The Scribe Read Free Page A

child?”
    “Yes, Father,” she sobbed. “I thought I could get help from the soldiers and I ran off to find them, but I couldn’t reach them, and then when I turned back…”
    Theresa was unable to finish the sentence, choked up by her own weeping. Gorgias took her hand in his and pulled it toward him approvingly. He tried to say something but instead coughed again and fell unconscious.
    “He should rest now,” said the woman, delicately leading Theresa away. “And stop crying—those tears won’t solve anything.”
    Theresa nodded. For a moment she thought about returning to her house to let her stepmother know, but she quickly ruled out the idea. She would tidy the workshop while they waited forthe physician. When she knew the extent of the injuries, then she would tell Rutgarda.
    With a bowl of oil, Korne set about filling the lamps. “If you only knew the number of times I’ve almost dipped some old bread in this oil,” the parchment-maker grumbled.
    When he finished lighting the lamps, the room looked like a torch-lit cavern. Theresa started clearing up the morass of needles, knives, lunella mallets, parchments, and jars of glue strewn between the tables and frames. As usual, she divided the tools according to their purpose, and after carefully cleaning them, she placed them on their corresponding shelves. Then she went to her workbench to check her pounce box, polish levels, and to ensure all surfaces were clean. Having finished her tasks, she returned to her father’s side.
    She did not know how long it was before the surgeon Zeno arrived. He was a grubby and disheveled man whose potent body odor was matched only by the fumes of cheap wine emanating from his breath. On his back, he carried a sack. And he appeared to be in a half stupor as he walked into the room without a greeting. With a quick look around, he went over to where Gorgias lay unconscious. Opening his bag, he pulled out a small metal saw, several knives, and a tiny box from which he took some needles and a roll of string. The surgeon placed the instruments on Gorgias’s stomach and asked for more light. He spat on his hands several times, paying particular attention to the blood dried to his fingernails, and then he grasped the saw firmly.
    Theresa went pale as the little man positioned his instrument over Gorgias’s elbow, but mercifully he only used it to cut the tourniquet Korne had made. The blood started flowing again, but Zeno didn’t seem alarmed.
    “Good job, though it was too tight,” said the surgeon. “Do you have any more strips of leather?”
    Korne brought him a long one, which the physician grabbed without looking away from Gorgias. He knotted it expertly and began working on the wounded arm with the indifference of someone stuffing a pheasant.
    “It’s the same every day,” he said without lifting his eyes from the wound. “Yesterday someone found old Marta on the low road with her guts cut open. And two days ago they found Siderico, the cooper, at the gate to his animal pen with his head bashed in. And for what? To steal God knows what from him? The poor wretch couldn’t even feed his children.”
    Zeno seemed to know his trade well. He stitched flesh and sutured veins with the dexterity of a seamstress, spitting on the knife to keep it clean. He finished with the arm and moved on to the rest of the wounds, to which he applied a dark ointment that he took from a wooden bowl. Finally, he bandaged the limb in some linen rags that he declared to be newly washed, despite the visible stains.
    “Well,” he said, wiping his hands on his chest, “all done. Take care of him, and in a couple of days—”
    “Will he recover?” Theresa butted in.
    “He might. Though, of course, he might not.”
    The man roared with laughter, then rummaged in his sack until he found a vial containing a dark liquid. Theresa thought it might be some kind of tonic, but the physician uncorked it and took a long draft.
    “By Saint Pancras!