Chapter 3:
How would he ever explain to himself, let alone the younger scribe, what just happened? There had to be a logical explanation for what he witnessed in that dark room, but he couldn’t think of one at the moment. The bar left untended, he walked over and poured himself another glass of the watered-down red wine he had for lunch. He took a deep breath of the fragrance and smelled nothing out of the ordinary. He doubted the wine had been drugged, and there was little chance his gruel had been tampered with. Perhaps the aroma of the herbs boiling on the woodstove had some… hallucinogenic effect on him… and the whole of the tavern? Thaddeus doubted that likelihood.
“Where is the woman?” Geovanni asked from the door he held cracked open, his head barely inside the tavern. “Are the sp
