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Rome | 844

ANASTASIUS put down his quill, stretching his fingers to rid them of cramp. With pride, he studied the page he had just written— the latest entry in his masterpiece, the Liber pontificalis, or Book of the Popes, a detailed record of the papacies of his time.

Lovingly Anastasius ran his hand over the clean white vellum that lay ahead. On these blank pages the accomplishments, the triumphs, the glory of his own papacy would one day be recorded.

How proud his father, Arsenius, would be then! Though Anastasius’s family had accumulated many titles and honors over the years, the ultimate prize of the papal throne had eluded them. Once it had seemed Arsenius might achieve it, but time and circumstance had conspired against him, and the opportunity had passed.

Now it was up to Anastasius. He must, he would vindicate his father’s faith in him by becoming Lord Pope and Bishop of Rome.

Not immediately, of course. Anastasius’s overarching ambition had not blinded him to the fact that his time had not yet come. He was only thirty-three, and his position as primicerius, though one of great power, was too secular a post from which to ascend to the Sacred Chair of St. Peter.

But his situation was soon to change. Pope Gregory lay on his deathbed. Once the formal period of mourning was over, there would be an election for a new Pope—an election whose outcome Arsenius had predetermined with a skillful blend of diplomacy, bribery, and threat. The next Pope would be Sergius, cardinal priest of the Church of St. Martin, weak and corruptible scion of a noble Roman family. Unlike Gregory, Sergius was a man who understood the way of the world; he would know how to express his gratitude to those who had helped him into office. Soon after Sergius’s election, Anastasius would be appointed Bishop of Castellum, a perfect position from which to ascend the papal throne after Sergius, in his turn, was gone.

It was a pretty picture, but for one detail—Gregory still lived. Like an aging vine, roots driven deep to suck sustenance from arid soil, the old man stubbornly clung to life. Prudent and contemplative in his personal life as in his papacy, Gregory was proceeding with infuriating slowness even in this final act of dying.

He had reigned for seventeen years, longer than any Pope since Leo III of blessed memory. A good man, modest, well intentioned, pious, Gregory was well loved by the Roman people. He had been a solicitous patron of the city’s teeming population of impoverished pilgrims, providing numerous shelters and houses of refuge, seeing that alms were distributed with a generous hand on all feast days and processions.

Anastasius regarded Gregory with a complicated mix of emotion, equal parts wonder and contempt: wonder at the genuineness of the man’s piety and faith, contempt for his simplicity and slow-wittedness, which left him constantly open to deceit and manipulation. Anastasius himself had often taken advantage of the Pope’s ingenuousness, never more successfully than on the Field of Lies, when he had arranged for the betrayal of Gregory’s peace negotiations with the Frankish Emperor Louis under his very nose. That little stratagem had paid handsomely; the benefactor, Louis’s son Lothar, had known how to render gratitude into coin, and Anastasius was now a wealthy man. Even more important, Anastasius had succeeded in winning Lothar’s trust and support. For a time, it was true, Anastasius had feared that his carefully cultivated alliance with the Frankish heir might come to naught—for Lothar’s defeat at Fontenoy had been admittedly disastrous. But Lothar had managed to come to terms with his rebellious brothers in the Treaty of Verdun, a remarkable piece of political legerdemain that permitted him to retain both his crown and his territories. Lothar was once again undisputed Emperor—a fact that should prove very valuable to Anastasius in the future.

The sound of bells jolted Anastasius from his reverie. The bells tolled once, twice, a third time. Anastasius slapped his thighs jubilantly. At last!

HE HAD already donned the robe of mourning when the expected knock came. A papal notary entered on silent feet. “The Apostolic One has been gathered to God,” he announced. “Your presence, Primicerius, is requested in the papal bedchamber.”

Side by side, without speaking, they threaded their way through the labyrinthine hallways of the Lateran Palace toward the papal quarters.

“He was a godly man.” The notary broke the silence. “A peacemaker, a saint.”

“A saint, indeed,” Anastasius responded. To himself he thought, What better place for him, then, than in Heaven?

“When will come another?” The notary’s voice cracked.

