The Scribe (25 page)

As she examined the text, Theresa realized that she had not agreed to any kind of remuneration with Alcuin for her new employment. She knew that he was looking after Hoos, and she did not wish to appear ungrateful, but when the money she was given for the bear head was gone, she would need funds to pay for board and lodging. She didn’t know how to broach the subject, but Alcuin seemed to read her thoughts.

“As for your pay,” he informed her, “I promise to provide two pounds of bread every day, along with whatever vegetables you need. You may also keep the robe you are wearing, and I will give you a new pair of shoes so that you do not catch a chill.”

It seemed sufficient to Theresa, who guessed she would only be kept busy until dinner time, which meant she would still have several hours to help Helga at the tavern.

He had explained to her that her schedule would fit around religious services, which took place every three hours. The monastery
came to life at dawn, after the Prime service. That was when they had breakfast and afterward the monks would go about their tasks. At around midmorning during the Terce service, which coincided with Chapter Mass, was when Theresa should start her work. Three hours later, at midday, the Sext service would be held, straight after lunch. None was held midafternoon until sunset, after which came dinner, and then Vespers. By midevening they would return to the church for Compline, which lasted until midnight. He told her that what time her day ended would depend on how many pages she managed to complete.

Alcuin donned a woolen overcoat. “If you should need to visit Hoos in my absence, ask for my acolyte and show him this.” He handed her a tarnished bronze ring. “He will escort you. I will return in a couple of hours to check your progress. Do you like soup?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I will tell the kitchen to prepare you some food.”

Then he left her alone with the text.

She dipped the pen in the ink, crossed herself, and started writing—putting her heart and soul into every letter. She copied the writing imitating the stroke, inclination, movement, and size. Perfect symbols appeared on the page. Words interlinked to form harmonious paragraphs full of meaning, and in her mind’s eye she saw the image of her father, encouraging her to achieve her ambitions. She was saddened to think of him and longed to be by his side. Then with renewed resolve, she went back to writing.

13

Haec studia adolescenciam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis solatium et perfugium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.”

“No, no, and no!” Alcuin, exasperated, said to the young assistant assigned to him by the bishop. “It has been three days and you still have not learned! How many times do I have to tell you that if you do not keep the pen perpendicular to the parchment, it will ruin the document.”

The novice lowered his head as he muttered an apology. It was already the second time he had made a mistake that afternoon.

“And look here. It’s not
haec
, it’s
hæc
. Nor is it
praepent
, but
præpent
, lad!
Præpent
! How do you expect anyone to understand this… this gibberish. Oh, well, I suppose we’ll leave it there for today. It’s almost dinnertime anyhow, and we’re both tired. We’ll continue on Monday when we’re both calmer.”

The young man stood, his head bowed. It was clear he didn’t like the work, but the bishop had ordered him to help Alcuin with whatever he asked. He sprinkled some chalk powder on the blot he had just made, but all this did was ruin it further. So he decided to give up completely for the day and gathered his implements,
cleaning them sloppily before placing them into a wooden chest. He blew at the chalk remains and used a tiny brush to sweep away the lumps that had formed around the blot. Finally, he sharpened the calamus, rinsed it a little, and left it on the lectern with the original codex. Then he ran after Alcuin, who had already disappeared down the corridor that led to the old
peristylium
of the cathedral chapter.

“Master, master!” called out the young acolyte. “While I remember, we may not be able to continue on Monday, since it is the day of the execution.”

“The execution? God almighty! I had forgotten,” he said, scratching his tonsure. “Well, it is our duty to assist him at such a difficult juncture. Speaking of which, will the bishop be there?”

“With the whole cathedral chapter,” the acolyte responded.

“Well, then, lad, I will see you at breakfast on Tuesday.”

“You will not be at dinner this evening?”

“No, no. At night, food, aside from bloating my stomach, dulls my senses. And I still have to finish this
De Oratione
,” he said, raising the parchment roll he carried under his arm. “God be with you.”

