Night Blooming

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  There was a great feast that night, greater than the Feast of the Nativity on the previous night, for this one was to honor the Franks as well as Our Lord. Some of the Cardinal Archbishops were displeased, and were heard to complain loudly that the Pope had betrayed the Church by making himself subject to the Emperor. Others said that in spite of his Declaration, Leo III was no longer worthy to hold his exalted position and should resign for the good of the Church and all Christendom. This was quickly silenced by the Frankish Churchmen, and many of the Bishops who had accompanied the Emperor to Roma were loud in their condemnation of these Cardinal Archbishops. Many of these discussions quickly grew acrimonious, and by morning there were many with blackened eyes and other injuries to serve as tokens of their disagreements. I did not attend the great feasts, for monks and priests were not included among those invited to the Lateranus for the splendid meal. I attended the meal served at the House of the Franks, which, while plentiful and of good quality, was not the equal of what the Pope could command for his guests.

  I have been informed that Gynethe Mehaut will be summoned before the Pope in three days, where testimony will be given in regard to her and all she has done. The hope is that the examination may be kept private so that more scandal will not be visited upon the Church just now. Nonetheless, she will have to listen to praise and accusation and answer any questions the Pope may choose to address to her. Based on what he hears, he will decide what is to become of her. I should warn you that Bishop Iso has been busy trying to find those who will speak against the White Woman, saying she is an agent of the Anti-Christ and demonstrating how she has shown this over the years; his woman, Sorra Celinde, has been commanded to tell all that she knows.

  Because of this, and because so much of what she does has been under scrutiny, I have decided not to attempt to do away with Hiernom Rakoczy, at least not until the decision in regard to Gynethe Mehaut has been made. Any action taken against him is likely to attract Papal attention, and that, in turn, might lead to many questions. If, after the examination of Gynethe Mehaut is complete, it is decided that Magnatus Rakoczy has contributed to her corruption, I shall follow your orders and see him killed. But I must warn you, it may be that in so doing I will bring your part in all this to light, and if that happens, your victory may be short-lived, and Gynethe Mehaut may be the one to pay the price for your attempts to save her from the intrusions of the world. I know you believe she carries the marks of crucifixion as a sign of blessing and favor, and you wish to eliminate anything that might serve to blight her recognition, but I am also convinced that there is good reason for you to guard yourself in this, for you may have to answer for your efforts on her behalf. You may wish to know that the Emperor has ordered Rakoczy to return to his fiscs as soon as possible: he is to leave Roma at Epiphany, in the company of nine soldiers, or so a slave in the Emperor’s train has told me. I thanked him with a woolen blanket and a dagger through his side, for which I have Confessed and received Absolution.

  Although this may seem like defiance, I am still your servant, and I am as devoted to you as I am to the Church. You may repose trust in me from now until God summons me to His Throne, to judge me and all men.

  Fratre Grimhold

  by my own hand

  Chapter Eleven

  “WE ARE HERE AT THE PLEASURE of Pope Leo the Third,” said Rakoczy to the Lateranus Guard who held his spear up to halt the foreigner wrapped in a black mantellum of boiled wool, riding a grey horse and leading a plausterum drawn by a pair of liver-colored ponies with flaxen manes and tails. “I am Hiernom Rakoczy and I have the honor to escort Gynethe Mehaut.” Although it was mid-morning frost still glistened on the road and roofs of the city, and a biting wind whipped out of the north, sending debris flying and chilling everything it met.

  The Lateranus Guard cocked his head. “At what hour were you summoned?” He made a point of exchanging glances with the other Guards on duty at the gate. It was four days since the Mass of Christ, and Roma in the wake of such grand celebration had sunk into lethargy. The streets were half-empty, the chapels had closed their doors, and even the beggars remained inside, waiting for the day to improve before venturing out.

  “At Terce,” said Rakoczy. “There should be someone to escort us to His Holiness.”

