The Scribe (36 page)

At that moment she heard the screech of a bolt at the other end of the passage. She hid in a cubbyhole just in time to avoid being seen by the guard who approached bearing a torch. Theresa gestured to The Swine to be silent and remained out of sight until the guard passed. Then she ran with all the speed she could muster toward the exit. She did not stop until she reached the abbey.

When she found Alcuin, she had to wait to catch her breath before she could inform him of her findings. She tried to tell him everything all at once, gesticulating with her arms and stumbling over her words, while Alcuin attempted to make sense out of her blather. Theresa sucked in some air before blurting out, “I know who the culprit is,” she announced with a triumphant smile.

She told him again, this time more slowly, the events that had transpired at the slaughterhouse, taking pleasure in recounting the
most gory details and leaving the big surprise to the end. Alcuin listened attentively.

“You should not have gone alone,” he reproached her.

“And that was when,” she added, ignoring him, “hearing the redhead’s name, he hit himself with such force I thought he would split open his head. He showed me what that man did to his tongue. It was horrible.”

“Did he tell you that Rothaart did it?”

“Well, not exactly. But I’m certain of it.”

“Even so, he’s not the one we’re looking for.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“Rothaart was found dead this morning. At Kohl’s mill. Ergot poisoning.”

Theresa let herself flop, dejected. It was not possible. She had risked her life for nothing. She was about to argue with him when the monk cut in.

“And not just that. It would seem that our man is rushing to sell all the flour. Since this morning people have been falling sick all over the place. Saint John’s Church is crammed full, and the hospital is overrun.”

“But in that case it’ll be easy to catch him.”

“And how do you propose we do that? He is clearly very cunning, and is most likely selling batches of putrid flour alongside batches in good condition. What’s more, remember that nobody is aware that wheat is the source of the illness.”

“Even so, we can question the sick. Or their relatives, if necessary.”

“Do you think I have not already done so? But people don’t just buy their flour from the mills. They also acquire it from the market, from houses, from farms. They eat it in taverns, at bakeries or at peddlers’ stalls. They share bread at work, use flour to pay for their purchases, or trade it for meat or wine. Sometimes they even mix wheat with rye flour so that it holds up longer in the oven.” He
paused to reflect. “Each sick person told me a different story. It’s as if the entire town has been infected.”

“It’s all very odd. If this man is as clever as you say—”

“He is, I’m sure of it.”

“Then he will have contact with the various flour traders. And they trust him.”

“Presumably.”

“So, perhaps he has distributed the contaminated batches far and wide so that there are more suspects.”

“You mean more accomplices?”

“Not necessarily.” Theresa was feeling important. “He could have deposited the batches in various storehouses without their owners knowing. This would explain why there are so many more getting sick from purchasing flour at so many different outlets.”

“Perhaps,” Alcuin admitted.

“And what’s more, there’s the matter of The Swine.”

“What of him?”

“Well, the fact that it was the redhead who cut his tongue out.”

The redhead cut out his tongue
. Alcuin pondered the idea as he and Theresa made their way to the hospital. What if he had been rash in drawing his conclusions? In truth he had only seen Rothaart’s body from a distance, and though he thought he had seen signs of gangrene on his limbs, perhaps his death had not been due to ergot. In fact, it was difficult to believe that a healthy and well-fed man could succumb so quickly to rot.

“I must return to Kohl’s mill,” he announced to Theresa. “You continue to the hospital. Record the names of those who have recently fallen sick. Note everything—where they come from and where they buy their bread, what they have recently eaten, and when they started to feel unwell. Anything you can think of
that may help us. Then go back to the chapter. We will meet at the cathedral after Sext.” And without giving her time to respond, he turned and ran off into the narrow streets.

When Theresa reached the monastery, she came across crowds of people streaming in through its open gates. It seemed that the influx of sick was so great that the cellarer and other monks had been sent to the hospital to help in whatever way they could. Theresa used Alcuin’s ring that he had given her, in order to jump ahead of the long lines of relatives of the sick who were waiting for news. Entering the hospital she was received by an infirmarian, who, after recognizing her, impressed on her that she should not get in the way of the monks desperately running to and fro like bees in a hive.

Theresa did not know where to begin. The sick filled the room, scattered around on improvised beds, while outside in the courtyard, the less severe patients awaited anything that might alleviate their pain. Some of them seemed seriously ill, with pain in their limbs or afflicted by hallucinations, but many of them were mostly terrified.

Speaking to them, she discovered that the bishop and his secretary had met to discuss the possibility of burning houses and closing the city walls. She was surprised. On other occasions she had heard of such measures, but in this case, the pestilence was limited to the flour that was poisoned with the ergot fungus. She thought that she must convince Alcuin to change his mind about not revealing the cause of the sickness.

Within two hours, Theresa had gathered enough information to determine that at least eleven of the patients had not ingested any wheat bread. When she completed her questioning, she gathered her things and returned to the chapter kitchens. There she found Helga the Black busy polishing some pans that looked like they had been used as plant pots. Seeing Theresa, the woman
stopped what she was doing and ran to greet her. She told her that the entire city was in a state of anxiety because of the Plague.

