The Scribe(19)
He recalled the birth of his daughter, that little peach, that bundle of life trembling in his arms. The wine and honey had flowed for weeks. He sent news to all the empire’s forums, commissioned an altar be built behind the villa, and had his slaves mark her birth with offerings on that happy day. Not even his appointment as optimas of Bithynia had brought him greater satisfaction. His wife Otiana lamented that they had not had a boy, but he was in no hurry. The girl had his blood running through her veins, the blood of the Theolopouloses, the most renowned merchant family in Byzantium, from the Danube to Dalmatia, from Carthage to the Exarchate of Ravenna, respected and feared beyond Theodosius’s walls. There would be time for more children to fill their home with their mischief. They were young and had their whole lives ahead of them. Or at least, that’s what he had thought.
The second pregnancy was ill-fated. The physicians attributed Otiana’s death to the damp softness of the fetus. Damned fools! They could have at least prevented all her suffering. For months, desperation had become his only companion. He could see his wife in every corner of the house, smell her perfume, hear her laughter. In the end, on his brothers’ advice, he decided to put some distance between himself and the melancholy that consumed him, and he moved to old Constantinople. There he bought a villa, surrounded by gardens, close to Trajan’s forum, where he made a home for himself with his slaves and a wet nurse.
Several years went by in which he watched Theresa grow surrounded by books and writing, which were his only passion, and the only remedy for his grief that no physician could prescribe. His title of patrician and his friendship with the Cubicularius of the Basileus gave him access to the library of the Hagia Sophia, the greatest repository of wisdom in Christendom. Every morning he would visit the hall at the cathedral accompanied by Theresa, and while she played, he would reread Virgil, copy passages from Pliny or recite verses by Lucian. After her sixth birthday, the child took an interest in her father’s activities. She would sit between his legs and bother him until he let her have one of the codices he was reading. At first, to distract her, he would offer her damaged documents, but he noticed that, as he wrote, Theresa would imitate each of his movements with extraordinary delicateness.
In time, what had started as a pastime became her preoccupation. The little girl hardly ever played with other children and when she did, she would amuse herself by scribbling on their clothes with feathers she’d stolen from the henhouses. The librarian Petrus had told him about Theresa’s behavior with the other children and persuaded him to introduce her to the secrets of writing, putting himself forward as the girl’s tutor. That was how Theresa learned to read and, later on, to make her first inscriptions on wax tablets.
He reminisced with sorrow how her passion for reading had been interrupted when she was sixteen years old, following the assassination of the Emperor Leo IV at the hands of his wife, the Empress Irene. The death of the Basileus triggered an endless cycle of feuds and revenge, ending in the arrest and execution of anyone who dared oppose the new monarch. But it was not just dissenters who ended up in the cemeteries. Anyone who had forged political or commercial ties with the Basileus while he was alive also suffered the wrath of the empress.
One winter night, the Cubicularius turned up at Gorgias’s home in disguise with a warning and a couple of horses. The next day he and his daughter were to be put to death. They fled on horseback to Salonika. Then they undertook a pilgrimage to Rome before journeying to the cold Germanic lands.
But why was his mind preoccupied with the past at this precise moment? Why bring back memories that only fueled his pain? Accursed destiny. Cruel torment. Meandering caprices that tear the flesh that was mine from my soul, leaving me empty. Loathsome hair shirt, path of punishment. Take me with you so that I may give you my hatred. Come and embrace me. He closed his eyes and began to weep.
Despite the stony soil, Gorgias and Reinold finished digging the grave just after midnight when the clerics were resting in their chambers and Wilfred could officiate the funeral in complete secrecy. Afterward, he told Gorgias to cover the casket without a cross or any sign that would betray their act.
“The manuscript…” the count reminded him when it was all done.
Gorgias nodded in understanding with reddened eyes.
Then Wilfred lowered his head and left Gorgias to be alone in his bitter sadness.
5
That night chilling winds from the north covered Würzburg in a blanket of ice. The men busied themselves sealing off cracks and stoking the fires in their homes, while the women pressed their children between straw mattresses. They all prayed for the firewood to last until dawn.
Those who slept within reach of the embers’ warmth bore the cold with resignation, but Theresa was far from any heat and could not fall asleep. Her weeping had inflamed her eyelids until they were swollen like wineskins, and her feverish eyes could hardly make out the pigsty that she had found shelter in. Her skin was still ash gray from the smoke, and the charred smell of her clothes constantly reminded her of the hellish nightmare she had experienced. Again, she broke into tears and asked God to forgive her sins.
The images of all that had happened flashed through her mind again: the mocking laughter of the workshop boys, the rotten skin floating in the pool, the test that she had fought so hard to take, the argument with Korne, and finally, the terrifying fire. Just thinking about it gave her goose bumps, but she thanked the heavens that she had been able to escape the flames with her life.