Wednesday, November 21, 2012

So we did

So we did,fake uggs for sale, and without difficulty we opened the door of the balneary, next to the infirmary.
Separated one from the other by thick curtains were some tubs, I don’t recall how many. The monks used them for their ablutions, on the days the Rule established, and Severinus used them for therapeutic reasons,fake montblanc pens, be?cause nothing can restore body and mind better than a bath. A fireplace in one corner allowed the water to be heated easily. We found it dirty with fresh ashes, and before it a great cauldron lay, overturned. The water could be drawn from a font in another corner,replica gucci handbags.
We looked in the first tubs, which were empty. Only the last, concealed by a drawn curtain, was full, and next to it lay a garment, in a heap. At first sight, in the beam of our lamp, the surface of the liquid seemed smooth; but as the light struck it we glimpsed on the bottom, lifeless, a naked human body. We pulled it out slowly: Berengar. And this one, William said, truly had the face of a drowned man. The features were swollen. The body, white and flabby, without hair, seemed a woman’s except for the obscene spectacle of the flaccid pudenda. I blushed, then shuddered. I made the sign of the cross as William blessed the corpse.
Chapter 23
FOURTH DAY
LAUDS
In which William and Severinus examine Berengar’s corpse and discover that the tongue is black, unusual in a drowned man. Then they discuss most painful poisons and a past theft.
I will not go into how we informed the abbot, how the whole abbey woke before the canonical hour, the cries of horror, the fear and grief that could be seen on every face, and how the news spread to all the people of the compound, the servants blessing themselves and uttering formulas against the evil eye. I don’t know whether the first office that morning proceeded accord?ing to regulations, or who took part in it. I followed William and Severinus, who had Berengar’s body wrapped up and ordered it laid out on a table in the infirmary.
When the abbot and the other monks had left, the herbalist and my master studied the corpse at length, with the cold detachment of men of medicine.
“He died by drowning,” Severinus said, “there’s no doubt. The face is swollen, the belly taut. ...”
“But he was not drowned by another’s hands,” William observed, “for in that case he would have reacted against the murderer’s violence, whereas everything was neat and clean, as if Berengar had heated the water, filled the bath, and lain in it of his own free will.”
“This doesn’t surprise me,” Severinus said. “Berengar suffered from convulsions, and I myself had often told him that warm baths serve to calm agitation of the body and the spirit. On several occasions he asked me leave to light the balneary fire. So he may have done last night. …”
“Night before last,” William said, “because this body,LINK?—as you see—has remained in the water at least one day.
William informed him of some of the events of that night. He did not tell him we had been in the scriptori?um furtively, but, concealing various circumstances, he told him that we had pursued a mysterious figure who had taken a book from us. Severinus realized William was telling him only a part of the truth, but he asked no further questions. He observed that the agitation of Berengar, if he had been the mysterious thief, could have led him then to seek calm in a refreshing bath. Berengar, he said, was of a very sensitive nature, and sometimes a vexation or an emotion brought on his trembling and cold sweats and made his eyes bulge, and he would fall to the ground, spitting out a whitish slime.

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