16  

ON ALL Souls’ Day, the brethren of Fulda gathered in the forecourt for the separatio leprosorum, the solemn liturgy segregating lepers from society. This year seven such unfortunates had been identified in the region surrounding Fulda, four men and three women. One was a youth of no more than fourteen, in whom the marks of the disease were as yet very indistinct; one an ancient woman of sixty or more, whose lidless eyes and absent lips and fingers attested to an advanced stage of the disease. All seven had been wrapped in black shrouds and herded into the forecourt, where they huddled in a wretched little band.

The brethren approached in solemn procession. First came Abbot Raban, drawn up tall in full abbatial dignity. To his right walked Prior Joseph, to his left, Bishop Otgar. Behind marched the remaining brethren in order of seniority. Two lay brothers brought up the rear of the procession, pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with earth taken from the graveyard.

“I hereby forbid you to enter any church, mill, bakery, market, or other place where people gather.” Abbot Raban addressed the lepers with heavy solemnity. “I forbid you to use the common roads and paths. I forbid you to come near any living person without ringing your bell to give warning. I forbid you to touch children, or to give them anything.”

One of the women began to wail. Two dark, wet patches stained the front of her worn woolen tunic. A nursing mother, Joan thought. Where is her babe? Who will take care of it?

“I forbid you to eat or drink in the company of anyone save lepers like yourselves,” Abbot Raban continued. “I forbid you ever to wash your hands or face or any objects you may use at the riverbank, or at any spring or stream. I forbid you carnal knowledge of your spouse, or any other person. I forbid you to beget children, or to nurse them.”

The woman’s anguished wailing intensified, her tears coursing down her ulcerated face.

“What is your name?” With barely concealed irritation, Abbot Raban addressed the woman in the vernacular. Her unseemly display of emotion was marring the well-ordered symmetry of the ceremony, with which Raban had hoped to impress the bishop. For it was now apparent that Otgar had come to Fulda not merely to deliver the news of Gottschalk’s release but also to observe and make report upon Raban’s stewardship of the abbey.

“Madalgis,” the woman snuffled in reply. “Please, lord, I must go home, for there are four fatherless little ones needing their dinner.”

“Heaven will provide for the innocent. You have sinned, Madalgis, and God is afflicting you,” Raban explained with elaborate patience, as if to a child. “You must not weep, but instead thank God, for you will suffer the less torment in the life to come.”

Madalgis stood bewildered, as if she doubted she had heard aright. Then her face crumpled and her crying broke out anew, louder than before, her face crimsoning from the bottom of her neck to the roots of her hair.

That’s odd, Joan thought.

Raban turned his back upon the woman. “De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine …” He began the prayer for the dead. The brethren joined in, their voices mingling in deep unison.

Joan mouthed the words mechanically, her eyes fixed on Madalgis with intent concentration.

Finishing with the prayer, Raban moved on to the final part of the ceremony, in which each of the lepers, in turn, would be formally separated from the world. He stood before the first, the relatively unmarked boy of fourteen. “Sis mortuus mundo, vivens iterum Deo,” Abbot Raban said. “Be dead unto the world, living in the eyes of God.” He signaled to Brother Magenard, who plunged a spade into the wheelbarrow, lifted out a small pile of graveyard earth, and flung it at the boy, spattering his clothes and hair.

Five times the little ceremony was repeated, ending each time with the hurling of the earth. When it came Madalgis’s turn, she tried to run, but the two lay brothers blocked her way. Raban frowned at her.

“Sis mortuus mundo, vivens iter—”

“Stop!” Joan shouted.

Abbot Raban broke off. Everyone turned to locate the source of this unprecedented interruption.

With all eyes upon her, Joan advanced toward Madalgis and examined her with rapid skill. Then she turned to Abbot Raban. “Father, this woman is no leper.”

“What?” Raban struggled to keep his anger reined, so the bishop would not observe it.

“These lesions are not leprotic. See how her skin colors, fed by the blood beneath? This affliction of the skin is not infectious; it can be cured.”

“If she is not a leper, then what has caused these ulcers?” Raban demanded.

“There could be several causes. It is difficult to say without further examination. But whatever the reason, one thing is certain: it is not leprosy.”

“God has marked this woman with the visible manifestation of sin. We must not defy His will!”

“She is marked, but not by leprosy,” Joan responded sturdily. “God has provided us with the knowledge to discern between those whom He has chosen to bear this burden, and those whom He has not. Will He be pleased if we consign to a living death one whom He Himself has not elected?”

