The Scribe(104)
“He knew the victim well. In fact, the night she was found dead, the redhead had spent the night at the mill. According to Kohl’s wife, that same night their daughter awoke in discomfort, left the house to empty her stomach, and never returned. I will say it again: left-handed and skilled with a knife. We know it could not have been The Swine because he is incapable of holding any kind of implement, and we know that Rothaart, the left-handed, was there on the premises with his knife.”
“But, what was his motive to kill her?” the king asked.
“His fear of Lothar, of course,” Alcuin said, unblinking.
“Explain yourself,” ordered Charlemagne.
“Rothaart drank frequently. He latched on to the barrel like a newborn to a teat. The night of her murder, he had to transport the contaminated wheat from the granary to the mill. When he arrived at the mill, he was drunk. As he was busy working to unload the poisoned grain, Kohl’s daughter happened upon him, probably surprised to see him there at that time of night. There were a thousand excuses Rothaart could have given her, but the aqua ardens clouded his senses and he reacted as he would’ve in the tavern: He pulled out his knife and with one stroke, killed her.”
“I didn’t know that you had the powers of a witch,” said the bishop sarcastically. “Or is it that you were there in person?”
Alcuin declined to answer, instead posing another question: “Tell me, Lothar, is it true that Rothaart regularly visited your chambers? To speak to you about the mill business, I suppose.”
“I see so many people that if I had to remember all of them, I would not have room for anything else in my head.” He cleared his throat.
“And yet your acolyte remembers. In fact, he told me that you would spend quite some time discussing matters of money.”
Lothar gave his acolyte a stern look, then turned back to Alcuin. “And what if I did talk to Rothaart a lot? The bishopric owns a mill, and Rothaart works as a miller at Kohl’s mill. Sometimes they would mill grain for us, and sometimes we did it for them.”
“But the sensible thing would be to discuss these matters with the owner of the mill, not a subordinate.”
“And from that you infer who the murderer is? Alcuin, stop talking nonsense and accept the truth: Whatever Rothaart did, it doesn’t matter. It was Kohl who was selling the wheat.”
“If you don’t mind, I will continue with my nonsense.” He glanced at his notes. “As I have already said, Rothaart the redhead had money: He wore sumptuous jerkins, boots of fine leather, and enough gold on his arms to buy an allodium—and all the farmhands needed to work it. This is inexplicable for a miller. It is clear that he had other means of income, which fits with what his friend Gus at the tavern told me he does on Sundays.”
“What activity is this?” the monarch asked.
“I spoke to Gus after Rothaart’s death at length over a couple of tankards of beer. After lamenting the loss of his friend, he told me that Rothaart obtained wheat from somewhere, which he ground at Kohl’s mill on Sundays when the mill owner was attending High Mass. Once it had been milled, he transported the cereal to a clandestine storeroom where he kept it until it was ready to be sold.”
“And Gus told you all of this, just like that?” asked the king.
“Well, it was easy to convince him that I already knew about his schemes. He was also shaken by the unexpected death of his friend Rothaart, which naturally I attributed to divine justice, and then there was the considerable amount of beer that I purchased for him to drink. So it is no surprise that he confessed to what at any rate he didn’t consider a sin. Bear in mind that Gus was being deceived, and made to work for little more than some wine and a paltry sum of money.”
“Gus, a drunk, and Rothaart, a murderer. Well, perhaps they were! But what does that have to do with me?” Lothar asked, incensed.
“Have patience, I’ve nearly finished. As I have already explained, I deduced that the sickness came from the grain due to the similarity of the symptoms I observed in victims during the famine in my native York. That was why I asked Lothar for the bishopric’s polyptychs: to find an entry perhaps related to contaminated rye. Surprisingly, neither Theresa nor I could find any direct mention of contaminated wheat, but there was a scraped and amended page containing the information we sought. As if by magic, it strongly suggested that a shipment of wheat had been transported from Magdeburg to Fulda. A deadly shipment of wheat that was likely bought at a discounted price or traded for no cost at all by the previous abbot.”
“So what are you talking about? Go to the cemetery then and accuse the late abbot,” Lothar said, red in the face.
“I would have done that, were it not for the fact that I always suspect the living, particularly since I discovered that you were plowing uncultivated land, preparing for something to be sowed in the middle of January. Tell me, Lothar, since when is wheat sown in winter?”
“What rubbish! That land belongs to me, and I can do whatever I please with it. And I will say more. I am sick of your unfounded accusations and your eagerness to show how wise you are. You speak nothing but blather without a shred of evidence. You accuse Rothaart, yet he is dead. You speak of The Swine, but he is both demented and mute. You mention the old Abbot of Fulda, yet his body has been lying in his grave for several years. And finally, you claim that there is a polyptych that reveals secrets through some act of witchcraft, on a page that nobody has seen, let alone verified. Very well. Do you have this polyptych? Show it to us once—or rescind your accusations.”