Anastasius saw the man was crying. He was intrigued by the display of genuine emotion. He himself was far too artful, too aware of the effect everything he said and did had on others, to engage in lacrimae rerum. Nevertheless, the notary’s emotion reminded him that he should prepare his own show of grief. As they approached the papal bedchamber, he drew in his breath and held it, screwing up his face until he felt a sting behind his eyes. It was a trick he had, a way of bringing forth tears at will; he used it seldom, but always to good effect.

The bedchamber stood open to the gathering crowd of mourners. Inside Gregory lay on the great feather bed, eyes closed, arms, ritually crossed, clasped round a golden cross. The other optimates, or chief officers of the papal court, ringed the deathbed: Anastasius saw Arighis, the vicedominus; Compulus, the nomenclator; and Stephen, the vestiarius.

“The primicerius, Anastasius,” the secretary announced as Anastasius entered. The others looked up to see him plunged into grief, his features etched with pain, his cheeks streaked with tears.

JOAN raised her head, letting the rays of warm Roman sun spill onto her face. She was still unaccustomed to such pleasant, mild weather in Wintarmanoth—or January, as it was called in this southern part of the Empire, where Roman, not Frankish, customs prevailed.

Rome was not what she had imagined. She had envisioned a shining city, paved with gold and marble, its hundreds of basilicas rising toward Heaven in gleaming testimony to the existence of a true Civitas Dei, a City of God on earth. The reality proved far different. Sprawling, filthy, teeming, Rome’s narrow, broken streets seemed engendered in Hell rather than Heaven. Its ancient monuments—those that had not been converted to Christian churches—stood in ruin. Temples, amphitheaters, palaces, and baths had been stripped of their gold and silver and left open to the elements. Vines snaked across their fallen column shafts; jasmine and acanthus sprouted from the crevices of their walls; pigs and goats and great-horned oxen grazed in their decaying porticoes. Statues of emperors lay strewn upon the ground; the empty sarcophagi of heroes were reemployed as wash-tubs, cisterns, or troughs for swine.

It was a city of ancient and seemingly irreconcilable contradictions: the wonder of the world, and a filthy, decaying backwash; a place of Christian pilgrimage, whose greatest art celebrated pagan gods; a center of books and learning, whose people wallowed in ignorance and superstition.

Despite these contradictions, perhaps because of them, Joan loved Rome. The seething tumult of its streets stirred her. In these teeming corridors the far corners of the world converged: Roman, Lombard, German, Byzantine, and Muslim jostling one another in an exciting mix of customs and tongues. Past and present, pagan and Christian were intertwined in a rich and diverting tapestry. The best and worst of all the world were gathered within these ancient walls. In Rome, Joan found the world of opportunity and adventure which she had sought all her life.

She spent most of her time in the Borgo, where the various scholae, or societies, of foreigners were clustered. Arriving over a year ago, she had naturally gone first to the Schola Francorum but found no admittance there, as the place was overbursting with Frankish pilgrims and immigrants. So she had gone on to the Schola Anglo-rum, where her father’s English ancestry, as well as her surname, Anglicus, had gained her a warm welcome.

The depth and breadth of her education soon earned her a reputation as a brilliant scholar. Theologians came from all over Rome to engage her in learned discourse; they went away awed by the breadth of her knowledge and her quick-witted skill in disputation. How dismayed they would have been, Joan thought with an inward smile, had they known they had been bested by a woman!

Her regular duties included assisting at daily mass in the small church close beside the schola. After the midday meal, and a short nap (for it was the custom in the south to sleep away the sweltering afternoon hours), she went to the infirmary, where she passed the rest of the day tending the sick. Her knowledge of the medical arts stood her in good stead, for the practice of medicine here was nowhere near as advanced as in Frankland. The Romans knew little of the healing properties of herbs and plants, and nothing of the study of urine to diagnose and treat disease. Joan’s successes as a healer put her services much in demand.

