Garrido, Antonio - The Scribe

“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 tunica 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 .”