Dear and Glorious Physician Page 3

  Iris understood that Diodorus’ wrath had not so much been expended on the men immediately about him but upon the modern mores and corruption of Rome, which he could not endure. They had been but the precipitating factor that had relieved the smoldering and chronic rage of the tribune. She sighed, and said to her husband, “I am certain he will never do that again.” Aeneas replied severely, “One can never be sure with such a capricious man. I confess I never understood him.”

  The furious elation of Diodorus had lasted all through the evening meal. He had told Aurelia about it, and she had nodded with wifely wisdom, though the whole matter was beyond her comprehension. She let a little pause follow, and then had said with anxiety, as if her husband had told her nothing at all, “The little Rubria is again coughing blood, and is complaining of the pains in her arms and legs. The physician has ordered effusions on her throat and joints, and she is sleeping at last, though her face remains flushed. How sorrowful it is when a child suffers, a child who has never been healthy, and how much more sorrowful it is, dear husband, that I have given you only this weak little lamb and not strong sons.”

  Diodorus immediately forgot his anger, and took his wife in his arms and kissed her. She was not revolted by the heavy stench of his sweat, but rather comforted. She wound her arms about his neck and said, “But I am still only twenty-five, and it may be that the gods will grant us sons. I must go to Antioch soon and make a special sacrifice to Juno.”

  The child, Rubria, was heart of Diodorus’ heart, though he believed that only he knew this. He softly climbed the white stone stairway to her apartments and noiselessly moved aside the thick draperies of crimson silk. The child lay in the cool early twilight on her bed, sleeping, her nurse by her side. The small window was a square of scarlet, and purple shadows hovered in the corners of the room. Was it only the reflection of the setting sun which was reddening the little face, or was it that sinister and unknown fever? Diodorus bent over his daughter, and his indomitable heart fluttered at her fragility. Long thick black lashes trembled uneasily on the thin and brightened cheek; the pretty childish mouth burned. So sweet and dear a creature, so full of laughter and gaiety, even when in pain, so tender a dove! The gnarled hand of Diodorus touched the black sweep of hair on the white pillow, and he pleaded desperately to Aesculapius for his help. “Pray, you Master Physician, you son of Apollo, that you send Mercury on the wings of compassion to this child, who is more precious to me than my life, and that your daughter, Hygieia, look tenderly upon her. Mercury, hasten to her, for is she not like unto you, swift as fire, quick as the wind, changeful as an opal?”

  He promised to sacrifice a cock to Aesculapius, who preferred that sacrifice, and a pair of white oxen to Mercury, with golden rings in their noses. Terror seized him as he again touched Rubria’s hair and saw the tremor of the small hands on the sheet. Surely he had honored the gods all his life, and they would not take from him his very heartbeat. Never have I feared a sword or a spear, nor any man, nor any thing, yet I am weakened by fear tonight, he said to himself. It is not that this illness is something new, but my soul trembles as if with premonition.

  He renewed his prayers, and added one to Juno, the mother of children. To him the gods of Rome had never been depraved, not even Jupiter, for all his propensities with regard to maidens. He wondered if he should not implore Mars, his special deity, the patron of soldiers. He decided against it; Mars would not understand a soldier who held a child more precious and important even than war. Such a prayer to him might inspire his anger. Diodorus hastily besought Mercury again, with his winged sandals and his staff of serpents.

  When Diodorus joined Aurelia again he found her in the anteroom of her chamber, industriously spinning fine wool into cloth for her child’s capitium. She was the very personification of a matron of old Rome as she sat there, her foot moving rhythmically on the treadle, her hand at the wheel, her black hair braided severely about her round head, her pink face serious and absorbed. Her white garments flowed about her full figure in modest folds, and sleeves half covered her voluptuous arms. To Diodorus she was a reassuring figure. Rather than wail uselessly over her child, she spun warm cloth for her. Diodorus touched her head lovingly with his hand, and then his lips. The busy foot and hand did not falter, but Aurelia smiled. “Why do you not, my beloved, walk among the gardens in the sunset? You will find comfort there, as always.” Her voice was steady and calm.