It was a clever argument. With dismay, Raban saw the others were moved by it. “How do we know whether you have correctly interpreted the signs of God’s will?” he countered. “Is your pride so great you would sacrifice your brethren to it—for in order to minister to this woman you must put all in jeopardy.”

This elicited a buzz of concern. Nothing, save the unimaginable torments of Hell, inspired more horror, revulsion, and fear than the disease of leprosy.

With a howl, Madalgis threw herself at Joan’s feet. She had been following the discussion without understanding, for Joan and Raban had been speaking in Latin, but she had managed to discern that Joan had interceded on her behalf, and that the argument was not going well.

Joan patted her shoulder, as much to quiet as to comfort her. “None of the brethren needs be put at risk, saving myself. With your leave, Father, I will go with her to her home, bringing such medications as may be necessary.”

“Alone? With a woman?” Raban’s brows rose in pious horror. “John Anglicus, your purpose is perhaps innocent, but you are as yet a young man, subject to the baser passions of the flesh, from which it is my duty, as your spiritual father, to protect you.”

Joan opened her mouth to respond, then closed it with frustration. No one could be safer from temptation by a woman than she, but there was no way she could explain that to Raban.

Brother Benjamin’s rasping voice sounded behind her. “I will accompany Brother John. I am old, long past the time for such temptation. Father, you may trust in Brother John when he says the woman is no leper, for when he speaks with such certainty, he will not be wrong. His skill in such matters is very great.”

Joan shot him a grateful glance. Madalgis clung to her, her wails tempered into muted whimpering by Joan’s reassuring touch.

Abbot Raban hesitated. What he really wanted was to give John Anglicus a sound caning for his presumptuous disobedience. But Bishop Otgar was watching; Raban could not appear to be unbending or unmerciful. “Very well,” he said grudgingly. “Brother John, after vespers you and Brother Benjamin may go from here with this sinner, and do what may be done in God’s name to cure her of her affliction.”

“Thank you, Father,” Joan said.

Raban made the sign of the cross over them. “May God in His merciful goodness shield you from harm.”

THE mule carrying bags of medical supplies plodded along placidly, indifferent to the westering sun. Madalgis’s cottage lay some five miles on; at this languid pace, they would be hard-pressed to arrive before dark. Joan prodded the mule impatiently. To humor her, the beast took five or six quick steps in succession, then settled back comfortably into its original gait.

As they walked, Madalgis chattered on with the nervous energy that often follows a great fright. Joan and Benjamin learned her whole sad story. Despite her destitute appearance, she was no colona but a free-woman whose husband had held independent title to a manse encompassing some twelve hectares. After his death, she had tried to support her family by working the land herself, but this heroic endeavor was abruptly curtailed by her neighbor, Lord Rathold, who coveted the prosperous manse. Lord Rathold had brought Madalgis’s labors to the attention of Abbot Raban, who forbade her, upon threat of excommunication, ever to take up tiller or hoe again. “It is ungodly for a woman to do the work of men,” he told her.

Faced with starvation, Madalgis had been forced to sell the manse and its house to Lord Rathold for a fraction of its worth, receiving in return only a few solidi and a tiny hut in a nearby settlement with a small piece of pasturage for her cows.

She had taken up cheese making; in this way she had managed to eke out a minimal subsistence, bartering the fruits of her labor for other food and necessities.

As soon as she caught sight of her home, Madalgis gave a glad cry and ran ahead, quickly disappearing inside. Joan and Brother Benjamin followed a few minutes later and discovered her buried beneath a breathless tumble of children, all laughing, crying, and talking at the same time. Seeing the two monks enter, the children cried out in alarm and surrounded Madalgis protectively, fearing she would be taken from them again. Madalgis spoke to them and their smiles returned, though they studied the two strangers curiously.

A woman came in, holding a babe in each arm. She made a respectful bow to the two monks, then hurried past to hand one of the infants to Madalgis, who seized it joyfully and put it to her breast, where it began to suck hungrily. The other woman seemed a dame of fifty years or more, but then Joan saw that though her face was drawn and lined with care, she was not so old as that—no more perhaps than twenty-nine or thirty.

