The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “What will he do if he does come?” I asked unhappily.

  Athanasios sighed, then shrugged wearily. “He’s unlikely to be moderate, if that’s what you want to know. He’s a proud, hot-tempered man, and a passionate Arian; he won’t trouble himself to conciliate anyone, and he’ll be pleased to use force.” He looked at me for a moment; his expression softened, the look of suppressed amusement came into his eyes, and he added, “But I don’t think you need to worry about yourself. He won’t bother to chase doctors when there are monks he can have flogged — unless you managed to attract the attention of his spies, of course.”

  I hadn’t noticed the spies when I had first come to the episcopal palace, but after this conversation and Thorion’s letter, I saw that they were everywhere. There were always a few odd clerics about, people from outside Egypt, some of them carrying letters from foreign bishops, some of them on less precise errands, and they asked lots of questions. There were the more obvious people from the office of the prefect, the governor Palladios. And then there were the agents. Agentes in rebus, “agents in things,” is a wonderfully vague Latin title. They’re couriers, carrying official messages and information from different parts of the empire to the courts of Their Sacred Majesties. But they, and particularly their inspectors, or curiosi, are also spies. They can be billeted in any rich man’s house, and they report back on what they hear there, telling all the gossip and rumors to the master of the offices. One agent left the palace shortly after it became obvious that Athanasios was not going to die quite yet, and the next one showed up only six weeks later.

  As I was finishing my check on the archbishop one morning in November, there came a knock on the door, and then, without waiting for a reply, a tall young man with a short military cloak and a swagger marched in, followed by an unhappy Theophilos. “Athanaricus of Sardica, curiosus of the agentes in rebus, to see Archbishop Athanasios,” the stranger announced.

  Athanasios regarded him with distaste, and gestured for me to hand him his cloak; he’d taken it off so that I could look at his chest. Athanaric — though it started like the archbishop’s name, it wasn’t Greek, or even Roman. It was pure Gothic. But the agents were in many ways more like the army than the civil service, and Goths are common in the army. This agent certainly looked like a Goth. He had light brown hair, which he wore fairly long; he had a short beard; he was carrying a sword on a harness by his side; and he was wearing trousers as well as his short military cloak. The trousers were dusty and the agent smelled of horses: he’d plainly just arrived in the city. He stood in the doorway with his thumb hitched through his sword belt, Theophilos peering in irritation over his shoulder.

  “Greetings, most excellent Athanaricus,” Athanasios said, standing up. The agent still towered over him. “May I perhaps see your license?”

  Athanaric handed him a signet on a chain, and a signed letter. Athanasios examined the signet, read the letter, and handed both back. “The authorities require you to be billeted here?” he asked resignedly. “How long will it take you to . . . inspect the posts?” That, of course, was the official job of a curiosus.

  “Oh, till spring I expect,” the Goth said cheerfully. He had a peculiar accent, clipped and staccato, saying all the words separately instead of running them together the way Greeks do. “Maybe longer. One never knows.” He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Your Holiness has his own eunuch chamberlains now?” I was used to looks like that, to the disgust with which an active man regards a eunuch, so I busied myself putting away my medical instruments.

  “This is my doctor, Chariton of Ephesus. Theophilos, can Your Piety find a room for the most excellent courier?”

  Athanaric gave a snort and went off with Theophilos. When I was leaving the palace next morning, though, he caught my arm in the courtyard and pulled me aside. “Chariton of Ephesus!” he said in an almost friendly fashion, keeping hold of my cloak. “How is His Holiness this morning?”

  “Much as he’s been the last month,” I replied. “Could Your Excellency let me go? I have a patient to visit.”

  “What, others besides the archbishop! Do they pay you well?”

  Here came the offer of a bribe. “Some,” I told him. “Others don’t pay at all. I have all the money I need.”

  “No one has that. Look, eunuch — Your Carefulness, then — the archbishop’s health is a subject that provokes a great deal of interest, in Antioch and Constantinople as well as in Alexandria. And my masters would very much like to know what the Alexandrian church is doing about Bishop Athanasios’ health. We’d be prepared to pay for the knowledge, of course. What would you say to a . . a consulting fee of ten solidi a go, eh? I’ll bet that’s more than the old Nicene pays you.”