It was an active, busy life, one that suited Joan perfectly. It offered all the opportunities of monastic life with none of the disadvantages. She could exercise the full measure of her intelligence without check or censure. She had access to the schola library, a small but fine collection of more than fifty volumes, and no one stood over her shoulder to question her if she chose to read Cicero or Suetonius rather than Augustine. She was free to come and go as she pleased, to think as she liked, to express her thoughts without fear of flogging and exposure. The time passed quickly, measured out contentedly in the fulfillment of each day’s work.

So things might have continued indefinitely had the newly elected Pope Sergius not fallen ill.

SINCE Septuagesima Sunday, the Pope had been beset by an assortment of vague but troubling symptoms: bad digestion, insomnia, heaviness and swelling of the limbs; shortly before Easter, he was stricken with a pain so intense as to be almost unendurable. Night after night, the entire palace was kept awake by his screaming.

The society of physicians sent a dozen of its best men to attend the stricken Pope. They tried a multitude of devices to effect a cure: they brought a fragment of the skull of St. Polycarp for Sergius to touch; they massaged his afflicted limbs with oil taken from a lamp that had burned all night on the tomb of St. Peter, a measure known to cure even the most desperate of afflictions; they bled him repeatedly and purged him with emetics so strong his whole body was racked with violent spasms. When even these powerful curatives failed, they tried to dispel the pain through counter-irritation, laying strips of burning flax across the veins of the legs.

Nothing availed. As the Pope’s condition worsened, the Roman people were gripped with alarm: if Sergius should die so soon after his predecessor, leaving the Throne of St. Peter vacant again, the Frankish Emperor, Lothar, might seize the opportunity to descend on the city and assert his imperial authority over them.

Sergius’s brother Benedict was also beset by worry—not out of any fraternal sentiment but because his brother’s demise represented a threat to his own interests. Having persuaded Sergius to appoint him papal missus, Benedict had skillfully used that position to accrue the authority of the papal office for himself. The result was that, only five months into his papacy, Sergius ruled in name only; all real power in Rome was wielded by Benedict—to the considerable aggrandizement of his personal fortune.

Benedict would have preferred to have the title and honor of the papal office as well, but he had always known this to be beyond his reach. He had neither the education nor the polish for so great an office. He was a second son, and in Rome it was not the custom to divide property and title among heirs as in Frankland. As the firstborn, Sergius had been lavished with all the privileges the family could provide—the expensive clothes, the private tutors. It was terribly unfair, but there was nothing to be done about it, and after a while Benedict had left off sulking and sought consolation in worldlier pleasures, of which, he quickly discovered, Rome had no shortage. His mother had grumbled about his dissolute habits but made no serious attempt to curtail them; her interest and hopes had always been centered on Sergius.

Now, at last, the long years of being overlooked were at an end. It had not been difficult to get Sergius to appoint him papal missus; Sergius had always felt guilty about the preference he had been given over his younger brother. Benedict knew his brother was weak, but corrupting him had proved even easier than anticipated. After all the years of ceaseless study and monkish deprivation, Sergius was more than ready to enjoy life. Benedict did not try to lure his brother with women, for Sergius clung adamantly to the ideal of priestly chastity. Indeed, his feelings on this point approached obsession, so that Benedict was hard put to keep secret his own sexual adventuring.

But Sergius had another weakness—an insatiable appetite for the pleasures of the table. As he consolidated his own power, Benedict kept his brother distracted with an unending parade of gustatory delights. Sergius’s capacity for food and wine was prodigious. He had been known to consume five trout, two roast hens, a dozen meat pasties, and a whole haunch of venison in a single sitting. After one such orgy, he had come to morning mass so gorged and bloated that he vomited up the Sacred Host onto the altar, to the horror of the congregation.

Following this shameful episode, Sergius resolved to reform, resuming the simple diet of bread and greens on which he had been raised. This spartan regimen restored him; he again began to take an interest in affairs of state. This had interfered with Benedict’s profitable schemes. But Benedict bided his time. Then, when he judged Sergius had had enough of pious self-denial, he resumed tempting him with extravagant gifts: rich and exotic sweetmeats, pasties and pottages, roasted pigs, barrelfuls of thick Tuscan wine. Soon Sergius was off on another feeding binge.

