The Scribe (9 page)

She remembered the moment that she decided to return to the workshop, right after making sure Korne’s wife had reached the top of the courtyard wall safely. As she went in, the fire was crackling on the roof, turning the place into a great forest of flames. She was looking for her latest books when she had seen her. Clotilda, curled up in a corner, was waving her arms around in an attempt to fend off the embers that rained down on her from the ceiling. At her feet apples were strewn across the ground. No doubt the girl had taken advantage of the mayhem to enter the workshop and find some food.

Theresa tried to get her out, but the girl resisted, her face etched with pain. That was when Theresa saw that her reddened skin looked as if it were already burning. At that moment, Theresa saw her blue dress under one of the tables, the one she wore when she had submerged herself in the pool. She picked it up and—discovering that it was still soaking wet—she offered it to the girl, who threw off her rags and pulled on the dress. The water soothed her, but at that moment the roof creaked and the beams began to cave in. Theresa remembered trying to drag her out, but the girl was too terrified and ran in the opposite direction. Then everything collapsed, and Clotilda was buried under the wreckage.

Theresa managed to escape, fleeing down the hill—running, stumbling, feeling the Devil’s breath on her neck. She took the path that ran around the walls, running deep into the undergrowth, until she reached a chestnut grove where pigs would often be put to forage. There she took shelter in the swineherds’ hut. She closed
the door hard as if wanting to shut out all the sorrow and pain left behind, and then fell to the ground, resting her back against the wall of mud and bramble.

The burned books, the workshop ruined and consumed, that poor girl dead. She would never be able to look Gorgias in the eye again. She had dishonored him in the worst way a daughter could dishonor her father, and though it pained her to admit it, letting him down was what caused her the most grief. She cried inconsolably until the tears made her cheeks raw. She sobbed, deeply releasing mournful cries from her throat over and over, asking God for forgiveness, praying that none of it had actually happened. It was all her fault. All because of her stupid desire to be someone she was not. They were right, those who said that a woman’s place was in the home—with her husband, bearing children, and looking after the family. And now God was punishing her for her greed.

Theresa woke up shivering, her body numb and her temples thumping against her head. As she stood, her legs wobbled as if she had been walking all night. The cold tightened her chest and her throat felt lined with thorns. When she had managed to clear her head, she opened the door and saw that dawn had already arrived. The hut seemed deserted, but still she scanned it carefully.

A flock of starlings took flight, their fluttering making a great clamor. In the light of a new day, Theresa admired the green of the fir trees, the purity of the sky. The chestnut wood clumped as if a neatly arranged garden and for a moment she lost herself in the scent of damp earth and the soft whispering of the wind.

Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she had not had a bite to eat since the previous day. She untied the leather bag that her father had left behind in the parchment-maker’s workshop before he was carried away, and she spread its contents on the ground. Wrapped in a linen cloth, she discovered a wax tablet and
a bronze stylus. Also wrapped in cloth was a ripe apple. She bit into it with relish. As she munched on the fruit, she looked through the rest of her belongings: a little steel for lighting fires, a crucifix cut from bone, a vial of essence for perfuming parchments, and a reel of hemp thread, which Gorgias used to sew quinternions. Then she put everything back in its place.

She thought hard for a while about what to do next before coming to a decision: She would flee far from Würzburg, to a place where no one could find her. Perhaps to the south, to Aquitania—or the west, to Neustria, where she had heard there were abbeys run by women. If the opportunity arose, she would even travel to Byzantium. Her father always said that one day she would meet her grandparents, the Theolopouloses. She could barely remember them, but if she reached Constantinople, no doubt she would find them. She could work there until she was a woman of standing. She would study grammar and verse, as Gorgias would have wanted, and perhaps one day she would have the courage to return to Würzburg to find her father and beg his forgiveness for her sins.

Frightened, she picked up her father’s bag and turned to look upon the city’s walls for the last time. Now, in her nineteenth year, she would have to build a new life for herself.

