Dear and Glorious Physician (6 page)

Then Diodorus had summoned Keptah, who came to him on feet which seemed to glide. “You spoke to me of good and evil last night, and knowledge,” he said. “Your language was very obscure.” Diodorus paused. He gazed at Keptah, not as a master looks at a slave, but as a man looks at a man. “You have studied the words of Aristotle during your years at Alexandria. You remember that the sage spoke of absolutes. Do you not believe in absolutes?”

Keptah was not perplexed; he knew that Diodorus had given their last conversation long thought. He knew all that was to be known about the tribune.

“No, Master, I do not.”

“And why not?”

“Because, Master, there are no absolutes, except in God.”

“But Aristotle was a great philosopher! Are you presuming to contradict him?” Diodorus turned in his chair with affront.

Keptah smiled his subtle smile. “Did wisdom end with Aristotle?” he asked.

Diodorus scowled, but he was shaken. “Then the last word has not yet been spoken?”

“Master, not yet.”

Diodorus scowled even more fiercely. “No absolutes! No last word!” He was dismayed. It was bad enough that politics were always so unstable, that life was capricious. But philosophy, surely, and philosophy such as Aristotle’s, was an eternal and unchanging thing. What was a man to hold to in an unpredictable world, if not philosophy, if not the memory of his fathers, the temples of his gods, and wisdom? He glanced up at Keptah, and saw the strange deviousness of his eyes, the obscure outline of his bloodless lips.

“Tell me,” said the tribune, “what was it you did to the slaves last night?”

“It was only a form of hypnotism, Master,” said the physician. “A delusion, if you will.”

“Whose delusion?” Diodorus was irate.

Keptah shrugged delicately. “Who knows, Master?”

Diodorus had dismissed him irritably. The thoughts raised in his mind by Keptah were too disturbing, so he suppressed them as soon as possible. He had not remembered them again until now.

And now he regarded Keptah; he was more firmly convinced than ever that the slave considered him, the mighty tribune, a very simple man. It was simplicity, then, to believe in virtue, in patriotism, in morality, in honor, in duty, and Diodorus suspected that to Keptah, the mysterious, such simplicity was absurd. But surely a man who believed in no absolutes was a corrupt man! Was it well for such a man to attend the little Rubria? But who, in Antioch, or even in Rome, had so gifted a physician as Keptah?

It was then, for a reason unknown to him, that Diodorus suddenly remembered Lucanus.

He put his hand to his pouch surreptitiously, and felt the stone and the little bag of herbs. He saw that Keptah was watching him, while not appearing to watch. He said, like a sheepish schoolboy, “I have here an amulet.”

Keptah raised his winged black brows, and said, courteously, “An amulet? Ah, amulets often possess supernatural qualities.”

Diodorus frowned. Was the man mocking him again? But Keptah was most serious, and he was waiting politely. He almost thrust the strange stone into the physician’s hand.

Keptah studied it. And then the most unreadable expression passed over his face. He turned his back to the lamps so that he stood in shadow, and Diodorus peered over his shoulder. In Keptah’s hands, in the dimness, the stone glowed as if burning with an internal and quenchless fire. It cast a frail but steady light on Keptah’s long dark fingers.

“What is it?” demanded Diodorus, impatiently.

Keptah contemplated his master’s alarm and his suddenly congested face with that hidden amusement of his. “It was given to me, tonight,” said Diodorus, “by my freedman’s son, the little Lucanus, for the Lady Rubria. He told me he had found it; he declared that the gods, or God, was in it.”

Keptah’s face changed. He said, “Lucanus?” He pondered. He knew the love between the young Greek and the younger Rubria — so innocent and gentle a love. He also knew the tremendous power of suggestion. He went to the bed, and, imperatively, as if he were master and Aurelia but a slave woman, he motioned her aside and she intinctively obeyed. Rubria was sobbing quietly, but now she stared up as if in fear at Keptah. He smiled at the child, and showed her the stone, which was not ordinary but possessed no powers except its beauty. “This,” he said to her, “is a magical stone, found by your playmate, Lucanus. The gods must have directed him to it. It will help you, little lady, if you believe in it, for did not Lucanus find it for you?”

Rubria looked at the stone and touched it timidly with one frail finger. She began to smile. Keptah lifted her shift deftly; he pressed the rounded contour of the stone against her left side, in the region of her swollen spleen. “Here it must rest,” he said to the parents, and the nurse, “for many days, until the child recovers her health.” He gazed at Rubria with a compelling look, and she appeared awed, as did Diodorus and Aurelia.