This time, however, the bingeing had gone too far. Sergius became ill, dangerously ill. Benedict felt no compassion for his elder brother, but he did not want him to die. Sergius’s death would spell the end of Benedict’s own power.

Something had to be done. The physicians attending Sergius were an incompetent lot who attributed the Pope’s sickness to powerful demons, against whose malignancy only prayer could avail. They surrounded Sergius with a multitude of priests and monks, who wept and prayed beside his bed day and night, raising their voices stringently toward Heaven, but it made no difference: Sergius continued to decline.

Benedict was not content to let his future hang upon the slender thread of prayer. I must do something. But what?

“My lord.”

Benedict was roused from his reverie by the small, hesitant voice of Celestinus, one of the papal cubicularii, or chamberlains. Like most of his fellows, Celestinus was the scion of a rich and aristocratic Roman family that had paid handsomely for the honor of having their young son serve as chamberlain to the Pope. Benedict regarded the boy with dislike. What did this pampered child of privilege know of life, of the hard scrabble to raise oneself up from obscurity?

“What is it?”

“My lord Anastasius requests an audience with you.”

“Anastasius?” Benedict could not place the name.

“Bishop of Castellum,” Celestinus offered helpfully.

“You dare instruct me?” Furious, Benedict brought his hand down forcefully on Celestinus’s cheek. “That will teach you respect for your betters. Now be off, and bring the bishop to me here.”

Celestinus hurried away, cradling his cheek tearfully. Benedict’s hand stung where it had contacted the boy; he flexed it, feeling better than he had in days.

Moments later Anastasius swept regally through the doors. Tall and courtly, the epitome of aristocratic elegance, he was well aware of the impression he made on Benedict.

“Pax vobiscus,” Benedict greeted him in mangled Latin.

Anastasius noted the barbarism but took care not to let his contempt show. “Et cum spiritu tuo,” he responded smoothly. “How fares His Holiness the Pope?”

“Poorly. Very poorly.”

“I grieve to hear it.” This was more than politeness; Anastasius truly was concerned. The time was not yet right for Sergius to die. Anastasius would not be thirty-five, the minimum age required in a Pontiff, for more than a year. If Sergius died now, a younger man than he might be elected, and it could be twenty years or more before the Chair of St. Peter stood vacant again. Anastasius did not intend to wait that long to realize his life’s ambition.

“Your brother is skillfully attended, I trust?”

“He is surrounded night and day by holy men offering prayers for his recovery.”

“Ah!” There was a silence. Both men were skeptical of the efficacy of such measures, but neither could own his doubt openly.

“There is someone at the Schola Anglorum,” Anastasius ventured, “a priest with a great reputation for healing.”

“Oh?”

“John Anglicus, I believe he is called—a foreigner. Apparently he is a man of great learning. They say that he can perform veritable miracles of healing.”

“Perhaps I should send for him,” said Benedict.

“Perhaps,” Anastasius agreed, then let the matter drop. Benedict, he sensed, was not a man to be pushed. Tactfully, Anastasius shifted the discussion to another matter. When he judged a reasonable amount of time to have passed, he stood to leave. “Dominus tecum, Benedictus.”

“Deus vobiscus.” Benedict mangled the form once again.

Ignorant oaf, Anastasius thought. That such a man could rise so far in power was an embarrassment, a stain upon the reputation of the Church. With a bow and an elegant sweep of his robes, Anastasius turned and left.

Benedict watched him go. Not a bad sort, for an aristocrat. I will send for this healer-priest, this John Anglicus. It would probably cause trouble, bringing in someone who was not a member of the society of physicians, but no matter. Benedict would find a way. There was always a way, when one knew what one wanted.

THREE dozen candles blazed at the foot of the great bed in which Sergius lay. Behind them knelt a clot of black-robed monks, droning litanies in deep-voiced unison.

