The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

Well, I thought, people do die. “Man born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble; he blossoms like a flower and is cut down. His days are determined, and the number of his months are with God,” as Timon said. But the pneumonia isn’t as bad as Timon’s was, I thought, and there’s no pleurisy. He has a chance. He’s my patient now, anyway, and I must simply do my best for him, as I would for anyone else. Even the monks can hardly punish me for that.

  I got up and checked the boiling water on the braziers.

  He slept most of the night, soundly and without too much tossing about. His breath bubbled horribly at first, then steadied some. Then he woke up, whispering something about thirst; his fever had risen sharply. I gave him some honeywater with a small quantity of hemlock in it — a very small quantity, because I didn’t want to suppress the cough which was clearing his lungs. He responded to this very well: the fever went down, and his pulse steadied. He still coughed occasionally, but these were good productive coughs. He fell asleep again, propped up on several pillows, and he was wheezing now more than bubbling. Was the crisis past? Too soon to tell. But there was nothing more I could do just then. I pulled a couch over so that I would hear at once if his breathing changed, and went to sleep on it.

  I woke up about the middle of the morning and found Athanasios watching me. The light came in crisscross through the shutters of the room, and the braziers had gone out.

  I sat up; my arm was asleep where I’d pillowed my head on it, and my tongue felt too big for my mouth. “Your Holiness,” I said, “how do you feel now?”

  He started to answer, then coughed. I stood up and supported his shoulders, then wiped his face and leaned him back on the pillows. He looked exhausted, but not as pinched and dried out as he had. The fever was gone.

  “Don’t try to talk,” I told him. “Just nod. Would you like something to eat? Some barley broth?”

  He nodded, so I went to the door and unbarred it. All the attendants seemed to be sitting outside in the corridor, even the other bishops. “He is much better,” I told them. “Can someone fetch some barley broth?”

  Various of the monks began to sing a psalm of praise; some more practical souls ran off to fetch the barley broth. The priests and deacons made a concerted effort to come in, but I wouldn’t let them. “His condition is still delicate,” I told them firmly. “I cannot have him excited, or the fever may come back. You can see him after lunch.”

  The barley broth arrived and was passed among the crowd like a holy relic. I took it and went back into the room, barring the door again. Athanasios was still watching me, with his old expression of suppressed amusement. “So,” he whispered, “we see that women make excellent doctors.”

  I laughed and sat down on my couch. “Don’t exert yourself talking,” I told him. “Just rest. Here, I’ll feed you this.”

  “Like a nurse feeding a child,” he whispered, and coughed. I wiped his face off and pushed him back into the pillows, then spoonfed him the barley broth. His temperature stayed down, and his breath remained wheezing, not bubbling. I gave him a bit more horehound and iris root, then fetched him a bedpan. I checked the urine: fairly clear, with a sediment. Another good sign.

  “Your followers want to see you after lunch,” I told him. “But don’t try to talk to them. Just wave or something, so that they can see you’re not going to die. It is very important that you rest until you have recovered your strength.”

  He nodded. “I won’t die this time,” he whispered. “Read something to me. The Scriptures. The Gospel of Matthew.”

  I thought this would probably do a good job of keeping him quiet, so I found a book of the Gospels — there were several volumes of Scriptures in the bookcase by the wall — and began reading. While I was reading the fourth chapter, about the temptation in the wilderness, Athanasios sat up, listening intently, though surely he knew the whole book by heart:

  “Again, the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and said to him, All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Depart, Satan, for it is written, You will worship the Lord your God, and him only will you serve.”

  The archbishop raised his hand for me to stop. I looked up, and saw him smiling a peculiar twisted smile. “The last temptation,” he whispered. “All the others were easy.” He coughed.

  “You shouldn’t speak, Your Holiness.”

  “Let me talk, girl. It will make me feel better. My followers are all sitting outside waiting for me to name my successor, aren’t they?”

  I admitted that they were.

