THERE ARE REMEDIES. The market wives of Mainz would know. Alerted by a tilt of the head towards the belly, a veiled remark about stopped blood, any one of them would whisper the name of the wise woman who might help, or offer the recipe for a brew to restore her to rights.
She has read such recipes in medical texts over the years. All recorded, likely, by men not as expert as they believed. She remembers, vaguely, a potion of parsley, hartwort, rue and celery seeds. Lovage and thyme in there as well, perhaps. Artemisia has a reputation; it’s said you will always find a supplier within hark of a whorehouse. But how it is to be ingested or applied she does not know.
What good is knowing, anyway? The Pope cannot simply walk to the market and buy such provisions, nor request them from the cooks lest they are wise to the purpose. Certainly she cannot ask the physicians. She is all powerful yet helpless as a newborn lamb.
There are surely many in this palace of men who have put women in this condition and expected the evidence to be removed, but that is no help. Even if she could confide (and she cannot, of course, she cannot), not one among them would have lifted a finger to make the removal happen nor given a single moment’s thought to how it might be so. She has become, in thought and friendship and knowledge, one of these men. Knowing such things are done by women, but with no clue as to how.
She sends a message to Randulf urging his immediate return for reasons that will be explained in person. The request itself as well as the order to use the relay network reserved for missives to kings and archbishops causes a palace full of raised eyebrows and whispers. There is nothing to be done about that. Without his assistance, and soon, there is little hope.
For nine days it rains and the Tiber swells and swells. The Romans on her staff insist the river can take weeks more of this. On the tenth day the banks burst. Boats, bridges and half the houses of Campus Martius are drowned on impact. By the twelfth day the water has reached the doors of Santa Maria in Via Lata—the very place blessed St Paul was held during his persecution—and there is great fear that the ancient stone of the crypts may not hold. Already lesser structures have been inundated, and corpses of every vintage float through the streets.
I have lived this before, she thinks. The rain doesn’t stop, the streets become part of the river, the saved and damned alike are exhumed. The hungry gather outside the gates in hope while the good Christians inside pray for relief instead of providing it. Water bogs every home and hall, turns every ordinary scratch into a murderous pestilence.
There is a saint who laid hands on a repentant pregnant nun and the child dissolved as if it had never been. Healed, the vita said. The pregnancy was healed. It is absurd but miracles always are. She cannot remember the name of the saint. Never mind; who needs intercession when you have a direct line to God? What do you say, Lord? Will you heal your pope of this affliction? Dissolve the issue without harm?
A surge of warmth, a rush of love. Her hands go to her belly, feel the flutter, the wonder. Why should you want this gone, God is saying, when it is the very thing that has brought us back into communion?
The messenger returns with a reply from Fulda. Brother Randulf remains abroad on his work for the abbey, having overwintered in Hibernia. The Holy Father’s message will of course be forwarded to him in haste when they receive word of his return to the Continent.
It is the first of March, winter a full month behind them in Rome, but in those far-off northern islands it may linger far longer.
All that night she is tormented by visions of that poor girl birthing to death in Mainz, of her own mother whose dying screams haunted the English Priest until the end of his life.
In the morning light she reminds herself that not all births end in death. Perhaps not even most.
Still, it is hard to believe this one won’t.
The locust swarm has moved south, destroying any hope of grain enough to feed Rome let alone export to the suffering northerners. Worse! Witnesses report seeing clouds of insects descend on small children, smother them in an instant, strip the flesh off their bones. In the churches, parents kneel in grief only to have the locusts invade, suck the moisture from their weeping eyes before devouring the holy bread and sacred candles. In northern Italy sturdy roofs cave in under the weight of the fat insatiable creatures.
‘Holy Father, we know you do not wish to hear of omens,’ Prudentius says, a flock of stern-faced cardinals behind him, ‘but we have consulted all the histories and never have there been signs such as these.’
She nods, resists the impulse to touch her belly. Any day now the crucifix around her throat will burst into flames. At any moment, eucharist wine will turn to mud in her mouth.
News from Constantinople that Michael, all of sixteen years old, has deposed his own mother. Theodora has put up no resistance, retiring quietly to a convent. Lucky Theodora, she thinks, to have experienced the heights of glory and still be allowed to end your life reading and drinking watered wine with other happily powerless crones.
Leave leave leave beat the wings in her womb. She scours the Liber Pontificalis for precedent.
