Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  “They say he should have darkness, to help him rest,” explained Marcus. “But the poor thing simply stares into space, as if he’s unable to shut his eyes—or afraid to.”

  “Does his illness have a name?” asked Lucius.

  “None that the physicians recognize. He cannot or will not eat. He wastes away. His breathing is uneven. Sometimes there’s a rattling in his throat.”

  “Can the physicians help him?”

  “They do this and that.” Marcus looked at the men across the room. Not one of them dared to meet his gaze. “But nothing seems to help.”

  “Oh, Verissimus! I truly think it was Fortuna who sent me here this day, wishing to bless us both. I came because a while ago I called upon a physician, a young Pergamene, and just recently I saw the most remarkable demonstration of his knowledge of anatomy.”

  “Yes?”

  “His name is Galen—”

  Lucius was interrupted by an audible snort of derision from one of the physicians across the room.

  Marcus narrowed his eyes. “Galen? From Pergamum? Have we heard of this physician?” He directed the question to the man who had snorted.

  “Yes, Dominus,” said the man. “We have knowledge of this newcomer. And not all of it good.”

  “He has many cures to his credit,” said Lucius.

  “Because he resorts to sorcery—or so we have heard,” said the man.

  “No, no!” Lucius protested. “Galen is a man of good character. I personally vouch for him.”

  Marcus grimaced. “What would you have us do next?” he asked the physician.

  “I think, Dominus, another bleeding is necessary. The imbalance of the humors persists. We have all conferred and we see no other alternative.”

  Marcus sighed. “Can we at least send Commodus from the room? The child is clearly distressed by the circumstances.”

  “No, Dominus, he must remain close to his brother. There is a special affinity between twins. The proximity of one to the other is known to be conducive to recovery.”

  Marcus looked down at the boy and gently touched his cheek. “Do you hear, Commodus? Titus needs you. You must be very brave.”

  “I am brave, Papa.”

  “Yes, you are.” Marcus managed a smile. “Very well. Another bleeding.” He nodded to the physicians, who moved into place around the sickbed. The one who was clearly the leader brought forth a very sharp-looking blade. Others extended bowls for catching the blood, others cloths to wipe away any drops that escaped the bowls. They pulled up Titus’s gown and chose a spot on one of his wasted legs for the incision.

  Lucius looked away, but from the corner of one eye he saw that Commodus was watching every step of the procedure with utmost fascination. Such an intent expression on the face of a four-year-old was somehow disconcerting. Lucius suddenly felt very out of place, and a bit peeved. His advice had been brushed aside as if his word meant nothing. Who were these physicians, that Marcus put such faith in them? From what he could see, poor little Titus was on the cusp between life and death. If the doctors were so competent, how had he ended up in such a condition? Lucius wanted very much to leave the room, at once, but to do so he would have to take his leave of Marcus, and he could hardly do so while the emperor’s attention was entirely on the procedure taking place. Like Commodus, Marcus watched every movement, but with something closer to dread than fascination. What a contrast, between father and son, and the looks on their faces, as the incision was made and the blood began to flow. Titus made no protest at all, but lay inert on the bed, staring at nothing.

  Suddenly, Titus gave a start. His limbs convulsed, all four at once. The bowl to catch the blood was knocked to the floor, spilling its shallow contents. Commodus jumped back, his mouth a circle, his eyes wide, staring at the splotch of red on the pale marble floor. Marcus cried out and put a fist to his mouth, his Stoic demeanor pushed to its limit.

  Titus convulsed again, and then again. His eyes never blinked.

  “Stop the procedure!” Marcus shouted. “Stop at once! All of you, out of the room!”

  “But, Dominus, the bleeding is more indicated now than ever,” the head physician insisted.

  “Out!” shouted Marcus.

  Lucius was aghast. He had never seen Marcus in such a state. The sight was almost as disturbing as that of the wasted, convulsing child on the bed. He turned to leave, but the emperor grabbed his shoulder.

  “Not you, Lucius. Stay!”

