The Scribe Read online

  Also by Antonio Garrido:

  The Corpse Reader

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2011 Antonio Garrido

  English translation copyright © 2013 Simon Bruni

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  The Scribe was first published in 2008 by Ediciones B as La Escriba. Translated from Spanish by Simon Bruni. Published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2013.

  Published by AmazonCrossing

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 978-1477848838

  ISBN-10: 1477848835

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911777

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  I know not…

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  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  DEDICATIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Year of Our Lord 799.

  Citadel of Würzburg. Franconia.

  And the Devil came to stay.

  I know not why I write anymore: Theresa died yesterday, and I might join her soon. We have had nothing to eat today. What I bring from the scriptorium is barely enough. All is desolate. The city is dying.

  Gorgias set his wax tablet on the ground and lay on the old bed. Before closing his eyes he prayed for his daughter’s soul. Then all he could think about were the terrible days leading up to the famine.

  NOVEMBER

  1

  There was no sunrise in Würzburg on All Saints’ Day. In the half-light of morning, farm workers started to emerge from their homes. Heading for the fields, they pointed at the grubby sky, swollen like the belly of a great cow. Dogs sniffed the coming storm and howled, but the men, women, and children continued their weary, silent parade like a soulless army. A whirl of dark clouds soon obscured the heavens as if heralding the end of the world. Then, such a torrent of water came that even the most hardened country folks trembled.

  Theresa’s stepmother roused her from a deep sleep. The young girl listened in astonishment to the drumming of the hailstones threatening to bring down the wattle roof and immediately understood that she must hurry. In a blink, mother and daughter gathered up leftover bread and cheese from the table, wrapped a few clothes in an improvised bundle, and—securing doors and windows—left to join the desperate mob running for shelter in the high part of the city.

  As they climbed the arched street, Theresa realized she had forgotten her wax tablets. “You carry on, Mother. I’ll be right back.”

  Ignoring Rutgarda’s shouting, Theresa disappeared into the crowd of peasants fleeing like sodden rats. Many of the streets had already turned to rivers cluttered with broken baskets, lumps of firewood, dead chickens, and soiled clothes. She negotiated the crowded tanners’ passageway by clambering over a cart jammed between two flooded houses, then she ran down the old street to the rear of her home, where she surprised an urchin trying to break in. She gave him a shove, but—instead of fleeing—the boy merely scampered off to another house where he had better luck climbing in through a window. Cursing him, Theresa went inside. From a chest she took her writing tools, her wax tablets, and an emerald-colored bible. She crossed herself, stashed everything under her cloak, and ran back as quickly as possible through the downpour to the place where her stepmother was waiting for her.

  On the way to the cathedral, streets disappeared under the mire, and roofs flew off like dead leaves. Then, a great torrent of water engulfed the maze of hovels in the poor quarter, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

  Over the next few days, wandering the streets of Würzburg became a terrible nightmare. Townsfolk were constantly falling over in the quagmire, and they had to keep their distance from the collapsing buildings. But their prayers could not prevent the rain and blizzards from turning their fields into lakes.

  Then the ice came: The Main River froze over, trapping the fishing skiffs, and the snowstorms blocked the passes that connected Würzburg to the plains of Frankfurt, preventing supplies of food and goods from getting through. Frosts decimated the crops and ravaged the herds. Gradually, provisions ran out and hunger spread like wildfire. Some villagers sold their land off cheap, and nothing more was heard of the fools who had left the protection of the city walls to make for the woods. It was rumored that some, driven by desperation, commended themselves to God and hurled themselves into the ravines.

  While the older folks shut themselves in their homes and waited for a miracle, the little ones, ignoring the warnings of their elders, continued to meet at the dunghills outside the walls to search for rats to roast. When they caught one, they celebrated with songs and cries of jubilation, parading down the main street with their quarry held up high.

  After two weeks, dead bodies peppered the streets of the city. The more fortunate dead were buried in the small cemetery beside the timber structure of Saint Adela’s Church, but volunteers soon gave up, letting bodies lie scattered like a plague along the watercourses. Some of the corpses swelled like toads, but usually the rats would devour them before then.

  Many children had grown weak, and their mothers despaired as they searched in vain for something besides a little water to put on the table. The stench of dead bodies permeated the city, as did the mournful ringing of the cathedral bells.

  Fortunately, Theresa still had work in the countship’s cathedral, where she had taken shelter the morning of the deluge. The cathedral had a meager yet steady need for workers. Laypeople worked in the diocesan workshops in return for a weekly ration of grain. The few women in service were there either to pleasure the men or toil in the kitchens. But Theresa had found work in the parchment-makers’ workshop, a job she had mixed feelings about. Yes, she had to suffer the crude stares of the leather workers, the comments about her breasts, and the men brushing past her with varying degrees of blatancy, but the reward for these annoyances came when, at the end of the day, she was left alone with the parchments. Then she would stack the pages that had arrived from the scriptorium—and instead of stitching the quinternions, she would enjoy a few moments to read. Theresa took compensation for her hard work from the tales told in the polyptychs and patristic texts. One day she knew her skills would be put to use for more than just baking cakes and washing pots.

