Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [63]
She lifted the cap off the vial and peered inside. Halfway down the length of the tube, the pale surface of the milk shimmered smooth and blue-white in the sunlight. Joan reached down and touched it with the tip of her little finger. Then she looked up, her keen eyes scanning the area around the stall. She laughed, lifted the vial to her lips, and drank.
The man gasped. “Are you woodly?” His face was contorted with anger.
“Delicious,” Joan said, recapping the vial and handing it back to him. “My compliments to your goat.”
“Why, you … you …,” the man sputtered, unable to find the words to express his rage and frustration. For a moment it seemed as if he might come round the table after her. There was a low growl; Luke, who until then had been sitting quietly, moved in front of Joan, a deep line furrowing the length of his muzzle, lifted at the sides to reveal a row of menacing white teeth.
“What is that?” The vendor stared at Luke’s glittering eyes.
“That,” a voice said behind Joan, “is a wolf.”
It was Gerold. He had come up quietly during her interchange with the vendor. He stood loosely, his arms at his sides, his body relaxed, but his eyes were hard with warning. The vendor turned away, mumbling something under his breath. Gerold put his arm around Joan’s shoulders and led her away, calling to Luke, who growled at the vendor one more time, then ran to join them.
Gerold didn’t speak. They walked together in silence, Joan quickening her pace to keep up with his long strides.
He is angry, she thought, her high spirits quenched as suddenly as a smothered hearth fire.
What was worse, she knew he was right. She had acted recklessly with the merchant. Hadn’t she promised to be more careful? Why did she always have to question and challenge things? Why couldn’t she learn it: Some ideas are dangerous.
Maybe I am woodly.
She heard a low rumble of sound; Gerold was laughing.
“The look on the man’s face when you lifted the vial and drank! I shall never forget it!” He pulled her close in a warm hug. “Ah, Joan, you are my pearl! But tell me, how did you know that it wasn’t the Virgin’s milk?”
Joan grinned, relieved. “I was mistrustful from the first, for if the thing were truly holy, why would it fetch so small a price? And why did the vendor keep his goat tethered behind the stall, where it couldn’t be seen? If it was received in barter, surely there was no need to hide it.”
“True. But to actually drink the stuff”—there was another burst of laughter from Gerold—“surely you must have known something else.”
“Yes. When I uncapped the vial, the milk was uncurdled and perfectly fresh, as if produced this morning, though the Virgin’s milk would be over eight hundred years old.”
“Ah”—Gerold smiled, his eyebrows arched, testing her—“but perhaps its great holiness kept it pure and uncorrupted.”
“True,” Joan admitted. “But when I touched the milk, it was still warm! So holy a thing might perhaps remain uncorrupted, but why should it be warm?”
“A pretty observation,” Gerold said appreciatively. “Lucretius himself could have done no better!”
Joan beamed. How she loved to please him!
They had walked almost to the end of the long row of stalls, where the huge wooden cross of St.-Denis marked the boundary of the fair, protecting the holy tranquillity of the abbey brothers. This was where the parchment merchants had set up their stalls.
“Look!” Gerold spied them first, and they hurried over to inspect the merchandise, which was of very high quality. The vellum, in particular, was extraordinary: the flesh side of the skin was perfectly even, the color whiter than Joan had ever seen; the other side was, as usual, somewhat yellower, but the pittings where the calf’s hair had been rooted were so tiny and shallow as to be almost invisible.
“What a pleasure it must be to write on such sheets!” Joan exclaimed, fingering them gently.
Gerold immediately called one of the merchants over. “Four sheets,” he ordered, and Joan gasped,