Dear and Glorious Physician

by Taylor Caldwell

  Moreover, the senator used spikenard and attar of roses, and Diodorus would say loudly, “Not only a filthy house and breakfast in bed, but perfumes!” He affected to find the senator incredible, which convinced the senator that Diodorus should remain in Syria, in spite of his letters to Rome. This was a matter about which the senator had not as yet talked with his host. He felt he needed a prolonged rest first. He had been seasick all the way to Antioch. And Diodorus was a difficult man.

  The headache had been extraordinarily severe this morning, and Keptah, mixing potions while his master bellowed in denial, understood that Carvilius Ulpian was adding extra torture to the affliction. He gave Diodorus the cup and said, soothingly, “A student of Hippocrates once asked the great physician, ‘Would a permitted murder not assuage the pangs of the victim?’ To which Hippocrates replied, ‘Certainly’.”

  “Are you asserting that if I could murder — let us say, anyone at random, without a qualm, that I would lose my headache?” Diodorus demanded, outraged, sitting up in bed.

  Keptah nodded. Diodorus began to swear, then he smiled longingly, thinking of his brother-in-law. “Attar of roses!” he muttered. “Pfui!” He sank back on his pillows and gave himself up to a pleasant fantasy. The migraine subsided a little and this time Diodorus did not vomit up the potion. Still, he was in a bad condition and in a bad temper when he emerged from the house in the fresh and gleaming morning, without breakfast, which he could not eat when afflicted. The son of a whole line of pigs could at least have brought Cornelia, he thought, to visit my wife, instead of mere letters. But Cornelia, as simple, sturdy and unimaginative as Aurelia, would have inhibited the senator’s diversions to some extent. Diodorus consoled himself that the senator’s visits were very few and very far between.

  Migraine, after its first dimming of the vision, always made Diodorus see too clearly, too sharply, so that seeing was in itself a pain. This heightened awareness depressed him. He heard laughter, and winced, putting his hand to his head. Who could laugh while the master of the house was dying on his feet, and fearing the rumble and swaying and rattling of the chariot which would soon arrive to take him to Antioch? Grumbling words he never used before anyone but tax collectors, he left the outer court and went into the gardens. His daughter, Rubria, and Lucanus were playing ball with two young slaves and making noise enough to wake the dead, that is, thought Diodorus, enough to wake anyone but the fragrant senator with his oils.

  It was a pretty sight, that of the dark-eyed maiden in her long rosy tunic running to catch the ball Lucanus or a slave girl threw, her cheeks pink and her black hair flowing. In contrast, Lucanus was a golden, youthful god, complementing her, and the slave girls, dressed as simply as their young mistress, and as charming, were like nymphs, their white feet sparkling with dew, their red and brown tresses streaming behind them like banners. All about the young people the garden was a garden fresh from the hands of Ceres, the palms blowing and bowing in a scented wind, the statues glowing, the fountains leaping like liquid silver, and the arch of the sky most ineffably blue.

  For a moment Diodorus’ bad temper became milder. He watched the girls and the boy, and he thought, How wonderful it is to be innocent and beautiful. Then he was angry again. No one had a right, even a maiden and a boy, to be innocent in this foul world which was composed of perfumed senators, vile tax collectors, magistrates, and officials and Caesars who would not answer urgent letters.

  The chit is fourteen; she should be betrothed now and preparing for marriage, thought Diodorus resentfully. The fact that the senator had discreetly mentioned one of his own sons, now seventeen and ready for marriage, and that this mention had made Diodorus look like a veritable Mars with a red dart in his eyes, was completely forgotten by the tribune. Rubria, though still too slender, and given to attacks of breathlessness and pallor about the lips when tired, had a round little bosom and her legs, immodestly flashing from under the blowing tunic, were definitely the legs of a woman. Diodorus was aghast both at this new aspect of his daughter and that she was not as yet betrothed. He was also furious at Lucanus for some obscure reason.

