When the voices woke Gorgias, it was already nightfall at the mine. He had just enough time to roll to one side and pull the pallet over himself. Pain shot through him as he fell on the stump of his arm. He crouched down and waited in silence, praying to God that the darkness would protect him.
Before long, hidden in the shadows inside the miner’s hut, he listened to the approaching voices until finally he could see two individuals bearing torches. One of them was tall and blond, and the other appeared to be a priest. The strangers separated and began to sniff around the shacks, kicking aside the discarded junk. At one point the blond one came near his hiding place while the other waited at a distance. For a moment Gorgias thought he would be discovered, but in the end the man turned around, signaled to the clergyman, and they each deposited a bundle just a few paces from where he was hiding. Then they turned around and, as quickly as they had arrived, disappeared into the darkness.
Gorgias hid until he was sure they were not coming back. After a while he poked out his head and rested his gaze on the abandoned bundles. Suddenly one of them moved, making Gorgias give a start. He thought it might be some kind of wounded beast, so when the movements stopped, he decided to investigate.
With difficulty he left his hiding place and dragged himself toward the two bundles. He could barely manage to do even this. In the last week his arm had taken a turn for the worse—so much so that he had spent several days lying down without eating a thing. His fever told him that he was dying. If he had been able to find the strength, he would have returned to Würzburg, but for some time he had been breathless from his shivering.
He reached the first bundle and probed it with a stick. Squeezing it, he noted that it yielded and wriggled, and he flinched when it let out its first groan. He kept silent, and immediately heard it again. This time it faltered, making almost a moaning sound. Frightened, he slowly approached and unwrapped the bundle and, stunned, he did the same with the second one. When he had finished, he couldn’t believe his eyes, which were the size of two great plates. Before him, gagged with kitchen cloth, lay Wilfred’s twins.
He quickly undid the ligatures that bound them, lifted up the one that was breathing and nervously slapped the cheeks of the one that he hoped was sleeping. But she gave no reaction. He assumed she was dead, but when he tipped her chin up, the little girl coughed and began to cry, spluttering and asking for her father. Gorgias thought to himself that if those men heard the girls they would come back and kill them all, so he dragged the twins as quickly as he could to one of the tunnels, where he hid and hoped that the stone would muffle their crying. However, once inside, they sank into a strange torpor that made them sleep.
As on the preceding days, Gorgias struggled to get to sleep. Though still consumed by fever, the presence of the girls had given him back a little of the lucidity that he had lacked for so long. He stood and contemplated them. Their faces seemed a little blue, so he woke them up by timidly nudging them. When they were awake, he lifted up the one that was most alert, tidied her curls and sat her down like a rag doll. The little girl teetered a little but managed to keep her balance, even after hitting her head against the corf he had leaned her against. She seemed dazed, for she made no complaint. The other girl was in a stupor. He could barely feel her pulse. He poured a little of the water he kept in the tunnel on her head, but still there was no reaction. He did not know if their condition was the reason for their abandonment, but he knew that if he did not get them to Würzburg soon they would undoubtedly perish.
With the sun coming up, Gorgias decided to take them outside. It felt cold out in the open, auguring a storm. He wondered how he would transport them if he could barely stand himself. Searching the area, he found a wooden chest to which he tied a rope. He knotted this to his belt and then dragged it through the mud to where he had left the twins. Carefully, he placed them inside, explaining that it was a little carriage, but the little girls remained in a daze. He stroked their heads and then pulled on the rope. The chest didn’t budge. He removed the stones that were in its path and then pulled again. The chest slid along heavily behind Gorgias as he set off for Würzburg.
He had not gone even half a mile when he sank into the mud. The first time he got up again. The second time, he passed out and fell to the ground.
He stayed there, lying flat on his face until the weeping of one of the children prompted him to continue, but he could not find the strength to stand up. He merely panted like a wounded animal. He dragged himself to the side of the road. There, as he got his breath back, he realized he would never accomplish what he had set out to do. His stump was hurting again, with the pain reaching to his lungs, though he no longer cared. He rested against the side of a rock and wept in despair. He was not concerned for his own life, but he was desperate to protect the two little girls.
From the bend in the road where he was sitting, he contemplated Würzburg in the distance. He admired the cluster of hovels packed behind the walls in the valley with the towers of the fortress watching over them from the hilltop. He looked longingly at the clear sky between the little columns of smoke rising up from the houses, and the first greenery appearing on the fields in the distance that seemed unreachable. It comforted him to think that his daughter already rested there under those lands, and that soon he would be reunited with her.
As he noticed the plumes of smoke, he suddenly had an idea. He lifted the twins out of the chest and put them to one side. Then, with the last of his strength, he smashed it into a heap of splinters with his foot. He took out his steel and held the flint between his feet to direct the sparks toward the dry cloth he’d positioned on top of the wood. Then he scraped the steel, praying to God the canvas would catch. But as much as he pleaded, it would not ignite. He tried again and again, but eventually his strength left him. Exhausted, he threw away the steel, cursing his bad luck.
After a while, he remembered the document he had hidden behind the beam in the slave hut. He thought the parchment would make ideal tinder, but when he stood up with the intention of retrieving it, everything started spinning.