The Scribe chapter 2 for bloody disgusting

Excerpted from

The Scribe

by Antonio Garrido

translated by Simon Bruni Copyright 2013

Jo Fletcher Books an imprint of Quercus New York/London

Distributed in the United States and Canada by Random House Publisher Services c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway New York, NY 10019

Chapter Two By early afternoon, the boys’ voices brought Gorgias back to the land of the living after spending all morning in a dreamlike state. He had remained lying down, his head to one side and his gaze absent, oblivious to Korne’s suggestions and Theresa’s gestures of affection. But gradually awareness crept back into his face, and after a few moments of confusion he lifted his head to call for Korne.

The parchment-maker seemed pleased to see Gorgias’s health improving, but when Gorgias asked him about his assailant, Korne’s countenance changed, and he declared he could not remember anything.

“When we went to help you, whoever it was had already fled.”

Gorgias screwed up his face and spluttered a curse as he grimaced with pain. Then he stood and began pacing around the workshop like a tormented animal. As he walked up and down, he tried to recall his attacker’s face, but his efforts were in vain. The darkness and the suddenness of the attack had masked the identity of the assailant.

He was weak and confused, so he asked Korne to allow one of his sons to accompany him to the scriptorium.

Once Gorgias left, the workshop gradually resumed its usual bustle. The younger workers spread earth over the 20

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blood on the ground and cleaned the table, while the craftsmen complained about the mess that had been created. Theresa said a brief prayer for her father’s recovery before diligently returning to her daily tasks. First, she cleaned and picked up the rubbish from the day before.

Then she separated the more damaged pieces of leather and placed them in the scrap barrel, where they would rot. Unfortunately, the keg was overflowing. She had to decant its contents into maceration jars so that once the leather had been soaked, mashed, and boiled, they could make the glue that the master craftsmen used as an adhesive. When she had finished, she covered herself with a sack to keep the rain off and made for the outdoor pools in the dilapidated inner courtyard.

Theresa examined the quadrangular pools closely.

Seven pools were distributed in a disorderly fashion around the central well so that the flayed skins could be easily transferred between them after the usual process of cutting, shaving, and scraping. The young woman observed the whitish skins floating on the water like scrawny corpses.

She hated the penetrating acid stench that came from the defleshed pelts.

On one occasion, when she had had a severe chill, she asked Korne to relieve her for a few days because the dampness and causticity of the pools were aggravating her lungs, but all she received was a cuff around the head and a scornful guffaw. She never complained again. When Korne ordered her to turn over the sticky, wrinkled skins, she hike up her skirt, and—holding her breath—stepped into the pools.

She was still looking over the pools when someone came up behind her.

“They still repulse you? Or perhaps you think it’s not a task a parchment-maker’s nose should have to endure?”

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Theresa turned to find Korne smiling sardonically.

The rain ran down his grotesque face and over his bare, exposed gums. He stank of incense, which he used to mask his usual rancid stench. She would have happily told Korne the nature of her thoughts, but remembering the past, she bit her tongue and bowed her head. After so much sacrifice, she was not about to give in to provocation. If he was trying to find an excuse to reproach her, he would have to try a lot harder.

“No matter,” continued the parchment-maker. “I must admit, I feel sorry for you: Your father has been hurt … you have had a fright … you’re nervous, of course. Evidently it is not the right time to undertake such an important test. So in consideration of your father, I am prepared to postpone the examination for a sensible length of time.”

Theresa breathed a sigh of relief. It was true that she still had the image of her blood-soaked father in her head.

Her hands trembled, and though she felt strong enough, a postponement would give her the chance to calm down.

“I’m grateful for your offer, but I don’t wish to disrupt preparations. However, I would welcome a few days to rest,” she admitted.

“A few days? Oh, no!” he said with a smile. “Postponing the trial would mean waiting until next year. It’s the rules, you see. But in your state … look at you: trembling, frightened … I have no doubt that postponing it is the right thing to do.”

Theresa feared that Korne was right. Candidates who withdrew from the examination could not reapply for admission until a full year later. However, for a moment she had thought that given the circumstances the parchment-maker would make an exception.

