The Physician

by Noah Gordon

  Before she had returned to her senses he had insinuated himself. They were truly linked, he was an extension of snug, silken warmth in her very core. There was no pain, only a certain feeling of tightness that presently eased as he moved slowly.

  Once, he stopped. “All right?”

  “Yes,” she said, and he resumed.

  Directly she found herself moving her body to meet his. Soon it became impossible for him to exercise restraint and he moved faster and from a greater distance, jarringly. She wanted to reassure him, but as she studied him through slitted eyes she saw him rear his head back and arch into her.

  How singular to feel his great trembling, to hear his snarl of what seemed to be overwhelming relief as he emptied into her!

  For a long time then in the dimness of the man-tall grain they scarcely moved. They were quiet together, one of her long limbs flung across him and the sweat and the liquids drying.

  “You might get to like it,” he said finally. “Like malt ale.”

  She pinched his arm as sharply as she could. But she was pensive. “Why do we like it?” she asked. “I have watched horses. Why do animals like it?”

  He appeared startled. Years later, she would understand that the question separated her from any woman he had known, but now all she knew was that he was studying her.

  She couldn’t bring herself to say so, but he was already separated from other males in her mind. She sensed he had been remarkably kind to her in a way she didn’t fully comprehend, save that she had a prior boorishness as comparison.

  “You thought more of me than of yourself,” she said.

  “I didn’t suffer.”

  She stroked his face and held her hand there while he kissed her palm. “Most men … most people are not so. I know it.”

  “You must forget the damned cousin in Kilmarnock,” he told her.

  32

  THE OFFER

  Rob gained some patients from among the newcomers and was amused when he was told that when Kerl Fritta had recruited them he boasted that his caravan was doctored by a masterful barber-surgeon.

  It gave his spirits a special lift to see those he had treated during the first part of the journey, for never before had he tended to the health needs of anyone for so long a time.

  People told him the big grinning Frankish drover whom he had treated for bubo had died of the disease in Gabrovo in midwinter. He had known it would happen and had told the man of his coming fate, yet the news threw him into gloom.

  “What’s gratifying is an injury I know how to mend,” he told Mary. “A broken bone, a gaping wound, when the person is hurt and I’m secure in what must be done to make him well. It’s the mysteries I loathe. Diseases about which I know nothing at all, perhaps less than the afflicted. Ailments that appear out of the air and defy all reasonable explanation or plan of treatment. Ah, Mary, I know so little. I know nothing at all, yet I’m all they have.”

  Without understanding everything he said, she comforted him. For her part, she drew no small comfort from him; one night she came to him bleeding and racked with cramp, and she spoke of her mother. Jura Cullen had started her monthly course on a fine summer’s day and the flow had turned to gush and then to hemorrhage. When she died Mary had been too torn by grief to cry, and now each month when her flux came she expected it to kill her.

  “Hush! It wasn’t ordinary monthly bleeding, it had to be something more. You know that’s true,” he said, holding a warm and soothing palm to her belly and solacing her with kisses.

  A few days later, riding with her on the wagon, he found himself talking of things he had never told anyone: the deaths of his parents, the separation of the children and their loss. She wept as though she could never stop, twisting in the seat so her father wouldn’t see.

  “How I love you!” she whispered.

  “I love you,” he said slowly and to his own amazement. He had never said the words to anyone.

  “I never want to leave you,” she said.

  After that, when they were on the trail often she turned in the saddle on her black gelding and looked at him. Their secret sign was the fingers of the right hand touched to the lips, as if to brush away an insect or a bit of dust.

  James Cullen still sought forgetfulness in the bottle and sometimes she came to Rob after her father had been drinking and was sleeping soundly. He tried to discourage her from doing this because the sentries usually were nervous and it was dangerous to move about the camp at night. But she was a headstrong woman and came anyway, and he was always glad.

  She was a quick learner. Very soon they knew each other’s every feature and blemish like old friends. Their largeness was part of the magic and sometimes when they moved together he thought of mammoth beasts coupling to thunder. It was as new to him as to her, in a way; he had had a lot of females but never had made love before. Now he wanted only to give her pleasure.

  He was troubled and struck dumb, unable to understand what had befallen him in so short a time.

  They pushed ever deeper into European Turkey, a part of the country known as Thrace. The wheat fields became rolling plains of rich grasslands and they began to see flocks of sheep.

  “My father is coming alive,” Mary told him.

  Whenever they came to sheep Rob saw James Cullen and the indispensable Seredy galloping out to talk with the shepherds. The brown-skinned men carried long crooks and wore long-sleeved shirts and loose trousers pulled tight at the knees.

  One evening Cullen came alone to call on Rob. He settled himself by the fire and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

  “I wouldn’t have you think me blind.”

  “I hadn’t supposed you were,” Rob said, but with respect.

  “Let me tell you about my daughter. She has some learning. She has Latin.”

  “My mother had Latin. She taught some to me.”

  “Mary has a good deal of Latin. It is an excellent thing to have in foreign lands, because with it one can talk with officials and churchmen. I sent her to the nuns at Walkirk for teaching. They took her because they thought they would lure her into the order, but I knew better. She doesn’t take to languages, but after I told her she must have Latin, she worked at it. Even then I dreamed of traveling to the East for fine sheep.”