  “Yes, they are afraid,” he said thoughtfully. “Even if I live this time, they want it settled. But it’s hard to condemn a friend to exile and possible death.”

  I looked back down at the book. “And that will happen to anyone you name?”

  “I know it will. Even if the rest of the world became Nicene. The emperor wishes to break the power of the church of Egypt. All I can do is to try to soften the blow.” He coughed again, then lay back on the bed, his fierce dark eyes fixed on the ceiling. “It’s safe while I’m alive,” he said after a minute. “I’m too old for Valens to exile me again, and he hasn’t forgotten what happened the last time. But, oh Holy Christ, it will start up again when I’m dead. The rioting, the exiles, the people thrown into prison. The torturing. It’s gone on for years and years. Yes, and my own people are guilty too.” He smiled his twisted smile. “Some of us, anyway. Passionate, turbulent, arrogant, violent Egyptians. But we always suffer more than we inflict.” He lay still for a moment, his thin old fingers plucking at the sheets. “I will have to name two successors,” he said after a moment. “One to be exiled, and one to take things in hand here in Alexandria. To contain the damage, and try to calm the people. I will have to arrange things with the prefect’s office beforehand. But so much depends on the prefect, and they change all the time . . . What’s the situation in Persia?”

  “In Persia, Your Holiness!” I stared at him. He stared back, smiling. I shrugged and humored him. “The Great King has laid claim to Armenia again, and they say there’s to be another war.”

  Athanasios sighed. “They’ve been saying that for years. I think they’ll talk some more before doing any fighting. What about the Danube frontier?”

  I was mystified by this interest in foreign wars. “All is peaceful in the East, Your Holiness. I’ve heard that there’s a war in Africa, though.”

  “The troubles of Valentinian Augustus are no help. The western emperor doesn’t meddle much in church affairs — indeed, my successor will probably have to go to the West to be safe. But if there were a war here in the East, perhaps Valens would leave us alone. Well, we can expect no help from the barbarians; I will have to strengthen the church to endure the worst. Charis daughter of Theodoros, I didn’t mean to have you called.”

  “Did God reveal to you what my father’s name is?” I asked him sarcastically, closing the book.

  He jerked his head back, still smiling. “I worked it out. It is a pity, though. I hope I can still trust you.”

  “You can trust me. And you still know who I am: you have a hold on me.”

  “I fear that I do not. If I should reveal to the world that you are not a eunuch, I would have to reveal that I have just spent the night alone with a young woman, which would be even more damaging to me than it would be to you.”

  “But you were gravely ill with pneumonia, and you’re old!”

  He laughed, then coughed hard. “If I’m hypocritical enough to pretend to be an ascetic for seventy years, I’m hypocritical enough to pretend to have pneumonia. I’ve been accused of rape before, and tried for it. Rape, murder, sedition, sacrilege, and sorcery. Don’t worry, I was acquitted. And the charges weren’t true, except about the sedition.”

  “I’m not likely to accuse you of rape,” I told him. “And I consider myself bound by the oath of Hippocrates. “Whenever I enter a house, I will go to help
the sick, never with the intention of doing harm.” If you don’t think you can trust me, why did you send for me?”

  “I didn’t. Some of my attendants wanted to send for a doctor, and I couldn’t think of anyone, not that I could trust. Then Theophilos remembered that I had talked with you. He asked if I could trust you, and I agreed that I could, so he ran off and fetched you. But here I am alive, so I suppose it was for the best. May I have a drink of water?”

  “Plain water’s not good in acute illnesses,” I told him, and gave him a drink of honeywater. I checked his pulse: still perfectly steady, but his temperature seemed to me to be rising again. “You must stop exciting yourself. You’ll have a relapse.”

  He jerked his head back again. “I’ll name Petros to be my official successor,” he said after a moment. “Another Archbishop Peter of Alexandria. The last one was martyred. That was in the great persecution. I can remember him: I heard him preaching when I was a boy. He never sat on the episcopal throne of St. Mark, but always on the footstool in front of it. I meant to do the same thing when I was consecrated, but the people cheered and it went out of my head. Do you know what it’s like when they acclaim you? It intoxicates the will.” He looked at me, the eyes no longer just bright but feverish.

