“I did not meant to incriminate you,” she finally managed to say.
“Well, according to Lothar, it seems a little too late for that.” He kept walking without looking back at her. For the entire trip back to his cell, Theresa kept apologizing for what she had done, all the while asking herself why she was doing so. For after all, the monk had used her for his own purposes. He had locked her up, and if it had been left up to him, nobody would know yet about the cause of the Plague. There was also the matter of the folia, in which he had accused Kohl as the culprit, something he had never mentioned to Theresa before.
As she struggled to sort through her thoughts, Alcuin went into his cell. But, before the guard locked him in, he turned to Theresa, and taking her hands into his, he said in Greek: “Return to the episcopal scriptorium and reexamine the polyptychs.”
Then the guard closed the door, giving Theresa an arrogant look. She turned and ran toward the kitchens, pressing against the key that Alcuin had just given her to her chest.
19
When she reached the kitchens, Theresa found Favila wrestling with a chicken. “So you heard the news of the postponed execution too? Truly, I don’t know what they are waiting for to bring that murderer to justice,” she said as a greeting to Theresa as she continued to pluck feathers from the bird.
Theresa nodded without making a fuss, but she felt annoyed that Favila and everyone else took for granted The Swine had killed the miller’s daughter.
“Have you seen Helga?” she asked halfheartedly.
The woman shook her head no as she jointed the chicken.
“I didn’t think you would have,” she added, then took a piece of cheese and said good-bye to the cook.
She had to wait for the congregation to gather in the refectory before she could access the episcopal scriptorium without being seen. Though she had been in that room dozens of times, fear constricted her throat. She inserted the key in the lock and turned it until the bolt popped, then she quickly went in and closed the door behind her. She was comforted by the smell of the fire, still burning in the hearth, glad that the bishop had instructed one be built in such a cold room.
On the table she found several unfurled documents that looked as if they had been worked on recently. She ran a finger across the ink and found it still wet. Written within the hour, she estimated. She looked through them but could see nothing important. Mostly they were various epistolae signed by Lothar exhorting other bishops to follow the precepts of the Rule of Saint Benedict.
She put down the documents and went to the bookshelves where she found the polyptych that she had already reviewed so many times. However, when she tried to take it down, she realized that it had been chained to the shelf, so she pulled it out as far as she could and opened the cover to examine its contents. Due to the proximity of the neighboring volumes, she could barely turn the pages. Still she managed to locate the summaries of the grain transactions settled almost four years earlier with the nearby town of Magdeburg.
The text was all the same in the same handwriting—the exact same sentences as before. She read them over again without finding anything new. But on the altered page, she could only read the paragraphs that someone had tried to pass off as the original entry. She couldn’t examine the hidden text that she had discovered earlier.
While she continued to study the pages, she wondered again what she was doing in the scriptorium trying to help Alcuin. She did not even know whether the monk was guilty or innocent. If they discovered her, they would think she was in cahoots with him, an accomplice in a murder, and she too would probably end up on the pyre. She decided she must leave and quickly put the whole affair behind her.
She was about to close the book when suddenly some words jumped out at her: In nomine Pater. She looked at the letters closely, reading them slowly over and over again. In nomine Pater. Why did it catch her attention? It was nothing more than the standard way to begin a letter.
In a flash, she understood. Good God! That was it! She gave a cry of joy and ran to the documents spread out on the table. She frantically searched through the epistles signed by Lothar, unfurled them with trembling hands. There it was. In nomine Pater.
The same inclination… the same stroke… the same handwriting!
The amendments made to the polyptych in which the grain sales were recorded had been written by Lothar’s hand. She crossed herself and then shivered, taking a step back. If it was Lothar who had made the corrections… perhaps he was also behind the murders.
She had to take the evidence to the king.
Tidying the documents on the table, she returned to the polyptych on the bookshelf, but try as she might, she could not free it from its chain.
She was trying to figure out how to work it loose when she heard the door creak. Terrified, she crouched among the books just in time to see the stout figure of Lothar walk into the scriptorium. Theresa put down the polyptych and crawled to the end of the bookshelf. There she hid behind a large chair.
Lothar went to the table and looked at the documents before approaching the hearth. Then he walked over to the polyptych and unchained it. He hesitated for a moment, glancing from side to side as if he feared being watched. Then he leafed through the codex and finally cast it into the flames, where in the blink of an eye it burned like a parched bale of hay.
Moments after Lothar departed, Theresa left, too. She needed to speak to Alcuin to tell him all that had happened, but when she reached his cell she found it empty. On the way there she passed by the kitchens, where to her surprise, she found Helga the Black. Astonished, Theresa didn’t know what to say. But Helga gestured to her to stay silent and led her to a storeroom where they could speak in private.
“I thought you were dead,” Theresa said sharply. Then she gave her friend a strong embrace.
“I’m so sorry,” Helga said. “I didn’t want to worry you, but Alcuin made me do it.”
“Made you? Made you do what? And what about your legs? Are they all right?” She remembered seeing them blue from the sickness.
“It was fake,” she said, ashamed. “Alcuin made me put tincture on them. He told me that if I didn’t do it, he would take my child from me when it’s born.”
“But why?”