  Diodorus thought of his books. Today, by special messenger, he had received a roll containing the philosophies of Philo. Rumor had it that Philo was considered superior to Aristotle. This Diodorus did not believe, but he was both excited and curious. But all at once a flatness and heaviness of heart came to him, and he decided to do as his wife had advised. The book could wait; he was too restless to give it his full and thoughtful attention.

  He stepped out into the courtyard. A dark crimson was drifting through the fronds of the palms; the scent of jasmine rose in clouds in the warm air. The ornamental orange and lemon trees were globed in golden and green fruit. Insects hummed with a sound of thin wires, and suddenly a nightingale sang to the purpling sky. The white stones set among the exotic flower beds were flooded with heliotrope shadows, and a dim blue light filled the arches of the colonnades which surrounded the courtyard. A fountain, in which stood a marble faun, tinkled sweetly, mingled its frail song with the song of the nightingale. The mingled purple and crimson of the sunset glimmered in the bowl of the fountain, which was alive with brilliant little fish. Now the palms clattered a little in a freshening wind from the distant sea, and through the moving fronds of one Diodorus could see the gleaming radiance of the evening star. The trunks of the trees, set along the high walls of the yard, resembled gray-white ghosts.

  No sound came from the high square of the house behind Diodorus; the pillars shimmered in the half-light as if made of some unsubstantial material and not marble. Diodorus found the silence suddenly oppressive; the voice of the nightingale failed to entrance him as usual. It was a voice that had no consolation in it, but only melancholy, and the fountain murmured of non-human sorrows. Diodorus, assaulted again by his loneliness, thought of Antioch, and the celebrations begun there in honor of Saturn. They would end in a general debauch, as usual, but at least there would be the sound of men and women. He considered riding back to Antioch and summoning a few of his officers who were the least repugnant to him. But he knew he would bore them; they would want to participate in the riotous gaiety, and he would just inhibit them. If only I had a companion, thought the lonely tribune. If only there was just one with whom I could talk, in order to drown out the voice of the fear in me, one with whom to share a cup of wine and discuss those things which are of importance to me. A philosopher, perhaps, or a poet, or just a man who is wise.

  He heard the slightest movement, almost the breath of a movement, and he turned towards the fountain again. The sunset sky brightened for an instant above the muttering heads of the palms, and it struck on the fair head of a child leaning against the marble bowl of the fountain in complete enchantment, unaware of the presence of Diodorus.

  Moving silently, Diodorus advanced towards the child, who was sitting on the coarse green grass and staring up at Rubria’s window. When he reached the opposite side of the wide and shallow bowl, Diodorus thought, Why, it is the young Lucanus, son of my freedman, Aeneas. His heart bounded with a nameless longing, and he thought of Iris, his old playmate, Iris with her aureate hair, her wonderful blue eyes, soft white flesh, and round, dimpled chin, and her slender Grecian nose. He heard, as from echoing down long and clouded corridors, the sound of her child’s laughter, the questioning of her call to him. Iris, for him, had not existed even as a remembered playmate since her marriage to that stilted and precise mediocrity of an Aeneas. But now he remembered that when he had been off on his campaigns, before the death of his parents, Iris had shone like a star in his mind, sweet, wise Iris, his mother’s young slave, his mother’s petted handmaiden who had been to h
er as a daughter.

  He, a tribune, young and ambitious and stalwart, of unimpeachable family, had even dreamt of being married to Iris. His parents, he believed, in spite of their love for Iris, would have expired of humiliation if their son had condescended to a slave, and if she had said to him, “Where thou art, Caius, there am I, Caia.” Yet when he had heard of their deaths, while still stationed in Jerusalem, his first thought, after the initial pang of sorrow, had been of Iris. He had returned, to find her not only freed but married and pregnant, and he had put her sternly out of his mind. Surely, then, his loneliness had begun, and he had thought it merely a yearning to return to his active life in the Orient.