  “Please don’t talk,” I told him.

  “Let me talk to someone. I have to give someone the throne of St. Mark, and that is even more uncomfortable than the imperial purple these days. And it’s dangerous.”

  “You just said that you would give it to Peter.”

  “He’s almost as old as I am. He’s a brave man, an experienced man, but I will have to find someone else as well. Only it is hard. I must choose someone who is competent, who can manage the business of the church, who will judge fairly in the courts, who can hold his own against the authorities. But I cannot choose someone who is ambitious. ‘The kingdoms of the world and all their glory’ — a man who wants that can easily lead the church astray. It is difficult, when you are fighting against emperors and governors, to remember that your kingdom is not of this world.” He looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. He seemed to be looking through the ceiling into some other place, somewhere where it was dark and very silent. “I should never have become archbishop,” he whispered, quite clearly. “I wanted power too much. Well, it is in the hands of God.” He began to sit up again.

  “Lie still!” I ordered him. “I don’t want to give you drugs, but I will if I have to!”

  He smiled, but lay still. “I am not delirious, doctor. Only a sick old man prattling on.” He stretched out a thin, blue-veined hand for the water, so I held it to his lips, then wiped his face for him.

  “I know you are the governor of a great church, and a powerful man,” I said, more gently. “But it would be better if you waited before trying to arrange any ecclesiastical affairs. Just wave at them this afternoon; leave the succession until tomorrow.”

  “I can never leave anything till tomorrow,” he told me. “By tomorrow all the city will know that I am ill, and there will be trouble unless someone acts to see that there isn’t. Go and fetch in Peter and Theophilos. I want to pray with them.”

  I tried to argue him out of this, but he was quite firm, and eventually I had to fetch them. Peter was another gray-robed old ascetic, but Theophilos was the younger man who had fetched me. When I went out of the room to call them, I found Peter sitting on the floor by the door reading the Scriptures, and Theophilos sitting in the next room on a chair, having a low-voiced discussion with some other deacons about what to say to the people. He looked surprised and alarmed when I said that the archbishop wanted to see him. When I had let them both into Athanasios’ room, I warned them severely that they must not excite His Holiness, or I wouldn’t answer for the consequences. Athanasios laughed at this, had another coughing fit, then sent me out of the room.

  He prayed with them privately for what seemed a long time. I sat down in the corridor outside, with the others; they asked me how long I thought the archbishop would live. “Years, if he’s sensible and rests himself,” I told them sharply. “Otherwise, not long.”

  They again began variously praying for his health and debating in whispers what they should do when he died and the imperial troops arrived. I felt very tired, and sat with my head on my knees, trying to calculate doses of hemlock and foxglove.

  After an hour or so, Peter and Theophilos came back to the door and called in the whole throng. Everyone filed into the room; it filled up so that it was difficult to breathe, and people were still waiting in the corridor outside. Athanasios was sitting up in bed, looking feverish but calm. He blessed them all. “Beloved brethren,” he said in the clear, strong voice I had heard calming the crowd before (I don’t know how he managed it, with the infection in his lungs). “Do not be troubled. God has delivered me from ‘the pestilence that walks in darkness’ as from ‘the destruction that wastes at the noonday.’ And I trust the Divine Power will protect us all. But I am tired, and need rest to recover. Therefore, I appoint Peter and Theophilos to care for you and bear my responsibilities while I am recovering.” He would have gone on, but his lungs didn’t permit it: he had another coughing fit. At this there was considerable commotion — praying and psalm singing and urgent questions from the deacons — but this time Peter and Theophilos moved to manage it, and helped me get the crowd out of the room. After this the archbishop consented to rest.

