The Scribe

by Garrido, Antonio

  “Come on, you son of a bitch, move!” he cried.

  Suddenly there was a cracking noise and the beam lifted, creating a space the width of a few fingers. Gorgias breathed in a mouthful of smoke, heaved once more and the beam moved again, now there was a palm’s width of space between the boy and the beam.

  “Now, Johan! Get out of there!”

  The youngster rolled to one side, just as Gorgias’s strength left him and the beam went crashing to the floor. Puffing with exertion, he lifted the enfeebled boy onto his shoulders and quickly fled the inferno.

  In the courtyard, where neighbors tended to the injured, Gorgias saw Zeno helping a man with blister-covered legs. The physician brandished a lancet that he used to burst the blisters at great speed before squashing them like grapes. He was assisted by a helper who, with panic in his eyes, was applying oil-based ointments with questionable skill.

  Gorgias headed toward him with Johan on his back. As he reached Zeno, he lay the boy down on the ground and asked the physician to help.

  But with one quick glance, Zeno turned toward Gorgias and shook his head. “Nothing to be done,” he said with resolve.

  Gorgias took Zeno by the arm and pulled him away from the boy. “You could at least make sure he can’t hear,” he whispered. “Tend to him at any rate, and let God decide his fate.”

  Zeno gave him a scornful smile. “You should look after yourself,” he said, pointing at his blood-soaked arm. “Let me have a look.”

  “First the boy.”

  Zeno grimaced and squatted beside the youngster. He called over a helper and snatched the ointment from his hands.

  “Pig fat—the best thing for burns,” he announced as he smeared the substance on Johan’s wounds. “The count will not be pleased if it is wasted on someone with no hope of recovery.”

  Gorgias did not respond. All he could think about was finding Theresa. “Are there more wounded?” he asked.

  “Of course. The most seriously injured have been taken to Saint Damian’s,” the surgeon answered without lifting his gaze.

  Gorgias crouched beside Johan and stroked his brow. The boy responded with a hint of a smile. “Pay no heed to this meatcutter,” he said. “You will get better, you’ll see.” And without giving him time to respond, he stood and set off toward the basilica in search of his daughter.

  Despite its squat appearance, Saint Damian’s Church was a solid, sturdy structure. It had been built from good masonry stone and Charlemagne himself had expressed his satisfaction when he learned that a building consecrated to God had been erected on foundations as robust as the faith of its subjects. Before going in, Gorgias crossed himself and prayed to God that Theresa was safe.

  As he walked through the door, he was struck by an unbearable stench of burned flesh. Without stopping he took one of the torches secured to the walls and continued toward the transept, using the torch to illuminate the little chapels that flanked the lateral naves. When he reached the presbytery, he noticed a row of straw sacks arranged behind the altar for the injured to lie on.

  Gorgias promptly recognized Hahn, a bright boy who would hang about the workshop waiting for someone to give him an odd job. Now his legs were scorched and he was wailing bitterly. Beside him lay a man who Gorgias was unable to identify since burns had transformed his face into a dark scab. By the central apse he spotted Nicodemus, one of Korne’s craftsmen, confessing his sins. Beyond the transept there was a stout man, his head in bandages with only his ears showing, and behind him, the prostrate figure of a naked boy. Gorgias noted that it was Caelius, youngest son of the master parchment-maker. The youngster’s body was lying there with half-open, unseeing eyes, his neck twisted round. He had undoubtedly died in terrible agony.

  Nobody there was able to tell him the whereabouts of his daughter.

  Gorgias went down on his knees and prayed to God for Theresa’s soul. As he prepared to continue his search, he felt his strength leave his body. A shiver ran through his insides, shaking him until his vision blurred. He tried to hold himself up against a column, but blackness overcame him. Swaying from side to side, he fell to the ground, unconscious.

