Read Online Joanna by Roberta Gellis - Free Book Online

served as messenger to my mother for years.”
    “No, IYes, I do. What of him?”
    “He died some weeks ago, but when he was very ill his old wife came weeping to me that the priest would not give   him the viaticum. Poor old man to be burdened with such fear at the end of his life.”
    “God have mercy on him,” Geoffrey murmured. “That is a bitter death for a loyal servant and a good man.”
    “Oh, he died in peace,” Joanna said, her full lips thinned to a hard line. “I sent Father Francis down to him and he gave him good comfort. I took my whip to that priest also, and I tied him to my mare’s tail and dragged him off the demesne. There is a young priest now who sees his duty to me and to the pope more clearly.”
    Geoffrey sat upright and stared at his betrothed. “You took your whip to the priest and drove him off? But”
    “But what?” Joanna asked hotly. “Can he challenge
me
before the bishop of Winchester? Will Peter des Roches, who sits at supper with the excommunicated king, deny that there is a reasonable limit to obedience to the pope? I do not ask the priest to open the church or to say daily mass. What sins grow upon us for lack of such things we can atone for in the future. For the dying, there is no future. A man must not be damned for eternity by the failure of a rite because of a priest’s whim. Cedric’s sins were little sinsif he had any. Why should he be denied heaven and burn eternally in hell because of a quarrel between the king and the pope that had nothing to do with him?”
    “I do not know,” Geoffrey replied heavily. “Where is he buried?”
    “Oh, mother settled that when the interdict was first announced. We gave a field right beside the churchyard to the church. All our people are buried there, and Father Francis assured them that as soon as the interdict was lifted he would consecrate the field.”
    “I hope he lives so long,” Geoffrey remarked drily.
    Joanna looked seriously at him. “Tell me what this quarrel is about, Geoffrey. Mother and Ian never speak of it. They never speak of the king at all, unless it is very necessary, and I do not like to ask becausebecause I can see the fear in mama’s eyes when Ian talks of these matters. She fears for him.”   “I, too. It is well he went to Pembroke in Ireland. The quarrel between the king and the pope is simple enough. There was a disputed election for archbishop of Canterbury. The monks desired the elevation of their subprior, Reginald; the king desired his friend John Grey, bishop of Norwich as archbishop.”
    “That toad? Peter of Winchester is loyal to the king, but Norwich is”
    “Your mother would say ‘an ass licker,’ ” Geoffrey remarked innocently.
    Joanna’s eyes laughed at him while her face took on a look of great gravity. “A married dame’s ways and language are not fitting for an innocent maiden,” she cooed.
    The expression was so enchanting that Geoffrey’s hand tightened on his lute and the strings twanged. “There was also some meddling by the bishops suffragan to Canterbury,” he went on hastily, “and the outcome was that the pope appointed as archbishop an Englishman, then in Rome, a man called Stephen Langton. He is, I understand, a wise, learned, and good man. The monks of Canterbury were pleased; the suffragan bishops were also pleased; the king, however, was furious.”
    “I do not much love the king,” Joanna put in, “and certainly I would not wish to see John Grey as archbishop, butbut the king is not all wrong in this. It is his right to be consulted on so high an appointment, and his authority”
    Geoffrey shrugged. “That is true enough, but in a choice among evils I suppose I had rather have the pope’s power a little strengthened and Langton as archbishop than have John’s authority perfect and give control of the Church, through Grey, into the king’s hands. I do not know. Ian says that Langton is a great man and will not be merely a creature of the papacy.