“And you, Father. Good night.”

“By the way,” added Alcuin, glancing at the lectern, “don’t you think you should put the codex back on its shelf?”

“Oh! Of course!” said the novice, and quickly retraced his steps. “Good night, Father, I will do that right away.”

The monk set off for the boarding house at the cathedral complex with a disgruntled look. The acolyte had been working on that codex for several days and had barely managed to transcribe four complete pages. At that pace he would never have a decent copy. He decided that as soon as he saw the bishop he would announce his intention to appoint Theresa to the position, for the novice was clearly not the right person for the job.

As he crossed the
peristylium
he stopped for a moment to look around him. As far as he could see, Fulda’s monastic chapter had adhered to the latest reforms instituted by Charlemagne. In his
institutio canonicorum
, he aimed to promote community life among the chapter’s clergymen by regulating the system and design of the clerical buildings surrounding the cathedral and the bishop’s palace.

He was fascinated by that arrangement of structures of various styles and functions that wrapped around the little cathedral, and he was even more surprised by the fact that the bishop of Fulda had chosen an old Roman
domus
as the site for his episcopal see. The palace was a two-story stone building. The upper floor had eleven small heated rooms with doors leading out to a communal gallery with views over the atrium. The ground floor housed the cellar, two porticos, two chambers with timber floors, a stable, the kitchens, a bakery, the pantry, the granary, and a small infirmary. Perhaps he was not the right man to make such a judgment, but he had the impression that the palace exceeded the humility required of a prelate of the Church. That said, he knew that he should not criticize too harshly one who had so warmly welcomed him. After all, the Bishop of Fulda had felt most complimented by his presence, especially when he learned that Alcuin was interested in the exquisite treasures of his library.

It was completely dark by the time he arrived at his cell in the boarding house. He could have stayed in the optimates’ residence in the abbey, but preferred a small, private cell to a large but shared room. He thanked the heavens for a space of his own, took off his shoes, and made ready to use his brief moment of solitude to meditate on the events of the day, which had been particularly arduous, but not as bad as the days he had to endure in his far-off Northumbria. After all not in Fulda nor in Aquis-Granum did he have to rise for Matins, and after the Prime service he always had a warm breakfast of cakes with honey, cured cheese, and apple
cider waiting for him. Indeed, his daily duties were nothing like those he had performed with utter devotion during his days at the episcopal school in York, where he taught rhetoric and grammar, ran the library, oversaw the scriptorium, collected codices, translated texts, oversaw the loans of books brought in from the distant monasteries of Hibernia, supervised the admission of novices, organized debates, and assessed the progress of each student. How distant were those days in York!

As if he were reliving them, his mind conjured images of his childhood in Britain. He had been born into a Christian family in Whitby, Northumbria, a tiny coastal town whose few inhabitants lived from what they could pull from the sea and from the meager orchards sprawled around an ancient fort. He remembered the rain-soaked land, an eternally damp place, but fresh, where every morning he would wake to the smell of dew and salt, and the sound of waves in constant battle.

His parents found him to be a nervous boy who was happier examining seeds or studying snails than throwing stones with the other children. A strange boy, they thought, not least when he accurately guessed how much fish a certain boat would catch—or which house would collapse after the next storm.

He found it pointless to explain that he merely observed the condition of the nets used by the fishermen or the rot that had taken hold of pillars and beams. Unfortunately, the rest of the village thought the gangly little boy was touched by the Devil, so, to right his soul, his parents decided to send him to the cathedral schools in York.

His teacher was Aelbert of York, a knock-kneed monk, the head magister at the time and disciple of the previous head, Count Egbert, who was a relative. Perhaps that was why Aelbert took him in like a son and devoted himself body and soul to channeling his strange talent. There Alcuin learned that England was a heptarchy made up of the Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Wessex, Essex, and Sussex
in the south of the island, and the northern realms of the Angles of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria, where he resided.

