“But why didn’t Theodor just follow him? Or force him to disclose my father’s whereabouts?”
“Who says he didn’t? No doubt he attempted to, but a child could put that big oaf off the scent. I suppose that, in his rage, Wilfred poisoned Genseric when he next saw him. Then he must have had Theodor follow him to discover the hiding place. He returned to the fortress to inform Wilfred, who immediately ordered him back to the crypt to free Gorgias. But by then the coadjutor was dead and Gorgias had disappeared.”
“So, it was Theodor who dragged Genseric’s body off and stuck the stylus in him.”
“Precisely. Wilfred ordered him to take Gorgias’s stylus and fake the murder so there would be a reason to find him quickly. From that point forward, you know the rest of the story: the voyage on the river, your falsified resurrection, and the disappearance of the twins.”
“Now that, I still don’t understand.”
“It’s not difficult to deduce. With Genseric dead, Flavio needed another agent. So he moved onto Korne, a man of loose morals, which his love affair with the wet nurse confirms. No doubt Hoos informed Flavio of Korne’s weaknesses, so by offering him titles, and no doubt Gorgias’s head, too, he persuaded the parchment-maker to abduct Wilfred’s daughters.”
“Intending to blackmail him to retrieve the parchment?” Theresa asked, still trying to fit the pieces together.
“I would imagine so. The document written by your father he had given up for lost. However, he knew that at that time you were working on transcribing another one. Flavio decided that by extorting Wilfred he could obtain the document that you were working on. At any rate, it did him little good, because Wilfred then poisoned Korne with the mechanism in his chair.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. What would Wilfred have to gain from killing Korne?”
“The knowledge of where he was keeping his daughters, I suppose. He was sure that he could get that information from him in exchange for giving him the antidote to the venom. However, it didn’t work out as planned. Korne, who did not know where the girls were, ran off in fear and soon died during the singing in the service.”
“So why did Flavio and Hoos leave the little girls at the mine?”
“I can’t answer that. Perhaps they were alarmed by Korne’s strange death. Or maybe they thought someone might discover them there. I don’t know. Bear in mind it’s not easy to watch over two girls. How could they feed, hide, and guard them in secret? To do this, they were counting on the parchment-maker, who was now dead. In fact, I believe they drugged them to make it easier.”
“And they took them to the mine—not to abandon them, but so they could be found?”
“That must have been their intention. Remember that the next day they organized a search, from which they emerged as heroes instead of outlaws.”
“And incriminating my father while they were at it.”
Alcuin nodded and gestured for Theresa to wait. He went to the door and asked for more food.
“I don’t know why, but all this talking is making me hungry,” he said upon returning. “Where were we? Ah, yes! I remember now. They tried to implicate your father from the beginning. I discovered, you should know, that Hoos did not just work for Flavio. He worked for himself and his own benefit first and foremost. Do you recall those youngsters who were stabbed to death? I had the opportunity to speak to their families, and they told me that when they enshrouded them, they found that they had black hands and feet. Does that remind you of anything?”
“The grain in Fulda?” she suggested incredulously.
“That’s right. The poisoned grain. Although Lothar never admitted to it, after I tried to account for all the poisoned grain, I realized there was still a batch hidden somewhere. Do you recall that when Hoos disappeared from Fulda, he was still wounded—and he was traveling on horseback, wasn’t he?”
Theresa lowered her head and admitted she had found him the horse.
“Helga the Black told me,” Alcuin continued, “but according to Wilfred, Hoos arrived in Würzburg in a wagon. So it would appear that someone else also helped him escape Fulda: Rothaart the redhead, maybe, or Lothar.”
“Why do you assume that?”
Alcuin rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a handful of grain. “Because in the stables where they amputated your father’s arm, I found the missing batch of contaminated wheat.”
He explained that it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to think that Hoos would attempt to do business with it, taking advantage of the famine in Würzburg. “The youngsters who died were hired by Hoos for various tasks,” he informed Theresa. “He must have paid them in wheat, which he did not eat himself having been warned by Lothar not to. Perhaps he didn’t know that the poison would take effect so quickly, but suddenly he found himself with two very sick young lads threatening to expose him, so on the spur of the moment he decided to murder them.”
“And again incriminate my father.”
“Indeed. He had to find him, and if he was held responsible for several deaths in Würzburg they would help to find him. I don’t know whether Hoos found out that your father was hiding at the mine. Perhaps he suspected it, or maybe it was fate. The fact is that his presence no longer suited anyone. Flavio and Hoos wanted him dead, for if Gorgias survived, he could transcribe another parchment.”
“And you, too, in order to cover up his discovery.”
“What do you mean?” asked the monk, surprised.
“I bet you wanted him dead, too, since my father had uncovered the hypocrisy of the document.”
Alcuin frowned. At that moment the servant returned with his requested food, but Alcuin shooed him away with an irritable gesture.
“I have told you that I was fond of your father. But let’s not talk about that. Whatever I could have done for him, or didn’t do for him, I could not have prevented his death.”
“But he didn’t have to die like a dog.”
Alcuin didn’t blink. He picked up a Bible and found the Book of Job. He began to read it out loud as if to justify his behavior. Then he added, “God demands sacrifice from us. He sends us afflictions that perhaps we do not understand. Your father offered his life, and you should be grateful to him for it.”
Theresa looked him in the eyes with steely determination. “If there is something I should thank him for, it is that he lived long enough to show me that you two are as different as night and day.”
She left the room, leaving Alcuin standing there.