The church soon filled like a packed sheepfold. When the great doors were closed, Cassiano, the precentor, had the boys warm up their voices. Then, with Flavio’s permission, he opened his arms like an angel to commence the miracle of Gregorian chant. Those in attendance, most of them clerics, bowed their heads when the first antiphon rang out in a symphony of celestial notes that made the ashlars vibrate. Cassiano swung his arms directing the swirl of voices up into the vaults, where they enveloped the pillars and reverberated until hairs stood on end. The music kept dancing, flowing from those cherubs like the melodic prayers of goldfinches
Then, abruptly, one of the voices fractured into a howl of terror. The rest of the children fell silent and everyone in the church turned toward the choir to see the boys retreating as if fleeing from a bad smell.
Lying on the ground before them, Korne the parchment-maker convulsed and vomited what little life he had left. By the time Alcuin reached him, the old man was dead.
They took the body to the sacristy, where Flavio anointed him with holy oil in a final attempt to resuscitate him. But despite his efforts, the body remained motionless. Alcuin noticed that Korne’s head had been shaved, that he had gray hairs on his pubis, and that he reeked of incense. Korne’s eyes seemed askew, and his mouth continued to issue a whitish froth. When Alcuin examined his hands, he found two puncture holes on the right palm.
When he informed Wilfred of what happened, the count merely continued to munch on the chicken thigh he was holding. After throwing the bones to the dogs, he looked at Alcuin indifferently as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. The monk told him that he had found a snakebite on Korne’s right hand.
“Have him buried outside of the cloister,” was all he said in response.
“You don’t understand,” he persisted. “At this time of year there are no reptiles.”
“Würzburg is full of serpents,” he answered, turning to look elsewhere.
Alcuin could not comprehend his indifference after he had pointed out the strange, identical nature of Genseric’s and the parchment-maker’s deaths. And not only that, but he had also informed him of Korne’s gray hairs, the fact that his head was shaven, and—more important—that each morning, after breakfasting in the kitchens, Korne had accompanied the twins to their singing lessons. It seemed useless to explain that, in all likelihood, it was Korne who had abducted the twins. Anyone else in his place, crippled or otherwise, would have jumped with joy, and yet Wilfred remained impassive, as if his fate had already been decided.
Wilfred dismissed him without looking up. But as Alcuin left, the monk saw tears in the count’s eyes.
On the way to his chambers, Alcuin wondered what might be behind Wilfred’s strange reaction. In his mind, such melancholy could only be explained by temporary dementia caused by the loss of his daughters, even if, curiously, his delirium did not seem to be affecting the rest of his faculties. Consequently, it would be sensible to assume that his behavior was not random but premeditated, as if he had prior knowledge of a link between the deaths of Genseric and the parchment-maker.
He decided to visit Korne’s room in the fortress, for since the workshops had burnt down that was where he resided. The chamber was not unlike the one Alcuin was staying in. It had an old bed, a crude table with a stone bench under the window, some shelves with a work habit on top, some skins, and the usual bucket for emptying the bowels. He looked inside the container and recoiled in disgust. Then he crouched down to scour the floor, both examining it with his eyes and with his hands until he came across what seemed like a necklace bead. However, in the light he could see that the little white pebble with a blue circle painted on it was in fact an eye from one of the twins’ dolls. He was at pains to admit that the smell of incense had led him down the wrong path, believing the culprit to be a man of the church.
He immediately made for the scriptorium, where he found Theresa working in an uncharacteristically clumsy manner. Normally the young woman would practice the text she had to copy on some old parchment before doing the final version, but that afternoon she was smudging her writing as if she were painting with a brush. Although Alcuin reprimanded her, he sensed that her mistakes were owed not to incompetence, but because of something worrying her.
“It’s Hoos,” she finally confessed. “I don’t know if it’s because you reproached him, but ever since the night we were together…” She reddened. “I don’t know, he seems different.”
“I didn’t say anything to him. What do you mean by different?”
Tears rolled down the young woman’s face, and she told him that Hoos had been shunning her. That morning, after bumping into him, he had snubbed her cruelly.
“I even fear he might strike me,” she sobbed.
“Sometimes we men behave coarsely,” he said, trying to console her. “It’s a question of nature. If circumstances sometimes mar the souls of those at peace and cloud the minds of the learned, who knows what they might do to men who give in to their most sordid desires?”
“It’s not that,” she complained, as if Alcuin understood nothing. “There was something strange in his expression.”
Alcuin relented, patting her on the back. As he gathered up his notes, he thought to himself that he had enough on his plate with the disappearance of the twins to also have to try to reason with a young woman in love. Instead, he asked her how the parchment was progressing.
“I’ve almost finished it,” she answered. “But I must admit there is something that has me worried.”
“I’m listening.”
Theresa went to find something and returned with an emerald-colored codex, which she placed in front of Alcuin.
“Aha! A Vulgate,” said the friar as he leafed through it.
“It’s my father’s Bible,” she said, stroking it with tenderness. “I found it in the crypt where he was imprisoned.”
“A nice copy.”
“That’s not all.” She picked up the Vulgate and opened it approximately from the middle. “Before the fire my father told me that if anything happened to him, I should look inside his book. I didn’t know what he was referring to at the time, in fact, I couldn’t even imagine that anything would happen to him. But now I believe that, while he was working for Wilfred, he began to fear for his life.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
She lifted the codex and forced the spine until a gap appeared between the gatherings. Then she inserted her fingers and pulled out a piece of parchment that she unfolded, and read from: “Ad Thessalonicenses epistula i Sancti Pauli Apostoli. 5.21. Omnia autem probate, quod bonum est tenete.” She translated: “Examine it all, retain the good.”
“Yes, but what does it mean?” he asked in surprise.
“On the face of it, nothing, so I did what it said in the quotation: I examined the Bible until my eyes hurt. Now look at this,” she said, pointing at a paragraph.
“What is it? I can’t see it.”
“It’s barely visible. My father must have diluted the ink with water so that it would barely leave a mark, but if you look carefully, you can see that between each line, as faint as morning dew, there are notes.”
Alcuin pressed his nose against the page but still could not make out a thing.
“Interesting. And what do the notes say?”