Ennodius, chief physician of Rome, raised his iron lancet and drew it deftly across Sergius’s left forearm, slicing into the chief vein. Blood welled from the wound and dripped into a silver bowl held by Ennodius’s apprentice. Ennodius shook his head as he examined the blood in the bowl. It was thick and dark; the peccant humor that was causing the Pope’s illness was compacted in the body and would not be drawn out. Ennodius left the wound open, letting the blood flow longer than usual; he would not be able to bleed Sergius again for some days, for the moon was passing into Gemini, an unpropitious sign for bloodletting.

“How does it look?” Florus, a fellow physician, asked.

“Bad. Very bad.”

“Come outside,” Florus whispered. “I must speak with you.”

Ennodius staunched the wound, pressing the flaps of skin together and applying pressure with his hand. The task of binding the wound with grease-coated leaves of rue wrapped in cloth he left to his apprentice. Wiping the blood from his hands, he followed Florus out to the hall.

“They’ve sent for someone else,” Florus said urgently as soon as they were alone. “A healer from the Schola Anglorum.”

“No!” Ennodius was chagrined. The practice of medicine within the city was supposed to be strictly confined to members of the physicians’ society—though in actuality a small and unrecognized army of medical dabblers plied their questionable skills among the populace. These were tolerated, as long as they operated anonymously among the poor. But a forthright acknowledgment of one of these, coming from the papal palace itself, represented an undeniable threat.

“John Anglicus, the man is called,” Florus said. “Rumor has it he is possessed of extraordinary powers. They say he can diagnose an illness merely by examining a patient’s urine.”

Ennodius sniffed. “A charlatan.”

“Obviously. But some of these medical pretenders are quite artful. If this John Anglicus can mount even an appearance of skill, it could be damaging.”

Florus was right. In a profession such as theirs, where results were often disappointing and always unpredictable, reputation was everything. If this outsider should meet with success where they had been seen to fail …

Ennodius thought for a moment. “He makes a study of urine, you say? Well, then, we’ll provide him with a sample.”

“Surely the last thing we should do is help the foreigner!”

Ennodius smiled. “I said we’d provide him with a sample, Florus. I didn’t say from whom.”

SURROUNDED by an escort of papal guards, Joan walked quickly toward the Patriarchium, the enormous palace housing the papal residence as well as the multiplicity of administrative offices that constituted the seat of government in Rome. Bypassing the great Basilica of Constantine, with its magnificent line of round-arched windows, they entered the Patriarchium. Inside, they climbed a short flight of stairs which let upon the triclinium major, or great hall of the palace, whose construction had been commissioned by Pope Leo of blessed memory.

The hall was paved in marble and decorated with myriad mosaics, worked with a degree of artistry that left Joan awestruck. Never before had she seen colors so bright, nor figures so lifelike. No one in Frankland—bishop, abbot, count, not even the Emperor himself— could command such magnificence.

In the center of the triclinium, a group of men was gathered. One came forward to greet her. He was dark avised, with narrow, puffy eyes and a crafty expression.

“You are the priest John Anglicus?” he asked.

“I am.”

“I am Benedict, papal missus and brother to Pope Sergius. I have had you brought here to cure His Holiness.”

“I will do all I can,” Joan said.

Benedict dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “There are those who have no wish to see you succeed.”

Joan could well believe it. Many in the assemblage were members of the select and exclusive physicians’ society. They would not welcome an outsider.

Another man joined them—tall, thin, with penetrating eyes and a beaked nose. Benedict introduced him as Ennodius, chief of the physicians’ society.

Ennodius acknowledged Joan with the barest of nods. “You will discover for yourself, if you have the skill, that His Holiness is afflicted by demons, whose pernicious hold will not be dislodged by medicines or purgings.”

Joan said nothing. She put little credence in such theories. Why look to the supernatural when there were so many physical and detectable causes of disease?

Ennodius held out a vial of yellow liquid. “This sample of urine was taken from His Holiness not an hour ago. We are curious to see what you can learn from it.”

So I am to be tested, Joan thought. Well, I suppose it’s as good a way to start as any.

She took the vial and held it up against the light. The group gathered round in a semicircle. Ennodius’s beaked nose quivered as he watched her with vulpine expectancy.

She turned the vial this way and that until the contents showed clearly. Strange. She sniffed it, then sniffed again. She dipped a finger in, put it to her tongue, and tasted carefully. The tension in the room was now almost palpable.

