The Scribe(14)
Gorgias promptly recognized Hahn, a bright boy who would hang about the workshop waiting for someone to give him an odd job. Now his legs were scorched and he was wailing bitterly. Beside him lay a man who Gorgias was unable to identify since burns had transformed his face into a dark scab. By the central apse he spotted Nicodemus, one of Korne’s craftsmen, confessing his sins. Beyond the transept there was a stout man, his head in bandages with only his ears showing, and behind him, the prostrate figure of a naked boy. Gorgias noted that it was Caelius, youngest son of the master parchment-maker. The youngster’s body was lying there with half-open, unseeing eyes, his neck twisted round. He had undoubtedly died in terrible agony.
Nobody there was able to tell him the whereabouts of his daughter.
Gorgias went down on his knees and prayed to God for Theresa’s soul. As he prepared to continue his search, he felt his strength leave his body. A shiver ran through his insides, shaking him until his vision blurred. He tried to hold himself up against a column, but blackness overcame him. Swaying from side to side, he fell to the ground, unconscious.
By midmorning, pealing bells roused Gorgias from his slumber. Slowly the hazy veil that had clouded his vision dissipated, until vague forms took clear shape again, as if they were being rinsed with clean water. He soon recognized his wife, Rutgarda, with a hint of a smile on her face that did little to disguise the fact she had been weeping. Farther back he could see Zeno, busy with some vials of tincture. Suddenly he felt a pain so intense that he feared they had cut off his arm, but when he lifted it, he saw that once again it had been carefully bandaged. Rutgarda sat him up, positioning a large cushion behind his back. Then Gorgias realized he was still in Saint Damian’s, resting against the wall of one of the little chapels.
“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.