  Her father, Gorgias, plied his trade as a scribe at the episcopal scriptorium, close to the workshop where she worked as an apprentice. Theresa had assumed the position thanks to the misfortune of Ferrucio, the previous apprentice who had blighted his future in a moment of carelessness by severing the tendons in his hand. That was when her father put her forward to replace him. However, from the beginning, Korne—the master parchment-maker—opposed her appointment on the basis of women’s changeable natures, their inclination toward quarreling and gossip, their ina
bility to bear heavy loads, and the frequency of their menstruation. All of this, in his view, was incompatible with a role that required wisdom and dexterity in equal measure. And yet Theresa could read and write fluently, a skill of unquestionable value in a place where there was too much muscle and not enough intellectual talent. It was thanks to her skill, and the intercession of the count, that she had been awarded the post.

  When Rutgarda first found out about Theresa’s appointment, she was up in arms. If Theresa had been feebleminded or sickly, she might have understood the decision. But she was an attractive young woman—perhaps a little skinny for the tastes of Frankish boys—but with wide hips and generous breasts, not to mention a full set of teeth, as white as they come. Anyone else in her position would have sought a good husband to knock her up and keep her. But no, Theresa had to throw away her youth, shut away in some old priests’ workshop, working on pointless priestly things, and enduring the idle gossip of the priests’ women. And worst of all, Rutgarda was certain that the person responsible for all of this was none other than Theresa’s father.

  In the end the girl had succumbed to Gorgias’s absurd ideas. His head was always stuck in the past, yearning for his native Byzantium, and he rattled on about the benefits of knowledge and the greatness of the ancient writers as if those wise men could put food on his table. The years would go by, Rutgarda thought, and one day, all of a sudden her stepdaughter would find herself with sagging flesh and bare gums. Then she would regret that she had not found a man to feed and protect her.

  On the second to last Friday of November, Theresa awoke earlier than usual. She used to rise before the sun to sweep the animal pen and take care of the hens, but for some time there had been no food to give them and no chickens to feed. Even so, she considered herself lucky. The storm that had laid waste to the poor quarter and forced her to take refuge in the cathedral for a few nights had left the walls of her house intact—and neither her stepmother nor her father had been harmed.

  As she lay in bed, waiting for the sun to rise, she curled up under her blankets. In her head she went over the trial she would undertake in a few hours’ time. The week before, Korne had expressed his objections to her taking the entry examination to become an official parchment-maker. When he discovered she had applied to take the exam, he became like a bear with a sore head, arguing that a woman had never before held the position. He grew even angrier when she reminded him that two years had gone by, following which, under the rules of the guild, anyone could demand entry into the trade.

  “Any apprentice who is able to carry a heavy load,” Korne had responded with a look of distaste.

  Nevertheless, late on Thursday, Korne had appeared in the workshop and sneeringly told her that he would accept her application, informing her that the test would take place the following day.

  Korne’s haste raised Theresa’s suspicions, and despite her joy at the news, she could not help but wonder why Korne had changed his mind so suddenly. Yet she was confident that she could pass the test: She could distinguish between parchments of lambskin or goat’s vellum. She was able to frame and stretch the damp skins better than even Korne, and she could mend arrow and bite marks to leave the leather as white and as clean as a newborn’s backside. And that was all that mattered to her.

  Even so, when it was time to rise Friday morning, she could not stop a shiver from running down her spine. Quietly, she sat up and unhooked the worn blanket that separated her old bed from her parents’. Wrapping the blanket around her body and tying it in place with a piece of cord, she left the room, doing her best not to make any noise. After relieving herself in the animal pen, she washed with some ice-cold water and ran back into the house. She lit a little oil lamp and sat down on a chest. The flame dimly lit the only room in the house, a small rectangular space that could barely accommodate a family. In the center of the room, the fire smoldered in its pit dug into the soft, damp earth. The cold was biting and the embers were beginning to weaken, so she added a little peat and stoked the fire with a stick. Then she took a scorched pot and scraped leftover porridge from it—until she heard a voice behind her.

  “What on earth are you doing? Come on! Back to bed.”

  Theresa turned around and looked at her father. She wished she hadn’t woken him.

  “It’s the test. I can’t sleep,” she explained.

  Gorgias stretched and moved closer to the fire with a begrudging grumble. Its glow lit up a bony face under a tangle of white hair. He sat next to Theresa and squeezed her against him.