  The whole courtyard filled with soft mauve shadows, in which the leaning head of Lucanus was like a yellow harvest moon. Diodorus could see his fine profile, and he thought, It is the face of the child, Iris. He had never been interested in children, except his daughter, Rubria, and though he had wished for sons he had thought of them as young soldiers, and his heirs. Now he peered at Lucanus, his eyes straining through the colored twilight, and again his heart bounded and was filled with tenderness.

  Lucanus sat in motionless silence, still gazing at the dwindling square of Rubria’s window. He wore a thin white tunic; his long legs, so pale that they resembled alabaster, were folded under him. In his hands there lay a large stone of unusual form and hue, restless with dull light. The whole attitude of Lucanus was one of prayerful rapture, yet he was very still. His rosy lips were parted, and the hollows of his eyes were filled with a strange blueness. It was as if he were listening, and Diodorus, superstitious as were all Romans, watched with a kind of nervous fear, his skin prickling.

  He spoke suddenly and loudly: “It is you, Lucanus.”

  The boy did not start. He only moved a little and turned his entranced face to Diodorus. He did not leap to his feet; he merely sat there, the stone in his hands. It was as if he did not see the tribune at all.

  Diodorus was about to speak again, more roughly, when the boy smiled and appeared to notice him for the first time. “I was praying for Rubria,” he said, and his voice was the voice of the young Iris.

  Diodorus moved around the circle of the fountain, hesitated, then squatted on his heels and looked earnestly at the boy, who sat in such utter relaxation and bemusement before him. The tribune had removed his heavy military clothing on returning home; he wore a loose white tunic, belted with simple leather inlaid with silver. Under the thin material his browned body was square and hard, and his thick legs bulged with muscles. He folded his strong arms on his knees and contemplated Lucanus, who smiled at him with simple serenity.

  Lucanus was neither awed nor frightened by the soldier. He regarded the fierce dark face, beaked and stern, as tranquilly as he would have regarded his father. The harsh and jutting chin did not alarm him, nor the sharp and penetrating black eyes set under black and swelling brows. But Diodorus, confronted with the very image of the child he had once known, was conscious of his own hard round head covered with stiff black hair, shorn and lusterless, and the crude strength of his disciplined body.

  The boy had no business in this courtyard, thought Diodorus automatically. And then he was ashamed, remembering Iris. But what had he said? “I was praying for Rubria.” The two children were playmates, just as he and Iris had been playmates.

  Diodorus softened his grating voice. “You are praying for Rubria, boy? Ah, she needs your prayers, the poor little one.”

  “Yes, Master,” said Lucanus, seriously.

  “To what god are you praying?” asked Diodorus. (Surely, he thought, the gods were especially touched by the prayers of innocents, and some of his pain lightened.)

  Lucanus said, “To the Unknown God.”

  Diodorus’ dark eyelids flickered in surprise. Lucanus was saying, “My father has taught me that He is everywhere, and in all things.” He extended the strange stone to Diodorus simply. “I found this today. It is very beautiful. Do you think He is here, and that He hears me?”

  Chapter Two

  Diodorus took the stone in his hands, gravely, still squatting on his heels. He could barely see it in the twilight now, but he felt that it was warm, and when he turned it in his fingers it gave off a curious faint glow of many colors, which caught the last light.

  It was warm, most probably because it had lain so long in the palms of the child’s hands. But the warmth did not decrease, though the air was cooling rapidly. Rather, it increased. The superstitious Diodorus wanted to drop the stone, but that would be an embarrassing gesture before the child.

  “Do you think, Master, that He is here, and that He hears me?” repeated Lucanus. He had a clear and steadfast voice, without servility, the voice of one of patrician birth.

  “Eh?” said Diodorus. Again he turned the stone about in his fingers and peered at it.

