On the way back to the mine, he looked up at the narrow illuminated windows above the fortress walls where Wilfred resided. The rain seemed to play with the lights, hiding and revealing them like some kind of riddle. As he speculated on the whereabouts of Wilfred’s chambers, he heard clucking. The stink confirmed that the animal pens were just on the other side of the wall, which made him wonder whether he might be able to steal a chicken. He needed to eat, after all, and a bird that needed very little food could provide him with a delicious egg every day.
He looked around for a crack in the wall that would enable him to climb over, but soon realized that with just one arm, he would never manage. He made for the animal entrance, despite knowing that a guard would be posted there. As he approached, his hunch proved to be true. Behind the palisade, he could make out the image of Bernardino, the short, barrel-shaped Hispanic monk.
He stopped under a tree, undecided as to whether to continue. Briefly, he thought about speaking to the monk, but then concluded that would be a stupid thing to do. More clucking made him linger, his stomach cramped with hunger, then he heard a cart approaching. When it reached him, he could see that it was the same guards who had been at Rutgarda’s sister’s house moments before. As they arrived at the gate, the men called to Bernardino. Approaching the cart to identify its occupants, he then opened up for them immediately.
“Damned rain! You’ve been relieved?” asked the midget, attempting to shield himself from the downpour.
The men responded listlessly and urged on the horse.
Gorgias took his opportunity. As the cart rolled past, he crouched down and ran beside it protected by the darkness. Once through the gate, he hid behind some bushes until the soldiers were out of sight. He breathed more easily after the midget had closed the gate and took shelter in the hut without spotting him.
Before long, when the monk’s snoring confirmed that he was asleep, Gorgias crawled through the undergrowth in the direction of the animal pens. Where he reached the pen, he stopped for a while, determining which hen seemed the plumpest. Waiting for the chickens to calm down, he slowly opened the gate to the pen and snuck in like a stealthy fox hunting its prey. When he was close enough, he grabbed his quarry by the neck, but the bird started to cackle as if being plucked. All of a sudden, the rest of the hens woke up, making such a racket that Gorgias was sure they would wake the dead.
He kicked at them, making them scatter, then hid on the other side of the pen and waited for Bernardino to appear. The midget soon emerged, wondering what was going on, and Gorgias took the opportunity to run to the gate, escaping with the hen.
When he arrived at the mine it was still completely dark. He took shelter again in the slave hut beside the barrels. One of the barrels was empty so he used it as a cage for Blanca, his new tenant. Despite the pain in his shoulder, he soon fell into a deep sleep and was dead to the world until long after dawn. When he woke, Blanca the hen greeted him with an egg under her legs.
Gorgias repaid her with a couple of worms he found nearby, putting some spare ones in a wooden bowl, which he then covered with a stone. After drinking some fresh rainwater, he carefully unwound the bandage to examine his stump. Zeno had sawed off the bone just above the elbow and sewed up a flap of skin, which he had somehow also cauterized. The blisters from the burns were still visible. But Gorgias accepted his stump of an arm as a lesser evil, knowing that it had been the only way to prevent the rot from returning. He carefully re-bandaged himself and sat down to consider his situation.
In his head he tried to make sense of all the events that had transpired since the morning when a stranger with pale blue eyes had attacked him in order to steal the parchment in his bag. Then there was the fire and loss of his daughter. Remembering made him cry again. After the burial, Wilfred had ordered him to hand over the Donation of Constantine, but the document had gone up in flames in the parchment-maker’s workshop. Then Genseric had intervened, in collusion with Wilfred himself, it would appear, to lock him away in the crypt in order to ensure he carried out his task. After a month in captivity, and without news of any imminent papal delegation, he had attempted to flee, which he managed thanks to Genseric’s strange death. Then there was the man with the serpent tattoo, and the amputation of his ruined arm.
He pondered the role that Genseric had played. At first he had assumed he was acting by himself, had even assumed it was Genseric who had attacked him, but the unusual circumstances of his death and the fact that Wilfred was keeping watch over Rutgarda made him doubt those assumptions. And who was the serpent man? Certainly, it must be someone aware of what was happening. What’s more, from the way he had threatened Genseric, he undoubtedly appeared to outrank him.
Resting against the barrels, Gorgias noticed that the hen was examining the bandages on his shoulder with her pea-brained curiosity, and he smiled bitterly. He had lost his right arm, his writing arm, because of a despicable document. He took the parchment out of his bag and studied it closely. For a moment he was tempted to tear it to pieces and offer it to Blanca as feed. But he resisted. After all, if it was so valuable, perhaps they would pay him to recover it.
It has stopped raining, so he got up to wander about the area and create a list of priorities. First he had to find a way to survive, a problem that was still unresolved despite the best efforts of the hen. On the way back to the mine, he had passed through a walnut grove. Nuts and berries could supplement the eggs, but even so he would need more food. He considered trying to catch some animal using Blanca as bait, but he soon decided that the idea would surely lose him his hen.
Hunting would be difficult. With just one arm, and without the necessary traps, even a duck could get away from him. But perhaps fishing would be possible. In the mine he had twine and thread, pieces of metal to bend into hooks, and enough worms to offer up a banquet. The river was close and while he waited for the fish to bite, he could make more hooks. He felt pleased to have resolved the problem of finding food. Then he remembered his wife Rutgarda, and he yearned to see her again.
He didn’t know how long they would keep her under watch and he tried to think of someone who could help him, someone to tell her what he was doing and how he was faring. He would be satisfied if he could just let her know that he hadn’t forgotten her. But he feared being discovered, so he decided to wait for a better opportunity. Rutgarda was doing well, and that was all that mattered.
After a while he took out the document and examined it carefully. Its transcription was perfectly finished, and he read it repeatedly, focusing on the parts that had surprised him while he made the copy. There was something dark in that parchment, something that perhaps Wilfred had not even noticed.