Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [80]
Gisla heard and wheeled to run, but it was too late. A group of Norsemen came through the door. They fell on Gisla with a jubilant shout, lifting her above their heads.
They carried her to an open space beside the altar and spread-eagled her, pinning her down by the wrists and ankles. She twisted violently to free herself. The tallest of the men dragged her tunic up over her face and dropped full length on her. Gisla screamed. The man dug his hands into her breasts. The others laughed and shouted encouragement as he raped her.
Joan gagged, clamping hand over mouth to mask the sound.
The Norseman stood up, and another one took his place. Gisla lay slack and unmoving. One of the men took hold of her hair and twisted it to make her jump.
A third man took her, and a fourth; then they left her alone while they retrieved several sacks piled near the door. There was a ringing of metal as they hoisted them; the sacks must have been filled with more of the cathedral’s plundered treasure.
It was for these that they had returned.
Before they left, one of the men strode over to Gisla, pulled her up, still limp and unresisting, and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
They left by the far door.
Deep inside the reredos Joan heard only the eerie, echoing stillness of the cathedral.
LIGHT coming through the front seam of the reredos cast long shadows. There had been no sound for several hours. Joan stirred and crept cautiously through the narrow opening.
The high altar still stood, though stripped of its gold plating. Joan leaned against it, staring at the scene around her. Her wedding tunic was splattered with blood—her own? She could not tell. Her torn cheek throbbed with pain. Woodenly, she picked her way through the jumbled bodies, searching.
In a pile of corpses near the door, she came upon the farrier and his son, their arms sprawled as if each had tried to protect the other. In death the boy looked shrunken and old. Only a few hours ago, he had stood beside her in the cathedral, tall and ruddy and full of youthful strength and vigor. There will be no marriage now, Joan thought. Yesterday that thought would have filled her with profound relief and joy; now she felt nothing but numbing emptiness. She left him lying beside his father and continued her search.
She found John in the corner, his hand still gripping the Norseman’s sword. The back of his head had been smashed in with a heavy blow, but the violence of his death had left no mark on his face. His blue eyes were clear and open; his mouth was drawn back slightly in what appeared to be a smile.
He had died a soldier’s death.
SHE ran, stumbling, toward the door and pushed it open. It swung away from her crookedly, the hinges broken by the Norsemen’s axes. She rushed outside and stood gasping, breathing the fresh, sweet air in great gulps, ridding herself of the stench of death.
The landscape was bare. Smoke curled upward in lazy spirals from heaps of rubble that only this morning had been a lively clutter of homes and buildings surrounding the cathedral.
Dorstadt was in ruins.
Nothing stirred. No one was left. All the townspeople had been gathered in the cathedral for the mass.
She looked east. Above the trees obscuring her view, black smoke mushroomed skyward, darkening the sky.
Villaris.
They had burned it.
She sat down on the ground and put her face in her hands, cradling her wounded cheek.
Gerold.
She needed him to hold her, comfort her, make the world recognizable again. Scanning the horizon with narrowed eyes, she half-expected him to appear, riding toward her on Pistis, red hair streaming behind him like a banner.
I must wait for him. If he returns and does not find me, he will think I was carried off by the Norsemen, like poor Gisla.
But I can’t stay here. Fearfully she surveyed the ruined landscape. There was no sign of the Norsemen. Had they gone? Or would they be back, looking for more plunder?
What if they find me? She had seen what mercy an unprotected female could expect from them.
Where