The Scribe (44 page)

When his hood was finally removed, Gorgias thought he was in some abandoned stables. Two torches lit up the cubicle in which, for some reason, they had placed a table. Zeno asked Genseric to take off the chains.

“Can’t you see his condition? He’s not going anywhere,” the physician argued.

Genseric refused. He freed the injured arm, but chained the healthy one to a ring on the table.

Zeno moved a torch close to the wound. Seeing it, he was unable to contain an expression of horror. He sniffed it and flinched. He
pressed on the wound with a piece of wood, but Gorgias did not respond. Zeno shook his head.

“This arm is dead meat,” he whispered to Genseric. “The rot has penetrated the lymph. You can start looking for a grave.”

“Do what you must, but he cannot lose the arm.”

“It’s lost already. I don’t even know if I can save his life.”

“Do you want your money or not? I don’t care if the rest of him explodes, but that arm needs to be able to write.”

Zeno cursed. He handed the torch to Genseric and asked him to give him light. Then he opened his instrument bag on the table, took out a narrow blade and held it near the wound. “This might hurt,” he warned Gorgias. “I have to open up your arm.”

He was about to begin when Genseric reeled back. The physician noticed just in time to catch him.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. It was nothing. Continue.”

Zeno raised a skeptical eyebrow before turning back to his work. He poured a little liquor on the wound and then made a cut parallel with the scar. The skin dropped off like a toad’s gut, allowing a trickle of pus to escape. The stench made Genseric step back. Zeno found a needle and attempted to thread it.

“Shit!” Zeno exclaimed when it slipped through his fingers. He bent down to pick it up, but try as he might he could not find it.

“Leave it and use another one,” Genseric suggested.

“I don’t have any more here. You’ll have to go to my house.”

“Me? You go.”

“Someone has to contain the hemorrhage.” He released Gorgias’s elbow and a stream of blood flooded onto the table. Zeno put pressure on the artery again.

Genseric nodded.

Though Gorgias was lying there helpless, the coadjutor warned Zeno not to leave his side. Before he left he made sure the chains
were secure and confirmed with Zeno where he kept the needles. He was about to leave when he gave another sudden lurch.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Zeno insisted.

“Fix that arm by the time I return!” he said, squinting as he left the stables, as if he could not see.

Zeno tightened the tourniquet under Gorgias’s arm until the flow of blood stopped. Examining the wound again, he noticed its brown and purple coloring and shook his head. The arm was lost, however much Genseric refused to accept it.

Gorgias suddenly came round. Seeing the physician he attempted to sit up, but the chain and tourniquet prevented him. Zeno tried to calm him.

“Where have you been? Rutgarda has given you up for dead,” the physician told him. He bent down as he spotted the glint of the lost needle.

Gorgias tried to speak, but his fever prevented it. Zeno informed him that he had to amputate the arm, or he would inevitably die. Gorgias looked at him in horror.

“Even if I remove it, you could still die,” the physician blurted out, as if talking about slaughtering a pig.

Gorgias understood. For a few days he had not felt his fingers. He had tried to ignore it, but from the elbow down all that remained was a lifeless limb. He pondered Zeno’s words. If he lost the arm, he would lose his livelihood, but at least he could fight for Rutgarda. He looked at his pustule-covered arm miserably. It pulsated, but there was no pain. It was clear the physician was right. When Zeno explained that Genseric opposed the amputation, Gorgias could not comprehend it.

“I’m sorry, but he’s the one paying,” Zeno replied.

Gorgias tried to reach for something at his neck, but Zeno stopped him.

“Take it,” Gorgias managed to utter. “The stones are rubies. It’s more than you’ve ever been paid.”

Zeno examined the necklace that hung from the patient’s neck. He clasped it and then pulled it off him, thinking it over as he looked at the door. “Genseric will kill me.”

But he spat on the ground and told Gorgias to bite into a dry stick. Then he took hold of the saw and carved through the arm like a butcher.

When Genseric returned, he found Gorgias unconscious in a great pool of blood. He looked for Zeno, but could not find him. The amputated limb lay on the floor. Where it used to be was now just a skillfully sewn stump.