  I stayed at the episcopal palace for a week, feeling lost the whole time, what with the mobs standing outside the door singing, and the church officials consulting me as to what to tell His Holiness about the state of the city, and the imperial officials drawing me aside and offering me bribes for information about what the church officials had said. I got used to going to the door of the house and making announcements to all and sundry about the state of His Holiness’ health, and I learned a few tricks for diverting the officials, but I felt out of my depth. Athanasios was a difficult patient, too, always trying to do too much and losing his temper when his body failed him. Moreover, I had very little privacy — the palace was apparently crowded at the best of times, and no one had a room to himself. I stayed beside my patient, but there was nowhere I could wash. I was worried that my period would start. There was no trouble concealing this inconvenience at Philon’s house; for a doctor to have a couple of blood-stained towels soaking in a corner raised no comment there. But I’d refused to bleed Athanasios, and anything I did do raised endless worried discussion, so I could never have hidden it.

  But the archbishop was a strong man, and determined to hold on to life a bit longer — at least until he had put the affairs of the church in order. He did recover steadily, and after a week even I felt that there was no danger of a relapse. I recommended to him that he leave the city for a few weeks, though, and stay in the countryside where he would be allowed more rest. He sighed and jerked back his head: no.

  “I would like to go to Nitria,” he admitted to me. “I would like to die there, in a monastery. It is so still in the desert; the only thing that moves is the light. You can think there, and pray. Here in the city they are always talking, plotting and counterplotting. But I must see how Theophilos manages.”

  “He’s very competent,” I told him. Theophilos was indeed more competent than old Peter, who couldn’t keep more than one idea in his head at a time.

  “Oh, I know he’s competent,” Athanasios said sadly. “What I need to know is how ambitious he is.”

  So the archbishop stayed in the city, and I went back to Philon’s house. I continued to go to the palace every day to check on my illustrious patient, but I hoped that things could now get back to normal. But of course everything was changed. I was, incredibly, the doctor that had cured the archbishop of Alexandria, and I was fashionable. Even before I left the palace I was being called in to other cases, to sick monks and nuns, priests and deacons, and a few important lay people. As soon as the archbishop was back on his feet I was bes
ieged with new patients, all of them Christian and some of them very distinguished. My fellow students asked so many questions that I stopped going to the tavern to avoid having to answer them. I stopped going to lectures too. I was too busy for them.

  “You had better take that examination,” Philon told me one night when I returned after midnight, my head buzzing with ecclesiastical intrigues and anxieties. “The doctors at the Temple are very annoyed about you. They think that you’re slighting them, not taking the examination so that you don’t have to acknowledge that they taught you. I had Adamantios himself going on at me today when I went to the library to check a prescription. He thinks you must have become some kind of religious fanatic.”

  “Oh, by Artemis the Great!” I said. Philon gave me a strange look and laughed. It was a very stupid oath for a Christian physician, but a very common one in Ephesus. “Won’t this just blow over?” I asked him pleadingly. “I’m not old enough for this; I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “You’ll do your patients as much good as any other doctor in the city,” he told me. “And it won’t blow over.”

  He had met me in the front room when I came in. The rest of the household was asleep. It was a hot autumn night; the street stank of the harbor. Only one oil lamp was lit, the one that hung over Philon’s writing desk at the corner. I sat down at the dining table and stared at the worn wood. When I had come to Alexandria I had never really thought of having a medical career. Of course, I had meant to go back to Ephesus one day. It had been enough just to study the art, and to practice it. But Philon was right: this wouldn’t blow over. I was, if still unofficially, the private physician of the most powerful man in the city. I still did not know what I thought of Athanasios. I admired him, certainly, and I was beginning to feel a kind of exasperated affection for such an unruly patient. But on the whole I wished that he had not discovered me, and that Theophilos had not remembered it. I liked working with Philon, living in his house; I liked his generosity with his patients. And I liked many of the patients as well; the Jews of Alexandria were kinder and less excitable than their Egyptian neighbors. I found them easier to get on with than Athanasios’ monks.