colonus, and he carried himself more like a soldier than a scholar. His tunic, bearing the insignia of the bishop, was rumpled and dusty from travel.
“You will do us the honor of supping with us?” Joan’s father indicated the pot boiling on the hearth.
“Thank you, but I cannot.” He spoke in Theodisk, the common tongue, not Latin, another surprise. “I left the rest of the escort at a cella