The Scribe(89)
“It’s all very odd. If this man is as clever as you say—”
“He is, I’m sure of it.”
“Then he will have contact with the various flour traders. And they trust him.”
“Presumably.”
“So, perhaps he has distributed the contaminated batches far and wide so that there are more suspects.”
“You mean more accomplices?”
“Not necessarily.” Theresa was feeling important. “He could have deposited the batches in various storehouses without their owners knowing. This would explain why there are so many more getting sick from purchasing flour at so many different outlets.”
“Perhaps,” Alcuin admitted.
“And what’s more, there’s the matter of The Swine.”
“What of him?”
“Well, the fact that it was the redhead who cut his tongue out.”
The redhead cut out his tongue. Alcuin pondered the idea as he and Theresa made their way to the hospital. What if he had been rash in drawing his conclusions? In truth he had only seen Rothaart’s body from a distance, and though he thought he had seen signs of gangrene on his limbs, perhaps his death had not been due to ergot. In fact, it was difficult to believe that a healthy and well-fed man could succumb so quickly to rot.
“I must return to Kohl’s mill,” he announced to Theresa. “You continue to the hospital. Record the names of those who have recently fallen sick. Note everything—where they come from and where they buy their bread, what they have recently eaten, and when they started to feel unwell. Anything you can think of that may help us. Then go back to the chapter. We will meet at the cathedral after Sext.” And without giving her time to respond, he turned and ran off into the narrow streets.
When Theresa reached the monastery, she came across crowds of people streaming in through its open gates. It seemed that the influx of sick was so great that the cellarer and other monks had been sent to the hospital to help in whatever way they could. Theresa used Alcuin’s ring that he had given her, in order to jump ahead of the long lines of relatives of the sick who were waiting for news. Entering the hospital she was received by an infirmarian, who, after recognizing her, impressed on her that she should not get in the way of the monks desperately running to and fro like bees in a hive.
Theresa did not know where to begin. The sick filled the room, scattered around on improvised beds, while outside in the courtyard, the less severe patients awaited anything that might alleviate their pain. Some of them seemed seriously ill, with pain in their limbs or afflicted by hallucinations, but many of them were mostly terrified.
Speaking to them, she discovered that the bishop and his secretary had met to discuss the possibility of burning houses and closing the city walls. She was surprised. On other occasions she had heard of such measures, but in this case, the pestilence was limited to the flour that was poisoned with the ergot fungus. She thought that she must convince Alcuin to change his mind about not revealing the cause of the sickness.
Within two hours, Theresa had gathered enough information to determine that at least eleven of the patients had not ingested any wheat bread. When she completed her questioning, she gathered her things and returned to the chapter kitchens. There she found Helga the Black busy polishing some pans that looked like they had been used as plant pots. Seeing Theresa, the woman stopped what she was doing and ran to greet her. She told her that the entire city was in a state of anxiety because of the Plague.
“Don’t even think about eating wheat bread,” she said, and then immediately thought that Alcuin would be angry that she had revealed their secret. She realized that, actually, they should not consume any kind of bread.
Helga the Black told Theresa that Alcuin had just deposited a sack of wheat from Kohl’s mill in the pantry and told her that nobody must touch it. As soon as she heard this, Theresa disobeyed his instruction. She went to the sack and took a handful using a linen cloth. Then she examined one of the grains. On the fourth handful she found the first ergot. She assumed Alcuin had discovered this, too.
Just before Sext, Alcuin appeared bearing news. He said he had visited Kohl’s mill, but—it would appear—they had taken the redhead’s body far from the city, to the hollow where they burned the corpses of lepers. Fortunately, he located the body before it had been cast into the fire.
“He was not killed by the ergot,” he said triumphantly. “They painted his legs to look gangrenous. They must have poisoned him because a few witnesses said he died in terrible agony. That was what misled me.”
Painted. Theresa remembered Althar’s ruse to feign leprosy. “But who would do that?”
“I don’t know yet. The only thing that is clear to me is that whoever killed him wanted his death to go unnoticed. However, I established a couple of things: First, Kohl’s wife did not catch The Swine finishing off his victim. It was another woman—Lorraine, one of the family’s servants. I spoke to her, and she confirmed that she saw the half-wit over the dead girl, but not clearly enough to assert that he had killed her. She also gave me a vital piece of information: The gash on the young woman’s face was on the left side, from her ear to the middle of her throat. She remembered it because she had to seal the wound in order to shroud her.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Quite simply, someone left-handed must have dealt the lethal blow.”