“So?” Korne pressed.

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Theresa was unable to respond. Her hands were sweating and her heart thumped in her chest. Korne’s offer was not unreasonable, but nobody could foresee what would happen in twelve months. However, if she attempted the test and failed, she would never again be allowed to retake it. Or at least, not while Korne was head of the parchment-makers, for he would use her failure as proof of what he had so frequently proclaimed: that women and animals are merely there to bear children and transport loads.

As Korne waited for her response, he tapped his fingers on a barrel. Theresa considered withdrawing, but at the last moment she resolved to show Korne that she was better qualified than any of his sons to be a parchmentmaker. And what’s more: If she really wanted to become a master parchment-maker, she must get used to dealing with problems as they arose. And if for any reason she did not pass the test, perhaps in a few years’ time, she would be able to attempt it again. After all, she told herself, Korne was old, and by then he might have died or fallen ill. So she lifted her head, and with determination in her voice, she informed him that she would take the examination that morning and accept the consequences.

The parchment-maker looked unperturbed.

“Very well. If that is what you wish, let the show begin.”

Theresa nodded and turned to head back into the workshop. As she was about to go through the entrance, the parchment-maker called out: “May I ask where you are going?” he said with nostrils flaring like a horse’s.

Theresa looked at him, perplexed. She was going to her workbench to check the equipment she would use 23

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in the test. “I thought I would sharpen the knives before the count arrived, prepare the—” “The count? What has the count got to do with this?” he interrupted, feigning surprise.

Theresa lost the will to speak. Her father had assured her that Wilfred would be present.

“Ah, yes!” Korne continued with an affected grimace. “Gorgias said something about that. But yesterday, when I visited the count, he was so busy I judged that we should not disturb him for such a trivial thing.

I presumed, and I think rightly, that if you are capable of coping with any turn of events, the count’s absence from your examination should not be an impediment.

Or should it?”

Theresa then understood that Korne had not assisted her father out of kindness, nor had he suggested postponing the examination out of consideration of her circumstances. He had helped Gorgias knowing that the fate of the workshop, and therefore his own, was bound to the scriptorium’s activity. What a fool she had been!

To think that for a few moments she had believed he had good intentions. Now she was at the mercy of this moron, and all her skills would be as much use as a pile of sodden firewood. The young woman bowed her head and prepared to accept the inevitable, but just as she had lost all hope, an idea lit up her face.

“It’s curious,” she said confidently. “My father not only assured me that Wilfred would witness the examination, but also that, aware of my progress, he wanted to keep my first parchment for himself. A parchment that—as you know—I must mark with my seal,” she pointed out.

She prayed that Korne would swallow her lie. If he did, perhaps she would have a chance.

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The parchment-maker’s stupid smile immediately disappeared from his face. Ultimately, he did not know whether what she was saying was true, but if they were Wilfred’s wishes, he could hardly risk going against them.

In any event, he could not care less what the count said or thought, because the girl would not pass the test. Not, at least, while he was master of the parchment-makers.

Theresa was still waiting to hear whether she would be allowed to take the test when Korne summoned the rest of the workers. Laborers and craftsmen immediately stopped their work filling the courtyard and turning it into a sort of arena. The youngest workers nabbed the front spots, spreading out around the yard. One boy shoved another lad, who fell into a pool, making the crowd cheer with approval. The craftsmen made themselves comfortable in the corners out of the rain, but the laborers were unfazed by a little water. One of them came out with a basket of apples to share with those who were waiting impatiently as if for the beginning of the show. It seemed like everyone except Theresa knew what was about to happen. Korne clapped his hands and addressed the improvised audience.

“As you all know, young Theresa has applied for admission to the guild.” There was a roar of laughter.

“The lass,” he said, pointing at her as he clutched his groin, “thinks she is cleverer than you, cleverer than my sons, and cleverer than me. This woman! A woman who shits her skirt and hides under a blanket when she hears a dog bark! But she has some courage, I’ll give her that.

Ha! The audacity to ask for a job that by its very nature is for men.”