“Don’t even think about eating wheat bread,” she said, and then immediately thought that Alcuin would be angry that she had revealed their secret. She realized that, actually, they should not consume any kind of bread.

Helga the Black told Theresa that Alcuin had just deposited a sack of wheat from Kohl’s mill in the pantry and told her that nobody must touch it. As soon as she heard this, Theresa disobeyed his instruction. She went to the sack and took a handful using a linen cloth. Then she examined one of the grains. On the fourth handful she found the first ergot. She assumed Alcuin had discovered this, too.

Just before Sext, Alcuin appeared bearing news. He said he had visited Kohl’s mill, but—it would appear—they had taken the redhead’s body far from the city, to the hollow where they burned the corpses of lepers. Fortunately, he located the body before it had been cast into the fire.

“He was not killed by the ergot,” he said triumphantly. “They painted his legs to look gangrenous. They must have poisoned him because a few witnesses said he died in terrible agony. That was what misled me.”

Painted
. Theresa remembered Althar’s ruse to feign leprosy. “But who would do that?”

“I don’t know yet. The only thing that is clear to me is that whoever killed him wanted his death to go unnoticed. However, I established a couple of things: First, Kohl’s wife did not catch The Swine finishing off his victim. It was another woman—Lorraine, one of the family’s servants. I spoke to her, and she confirmed that she saw the half-wit over the dead girl, but not clearly enough to assert that he had killed her. She also gave me a vital piece of information: The gash on the young woman’s face was on the left
side, from her ear to the middle of her throat. She remembered it because she had to seal the wound in order to shroud her.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Quite simply, someone left-handed must have dealt the lethal blow.”

“Like Rothaart, for instance.”

Alcuin nodded. “And Kohl provided me with a sample sack of wheat, but without accounting for its provenance. After apologizing for my behavior on the day of the execution, I pressed him to sell me some wheat, which he agreed to do without too many objections. But he did say that it would take him a couple of days to procure. To my surprise, he gave me a sack so that I could verify its quality.”

“I’ve seen it. It’s riddled with ergot,” Theresa confirmed.

“You should not have touched it,” he protested.

Theresa pulled out the cloth and showed him the little black capsules. Alcuin shook his head. “At any rate, our list of suspects continues to narrow,” he added. “Now it consists only of Kohl and the priors Ludwig and Agrippinus.”

“And Lothar?”

“I ruled out the bishop some time ago. Remember that Lothar did not object to us checking the chapter’s polyptychs. No. His innocence is beyond doubt. As for Agrippinus, we should remove him from the list: He has also fallen sick, and I do not think he will live.”

“At this rate, all of our suspects will die.”

“It would be a solution,” he said with bitterness.

Theresa fiddled with her hair. The list of suspects now consisted of just Kohl and the prior Ludwig. She could not understand why Alcuin would not take action once and for all.

“You should reveal the source of the illness,” she finally said. “Dozens are sick now. Women and children will soon fill the cemeteries,” she pleaded.

“We have already talked about that,” he responded with a grim expression. “As soon as people know ergot is the cause of the Plague, the culprit will mill all the contaminated grain and hide it, and we will never know who it is.”

“But by warning them, we will save people’s lives.”

“Save them from what? Dying of sickness rather than hunger? What do you think they will eat if they cannot have wheat or rye?”

“At least they could decide the manner of their death,” she retorted in irritation.

Alcuin took a deep breath, his teeth clenched. The girl was the most pigheaded creature he had ever come up against. She would never understand that not even closing the mills would stop the murderer. Such a killer would just grind the grain manually or sell it immediately to some unscrupulous person—or even take it to another city to continue his business. Alcuin tried to explain, but it was useless.

“People are dying now,” she continued. “Not tomorrow, not in a month’s time. Do you not see? It is now or never,” she insisted.

“These deaths are like God’s eyes,” explained Alcuin. “Or do you think that the lives lost now are more valuable than those that will be lost in a few months?”

“All I know is that the abbey is full of sick people who don’t understand what their sin has been,” said Theresa, now crying with rage. “For that is what they believe: that they have sinned and that God is punishing them.”

“Clearly you are still too young to understand certain matters. If you wish to help, go back to the scriptorium and continue copying the
Hypotyposeis
texts.”

“But Father—”

“Go back to the scriptorium.”

“But—”

“Or would you rather return to the tavern?”

Theresa bit her tongue. She thought to herself that were it not for Helga the Black’s pregnancy, she would’ve told Alcuin he could go take his texts and sleep in the dung tonight. Finally, she walked off without saying a word.

After reproducing several paragraphs, Theresa absentmindedly screwed up the parchment. Why shouldn’t she ask for help, she thought. If the bishop wasn’t a prime suspect, why not tell him what was happening? She was sure that Lothar could contribute to solving the problem. He knew the suspects, he was familiar with how the abbey operated, and he knew how a mill was run. She simply couldn’t understand Alcuin’s behavior, yet she had no option but to abide by his decisions.

She took out a new parchment and began again until the quill broke under the pressure. When she went to find another, she discovered that none remained in the little chest where Alcuin kept his writing materials. So she went to the kitchen to procure a new one. There she found that Favila was a bundle of nerves. She asked after Helga the Black, but the woman did not seem to hear her. She just stood there scratching her legs and arms.