She prayed to God for the strength she would need and set off purposefully on the path that wound through the vegetation.

By the midmorning she dropped her bag on the ground, exhausted. She had traveled five miles along the path between Würzburg and the roads to the north, but as she climbed the first foothills, the path had disappeared under the snow. Wherever she looked, everything from the smallest stone to the most distant hill was covered in a white blanket, obscuring any landmark she might use to guide her. Every tree was identical to the last and every outcrop a reflection of the next.

She needed to rest. Sitting on a fallen trunk, she looked to the sky with concern, for the weather was changing quickly and the
threat of a storm loomed. She had thought she would find nuts and berries on the way, but ice had ravaged the shrubs, so she had to make do with the apple core that thankfully she’d had the foresight to keep. As she opened her bag and took it out, a bolt of lightning suddenly lit up the horizon. The wind began to shake the treetops and gradually the sky turned a somber gray. Before long it started to rain. Theresa sought shelter among some crags, but soon she was soaked through.

As she huddled under a projection, she grasped the naivety of her decisions. No matter how much she wanted it, she would never reach Aquitania or Neustria, let alone far-flung Byzantium. She had neither food nor money, nor relatives to turn to. She had no knowledge of the hoe or plow. She had never harvested crops nor even made a rudimentary stewpot. She only knew about useless parchments that would never help her make a living for herself. What a fool she had been not to listen to her stepmother! She should have devoted herself to cooking or some other women’s trade: spinner, seamstress, washerwoman… any of them would have enabled her to earn a crust in Aquis-Granum, and even save enough to pay her passage to Neustria with a caravan.

Even given her predicament, she resolved to learn. She would work as a farm laborer or find a job as a tanner’s apprentice. Anything but end up in a brothel covered in boils and riddled with disease.

With the rain growing heavier, she considered whether she should move somewhere safer. What’s more, she thought, in Würzburg they had probably started searching for her by now, and if she stayed near the path, they would soon find her. Then she remembered the old lime kiln, a building in a small quarry half an hour’s walk away. She knew the place because she’d been there on several occasions to collect the lime they used to tan the skins. The kiln belonged to the Larsson widow, a burly woman who worked the quarry with the help of her sons. In winter, when
the builders’ orders stopped, they closed the kiln and plied their trade in Würzburg, so she knew she could take shelter in one of the sheds and wait for the storm to ease without running into anyone.

Not long before midday, Theresa approached the quarry. She was desperate to get out of the rain, but rather than rush in, she pricked up her ears and cautiously listened. The pit was dug into the side of the mountain like a great gap-toothed mouth, boulders strewn down the slopes like fallen teeth. At the foot of the mountain stood the lime kiln, a sort of squat, tapered tower slightly larger than a bread oven. At the top there was a circular hole that served as a chimney, while on the side were four vents. The house stood on the riverbank, away from the vapors of burning lime, and farther on, behind it, were the sheds used as storehouses.

Theresa waited to make sure neither the Larsson widow nor her sons were in the area. She was holding on to the hope that she was alone, but as she approached the house, she saw the door ajar and wondered whether she had made the wrong decision. Still she knocked, but there was no answer. She knew it was foolish but decided to go in nonetheless. Picking up a stick from the ground, she pushed the door open with her shoulder. It was jammed. On the third attempt it flew open with a loud crash, revealing an empty room. Theresa went in, leaving the door ajar the way she found it. Then she closed her eyes, savoring a moment of peace. The bitter odor of lime burned her throat, but she welcomed it in exchange for a bit of rest. She heard the rain beating against the roof and the wind battering the timber, and she felt comforted in her newfound shelter.

Similar to other buildings in the area, the house had no windows, so the only light was from the hole in the wattle that served as a chimney. As her eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, she could see that the room was a mess, with stools tipped over and belongings and pans scattered on the floor. She assumed some animal had been the cause of the chaos and so thought nothing of
it. After establishing that there was no food or warm clothes, she decided to amuse herself by tidying up the room. In one corner she piled up the offcuts of logs and timber that the Larsson widow would use to make clogs. Like so many other families, the Larssons had found woodcutting to be an additional trade they could ply while they waited for a batch of lime to be baked.