The laborers laughed in unison. One joker threw an apple core, which flew across the yard and hit Theresa in the face. Another flailed about, imitating a girl running 25

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scared, and the rest applauded until Korne interrupted the jesting to continue his tirade.

“Women doing men’s work … can someone explain to me how a woman could work here and also tend to her husband? Who would cook and clean for him? Who would take care of his children? Or perhaps she would bring her brood of little girls here to join the guild, too?”

Laughter rippled around the yard again.

“And when summer comes and the heat arrives, when sweat soaks her body and her smock presses tight against her breasts, will she expect us to look elsewhere and repress our desires—or perhaps she will offer us her fruits as a reward for our efforts?”

The crowd continued laughing, shoving each other and winking as they applauded Korne’s witticisms.

At that moment, Theresa stepped forward. Until then she had kept quiet, but she was not going to put up with any more jeering. “If I have a husband one day, how I look after him will be my business. And as for my breasts,” she said, “given the attention you pay them, I will be only too pleased to inform your wives of your lecherous desires so they can make up for the lack that you so clearly suffer from. And now, if you don’t mind, I would like to start the test.”

Korne reddened with rage. He had not expected such a feisty reaction, let alone the derisive snickers her words provoked among the youngsters—snickers that he imagined were aimed at him. The parchment-maker went over to the basket of apples and picked out the most damaged one. Then he turned and walked over to Theresa.

Planting himself a few inches from her, he slowly bit into the apple. After slobbering all over the fruit, he held it out in front of the girl’s lips.

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“Want some?”

He smiled at Theresa’s disgust. Looking at the fruit again, he saw a worm squirming in its rotten center.

Without batting an eye, he bit through the core and the worm, casting the rest of the apple into one of the pools.

As he chewed, he gathered his unkempt hair into a grotesque ponytail. Then he went over to the pool where he had discarded the apple.

“Here you have your test,” he said, and he opened the latticework lid that protected the pool. “Make ready the skin and you will earn the qualification you so crave.”

Theresa’s lips tightened. Scraping and preparing the skins was not a task befitting a craftsman, but if that was what Korne wanted, she would not disappoint him. She walked over to the edge of the pool and observed the layer of blood and fat floating on its surface. Taking a spade, she pushed the remains left by the caustics to one side and fished around for the skin that she would work on. But after several attempts, she still could not find one. She turned with a look of puzzlement on her face, demanding an explanation.

“It’s in there,” Korne indicated toward the deepest pool.

Theresa walked over to the pool that received the skins just as they had been torn from the animals. Carefully, she took off her boots. Then she gathered up her skirt and stepped into the water, holding her breath.

Scraps of skin and clots of blood floated in the bath, intermingling with the filth of the maceration pool. Under the attentive gaze of the crowd, she lowered herself until the liquid reached her stomach. The cold made her groan.

She waited a moment before taking another deep breath and letting herself sink into the depths of the pool. For a blink of an eye she disappeared underwater, 27

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but she quickly emerged with her head veiled in grease.

Spitting, she wiped the filth from her face. Then she plunged further into the center of the bath, pushing away the floating detritus. The lime stung her skin under her clothes and the ice numbed her bones. Under her bare feet she could feel a bed of slime. And she groped the surface like a blind woman looking for a rail to cling to.

But she kept going, feeling her way forward as the water lapped against her chin.

Suddenly she bumped into something under the water, and her heart missed a beat. When she managed to calm herself down, she felt the object with her foot to try to identify it. For a moment she thought about giving up, but she remembered her father and everyone who had believed in her. She filled her lungs with air and submerged herself into the water. The cold made her temples throb as her hands touched the object. Its sticky feel made her want to retch, but she suppressed her revulsion and continued to run her hands over the thing until she found a string of beads that felt like little shingles. She felt along the line and after a moment of uncertainty, she realized with horror she was grasping a row of teeth. She almost opened her eyes in fright and would have been blinded forever by the lime, but she kept control of herself. She let go of the jawbone and went up for air, gasping, her face flushed red as the Devil’s. As she coughed and spluttered, vomiting water, the remains of a putrid and deformed cow’s head bobbed up in front of her.