  By midmorning, pealing bells roused Gorgias from his slumber. Slowly the hazy veil that had clouded his vision dissipated, until vague forms took clear shape again, as if they were being rinsed with clean water. He soon recognized his wife, Rutgarda, with a hint of a smile on her face that did little to disguise the fact she had been weeping. Farther back he could see Zeno, busy with some vials of tincture. Suddenly he felt a pain so intense that he feared they had cut off his arm, but when he lifted it, he saw that once again it had been carefully bandaged. Rutgarda sat him up, positioning a large cushion behind his back. Then Gorgias realized he was still in Saint Damian’s, resting against the wall of one of the little chapels.

  “And Theresa? Has she turned up?” he managed to ask.

  Rutgarda looked at him with sadness in her eyes. Tears welled up as she hid her face in her arms.

  “What has happened?” he cried. “For God’s sake, where is my daughter? Where is Theresa?”

  Gorgias looked around, but there was no response. Then, just a few steps away, he noticed a lifeless body, covered by a cloth.

  “Zeno found her in the workshop, huddled under a wall,” Rutgarda sobbed.

  “No! No! God almighty! It cannot be.”

  Gorgias clambered to his feet and ran to where the body lay. The shroud that covered it was marked with a grotesque white cross, a charred limb protruding from one end. Gorgias pulled back the cloth and his pupils dilated in horror. Flames had devoured her body, turning it into an unrecognizable mass of flesh and scorched skin. He did not want to believe his eyes, but his hopes were shattered when he recognized the remains of his daughter’s blue dress, the one she had adored so much.

  By early afternoon, folks started gathering outside of the locked doors of Saint Damian’s Church for the funerals. Children were laughing and chattering, playing at dodging the jostling grownups, while the more irreverent ones mocked the women by imitating their weeping. A group of old women wrapped in dark fur-lined cloaks congregated around Brynhildr, a widow purported to run a brothel who tended to know everything that happened in the city. She had piqued the interest of the other women by suggesting that it was the scribe’s daughter who had caused the fire and that it was not only the victims’ lives that the flames had claimed but also, perhaps most regrettably, some provisions that Korne had kept hidden in his storerooms.

  People were forming rings to discuss the number of wounded, dramatize the severity of their burns, and speculate on the cause of the fire. Now and then a woman would run from one place to another with a smile on her face, eager to share the latest bit of idle gossip. However, despite all the excitement, the rain was growing worse and there were not enough places in the street to take shelter. So the arrival of Wilfred and his team of dogs was welcomed with relief.

  As soon as the gate opened, the crowd rushed in to grab the best spots. As usual, the men positioned themselves nearest the altar, leaving the women and children at the back. The front row, reserved for the parents of the deceased, was occupied by the parchment-maker and his wife. Their two children who had been injured in the fire rested on sacks of straw beside them. The remains of the youngest, Caelius, lay wrapped in a linen burial cloth next to Theresa’s body. The dead lay on a table in front of the main altar. Gorgias and Rutgarda had declined Wilfred’s invitation to sit up front, instead sitting farther back to avoid any confrontation with Korne.

  The count waited in the doorway for the last of the parishioners to take their places. When the murmuring subsided, he cracked his whip and made the dogs pull him down a side nave to the transept. There, two tonsured acolytes helped him position himself behind the altar, covered the dogs’ heads with leather hoods, then freed the count from the belts that kept him secured to his wooden contraption. The subdeacon then removed the cope that Wilfred was wearing and replaced it with a tunic
a albata, which he tightened with a cingulum. Over it he placed an embroidered indumentum with a string of silver bells hanging from its lower edging, and finally he crowned him with an impressive damask headdress. Once the count was appropriately dressed, the ostiarius washed his hands in a lavabo and placed a modest funerary chalice beside the chrismatories that contained the holy anointing oils. Two candelabras shed their weak light on the shrouds of the deceased.

  A chubby cleric with an awkward gait approached the altar equipped with a psaltery. He calmly opened the volume. After wetting his index finger, he began the service, reciting the fourteen verses required by the Rule of Saint Benedict. He then intoned four psalms with antiphons, and chanted another eight, before offering a litany and the vigil of the dead. Then Wilfred took the floor, his mere presence ended the first murmurings. The count scrutinized the congregation as though he were looking for the perpetrator of the tragedy. It had been two years since he had worn the vestments of a priest.