  Of course it was. No one pays their doctors as well as they pay their spies. “I am sorry, Your Perfection,” I said carefully. “I have sworn an oath, and cannot accept your generous offer.”

  “What oath?” he said, looking taken aback and suspicious.

  “Hippocrates’ oath. I am a Hippocratic, by training and inclination.”

  He laughed. “I thought you meant that the archbishop had sworn you to secrecy. All right, fifteen solidi. Is the oath less binding now?”

  “The oath is not less binding under any circumstances,” I told him. “You will excuse me. I have a patient, as I said.”

  “Don’t look so bad-tempered!” he told me, but his face had grown a bit flushed. “You don’t expect me to believe that a eunuch takes the Hippocratic oath seriously, do you? What do you spend your money on, to have enough of it, eh? Girls are of no use to you? What about wine, paintings, fine clothing?”

  I thought it was particularly stupid to mention clothing, as I was dressed for work in my old blue tunic, which now looked almost disreputable. In fact money couldn’t have tempted me at all, even if I hadn’t felt bound to the archbishop; I was already earning considerably more than I was spending. All I wanted was knowledge of the art. “Books,” I said. “But I have plenty of money for them.”

  “I’m sure you have plenty of money but could use some more. Twenty solidi. Very well, twenty-five. I warn you, I won’t go any higher than that.”

  “My patient is expecting me,” I said sharply. “Please let go of my cloak.”

  He let go. “What hold does the archbishop have on you?”

  “He is my patient. Your Excellency, much health.”

  And I walked off, leaving him staring after me with a surprised expression.

  “Some barbarian was asking about you at the Temple this morning,” Theogenes said when we met at Kallias’ tavern a few days later.

  “A barbarian?” I asked, surprised and unhappy. “You mean that agent, Athanaric of Sardica?”

  “That was the name.” Theogenes filled our wine cups from the bowl on the table, swirled the wine in his. “He caused quite a stir, coming to the Temple in trousers and carrying a sword, flashing his license for the post. Everyone was wondering what you’d done.”

  “I turned down a bribe he offered me,” I said bitterly. “What did he want to know?”

  “Were you a good doctor, were you honest, were you interested in money. Yes, yes, and no were all the answers he got. Well, Nikias told him that you were a conceited ass and an enemy of the gods as well, but otherwise he agreed with everyone else. The agent said that a friend of his was thinking of offering you a job, but he didn’t ask for any references, so nobody believed that. I thought that he was looking for something to blackmail you with. Don’t worry, he won’t have learned your deep dark secret reasons for leaving Ephesus, whatever they were. People can’t tell what they don’t know.”

  I sighed and rubbed my face. “Maybe I should just have accepted the bribe. He was so surprised to find a eunuch refusing money that he’s suspicious. Only I couldn’t give him any real information, and telling lies is too much work and makes trouble.”

  Theogenes laughed. “You’ve surprised a lot of people that way, haven’t you? Look, don’t
worry! All he knows about you is that you’re a good doctor and that you’re not remotely interested in money.” The serving girl brought us our lunch, a dish of broiled eels with beetroot. Theogenes dipped his bread into it and took a bite. “Now that he knows he can’t bribe you, you don’t need to have anything else to do with him.”

  However, I was waked up by a knock on the door one night not long afterward. I got out of bed. The brazier had gone out and the room was cold; I’d been wearing my tunic, without the corset, even while I slept. “Who is it?” I asked, shivering and looking for my sandals.

  It was one of the slaves from the episcopal palace. Someone was ill; I must come at once. I told him to wait while I dressed, got on my corset, tunic, and cloak, picked up my medical bag, and went out.

