“Your friend the monk. That damned Alcuin. He ordered me to stay here until he found me somewhere to go.”
Theresa returned to the kitchen and asked Favila for her help, but the woman refused, still washing her arms in cold water. Theresa snatched the basin and threw it against the wall, making it smash into pieces.
“Alcuin said—” Favila began.
“I don’t care what Alcuin said. I’m fed up with that man,” she cried. Then she turned and left the kitchen. As she walked in the direction of the palace, she cursed the British monk over and over again. Now she better understood Hoos Larsson’s warning about him. Alcuin was a cold-blooded man, concerned only with his books and nothing else. She remembered that if she hadn’t refused to continue writing, he would never have agreed to help her friend Helga the Black. But all of that was about to end. It was about time Lothar knew just what kind of a man Brother Alcuin was.
When the old secretary saw her appear, he tried to stop her, but he was unable to prevent her from bursting into the bishop’s chamber. Theresa stumbled upon Lothar urinating with his back to her. She turned to avoid seeing him but did not leave the room. When she heard the trickle subside, she counted to three and then wheeled back around.
Lothar turned around and looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and irritation. “May I ask what the devil you are doing here?”
“Forgive me, Your Eminence, but I needed to see you.”
“But who…? You’re not that girl who follows Alcuin around everywhere, I hope! Get out of here immediately!”
“Father. You must listen to me.” An acolyte tried to expel her, but Theresa shoved him away. “I must speak to you about the Plague.”
On hearing the word plague, Lothar simmered down. He arched an eyebrow and adjusted his breeches. Then he donned a robe and looked at her skeptically.
“What plague are you referring to?”
“The one that has gripped the city. Alcuin has uncovered its source and we know how to stop it.”
“Sin is the source of the Plague, and this is our only cure,” he said, signaling toward a crucifix.
“You are wrong. It’s the wheat.”
“The wheat?” He gestured for the secretary to leave them. “What do you mean the wheat?”
“According to the chapter’s polyptychs, some batches of contaminated wheat were acquired and transported to Fulda nearly four years ago—during the pestilence of Magdeburg. Until recently whoever acquired it was selling it at long intervals so that nobody would link the illness to the wheat, but lately the perpetrator has flooded the markets. The sick and dying are rapidly increasing and nobody is doing anything to prevent it.”
“But what you’re telling me is… are you sure?”
“We found something at Kohl’s mill. A poison that corrupts the cereal.”
“And Kohl is responsible?”
“I don’t know. Alcuin suspects two individuals: the prior Ludwig and Kohl himself.”
“By God’s bones! And why didn’t he come to me himself?”
“That is what I asked him. He mistrusts even you. He is obsessed with catching the culprit, but all he does is wait while folks continue to die.” She broke into tears. “Even my friend Helga the Black has fallen ill.”
“I will speak to him immediately,” he said, putting on his shoes.
“No, please. If he finds out that I told you, I don’t know what he’ll do to me.”
“But we must do something. Did you say Boethius, Kohl, and Ludwig? Why those three and no one else?”
Theresa told him everything she knew. After answering Lothar’s questions, she felt better, for the bishop seemed like he was keen to put an end to the problem. “I will give the order to arrest the suspects. As for your friend… what did you say her name was?”
“Helga the Black.”
“That’s it, Helga. I will request that she is taken to the chapter infirmary with orders that they do everything they can for her there.”
They agreed that Theresa would return to the scriptorium but remain in the episcopal palace should Lothar need her. When she came out of the bishop’s chambers, she noticed the secretary looking at her as if he wanted to thrash her.
Before going back to the scriptorium, Theresa decided to check up on Helga. She didn’t know whether they would be able to find a cure for the sickness, but she assumed that the news of her imminent transfer to the hospital would at least console her a little. However, when she arrived at the kitchen, Helga was not in the room. She asked everyone she could find, but nobody knew where she had gone.
The rest of Theresa’s day proceeded without her hearing from either Lothar or Alcuin. She was relieved not to see the monk. But Helga the Black’s disappearance concerned her greatly. Before dinner she decided to leave the palace to wander for a while. She had not eaten for some time, but the truth was that pangs of remorse had taken away her appetite. She didn’t know whether she had done the right thing, but at least she could hope that Lothar would do the right thing and close the mills, making the Plague disappear forever.
As she walked she could not stop thinking about her friend Helga. She had searched for her in the kitchens, in the pantries, at the infirmary. She went back to her abandoned tavern and to the house of the neighbor who had taken her in the day that Widukind had beaten her so severely. She even asked around the streets where the most bedraggled prostitutes plied their trade, but there was no trace of her to be found.
Nothing. It was as if the earth had swallowed her up. Then she remembered Alcuin, and her stomach tightened. She didn’t know why she was filled with so much unease since she had acted out of good conscience.
Suddenly, she longed to be with Hoos Larsson. She missed his smile, his sky-blue eyes, his little jokes about the size of her hips, and his entertaining stories about Aquis-Granum. He was the only person who made her feel good, and the only person she could trust. She yearned for him so much she would have given everything she had to feel his caresses for even one moment.
Her walk ended in front of the city’s great gates, an impressive lattice of timber, hawthorn, and metal beams that protected the main entrance into Fulda. At the top, sharpened tree trunks stood in a line like a row of teeth flickering in the reddish glow of the torches. The many repairs that had been made to the gates gave them the appearance of a dying structure.