Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [92]
But John Anglicus was not like the others. John Anglicus did not belong here among this renowned and distinguished brotherhood. It was not through any defect of mind or character that this was so. It was an accident of fate, or of a cruel, indifferent God, that set John Anglicus irrevocably apart. John Anglicus did not belong among the brothers of Fulda, because John Anglicus, born Joan of Ingelheim, was a woman.
FOUR years had passed since she had presented herself at the abbey foregate disguised as her brother John. “Anglicus” they named her, because of her English father, and even among this select brotherhood of scholars, poets, and intellects, she soon distinguished herself.
The very same qualities of mind that as a woman had earned her derision and contempt were here universally praised. Her brilliance, knowledge of Scripture, and quick-wittedness in scholarly debate became matters of community pride. She was free—no, encouraged—to work to the very limit of her abilities. Among the novices, she was quickly promoted to seniorus; this gave her greater freedom of access to the renowned Fulda library—an enormous collection of some three hundred and fifty codices, including an extraordinarily fine series of classical authors—Suetonius, Tacitus, Virgil, Pliny, Marcellinus, among others. She ranged among the neatly rolled stacks in a transport of delight. All the knowledge of the world was here, it seemed, and all was hers for the asking.
Coming upon her reading a treatise of St. Chrysostom one day, Prior Joseph was surprised to discover that she knew Greek, a skill no other brother possessed. He told Abbot Raban, who immediately set her to work translating the abbey’s excellent collection of Greek treatises on medicine; these included five of Hippocrates’ seven books of aphorisms, the complete Tetrabiblios of Aëtius, as well as fragments of works by Oribasius and Alexander of Tralles. Brother Benjamin, the community physician, was so impressed with Joan’s work that he made her his apprentice. He taught her how to grow and harvest the plants in the medicinal herb garden, and how to make use of their various healing properties: fennel for constipation, mustard for coughs, chervil for hemorrhages, wormwood and willow-bark for fevers—there were curatives in Benjamin’s garden for every human ailment imaginable. Joan helped him compound the various poultices, purges, infusions, and simples that were the mainstay of monastic medicine, and she accompanied him to the infirmary to tend the sick. It was fascinating work, exactly suited to her inquisitive, analytical mind. Between her studies and her work with Brother Benjamin, as well as the bells that rang regularly seven times a day, calling the brethren to canonical prayers, her days were busy and productive. There was a freedom and power in this man’s existence that she had never experienced before, and Joan found that she liked it; she liked it very much.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this, for it will swell your head till it no longer fits the cowl,” gossipy old Hatto, the porter, had said to her just the day before, smiling cheerfully to let her know he was only jesting. “But yesterday I heard Father Abbot tell Prior Joseph that you had the keenest mind of all the brethren and would one day bring great distinction to this house.”
The words of the old fortune-teller from the St.-Denis fair echoed in Joan’s ears: “Greatness will be yours, beyond your imaginings.” Was this what she had meant? “Changeling,” the old woman had called her and said, “You are what you will not be; what you will become is other than you are.”
That much is certainly true, Joan thought ruefully, fingering the small hairless spot at the crown of her head, almost obscured by the thick ring of curly white-gold hair encircling it. Her hair—her mother’s hair—had been Joan’s only vanity. Nevertheless, she had welcomed being shaved. Her monk’s tonsure, along with the thin scar on her cheek left by the Norseman’s sword, enhanced her masculine disguise—a disguise