She has been nursing Madalgis’s babe as well as her own, Joan realized. With sympathy she noted the woman’s leaking breasts and sagging abdomen and the unhealthy pallor of her skin. Joan had seen the symptoms before: women often bore their first child by the age of thirteen or fourteen and thereafter existed in a state of virtually perpetual pregnancy, bringing forth one babe after another with dreary regularity. It was not uncommon for a woman to have twenty or more pregnancies during her lifetime—though inevitably some of these were cut short by miscarriage. By the time a woman reached her time of change—if indeed she lived that long, for childbirth carried with it a considerable hazard—her body was wasted, her spirit broken by exhaustion. Joan made a mental note to make up a tonic of powdered oak bark and sage to fortify the woman against the coming winter.

Madalgis spoke to her oldest child, a gangly boy of twelve or thirteen. He went out the door and returned a minute later with a loaf of bread and a chunk of blue-veined cheese, which he offered to Joan and Brother Benjamin. Brother Benjamin took the bread but refused the cheese, for it was obviously rotten with mold. Joan also found the cheese repellent, but to please the boy, she broke off a tiny piece and put it in her mouth. To her surprise, it tasted wonderful—pungent, rich, astonishingly flavorful—far superior to any cheese at Fulda’s tables.

“Why, it’s delicious.”

The boy grinned.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Arn,” he answered shyly.

As she ate, Joan took note of her surroundings. Madalgis’s home was a small, windowless hut rudely constructed of crossed lathes daubed with mud and stuffed with straw and leaves. There were large gaps in the walls, through which the cool night air now swept, stirring the smoke from the hearth fire into a choking cloud. In one corner there was a pen for animals; in another month, Madalgis would bring in her cows for the winter—a common practice among the poor. Doing so not only protected the precious livestock but also brought a much-needed extra source of warmth into their homes. Unfortunately, in addition to their body heat, the animals brought pests: ticks, biting flies, fleas, and a host of other vermin, which burrowed into the floor rushes and the straw sleeping pallets. Most poor folk were covered with painful bites and rashes, a fact documented in the local churches, whose walls featured graphic representations of Job, his body covered with ulcers, scraping at his sores with a knife.

Some people—and Joan suspected Madalgis was one of these— developed unusually strong reactions to the insect bites over time. Their skin swelled into great sores, which, further irritated by clothes of coarse and unclean wool, finally erupted into festering lesions.

The test of Joan’s diagnosis would have to wait, however, as it was now full dark. Tomorrow, Joan told herself as she prepared for sleep, tomorrow we’ll begin.

THE next day they cleaned the little hut from top to bottom. The old rushes covering the ground were tossed out and the earth floor swept perfectly smooth and even. The sleeping pallets were burned, and new ones of fine fresh straw made up. Even the thatch roof, which had begun to sag and rot with age, was replaced.

The difficult part was persuading Madalgis to take a bath. Like everyone else, she washed her face, hands, and feet regularly, but the idea of total immersion was to her strange and even dangerous.

“I’ll catch the flux and die!” she wailed.

“You’ll die if you don’t,” Joan answered firmly. “A leper’s existence is a living death.”

The cool winds of Herbistmanoth had rendered the little creek that ran behind the settlement too cold for bathing. They had to haul the water up and heat it over the hearth fire, then pour it into a laundry tub. While the two monks stood with their backs to her, Madalgis lowered herself into the tub with a great deal of trepidation, then washed her body with soap and water.

After her bath, Madalgis donned a clean new tunic Joan had obtained from Brother Conrad, the cellarer, in anticipation of the need. Made of fine heavy linen, it was warm enough to see Madalgis through the winter yet was far smoother and less irritating than wool.

Bathed and cleaned, her house rid of vermin and gleaming from roof to floor, Madalgis immediately began to improve. Her lesions dried and began to show signs of healing.

Brother Benjamin was ecstatic. “You were right!” he said to Joan. “It isn’t leprosy! We must return and show the others!”

“A few days more,” Joan said cautiously. There must be no doubt whatsoever as to the cure when they returned.

“SHOW me another one,” Arn pleaded.

Joan smiled at him. For the past few days she had been teaching the boy Bede’s classical method of digital computation, and he had proved an apt and eager student.

“First you must show me that you remember what you’ve already learned. What do these represent?” She held up the last three fingers of her left hand.

“Units of one,” the boy said unhesitatingly. “And these”—he indicated the left thumb and index finger—“are decimals.”

“Good. And on the right hand?”

“These represent hundreds, and these, thousands.” He lifted the appropriate fingers to illustrate.

“Very well, what numbers do you want to use?”