Beginning with St Peter, for three centuries every pope ended in martyrdom. Since then there has been a single nominal renunciation, six hundred years ago. Nominal because Pontianus was a prisoner of the anti-Christian emperor at the time and beaten to death soon after. Half a century on, Marcellinus was said to have renounced not the throne but God himself while a captive of Diocletian. Happily for his soul, he renounced the renunciation and he, too, was swiftly put to death.
You would be martyred for this, Randulf said.
In the midst of a tedious, hours-long discussion about the repair of flood-damaged churches she is hit with an impulse so powerful it can only be a direction from God.
‘I must go on retreat,’ she says to her cardinals. ‘An extended time of silent prayer and contemplation. Ostia or Monte Cassino, perhaps. Somewhere I will be undisturbed, able to commune more deeply with God. To learn what is meant by these omens. To hear what God is trying to tell us, what He wants us to do.’
There is a long silence during which the hummingbird flutters and pecks with fervour and it is hard to believe that the gathered men cannot sense the new soul among them.
Prudentius is the first to speak, says, ‘Holy Father, the power of your prayer is well-known and a profound gift to us all. I fear, alas, that your absence at this difficult time will cause panic among the people. They will consider it a bad omen in itself to have the See vacant.’
‘I will explain it to them,’ she says. ‘A public address in the square to let them know their father is not abandoning them but entering into spiritual battle for their protection.’
‘Holy Father, forgive me,’ says Nicholas, the oldest amongst her cardinals, a survivor of the terrors of 846. ‘Anastasius lurks still. He pretends loyalty but only because you are strong and beloved by the people. If you leave Rome at a time of such unrest he will take his chance, gather allies, stir dissent.’
Let him, she thinks. Let him take the throne, the Lateran, the city. He is clever and charismatic, gifted in languages and better educated than any man in this room. A fine choice for pope, apart from the treason and excommunication.
‘Your arguments are sound,’ she tells the men. ‘I am bound to follow God, however, and His will is clear. He would have me retreat, to pray and meditate at length as I did in Athens. And so I must.’
Prudentius allows himself a sigh and she allows it to pass without comment.
‘What He wills, will be, Holy Father,’ says Prudentius. ‘I will instruct the vicedominus to begin preparations, send envoys to ascertain which of our houses in the country has sufficient staff to assure your comfort. The primicerius will need to know, of course. The archpriest.’
‘The superista,’ Nicholas adds. ‘I will meet with him at once. We will need extra guards in the palace once it is known the throne is vacant. As well as a retinue of the best men to accompany you, Holy Father, of course.’
She almost laughs. Had she thought they would let her pack a satchel and walk into the wilderness alone? That she would be left unobserved long enough to birth her child? And then what? She would wander back to the Lateran with some newborn foundling in her arms?
No. She had not thought that, not really. She had only thought—felt—retreat retreat retreat and the urgency of it had let her think it was of God. She sees now that it is impossible and therefore cannot be divine. As Prudentius said, What He wills, will be.
Before anyone can begin preparations she announces the plan is cancelled. Consternation over this uncharacteristic indecisiveness is outweighed by relief that the Holy Father will remain in his rightful place.
Mid-April and still no word from Randulf. Her body is a wonder. The boar’s marks grow with her, just as in her sprouting youth. The dense, dark scarring stretches into pale rivers across her rounding belly. The change in her shape is not yet evident when she is in cassock, robe and cape but it can only be a matter of weeks.
There is no choice to make; God has made it for her, as of course He always does whether she is humble enough to admit it or not. What she must make is a plan. It will not be a safe or sure one, but that, too, is beyond her control.
She studies the liturgical calendar and the Ordines Romani. Less than two weeks hence is the Rogation Litany, which calls for a procession extravagant enough to put the pagan emperors to shame. There will be singing and drums to scare off the devil, reliquaries paraded before the crowds, painted icons and statues held aloft. She will dress, beneath her violet ceremonial robes, in her simplest white alb, which is similar enough to that of a priest to fool a layman. When the rituals and ceremonials are complete she will insist on walking unprotected among the people. She will shower the crowd with every drop of her famed charisma, preach with the fervour and passion for which she became known in her earliest days in this city. She will create a frenzy of worship as only she can, put a thousand faithful Romans between her and the Pope’s entourage. And in its midst, somehow—God willing, God willing—she will discard her robes, become a simple parish priest. She will do what she should have done on the day of her election. She will run.