  “Be grateful to God that in His boundless mercy He has taken pity on us today,” he decreed. “Accustomed to living in complacency, to abandoning yourselves to the pleasures of your desires, you forget with despicable ease the reason why you were put on this earth. Your pious appearances, your prayers and offerings, your clouded understanding. These things make you believe that what you possess is the result of your own efforts. You insist on desiring women who are not your own. You envy others’ good fortune. And you allow your ears to be pulled from your head if it means obtaining the wealth that you so covet. You think that life is a banquet that you have been invited to, a feast in which to savor the finest meats and liqueurs. But only a selfish brain, a weak soul oozing ignorance, is capable of forgetting that nobody but the Holy Father is the owner of our lives. And just as a father thrashes his children when they disobey—and just as a bailiff cuts the tongue from a liar or severs the limbs of a poacher—God corrects those who forget His commandments with the most terrible of punishments.”

  The church was filled with murmuring.

  “Hunger calls at our door,” he continued. “It seeps into our homes and devours our children. The rain floods our crops. Disease decimates our livestock. And still you complain? God sends us signs, and you lament His ways? Pray! Pray until your souls cough up the phlegm of your greed and hatred. Pray for the glory of the Lord. He has taken lives today, including Caelius and Theresa, freeing them from the sinful world that you have built. Now that their souls have left the corruption of the flesh, you tear your hair out and cry like women. Heed His warnings, I say, for they will not be the last. God is showing you the way. Forget your hardships and fear Him, for you will not find the feast that you crave in this world. Pray! Beg for forgiveness, and perhaps one day you will sit at His table, for those who renounce the Lord will be consumed in the abyss of damnation, until the end of time.”

  Wilfred went silent. Over the years he had come to understand that, whatever the cause, the best argument was eternal damnation. Nonetheless, Korne frowned and stepped forward.

  “If you will allow me,” he said, raising his voice. “Since my conversion, I have always thought myself a good Christian: I pray when I rise in the morning. I fast every Friday, and I follow the Lord’s commandments.” He looked around at those gathered as if seeking their approval. “Today God has taken my son Caelius: a healthy and robust boy, a good child. I accept the ways of the Lord, and I pray to Him for my son’s soul. I also pray for my own, for my family’s, and for those of almost everyone present.” He swallowed and turned to Gorgias. “But the culprit of this tragedy does not deserve a single prayer to ease her punishment. That girl should never have set foot in my workshop. If God uses death to teach us, perhaps we should use His teachings. And if it is God that judges the dead, let us be the ones to judge the living.”

  The church filled with shouts and cries: “Nihil est tam volucre quam maledictum—nihil facilius emiltitur, nihil citius excipitur, nihil latius dissipatur.”

  Wilfred interjected at the top of his voice. “Poor illitterati: Nothing moves quicker than slander. Nothing issues forth from us so easily. Nothing is accepted so readily. And nothing spreads farther across the face of the earth. I have already heard the rumors surrounding Theresa. You all say the same thing, yet none of you know the truth of what happened. Give up this falseness and ignominy—because there are no secrets that do not come out sooner or later. Nihil est opertum quod non revelavitur, et ocultum quod non scietur.”

  “Lies, you say?” responded Korne, waving his arms around. “I suffered the wrath of that daughter of Cain myself. Her hatred caused the fire that has destroyed my life. And I will say it here, in God’s house. My son Caelius would have borne witness to it had he not died because of that girl. Everyone who was there can attest to it and I swear before the Almighty that they will do so when Gorgias and his family face judgment.” And without waiting for Wilfred’s consent, he lifted Caelius’s body onto his shoulders and left the church with his family following.

