The Psalter (40 page)

“Do you know me so little? I don’t care what Rome says about me, good or bad. Baraldus works with the farmers when he isn’t spinning tales in the inns. Ahmad’s days are full of contracts, finance, and endless ledgers. Even your son is occupied organizing the suppliers, but what do I do? I’m idle.”

Avraham pondered his guest for a long moment. “You’re right. I have not seen you, but I’m not quite as blind as you might think.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s easy enough to see if one looks beyond how we wish others to view us.”

Johanna’s jaw dropped until she caught herself.

The Rosh Yeshiva smiled serenely, “You would fill the days to overflowing so your mind has little time to dwell on the hole in your heart.”

“It’s only that you all contribute and I do nothing.”

“You’re the cardinal of the Apostolic farms. You don’t toil in the fields and workshops like the others. You hold a position of authority, to make sure all do their jobs well, and you’ve done it better than anyone might have fathomed. Yet your idleness is not what you lament. Your melancholy is that you miss Anastasius.”

Johanna fidgeted in her seat. “Of course I do. He’s my dearest friend and I worry for his safety.”

The rabbi leaned back in his chair and sighed, “Who would not in your place?”

“I need his help and advice. I’m lost without him.”

“Do you need him to help you with your idleness?”

Johanna realized her misstep and searched for an answer.

“I’m sorry, my words were thoughtless,” Avraham said. “Who would not long to hold their dearest friend once again and listen to his soft voice and gentle counsel? Do I not miss you when you’ve been too long at your labors?” The Rosh Yeshiva leaned forward at the corner of the table, bringing his grizzled face close to the priest’s. “Still, there’s no despair like the longing one feels when they’ve lost their wife.”

Johanna peered into the old man’s eyes.

“When my beloved wife died, I believed my world had come to an end; indeed, part of it had. I knew I would never again enjoy the affection and comfort of a woman. My love was gone to me until my time comes to join her.”

Tears filled Johanna’s eyes and flowed down her rosy cheeks. She flung herself into Avraham’s open arms, weeping.

“Now, now daughter. Put your faith in God and pray that he will protect your love and guide him once again to you. I’ll say a prayer in the synagogue that He Who Cannot Be Named hears our plea. I’m certain He will.”

Johanna sobbed and sniffed, trying to control her crying. “How long have you known?”

“Since the day we met. I’m bewildered you didn’t spot it in this old man’s eyes.”

37
Peripleumonia

The English school’s Headmaster was beside himself with joy that such a famous cardinal and distinguished scholar would offer his services as a mere teacher at the humble
schola anglorum
, the English guild’s university in the Borgo. Avraham had counseled Johanna to fill her days helping her own people. “There can be no greater gift than education,” he had said, “and you possess a surfeit. I’ve spent my life educating my Jewish brethren about the Torah and its lessons for our lives and souls. No occupation could be nobler than a teacher. Do your scriptures not call Jesus,
Teacher
? Let Him be your example.”

Thus did Johanna leave
primicerius
Baraldus in charge of the apostolic farm colonies assisted by Ahmad and Elchanan. They were the real force behind the success of the farms anyway, she told herself.

“But surely you should be Master of the
Trivium
or
Quadrivium
departments,” the school’s Headmaster said.

“No,” Johanna replied. “I wish only to be a humble teacher. I’m well qualified to teach grammar and logic, and perhaps even geometry so my students can measure the length and breadth of their lands and daily work.”

Rome’s academic institutions, like all those in the Western World, were based on Aristotle’s model of education: the
Trivium
, which included grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the
Quadrivium’s
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Schools educated children of the nobility or wealthy merchants to prepare them for a life administering their family’s lands or business, or a career in law or even the church. Although the English school taught mainly their own people, they educated lesser nobles and less prominent merchants as well. There were also a few students from wealthier families who wanted to be immersed in a foreign language like Frankish or English.

However, Johanna had a new idea. She believed that knowledge was power. Farmers and ordinary people might free themselves from mind-numbing labor or indenture to the church or nobility if only they could be educated.

“If their minds can be freed from ignorance,” she told the Headmaster, “then they might devise a way to emancipate themselves from their servitude.”

