Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [46]
“Here?”
“She can share a bed with Gisla, who could use a sensible companion for a change.”
Richild’s graceful black eyebrows arched haughtily. “She looks like a colona.”
Joan flushed with the insult.
“Richild, you forget yourself,” Gerold admonished sharply. “Joan is a guest in this house.”
Richild sniffed. “Well”—she fingered Joan’s new green linen tunic—“at least she appears to be clean.” She signaled imperiously to one of the servants. “Show her to the dortoir.” Without another word she swept from the room.
LATER, lying on the soft straw mattress in the upstairs dortoir beside a snoring Gisla (who had not awakened even when Joan crawled in beside her), Joan wondered about her brother. Beside whom was John sleeping now—if, that is, he was able to sleep? She certainly could not; her mind was aswirl with troubling thoughts and emotions. She longed for the familiar surroundings of home, longed especially for her mother. She wanted to be held and caressed and called “little quail” again. She should not have run off the way she did—in silence and in anger, without a word of farewell. Gudrun had betrayed her with the bishop’s emissary, it was true, but Joan knew that she had done it from an excess of love, because she could not bear to see her daughter leave. Now Joan might never see her mother again. She had leapt at the chance for escape without considering the consequences. For she could never return home, that was certain. Her father would kill her for her disobedience. Her place was here now, in this strange and friendless country, and here, for good or ill, she must remain.
Mama, she thought as she stared into the forbidding darkness of the unfamiliar room, and a single tear slid silently down her cheek.
8
THE classroom, a small, stone-walled chamber adjacent to the cathedral library, remained cool and moist even on this warm fall afternoon. Joan loved its coolness and the rich smell of parchment that permeated the air, an enticement to explore the vast holding of books that lay just next door.
An enormous painting covered the wall at the front of the room. It was a picture of a woman dressed in the long, flowing robes of the Greeks. In her left hand she held a pair of shears; in her right, a whip. The woman represented Knowledge; her shears were to prune away error and false dogma, her whip was to reprimand lazy students. The brows of Knowledge were sharply drawn together, and the corners of her mouth curved down, creating a stern expression. The dark eyes glared from the painted wall, seeming to focus on the observer, their look hard and commanding. Odo had commissioned the work shortly after assuming the position of teaching master at the schola.
“Bos mugit, equus hinnit, asinus rudit, elephans barrit …”
On the left side of the room, the less advanced students chanted monotonously, practicing simple verb forms.
“Cows moo, horses neigh, donkeys bray, elephants roar …”
Odo motioned rhythmically with his right hand, setting the pace of the chant. Meanwhile, his eyes swept the room with practiced skill, monitoring the work of his other students.
Ludovic and Ebbo huddled together over one of the psalms. They were supposed to be memorizing it, but the tilt of their heads toward each other indicated that they had ceased to concentrate on their work. Without letting his other hand miss a beat of the chanting rhythm, Odo smacked both boys sharply on the backs of their heads with a long wooden rod. They yelped and bent over their tablets again, models of industriousness.
Nearby, John was working on a chapter of Donatus. He was clearly having great difficulty. He read slowly, painstakingly forming each vowel and consonant with his lips, stopping frequently to scratch his head in puzzlement over some unfamiliar word pattern.
Sitting apart from the others—for they would have nothing to do with her—Joan was intent on the task to which Odo had set her, preparing a gloss of a life of St. Antony. She worked quickly, her