  He lifted his voice to a stentorian tone. “What is this play? Is it not time for the schoolroom? Why this wantonness?”

  The slave girls looked at him with fright, and fled from him to the rear of the house like petals scattered by the wind. Rubria, still smiling, stood with the ball in her slender brown hands, and Lucanus colored.

  “It is not time, Father,” said the girl, and ran to him for a kiss. She wound her arms about his neck, and he could not refrain from responding to her. But he glowered at Lucanus. “Sixteen years old!” he exclaimed. “And playing with girls! Can you find no worthier playmates among your own sex?”

  Rubria contentedly kissed him again in her mother’s fashion, but her father scowled blackly at Lucanus over her shoulder. The youth stood in silence, his yellow head held proudly, his face cold and remote.

  “And with whom shall he play?” asked Rubria, her hands smoothing her father’s arms comfortingly. She was not disturbed; she had learned from her mother to treat Diodorus like a beloved but occasionally fractious child. “None of the slave boys are his age, and there are no families with sons near us.” She gave Lucanus a laugh and a mischievous glance. “He is also too sober.”

  “Not too sober to neglect his lessons and engage in puppyish antics,” said Diodorus. He did not like the youth at all this morning. “Must one wait until the hourglass has dropped an exact number of grains of sands before one studies? Is it on such an irresponsible that I must spend my money?”

  Lucanus looked at him with a hard blue light in his eyes, and he opened his mouth to answer angrily, then he saw that Diodorus was a sickly yellow and that he had not shaved. His beard was dark under his coarse skin. Lucanus remembered that this was the day for the magistrates and the tax collectors, and that Diodorus was inevitably bad-tempered on these days. The unshaven beard could be relied upon as accurately as a water clock.

  So Lucanus said mildly, “You do well to reprove me, Master.”

  He went away, stepping high and gracefully, and Diodorus watched him go and was more depressed than ever. “Go to your mother, girl,” he said with unusual roughness to his daughter. Now his chariot was coming. He could hear the infernal clang and rumble, and winced again, and groaned. Rubria kissed him, patted his cheek, gave him a glance of loving commiseration, and ran off. Diodorus followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight, and there was a pain in his heart. Yesterday she was a babe at her mother’s breast; today she was a woman, and would soon leave her parents. It was one of nature’s most unbearable tricks. He thought again of Lucanus, and now his obscure anger returned. He had seen Rubria’s ardent glance at the youth, he had seen Lucanus reply with a deep smile. Diodorus lashed his horses, and was frightened. If he could not be relieved of this polluted place himself he would send Rubria and Aurelia to Rome, and even the senator’s son, who was a frail, studious youth and not to Diodorus’ exacting fancy, would not be untenable as a son-in-law. At least some of the money will return to the family, thought the tribune, who considered it outrageous that Carvilius Ulpian should be able to spend one penny of it.

  An old pride came back to the Roman, and his heart hardened with affront. He was incensed now that Lucanus, that son of a freedman, should even look upon his daughter lovingly. He forgot, in his gathering black anger, that Lucanus was the son of Iris, whom he had not seen for a long time except at a far distance, and then only fleetingly. Diodorus decided to have a very stern talk with Aurelia tonight. He, Diodorus, would keep his promise to educate the youth — in order that he could serve the household humbly. A slave girl of some promise, modesty and household arts would be freed and a marriage arranged between her and Lucanus. The Roman master had only to command, and command he would. Let Lucanus take his wife to Alexandria with him and let her keep a humble house for her student husband and bake his bread, and serve him a properly inferior wine. I have been sof
t and weak, thought the tribune, biting his thick underlip and lashing his horses. I have forgotten that I am a Roman in this soft, sweltering, depraved province. I have treated slaves as equals.

  He had also forgotten many other things. The face of Aeneas rose before him — that sly, mealymouthed, weak-spoken imitation of a man! — and his anger made his eyes blind for a few moments and his heart beat as if he had been unbearably humiliated. And an old anguish, without a face, returned to him like teeth in his chest.