  It was a cold night; the street was full of a damp fog from the harbor. Off to the right the Pharos lighthouse cast its beams far out to sea, reflecting the light away from the city with its mirrors. It was past midnight, and there was no other light and no one else around. A rat screamed as one of the stray cats caught it in an alley. I stumbled in the darkness over some garbage that had been tipped into the way, and the palace slave remarked that it was a foul night. I thought suddenly of Ephesus, as I had not done for years. There I could have as much sleep as I wanted, with no work on cold nights or hot summer afternoons; there were gardens to sit in, comfort all around, cleanness, peace. I pictured myself in the small white room I’d shared with Maia, lying in bed after a bath (I hadn’t had a proper bath since arriving in Alexandria), listening to my nurse sing and wondering what would happen when I married. Well, I told myself, you could go back, or go to Constantinople and join Thorion. Are you going?

  Of course not. I set my shoulders, and we stumbled on to the episcopal palace.

  Theophilos and Athanasios were both waiting for me in the entrance hall; they were squatting scribe-fashion on the ground and whispering intently. Theophilos kept shaking his head. I was pleased to see the archbishop: the slave hadn’t said who was ill, and I’d been too groggy to ask him. “Chariton,” said Athanasios when the slave opened the door for me, “is enteritis very common this time of year?”

  “It’s getting near the solstice,” I told him, somewhat confused. “That’s a bad time for health. And yes, I have seen quite a few cases recently. But it’s better now than in the autumn.”

  “It wouldn’t help if the whole city were dying of it,” Theophilos said impatiently. “They’ll still say that we poisoned him.”

  “Poisoned who?” I asked.

  “That Goth,” Theophilos replied contemptuously. “That Arian agent.”

  Athanasios shook his head reprovingly. “Do your best to cure him,” he told me. “I don’t want to give the prefect any excuse to bring a prosecution against us.”

  “I always do my best with a patient,” I said. “Can Your Piety please go to bed? You shouldn’t be up this late. You’ll come down with whatever it is too, and you have less chance of surviving it than a strong young man does. I’ll have you called if anything happens.”

  “Holy God, Holy Immortal One!” snapped Athanasios. “Doctors! Once let them into your house and they think they own you! First let me know whether you think the man will live.”

  Athanaric had his own room at the palace, though it was small. We came in to find the agent lying curled up on his side, shivering. All strength and swagger were gone; he was exhausted, comatose. I’d disliked him, but it is painful to see a strong young person folded up by imminent death. The bed had been stripped, but the smell of vomit lingered in the air. Pulse weak and erratic; fever high. His eyes were half-closed, with the whites showing under the lid: a very bad sign. “Has he had diarrhea as well?” I asked the attendants, and was relieved when they said he had: eyes like that usually mean death, but diarrhea can do it too. I was astonished at the agent’s condition; either he’d deteriorated with remarkable speed, or no one had thought to call me earlier. I examined the attendants about it. They said he’d felt sick that morning, had gone to bed but then commenced vomiting, and had kept it up until he collapsed into his present state. But he had not vomited or passed blood or pus, from what I could make out, and no particular part of his body seemed tenderer than any other, so I diagnosed an acute enteritic fever rather than an infection, and told the archbishop that I thought he had a good chance. At this Athanasios agreed to leave the sickroom and go to bed, and I told the attendants not to let him in again.

  The agent needed very careful nursing. That first morning I half expected him to die during the day, for he could keep nothing down and was getting severely dehydrated. I tried suppositories, and kept the room cool. I repeatedly washed him off and gave him honeywater with aloe on a sponge, and I had the attendants burn some opium under his nose to ease the rigors by relieving the pain. But it was a delicate business. The combination of vomiting, diarrhea, and a high fever is a dangerous one, and it needs a very strong constitution to survive it. Fortunately, Athanaric was strong, and had been healthy and well fed, and he pulled through. I got some honeywater into him, and then a good dose of opium, and then more honeywater, and that evening he finally commenced sweating, which lowered the fever. After that I thought it would be simply a matter of making him eat sensibly and rest until he was better. But I stayed in the sickroom that night, just to be sure. He woke up in the middle of the night, muttering in Latin, the speech of his native Sardica. His fever was up again and he was delirious. When I tried to give him a dose of hemlock, he refused to take it and called me a poisoner — at least I think that was what he said. I had only a touch of Thorion’s legal Latin, and hadn’t thought of it for years. I stammered out some of the words I did know, telling him that the drink was medicina. “Medicus sum,” I told him, to which he replied, “Non medicus, mulier venafica!” “Medicus,” I insisted, and eventually got it down him. The nausea seemed to be better, because he kept the drink down and eventually went back to sleep, still tossing and muttering. And the hemlock duly lowered the fever.