  “But Verissimus, I’m an intruder here. I’ll go at once—”

  “Stay! And look—as soon as the others left the room, the convulsions stopped. Is it a sign? Perhaps you were sent to me today by some divine power, Lucius. Perhaps I’m meant to call upon this Pergamene, this Galen, after all. Where can he be found, and quickly? Never mind, I have messengers who’ll know where he is and the fastest way to fetch him. I’ll send for him at once!”

  * * *

  Galen rushed through the narrow streets, following the imperial messenger as quickly as he could, trying not to trip on uneven paving stones. They came to a wider street. An imperial sedan was waiting. It had a seat for only one, and eight men to carry the two long poles. Galen was practically pushed into the seat, and then they were off, traveling at a run.

  He sat back and tried to catch his breath. At a slower pace, the ride would have been smoother, but as it was, he was jostled violently this way and that. He had to clench his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering.

  He had been summoned to the palace. That was all the messenger had told him. But why? And how had such a situation come about? He could only imagine that some terrible crisis was taking place, and that somehow his name had been put forward. But by whom? A friend? An enemy? Almost certainly the latter, for the one thing he dreaded above all others was exactly this, that he should be pressed into serving the emperor or his family under the most stressful circumstances imaginable, and that he should—unthinkable as it was!—fail, and fail utterly. An imperial relative, dead—or even worse, a dead emperor!—that was a disaster from which no physician could ever hope to recover, not in a thousand lifetimes.

  The dark streets passed as if in a nightmare, barely glimpsed in the headlong rush. They came to a halt so abruptly that he was thrown from the chair onto the shoulders of the two men immediately in front of him. One of them had the effrontery to laugh as the muscle-bound runner tossed him aside, like a ball in a game, and into the arms of a courtier almost as discombobulated as Galen.

  The courtier grabbed his arm with an iron grip—he was quite strong for a man with such a white beard—and rushed Galen up a flight of marble steps, into a shadowless antechamber lit by a forest of lamps, some on stands, some hanging from the ceiling. Dazzled by the light, Galen rolled his eyes up, and saw that the ceiling was gaily painted with scenes of the nymph Chelone transformed into a tortoise by Mercury. That was the sort of thing that happened to mortals who displeased a god or a goddess! What was the fate of a poor physician who displeased a Roman emperor?

  Down a series of lamplit corridors they flew, and up a flight of yellow marble steps, past hanging curtains, and then into a room that seemed to him at first pitch-black. For a moment he heard nothing but his own gasping breath, but then he heard a woman weeping. A lamp was brought into the room, and then more lamps. As the darkness receded, he saw the woman. She was dressed in a very fine gown. For many a woman, even a rich one, it would be the finest gown she owned, but in these circumstances it was probably her sleeping gown. She was approaching middle age, and might have been pretty, but it was hard to tell with her face so red and tearstained, and her body wracked by sobs. Was this the empress?

  Yes, most certainly it was, for the next thing Galen saw, instantly recognizable from the images on thousands of coins from the wilds of Britannia to the Parthian borderland, was the face of Marcus Aurelius.

  Galen gasped, and not for lack of breath. It seemed to him he must still be asleep and dreaming, yet here he was, somewhere in the innermo
st recesses of the imperial house. Faustina was weeping uncontrollably. The ruler of the world was staring at him grimly. And there, just past the emperor, Galen saw how such an impossible situation had come to pass: the familiar face of Senator Lucius Pinarius, who looked as miserable as the others.

  There was a little boy in the room, as well, gazing up at him with wide eyes, sucking at his fingertips. And there, on the bed, lay a second boy, the mirror image of the other, despite his pale, drawn face. Galen realized that these were the imperial twins—or what remained of them, for the boy on the bed was almost certainly deceased. Any uncertainty vanished when the emperor stepped to the bed, pulled up a sheet, and covered the boy’s face. The empress wailed.

  Marcus stared at the lifeless child. “And yet … I had … such hopes. Since I took on the burden of rule, nothing has been a greater comfort to me than the fact that I have another to share that burden—dear Verus, as much my brother as if we had been born from the same womb, though no one seeing us would ever mistake us for twins. Almost from—” His voice caught in his throat. He paused for a long moment, composing himself. “Almost from the moment the twins were born, I dared to hope that one day, when I should lay down my burden and pass it along, it would be to brothers—not to one man, but to two—two men who loved and trusted one another as Verus and I love and trust each other, not just brothers, but twins, true twins, my dear Commodus and my dear … my dearest … Titus!”