  He was in a fine, vengeful mood when he arrived in Antioch. He had never killed a man, except in battle, but he longed to kill now. If only he were Hercules! He would tear this city apart with his bare hands, To his nostrils, assaulted by the stenches of the city, urine seemed the dominant stench. A urinous city! And what was a Roman proconsul doing driving his own chariot here, like a mean merchant? Did no one respect him? Where were his officers, his soldiers? He forgot that this was all of his own choosing, and that he had often said that he was a simple soldier and not a lady-man of modern Rome, and that Cincinnatus had ridden into the Imperial City on the back of an ass, and without attendants save those poor farmers like himself. There will be changes! Diodorus promised in silent grimness.

  He was met by Sextus and a troop of soldiers, helmeted, shielded and armed, as usual on the day of justice. Diodorus shouted at Sextus, his face flaming with wrath, “How now, is this the earliest you can drag yourself out of bed to meet and escort me? Am I a provincial dog of a magistrate that I deserve no honors or escort, but must drive like the meanest peasant from my own home?”

  Sextus was accustomed to the tribune’s bad humor on these days, but he was not accustomed to such an attack on his integrity as a soldier and a worthy and loyal officer. So he was taken aback. He did not retire into obedient and military reserve, as was his training when tongue-lashed by his superior. He blurted out, “Why, noble Diodorus, I have only obeyed your express orders. You have constantly refused to be escorted, and have ordered that no soldiers remain about your house.” He looked at Diodorus with dismay, and his soldiers kept their faces blank, and stared before them, carrying the fasces and the banners.

  Diodorus pulled up his horses so hard that they reared, and a hoof just missed Sextus’ face. He did not step back, however. His young eyes were filled with both reproach and bewilderment.

  “Now, by Zeus!” Diodorus bellowed, lashing the horses. “Where is your military discretion!” He got the horses under control, and swore at them. “You will not only accompany me to the Hall of Justice but will return to my house with me and remain there at my orders!”

  He roared off, and Sextus shook his head dismally. He then sharply ordered his troops to follow him after the tribune. Diodorus’ chariot was now enveloped in hot white chalky dust at the end of the cobbled street. Sextus and his soldiers began a military trot after him, and the humiliation of the young soldier was complete when passers-by jeered at them. He gritted his teeth.

  Whether or not the magistrates were more tedious than usual and the tax collectors’ reports more boring, or the local nobles and merchants more complaining, it seemed to Diodorus the worst day he could remember. He shouted, he thumped his fist on the table, he scattered papers, he denounced, he insulted, he ascribed shameful ancestry to magistrates, judges, nobles and tax-gatherers alike. They had heads like asses; their mothers had been engaged from puberty in unmentionable obscenities; they were totally illiterate; they were inhabitants of the most depraved and most contemptible country in the world. Their wits were like flies. Antioch was a cesspool, and they worthy inhabitants of it. He despised them all in vivid language. At some time he had unpardonably offended the gods, otherwise he would not be here. He consigned them all to Pluto, and impugned their honesty, their decisions, their records. They were thieves, liars, idiots, cripples. Though his wrist was bound with leather thongs he sprained it by his table-thumping, and his face, swollen and scarlet, seemed about to burst. He would eat nothing; when offered wine, he expressed his opinion of it and spat.

  When he roared off in the afternoon, his head one cauldron of pain and his neck muscles in spasm, those he had left were, for the first time, as one. The tribune was mad, of course, and he was a beast, like all Romans. Tax-gatherer and merchant put heads together and condoled with one another. The magistrates expressed their fervent hopes, in low and whispering voices, not only that the tribune would soon descend into hell, but Rome with him.

  Sextus had provided himself and three of his junior officers with horses, and they dashed after Diodorus’ chariot. They could hardly keep up with him. He drives like Apollo, thought Sextus, still smarting, without the beauty of Apollo. He should enter the races in the circus. Gods, he will kill those poor beasts! But his soldierly heart was filled with consternation. The tribune was apparently ill and temporarily out of his mind. Sextus invoked Ares as he fled along the rutted road after Diodorus. The humid heat was intense, and under their armor the gloomy soldiers sweated, and their shields were too heavy. One or two wondered what punishment would be given them for what transgressions.