The laborers immediately came to the edge of the pool to taunt the young woman. One offered him his hand, but as Theresa grasped it, he let go, making her fall back into the water. At that moment, the parchment-maker’s wife appeared in the courtyard. She had witnessed the scene 28

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and come with dry clothes. The woman pushed past the laborers and pulled Theresa—who was quivering like a puppy—out of the pool. She covered her with a blanket and took her into her home, but as they were about to go through the door they heard Korne say, “She can get changed and get back to work.”

When Theresa returned to the workshop, she found the wrinkled remains of the cowhide on her bench. She spread it out with the help of a wooden trowel and then removed the excess water. After examining the skin, she deduced that the animal must have been flayed that very week, since the lime had barely begun to dislodge the hair, and scraps of meat and fat were stuck to the inside. The cow must have been devoured by wolves, because the skin had many bite marks. Aside from that, there were signs of the abscesses and blemishes typical of older beasts. She wouldn’t even throw that skin to the rats, she thought.

“You want to be a parchment-maker, do you not?

Well, there’s your test,” Korne smirked from the doorway. “Prepare the parchment that you are so keen for Wilfred to see.”

Though she knew what he asked was impossible, Theresa did not protest. Rendering and cleaning an animal skin required several days of work with time to rest in between so the caustics and washing could take effect.

Still, she was not about to give up. With a stiff brush, she scrubbed the skin to remove the remnants of meat that the worms had not managed to devour. When she finished with the flesh side of the skin, she turned her attention to the hair side. She brushed and scraped the hair energetically. Then she wrung out the leather and spread it over the bench to better see the areas that still had hair.

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Finally, she looked around for the box that contained the broom used to apply the acid—but she was surprised to find it had disappeared.

Korne observed the whole process, a smile appearing on his lips from time to time. Occasionally he would turn away, as though he had more important things to do, but he would soon return to check the young woman’s progress. Theresa did her best to ignore him. She assumed that the broom’s disappearance was no coincidence, so she did not bother searching for it. Instead she scooped up a trowelful of ash, mixed it with some dung that the mules had deposited at the entrance, and applied the resulting paste to the pores in the skin. Then, with the help of a blunt, curved knife, she continued to work on the thick hair until she achieved the desired result.

Then she stretched the skin over a frame to form a gigantic tambourine—a delicate step, for she ran the risk of tearing the leather at its most damaged points. She skillfully positioned some pebbles around the skin and wrapped them in pinches of the leather to form little sacks resembling thick teats, which she fastened with some cord.

Then she attached the leather to the frame and stretched it using the cords coming from the teats. When she saw that the tears on the skin were holding, she sighed with relief. Now all she had to do was dry the skin by the fire and wait for it to tighten before scraping it. She moved the frame over to the fire blazing in the center of the workshop. Not only was it the warmest part of the room, it was also the brightest, so the benches where the most valuable codices were repaired were located there.

As she waited for the moisture to exude from the taut leather, she warmed herself by the fire and wondered where the skin had come from. Cattle had been in short supply 30

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for some time, and as far as she knew, only Wilfred had a few animals, so Korne had probably obtained it from one of his intendants. And judging by its condition, he had done so with the sole intention of making her life difficult.

The parchment-maker came over to the fire. He ran his finger over the skin, which was oozing moisture. He turned to Theresa with a look of indifference.

“I can see you are applying yourself. You may yet get something out of it,” he said, pointing at the taut skin.

“I’m doing my best, sir,” she responded.

“And this pig’s ear is the best you can do?” Korne sneered as he drew his knife and waved it at the skin.

“Have you seen these marks? The skin will break here.”

Theresa knew that would not happen. She had checked the tears and tightened the cords in a way that would prevent breakage.

“That won’t happen,” she retorted.

Korne seemed barely able to contain his rage. Very slowly, he passed the point of his knife over the taut leather, like someone sliding a dagger over the throat of his victim. The blade scraped against the skin, roughening it ever so slightly. Theresa watched, aghast, as the blade’s point stopped near a mark Korne had indicated earlier. With flashing eyes and his mouth opened enough to show his bare gums, Korne started to press the point into the surface.