Again she sniffed and tasted. No doubt about it.

A clever ruse, substituting a pregnant woman’s urine for the Pope’s. They had confronted her with a true dilemma. As a simple priest, and a foreigner, she could not accuse so august a company of deliberate deceit. On the other hand, if she did not detect the substitution, she would be denounced as a fraud.

The trap had been skillfully set. How to escape it?

She stood considering.

Then she turned and announced, straight-faced, “God is about to perform a miracle. Within thirty days, His Holiness is going to give birth.”

BENEDICT shook with laughter as he led the way out of the triclinium. “The looks on those old men’s faces! It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud!” He was deriving an inordinate amount of pleasure from what had transpired. “You proved your skill and exposed their deceit without uttering a single word of accusation. Brilliant!”

As they approached the papal bedroom, they heard hoarse shouting from the other side of the door.

“Villains! Ghouls! I’m not dead yet!” There was a loud crash, as of something thrown.

Benedict opened the door. Sergius was sitting up in bed, crimson faced with fury. Halfway across the floor, a broken pottery bowl rocked wildly before a group of cringing priests. Sergius had snatched a golden cup from a bedside table and was about to hurl it at the hapless prelates when Benedict hurried over and pulled it from his grasp.

“Now, Brother. You know what the doctors said. You are ill; you must not exert yourself.”

Sergius said accusingly, “I woke to find them anointing me with oil. They were trying to administer unctio extrema.”

The prelates smoothed their robes with ruffled dignity. They appeared to be men of importance; one who wore the pallium of an archbishop said, “We thought it best, in view of His Holiness’s worsening condition—”

“Leave at once!” Benedict interrupted.

Joan was astonished; Benedict must be powerful, indeed, to address an archbishop so uncivilly.

“Take thought, Benedict,” the archbishop warned. “Would you endanger your brother’s immortal soul?”

“Out!” Benedict swung his arms as if driving off a flock of blackbirds. “All of you!”

The prelates retreated hastily, exiting in shared indignation.

Sergius fell back weakly against his pillows. “The pain, Benedict,” he whimpered. “I cannot bear the pain.”

Benedict poured wine from a pitcher beside the bed into the golden cup and put it to Sergius’s lips. “Drink,” he said, “it will ease you.”

Sergius drank thirstily. “More,” he demanded as soon as he had drained it. Benedict poured him a second cup, and then a third. Wine spilled down the sides of Sergius’s mouth. He was small boned but very fat. His countenance was a series of connecting circles: round face connecting to round chin, round eyes centered inside twin rings of flesh.

“Now,” Benedict said, when Sergius’s thirst was quenched, “see what I have done for you, Brother? I have brought someone who can help you. He is John Anglicus, a healer of great repute.”

“Another physician?” Sergius said mistrustfully.

But he made no objection when Joan pulled back the covers to examine him. She was shocked at his condition. His legs were hugely swollen, the stretched flesh cracked and splitting from the strain. He was afflicted with a serious inflammation of the joints; Joan guessed the cause, but she had to make certain. She checked Sergius’s ears. Sure enough, there they were: the telltale tophi, little chalky excrescences resembling crabs’ eyes whose presence meant only one thing: Sergius was suffering an acute attack of gout. How was it possible that his doctors had not recognized it?

Joan ran her fingertips gently over the red, shiny flesh, feeling for the source of the inflammation.

“At least this one hasn’t the hands of a plowman,” Sergius conceded. It was astonishing he was still lucid, for he burned with fever. Joan felt his pulse, noting as she did the multiple wounds on his arm from repeated bleedings. His heartbeat was weak, and his coloring, now the fit of choler had passed, a sickly bluish white.

Benedicite, she thought. No wonder he suffers from thirst. They have bled him within an inch of his life.

She turned to a chamberlain. “Bring water. Quickly.”