  “The Unknown God,” said Lucanus, patiently.

  Diodorus knew all about the Unknown God. Once, in a Greek temple, he had sacrificed to Him, though the Greeks had believed He did not wish sacrifices. Who was this God who had no name? What were His attributes? Of what men was He the Patron? There were no images of Him anywhere. Could He be the God of the Jews, of whom Diodorus had heard much in Jerusalem? But he had known that they, the Jews, sacrificed to Him, doves and lambs, on some festival, the Passover, in the spring of the year. The Jews called Him Lord, and they appeared to know Him very well. In his mind’s eye Diodorus could see the great gold and pale marble temple hanging against the peacock sky of Jerusalem. Lucanus was a Greek, not a Jew. It was possible that the Greeks had heard of the Jewish God, and as they did not know His name they called Him the Unknown.

  Diodorus shook his head. A great moon, like a bowl filled with soft fire, was rising behind the palms now. It filled the courtyard with a stream of shifting light, and the shadows of the palms fell sharply on the white stones and the white walls of the house, and crept into the colonnades, which had begun to gleam as if made of yellow marble. The scent of jasmine rose in waves about the man and the boy, and crickets shrilled in the grass and among the colorless flowers. Somewhere, out of sight, a carapaced animal scraped over the stones.

  Diodorus remembered a name he heard from a Jewish princeling: Adonoi. He said to Lucanus, “Is His name Adonoi?”

  “He has no name, Master, that men know,” replied the boy.

  “Anyway, I seem to remember that it just means ‘Lord’,” said Diodorus abstractedly. “He is the God of the Jews.”

  “But the Unknown God is the God of all men,” said Lucanus, earnestly. “He is the God not only of the Jews, but of the Romans and the Greeks and the pagans and of slaves and Caesars, and of wild men in the forests and in lands yet unknown.”

  “How do you know this, child?” asked Diodorus, with a slight smile.

  “I know. I know it in my heart. No one has told me,” said Lucanus, with simplicity.

  Diodorus was strangely moved. He remembered that the gods often preferred to give their wisdom to children, whose minds were not distorted and crippled by life.

  “Someday,” said Lucanus, “I shall find Him.”

  “Where?” asked Diodorus, trying for indulgence.

  But Lucanus had lifted his face to the sky, and his profile was flooded with the golden light of the moon. “I do not know where, but I shall find Him. I shall hear His voice, and I shall know Him. He is everywhere, but I shall know Him in particular, and He shall speak to me, not only in the moon and the sun, the flowers and the stones, the birds and the winds, and the dawns and the sunsets. I shall serve Him, and give my heart and my life to Him.”

  There was joy in the boy’s voice, and again Diodorus felt a quiver of superstition.

  “And you prayed to Him for Rubria?” he said.

  Lucanus turned his face to him, and smiled. “Yes, Master.”

  “But what do you call Him, child, when you pray?”

  Lucanus hesitated. He gazed at Diodorus as if pleading with him. “I call Him Father,” he
said, in a low tone.

  Diodorus was amazed, and taken aback. No one ever called any of the gods Father. It was ridiculous. It would affront the gods to be addressed so familiarly by insignificant man. If this boy spoke so to the Unknown God, who knew but what, in His godly anger, He might not strike furiously at the object of the prayers? Rubria!

  Diodorus said sternly, “No man, not even the sons of the gods, ever dared call a god ‘Father’. It is outrageous. It is true that many of the gods have sons and daughters by mortal men and women, but even so — ”

  “Master, you speak angrily,” said Lucanus, not in the voice of fear and servility, but in the remorseful voice of one who has unwittingly offended and begs forgiveness. “The Unknown God is not inflamed when one of His children calls Him Father. He is pleased.”

  “But how do you know, boy?”

  “I know in my heart. And so, when I call Him Father, and ask Him to cure Rubria, I know He listens gently, and will cure her, for He loves her.”