Theresa changed her clothes before setting off for the cave of trophies, but not before she had inspected the stones and chosen four lenticular pebbles of a similar size. She thought that once they had been painted they would without a doubt resemble real eyeballs.
When she reached the cave she found that the door was closed. She assumed Althar was inside, so she pushed it open and went in without knocking. Sure enough she found the old man working on the bear’s frame, to which he had added two branches as front legs, in a downward direction.
“Oh! I didn’t expect you so soon,” he said in surprise. “So, tell me, what do you think?”
The young woman looked at the bizarre structure. “Horrible,” she said without thinking.
Althar took it as a compliment. “As it should be,” he asserted. “It will sell for more that way. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve brought the stones for the eyes,” she said, showing him.
Althar examined them carefully. He put them on the box that contained the scalpels, scrapers, and awls.
“They’ll do,” he confirmed.
Between them they mounted the treated skin on the crude frame, sewing the seams and filling the cavities with hay and rags. Finally, they attached the skull, pulling the skin of the head over it. When they had finished, the bear resembled a gigantic and rather battered toy.
“It doesn’t look very fierce,” Althar complained.
They changed the filling several times, but the result was worse still. It was the first time Althar had attempted such a large specimen. After a while, the old man cursed and went outside to clear his head.
Meanwhile, Theresa thought about the pitiful appearance of the bear. It was clear that, in its standing position, the weight of the hay made it accumulate in the belly, making the torso and shoulders sag. The front legs flopped down weakly, and the head, its mouth closed, seemed permanently stooped. Instead of it looking ferocious, she thought the animal looked like it had just been hanged.
She went out to look for Althar and tell him her thoughts, but she couldn’t find him, so she went back inside the cave to continue to ponder the problem without him.
When the old man finally returned he was speechless. Theresa had changed the position of the front legs so they were now raised ferociously above the animal’s head. In this pose, the hay accumulated around the shoulders, bulking them up. For the rear legs she replaced the hay with backstitched rags to keep them tight.
“And if we insert hay between the skin and the fabric, you won’t be able to see the bumps,” she explained.
Althar continued to survey her work, completely absorbed. He could see that Theresa had also positioned a dark stick in the mouth to keep the jaws open, giving the beast a menacing expression. It seemed impossible that this magnificent animal was the same pitiful scarecrow he had cast aside in frustration a little earlier.
They returned together to the bear cave at nightfall, tired but happy. On the way they stopped at the beehives to collect Theresa’s promised wax. When they arrived back at the cave, Althar greeted Leonora with a loud kiss before telling her about the progress they’d made.
“My news is not so good,” the woman lamented. “The young man has taken a turn for the worse.”
Hoos lay in the corner, trembling and struggling to breathe. Leonora showed them a bloody cloth, and told them he had spat it out.
“Did he vomit or cough it up?” Althar tried to ascertain.
“How do I know? It all happened at once.”
“If he coughed it up, it’s bad news. Hoos, can you hear me?” he said into his ear. The young man nodded. Althar put his hand on his chest. “Does it hurt here?” He nodded again.
Althar grimaced and shook his head. The presence of blood in the young man’s spit could only mean a rib had pierced a lung and was now tearing at it. He cursed unceremoniously when he found out that Hoos had been exerting himself earlier in the day.
“If what I fear has happened, there will be nothing we can do,” he said to his wife as an aside. “Except pray, perhaps, and wait until tomorrow.”
Hoos spent the night coughing and moaning. Leonora and Theresa took turns tending to him, but even with their attention and care, he hardly improved. By morning, he was consumed by a fever. Althar knew that without the help of a physician he would die.
“Wife: Prepare some food for the road. We’re going to Fulda,” he announced.
They were ready by midmorning. Althar loaded the cart with the stuffed bear, the half-finished head, and the pebbles for the eye sockets. They lay Hoos Larsson on a pallet among the goods. Then Theresa gathered her belongings, and Althar packed up the food, as well as a bundle of skins to sell, and they said farewell to Leonora.
“I hope to see you again,” said Theresa, her eyes welling up.
“He’ll get better,” she said, giving her an equally teary kiss.
Their first day on the road went by without incident. They stopped only to eat some venison pie and empty their bladders. Hoos slipped in and out of consciousness, his fever still high. They spent the night by a stream, taking turns to keep watch. Theresa used this time to finish sewing the second bear head. When she inserted the false eyes it acquired a formidable appearance—or, at least in the dim light, that’s how it seemed. The next morning they set out again, and just after midday, they could make out plumes of smoke indicating that Fulda was near.
Though they were still some distance away, Theresa could make out the abbey and was impressed. On top of a large hill, dozens of buildings of all different colors crowded together. It appeared that for every inch of land where timber could be driven into the ground or a fence built, that’s what had been done. In the town center at the top of the hill stood the walls that protected the monastery, a cheerless, dark structure that blended into the mountain it was erected on. Lower down, on the slopes, scores of hovels, shacks, storehouses, and barns were jammed together alongside workshops and animal pens. It was such a jumbled confusion that it was difficult distinguishing where one structure began and another ended.
As they approached, the path grew wider until it became a broad road, with peasants and animals trudging up and down in a disorderly fashion. Outlying farmhouses, with their roofs of wattle and mud, lay scattered around the fields with hawthorn fences protecting the owner’s land. Eventually they reached the banks of the River Fulda, the boundary between the tortuous road and the entrance to the city.
An endless line of peasants waited their turn to cross the bridge into and out of the city. Althar covered his face with a hood and urged the horse on until they reached the end of the queue.