She had to reduce the swelling before it killed him. Thank heavens she had brought corm of colchicum. Joan reached into her scrip and withdrew a small square of waxed parchment, unfolding it carefully so as not to spill any of the precious powder. The chamberlain returned with a jug of water. Joan poured some into a goblet, then infused two drams of the powdered root, the recommended dosage. She added clarified honey to mask the bitter taste and a small dose of henbane to make Sergius sleep—for sleep was the best anodyne against pain, and rest the best hope for a cure.

She handed the goblet to Sergius, who gulped it thirstily. “Pah!” He spat it out. “This is water!”

“Drink it,” Joan said firmly.

To her surprise, Sergius acquiesced. “Now what?” he asked after he had drained the cup. “Are you going to purge me?”

“I should have thought you’d had enough of such tortures.”

“You mean to do no more than this?” Benedict challenged. “A simple draft and that is all?”

Joan sighed. She had encountered such reactions before. Common sense and moderation were not appreciated in the art of healing. People demanded more dramatic measures. The more serious the disease, the more violent the cure was expected to be.

“His Holiness is suffering from gout. I have given him colchicum, a known specific for the disease. In a few moments, he will sleep, and, Deo volente, the pain and swelling that have afflicted him will recede in a few days’ time.”

As if in demonstration of the truth of what she said, Sergius’s ragged breathing began to ease; he relaxed against the pillows and closed his eyes peacefully.

The door swung open with a bang. In stalked a small, tensely coiled man with a face like that of a bantam cock spoiling for a fight. He brandished a roll of parchment beneath Benedict’s nose. “Here are the papers. All that’s needed is the signature.” By his dress and manner of speech, he appeared to be a merchant.

“Not now, Aio,” Benedict answered.

Aio shook his head fiercely. “No, Benedict, I will not be put off again. All Rome knows the Pope is dangerously ill. What if he dies in the night?”

Joan looked anxiously at Sergius, but he had not heard. He had slipped into a doze.

The man jingled a bag of coins before Benedict’s eyes. “One thousand solidi, as agreed. Have the paper signed, now, and this”—he raised another, smaller bag—“is yours as well.”

Benedict took the parchment to the bed and unrolled it on the sheet. “Sergius?”

“He is sleeping,” Joan protested. “Do not rouse him.”

Benedict ignored her. “Sergius!” He took his brother by the shoulder and shook him roughly.

Sergius’s eyes blinked open. Benedict took a quill from the table beside the bed, dipped it in ink, and wrapped Sergius’s hand around it. “Sign this,” he commanded.

Dazedly, Sergius put the pen to the parchment. His hand shook, spilling the ink onto the parchment in an uneven scrawl. Benedict covered his brother’s hand with his own and helped him trace the papal signature.

From where she stood, Joan saw the paper clearly. It was a formata appointing Aio Bishop of Alatri. The contract being made before Joan’s very eyes was a bribe to buy a bishopric!

“Rest you now, brother,” Benedict said, content now he had what he wanted. To Joan he said, “Stay with him.”

Joan nodded. Benedict and Aio exited from the room.

Joan pulled the bedcovers over Sergius, smoothing them gently. Her chin was set in characteristic determination. Clearly, things in the papal palace were very much amiss. Nor were they likely to be righted as long as Sergius lay ill and his venal brother ruled in his stead. Her task was plain: restore the Pope to health, and that as quickly as possible.

FOR the next few days, Sergius’s condition remained perilous. The constant chanting of the priests kept him from sound sleep, so at Joan’s insistence their bedside vigil was terminated. Except for one brief excursion to the Schola Anglorum to retrieve more medicines, Joan did not leave Sergius’s side. By day she carefully monitored his condition; by night she slept on a pile of cushions beside the bed.

On the third day, the swelling began to recede, and the skin covering it started to peel. In the evening, Joan woke from a restless sleep to find that Sergius had broken sweat. Benedicite, she thought. The fever has passed.

The next morning he awoke.

“How do you feel?” Joan asked.

“I … don’t know,” he said groggily. “Better, I think.”

“You look a good deal better.” The pinched look was gone, as was the unhealthy blue-gray cast of his skin.

“My legs … they’re crawling!” He began to scratch at them violently.

“The itching is a good sign; it means the life is returning,” Joan said. “But you must not irritate the skin, for there is still a danger of infection.”