  The empress’s wailing turned to shrieks. She suddenly bolted from the room, surrounded by a vast flock of retainers and serving women, all moving to comfort her.

  The emperor turned and looked straight at Galen. He felt his legs melting, but stiffened his spine and met the man’s steady gaze.

  “So this is Galen of Pergamum?” How strange it was, to hear his name spoken by the emperor himself. Galen was saved from making some tongue-tied response by Lucius Pinarius, to whom the question was apparently directed.

  “Yes, Verissimus. This is the physician of whom I spoke.”

  Marcus nodded slowly, never taking his eyes from Galen’s. “I should have trusted you, dear Lucius. Your coming here today was a sign—even if it came too late. Well, I shall heed it going forward. What fools all my physicians turned out to be! Or was there no hope from the beginning? At least poor Titus’s suffering is over. In future…” His voice quavered. “In future, I shall call upon you, Galen of Pergamum, to look after the boy’s brother.” The emperor reached forth and laid his hand on Galen’s shoulder, then looked down at the child beside him. “What do you say, Commodus? Shall I appoint this man your physician?”

  “Yes, Papa,” said the child, who paused from sucking at his fingers and stared up at Galen with wide eyes.

  * * *

  It was some months later that Lucius Pinarius, sitting in his garden, broke the wax seal on a folded bit of parchment that had come from a ship newly arrived at Ostia. The seal—a snake shaped like the Greek letter gamma—was not familiar to him, so he quickly scanned the letter to discover the sender.

  “Who is it from, Papa?” asked his daughter, who sat with her mother nearby. They were both at work sewing up small tears in several of the family’s garments.

  “Why, it’s from Galen!”

  “Oh.” Pinaria looked down at her sewing. Mention of the physician reminded her of the condition, or whatever one should call it, that Galen had diagnosed. Anything to do with the whole episode was distasteful to her.

  Lucius was too pleased by the unexpected letter to notice his daughter’s discomfort. “We were lucky to have his services. Who knew he would be leaving Rome so soon?”

  “It did seem odd, especially since you had introduced him personally to the emperor. Didn’t you tell me that Marcus Aurelius intended to make use of Galen?”

  “Ah, that was the problem, my dear. They met under such terrible circumstances. Galen told me afterward that the experience quite unnerved him. ‘Every time he sees me, he shall think of his poor, dead boy,’ he said. I told him that was nonsense, and then Galen confessed to me that the idea of treating anyone in the imperial family was too nerve-wracking for him to contemplate. ‘The stakes are too high,’ he said. ‘High stakes, high rewards!’ I said. Or as my warrior brother likes to say, ‘No spirit, no splendor!’ But Galen would have none of it. Well, one can see his point. What if he was called to the palace to treat Commodus one day, and instead of getting better, the boy…”

  “Touch that fascinum at your breast if you must utter such thoughts!” said Paulina. She was a firm believer in averting the Evil Eye, especially when speaking the unspeakable. Lucius dutifully obeyed.

  “Galen actually confessed to me that he was relieved when he saw little Titus lying there, dead. Otherwise, had he arrived earlier, he might have taken the blame—though at the same time he insisted to me that he could have done a better job ‘than those palace quacks,’ as he called them. ‘So which is it?’ I asked him. ‘Could you have saved the boy, or not?’ Well, I never got a straight answer to that! And the next thing I knew, Galen invited me to join him at some shady tavern on the riverfront, for a farewell cup of wine. He was leaving Rome, and being very quiet about it. ‘I never intended to stay for good,’ he said. ‘There’s more of the world to see, and it’s Pergamum that will always be my home.’ ‘And what happens when little Commodus has a cough, and Marcus sends for you?’ I asked. And he said: ‘I won’t be there.’”