  “There should be,” said the Lateranus Guard. He leaned back against the closed gates. “I haven’t seen anyone yet this morning who could admit you.”

  “There will be a priest or a monk come for us,” said Rakoczy confidently.

  “I can’t open the gate until I have the authorization,” said the Guard.

  “Of course not,” said Rakoczy, as the bells of Sant’ Ioannes Lateranus began to toll for Terce. “And I expect our usher will be here directly.”

  His calmness was troubling to the Guard, who was more used to bluster or subservience. “We all serve the Pope.”

  “And the Emperor,” said Rakoczy as an old priest appeared in the warder-door. Reverencing the priest from the saddle, Rakoczy said, “Unless I am mistaken, our usher is here.”

  The Guard gestured to his comrades. “Find out whom the priest wants.”

  “The White Woman and her Magnatus escort,” said the old priest, smoothing his beard. He shifted his weight from foot to foot as if trying to keep warm.

  “We are at your service,” said Rakoczy, tugging the ponies’ lead to bring the plausterum up to the gates; they swung open with complaints from the massive hinges that clashed with the sounds of the bells. The Guard stood aside and made a hint of a reverence as Rakoczy brought the plausterum through into the courtyard where a pair of grooms stood, trying to appear alert.

  The priest came up to Rakoczy’s horse. “You will go to the chapel to Santa Viviana the Martyr, where the Pope will receive you. He and the Court of those who are to judge the White Woman are assembled there now. The chapel is on the far side of the High Altar.” He ducked his head respectfully.

  “You aren’t going to come with us?” Rakoczy asked as he dismounted.

  “No. His Holiness has said you are to bring her alone.” He touched his hands together in a sign of petition. “I must do the Pope’s bidding.”

  “And so must we,” said Rakoczy, handing his grey to a groom who bustled forward. “Loosen the girth and see that he has water. The same for the ponies.” He held out the leads to the groom. “Do not unhitch the plausterum.”

  The groom lowered his head. “I’ll stall them together.”

  “Very good,” said Rakoczy, and gave the groom a silver coin before he went to the back of the plausterum to help Gynethe Mehaut to descend; she was wrapped in an ankle-length capa, a long veil over her head and hanging almost to her knees. Rakoczy reverenced her and pointed toward the side entrance to Sant’ Ioannes.

  “I am ready.” She managed to speak without a tremor in her voice and took an absurd moment of pride in this. Under the veil she folded her freshly bandaged hands and began to walk. “I’m glad they’re all at prayers,” she said quietly to Rakoczy. “I wouldn’t want them to stare at me.”

  “Then it is as well that he summoned us when he did,” said Rakoczy, going through a narrow doorway and looking into the dimness. Far ahead he saw the shine of light from the low dome lantern four stories above, long bars of muted illumination suffusing the area around the High Altar. “The chapel of Santa Viviana is on the far side.” Ambrosian chants echoed and rang along the stone vault, making harmony of plainsong.

  “Yes. I know what the priest said. I may be white, and too much light may blind me, but I hear well enough.” She held her hands together, putting a bit more distance between her and Rakoczy, a subtle reminder that she had no wish to be touched. “Lead the way, Rakoczy.”

  They stopped to reverence the High Altar and continued on through the incense-scented gloom, looking for the chapel of Santa Viviana, neither speaking. At last, among a line of chapels, they found a grated door standing open, and the glow of many candles from within. A fresco on the wall
showed a young woman holding an olive branch in one hand and a cross in the other. Benches were set out in an octagon before the altar; Pope Leo occupied the center bench all by himself; Bishops and Cardinal Archbishops flanked him, and behind them stood the witnesses, including Sorra Celinde, who kept her gaze directed at Bishop Iso.

  Rakoczy paused in the door to reverence the august gathering within. He stood aside and allowed Gynethe Mehaut to enter the chapel; she was trembling, but she was able to maintain her composure as she reverenced the Bishops and Cardinal Archbishops, then knelt to the Pope, remaining on her knees after she had kissed the Fisherman’s Ring.