“Education is expensive. Who will pay for it? We’re not a charitable institution, and while our classes have not the quality of universities in Rome, they still cost money.”

“I will,” Johanna said.

“You? Has a priest such a fortune that he can compensate us for our costs?”

“For each man that labors on the farms or on Leo’s wall or the restoration of the cathedrals, the church will pay for a child, boy or girl, to be educated here.”

“Girls, in the
schola anglorum
? Unheard of!”

“All or nothing, that’s my offer. You can either become the largest, most profitable university in Rome, with girl students, or I shall find somewhere else to teach. What say you?”

Johanna began her newest career as a teacher the following week, but, never having taught, she didn’t know where to begin. Frazzled, she fled as usual to Avraham, who patiently instructed her in the rudiments of lesson plans, starting from the simplest ideas and building on them to more complicated ones. He assured her that within a month, it would become routine but at the end of two long and frustrating weeks, her head swam. She returned to the Borgo and fell into bed without eating the supper Ahmad had prepared and was sound asleep before Vespers.

She tossed and turned, locked in a dreadful nightmare where she stood in front of her class stark naked as students laughed and mocked her. Worse, her womanhood was stripped bare, and she tried to cover herself with her hands. Schoolboys pointed and snickered while the girls hung their heads in shame. The boys yanked at the girls’ hair and lifted their frocks to humiliate them.

One part of her heard the bolt on the door slide and the other did not, and she was scarcely aware that her covers were pulled back and a man had slipped onto the pallet beside her. It was only when her body began to warm that she jerked awake. A hand covered her mouth. “Anastasius!” she cried in surprise and delight, then threw her arms around her sorely missed love, showering his face with kisses.

“I couldn’t stay away any longer,” he whispered, kissing the nape of her neck and holding her in his large hands.

“Did anyone see you?”

“The streets are empty except for a few snoring drunks.”

Their lips met as they grasped and caressed, smelling one another’s musky sweetness, trying to crawl into each other’s skins, to cleave together physically just as their hearts were already joined. Anastasius brushed back Johanna’s short, cropped hair as she clung to him, kissing his lips and finally pulling her fugitive love upon her. They feasted upon one another, giving their passion free rein, worshiping and adoring until satisfied unto exhaustion. Then they fell into a deep slumber, side by side, wrapped safe and contented in the tenderness of each other’s arms.

Johanna coughed and choked, awakening to an acrid stench that strangled her. Her eyes stung, and she was blinded by tears. Shoving herself off the pallet, she felt for the clay lamp on her bed stand, knocking it over, and crawled on hands and knees to search for it. The air was cleaner near the floorboards, and her head cleared a bit. The thatched roof sparked and sparkled like fiery stars. Smoke filled the room, and the ceiling burst into flames.

“Anastasius, wake up!” Johanna shook and shook, but couldn’t rouse him so she dragged him off the pallet to the ground and slapped his face, to no avail. She pressed on his chest over and over. Finally, he spat and coughed, then retched. They crawled to the door, keeping their noses close to the ground, but thick smoke descended like a fog and they choked and heaved. Holding his breath Anastasius pulled the bolt and shoved, but the door wouldn’t budge. He drove his shoulder into the wooden planks with all his might, but it moved scarcely an inch. Starved for oxygen, he slumped over.

Johanna pushed on the door from the floor, but it would open only a crack, and flames crept in when she did, licking at her hands. “Help us,” she croaked, gasping for air while holding her palm to her nose. Her head spun and her eyes rolled as she heard a crashing from outside. She could barely utter a whisper and lay down, clasping Anastasius’s hand, willing herself to remain conscious.

Outside, Baraldus grabbed burning tables and beams piled in front of the entrance, mindless of his blackened hands. He lifted them effortlessly and heaved them aside like so many sticks. “Master, master,” he cried. “Hold on, I’m coming.” Grabbing the last burning timber wedged against the entry, he hoisted it on his shoulder, stumbling away as it burned into his robe and singed his ear and tonsured hair.

Ahmad flung open the door. Johanna lay naked on the floor. He was taken aback for the briefest of moments, then stripped his cloak and wrapped it around her. Lifting her, he fled the smoke filled room. “Anastasius,” she whimpered. “Anastasius.”

