Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [54]
Gerold laughed, plainly enjoying her embarrassment. “It’s all right. You could not have known. I was some years studying at the Schola Palatina when old Emperor Karolus was alive.”
“The Schola Palatina!” The name was legend. The school founded by the Emperor had turned out some of the finest minds of the day. The great Alcuin himself had been the master teacher.
“Yes. My father sent me, intending me for a scholar. The work was interesting, and I enjoyed it well enough, but I was young and hadn’t the temperament to make a steady diet of it. When the Emperor called for men to campaign with him against the Obodrites, I went, though I was only thirteen. I was gone some years, perhaps would be there still, but then my eldest brother died, and I was called home to assume inheritance of this estate.”
Joan regarded him wonderingly. He was a scholar, a man of letters! How could she not have known! She should have guessed from the way he had spoken with her about her studies.
“Off with you.” Gerold shooed her away amiably. “I know you cannot wait. There’s an hour yet before supper. But listen carefully for the bell.”
Joan ran upstairs to the dortoir she shared with Dhuoda and Gisla. She went to her bed and opened the book. She read slowly, savoring the words, stopping occasionally to make note of a particularly elegant phrase or argument. When the light in the room faded with the dusk, she lit a candle and kept working.
She read on and on, completely forgetting the time and would have missed supper entirely had not Gerold, in the end, sent a servant to fetch her.
THE weeks passed quickly, charged with the excitement of Joan and Gerold’s work together. Waking each morning, Joan wondered impatiently how she would ever make it until after vespers, when, supper over and the necessary devotions past, she and Gerold could resume their study of Lucretius.
De rerum natura was a revelation—a wonder of a book, rich in knowledge and wisdom. In order to discover truth, Lucretius said, one had only to observe the natural world. It was an idea which made good sense in Lucretius’s time but which was extraordinary, even revolutionary in anno domini 827. Nevertheless, it was a philosophy that appealed strongly to Joan’s and Gerold’s practical turn of mind.
It was, in fact, entirely because of Lucretius that Gerold trapped the white wolf.
Joan returned from the schola one day to find Villaris in an uproar. The household dogs were barking themselves hoarse; the horses ran wildly round the perimeter of their corral; the entire bailey was echoing with a deafening series of terrifying growls.
In the middle of the forecourt, Joan found the object of all the excitement. A large white wolf fought and twisted and hurled itself furiously against the sides of an oblong cage. The bars of the cage, constructed of sturdy oakwood three inches thick, cracked and groaned under the fury of the beast’s assault. Gerold and his men ringed the area warily, bows and spears at the ready, lest the creature should succeed in breaking loose. Gerold gestured to Joan to stay back. As she watched the she-wolf’s strange pink eyes, glittering with hatred, Joan found herself willing the bars to hold firm.
After a time the wolf tired and stood panting, legs planted stolidly and head lowered, glowering. Gerold lowered his spear and came over to Joan.
“Now we put Odo’s theory to the test!”
For a fortnight the two of them kept vigil, determined, if at all possible, to observe the very moment of birth. Nothing happened. The wolf sulked in her cage and showed no sign of an impending delivery. They had almost begun to doubt whether the beast was pregnant when she abruptly went into labor.
It happened during Joan’s turn at the watch. The wolf alternately paced and shifted restlessly on the floor, as if unable to get comfortable. Finally she grunted and began to heave. Joan ran to get Gerold and found him in the solar with Richild. Bursting in upon them like a whirlwind, Joan dispensed with the normal courtesies. “Come quickly! It’s started!”
Gerold rose immediately.