Pope Joan

F
OR MY FATHER,
W
ILLIAM
W
OOLFOLK
,
and there are no words
to add

Prologue

I
T WAS the twenty-eighth day of Wintarmanoth in the year of our Lord 814, the harshest winter in living memory.

Hrotrud, the village midwife of Ingelheim, struggled through the snow toward the canon’s
grubenhaus.
A gust of wind swept through the trees and drove icy fingers into her body, searching the holes and patches of her thin woolen garments. The forest path was deeply drifted; with each step, she sank almost to her knees. Snow caked her eyebrows and eyelashes; she kept wiping her face to see. Her hands and feet ached with cold, despite the layers of linen rags she had wrapped around them.

A blur of black appeared on the path ahead. It was a dead crow. Even those hardy scavengers were dying this winter, starved because their beaks could not tear the flesh of the frozen carrion. Hrotrud shivered and quickened her pace.

Gudrun, the canon’s woman, had gone into labor a month sooner than expected.
A fine time for the child to come
, Hrotrud thought bitterly.
Five children delivered in the last month alone, and not one of them lasted more than a week.

A blast of wind-driven snow blinded Hrotrud, and for a moment she lost sight of the poorly marked path. She felt a swell of panic. More than one villager had died that way, wandering in circles only a short distance from their homes. She forced herself to stand still as the snow swirled around her, surrounding her in a featureless landscape of white. When the wind let up, she could just make out the outline of the path. Again she began to move forward. She no longer felt pain in her hands and feet; they had gone completely numb. She knew what that could mean, but she could not afford to dwell on it; it was important to remain calm.

I must think of something besides the cold.

She pictured the home in which she had been raised, a
casa
with a
prosperous manse of some six hectares. It was warm and snug, with walls of solid timber, far nicer than their neighbors’ homes, made of simple wooden lathes daubed with mud. A great fire had blazed in the central hearth, the smoke spiraling up to an opening in the roof. Hrotrud’s father had worn an expensive vest of otter skins over his fine linen
bliaud
, and her mother had had silken ribbons for her long, black hair. Hrotrud herself had had two large-sleeved tunics, and a warm mantle of the finest wool. She remembered how soft and smooth the expensive material had felt against her skin.

It had all ended so quickly. Two summers of drought and a killing frost ruined the harvest. Everywhere people were starving; in Thuringia there were rumors of cannibalism. Through the judicious sale of the family possessions, Hrotrud’s father had kept them from hunger for a while. Hrotrud had cried when they took away her woolen mantle. It had seemed to her then that nothing worse could happen. She was eight years old; she did not yet comprehend the horror and cruelty of the world.

She pushed her way through another large drift of snow, fighting off a growing light-headedness. It had been several days since she had had anything to eat.
Ah, well. If all goes well, I will feast tonight. Perhaps, if the canon is well pleased, there will even be some bacon to take home.
The idea gave her renewed energy.

Hrotrud emerged into the clearing. She could see the blurred outlines of the grubenhaus just ahead. The snow was deeper here, beyond the screen of trees, but she drove ahead, plowing through with her strong thighs and arms, confident now that safety was near.

Arriving at the door, she knocked once, then immediately let herself in; it was too cold to worry about social courtesies. Inside, she stood blinking in darkness. The single window of the grubenhaus had been boarded up for winter; the only light came from the hearth fire and a few smoky tallows scattered about the room. After a moment, her eyes began to adjust, and she saw two young boys seated close together near the hearth fire.

“Has the child come?” Hrotrud asked.

“Not yet,” answered the older boy.

Hrotrud muttered a short prayer of thanks to St. Cosmas, patron saint of midwives. She had been cheated of her pay that way more than once, turned away without a
denar
for the trouble she had taken to come.

At the hearth fire, she peeled the frozen rags from her hands and feet, crying out in alarm when she saw their sickly blue-white color.
Holy Mother, do not let the frost take them.
The village would have little use for a crippled midwife. Elias the shoemaker had lost his livelihood that way. After he was caught in a storm on his way back from Mainz, the tips of his fingers had blackened and dropped off in a week. Now, gaunt and ragged, he squatted by the church doors, begging his living off the charity of others.

Shaking her head grimly, Hrotrud pinched and rubbed her numbed fingers and toes as the two boys watched in silence. The sight of them reassured her.
It will be an easy birth
, she told herself, trying to keep her mind off poor Elias.
After all, I delivered Gudrun of these two easily enough.
The older boy must be almost six winters now, a sturdy child with a look of alert intelligence. The younger, his round-cheeked, three-year-old brother, rocked back and forth, sucking his thumb morosely. Both were darkavised, like their father; neither had inherited their Saxon mother’s extraordinary white-gold hair.

Hrotrud remembered how the village men had stared at Gudrun’s hair when the canon had brought her back from one of his missionary trips to Saxony. It had caused quite a stir at first, the canon’s taking a woman. Some said it was against the law, that the Emperor had issued an edict forbidding men of the Church to take wives. But others said it could not be so, for it was plain that without a wife a man was subject to all kinds of temptation and wickedness. Look at the monks of Stablo, they said, who shame the Church with their fornications and drunken revelry. And certainly it was true that the canon was a sober and hardworking man.

