They decided to ask the monk for an explanation, but when they arrived at the scriptorium, the door was locked.
Theresa shared with Izam the hidden message she had transcribed and they wasted some time in one of the atriums, pondering its significance. Theresa admitted that she had not been able to decipher a single word.
“But my father will help us,” she asserted.
Izam nodded. Then he looked up to the sky. Soon it would be time to meet the physician and try to help Gorgias.
A few minutes after the agreed time, Zeno appeared with his bag. He smelled of wine, though no more than he had when Izam first spoke to him that morning. He paid the agreed sum, and then Izam, Theresa, and the physician headed to the dungeons.
Theresa was surprised to hear that they used some old meat safes to lock away prisoners. The safes consisted of holes resembling silos cut into the rock, which when filled with snow preserved food until summer. Since they were not needed in winter, on occasion they were used as storerooms and, if necessary, as improvised cells.
“Elsewhere they only use them for thieves, but we put other criminals in there, too,” Zeno boasted as if he were responsible for the idea. “We throw them into these ditches and they don’t come out till they’re dead. Sometimes, depending on the crime, we’ll throw them bread from up top just to see them kill each other for a few crumbs. But in the end, they all rot like vermin.”
Izam asked him to spare them the details, but Zeno prattled on as if Theresa wasn’t there. Only when Izam grabbed him by the shirtfront did he finally hold his tongue.
The meat safes were located in a basement under the kitchens that could be reached either from the wine cellar or from an entrance near the stables. They entered through the kitchens, for the passage near the stables was very narrow and primarily used to shovel snow through.
When they reached the meat safe, they met Gratz, the sentry posted there by Izam. The man urged them to be quick, for he did not know when the other guard, who he had distracted with a prostitute, would return.
Zeno and Izam went down into the meat safe using a wooden ladder that Gratz had found. Theresa waited at the top because Zeno said she would only get in the way. From the edge, Theresa could see her father. She watched as the physician, shaking his head, inspected the scar on Gorgias’s shoulder.
Her father was barely able to stammer a few words, though she heard a loud groan when Izam sat him up so that the physician could better examine him. Zeno took out a tonic, which he had Gorgias drink, but he coughed it up, making the physician curse. Then he clambered up the ladder.
“Go down if you want,” he told Theresa.
“How is he?” she asked.
Zeno spat on the ground. Without answering, he took a swig of the tonic himself and then moved away from the meat safe. Theresa wanted the physician to vomit, too. At that moment Izam pressed her to climb down.
Once she was by her father’s side, he looked at her oddly.
“Is it you?” he whispered.
Theresa embraced him, trying not to let him see the tears running down her face.
“Is it you, little one?”
“Yes, it’s me. Theresa.” She kissed him, wetting him with her tears. Gorgias hardly looked at her. It was as if his eyes no longer belonged to him.
“I’ll get you out of here. Everything will be fine,” she promised as she kissed him.
“The document…”
“What are you saying, Father?”
“The parchment.” Gorgias repeated in a whisper, his pupils contracted.
Theresa burst into tears. Her father’s eyes were like a pair of opaque beads.
“I hear someone coming,” Izam warned her.
She didn’t listen to him. Izam took her arm, but she resisted.
“Sic erunt novissimi primi, et primi novissimi,” Gorgias uttered in a thin voice.
“Come, or we’ll be discovered!” Izam insisted.
“I can’t leave him here!” Theresa sobbed.
Izam lifted her into the air and made her go back up. At the top, he promised they would return, but right now they had to run for it.
Gratz removed the ladder just as Wilfred’s guard returned, humming to himself and scratching his crotch. He was surprised to find visitors, but a few coins convinced him that Izam and Theresa had just come from the kitchens. When they left, Theresa knew that her father would never make it out of the meat safe alive.
Izam decided that they would stay on one of the boats moored at the wharf so they would have the protection of his own men. Once there, they ate from the soldiers’ rations before retreating to the benches at the stern. Izam wrapped Theresa in a blanket and she accepted a sip of strong wine to combat the cold out on deck. She was comforted by his embrace, and almost without intending to, she rested her head against him.
She spoke to him of her father: his dedication to his work and how he had instilled a love of reading in her. She described the nights when she would get up to prepare some broth for him while he wrote by the light of a candle; his efforts to teach her not just Latin but also Greek, the Commandments, and the Holy Scriptures. She told him about his efforts to ensure that she remembered her native Byzantium.
She cried.
Then she asked Izam to free her father. When he said he would have to speak to Alcuin, Theresa moved away in surprise. “Alcuin? What has he got to do with my father’s imprisonment?”
Izam told her that during his conversation with Wilfred, the count had assured him that, if it were up to him, he would have already executed the scribe.
“But, it would seem, Alcuin stopped him, at least until the mystery is solved.”
“What mystery?” She rested her head back on his chest.
“That’s what I asked, but Wilfred stammered and changed the subject. Anyway, the important thing is that your father’s still alive—a miracle when you bear in mind that we found him with the twins.”
“But you know—”
“It matters not what you or I know. What matters is what Alcuin believes. He’s the one in charge, and it’s him we should convince if we want to get Gorgias out of the meat safe.”
Theresa regretted having completed the parchment. She had finished it the same afternoon they imprisoned her father. Izam explained that Alcuin was a powerful man, much more powerful than she could even imagine.