Script Master:
The Learned Men came from a coastal city in the Western Country. Their accents were foreign, their manners prideful, their robes of a peculiar cut.
“Stiff-necked,” said the Innkeeper’s Widow who put them up. Her gossips knew her to have uncanny sight. “Full of secrets. The men quarrel in whispers among themselves, buzzing like choleric bees. There is one who scolds overmuch, another who drinks overmuch, and a third who favors his left hand. He keeps the purse. But do I complain? They pay without haggling and never piss the bed.”
The secrets about which the Learned Men whispered were on papers locked in an iron box. The strangers needn’t have been so mysterious. None in town could read but two scribes.
“Fiddle-faddle on paper,” said the Innkeeper’s Widow. “Leave that box open and I will kindle my kitchen fire with their writ. Now listen to me — It’s the purse that needs watching, tied to the sinister side of the man who holds it. The purse opens and opens and opens again, yet never empties.”
The strangers carried their box into the castle ruins where various pages were consulted. Spying children reported how measurements were taken, markings were chalked on rock walls, much agitated pacing was done. Constantly the men argued. Once they killed a squealing piglet, then the men held hands and droned inscrutable words. After a month of such doings, they found the spot they wanted and the purse opened in earnest. The Learned Men hired a score of folk to work under their direction. The monstrosity they built started as a scaffold, as might be made to hang a murderer. But instead, on it were mounted poles and iron wheels and ropes wound about them, so that a stout wooden arm could move a heavy weight in a sling.
“There is knowledge better off not known,” said the Innkeeper’s Widow. “Our Virgin Mother bestowed wisdom on her sons, even as the twin lords swam in her womb. To Lord Jesus she gave all lively wisdom. But that which is deadly she passed in secret to Lord Judas, that he might obscure it and protect us from it — the knowledge to make rivers flow backward and wolves walk upright, to enchant a cat so it is both dead and alive, to burn rocks and to peel apart metal like an onion.”