  The senator, Carvilius Ulpian, was graciously sitting in the outdoor portico with his sister-in-law, Aurelia, sipping one of Diodorus’ more expensive wines and commenting upon it to himself in expressive language. Aurelia, the good matron, was busily using her hands in sewing, a vulgar and common habit shared by her sister, Cornelia, who would never be a fashionable lady. They were startled by a thunder of hoofs and the sight of a large cloud of luminous dust in the distance. The senator started to his feet, his white robes dropping around him. “Now, by Mithras, is that the Minotaur approaching?” he cried. “Or Pluto bursting through the earth?”

  “It is probably only Diodorus,” said Aurelia, undisturbed. “This is always a bad day for him. But are there not other horses with him?” She put aside her sewing and stood up to see and to listen. An optimistic young woman, she never thought that anything out of the ordinary could be ominous. “Is he bringing guests for dinner?”

  “If those are guests they are probably charioteers out on practice,” said the senator, shielding his eyes from the late afternoon sun and craning to see. Then he began to laugh, now glimpsing Diodorus lashing his horses and standing up like a racer in his chariot, and the soldiers hurtling behind him, all enveloped in radiant clouds of dust. He clapped his hands and cheered, like one cheering the chariots in the circus. “He will make it! He will be the first at the gate!”

  “Good heaven, and in this heat,” murmured Aurelia. “And with his headache. Why is Sextus with him, and the others?”

  “Am I his wife that I should know what Diodorus ever does?” asked the senator reasonably, and still laughing.

  Diodorus thundered to the gate, sprang from the chariot and tossed the reins aside. His followers roared up, and barely managed to avoid the halted chariot; their horses danced and pranced and reared all about it, and screamed in distress. Sunlight glanced off the soldiers’ armor and off their helmets, and the horses were covered with foam. Diodorus burst through the gate at a brisk trot and then into the outdoor portico. He glared at the senator and ignored his wife.

  “What! Are you still here?” he demanded roughly. “Not beginning to yearn as yet for your Corybantes and bacchantes, nor pining for your favorite gladiators and actors?” He was panting, crimson of brow, and dripping with sweat.

  “Beloved,” Aurelia began, astonished at this rudeness and alarmed at her husband’s appearance. She took a step towards him, but he waved her away. “Go to your quarters, woman,” he said, not looking at her, and Aurelia gathered up her sewing and vanished through the pillars of the house, tears in her eyes. Never had Diodorus spoken to her like that before.

  The senator was not disturbed. He stood there in all his tall elegance and his face was humorous. He thought Diodorus a boor, a military imbecile whose temper, like that of all soldiers, befitted more an animal than a man. He cocked his eyebrows, smiled, and regarded the goblet in his hand quizzically. �
��Bacchus would disdain such wine, my good friend and brother, and so, even if I yearn, no bacchantes are hovering about me.”

  The soft insult made Diodorus shake. He stood before this smooth patrician, with his fine hands and expertly folded toga, like a wild, dark figure of a military barbarian, covered with dust, his eyes glaring, and his fierce and reddened face convulsed. His panting was loud in the evening stillness. He took off his helmet and dashed it onto the stones. Carvilius Ulpian took a delicate sip of the wine and shook his head deploringly. The helmet rolled and rattled.

  The senator sat down again, gracefully. His sandals were of silver laced with gold. “Sit down,” he suggested, like a man playing host to one of inferior station. “Have some wine. It will refresh you. Is the headache still very bad? My physician here with me has a potion which is very beneficial. Shall I call for his services?” He sat in his chair, a foreign figure majestic and at ease on the crude portico and in front of a house he thought plebeian in the extreme and fit only for an overseer of slaves.