  When he woke in the morning, he was lucid. One of the attendants shook me awake as soon as he noticed that the patient had woken, and I went over and checked his pulse. He stared up at me blankly. The morning sun made gold lights in his hair; his eyes were clear again, a vivid blue; and for the first time I noticed that he was very good-looking. “Chariton of Ephesus,” he whispered at last. He looked disappointed.

  “Your doctor,” I told him. “How are you feeling?” The pulse was steady, and the fever was down to manageable levels.

  He frowned. “I was poisoned.”

  “You had an acute case of enteritis,” I corrected him. “Probably brought on by drinking water you weren’t accustomed to. His Holiness directed me to do my best to cure you, and I have done so.”

  He kept frowning, glancing about uncertainly. “There was a woman here last night.”

  “I was here last night. You kept raving about some woman trying to poison you, while I was trying to give you a dose of hemlock.”

  “Isn’t that a poison?”

  “Of course. Most good drugs are. It all depends on the dose. Would you like something to eat?”

  Barley broth, says Hippocrates, is by far the most suitable food for convalescents, and I saw to it that Athanaric ate barley broth for a week, gradually supplementing it with bread, then wine and the rest of a normal diet. But the agent recovered as quickly as he had succumbed to the illness, and wanted to be up and about. He got on with his job, too. Even before I would allow him up he was asking the attendants questions, and trying his luck with me again. “I hear that Archbishop Athanasios had some divine revelation about you,” he told me when I made one of my visits to him. Well, he would have heard it; everyone in the household knew it, and reported it with pride. I was generally supposed to have been converted from an Arian to a Nicene during our conversation.

  “His Holiness called it that,” I answered. “Have you moved your bowels today?”

  “Don’t change the su
bject,” Athanaric complained. “What did he discover?”

  “Nothing that he could hurt me with,” I said misleadingly. “Any more cramps, wind, nausea?”

  He muttered something in Latin. “Are you really a passionate Nicene, then?” he demanded.

  “How do you expect me to treat you if you won’t answer my questions?” I asked him. “Are you really a passionate Arian?”

  He shrugged. “To tell the truth, I’m not really bothered about theology. But I am loyal to Their Sacred Majesties. And it is dangerous to have this kind of instability in the richest diocese of the empire, with an old preaching demagogue putting his notions of divinity before the common good, putting Roman armies at risk from the Persians because he disagrees with the emperor about the relation of persons in the Trinity. You’d think he was an emperor himself, the way he acts! And he has no warrant for the power he has: the Sacred Offices certainly didn’t give him the right to rule Egypt. You can’t have two independent powers in the state; it endangers the public safety. Apart from fanaticism, I don’t see why anyone supports him.”

  I said nothing and began packing away my medical instruments. I was, I decided, now a Nicene in my theology. I’d been sufficiently impressed by Athanasios’ book to agree with him on that. But I certainly wasn’t passionate on the subject. Still, I realized, I was not loyal to Their Sacred Majesties. I did not like to think of Roman soldiers at risk before the Persians, but this great tyranny that rules the world, the omnipotent imperial power, from which there is no appeal, which rules by force and inflicts its edicts on pain of torture and death — I had no love for it. I believed that the church ought to be allowed to determine its own destiny, choose its own theology, pick its own bishops, and not have them imposed by Constantinople. Apart from the church, there was no power in all the world that could oppose the emperors; apart from Athanasios, there was no man who had succeeded in struggling against them as an equal without claiming the purple for himself. Which was the fundamental reason why all the Egyptians, and not just the Christians, supported the archbishop. And it was why I would support him too.