He withdrew his hand. But the itching sensation was too strong; a moment later he was clawing at his legs again. Joan administered a dose of henbane to calm him, and again he slept.

When he opened his eyes the next day, he was clearheaded, fully aware of his surroundings.

“The pain—it’s gone!” He looked at his legs. “And the swelling!” The observation animated him; he pulled himself into a sitting position. Spying a chamberlain by the door, he said, “I’m hungry. Bring a raft of bacon and some wine.”

“A plate of greens and a jug of water,” Joan countermanded. The chamberlain hurried off before Sergius could protest.

Sergius’s brows flew up with surprise. “Who are you?”

“My name is John Anglicus.”

“You’re not Roman.”

“I was born in Frankland.”

“The north country!” Sergius’s eyes sharpened. “Is it as barbarous as they say?”

Joan smiled. “There are fewer churches, if that’s what you mean.”

“Why are you called ‘Anglicus,’” Sergius asked, “if you were born in Frankland?” He was astonishingly alert in light of what he had been through.

“My father was English,” Joan explained. “He came to preach the faith among the Saxons.”

“The Saxons?” Sergius frowned. “A godless tribe.”

Mama. Joan felt the old familiar surge of shame and love. She said, “Most are Christian now—as far as any can be who are brought to the Faith through fire and sword.”

Sergius eyed her sharply. “You do not hold with the Church’s mission to convert the heathen?”

“What value has any pledge exacted by force? Under torture, a person may confess to any number of lies, merely to put an end to pain.”

“Yet our Lord bids us spread the word of God: ‘Go, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’”

“True,” Joan conceded. “But—” She broke off. She was doing it again—allowing herself to be drawn into imprudent and possibly dangerous debate—this time with the Pope himself!

“Go on,” Sergius prodded.

“Forgive me, Holiness. You are not well.”

“Nor yet too sick for reason,” Sergius replied impatiently. “Go on.”

“Well”—she chose her words carefully—“consider the order of Christ’s commands: teach the nations first, then baptize them. We are not enjoined to bestow the sacrament of baptism before the mind embraces the Faith with rational understanding. First teach, Christ says, then dip.”

Sergius contemplated her with interest. “You reason well. Where were you educated?”

“A Greek by the name of Aesculapius, a man of great learning, tutored me as a child. Later, I was sent to the cathedral school at Dorstadt, and later still to Fulda.”

“Ah, Fulda! I have only recently received a volume from Raban Maur, beautifully illuminated, containing a poem of his own composition on the Holy Cross of Christ. When I write to thank him, I will tell him of your service to our person.”

She thought she had put Abbot Raban behind her forever; would his tyrannous hatred follow her even here, blighting the new life she had made for herself? “You will not have good report of me from that quarter, I fear.”

“Why is that?”

“The abbot holds obedience to be the greatest of the religious vows. Yet, to me, it has always come the hardest.”

“And your other vows?” Sergius asked sternly. “What of them?”

“I was born into poverty and am accustomed to it. As for chastity”—she kept her voice free of any tinge of irony—“I have always resisted the temptations of women.”

Sergius’s expression softened. “I am glad to hear it. For in this matter, Abbot Raban and I do not agree; of all the religious vows, chastity is surely the greatest and most pleasing to God.”

Joan was surprised that he should think so. The ideal of priestly chastity was far from universally practiced in Rome. It was not at all uncommon for a Roman priest to have a wife, as there was no prohibition against married men entering the priesthood, provided that they agreed to abjure all future conjugal relations—an agreement that predictably was observed more in the breach than in the practice. A wife rarely objected if her husband sought to become a priest, for she shared in the prestige of his position: “Priestess,” the wife of a priest was respectfully titled, or “Deaconess,” if the wife of a deacon. Pope Leo III had been married when he ascended the papal throne, and no one in Rome had thought worse of him for it.

The chamberlain returned with a silver dish of bread and greens that he placed before Sergius, who tore off a chunk of bread and bit into it hungrily. “Now,” he said, “tell me all about you and Raban Maur.”