“Twelve, for that’s my age. And”—he thought for a moment— “three hundred sixty-five, for that’s the number of days in a year!” he said, proud to show off something else he had learned.

“Twelve times three hundred sixty-five. Let’s see …” Joan’s fingers moved swiftly, computing the total. “That’s four thousand three hundred and eighty.”

Arn clapped his hands with delight.

“You try it,” Joan said, going through it again, more slowly, allowing time for him to mimic each motion. Then she had him do it on his own. “Excellent!” she said after he had executed it.

Arn grinned, delighted by the game and the praise. Then his round little face grew serious. “How high can you go?” he asked. “Can you do it with a hundred and a thousand? With … a thousand and another thousand?”

Joan nodded. “Just touch your chest like this … see? That gives you tens of thousands. And if you touch your thigh, like this, hundreds of thousands. So”—her fingers moved again—“one thousand one hundred times two thousand three hundred is … two million five hundred and thirty thousand!”

Arn’s eyes flew wide with wonderment. The numbers were so enormous he could scarcely conceive them.

“Show me another!” he begged. Joan laughed. She enjoyed teaching the boy, for he drank in knowledge thirstily. He reminded her of herself as a child. What a shame, she thought, that this bright spark of intelligence was destined to be extinguished in the darkness of ignorance.

“If I can arrange it,” she said, “would you like to study at the abbey school? You could go on learning there—not just numbers, but reading and writing as well.”

“Reading and writing?” Arn repeated in wonder. Those extraordinary skills were reserved for priests and very great lords, not for such as he. He asked anxiously, “Would I have to become a monk?”

Joan was amused. Arn was of the age when boys begin to develop a strong interest in the opposite sex; the idea of a life of chastity was understandably abhorrent to him.

“No,” she said. “You would study at the Outer School, the one for lay students. But it would mean leaving home and living at the abbey. And you’d have to study hard, for the teaching master is very strict.”

Arn didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Oh yes! Yes, please!”

“Very well. We’re returning to Fulda tomorrow. I’ll speak to the teaching master then.”

“AT LAST!” Brother Benjamin breathed with relief. Straight ahead, where the pebbled road met the horizon, the gray walls of Fulda rose starkly, backgrounded by the twin towers of the abbatial church.

The little group of travelers had endured a wearisome journey from Madalgis’s cottage, and the chill damp had aggravated Benjamin’s rheumatism, making every step a torment.

“We’ll be there soon,” Joan said. “You’ll have your feet up before the brazier in the warming room within the hour.”

In the distance, the beating of the boards was announcing their arrival—for no one approached the gates of Fulda unheralded. At the sound, Madalgis clutched her babe nervously. It had been all Joan and Brother Benjamin could do to convince her that she had to return to the abbey; she had agreed at last only on condition that her children accompany her.

The brethren were gathered in the forecourt to greet them, lined up ceremoniously in order of rank, with Abbot Raban himself, silver haired and majestically erect, in the front.

Madalgis shrank back fearfully, hiding behind Joan.

“Come forth,” Raban said.

“It’s all right, Madalgis,” Joan reassured her. “Do as Father Abbot says.”

Madalgis advanced and stood trembling in the midst of the alien company. An audible sigh of astonishment passed through the ranks of brethren at the sight of her. The open, ulcerous nodes and lesions had all disappeared; except for a few dry and healing marks, the sun-browned skin of her face and arms showed forth clear and firm, blooming with renewed health. There could be no further doubt: even the most inexperienced could tell that the woman who stood before them was no leper.

“O wondrous sign of grace!” Bishop Otgar exclaimed in awe. “Like Lazarus, she has been restored from death to life!”

The brethren crowded around, sweeping the little group of travelers triumphantly toward the church.

JOAN’S cure of Madalgis was regarded as nothing less than a miracle. All Fulda rang with John Anglicus’s praise. When elderly Brother Aldwin, one of the community’s two priests, died in his sleep one night, there was little doubt among the brethren as to who should succeed him.

Abbot Raban, however, was of a different mind. John Anglicus had entirely too bold and presumptuous a nature for his liking. Raban preferred Brother Thomas, who, though admittedly less brilliant, was far more predictable—a quality Raban valued.

But there was Bishop Otgar to consider. The bishop knew of Gottschalk’s near-death from whipping, an event that reflected badly on Raban’s abbacy. If Raban passed over John Anglicus in favor of a less qualified brother, it might raise further questions about his stewardship of the abbey. And if the king should receive bad report of him, he might remove him as abbot—an unthinkable outcome. Best to be prudent in his choice of priest, Raban decided—at least for the moment.