  “Can you get sheep back to your home alive?” Rob doubted it.

  “I can do it. I’m a good man with the sheep,” Cullen said with pride. “It was always just a dream, but when my wife died I decided we would go. My kinsmen said I was fleeing because I was mad with grief, but it was more than that.”

  They sat in a thick silence.

  “You’ve been to Scotland, boy?” Cullen asked finally.

  He shook his head. “Closest I’ve come is the English north and the Cheviot Hills.”

  Cullen snorted. “Close to the border perhaps, but not even close to the real Scotland. Scotland is higher, you see, and the rocks are bonier. The mountains have good streams full of fish and plenty of water left over for grass. Our holding is in rugged hills, a very large holding. Vast flocks.”

  He paused, as though to choose his words carefully. “The man who marries Mary will take them over, be he the right sort,” he said finally.

  He leaned toward Rob. “In four days’ time we’ll reach the town of Babaeski. There my daughter and I shall leave the caravan. We’ll swing due south to the town of Malkara, where there is a large animal market at which I expect to buy sheep. And then travel to the Anatolian Plateau, where I place my highest hopes. I would be content if you were to accompany us.” He sighed and gave Rob a level look. “You’re strong and in health. You’ve courage, else you wouldn’t venture so far to do business and better your position in the world. You are not what I would have chosen for her, but she wants you. I love her and wish her happiness. She is all I have.”

  “Master Cullen,” he said, but the sheep raiser stopped him.

  “It’s not something to be offered or acted upon lightly. You want to think on it, m
an, as I have.”

  Rob thanked him politely, as if he had been offered an apple or a sweetmeat, and Cullen returned to his own camp.

  He spent a sleepless night, staring at the sky. He was not so great a fool not to recognize that she was rare. And miraculously, she loved him. He would never meet such a woman again.

  And land. Good God, land.

  He was offered a life such as his father had never dreamed, nor any of their forebears. There would be assured labor and income, respect and responsibilities. Property to be handed down to sons. A different existence than he had ever known was being handed to him—a loving female with whom he was besotted, and an assured future as one of the world’s few, those who owned land.

  He tossed and turned.

  Next day she came with her father’s razor and proceeded to trim his hair.

  “Not near the ears.”

  “It is there it has gotten especially unruly. And why don’t you shave? The stubble makes you look wild.”

  “I’ll trim it when it’s longer.” He pulled the cloth from his neck. “You know that your father spoke to me?”

  “He spoke to me first, of course.”

  “I’m not going to Malkara with you, Mary.”

  Only her mouth indicated what she was feeling, and her hands. Her hands appeared to be in repose against her skirt but grasped the razor so tightly the knuckles showed white through her translucent skin.

  “Will you be joining us elsewhere?”

  “No,” he said. It was difficult. He was unaccustomed to speaking honestly to women. “I’m going to Persia, Mary.”

  “You do not want me.”

  The stunned bleakness in her voice made him realize how unprepared she was for such an eventuality.

  “I want you, but I’ve turned it over and over in my mind and it isn’t possible.”

  “Why, impossible? Have you already a wife?”

  “No, no. But I’m going to Ispahan, in Persia. Not to seek opportunity in commerce, as I had told you, but to study medicine.”

  Her confusion was in her face, asking what medicine was, compared to the Cullen holding.

  “I must be a physician.” It seemed an unlikely excuse. He felt a strange kind of shame, as though he were acknowledging a vice or other weakness. He made no attempt to explain, for it was complicated and he didn’t understand it himself.

  “Your work gives you misery. You know that to be fact. You came to me and told me so, complaining that it torments you.”

  “What torments me is my own ignorance and inability. In Ispahan, I can learn to help those for whom now I do nothing.”

  “Cannot I be with you? My father could come with us and buy sheep there.” The pleading in her voice and the hope in her eyes caused him to steel himself against comforting her.

  He explained the Church’s ban against attending Islamic academies, and he told her what he intended to do.

  She had paled as she gained understanding. “You are risking eternal damnation.”

  “I cannot believe my soul will be forfeit.”

  “A Jew!” She wiped the razor clean on the cloth with preoccupied movements and returned it to its little leather bag.

  “Yes. So you see, it’s something I must do alone.”

  “What I see is a man who is mad. I have closed my eyes to the fact that I know nothing about you. I think you have said farewells to many women. It is true, is it not?”

  “This is not the same.” He wanted to explain the difference but she wouldn’t allow it. She had listened well and now he saw the depth of the wound he had made.

  “Do you not fear I’ll tell my father you’ve used me, so he may pay to see your death? Or that I’ll hasten to the first priest I meet and whisper the destination of a Christian who makes mockery of Holy Mother Church?”

  “I’ve given you truth. I could neither cause your death nor betray you, and I’m certain you must treat me the same way.”

  “I’ll not be waiting for any physician,” she said.

  He nodded, loathing himself for the bitter veil over her eyes as she turned away.