Before long Zeno reappeared, doing up his trousers. When he saw Genseric he tried to explain that he had decided to do the inevitable, but the coadjutor would not heed reason. He cursed him a thousand times, condemned him to hell, insulted and attempted to hit him. But suddenly he calmed down, as if seized by a strange fatalism, before reeling again. He seemed confused. His gaze wandered around the room. Zeno managed to catch him before he collapsed onto the floor. He was coughing, his face pale as a mask of marble. The physician gave him a swig of liquor, which seemed to revive him.

“You look unwell. Would you like me to accompany you?”

Genseric nodded without conviction.

Zeno unfastened Gorgias’s other arm, then brought his cart around, ushering on the coadjutor before loading Gorgias as if he were a sack of wheat. Finally he climbed on, cracked his whip, and guided the horse through the woods, following Genseric’s confused directions. As they traveled, Zeno noticed that the coadjutor was repeatedly scratching the palm of his left hand. It seemed irritated, as though he had rubbed it with nettles. He mentioned it, but Genseric was oblivious.

They stopped in the oak grove near the fortress walls. Genseric clambered down from the cart and started walking, dragging his feet like a ghost until he reached a wall. In the darkness, the
coadjutor groped among the climbing plants until he found a small door, took a key from his robes, and inserted it with difficultly into the lock. Then he leaned against the doorframe to rest before opening it and entering like a sleepwalker. Finally, he collapsed.

When Gorgias awoke the next day, Zeno was long gone, and Genseric’s dead body lay by his side.

It was some time before Gorgias was able to stand. With his vision still cloudy, he looked at the stump that Zeno had bandaged for him with a strip of material from his own chasuble. The pain was excruciating, but at least it was not bleeding.

He turned toward Genseric’s body. The monk was lying on the ground with a contorted expression, his hands clutching his stomach, the left one a strange purple color. Gorgias wanted to kick him, but contained himself.

Looking around, Gorgias saw that he was in the circular crypt where he had been imprisoned all that time. He turned toward the cell and pushed the door open with a squeak. Fear made him hesitate, but finally he went in to search through his documents. Fortunately, the truly valuable ones were still where he had hidden them. Stashing away the original and the Greek transcription, he did his best to tear up everything else he could find with his one hand. Then he took some bread that had been left there and departed for the old mine.

By midmorning he could make out the great, corroded honeycomb that the iron deposit had become. He continued along the old mining paths, among mounds of sandstone, the remains of old chests scattered around, broken lamps, and gnawed leather harnesses, which, after the mines were depleted, nobody bothered to remove.

Soon he reached the old slave huts and stopped to examine the half-ruined structures, often used by bandits and vermin, praying they were unoccupied. The rain was growing heavier, so he walked into the only hut that still had a partially preserved roof, seeking refuge among the pulleys, amphorae of caustic, tackle, and dismantled winches. Finally he found a space near some barrels full of stagnant water. He slumped against them and closed his eyes, trying to manage the searing pain. For a moment he wished he could cast off the bandage that covered the stump, but he knew it would be foolish.

He thought of his wife, Rutgarda.

He needed to know that nothing bad had happened to her, so he decided to visit her that night. He would wait for the sun to go down and then enter Würzburg through the drainage channel, which could be used to pass through the walls when the gates were locked. Trying in vain to get to sleep, he remembered his daughter Theresa. How he missed her!

He ate a little of the bread that he picked up in the crypt and pondered how Genseric had died. Over the course of his life he had witnessed many deaths, but never had he seen a face as distorted as the coadjutor’s, choked on his own vomit. He wondered if he had been poisoned, perhaps by the man with the serpent tattoo.

Suddenly he could see it, like an apparition: the night when he was attacked. Those pale eyes, an arm thrusting at him, all his attempts hold his assailant off. His mind conjured the image of a snake wrapped round the dagger that had wounded him. Yes, he was certain. The man who had attacked him was same man who had argued with Genseric in the crypt. It was the man with the serpent tattoo.

At nightfall he began the journey back to Würzburg, where he arrived protected by the half-light. He found his house empty and he supposed Rutgarda was still sharing a roof with her sister, so he decided to try her home, located on the hillside. As he approached,
he heard his wife humming a little tune she often sang. For a moment the pain in his shoulder disappeared. He was about to go in when he heard some men who were around the corner.