Baraldus dropped the heavy timber and stormed into the building as flames clambered up walls, devouring beams and lapping at the joists. Lifting the excommunicated cardinal, he flung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and lumbered out as the burning roof crashed to the ground.

A gale from the coast blew hard on Rome, warming as it passed over land. Gusts rushed up Vatican Hill and flowed down into the Borgo, fanning the flames like a bellows. Sparks and smoldering straw from thatched roofs filled the sky, settling on other roofs and igniting them. Extreme heat from burning buildings ignited the structures next to them, and within minutes, the Borgo was aflame.

“We must get across the Tiber or we’ll be roasted alive,” Baraldus shouted to Ahmad. But streets and alleys were filled with a frantic mob carrying small bundles or children in their arms, packed together, shoving and grasping, inching toward the river and the safety of Rome. Burning debris rained down upon them. Horses bolted wild-eyed, crashing the carts they pulled into buildings and galloping through the throng. Freed cattle, smelling the water yet having no path to escape, gored and trampled the fallen. Sheep and lambs bleated in terror, their frightened cries adding to the cacophony of the horror stricken.

“No,” Ahmad said. “It’s folly to fight a panicked herd. The wind blows from the west so let’s head south to the Trastevere.”

Anastasius coughed nonstop but walked under his own power as they shoved their way across the powerful torrent of frenzied people. Johanna begged to be let down between hacking and gasps for air and Baraldus pleaded to carry her, but Ahmad would have none of it. He carried her in his arms, holding his cloak around her. Stout Baraldus led the group, plowing his way like a rolling boulder into one river of souls after another. He shouldered and pushed people aside, creating a brief space that slammed shut the moment they bowled through. The river of humanity flowed slower the further south they drew, and rivulets of people split off from the surge, scattering into side streets. At long last, they made their way to the narrow alleys of the Trastevere.

The Rosh Yeshiva stood outside his home with his son as Jews filled the streets, watching flames from the Borgo burn toward the Tiber. Avraham strained his eyes, then recognized the singed, soot-stained quartet as they rounded the corner. He rushed forward with Elchanan at his side. “Get to my house,” he shouted and led them to his door.

Elchanan fetched the doctor, who ordered draughts of wine into which he mixed a brownish powder. “
Parthenium
,” he said. “You call it feverfew. It’ll dull the pain and open the airways.” Then he tossed hot stones on the fire. “We must steam the smoke from your lungs, or you’ll get an infection.” Avraham whispered something into the doctor’s ear, and the physician arched an eyebrow adding, “I’ll put you in different rooms so I can attend you separately.” Ahmad’s normally inscrutable face heaved a sigh of relief.

Avraham put Anastasius in a pantry and Ahmad carried Johannes to a closet. The doctor used tongs to set searing stones on large, earthenware platters in each room. Towels and a bowl of cool water were brought, and he showed them how to ladle a bit of liquid on the rock to make steam. “You must breathe in the vapor. It won’t be easy—inhale and spit. Now strip.”

In the kitchen, Baraldus was bare to the waist and winced as the doctor applied cold compresses to his scorched and blistered hands. Yet as each wave of pain descended, he clenched his square, Lombard jaw. “I’ll give you something for your discomfort, but you’ll suffer for awhile. How did you get such burns? Were you playing with the fire?”

The slave Ahmad smoothed the back of Baldurus’s singed, tonsured hair. “If not for the priest, who has the heart of the greatest warrior I have ever known, the others wouldn’t be here.”

A single tear escaped the corner of the Lombard’s eye, but he sniffed and caught the rest.

Avraham led Ahmad into his study while the doctor attended Baraldus. “So you know?”

“I know.”

“You were right to come here.”

“I knew not where else to go,” the onetime prince said.

Benedict, the Bishop of Albano, stood alone on Rome’s side of the Tiber, a smug look on his face as stampeding refugees poured over the Sant’Angelo Bridge. Pope Leo arrived with the
patriarchum’s
cardinals in attendance. He braced himself in the superheated wind as fire raced toward the river from the opposite shore. “Those poor souls,” he lamented as the newly homeless sought refuge.