At chapter he announced, “As your spiritual father, the right to appoint a priest from among you belongs to me. After much prayer and reflection, I have decided upon a brother well suited for the office by virtue of his great learning: Brother John Anglicus.”

There was a murmur of approval from the brethren. Joan flushed with excitement. I, a priest! To be admitted to the sacred mysteries, to administer the holy sacraments! It had been her father’s cherished ambition for Matthew and, after Matthew died, for John. How rich an irony if that ambition were finally realized through his daughter!

Seated across the room, Brother Thomas glowered at Joan. This priesthood is mine, he thought bitterly. I was Raban’s choice; didn’t he say as much only a few weeks ago?

John Anglicus’s cure of the leper woman had changed everything. It was infuriating. Madalgis was a nobody, a slave, or little better. What difference did it make if she went to the leprosarium—or lived or died for that matter?

That the prize should go to John Anglicus was bitter gall. From the very first, Thomas had hated him—hated the quickness of his wit, of which he had often felt the barb, hated the ease with which he had mastered his lessons. Such things did not come easily to Thomas. He had had to slave to learn the forms of Latin and memorize the chapters of the rule. But what Thomas lacked in brilliance he made up for in persistence, and in the effort he put into the outward forms of faith. Whenever he finished with his meal, Thomas took care to lay his knife and spoon down perpendicularly, in tribute to the Blessed Cross. He never drank his wine straight down like the others but partook of it reverently, three sips at a time, in pious illustration of the miracle of the Trinity. John Anglicus didn’t trouble himself with such acts of devotion.

Thomas glared at his rival, so angelic looking with his fine halo of white-gold hair. May Hell dry him up with its flames, him and the God-cursed womb that engendered him!

THE refectory, or monks’ dining hall, was a masonry-walled structure forty feet wide and one hundred feet long, built large to accommodate all three hundred and fifty of the Fulda brethren at once. With seven tall windows on the south wall and six on the north, letting in direct sunlight year-round, it was one of the most cheerful of all the cloister buildings. The wide wooden beams and purlins supporting the rafters were colorfully painted with scenes from the life of Boniface, patron saint of Fulda; these added to the impression of brightness and light, so the room was as cheerful and pleasant now, in the cold, short days of Heilagmanoth, as it was in summertime.

It was noontime, and the brothers were assembled in the refectory for dinner, the first of the day’s two meals. Abbot Raban sat at a long U-shaped table centered on the east wall, flanked by twelve brothers on his left and twelve on his right, representing Christ’s apostles. The long planked tables bore simple plates of bread, pulse, and cheese. Mice scurried about on the earthen floor beneath, in furtive search of fallen crumbs.

In accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict, the brothers always took their meal without speaking. The strict silence was broken only by the clink of metal knives and cups and the voice of the lector for the week, who stood at the pulpit reading from the Psalms or the Lives of the Fathers. “As the mortal body partakes of earthly food,” Abbot Raban liked to say, “so let the soul derive spiritual sustenance.”

The regula taciturnitis, or rule of silence, was an ideal, commended by all but observed by few. The brothers had worked out an elaborate scheme of hand signs and facial gestures with which they communicated during meals. Entire conversations could be carried on in this manner, especially when, as now, the reader was poor. Brother Thomas read in a harsh, heavily accented voice that completely missed the lilting poetry of the Psalms; oblivious to his shortcomings, Thomas read loudly, his voice grating on the brethren’s ears. Abbot Raban often asked Brother Thomas to read, preferring him to the monastery’s more skilled readers, for, as he said, “too sweet a voice invites demons into the heart.”

“Pssst.” A muted hissing drew Joan’s attention. She looked up from her plate to see Brother Adalgar signaling her across the table.

He held up four fingers. The number signified a chapter from the Rule of St. Benedict, a frequent vehicle for this kind of brotherly communication, which favored enigmatic references and circumlocutions.

Joan recalled the opening lines of chapter four: “Omnes supervenientes hospites tamquam Christus suscipiantur,” it read. “Let all who come be received like Christ.”

Joan took Brother Adalgar’s meaning at once. A visitor had come to Fulda—someone of note, or Brother Adalgar would not have troubled to mention it. Fulda received upward of a dozen visitors a day, rich and poor, fur-robed pilgrims and ragged paupers, weary travelers who came knowing that they would not be sent away, that here they would find a few days’ rest, shelter, and food before continuing on their way.

