“By the Archangel Gabriel!” exclaimed Gorgias. “Your new dress makes an appearance at last!”
Theresa smiled. Several months before, her father had given her a lovely dress, blue like the summer sky. It was for her nineteenth birthday, but she had been saving it for the right occasion. Before leaving, she approached the straw mattress where her stepmother still slept and kissed her on the cheek.
“Wish me luck,” Theresa whispered into her ear.
Rutgarda grumbled and nodded, but as her family left the house, she prayed that Theresa would fail the test.
Father and daughter climbed the blacksmith’s road in double time, with Gorgias occupying the center of the street to avoid the nooks and crannies where all manner of undesirable might be lurking. In his right hand he clutched a torch and with his other arm he held Theresa to him, his cape wrapped around her. As they reached the watchtower, they passed a group of guards who were heading down toward the city walls. Then they came to the top of the hill and turned down the knights’ street toward the central square. There they skirted around the church until they could make out the workshop building, a squat but ample timber structure situated behind the baptistery.
They were a few steps from the entrance when a shadow swooped down on them from out of the darkness. Gorgias tried to react, but he barely had time to push Theresa to one side. A knife flashed, and Gorgias’s torch rolled down the street and off the edge.
Theresa screamed as the two men rolled around on the ground. Desperate, she ran to find help, pounding on the door to the workshop with all her strength. She felt the skin on her knuckles tearing, but she kept screaming and hitting the door. Behind her she heard the two men struggling, fighting for their lives. She kicked the accursed door again, but nobody answered. Had she been able, she would have knocked it down and dragged out the workshop’s occupants herself. Exasperated, she turned and ran, calling for help. Then she heard her father’s voice telling her to stay away.
Theresa stopped, not knowing what to do. The two men suddenly disappeared down an embankment. The young woman remembered the soldiers they had passed a few moments earlier, and she shot off down the street to find them. But as she approached the watchtower, she stopped again, uncertain she could reach them in time and even less sure she would be able to persuade them to help. She quickly retraced her steps to the workshop, where she found two men doing their best to help a blood-soaked figure. She recognized Korne and one of his sons, trying to lift her father’s limp and bloody body.
“For God’s sake!” cried Korne to Theresa. “Run inside and tell my wife to prepare a cauldron of hot water. Your father is badly wounded.”
Theresa did not stop to think. Calling out for help as she went, she rushed up to the attic where the parchment-maker lived. The space had been used as a storeroom until the previous year when Korne turned it into a home by adding some solid scaffolding.
Bertharda, the parchment-maker’s wife and a rather stout woman, peered out half-dressed with a sleepy face and a candle in her hands. “For heaven’s sake! What’s all this racket about?” she exclaimed, crossing herself.
“It’s my father. Quick, for the love of God!” Theresa implored.
The woman bounded down the stairs, trying to cover her intimate parts. As she reached the bottom, Korne and his son were coming in through the door.
“The water, woman—have you not prepared it yet?” Korne bellowed. “And light. We need more light.”
Theresa ran to the workshop and fumbled through the tools scattered over the workbenches. She found some oil lamps, but they were empty. Finally, she found a couple of candles under a pile of oddments, but one of them rolled under the table and disappeared into the darkness. Theresa picked up the other, hastening to light it. Meanwhile, Korne and his son had moved the skins off one of the tables and placed Gorgias on it. The parchment-maker ordered Theresa to clean the wounds while he went to find some knives, but the girl did not listen to him. In a daze, she held the candle closer and looked in horror at the awful gash on her father’s wrist. She had never seen such a terrible wound. The blood was gushing out, soaking clothes, skins, and codices—and Theresa did not know how to stop it.
One of Korne’s dogs came over and started lapping up the blood dripping onto the floor, but then Korne returned and kicked the dog aside.
“Light, here,” he blurted.
Theresa moved the flame where he indicated. Then the parchment-maker tore a skin from a nearby frame and spread it out on the ground. Using a knife and a piece of wood, he cut the skin into strips and tied the ends together to make a long cord.
“Get his clothes off,” he ordered Theresa. “And you, woman, bring that bloody water.”
“Good God! What has happened?” asked his frightened wife. “Are you all right?”
“Stop your chitchat and bring the damned pot,” Korne cursed, slamming his fist on the table.
Theresa started to undress her father, but Korne’s wife unceremoniously shoved her aside to take over. Once Gorgias was unclothed, Bertharda washed him carefully using a scrap of leather and warm water. Korne examined the wounds at length, noticing several cuts on the back and one or two more on the shoulders. The one that worried him most was on the right arm.
“Hold this here,” Korne said, lifting Gorgias’s arm.
Theresa obeyed, ignoring the trickle of blood soaking her own dress.
“Boy,” the parchment-maker said to his son, “run to the fort and alert the physician. Tell him it’s urgent.”
The young lad ran off, and Korne turned to Theresa.
“Now, when I tell you, I want you to bend his arm at the elbow and press it against his chest. Got it?”
With tears streaming down her cheeks, Theresa nodded without looking away from her father.
The parchment-maker fastened the leather cord above the wound and wrapped it round several times before tightening it. Gorgias seemed to regain consciousness, but it was merely a spasm. Soon, however, he did stop bleeding. Korne gestured to Theresa, and she folded her father’s arm as she had been told.
“Well, the worst is over,” Korne said. “The other cuts seem less serious, but we will have to wait for the physician to give us his opinion. He also has bruising, but the bones all seem to be in place. Let’s cover him to keep him warm.”
At that moment, Gorgias coughed violently and started to heave as he winced with pain. Through his half-opened eyes, he saw Theresa sobbing.
“Thank the heavens,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “Are you all right, my 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…”