He enjoyed broadening his mind in the typical subjects of the
trivium
, which included grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and of the
cuadrivium
, comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Along with these, in accord with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, he studied astrology, mechanics, and medicine.

“
Saeculare quoque et forasticae philosophorum disciplinae
” Aelbert insisted time and again, trying to convince Alcuin that the secular arts were nothing but the work of the Devil, handed to the Christians so they would forget the Word of God.

“But Saint Gregory the Great himself—in his
Commentary on the Book of Kings
—legitimizes these studies,” Alcuin retorted when he was just sixteen years old.

“That does not give you the right to spend the entire day reading that compendium of lies that is the
Historiae Naturalis
.”

“Would you be less displeased if I studied the
Etymologiae u
Originum sive etymologicarum libri viginti
? Because if you compare the two, you will note that the Hispanic saint modeled the structure of some of his books on Pliny’s encyclopedia. And not just on Pliny, but also on the ecclesiastical writers Cassiodorus and Boethius. And on Caelius Aurelianus’s translations of Asclepiades of Bithynia and Soranus of Ephesus—and Lactantius and Solinus—and even
Prata
by Suetonius.”

“You should read from the Christian point of view, not the pagan one.”

“The pagans are sons of God, too.”

“But at the service of the Devil, boy! And do not contradict me or I will cast all thirty-three volumes out the window one by one.”

In reality Aelbert did not worry too much about what kind of texts Alcuin read, for the boy never neglected his duties as a Christian. On the contrary, he had proven himself an accomplished and diligent student, able to gain the upper hand in theological
debates with the most experienced monks, so his dabbling in the pagan texts, though undesirable, had not diverted him in any way from his journey toward wisdom.

Over the years, Alcuin proved to be a true artisan of letters. He would examine texts, volumes, and codices and—like a master builder—extract fragments and passages in order to construct extraordinary and highly eloquent mosaics of knowledge. He did so with poems such as his “
De sanctus Euboriensis ecclesiae
.” In more than one thousand six-hundred and fifty verses, he not only described the history of York, its bishops, and the kings of Northumbria, but he also gave overviews of authors whose works Brother Eanwald had added to the library. Those authors included the likes of Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Cassiodorus, John Chrysostom, Cyprian, Gregory the Great, Jerome, Isidore, Lactantius, Sedulius, Arator, Juvencus, Venancio, Prudentius, and Virgil. Alcuin would write endlessly.

In time, his didactic works written as a student were used as educational texts, due to their clarity and rhetoric. He did so with Aristotle’s
Categories
, adapted in Saint Augustine’s
Categoriae decem
, or the
Disputatio de Vera
Philosophia
, the canon that would later become a bedside book of Charlemagne himself. And he did not forget to attend to his liturgical texts, theological works, exegetic and dogmatic writings, poetry and hagiographies.

The day that Aelbert succeeded Egbert as archbishop of York, the position of head magister of the cathedral school became vacant. Several candidates put themselves forward for the role, but by then Alcuin was first choice for the post. He was thirty-five years old and had recently been ordained as a deacon.

Later, the Saxon king Ælfwald himself sent him to Rome, to seek the pallium for the new count and obtain the rank of metropolitan for York. In Parma, on his return journey, he met Charlemagne, and from that point forward he never returned to running the
cathedral school. Even so, he did not stop taking enjoyment from his divinations or from using his unique cunning.

The case of The Swine suddenly sprang back into his mind. It was Friday and he would be put to death before nightfall on Monday.

He had learned that in Fulda the public executions took place on the main square at dusk so they could be witnessed by the greatest number of people. He imagined that the prisoner must have been found guilty of some heinous crime such as stealing from the estate of a noble or setting fire to property. Under the law, theft or destruction were the only offenses punishable by death—though of course there were exceptions, usually depending on the social status of the accused or sometimes the victims.