Joan’s curiosity was piqued. “Who?” she responded by a slight lift of her eyebrows.

At that moment Abbot Raban gave the sign, and the brothers rose from the table in unison, lining up in order of seniority. As they exited the refectory, Brother Adalgar turned to her.

“Parens,” he signed, and pointed at her emphatically. “Your parent.”

WITH the calm, measured step and placid mien befitting a monk of Fulda, Joan followed the brethren out of the refectory. Nothing in her outward appearance betrayed her profound agitation.

Could Brother Adalgar be right? Had one of her parents come to Fulda? Her mother or her father? Parens, Adalgar had said, which could mean either. What if it was her father? He would not expect to see her but rather her brother, John. The idea filled Joan with alarm. If her father discovered her imposture, he would surely denounce her.

But perhaps it was her mother who had come. Gudrun would not betray her secret. She would understand that such a revelation would cost Joan her life.

Mama. It had been ten years since Joan had seen her, and they had parted badly. Suddenly, more than anything, Joan wanted to see Gudrun’s familiar, beloved face, wanted to hold and be held by her, to hear her speak the lilting rhythms of the Old Tongue.

Brother Samuel, the hospitaler, intercepted her as she was leaving the refectory.

“You are excused from your duties this afternoon; someone has come to see you.”

Torn between hope and fear, Joan said nothing.

“Don’t look so serious, Brother; it isn’t the Devil come for your immortal soul.” Brother Samuel laughed heartily. He was a good-hearted, jovial man, fond of jests and laughter. For years Abbot Raban had chastised him for these unspiritual qualities, then finally given up and appointed him hospitaler, a job whose worldly duties of greeting and caring for visitors suited Brother Samuel perfectly.

“Your father is here,” Samuel said cheerfully, glad to impart such good news, “waiting in the garden to greet you.”

Fear splintered Joan’s mask of self-control. She backed away, shaking her head. “I will not see him. I … I cannot.”

The smile disappeared from Brother Samuel’s lips. “Now, Brother, you don’t mean that. Your father’s traveled all the way from Ingelheim to speak with you.”

She would have to offer some explanation. “There is bad blood between us. We … argued … when I left home.”

Brother Samuel put his arm around her shoulders. “I understand,” he said sympathetically. “But he is your father, and he has come a long way. It will be an act of charity to talk to him, if only for a little while.”

Unable to disagree with this, Joan kept silent.

Brother Samuel took this for acquiescence. “Come. I will take you to him.”

“No!” She shook off his encircling arm.

Brother Samuel was startled. This was no way to address the hospitaler, one of the seven obedientiary officers of the abbey.

“Your soul is troubled, Brother,” he said sharply. “You need spiritual guidance. We will discuss this in chapter tomorrow.”

What can I do? Joan thought in dismay. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to keep her true identity from her father. But a discussion in chapter could also be ruinous. There was no excuse for her behavior. If she was found to be disobedient, like Gottschalk …

“Forgive me, Nonnus”—she used the address of respect due a senior brother—“for my lack of temperance and humility. You took me by surprise, and in my confusion, I forgot my duty to you. I ask your pardon, most humbly.”

It was a pretty apology. Brother Samuel’s stern look dissolved into a smile; he was not a man to hold a grudge.

“You have it, Brother, most freely. Come. We will walk together to the garden.”

AS THEY made their way from the cloister past the livestock barns, the mill, and the drying kilns, Joan quickly calculated her chances. The last time her father had seen her, she had been a child of twelve. She had changed greatly in the ensuing ten years. Perhaps he would not recognize her. Perhaps …

They reached the garden with its neat rows of raised planting beds—thirteen in all, the number carefully selected to symbolize the holy congregation of Christ and the Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper. Each bed was exactly seven feet wide; this was also significant, for seven was the number of gifts of the Holy Ghost, signifying the wholeness of all created things.

In the rear of the garden, between beds of pepperwort and chervil, her father stood with his back to them. His short, squat body, thick neck, and resolute stance were immediately familiar. Joan pulled her head deep inside her voluminous cowl so the heavy material hung down in front, covering her hair and face.

Hearing their approach, the canon turned. His dark hair and beetling brows, which had once struck such terror in Joan, had gone completely gray.

“Deus tecum.” Brother Samuel gave Joan an encouraging pat. “God be with you.” Then he left them.

