Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [35]
“No!” Joan tried to stop him, but Gudrun held her tight, whispering in Saxon, “Trust me, little quail. It is for the best, I promise you.”
“No!” Joan struggled to free herself. It was a lie. This was Aesculapius’s doing. Joan was certain of it. He had not forgotten her; he had found a way at last for her to continue what they had begun together. John wasn’t the one being called to study at the schola. It was all wrong.
“No!” She twisted sharply, broke loose, and made straight for the door. The canon reached for her, but she evaded him. Then she was outside, running swiftly toward the retreating messenger. Behind her, in the cottage, she heard her father shouting, then her mother’s voice, tense, tearful, raised in reply.
She caught up with the man just as he reached his horse. She tugged at his tunic, and he looked at her. From the corner of her eye, Joan saw her father advancing toward them.
There wasn’t much time. Her message had to be convincing, unmistakable.
“Magna est veritas et praevalebit,” she said. It was a passage from Esdras, obscure enough to be recognized only to those well versed in the writings of the Holy Fathers. “The truth is great, and it will prevail.” He was the bishop’s man, a man of the Church, he would know it. And the fact that she knew it, that she spoke Latin, would prove that she was the scholar the bishop sought.
“Lapsus calami non est,” she continued in Latin. “There is no error in the writing. I am Johanna; I am the one you want.”
The man looked at her, his eyes kind. “Eh? What’s this, bright eyes? What a mighty stream of words!” He chucked her under the chin. “Sorry, child. I speak none of your Saxon tongue. Though having seen your mother, I begin to wish I did.” He reached into a pouch tied to his saddle and withdrew a honeyed date. “Here, have a sweet.”
Joan stared at the date. The man hadn’t understood a word. A scion of the Church, the bishop’s emissary, and he had no Latin. How was it possible?
Her father’s footsteps sounded close behind her. His arm gripped her painfully around the waist; then she was lifted off the ground and carried back toward the house.
“No!” she screamed. Her father’s large hand covered her nose and mouth, pressing so hard she could not breathe. She kicked and struggled. Inside the cottage he released her, and she fell to the floor, gulping air. He raised his fist over her.
“No!” Suddenly Gudrun was between them. “You will not touch her.” There was a tone in her voice that Joan had never heard before. “Or I will tell the truth.”
The canon stared in disbelief. John appeared in the doorway, carrying a linen sack stuffed with his belongings.
Gudrun nodded toward him. “Our son needs your blessing for the journey.”
For a long time the canon held her gaze. Then, very slowly, he turned to face his son.
“Kneel, Johannes.”
John knelt. The canon placed his hand on his bowed head. “O God, Who didst call Abraham to leave his home and didst protect him in all his wanderings, unto Thee we commit this boy.”
A thin stream of late afternoon sun filtered through the window, illuminating John’s dark hair with a rich light.
“Watch over him and provide all things needful for his soul and body …” The canon’s voice assumed a singsong rhythm as he prayed.
Keeping his head bowed, John looked up and met his sister’s gaze, his eyes wide and frightened, eloquent with appeal. He doesn’t want to go, Joan realized suddenly. Of course! Why had she not seen it before? She had not given a thought to John’s feelings. He is afraid. He cannot keep up with the demands of a schola, and he knows it.
If only I could go with him.
A plan began to formulate in her mind.
“… and when life’s pilgrimage is over,” the canon finished, “may he arrive safely at the heavenly country, through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.”
The blessing over, John rose to his feet. Stolid, unresisting, like a sheep before the sacrifice, he endured his mother’s embraces and his father’s last-minute admonitions. But