Pope Joan Read Online Free PDF Page B

this time he knew she meant it.
    He smiled at her. She noticed dark circles around his eyes; he looked tired and drawn.
    “Are you feeling well?” she asked with concern.
    “Of course!” he said, just a shade too heartily. “Let’s begin the lesson, shall we?”
    But he was restless and distracted. Uncharacteristically, he failed to catch her up when she made a careless error.
    “Is there anything wrong?” Joan asked.
    “No, no. I am a little tired, that is all.”
    “Shall we stop, then? I don’t mind. We can go on tomorrow.”
    “No, I am sorry. My mind wandered, that’s all. Let’s see, where were we? Ah yes. Read the last passage again, and this time be careful of the verb:
videat, not videt.
”
    T HE next day Matthew woke complaining of a headache and a sore throat. Gudrun brought him a hot posset of borage and honey.
    “You must stay in bed for the rest of the day,” she said. “Old Mistress Wigbod’s boy has the spring flux; it may be that you are coming down with it.”
    Matthew laughed and said it was nothing of the kind. He worked several hours at his studies, then insisted on going outside to help John prune the vines.
    The next morning he had a fever, and difficulty swallowing. Even the canon could see that he looked really ill.
    “You are excused from your studies today,” he told Matthew. This was an unheard-of dispensation.
    They sent to the monastery of Lorsch for help, and in two days’ time the infirmarian came and examined Matthew, shaking his head gravely and muttering under his breath. For the first time Joan realized that her brother’s condition might be serious. The idea was terrifying. The monk bled Matthew profusely and exhausted his entire repertoire of prayer and holy talismans, but by the Feast of St. Severinus, Matthew’s condition was critical. He lay in a feverish stupor, shaken by fits of coughing so violent that Joan covered her ears to try to shut them out.
    Throughout the day and into the night the family kept vigil. Joan knelt beside her mother on the beaten earth floor. She was frightenedby the alteration in Matthew’s appearance. The skin on his face was stretched taut, distorting his familiar features into a horrible mask. Beneath his feverish flush was an ominous undertone of gray.
    Above them, in the dark, the canon’s voice droned into the night, reciting prayers for his son’s deliverance.
“Domine Sancte, Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus, qui fragilitatem conditionis nostrae infusa virtutis tuae dignatione confirmas …”
Joan nodded drowsily.
    “No!”
    Joan wakened suddenly to her mother’s wailing cry.
    “He is gone! Matthew, my son!”
    Joan looked at the bed. Nothing appeared to have changed. Matthew lay motionless as before. Then she noticed his skin had lost its feverish flush; he was entirely gray, the color of stone.
    She took his hand. It was flaccid, heavy, though not so hot as before. She held it tightly, pressing it to her cheek.
Please don’t be dead, Matthew.
Dead meant that he would never again sleep beside her and John in the big bed; she would never again see him hunched over the pine table, brow furrowed in concentration as he labored at his studies, never again sit beside him while his finger moved across the pages of the Bible, pointing out words for her to read.
Please don’t be dead.
    A FTER a while, they sent her away so her mother and the village women could wash Matthew’s body and prepare it for burial. When they were done, Joan was allowed to approach to pay her final respects. But for the unnatural grayness of his skin, he looked to be merely sleeping. If she touched him, she imagined, he would wake, his eyes would open and gaze upon her again with teasing affection. She kissed his cheek, as her mother instructed her. It was cold and oddly unresistant, like the skin of the dead rabbit Joan had fetched from the cooling shed only last week. She drew back quickly.
    Matthew was gone.
    There would be no more lessons now.
    S HE