The room was warm. The large hearth was piled high with thick logs of birch and oak; smoke rose in great billows to the hole in the thatched roof. It was a snug dwelling. The wooden timbers that formed the walls were heavy and thick, and the gaps between them were tightly packed with straw and clay to keep out the cold. The single window had been boarded over with sturdy planks of oak, an extra measure of protection against the
nordostroni
, the frigid northeast winds of winter. The house was large enough to be divided into three separate compartments, one containing the sleeping quarters of the canon and his wife, one for the animals that sheltered there in harsh weather—Hrotrud heard the soft scuffle and scrape of their
hooves to her left—and this one, the central room, where the family worked and ate and the children slept. Other than the stone castle of the Emperor, still unfinished and therefore rarely inhabited, no one in Ingelheim had a finer home.

Hrotrud’s limbs began to prickle and throb with renewed sensation. She examined her fingers; they were rough and dry, but the bluish cast had receded, supplanted by a returning glow of healthy reddish pink. She sighed with relief, resolving to make an offering to St. Cosmas in thanksgiving. For a few more minutes, Hrotrud lingered by the fire, enjoying its warmth; then, with a nod and an encouraging pat for the boys, she hurried around the partition to where the laboring woman was waiting.

Gudrun lay on a bed of peat topped with fresh straw. The canon, a dark-haired man with thick, beetling eyebrows that gave him a perpetually stern expression, sat apart. He nodded at Hrotrud, then returned his attention to the large wood-bound book on his lap. Hrotrud had seen the book on previous visits to the cottage, but the sight of it still filled her with awe. It was a copy of the Holy Bible, and it was the only book she had ever seen. Like the other villagers, Hrotrud could neither read nor write. She knew, however, that the book was a treasure, worth more in gold
solidi
than the entire village earned in a year. The canon had brought it with him from his native England, where books were not so rare as in Frankland.

Hrotrud saw immediately that Gudrun was in a bad way. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse dangerously rapid, her whole body puffed and swollen. The midwife recognized the signs. There was no time to waste. She reached into her sack and took out a quantity of dove’s dung that she had carefully collected in the fall. Returning to the hearth, she threw the dung on the fire, watching with satisfaction as the dark smoke began to rise, clearing the air of evil spirits.

She would have to ease the pain so Gudrun could relax and bring the child forth. For that, she would use henbane. She took a bundle of the small, yellow, purple-veined flowers, placed them in a clay mortar, and skillfully ground them into powder, wrinkling her nose at the acrid odor that was released. Then she infused the powder into a cup of strong red wine and brought it to Gudrun to drink.

“What is that you mean to give her?” the canon asked abruptly.

Hrotrud started; she had almost forgotten he was there. “She is
weakened from the labor. This will relieve her pain and help the child issue forth.”

The canon frowned. He took the henbane from Hrotrud’s hands, strode around the partition, and threw it into the fire, where it hissed briefly and then vanished. “Woman, you blaspheme.”

Hrotrud was aghast. It had taken her weeks of painstaking search to gather that small amount of the precious medicine. She turned toward the canon, ready to vent her anger, but stopped when she saw the flinty look in his eyes.

“It is written”—he thumped the book with his hand for emphasis— “‘In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.’ Such medicine is unholy!”

Hrotrud was indignant. There was nothing unchristian about
her
medicine. Didn’t she recite nine paternosters each time she pulled one of the plants from the earth? The canon certainly never complained when she gave him henbane to ease the pain of
his
frequent toothaches. But she would not argue with him. He was an influential man. One word from him about “unholy” practices, and Hrotrud would be ruined.

Gudrun moaned in the throes of another pain.
Very well
, Hrotrud thought. If the canon would not allow the henbane, she would have to try another approach. She went to her sack and withdrew a long piece of cloth, cut to the True Length of Christ. Moving with brisk efficiency, she wound it tightly around Gudrun’s abdomen. Gudrun groaned when Hrotrud shifted her. Movement was painful for her, but that could not be helped. Hrotrud took from her sack a small parcel, carefully wrapped in a scrap of silken fabric for protection. Inside was one of her treasures—the anklebone of a rabbit killed on Christmas Day. She had begged it off one of the Emperor’s hunting party the previous winter. With utmost care, Hrotrud shaved off three thin slices and placed them in Gudrun’s mouth.

“Chew these slowly,” she instructed Gudrun, who nodded weakly. Hrotrud settled back to wait. From the corner of her eye, she studied the canon, who frowned in concentration on his book till his brows almost met over the bridge of his nose.

Gudrun moaned again and twisted in pain, but the canon did not look up.
He’s a cold one
, Hrotrud reflected.
Still, he must have some fire in his loins, or he wouldn’t have taken her to wife.

How long had it been since the canon brought the Saxon woman home, ten—or was it eleven?—winters ago. Gudrun had not been young, by Frankish standards, perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four years old, but she was very beautiful, with the long white-gold hair and blue eyes of the
aliengenae.
She had lost her entire family in the massacre at Verden. Thousands of Saxons had died that day rather than accept the truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Mad barbarians
, Hrotrud thought.
It wouldn’t have happened to me.
She would have sworn to whatever they asked of her, would do it now for that matter, should the barbarians ever sweep through Frankland again, swear to whatever strange and terrible gods they wished. It changed nothing. Who was to know what went on in a person’s heart? A wise woman kept her own counsel.