The Scribe(39)
It was nightfall by the time they approached the bear cave, an area so stony that Theresa was surprised the two wheels of the cart remained intact. Althar told her to hold Hoos tightly, but despite her efforts, all the jolting made the young man moan for the first time.
At the foot of a great wall of granite, Althar stopped the cart and gave a couple of whoops as he clambered down. “You can come out, my dear,” he said, whistling a silly tune. “We have company.”
A plump face appeared among some bushes. It let out a funny little cry and intoned the same melody. A large, squat body moving with surprising swagger followed the woman’s contagious smile.
“What has my prince brought for me?” asked Althar’s wife, running into her husband’s arms. “Jewelry or some perfume from the Orient?”
“Here are your jewels,” he joked, pressing his crotch against the woman’s stomach and making her laugh wildly.
“And these two?” she asked motioning behind him.
“Well,” Althar murmured, raising an eyebrow. “I mistook him for a deer, and she fell in love with my flowing locks.”
“I see.” She laughed. “In that case, come in and we’ll talk inside. It’s getting cold as hell out here.”
They left the goods outside, then took Hoos into the bear cave and lay him on a bed of furs. Theresa noticed that they had made a hole in the ceiling to serve as a chimney and around it they had set up a cooking area. A roaring fire kept the cave warm. Leonora offered them some apple cake, which they accepted with pleasure. There was hardly any furniture, but even so, Theresa felt like she was in a palace.
As they ate their dinner, Althar explained that they had another cave that they used for storage, and a cabin where they went when the weather improved. When they had finished, Theresa helped Leonora clear the table. Then she turned to Hoos to wrap him in more furs.
“You’ll sleep here,” Leonora indicated. She kicked aside a goat and cuffed away some hens. “And don’t worry about the young man. If God wanted to, He would have taken him already.”
Theresa nodded. When she lay down to sleep, she wondered again if Hoos had really followed her to retrieve his dagger.
That night Theresa barely slept, pondering the significance of the parchment that had been tucked away in her father’s bag. Before going to bed, she had taken it out and read through it quickly. It appeared to be a legal document detailing the legacy left by Constantine, the Roman emperor who founded Constantinople. She assumed it was very important or her father wouldn’t have bothered to hide it. Then her mind bubbled over with thoughts of the fire in Würzburg; the flames devouring Korne’s workshop; the parchment-maker’s loathsome smile; and the inferno swallowing up that poor girl. As she drifted to sleep she dreamed of the two terrifying Saxons, half men, half monsters, holding her down and violating her. Then it was the wolves, which, after devouring Hoos’s mount, were trying to tear her to pieces. In her delirium she thought she saw Hoos himself in front of her, slowly raising the emerald-studded dagger to her throat. Several times she didn’t know if she was sleeping or daydreaming. When she managed to open her eyes, she would evoke the protective image of her father. Though that calmed her for a while, yet another demon would come through the darkness at the mouth of the cave to torment her once more.
In that bear cave, where all was silent except for the hooting of an owl and the crackling of flames, she found it difficult to think. Awaiting the new day, she concluded that so much ill fate could only be part of some greater design: God was sending her a message. She reflected on what her sin might have been, and decided that perhaps everything bad that had befallen her was a consequence of her lies.
She recalled lying to Korne when she made him think the count wanted to personally check her entrance examination. She had deceived Hoos, telling him that she worked as a master parchment-maker rather than admitting she was a simple apprentice. And she had proceeded in the same manner with Althar, claiming that she had fled an arranged marriage, when she was merely escaping from the consequences of her deeds.
She wondered whether the master parchment-maker was right about women being the broth in which the filth of lies is boiled; whether in truth she had been a corrupt soul since birth, at the mercy of the compassion of the Almighty. Many times she had refuted those who proclaimed that the daughters of Eve embodied all the vices: weak, impulsive, changing at the whim of their flows, tempted by lust… and yet, at that moment, she began to doubt her convictions. She asked herself whether her lies were the Devil’s doing. After all, it was he that used his trickery to seduce the first woman created by God. In which case, wasn’t it the same demonic force that took Korne’s hatred and transformed it into fire?
Who was she trying to fool? As much as it pained her, she could not deny what she had become. And what would she do when Hoos awoke? Tell him that she had picked up the wrong dagger by mistake? That in the darkness, she had mistaken it for the crude scramasax that he had offered her? Every lie was followed by another, each one a little bit bigger than the last.
She cried inconsolably, but when she felt she had no more tears left, she promised herself that she would never lie again. She promised it for her father. Even if he could not see her, this time she would not fail him.
8
With the first light filtering through the roof of the cave, Theresa decided it was time to rise. She was surprised to find Althar and Leonora still asleep, but she would soon understand that things went at a different pace up there in the hills. She wrapped herself in the cloak she had slept under and silently approached the bed where Hoos was resting. His breathing sounded deep, which put her mind at ease. It was cold, so she turned to the fireplace and stoked the embers. The noise woke Althar, who came round with a clamorous fart. With his eyes half-closed, he huddled affectionately against Leonora.