  “You may leave us,” said Pope Leo, dismissing Rakoczy with a motion of his hand. The scars on his face were still faintly pink and distorted his speech a little.

  “Alas, Holiness, I fear I must refuse,” Rakoczy said as respectfully as he could. “The Emperor has made me Gynethe Mehaut’s escort: I have been with her from the Royal Residence at Attigny to Roma, and until you have decided her fate, I am bound to stay with her or fail in my duty to Great Karl.”

  The Cardinal Archbishops began to mutter among themselves, and one of them spat to show his opinion of the situation. The Frankish Bishops seemed confused, for they had no wish to abrogate the Emperor’s commands. They were on the verge of serious debate when the venerable Roman aristocrat Cardinal Archbishop Ittalus spoke up. “This foreigner is right. If he is her escort mandated to accompany the White Woman by the Emperor, he is obliged to remain.” This silenced all objection, for Cardinal Archbishop Ittalus was known to be more knowledgeable on matters of vassalage and fealty than any other Churchman in Roma.

  Pope Leo made a nod of concession and summoned a slave with a small, brass bell. “The Magnatus must sit. Find him a chair.” The slave hurried to obey, returning shortly with an old-fashioned Roman chair that he placed apart from the others. Once he was gone, the Pope continued. “We are here today on the matter of the woman, Gynethe Mehaut, to determine if she bears a sign of Godly favor or is a harbinger of the Anti-Christ All of us are enjoined to listen to all she says, and to contemplate carefully what the witnesses say. While we engage in this task, we will observe no Hours, nor will we take food or water; our devotion to the right must be complete or we will not deserve this task God has set for us. All our questions and testimony must conclude by sunset; we will then all celebrate Vespers and prepare for an evening of meditation and prayer. You, White Woman”—he addressed her directly for the first time—“remove your veil.”

  Very slowly Gynethe Mehaut complied, handing the lovely silk to Rakoczy as she listened to the whispers and oaths that accompanied her exposure. She found that she was remembering her days at Santa Albegunda, and for a moment she missed the convent with an intensity that bordered on despair.

  “Now remove the bandages from your hands,” Pope Leo ordered her.

  She obeyed, carefully rolling the linen strips so that she could use them again. When both her palms were bare, she extended her hands toward the Pontiff. The puncture wounds were easily seen in the candlelight; they were bleeding sluggishly today, so it took a short while for a drop of blood to fall to the stone floor.

  This time the whispers were alarmed, even frightened. Cardinal Archbishop Paulinus Evitus made a sign of protection; Bishop Gondebaud covered his eyes and turned away.

  “How come you by those wounds, White Woman?” Pope Leo demanded, obviously shaken by what he had seen.

  “I cannot say,” Gynethe Mehaut answered softly.

  “What do you do to get them?” Cardinal Archbishop lovinus asked, repelled and fascinated at once.

  “I cannot say,” Gynethe Mehaut repeated.

  “But you must do something,” the Pope exclaimed. “Wounds like that do not simply appear.”

  “These do,” said Gynethe Mehaut; she sounded tired already.

  “How?” Cardinal Archbishop Ittalus asked, his tone carefully neutral.

  “I don’t know, Sublime.” She pressed her lips together.

  “Actually, I am properly called Primore,” Cardinal Archbishop Ittalus said.

  “I don’t know, Primore; I wish I did,” Gynethe Mehaut corrected herself. “It began when I was young. No one knew what the cause was. I never sought them. I did what I could to be rid of them. My parents, too, wanted them gone: they did all they knew to heal the wounds, but, as you see, nothing could make them close.” She had a brief, vivid recollection of some of the treatments, and her stomach tightened.

  “Were the wounds not cauterized with hot irons?” asked Cardinal Archbishop Rufinus Colonnus.

  “Four times,” said Gynethe Mehaut, feeling a bit faint; she reminded herself that the inquiry was just beginning and that she had much more to deal with before the day was over.

