Dear and Glorious Physician (3 page)

Then he had turned to his officers — who were blushing in shame for him — and had cursed loudly and had shouted again, “Where are your scars and your calluses, your muscles, and your brown shoulders, you exquisites? Do you know what war is, and labor, and the strength of bodies which live sparely and with fortitude? To Hades with you all! By Mercury, you are less men than these poor slaves!”

This was unpardonable. The slaves snickered among themselves, and the faces of the Roman officers had darkened ominously. But they dared not reply. Diodorus was quite capable of slapping an impudent face openly; he had done it often enough, even before foot soldiers and slaves.

Diodorus, unfortunately, was not done. He wrathfully surveyed his men, and continued, “Cincinnatus left his plow to save Rome, and he did not halt even to wash his stained hands or put his sandals on his soil-dusted feet. But not one of you would leave the arms of a Syrian whore to save the life of a man, or to uphold, in your jurisdiction, a law of Rome.”

He had swung away from them then, and had pounded back on the docks to his horse, and had galloped off home to the suburbs. He left his chariot behind to be brought by an officer to his stables, and Aeneas rode in it with the officer. Once at home, Aeneas had related the whole horrifying episode to Iris, who had listened in silence. He expected her to be appalled, as he was appalled, but she had said mildly, with her lovely smile, “The noble tribune was once my playmate in the house of Priscus. He was always a strenuous boy; he would sometimes carry me on his back and pretend that he was Jupiter in the guise of a bull and I Europa.”

She had watched the aghast expression on Aeneas’ face for a moment, and had added gently, “Ah, but we were only children then, dear one.”

There were times when Aeneas could not understand Iris, and he said pompously, “I see that you do not grasp the larger implications of this incredible episode of today. Diodorus is constantly talking of discipline, yet he publicly derided his officers before their men and the slaves. Does that enhance their authority?”

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 her 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?”