  “It’s not that, my child. It is this cold, which will end up killing us all,” he whispered as he rubbed his hands. “And forget that porridge. Not even the rats would eat it. Your mother will find you something for breakfast. Right now what you have to do is stop being bashful and use the blanket to keep warm at night instead of using it as a curtain.”

  “Father, I don’t do it out of shyness,” she lied. “I put it there so I don’t bother you while I read.”

  “I don’t care why you do it. One day we will find you stiff as an icicle, and there will be nothing to agree or disagree about.”

  Theresa smiled and went back to scraping the porridge. She served some for her father, who devoured it as he listened to her.

  “I can’t sleep because of the examination. Yesterday, when Korne agreed to test me, there was a strange look in his eyes. I don’t know… something that worried me.”

  Gorgias smiled and ruffled her hair. He promised her that all would be well. “You know more about parchments than Korne himself. What vexes that old man is that his sons, after ten years in the trade, can’t tell a donkey’s hide from one of Saint Augustine’s codices. He’ll give you some documents to bind, you will do it perfectly, and you will become Würzburg’s first official female parchment-maker. Whether Korne likes it or not.”

  “I don’t know, Father… he won’t permit a newcomer to…”

  “So what if he’s not willing? Korne might be a master parchment-maker, but the owner of the workshop is Wilfred, and don’t forget that he will be present, too.”

  “Let’s hope so!” said Theresa as she rose.

  The sun was starting to rise. Gorgias stood up and stretched out like a cat. “Well, wait for me to dry the styluses and I’ll come with you to the workshop. At this hour, a pretty young girl should not be wandering about the citadel alone.”

  While Gorgias prepared his tools, Theresa amused herself admiring the beautiful snowy maze of rooftops. Sunlight was starting to pour into the alleyways, tingeing the buildings with a soft amber glow. In the part of the poor quarter sheltered by city walls, the timber hovels were cramped together as if they were competing for the one piece of land they could cling to—unlike in the high area, where fortified structures proudly festooned the streets and squares. Theresa was perplexed at how such a beautiful city could be transformed so quickly into a place of death and misery.

  “By the Archangel Gabriel!” exclaimed Gorgias. “Your new dress makes an appearance at last!”

  Theresa smiled. Several months before, her father had given her a lovely dress, blue like the summer sky. It was for her nineteenth birthday, but she had been saving it for the right occasion. Before leaving, she approached the straw mattress where her stepmother still slept and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Wish me luck,” Theresa whispered into her ear.

  Rutgarda grumbled and nodded, but as her family left the house, she prayed that Theresa would fail the test.

  Father and daughter climbed the blacksmith’s road in double time, with Gorgias occupying the center of the street to avoid the nooks and crannies where all manner of undesirable might be lurking. In his right hand he clutched a torch and with his other arm he held Theresa to him, his cape wrapped around her. As they reached the watchtower, they passed a group of guards who were heading down toward the city walls. Then they came to the top of the hill and turned down the knights’ street toward the central square. There they skirted a
round the church until they could make out the workshop building, a squat but ample timber structure situated behind the baptistery.

  They were a few steps from the entrance when a shadow swooped down on them from out of the darkness. Gorgias tried to react, but he barely had time to push Theresa to one side. A knife flashed, and Gorgias’s torch rolled down the street and off the edge.

  Theresa screamed as the two men rolled around on the ground. Desperate, she ran to find help, pounding on the door to the workshop with all her strength. She felt the skin on her knuckles tearing, but she kept screaming and hitting the door. Behind her she heard the two men struggling, fighting for their lives. She kicked the accursed door again, but nobody answered. Had she been able, she would have knocked it down and dragged out the workshop’s occupants herself. Exasperated, she turned and ran, calling for help. Then she heard her father’s voice telling her to stay away.

  Theresa stopped, not knowing what to do. The two men suddenly disappeared down an embankment. The young woman remembered the soldiers they had passed a few moments earlier, and she shot off down the street to find them. But as she approached the watchtower, she stopped again, uncertain she could reach them in time and even less sure she would be able to persuade them to help. She quickly retraced her steps to the workshop, where she found two men doing their best to help a blood-soaked figure. She recognized Korne and one of his sons, trying to lift her father’s limp and bloody body.

  “For God’s sake!” cried Korne to Theresa. “Run inside and tell my wife to prepare a cauldron of hot water. Your father is badly wounded.”

  Theresa did not stop to think. Calling out for help as she went, she rushed up to the attic where the parchment-maker lived. The space had been used as a storeroom until the previous year when Korne turned it into a home by adding some solid scaffolding.

  Bertharda, the parchment-maker’s wife and a rather stout woman, peered out half-dressed with a sleepy face and a candle in her hands. “For heaven’s sake! What’s all this racket about?” she exclaimed, crossing herself.