Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [79]
A few feet away she saw him, bending over the body of the Norseman he had killed. He was pulling at the man’s clothes, trying to pry something loose.
“John!” she shouted. “In here! Hurry!”
He stared at her, a mad, glittering gaze, his hands still working under the Norseman’s body. She didn’t dare shout again for fear she would reveal the precious hiding place. After a moment he gave an exultant yell and stood, holding the Norseman’s sword. She gestured for him to join her. He lifted the sword in mocking salute and ran off.
Shall I go after him? She edged toward the opening.
Someone—a child?—screamed nearby, a hideous shriek that hung in the air, then abruptly ceased. Fear overwhelmed her, and she drew back. Tremulously she put an eye to the seam between the panels and peered out, searching for John.
There was fighting directly in front of her peephole. She heard the clang of metal on metal, caught a brief glimpse of yellow cloth, the gleam of an uplifted sword. A body thumped down heavily. The fighting moved off to the side, and she was looking straight down the nave toward the cathedral entrance. The heavy doors stood ajar, propped open by a grotesque jumble of bodies.
The Norsemen were herding their victims away from the entrance toward the right side of the cathedral.
The way stood clear.
Now, she told herself. Run for the doors. But she could not bring herself to move; her limbs seemed to be locked.
A man appeared at the edge of her narrow field of vision. He looked so wild and disheveled that for a moment she did not recognize him as Odo. He was lurching toward the entrance, dragging his left leg. In his arms he clutched the huge Bible from the high altar.
He was almost to the doors when two Norsemen intercepted him. He faced his attackers, holding the Bible aloft as if warding off evil spirits. A heavy sword sliced through the book and took him directly in the chest. For a moment he stood, astonished, clutching the two halves of the book in his hands. Then he fell backwards and did not move again.
Joan shrank back into the darkness. The screams of the dying were all around her. Hunched in a ball, she buried her head in her arms. Her rapid heartbeat sounded in her ears.
THE screaming had stopped.
She heard the Norsemen calling out to one another in their guttural tongue. There was a loud noise of splintering wood. At first she did not understand what was happening; then she realized they were stripping the cathedral of its treasures. The men laughed and shouted. They were in high spirits.
It did not take them long to complete their plundering. Joan heard them grunting under the weight of their loot, their voices receding into the distance.
Rigid as a post, she sat in the dark and strained to hear. Everything was quiet. She inched toward the opening of the reredos until she reached the edge of the narrow crack of light.
The cathedral lay in ruins. Benches were overturned, hangings were torn off walls, statuary lay in pieces on the floor. There was no sign of the Norsemen.
Bodies lay everywhere, piled in careless heaps. A few feet away, at the bottom of the stairs leading to the altar, Fulgentius was sprawled beside the great wooden cross. It was splintered, the gilded crosspiece broken and wet with blood. Beside him lay the bodies of two Norsemen, their skulls crushed within their shattered helmets.
Cautiously, Joan crept forward until her head and shoulders were out of the reredos.
In the far corner of the room, something moved. Joan shrank back out of the light.
A pile of clothing twisted, then separated itself from the heap of bodies.
Someone was alive!
A young woman rose, her back toward Joan. She stood, shakily, and then began to stagger toward the door.
Her golden dress was ripped and bloodied, and her hair, torn loose from its cap, tumbled over her shoulders in auburn coils.
Gisla!
Joan called her name, and she turned, swaying unsteadily, toward the reredos.
There was a sudden burst