  “And still your hands bleed!” Bishop Didier marveled.

  “As you see,” said Gynethe Mehaut, wishing she could lower her hands, but not daring to.

  “Does it never stop?” Cardinal Archbishop Iovinus inquired, doing his best to keep the perturbation out of his voice.

  “Not that I have been aware of,” said Gynethe Mehaut.

  “Have you repented your sins?” Cardinal Archbishop Rufinus Colonnus asked her, his temper barely in check. “How dare you have such wounds.”

  “Exactly what I have maintained from my first sight of her,” said Bishop Iso, springing to his feet. “She is the embodiment of the Anti-Christ! Look at her!”

  “Sit down, Sublime Iso,” said Pope Leo, and waited until he was obeyed. “You may tell us what you saw and how you regarded it when you are called to bear witness. Until then, keep your peace.”

  “Yes, Holiness,” he said with the appearance of contrition, although his eyes shone with anger.

  Pope Leo saw Bishop Iso’s distress. “My son in Christ,” he said placatingly, “learn to bear all with Patience, which is a Cardinal Virtue. Address your prayers to that end.”

  “I will,” said Bishop Iso. “But is it not incumbent upon me, as a Christian, to denounce Satan’s Work wherever I see it?”

  “It is, and you shall, but in the right time,” said Pope Leo. He rubbed his jaw along the jagged scar, then went on. “You have already demonstrated your position, and I am well-aware of it. You needn’t worry that I will lose sight of all you have told me.” He made a sign for protection. “May God keep us from harm.”

  “Amen,” said everyone in the chapel.

  The Pope gave his attention to Gynethe Mehaut again. “You have done penance for these … these injuries, haven’t you?”

  “And my skin, and my eyes,” said Gynethe Mehaut tonelessly.

  “Yet you are still pale as whey,” Pope Leo said, shaking his head. “How is it God could so afflict you, were it not that you have done some wrong deserving of punishment?”

  “I don’t know, Holiness, nor do I know why.” She lowered her head and her hands. “If I have done anything against God’s Law, I cannot think what it could be. I have been guided by the Church since I was a child, and all I have done has been scrutinized.”

  Watching this, Rakoczy wanted to explain to the Churchmen that occasionally infants came into the world in this way, that it was not a failure of faith, but an accident of birth; he held his tongue, for this argument would mean nothing to the clerics, and might serve to put Gynethe Mehaut in more danger than she already was. He hoped he would be given the opportunity to speak on her behalf, but knew better than to expect such a concession, even from Pope Leo, who was so much beholden to Karl-lo-Magne that he might as well be one of the Emperor’s vassals. He put his hands on his knees and listened closely to all that was going on.

  “—because of your parents?” Bishop Didier was asking.

  “How could they have done this? What act of theirs would visit itself upon my flesh in this way?” Gynethe Mehaut asked. “It was a dreadful burden for them, heavier than most have to bear. My father sometimes said he had been cursed and I was proof of it.”

  “Some beasts ha
ve red eyes. If your mother had congress with such an animal, one with a white coat, surely you might bear the mark of it,” said Bishop Gondebaud.

  “My mother would not do such a despicable act,” said Gynethe Mehaut with a little heat in her words. “If she had, she would have Confessed and they would have drowned her for it, and I would never have been born.”

  “Your father, then? Could he have been possessed by a demon when you were conceived, or a demon taken his form planted you in your mother’s womb?” Bishop Gondebaud pursued.

  “I cannot say if a demon possessed my father,” Gynethe Mehaut said. “But he said that God had marked me to some purpose, and that I must bear it or bring more shame upon my family.”

  “A wise man, no doubt, and one who may have enemies capable of blighting his child before birth,” said Pope Leo. “Yet that may be the knowledge of experience, of one who has caused ill to others and has been made, through this woman, to pay the price. What might he have done that would bring this upon his child?”