Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [81]
After a long while, she forced herself to sit up. Night was coming on. The forest around her was dark and foreboding. She heard a rustle of leaves and flinched in fear.
The Norsemen might be nearby, camping in these woods.
She had to escape from Dorstadt and somehow get word to Gerold about where she had gone.
Mama. She longed for her mother, but she could not go home. Her father had not forgiven her. If she returned now, bringing news of the death of his only remaining son, he would have his revenge upon her, that was certain.
If only I were not a girl. If only …
For the rest of her life she would remember this moment and wonder what power of good or evil had directed her thoughts. But now there was no time to consider. It was a chance. There might never be another.
The red sun glittered on the horizon. She had to act quickly.
She found John lying as she had left him, sprawled in the dim interior of the cathedral. His body was limp and unresistant as she rolled him onto his side. The death rigor had not yet set in.
“Forgive me,” she whispered as she unclasped John’s mantle.
When she was done, she covered him with her own discarded cloak. Gently she closed his eyes and arranged him as decently as she could. She stood, shifting her arms, adjusting to the weight and feel of her new clothes. They were not so different from her own, except for the sleeves, close-fitted at the wrists. She fingered the bone-handled knife she had taken from John’s belt.
Father’s knife. It was old, the white bone handle darkened and chipped, but the blade was sharp.
She went to the altar. Loosening her cap, she placed a mass of her hair upon the altar. It curled thickly over the smooth stone surface, almost white in the dimming light.
She lifted the knife.
Slowly, deliberately, she began to cut.
AT TWILIGHT, the figure of a young man stepped from the door of the ruined cathedral, scanning the landscape with keen gray-green eyes. The moon was rising in a sky quickening with stars.
Beyond the rubble of buildings, the eastern road shimmered mackerel-silver in the gathering darkness.
The figure slipped furtively out of the shadow of the cathedral. No one was left alive to watch as Joan hurried down the road, toward the great monastery of Fulda.
12
THE hall was crowded and clamorous, jammed with people who had traveled from miles around the small Westphalian village to witness the proceedings of the mallus. They stood shoulder to shoulder, jostling, scuffling the clean rushes that had been scattered across the beaten earth floor, uncovering the ancient accumulation of beer, grease, spittle, and animal excrement that lay beneath. The rank odor rose into the hot, close air. But no one gave it much mind, such odors being common in Frankish dwellings. Besides, the focus of the crowd’s attention lay elsewhere: on the red-haired Frisian count who had come as missus to render judgment and deliver justice in the Emperor’s name.
Gerold turned to Frambert, one of the seven scabini assigned to assist him in his work. “How many more today?” The mallus had convened at first light; it was now midafternoon, and they had been hard at it for over eight hours. Behind the high table at which Gerold sat, his retainers drooped wearily over their swords. He had brought twenty of his best men, just in case. Ever since the death of the Emperor Karolus, the Empire had been sinking into disarray; the position of imperial missi had become increasingly precarious. They were sometimes met with bold-faced defiance from wealthy and powerful local lords, men who were unused to having their authority questioned. The law was nothing if it could not be enforced; that was why Gerold had brought so many men,