Diodorus rubbed his chin; he might be superstitious, but he was also a man of reason and logic. He bent over his daughter and studied the stone, and saw its fires and twinklings. Then, in some suspicion, he glanced up at Keptah, who had trouble in retaining his gravity. “I do not believe in magic,” grumbled the tribune. Keptah struggled with his almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. He said, “Master, there is much magic in the world. One has only to believe in it to find it.”

The tribune thought this ambiguous, and frowned, but Keptah seemed very serious. Well, thought Diodorus, it is possible I do not know everything, and I am not a physician or a dealer in magic, like this charlatan. His attention quickly returned to Rubria, and he shook his head. “What is all this that ails the child?” he demanded. “You have not been definite, but rather evasive, Keptah. The blood — suffused joints — the bruised areas of flesh — the difficulty in breathing — the seeping gums — the lumps in the glands.”

Keptah looked aside. “It is not a rare condition,” he said, mildly, “though a difficult one — to cure.” It was impossible for him to tell this father that the child had the white sickness, which was invariably fatal; there was pity in his heart.

“But the little Rubria will live?” demanded Diodorus, and his eyes shrank at the very thought of her death.

Keptah regarded him for a long moment before answering, and then he said, “It is not ordained that she die now, Master, nor any time in the immediate future.” Rubria, feeling Lucanus’ stone against her young flesh, felt surcease, and this Keptah noted. The force of the spirit, he reflected, can often keep death at bay, and faith can sometimes accomplish the impossible.

Diodorus was not satisfied. Fear quickened his heart. “You speak evasively. Will not the amulet cure her entirely?”

“I do not know, Master.” The ambushed eyes looked upon Diodorus with an expression that the Roman did not recognize as a remote compassion.

“Then,” said Diodorus, with angry frenzy, “she will surely die in the future?”

“Is that not our common fate, Master?”

Diodorus let his head drop on his breast, and he drew in his lips against his teeth. He then thought of the tiny bag of herbs given to him by that most unknowable boy, Lucanus, and with shaking fingers he withdrew it from his pouch and extended it with sudden stiffness to Keptah. “Lucanus gave me this, also, and said it must be mixed in hot wine and given to the Lady Rubria.”

He expected new mockery from Keptah, but the physician took the bag with a light and delicate swiftness. He opened it. Immediately the hot little room was pervaded by an intense odor, bitter yet pleasing. Keptah held the bag to his nostrils and closed his eyes and inhaled. “Where, Master, did the boy find these herbs, and how did he choose them?”

“I do not know!” shouted the frantic Diodorus. “In the fields, he said. He did not tell me how he chose them! Gods! Is there no end to this mystery? What does the bag contain?”

Keptah smiled, and carefully closed the bag. “Herbs I have not been able to find myself, though I have searched long and endlessly.” He drew his bony fingers across his mouth, as though to quiet them. He gave the bag to the nurse and commanded that it be mixed in hot wine immediately. He turned silently on his heels, went to the bed, and gazed down at Rubria with the expression one wears when confronted by a miracle.

Diodorus caught the arm of his physician. “The boy, Lucanus, has said he wishes to study medicine and I have promised him — “ He halted, and his fierce eyes narrowed with conjecture and thought, and his frugal mind hurried.

“Yes, Master?” asked Keptah, again the haughty slave parodying humility.

“I promised him that he may study with the Lady Rubria, and that later — later — it might be possible for him to study — ” Diodorus paused, and his ferocious brows drew together. “You shall teach him, Keptah, and if you believe he has the capacity to become a physician, then” — he drew a deep breath and heroically abandoned caution — “I shall send him to Alexandria.”

He expected Keptah to become incredulous and amused. But Keptah bowed his head seriously. “Master, what you have said is ordained.”

“Now what in the name of Hades do you mean by that?” demanded Diodorus, perplexed. “I suppose you are speaking of the Fates again. But have not Aristotle and Socrates spoken of the free choice of men and ridiculed that which is ordained?”

“Many philosophers are not wise in all things,” said the irritating Keptah calmly. “If a man were to live solely by the theories of the philosophers he would not survive, nor would he retain his sanity.” He smiled fully at Diodorus, as a pitying father smiles at an obstinate young son.

The nurse had brought in a silver goblet of hot wine, and Keptah dexterously mixed the herbs in it. The little girl’s moans were softer now, but it was evident she was still in great pain. Keptah gave the goblet to Aurelia, and she held it to Rubria’s lips with a fond smile. The child drank obediently between deep breaths of suffering. Keptah stood by the bed and watched her acutely for long moments.

