Garrido, Antonio - The Scribe

Korne reddened with rage. He had not expected such a feisty reaction, let alone the derisive snickers her words provoked among the youngsters—snickers that he imagined were aimed at him. The parchment-maker went over to the basket of apples and picked out the most damaged one. Then he turned and walked over to Theresa. Planting himself a few inches from her, he slowly bit into the apple. After slobbering all over the fruit, he held it out in front of the girl’s lips.

“Want some?”

He smiled at Theresa’s disgust. Looking at the fruit again, he saw a worm squirming in its rotten center. Without batting an eye, he bit through the core and the worm, casting the rest of the apple into one of the pools. As he chewed, he gathered his unkempt hair into a grotesque ponytail. Then he went over to the pool where he had discarded the apple.

“Here you have your test,” he said, and he opened the latticework lid that protected the pool. “Make ready the skin and you will earn the qualification you so crave.”

Theresa’s lips tightened. Scraping and preparing the skins was not a task befitting a craftsman, but if that was what Korne wanted, she would not disappoint him. She walked over to the edge of the pool and observed the layer of blood and fat floating on its surface. Taking a spade, she pushed the remains left by the caustics to one side and fished around for the skin that she would work on. But after several attempts, she still could not find one. She turned with a look of puzzlement on her face, demanding an explanation.

“It’s in there,” Korne indicated toward the deepest pool.

Theresa walked over to the pool that received the skins just as they had been torn from the animals. Carefully, she took off her boots. Then she gathered up her skirt and stepped into the water, holding her breath.

Scraps of skin and clots of blood floated in the bath, intermingling with the filth of the maceration pool. Under the attentive gaze of the crowd, she lowered herself until the liquid reached her stomach. The cold made her groan.

She waited a moment before taking another deep breath and letting herself sink into the depths of the pool. For a blink of an eye she disappeared underwater, but she quickly emerged with her head veiled in grease. Spitting, she wiped the filth from her face. Then she plunged further into the center of the bath, pushing away the floating detritus. The lime stung her skin under her clothes and the ice numbed her bones. Under her bare feet she could feel a bed of slime. And she groped the surface like a blind woman looking for a rail to cling to. But she kept going, feeling her way forward as the water lapped against her chin.

Suddenly she bumped into something under the water, and her heart missed a beat. When she managed to calm herself down, she felt the object with her foot to try to identify it. For a moment she thought about giving up, but she remembered her father and everyone who had believed in her. She filled her lungs with air and submerged herself into the water. The cold made her temples throb as her hands touched the object. Its sticky feel made her retch, but she suppressed her revulsion and continued to run her hands over the thing until she found a string of beads that felt like little shingles. She felt along the line and after a moment of uncertainty, she realized with horror she was grasping a row of teeth. She almost opened her eyes in fright and would have been blinded forever by the lime, but she kept control of herself. She let go of the jawbone and went up for air, gasping, her face flushed red as the Devil’s. As she coughed and spluttered, vomiting water, the remains of a putrid and deformed cow’s head bobbed up in front of her.

The laborers immediately came to the edge of the pool to taunt the young woman. One offered her his hand, but as Theresa grasped it, he let go, making her fall back into the water. At that moment, the parchment-maker’s wife appeared in the courtyard. She had witnessed the scene and come with dry clothes. The woman pushed past the laborers and pulled Theresa—who was quivering like a puppy—out of the pool. She covered her with a blanket and took her into her home, but as they were about to go through the door they heard Korne say, “She can get changed and get back to work.”

When Theresa returned to the workshop, she found the wrinkled remains of the cowhide on her bench. She spread it out with the help of a wooden trowel and then removed the excess water. After examining the skin, she deduced that the animal must have been flayed that very week, since the lime had barely begun to dislodge the hair, and scraps of meat and fat were stuck to the inside. The cow must have been devoured by wolves, because the skin had many bite marks. Aside from that, there were signs of the abscesses and blemishes typical of older beasts. She wouldn’t even throw that skin to the rats, she thought.

“You want to be a parchment-maker, do you not? Well, there’s your test,” Korne smirked from the doorway. “Prepare the parchment that you are so keen for Wilfred to see.”

Though she knew what he asked was impossible, Theresa did not protest. Rendering and cleaning an animal skin required several days of work with time to rest in between so the caustics and washing could take effect. Still, she was not about to give up. With a stiff brush, she scrubbed the skin to remove the remnants of meat that the worms had not managed to devour. When she finished with the flesh side of the skin, she turned her attention to the hair side. She brushed and scraped the hair energetically. Then she wrung out the leather and spread it over the bench to better see the areas that still had hair. Finally, she looked around for the box that contained the broom bundle used to apply the acid—but she was surprised to find it had disappeared.

Korne observed the whole process, a smile appearing on his lips from time to time. Occasionally he would turn away, as though he had more important things to do, but he would soon return to check the young woman’s progress. Theresa did her best to ignore him. She assumed that the broom’s disappearance was no coincidence, so she did not bother searching for it. Instead she scooped up a trowelful of ash, mixed it with some dung that the mules had deposited at the entrance, and applied the resulting paste to the pores in the skin. Then, with the help of a blunt, curved knife, she continued to work on the thick hair until she achieved the desired result.

Then she stretched the skin over a frame to form a gigantic tambourine—a delicate step, for she ran the risk of tearing the leather at its most damaged points. She skillfully positioned some pebbles around the skin and wrapped them in pinches of the leather to form little sacks resembling thick teats, which she fastened with some cord. Then she attached the leather to the frame and stretched it using the cords coming from the teats. When she saw that the tears on the skin were holding, she sighed with relief. Now all she had to do was dry the skin by the fire and wait for it to tighten before scraping it. She moved the frame over to the fire blazing in the center of the workshop. Not only was it the warmest part of the room, it was also the brightest, so the benches where the most valuable codices were repaired were located there.

As she waited for the moisture to exude from the taut leather, she warmed herself by the fire and wondered where the skin had come from. Cattle had been in short supply for some time, and as far as she knew, only Wilfred had a few animals, so Korne had probably obtained it from one of his intendants. And judging by its condition, he had done so with the sole intention of making her life difficult.

The parchment-maker came over to the fire. He ran his finger over the skin, which was oozing moisture. He turned to Theresa with a look of indifference.