Theresa gazed at the impressive tool that lay on one of the workbenches, a sort of giant machete articulated with a ring nailed to the bench. This enabled the blade to pivot on its end like a guillotine, which reminded Theresa of a drawbridge.

On occasions she had seen the Larsson widow operating the implement with great skill. She would lift the handle and rest it on a support, place a piece of wood under the blade, and with precise up-and-down movements she would hew the timber until she had carved the outside of the clog.

Driven by curiosity, Theresa decided to try it out. She found a piece of wood the right size and positioned it beside the blade. Then she took hold of the guillotine’s handle and with both hands she lifted it to rest it on the support, but the handle slipped and the blade fell violently onto the bench. Theresa was glad she had used two hands, for otherwise she surely would have lost one. More carefully this time, she raised the blade once more and placed it on the rest. Securing it in place, she decided that her career as a clog-cutter was over and picked up the overturned stools instead.

While she worked she pictured her arrival in Aquis-Granum. First she would go to the market and trade her steel and stylus for food. No doubt she could get a pound of bread and several eggs, or even barter for a slice of smoked meat. Then she would seek work as a tanner in the artisans’ quarter. She had never been to Aquis-Granum, but she assumed there must be an artisans’ quarter in the city King Charlemagne had chosen for his residence.

Suddenly her heart gave a leap upon hearing voices outside, and those voices were growing ever nearer. Horrified, she stopped
what she was doing and ran to the door. Was it the Larssons? She pressed her head against the wall, peering through a crack, and saw two blurred figures approaching the house. Oh, Lord! They looked like armed men and in a few seconds they would be inside the room.

She had to find somewhere to hide. Remembering the pile of wood by the guillotine, she ran and crouched behind it, just as the men burst in. She tucked her head between her legs and prayed they would not discover her. But the two men, instead of searching the place, went to the middle of the room and set about lighting the fire.

Hidden behind the firewood, Theresa could see what was happening. What were they waiting for? Why were they not searching for her? From her hiding place she peered around the woodpile to watch the men remove their weapons and skewer a pair of squirrels to roast on the fire. They laughed and gesticulated like two drunks, shoving each other and turning their spits with indifference. She examined the bulkiest one, a mountain of fat covered in furs, whose mere girth made simply standing upright and not falling flat on his face seem laudable. The skinny one would not stay still and was constantly scratching his freckled face and turning up his nose to sniff his prey. Theresa thought that if a rat could walk on two legs, it would look just like this man.

At one point, the bigger one blurted something to the freckled man, who then made a motion as if to grab his knife. But he suddenly stopped, and they both burst out in noisy laughter. When they had calmed down, Theresa realized they were speaking in an unintelligible dialect, and then it dawned on her that only a miracle could save her. Those men were not soldiers, nor were they from Würzburg. They looked like Saxons: pagans ready to kill the first unlucky soul to cross their paths.

At that moment Theresa leaned against a piece of timber, knocking it onto the ground with a crash. She held her breath as
the big man’s stupid eyes fell upon the log, but instead of investigating the source of the noise, he turned back to the fire to continue his cooking. The freckled man, however, gazed toward the woodpile. Then he picked up a burning branch, gripped his knife, and slowly advanced toward the logs. Theresa closed her eyes and curled up so tightly her bones hurt. Suddenly a hand grabbed her hair and pulled her up onto her feet. She kicked and screamed, trying to shake off her captor, but a brutal punch to her face took her breath away. The taste of blood made her realize that the last thing she would see would be the faces of these murderous Saxons.

The freckled man held the torch near Theresa and examined her like someone who had found a vixen in a rabbit trap. He smiled when he noticed her fair skin, its only imperfection the mark from his punch. He slowly looked down to her breasts, which he could see were firm and generous, before continuing down to her hips, wide and well-defined.