Once upon a time…

There was a physician/surgeon named Zaleukos from Constantinople. He decided to become a traveling merchant, and settled down in Florence. He got a mysterious request to meet someone on a bridge, but instead of explaining, the guy who needed help ran away, leaving Z with a fancy cloak. The next day, a teenager bought the cloak, and left just as Z found the note asking for it to be returned.

Yep.

Well, the teenager didn’t want to return the cloak. It was a very nice cloak, and he’d paid for it in full.

They ended up going to the teen’s house, where his dad (a judge) would decide who got to keep the cloak. Z showed the note, explaining how he got it and why it was for sale, and the judge decided Z could keep it. The teen got his money back, and a lecture about impulse buying.

That night, Z went back to the bridge with the cloak under his arm, and waited.

At midnight, the man from the night before walked up. This time he was wearing a Mardi-Gras mask, which Z decided was fine. He handed the cloak over, and in return got a bag with an insane amount of money in it.

Z was like “you should have started with this last night…”

The masked man asked him to follow, and explained. “My family is from far away. I was here with my sister, attending school. Two days ago she died. My father and I want her to be buried in our family crypt back home, but it’s too far to take a corpse. If at least part of her was there, that’d be enough. So I need a surgeon to remove her head and embalm it for travel. None of the surgeons here understand our customs, and say decapitating a corpse is against their religion or something. But you, being from far away, you can understand the importance of adhering to strange customs, right?”

Z was… mildly horrified, but agreed. He said he knew about embalming, and asked if the man just wanted her skull, or if the eyes and hair were important, and got all the details. He remembered living in Paris, and how nice it was when people accepted his customs instead of calling him weird for it. This job wasn’t what he’d like to do, but he understood the importance of it.

Plus he was being paid very well.

The masked man took him to a mansion, up a flight of dark stairs, and showed him to a bedroom. He promised to stay at the door until the deed was done.

Z nodded, and went in. He found a beautiful young woman laying in a bed, her face grey in the pale light. He felt sad that someone so young and beautiful had died, pulled out a knife, and made an incision.

The young woman gasped.

Z froze, not sure if he’d seen that right, but decided it was just a trick of the light. She’d been dead two days. Right?

So he took a bigger knife, and cut all the way around her neck, going into the veins.

NOPE. SHE WASN’T DEAD. SHE WAS VERY MUCH ALIVE, ACTUALLY.

Z freaked out, running to the door, but the man was gone. So he ran back to the young woman, and made sure her death was as quick as possible. He decapitated her, as asked, and ran back to the door. No one was around.

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So he ran home, washed the blood off, prayed for forgiveness over an accidental murder, and went to sleep.

The next morning was not a good one for Z. People came in and told him about the horrific murder of the governor’s daughter. He acted as casual as possible, but internally was freaking out.

At about ten a couple guards came in, carrying Z’s hat and knives. They asked if the items belonged to him. Since enough people could confirm that the hat belonged to him, and if they checked his belt they’d find a slot for a knife that was mysteriously missing, Z didn’t bother denying it. The guards asked him to come with them, which he did willingly.

They took him to the front of the house he’d been in the night before, and showed him into a conference room. The entirety of the city government was there, with the governor at the head of the table.

The governor got slowly to his feet, and announced that he couldn’t impartially judge his daughter’s murderer, and so would allow the oldest council member to judge the case.

A man in his nineties took the governor’s chair and asked Z for his story.

Z spoke as plainly and honestly as possible, explaining about the cape, the strange request, and his horror when he realized the girl had been alive. They… didn’t believe him. They asked for proof. He said he had the bag with an absurd amount of money in it, and the two notes.

Two guards were sent to find the notes, but they couldn’t.

Z was put in prison for the night, until they decided his fate.

At dusk, someone came to see him. It was one of the friends he’d made in Paris, the son of one of the council members. This friend said he’d arrived the day before, and heard about everything. He knew Z wasn’t a murderer, and asked if there was any way he could help. Z had no idea, saying a character reference probably wouldn’t go far.

His friend commiserated, then left. He promised he’d ask his father what could be done.

The next morning, Z was taken before the council. The young woman’s father had found letters in her room, signed with a Z, from someone very angry she was about to get married. The author of those letters said she’d marry him or no one. As absolutely no one else in the city had a name that started with Z, it was obvious who the murderer was.

They said that the punishment they’d decided on was death. However, his friend had pleaded with them, showing a previous murder case where the murderer had been punished by having everything taken from him, including his left hand.

So that was the punishment Z would receive.

This sucked, but less than death. Z willingly gave up his shop, his goods, and his hand. His friend helped him recover, and gave him money to go back to Constantinople.

Z left Florence with a caravan. He had a few friends in the caravan, and had left some money with friends in Constantinople. So he wasn’t completely friendless and destitute.

When he got to Constantinople, he went to his friend’s place. They welcomed him, gave him his money, and asked if he liked his new house.

Z was like “…what house?”

They explained that a week before, a man had come into town and bought a house in his name. He’d asked them for advice on furniture and stuff.

Z was baffled, but went with them to see this house. It was really an apartment in a larger building, in the fancy part of town. The building owner immediately recognized Z by his missing hand. He was shown to his new apartment, and given a box.

Inside the box was the apartment key, a stupidly huge amount of money… and a letter.

The letter thanked him for his assistance. It was written very apologetically, and gave an assurance that he would receive yearly reimbursement for the loss of his hand. It was sincere.

It wasn’t signed.

Z stayed in the house a few months, but honestly he wasn’t comfortable there.

So he once again bought a bunch of merchandise, joined a caravan, and made his way up the Medetarranian.

He never went back to Florence. And he never truly trusted his friends again.

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Moral: Before you decapitate someone, make sure they’re dead.