Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [84]
“Call the next case, Frambert.”
“Aelfric accuses Fulrad of refusing to pay the lawful blood price.”
The case seemed straightforward enough. Fulrad’s son Tenbert, a boy of sixteen, had killed a young woman, one of Aelfric’s coloni. The crime itself was not in dispute, only the amount of the blood price. The laws regarding wergeld were detailed and specific for every person in the Empire, depending on rank, property holdings, age, and sex.
“It was her own fault,” said Tenbert, a tall, loose-jointed boy with mottled skin and a sullen expression. “She was only a colona; she should not have fought so hard against me.”
“He raped her,” Aelfric explained. “Came across her harvesting grapes in my vineyard and took a fancy to her. She was a pretty little thing of only twelve winters—still a child, really, and she didn’t understand. She thought he meant to harm her. When she wouldn’t submit willingly, he beat her senseless.” There was a long murmur from the crowd; Aelfric paused, content to let it register. “She died the next day, bruised and swollen and calling out for her mother.”
“You have no cause for complaint,” Fulrad, Tenbert’s father, broke in hotly. “Did I not pay the wergeld the next week—fifty gold solidi, a generous sum! And the girl only a common colona!”
“The girl is dead; she will not tend my vines again. And her mother, one of my best weavers, is gone woodly with grief and is of no use anymore. I demand the lawful wergeld—one hundred gold solidi.”
“An outrage!” Fulrad spread his arms wide in appeal. “Your Eminence, with what I have given him, Aelfric can purchase twenty fine milk cows—which everyone knows are worth far more than a wretched girl, her mother, and the loom combined!”
Gerold frowned. This bartering over blood price was repellent. The girl had been about the same age as Gerold’s daughter Dhuoda. The idea of this sullen, disagreeable youth forcing himself on her was grotesque. Such things happened all the time, of course—any colona who made it to the age of fourteen with her virtue intact was extraordinarily lucky, or ugly, or both. Gerold was not naive, he knew the way of the world, but he did not have to like it.
A huge leather-bound codex gold-stamped with the imperial seal rested on the table before him. In it were inscribed the ancient laws of the Empire, the Lex Salica, as well as the Lex Karolina, which included revisions and additions to the code of law issued by the Emperor Karolus. Gerold knew the law and had no need of the book. Nevertheless, he made solemn show of consulting it; its symbolic value would not be lost on the litigants, and the judgment he was about to render would require all of its authority.
“The Salic code is very clear on this point,” he said at last. “One hundred solidi is the lawful wergeld for a colona.”
Fulrad cursed aloud. Aelfric grinned.
“The girl was twelve years of age,” Gerold continued, “and had therefore reached her childbearing years. By law her blood price must be tripled to three hundred gold solidi.”
“What, is the court mad?” Fulrad shouted.
“The sum,” Gerold continued equably, “is to be paid as follows: two hundred solidi to Aelfric, the girl’s lawful lord, and one hundred to her family.”
Now it was Aelfric’s turn to be outraged. “One hundred solidi to her family?” he said incredulously. “To coloni? I am lord of the land-holding; the girl’s wergeld is mine by rights!”
“Are you trying to ruin me?” Fulrad interrupted, too absorbed in his own problem to take pleasure in his enemy’s distress. “Three hundred solidi is almost the blood price of a warrior! Of a priest!” He moved aggressively toward the table where Gerold sat. “Even,