The Seer and the Scribe Read Online Free

in his youth.
    Volmar passed over his notes and stood up beside Paulus. “His name is Silas and he is 58 years old. He is suffering from hallucinations and some sort of wasting disease. Take a look at his feet.” Volmar lifted the end of the blanket, revealing the deformed feet. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
    Paulus nodded, his brow furrowed. “It seems his feet are full of scabs and scar tissue from blisters. Hmm, they are still blackened and quite swollen, but, it seems they have mostly healed. We’ll need to wrap both of them right away after cleaning them with warm wine.”
    Paulus had his look of total concentration etched on his face. He knelt beside the pallet and felt for Silas’s pulse. He then leaned forward and held his head close to the old man’s chest to listen to his lungs and heart. Volmar held the old man’s limp hands back just in case he woke and tried to attack Paulus.
    â€œHis breathing is erratic, and so are the beats of his heart.” Paulus frowned, as he leaned back and began to move Silas’s head from side to side, “Interesting, it seems he has a twisted, contorted neck.”
    Volmar went back to his writing, “The young girl is his granddaughter. Her name is Sophie. She can likely answer any questions.”
    Silas stirred at the mention of his granddaughter’s name, “You-u can’t have her. I promised her to that boy first.” His stark green eyes fluttered opened briefly before shutting again, his eyes rolling back into his head.
    Frightened, Sophie mumbled a prayer of forgiveness.
    Paulus turned to her and spoke plainly, “Diseases, Sophie, are not a punishment from God.” The elder monk went on. “There’s always a natural cause and each disease has its own peculiar nature and external causes. There must be something in your Grandfather’s diet, his occupation, or perhaps even the weather, that’s affecting him. My task . . . our task,” he said, correcting himself with emphasis, “is to find out what’s causing this condition. To do so, however, I’ll need your cooperation.”
    â€œYes sir . . . Brother Paulus, sir,” she stammered.
    Volmar whispered to Sophie, “Don’t worry. I was terrified of him for years. He’s much nicer than he looks.”
    Brother Paulus grunted obligingly. His thoughts were already racing to make any connections to past cases. The only things that kept coming to his mind were the ‘Holy Fire’ epidemics of 857 and 1039. Silashad all of the classic symptoms, the gangrenous feet, the twisted neck muscles, the confusion and hallucinations . . . . He’d read of the dreaded disease’s devastation at a monastery years ago in Vienne, recalling that no one knew how it started or why and no one knew how to treat it. Nightmare stories abounded on how it spread like a raging fire throughout the Rhine River Valley, mainly affecting peasants in rural areas, killing thousands; leaving aristocrats, monasteries and other more heavily populated villages alone. Disibodenberg was ill-prepared to deal with a plague, especially one so deadly and unpredictable.
    Paulus turned to Volmar. He didn’t want to raise any alarm unnecessarily so he kept the worst to himself, at least for the moment. “Well, well,” he declared, “whatever we’re dealing with is not contagious. Otherwise Sophie would be suffering from it also.”
    â€œI agree,” Volmar replied, making additional notes in his book.
    Paulus closed his eyes and prayed silently, hoping his instincts were wrong. He leveled his eyes with Sophie’s. “When did your Grandfather fall ill?’
    â€œOutside of Cologne, I think. Three months past.”
    Paulus gave a sigh of relief. He had it all wrong. No way could a man of Silas’s age survive three months with ‘Holy Fire.’ “Go on, child, tell me what happened,”