  Gorgias waited until the rest of the congregation had left the building. He wanted to talk to Wilfred about Theresa’s burial and he knew that there would not be a better time. Wilfred’s words had come as a great surprise to him. Rutgarda had told him about the rumors that pointed to Theresa as the perpetrator of the fire, but the count’s warning seemed to suggest it was far from an established fact. While Rutgarda waited outside, discussing preparations for the burial with some neighbors, Gorgias approached Wilfred and was surprised to see him stroking the backs of his hounds. He wondered how a man without legs could handle those ferocious beasts with such ease.

  “I am sorry about your daughter,” said Wilfred, shaking his head. “In truth she was a good girl.”

  “She was all I had—my whole life.” His eyes filled with tears.

  “People think there is only one death, but that is not entirely true. Every time a child dies, the death is also felt by the parents, and this in turn gives rise to a painful irony: The emptier life is, the heavier it becomes. But your wife is still young. Perhaps you could yet…”

  Gorgias shook his head. They had tried many times, but God did not want to bless them with another child.

  “My only desire is that Theresa receives a burial worthy of the Christian that she always was. I know that what I ask of you may be difficult now, but I beg you to heed my request.”

  “If it is within my power.”

  “I have seen terrible things of late: unclothed bodies lying in ruts, corpses thrown in dung heaps, remains dug from graves by desperate starvelings. I don’t want these things happening to my daughter.”

  “Naturally. But I do not see how—”

  “The cloister cemetery. I know only clerics and important men rest in that garden, but I ask you as a special favor. You know how much I have done for you.”

  “And I for you, Gorgias, but what you ask of me is impossible. Not another soul will fit in the cloister, and the chapel tombs belong to the church.”

  “I know, but I was thinking about the area near the well. It’s unused.”

  “That place is almost pure rock.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I will dig.”

  “With that arm?”

  “I’ll find someone to help me.”

  “Regardless, I don’t think it’s a good idea. The people would not comprehend why a girl accused of murder should lie to rest in a cloister surrounded by saints.”

  “I do not understand. You defended her yourself just a few moments ago.”

  “True,” he said, shaking his head. “Nicodemus, one of the injured workers, asked for confession. He must have felt the presence of death and between confessing his sins he spoke of what happened. It would seem that events did not occur as Korne described them.”

  “What are you saying? That it was not Theresa who caused the fire?”

  “Let us say that it is not clear what happened. Nonetheless, even if Korne’s accusation was false, it would be very difficult to prove it
. Nicodemus spoke under the secrecy of confession, and we can assume that the rest of the workers will confirm Korne’s version. I do not think Nicodemus will survive much longer in his condition, and even if he does, no doubt he will take back what he said. Remember that he works for Korne.”

  “And Korne works for you.”

  “My good fellow, sometimes you underestimate Korne’s power. People do not respect him for his work. They fear his family. Many townsfolk have suffered his wrath. His sons are as quick to draw their swords as an adolescent is to unsheathe his member.”

  “But you know that my daughter could not have done it. You know Theresa. She was a kind and generous soul.” His tears began to flow.

  “And stubborn as a mule. Look, Gorgias: I hold you in great esteem, but I cannot grant what you ask. I am truly sorry.”

  Gorgias could understand Wilfred’s position, but he was not going to allow his daughter’s body to be defiled in some old dunghill.

  “Then you leave me no option, Your Grace. If I cannot bury my daughter in Würzburg, I will take her body to Aquis-Granum.”

  “To Aquis-Granum you say? You must be jesting. The passes are blocked, as are the relay posts. Even if you had a cart with oxen, the bandits would tear you to pieces.”

  “I tell you that I will do it if it costs me my life.”

  Gorgias held Wilfred’s gaze. He knew the count needed his services and would not permit anything to happen.

  Wilfred took his time to respond. “You forget that there is a manuscript that needs finishing,” he eventually said.

  “And you that there is a body that needs burying.”

  “Don’t tempt fate. Until now I have protected you like a son, but that does not entitle you to behave like an insolent child,” he said, and resumed stroking the dogs’ heads. “Remember that it was me who took you in when you arrived in Würzburg begging for a scrap of bread. It was me who secured your place on the registry of free men, despite the fact that you lacked the required documents or weapons. And it was me who offered you the work that you have benefited from until now.”