HER father crossed the garden haltingly. He was smaller than she remembered; she saw with surprise that he used a stick to walk. As he drew near, Joan turned away and, without speaking, gestured him to follow. She led him out of the sharp glare of the midday sun into the windowless chapel adjoining the garden, where darkness would provide better concealment. Inside, she waited for him to take a seat on one of the benches. Then she seated herself at the far end, keeping her head low so the cowl hid her profile.

“Pater Noster qui es in caelis, sanctficetur nomen tuum …” Her father began the Lord’s Prayer. His folded hands shook with palsy; he spoke in the quavering, brittle tones of an old man. Joan joined her voice to his, their mingled words echoing through the tiny, stonewalled chamber.

The prayer completed, they sat for a while in silence.

“My son,” the canon said at last, “you have done well. Brother Hospitaler tells me you are to be a priest. You have brought honor to our family, as I once hoped your brother would.”

Matthew. Joan fingered the medallion of St. Catherine that hung around her neck, the one Matthew had given her so long ago.

Her father caught the gesture. “My eyesight has grown thick. Is that your sister Joan’s medallion?”

Joan let go of it, cursing her stupidity; she had not thought to hide it.

“I took it as a remembrance … afterwards.” She could not bring herself to speak of the horror of the Norsemen’s attack.

“Did your sister die without … dishonor?”

Joan had a sudden image of Gisla, screaming in pain and fear while the Norsemen took turns with her.

“She died inviolate.”

“Deo gratias.” The canon crossed himself. “It was God’s will, then. Headstrong and unnatural child, she could never have been at peace in this world; it is better so.”

“She would not have said so.”

If the canon caught the irony in her voice, he did not reveal it. “Her death was a very great grief to your mother.”

“How fares my mother?”

For a long moment the canon did not respond. When at last he did, his voice was shakier than before.

“She is gone.”

“Gone?”

“To Hell,” the canon said, “to burn for all eternity.”

“No.” Understanding crowded the edges of Joan’s consciousness. “No.”

Not Mama with the beautiful face, the kind eyes, the gentle hands that brought kindness and comfort—Mama, who had loved her.

“She died one month ago,” the canon said, “unshriven and unreconciled to Christ, calling upon her heathen gods. When the midwife told me she would not live, I did everything I could, but she would not accept the Blessed Sacrament. I put the Sacred Host in her mouth, and she spat it out at me.”

“The midwife? You don’t mean …” Her mother was over fifty, well past childbearing years; she had begotten no more children after Joan was born.

“They would not let me bury her in the Christian cemetery, not with the unbaptized babe still in her womb.” He began to cry, great, choking sobs that shook his entire body.

Did he love her, then? He’d had an odd way of displaying it, with his brutal rages, his cruelty, and his lust, his selfish lust that had killed her in the end.

The canon’s sobs slowly quieted, and he began the prayer for the dead. This time Joan did not join in. Quietly, under her breath, she began to recite the Oath, invoking the sacred name of Thor the Thunderer, just as Mama had taught her so long ago.

Her father cleared his throat uncomfortably. “There is one thing, John. The mission in Saxony … do you think … that is, could the brothers use my help, in their work with the heathens?”

Joan was perplexed. “What about your work in Ingelheim?”

“The fact is, my position in Ingelheim has become difficult. The recent … misfortune … with your mother …”

At once Joan understood. The strictures against married clergy, only feebly enforced during the reign of Emperor Karolus, had tightened under the reign of his son, whose religious zeal had earned him the title Louis the Pious. The recent synod in Paris had strongly reinforced both the theory and practice of clerical celibacy. Gudrun’s pregnancy, visible evidence of the canon’s lack of chastity, could not have come at a worse time.

“You have lost your position?”

Reluctantly, her father nodded. “But Deo volente, I have the strength and skill to do God’s work yet. If you could intercede for me with Abbot Raban …?”

Joan did not reply. She was overfull with grief, anger, and pain; there was no room left in her heart for compassion toward her father.

“You do not answer me. You have grown proud, my son.” He stood, his voice taking on something of its old commanding tone. “Remember, it was I who brought you to this place, and to your current position in life. Contritionem praecedit superbia, et ante ruinam exaltatio spiritus,” he remonstrated sternly. “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs, chapter sixteen.”

“Bonum est homini mulierem non tangere,” Joan retorted. “It is well for a man not to touch a woman, First Corinthians, chapter seven.”