“Christ’s wounds!” one of them blurted out. “I don’t know what the hell we’re doing here. The scribe has probably been eaten by wolves by now,” said one of the men who was trying to protect himself from the downpour.

Gorgias cursed his bad luck. They were Wilfred’s men, and the fact they were waiting for him suggested that Wilfred was involved. He couldn’t take the risk, so he clenched his teeth and retraced, heavy-hearted that he wouldn’t see Rutgarda.

On the way back to the mine, he looked up at the narrow illuminated windows above the fortress walls where Wilfred resided. The rain seemed to play with the lights, hiding and revealing them like some kind of riddle. As he speculated on the whereabouts of Wilfred’s chambers, he heard clucking. The stink confirmed that the animal pens were just on the other side of the wall, which made him wonder whether he might be able to steal a chicken. He needed to eat, after all, and a bird that needed very little food could provide him with a delicious egg every day.

He looked around for a crack in the wall that would enable him to climb over, but soon realized that with just one arm, he would never manage. He made for the animal entrance, despite knowing that a guard would be posted there. As he approached, his hunch proved to be true. Behind the palisade, he could make out the image of Bernardino, the short, barrel-shaped Hispanic monk.

He stopped under a tree, undecided as to whether to continue. Briefly, he thought about speaking to the monk, but then concluded that would be a stupid thing to do. More clucking made him linger, his stomach cramped with hunger, then he heard a cart approaching. When it reached him, he could see that it was the same guards who had been at Rutgarda’s sister’s house moments before. As they arrived at the gate, the men called to Bernardino.
Approaching the cart to identify its occupants, he then opened up for them immediately.

“Damned rain! You’ve been relieved?” asked the midget, attempting to shield himself from the downpour.

The men responded listlessly and urged on the horse.

Gorgias took his opportunity. As the cart rolled past, he crouched down and ran beside it protected by the darkness. Once through the gate, he hid behind some bushes until the soldiers were out of sight. He breathed more easily after the midget had closed the gate and took shelter in the hut without spotting him.

Before long, when the monk’s snoring confirmed that he was asleep, Gorgias crawled through the undergrowth in the direction of the animal pens. Where he reached the pen, he stopped for a while, determining which hen seemed the plumpest. Waiting for the chickens to calm down, he slowly opened the gate to the pen and snuck in like a stealthy fox hunting its prey. When he was close enough, he grabbed his quarry by the neck, but the bird started to cackle as if being plucked. All of a sudden, the rest of the hens woke up, making such a racket that Gorgias was sure they would wake the dead.

He kicked at them, making them scatter, then hid on the other side of the pen and waited for Bernardino to appear. The midget soon emerged, wondering what was going on, and Gorgias took the opportunity to run to the gate, escaping with the hen.

When he arrived at the mine it was still completely dark. He took shelter again in the slave hut beside the barrels. One of the barrels was empty so he used it as a cage for Blanca, his new tenant. Despite the pain in his shoulder, he soon fell into a deep sleep and was dead to the world until long after dawn. When he woke, Blanca the hen greeted him with an egg under her legs.

Gorgias repaid her with a couple of worms he found nearby, putting some spare ones in a wooden bowl, which he then covered with a stone. After drinking some fresh rainwater, he carefully
unwound the bandage to examine his stump. Zeno had sawed off the bone just above the elbow and sewed up a flap of skin, which he had somehow also cauterized. The blisters from the burns were still visible. But Gorgias accepted his stump of an arm as a lesser evil, knowing that it had been the only way to prevent the rot from returning. He carefully re-bandaged himself and sat down to consider his situation.

In his head he tried to make sense of all the events that had transpired since the morning when a stranger with pale blue eyes had attacked him in order to steal the parchment in his bag. Then there was the fire and loss of his daughter. Remembering made him cry again. After the burial, Wilfred had ordered him to hand over the Donation of Constantine, but the document had gone up in flames in the parchment-maker’s workshop. Then Genseric had intervened, in collusion with Wilfred himself, it would appear, to lock him away in the crypt in order to ensure he carried out his task. After a month in captivity, and without news of any imminent papal delegation, he had attempted to flee, which he managed thanks to Genseric’s strange death. Then there was the man with the serpent tattoo, and the amputation of his ruined arm.