“Get up!” the coadjutor ordered from the other side of the door.
Gorgias obeyed, not too sure what he was doing anymore. He looked at the little window with swollen eyes and saw that it was not yet dawn. Staggering over to the door, he rested his head on it. Gorgias prayed that Genseric had forgotten the incident with the hatch, though it would have made more sense, he thought, for him to pray for the walls to fall in and crack open his head.
The hatch turned, letting in a thread of light before abruptly closing. Gorgias groped in the darkness for the pot of food. He picked it up and devoured the porridge without savoring it, for he hadn’t eaten in three days.
He was swallowing the last mouthful when Genseric ordered him to prepare the parchment. Gorgias coughed. He could hardly think.
“I… I have not been able to make any progress,” he said. “My arm… I’m sick.”
Genseric cursed him and threatened to torture Rutgarda.
“I swear I’m not lying. Please, see for yourself.”
Without giving him time to answer, Gorgias dismantled one of the partitions from the hatch. He could hear Genseric releasing the bolt on the other side. Through the hole he could see the light of a candle. Then he slowly inserted his injured arm. Suddenly he felt something crush it and he cried out in pain.
“If you try anything, I’ll break it right here,” Genseric declared.
Gorgias agreed and Genseric lifted his foot. When the pain subsided, Gorgias could feel the heat from the candle near his fingers while the coadjutor examined his arm.
Genseric was taken aback. If the arm had not been moving, he would’ve thought the limb belonged to a corpse.
The coadjutor returned at nightfall to announce that the physician Zeno was prepared to see him, but by that time Gorgias couldn’t even understand, for he was consumed with fever. When he came round, he could hear Genseric on the other side of the door, striking the hatch to remove the two partitions. The beam of light expanded.
Genseric ordered him to rest his back against the door and put both arms through the hatch. Gorgias did as he was told, barely aware of his actions. He didn’t even complain when his wrists were chained.
Then he felt Genseric insert a stick between his forearms to secure him against the door, making it impossible for him to pull his arms back through. A few moments went by before the coadjutor opened up, forcing him to drag himself along the ground in the direction of the door.
He barely had time to look up before Genseric covered Gorgias’s head with a hood, which he cinched at the neck. Before removing the stick that kept him secured to the door, Genseric warned that he would kill him if he tried to escaped. Gorgias nodded, but he could hardly stay on his feet as Genseric pulled him up by the chains.
Gorgias didn’t know for how long they were walking, only that the journey seemed endless. Finally they stopped somewhere sheltered from the wind. Before long someone arrived and greeted Genseric. By the tone of voice, Gorgias supposed it was Zeno, but it could just as easily have been the man with the tattoo. The coadjutor insisted that Zeno tend to Gorgias with the hood still on his head, but Zeno refused.
“He could die and I wouldn’t know.”
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.