The Scribe(10)
The creaking of the door roused Gorgias from his thoughts. The same servant reappeared and asked for permission to enter. With him was the surgeon, visibly annoyed.
“Save me, Lord, from scholars,” he grumbled. “They think themselves so learned, yet at the slightest discomfort they moan like old women at a wake.” The physician brought a lamp over to Gorgias’s wounded arm.
“I can hardly move my fingers and it won’t stop bleeding,” Gorgias said, showing him the cut.
The surgeon examined the limb with the same scrutiny a butcher might examine a chicken he was about to dismember. Its stitching had nearly come completely undone. “Dear God! What have you been doing? Writing out the Bible in Greek? You should be grateful if I don’t have to amputate.”
Gorgias did not answer. The physician rummaged around in his workbag. “Well, I’ll be damned! I’m out of knotgrass. Do you have the powders I prescribed for you here?”
“I left them in the workshop. I’ll send someone to collect them later.”
“As you please, but I must warn you—your other wounds do not concern me, but this arm… If you don’t look after it, in one week, it will not be fit to feed to the pigs. And if you lose the arm, you can bet that you will lose your life. Now I’m going to strengthen the stitching to stop the hemorrhage. It will hurt.”
Gorgias grimaced, not just from the pain but also because he sensed the dire truth in what the physician said. “But how can a surface wound—”
“Whether you like it or not, that’s how it is. It is not just king’s evil and pestilence that kills people. In fact the cemeteries are stuffed with healthy people who croaked because of minor cuts and scrapes: a slight fever, some strange spasms… and farewell to them and their suffering. Perhaps you don’t know Galen’s methods, but I have seen enough people die to know who the likely candidates are months before they go to the grave.”
Having finished the dressing, the little man gathered up his implements and put them untidily in his bag. Gorgias ordered the servant to leave the scriptorium and wait outside before he said to the physician, “One moment, please. I need you to do me a favor.”
“If it’s in my power…”
Gorgias made sure the servant was out of earshot.
“The thing is, I would rather the count did not hear about this. I mean, the severity of my injury. I’m working on a codex, a document that he has a special interest in, and no doubt he will be displeased if he learned that the job were to be delayed.”
“Well, I don’t see that you have any other option. You will not be able to hold a pen in that hand for at least three weeks. And that’s if it doesn’t worsen. Since it is the count who is paying my fee, you will agree that I should not lie to him.”
“But I am not asking you to lie, just to keep quiet. As for your fee…”
Gorgias put his left hand in his shirt pocket and pulled out some coins.
“It is more than the count will pay you,” he added.
The physician took the coins and examined them closely. His eyes flashed with greed. He kissed them and put them away among his belongings. Then, without a word, he walked off toward the exit.
At the door he stopped and turned toward Gorgias.
“Rest and allow the wound to heal. Health is lost at a gallop, but it returns at walking pace. If you see abscesses or cysts, send notice to me immediately.”
“Don’t worry, I will follow your advice. And now, if you don’t mind, send the servant in.”
The physician nodded and said good-bye with a wink. When the servant came into the scriptorium, Gorgias looked him up and down. He was a scrawny, beardless young man, with a dimwitted, ungainly look about him.
“I need you to run over to the parchment-makers’ workshop and ask my daughter for the remedy that the physician prescribed for me. She will know what to do. But first, alert the count that I’m waiting for him in the scriptorium.”
“But, sir, the count is still resting,” he stammered.
“Then wake him!” Gorgias shouted. “Tell him it’s urgent.”
The servant drew back, nodding his head. When he left, he closed the door behind him, and Gorgias could hear his footsteps as he rushed away.
Gorgias looked around the scriptorium and saw that everything in the room was damp. The flames from the lamps barely lit the benches they rested on, giving the room a dreamlike appearance. Only a narrow window protected by solid bars provided some weak light for the gigantic wooden lectern, where there was a jumbled collection of codices, inkwells, pens and styluses, intermingling with awls, scrapers, and blotters. The room had another lectern and, in stark contrast, it was completely bare. On the north wall, a sturdy cabinet flanked by two lamps housed the most valuable codices, which had chains running through the rings on their spines to secure them to the wall. On the lower shelves, separate from the rest, there were psalters for communal use, beside both books of the Bible in Aramaic. On the rest of the shelves, dozens of unbound volumes stacked on top of missives, epistolaries, and cartularies of various kinds competed for space with the polyptychs and the censuses that recorded accounts and transactions.
He was still thinking about that morning’s attack when the door slowly creaked open and the light of a torch blinded him. When the servant moved aside, a strange, squat figure stood silhouetted against the torchlight. After a moment, Gorgias heard a faltering voice from the doorway.