  All day he watched her riding very erect in the saddle. She didn’t turn around to look at him. That evening he observed Mary and Master Cullen talking seriously and at length. Evidently she told her father only that she had decided not to marry, for a while later Cullen shot a grin at Rob that was both relieved and triumphant. Cullen conferred with Seredy, and just before dark the servant brought two men into the camp, whom Rob took to be Turks from their clothing and appearance.

  Later he guessed they had been guides, for when he awoke the next morning, the Cullens were gone.

  As was customary in the caravan, everyone who had traveled behind them moved up one place. That day, instead of following her black gelding, he now drove behind the two fat French brothers.

  He felt guilt and sorrow but also experienced a sense of relief, for he had never considered marriage and had been ill prepared. He pondered whether his decision had been made out of true commitment to medicine or if he had merely fled matrimony in weak panic, as Barber would have done.

  Perhaps it was both, he decided. Poor stupid dreamer, he told himself in disgust. You’ll grow tired one day, older and needier of love, and doubtless you will settle for some slovenly sow with a terrible tongue.

  Conscious of a great loneliness, he yearned for Mistress Buffington to be alive again. He tried not to think of what he had destroyed, hunching over the reins and staring in distaste at the obscene arses of the French brothers.

  Thus for a week he felt as he had after a death had occurred. When the caravan reached Babaeski he experienced a deepening of guilty grief, realizing that here they would have turned off together to accompany her father and start a new life. But when he thought of James Cullen he felt better about being alone, for he knew the Scot would have been a troublesome father-in-law.

  Still, he didn’t stop thinking of Mary.

  He began to come out of his moodiness two days later. Traveling through a countryside of grassy hills, he heard a distinctive noise coming toward the caravan from far away. It was a sound such as angels might make and eventually it drew near and he saw his first camel train.

  Each camel was hung with bells that chimed with every strange, lurching step the beasts took.

  Camels were larger than he had expected, taller than a man and longer than a horse. Their comic faces seemed both serene and sinister, with great open nostrils, floppy lips, and heavily lidded liquid eyes half hidden behind long lashes that gave them an oddly feminine appearance. They were tied to one another and laden with enormous bundles of barley straw piled between their twin humps.

  Perched atop the straw bundle of every seventh or eighth camel was a skinny, dark-skinned drover wearing only a turban and a ragged breech-cloth. Occasionally one of these men urged the beasts forward with a “Hut! Hut! Hut!” that his ambling charges seemed to ignore.

  The camels took possession of the rolling landscape. Rob counted almost three hundred animals before the last of them diminished into specks in the distance and the wonderful tinkling whisper of their bells faded away.

  The undeniable sign of the East hurried the travelers along their way as they began to follow a narrow isthmus. Although Rob couldn’t see water, Simon told him that to their south lay the Sea of Marmara and to their north the great Black Sea, and the air had taken on an invigorating salt tang that reminded him of home and filled him with a new sense of urgency.

  The following afternoon, the caravan crested a rise and Constantinople lay before him like a city of his dreams.

  33

  THE LAST CHRISTIAN CITY

  The moat was wide and as they clattered across the drawbridge Rob could see carp large as pigs in the green depths. On the inside bank was an earthen breastwork and twenty-five feet beyond, a massive wall of dark stone, perhaps a hundred feet high. Sentries walked the top from battlement to battlement.

  Fifty feet farther and there was a second
wall, identical to the first! This Constantinople was a fortress with four lines of defense.

  They passed through two sets of great portals. The huge gate of the inside wall was triple-arched and adorned with the noble statue of a man, doubtless an early ruler, and some strange animals in bronze. The beasts were massive and bulky, with big floppy ears raised in anger, short tails to the rear, and what appeared to be longer tails growing rampantly out of their faces.

  Rob pulled at Horse’s reins so he could study them, and behind him Gershom hooted and Tuveh groaned. “You must move your arse, Inghiliz,” Meir shouted.

  “What are these?”

  “Elephants. You have never seen elephants, you poor foreigner?”

  He shook his head, twisting on the wagon seat as he drove away so he could study the creatures. So it was that the first elephants he saw were the size of dogs and frozen in metal that bore the patina of five centuries.

  Kerl Fritta led them to the caravanserai, an enormous transportation yard through which travelers and freight entered and left the city. It was a vast level space containing warehouses for the storage of the varied goods, and pens for animals and rest houses for humans. Fritta was a veteran guide and, bypassing the noisy horde in the caravanserai yard, he directed his charges into a series of khans, man-made caverns dug into adjoining hillsides to provide coolness and shelter for caravans. Most of the travelers would spend only a day or two at the caravanserai, recuperating, making wagon repairs or swapping horses for camels, then they would follow a Roman road south to Jerusalem.

  “We’ll be gone from here within hours,” Meir told Rob, “for we are within ten days’ travel of our home in Angora and eager to be freed of our responsibility.”

  “I’ll stay a while, I think.”

  “When you decide to leave, go to see the kervanbashi, the Chief of Caravans here. His name is Zevi. When he was a young man he was a drover and then a caravan master who took camel trains over all the routes. He knows the travelers and,” Simon said proudly, “he is a Jew and a good man. He’ll see that you journey in safety.”