The moaning came less frequently now, and the child’s eyes grew large with wonder, and quiet. Her head lay upon her mother’s knees, and again Diodorus held her hand. She lifted her head, as if in surprise at the diminishing of anguish, and then she drew one moving breath after another, slow and deep, like sighs.

“Ah, gods,” muttered Diodorus, his eyelids watering with gratitude.

Like a red tide, the flush of fever receded from Rubria’s cheeks and lips, and was replaced by a ghostly pallor. To her parents this was excellent, for they forgot that it was this very pallor which had preceded this last acute illness, and which had, weeks ago, aroused their anxiety. Keptah nodded to himself with somberness.

“The child is sleeping!” cried Aurelia, very gently. And indeed Rubria slept, white as the dead beneath her dusky lengths of hair.

“I shall sacrifice not two, but four cocks to Aesculapius!” exclaimed Diodorus, weak with relief. “And to his messenger, the glorious, light-footed Mercury, two hecatombs!”

He swung to his physician, and forgetting he was master of this inscrutable slave, he seized his hand, blinking his eyes to keep back his tears. “Ah, Keptah, ask what you will! It shall be granted instantly for this night’s work!”

Keptah paused as Diodorus wrung his hand. He reflected that only opportunistic men sought profit from what was not their own. But slaves had no other choice but expediency. He said, so softly that his lips hardly moved, “My freedom, Master.”

Diodorus was taken aback. He compressed his mouth; he glared blackly at his slave. “Ah,” he said, in a threatening voice, “you would take advantage of my emotion, natural to a father?”

Keptah shrugged. “It was you who suggested it, Master, not I,” he answered.

Diodorus’ short hair bristled with that sudden anger of his. The nostrils of his beaked nose flared. Suspicion glittered in his eyes. “What a sleek rascal you are, Keptah! You know that it is promised to my father that you shall be given your freedom when you are forty-five years old, and enough gold for your ease. You would have me break my promise to my father?”

Keptah could not hold back a smile at this sophistry, and seeing that smile, Diodorus felt greater anger, and considerable sheepishness. He flung away Keptah’s hand, pulled his shoulders heavily up to his ears, and stood obstinately, like a lowering bull. He attempted to stare his slave down, with umbrage. But Keptah stood in quiet dignity, fingering a fold of his robe.

Diodorus forgot his sleeping daughter for a moment and shouted, “Very well, then, scoundrel! So be it. In a few days you shall go with me to the praetor.” He shook his thick finger in Keptah’s face. “But only on this contract, that you remain with me voluntarily until I dismiss you.”

“Did you think I would desert you, Master?” asked Keptah, as if marveling. “Besides, is it not ordained that I remain in this house and teach the son of Aeneas?”

But Diodorus was not appeased. He fumed, trying to intimidate the other. Keptah was not intimidated. “The praetor and you, Master, will no doubt agree on a just stipend, which I should prefer to suggest.”

Diodorus was about to burst out again when he felt Aurelia’s fingers on his sweating arm. She was smiling up at him; her cheeks were ripe again, and a dimple twinkled beside her mouth. She looked like a girl, seated on the edge of her child’s bed, and her hair was curling moistly on her forehead and shoulders. “Never shall it be said of the noble Diodorus that he broke a promise,” she murmured.

Her appearance, her love, touched Diodorus’ secretly soft heart. But it was necessary not to betray such an unmilitary weakness. He flung up his hands in a gesture of rageful surrender. “I have said, so be it!” he cried. “I shall also say that I despise an exigent man, be he master or slave. Keptah, I have respected you; now I have contempt for you.”

“The contempt of such as you, Master, is worth the honor of all other men,” said Keptah, and Aurelia laughed aloud, as if with delight.

Keptah waited for his dismissal, and when it was given he bowed deeply to Diodorus and Aurelia, and went at once to his own locked pharmacy, where he compounded his potions and ointments, and where he kept his powdered bodies and organs of animals and insects and strange herbs and dried blossoms and inorganic substances about which no other physicians knew, except those like himself.

This pharmacy was part of his own quarters, far from the quarters of the other slaves. It was not necessary to warn them away; they were terrified of Keptah and his abstruse air and stateliness. They were even more terrified of the magic behind that locked door. They whispered that he visited the crematoria and withdrew the blood of the dead before their incineration, and used it in his remedies. Sickening odors sometimes floated about him, like an aura, and sometimes lights glimmered long after midnight through his window. Some of the slaves swore that these were not the lights of lamps, but moving sparkles like stars, and that these sparkles often hovered on the window sills like cold fireflies.