Garrido, Antonio - The Scribe

“Wilfred had the seal?” Izam asked.

“Indeed. As you know, the parchment had three components: the medium itself, made from extremely fine vellum of unborn calf; the text in Latin and Greek, which Gorgias had to transcribe; and Constantine’s seal. Without all three things, it would be worthless. When Genseric saw that the stolen document was incomplete, he decided to snatch the seal.”

“But what did Flavio want? The seal or the parchment?” Theresa cut in.

“Sorry if I’m confusing you,” the monk said. “Flavio wanted to prevent the document from being presented to the council. He had various options: steal the document, take possession of the seal, or eliminate your father. They attempted them in that order. Bear in mind that, if they could get their hands on an original, they could demonstrate that the document was a fake in the event that it was transcribed onto another parchment.”

“And that’s why they kept my father alive.”

“Undoubtedly they would have killed him had he finished the document. But now let us return to Constantine’s seal.” Alcuin stopped to pick up a piece of cake, finishing it in just a few bites. Then he cleaned the seal and screwed it back into the dagger. “Hoos retreated to his cabin looking for somewhere to hide the dagger. There, as you told me, he found you in trouble.”

“Though it pains me to admit it, he saved me from two Saxons.”

“And you repaid him by running off with his dagger?”

Theresa nodded. She knew then why Hoos had been so keen to find her.

“When you went to Fulda, naturally I recognized you. I didn’t recall your face, but aside from Gorgias’s daughter, I don’t think there’s another young woman in all Franconia who can read Greek written on a jar.”

Theresa recalled that day at the apothecary when he had offered her work.

“Because of who your father was,” the monk acknowledged. “Then Hoos got better after having recovered his dagger with the seal, and he disappeared without a trace.” Alcuin sat opposite Theresa and took one last mouthful. “Hoos went back to Würzburg, where he met Genseric, and together they hatched a plan to kidnap your father to force him to finish the parchment. Fortunately, Gorgias managed to escape. Following Genseric’s death, Hoos must not have known what to do. He returned to Fulda to speak with Flavio Diacono, who no doubt suggested that he use you as a hostage to find your father, or if it came to it, replace him as a scribe. Wilfred had suspected Genseric for some time. Gorgias had vanished, but curiously his belongings didn’t disappear until two days later. By then, Wilfred had already ordered Theodor to watch the scriptorium, and it was the giant who discovered that the thief was Genseric.”

“But why didn’t Theodor just follow him? Or force him to disclose my father’s whereabouts?”

“Who says he didn’t? No doubt he attempted to, but a child could put that big oaf off the scent. I suppose that, in his rage, Wilfred poisoned Genseric when he next saw him. Then he must have had Theodor follow him to discover the hiding place. He returned to the fortress to inform Wilfred, who immediately ordered him back to the crypt to free Gorgias. But by then the coadjutor was dead and Gorgias had disappeared.”

“So, it was Theodor who dragged Genseric’s body off and stuck the stylus in him.”

“Precisely. Wilfred ordered him to take Gorgias’s stylus and fake the murder so there would be a reason to find him quickly. From that point forward, you know the rest of the story: the voyage on the river, your falsified resurrection, and the disappearance of the twins.”

“Now that, I still don’t understand.”

“It’s not difficult to deduce. With Genseric dead, Flavio needed another agent. So he moved onto Korne, a man of loose morals, which his love affair with the wet nurse confirms. No doubt Hoos informed Flavio of Korne’s weaknesses, so by offering him titles, and no doubt Gorgias’s head, too, he persuaded the parchment-maker to abduct Wilfred’s daughters.”

“Intending to blackmail him to retrieve the parchment?” Theresa asked, still trying to fit the pieces together.

“I would imagine so. The document written by your father he had given up for lost. However, he knew that at that time you were working on transcribing another one. Flavio decided that by extorting Wilfred he could obtain the document that you were working on. At any rate, it did him little good, because Wilfred then poisoned Korne with the mechanism in his chair.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. What would Wilfred have to gain from killing Korne?”

“The knowledge of where he was keeping his daughters, I suppose. He was sure that he could get that information from him in exchange for giving him the antidote to the venom. However, it didn’t work out as planned. Korne, who did not know where the girls were, ran off in fear and soon died during the singing in the service.”

“So why did Flavio and Hoos leave the little girls at the mine?”

“I can’t answer that. Perhaps they were alarmed by Korne’s strange death. Or maybe they thought someone might discover them there. I don’t know. Bear in mind it’s not easy to watch over two girls. How could they feed, hide, and guard them in secret? To do this, they were counting on the parchment-maker, who was now dead. In fact, I believe they drugged them to make it easier.”

“And they took them to the mine—not to abandon them, but so they could be found?”

“That must have been their intention. Remember that the next day they organized a search, from which they emerged as heroes instead of outlaws.”

“And incriminating my father while they were at it.”

Alcuin nodded and gestured for Theresa to wait. He went to the door and asked for more food.

“I don’t know why, but all this talking is making me hungry,” he said upon returning. “Where were we? Ah, yes! I remember now. They tried to implicate your father from the beginning. I discovered, you should know, that Hoos did not just work for Flavio. He worked for himself and his own benefit first and foremost. Do you recall those youngsters who were stabbed to death? I had the opportunity to speak to their families, and they told me that when they enshrouded them, they found that they had black hands and feet. Does that remind you of anything?”

“The grain in Fulda?” she suggested incredulously.

“That’s right. The poisoned grain. Although Lothar never admitted to it, after I tried to account for all the poisoned grain, I realized there was still a batch hidden somewhere. Do you recall that when Hoos disappeared from Fulda, he was still wounded—and he was traveling on horseback, wasn’t he?”

Theresa lowered her head and admitted she had found him the horse.

“Helga the Black told me,” Alcuin continued, “but according to Wilfred, Hoos arrived in Würzburg in a wagon. So it would appear that someone else also helped him escape Fulda: Rothaart the redhead, maybe, or Lothar.”

“Why do you assume that?”

Alcuin rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a handful of grain. “Because in the stables where they amputated your father’s arm, I found the missing batch of contaminated wheat.”

He explained that it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to think that Hoos would attempt to do business with it, taking advantage of the famine in Würzburg. “The youngsters who died were hired by Hoos for various tasks,” he informed Theresa. “He must have paid them in wheat, which he did not eat himself having been warned by Lothar not to. Perhaps he didn’t know that the poison would take effect so quickly, but suddenly he found himself with two very sick young lads threatening to expose him, so on the spur of the moment he decided to murder them.”