  Lucius laughed “Ha! I won’t be there! I never met a man so vain, but our Galen certainly has a timid streak. I still think he’s some sort of genius. Well, let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

  Lucius finally noticed the scowl on his wife’s face, and his daughter’s averted gaze. He proceeded to read in silence:

  To Senator Lucius Pinarius of Rome, from your loyal physician and, I hope, your friend, Galen of Pergamum—Greetings from Antioch! (I have not settled here, but am in transit.)

  In transit to where? Lucius wondered. Why was Galen so discreet? Perhaps he still feared a call from the emperor, who might reasonably presume that Lucius knew the physician’s whereabouts—and so Galen was keeping him in the dark. Had the letter actually come from Antioch? Who could say?

  Lucius read on:

  As my friend, and as a man who values truth and reason, I beg of you: don’t let anyone start false gossip about me, or slander me, saying I left because I killed a patient or some such nonsense. Even worse would be if word spreads that I was called to the palace and witnessed the death of the emperor’s son—or even caused it! Especially since the opposite is the case, and I was the only physician who might have saved the poor lad! So I ask you to divulge no details of that episode to others, who are full of jealousy and would maliciously distort the truth.

  Lucius smiled. Here at last was a straight answer to his question. Galen did believe, at least in retrospect, that he could have done what the others were unable to do: save Titus. Like every other physician Lucius had ever known, Galen was full of bravado—especially at a safe distance. And here he was, refashioning the story of his dismal visit to the palace so as to inflate his own ego—even while asking Lucius to keep it all a secret.

  Lucius put down the letter with a prickle of distaste. But then he looked at his daughter, sitting in a spot of sunshine and industriously sewing—back to her normal, lovely, calm, sweet self—and he realized just how grateful he was to Galen, and always would be.

  Lucius missed the fellow. Perhaps, one day, Galen would dare to return to Rome, and when he did, Lucius would be glad to see him.

  A.D. 168

  Lucius was asleep and dreaming.

  In his dream, it was again the day of the two emperors’ joint triumph, the first triumph to be held in Rome in almost fifty years, and the first in the lifetimes of just about everyone present. Lucius himself was now forty-seven. In all that time, until Verus’s Parthian campaign, there had been no wars to speak of, no grand conquests or decisive victories, no triumphs to be celebrated.

/>   How splendid that day had been! As a senator, Lucius himself had taken part in the grand procession. The contingents ahead of him had included a great many captives in chains to represent the barbarian multitudes subdued and conquered in the war, along with painted placards held aloft depicting the cities taken, and wagons full of booty, heaped with gold and jewels. After the senators had come the two emperors, sharing a chariot so capacious there was room for every one of Marcus’s children, not just Commodus but also the girls, all clustered around their father, smiling and waving to the multitude of cheering well-wishers in the vast crowds along the Sacred Way.

  Feasting and celebration had followed, including gladiator combats in the Flavian Amphitheater, not one of which was allowed to end in a fatality by decree of Marcus, who appreciated the skillful display of arms but not the necessity of death as the outcome. Amid the acrobatic displays in the arena, a young boy had fallen from a tightrope and broken his neck. Some in the crowd had been amused but others were aghast, including Marcus, who decreed that thereafter all such tightropes should have nets fitted beneath them, to safeguard against future fatalities. These innovations by Marcus had not met with universal approval. Lucius had overheard one loudmouth in the latrina grumbling, “What’s the point of gladiator games if no one’s to die in the end? And who wants to watch some fool prance across a tightrope if there’s no chance he might kill himself?”

  The arena games had delivered plenty of gore and bloodshed by the end, if mostly from creatures other than human. A great many exotic animals from the Parthian border regions, including camels and wild dogs, had been chased and hunted by men on horseback. At the climax of these animal spectacles, a hundred lions were set loose in the arena at once, causing the crowd to roar with delight. To prove that the lions were man-eaters, a number of convicted criminals were forced at sword-point into the arena, with predictable results. But just as the lions were settling down after gorging themselves, archers from an elevated gallery in the arena’s center rained arrows upon them. A few stray arrows went into the crowd, but no one was seriously wounded. The same could not be said for the lions, every one of which was put to death.