“No!” Theresa implored.

At that moment, Korne sunk the knife into the skin, making it tear into a thousand pieces that flew over their heads and floated down like dead leaves onto the fire.

“Oh, dear!” Korne said. “It would seem that you did not calculate the required tension for the skin, 31

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which regrettably reverts you to your miserable life as an apprentice.”

Theresa clenched her fists, her face contorting with anger. She had endured cold and humiliation. She had tended to that unusable skin and made it into something acceptable. She had put her heart and soul into preparing for the test. And now, for the sole reason that she was a woman, Korne was condemning her forever.

She was seething as he grabbed her arm and put his lips to her ear. “You could always earn a living massaging some drunk’s skin,” he sniggered.

Theresa could not take any more. She jerked her arm away and was about to leave the workshop, but the parchment-maker stopped her. “No harlot disrespects me like that,” he muttered, dealing her a blow to the cheek.

Theresa tried to defend herself, but Korne pushed her again and she slipped, falling against the frame she had been working on. The structure wobbled heavily, swaying for few prolonged moments before finally collapsing onto the fire with a great crash. On impact, a swarm of embers flew out into the workshop, turning it into a furnace.

Sparks flared and landed on the nearest benches. A few of the cinders set fire to the codices, and in the blink of an eye, the flames had reached the shelving.

Before Korne could react, a dimwitted laborer rushed to open all the windows. Fueled by the draft, the flames licked at the timber and wattle roofing, making the dead leaves catch fire. Korne had just enough time to snatch a bundle of parchment away before a burning branch fell, close to where Theresa stood in a daze.

Ignoring her, Korne ordered the laborers to quickly grab anything of value they could find and flee the building. They obeyed, bumping into each other as they 32

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gathered objects and bolted outside. One of them started to drag Theresa away from the flames, but when he saw that she was regaining her senses, he left her to her own fate.

When Theresa came round, she thought she was on the threshold of Hell. She looked around in desperation to see the flames devouring everything in their path and threatening to surround her. A creaking above made her look at the ceiling. For a moment she thought the roof would fall in, but then she could see that the flames were not spreading across the wattle, probably because of the damp and the accumulated snow.

She scanned the room and saw that her only hope of escape was to reach the inner courtyard, for the way out to the street seemed impassable. On her left she discovered a group of codices that had been stored under a ledge. Without hesitation, she wrapped herself in her dress, still damp from the pool, and gathered up as many codices as she could carry. Then she ran out into the courtyard, where she noticed a chestnut tree climbing up the easternmost corner to the rooftop that adjoined the cathedral’s eaves. She took off her wet garment and used it as a sack for the codices, but as she was about to climb the vine, a cry from inside made her stop.

Theresa dropped the codices and ran toward the workshop. As she entered the room, smoke blinded her. She advanced toward the fire, unable to breathe with the heat burning her insides. Huddled behind a wall of fire, she discovered Korne’s wife, crying out in desperation. The fire must have caught her by surprise while she was up in the attic and for some reason prevented her escape. As she approached, the woman was squealing like a hog about to be slaughtered, and suddenly Theresa noticed that the woman’s clothes were already on fire.

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Theresa moved toward her, but a wall of fire between them kept her from getting close. Above the fireplace the roof creaked. The branches of the latticework were beginning to give way under the thick layer of snow piled on top of it. Looking around, Theresa found a long spade lying on the ground. She picked it up and thrust it with all her might into the branches above that were starting to break. The roof creaked again, but she kept jabbing at it, until suddenly a great cracking sound made her stop. The latticework was on the verge of collapse.

With the smoke asphyxiating her, she needed air. With her remaining strength she rammed the spade into the ceiling as hard as she could.

A flood of snow suddenly burst through the hole that had opened up to the roof. When the avalanche subsided, the flames between her and Korne’s wife were extinguished.

“Your hand! For God’s sake, give me your hand!”

Theresa cried.

The woman stopped screaming and opened her eyes.

She stood, kissed Theresa’s hand, and moving as quickly as the woman’s thick legs would allow, they ran together toward the baths.

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