Her father raised his cane to strike her, but the movement caused him to lose his balance, and he fell. She put out her hand to help him, and he pulled her down to him, holding her fast.

“My son,” his voice pleaded tearfully in her ear, “my son. Do not desert me. You are all I have.”

Repelled, she pulled back so violently that her cowl slipped off her head. Hastily she pulled it on again, but it was too late.

Her father’s face held an expression of horrified recognition. “No,” he said, aghast. “No, it cannot be.”

“Father—”

“Daughter of Eve, what have you done? Where is your brother, John?”

“He is dead.”

“Dead?”

“Killed by Norsemen, in the church at Dorstadt. I tried to save him, but—”

“Witch! Mooncalf! Demon from Hell!” He traced the sign of the cross in the air before him.

“Father, please, let me explain—” Joan pleaded desperately. She had to calm him before his raised voice drew the others.

He retrieved his stick and struggled awkwardly to his feet, his whole body trembling. Joan moved to assist him, but he warded her off and said accusingly, “You killed your elder brother. Could you not have spared the younger?”

“I loved John, Father. I would never have harmed him. It was the Norsemen, they came without warning, with swords and axes.” She tightened her throat against mounting sobs; she had to keep talking, make him understand. “John tried to fight, but they killed everyone, everyone. They—”

He turned toward the door. “I must put a stop to this, to you, before you do any further harm.”

She grabbed hold of his arm. “Father, don’t, please, they will kill me if—”

He rounded on her fiercely. “Changeling devil! You should have died in your heathen mother’s womb before ever you were born!” He struggled to free himself, his face purpling alarmingly. “Let me go!”

Desperately she held on. If he walked through that door, her life was forfeit.

“Brother John?” A voice sounded from the doorway. It was Brother Samuel, his kindly face creased with concern. “Is anything wrong?”

Startled, Joan loosed her grip on her father’s arm. He pulled free and went to Brother Samuel.

“Take me to Abbot Raban. I must … I mush—” He broke off suddenly with a look of puzzled surprise.

He looked strange. His skin had gone an even deeper purple; his face twisted grotesquely, the right eye drooping lower than the left, the mouth crooked peculiarly to one side.

“Father?” She approached hesitantly, holding out her hand.

He lunged for her, his right arm flapping wildly as if no longer under his control.

Terrified, Joan backed away.

He shouted something unrecognizable, then fell forward like a hewn tree.

Brother Samuel called for help. Immediately five brethren materialized in the doorway.

Joan knelt beside her father and supported him in her arms. His head lay heavy and unresisting against her shoulder, his thin gray hair twined between her fingers. Looking into his eyes, Joan was shocked by the malignant hatred she saw there.

His lips worked with a ghastly determination. “M … m … m … !”

“Don’t try to speak,” Joan said. “You are not well.”

He blazed at her with savage fury. With one last, explosive effort, he spat out a single word: “M … m … m … Mulier!”

Woman!

His head turned convulsively to the side and froze there, his eyes set in their baleful glare.

Joan bent over him, seeking any sign of breath from the stretched lips, any pulse from the wasted neck. After a moment, she closed the staring eyes. “He is dead.”

Brother Samuel and the others crossed themselves.

“I thought I heard him speak before he died,” Brother Samuel said. “What did he say?”

“He … he called upon Mary, mother of Christ.”

Brother Samuel nodded sagely. “A holy man.” To the others he said, “Carry him to the church. We will prepare his body with all due ceremony.”

“TERRA es, terram ibis,” Abbot Raban intoned. With the rest of the brethren, Joan stooped to scoop up a handful of earth, then tossed it into the grave, watching the dark, wet lumps smear unevenly across the smooth wood of her father’s coffin.

He had always hated her. Even when she was little, before the lines of battle between them had been drawn, she had never elicited anything more from him than a sour, grudging tolerance. To him, she had always been only a stupid, worthless girl. Still, she was shocked to learn how willingly he would have exposed her, how unhesitatingly he would have consigned her to unspeakable death.

Nevertheless, as the last of the heavy earth was mounded on her father’s grave, Joan felt an odd, unexpected melancholy. She could not remember a time when she had not resented her father, feared him, even hated him. Yet she felt a peculiar sense of loss. Matthew, John, Mama—all were gone. Her father had been her last link with home, with the girl she once had been. There was no Joan of Ingelheim anymore; there was only John Anglicus, priest and monk of the Benedictine house of Fulda.