The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  “Satira was my mother’s name.” Ibn Sina sighed. But he had no explanation for the girl’s death. “There are many answers we have not been given.”

  “They will not be given unless we seek them out,” Rob said slowly.

  Ibn Sina shrugged and chose to change the subject by relating court news, disclosing that a royal expedition was being sent to India. Not raiders this time, but merchants empowered by the Shah to buy Indian steel or the ore from which to smelt it, for Dhan Vangalil did not have any steel left to make the patterned blue blades that Alā valued so highly.

  “He has told them not to return without a full caravan of ore or hard steel, if they must go to the end of the Silk Road to get it.”

  “What is at the end of the Silk Road?” Rob asked.

  “Chung-Kuo. An enormous country.”

  “And beyond that?”

  Ibn Sina shrugged. “Water. Oceans.”

  “Travelers have told me that the world is flat and is surrounded by fire. That one can venture only so far before dropping into the fire that is Hell.”

  “Travelers’ babble,” Ibn Sina said scornfully. “It is not true. I have read that outside the inhabited world all is salt and sand, like the Dasht-i-Kavir. It is also written that much of the world is ice.” He gazed pensively at Rob. “What is beyond your own country?”

  “Britain is an island. Beyond it is an ocean and then Denmark, the land of the Northmen from which our king came. Beyond that, it is said there is a land of ice.”

  “And if one goes north from Persia, beyond Ghazna is the land of the Rus—and beyond that is a land of ice. Yes, I think it true that much of the world is covered with ice,” Ibn Sina said. “But there is no fiery Hell at the edges, for thinking men have known always that the earth is round as a plum. You have voyaged on the sea. When sighting a distant oncoming ship, the first thing seen on the horizon is the tip of the mast, and then more and more of the craft as it sails over the curved surface of the world.”

  He finished Rob off on the game board by trapping his king, almost absentmindedly, and then summoned a slave to bring wine sherbet and a bowl of pistachios. “Do you not recall the astronomer Ptolemy?”

  Rob smiled; he had read only enough astronomy to satisfy the requirements of the madrassa. “An ancient Greek who did his writing in Egypt.”

  “Just so. He wrote that the world is round. Suspended beneath the concave firmament, it is the center of the universe. Around it circle the sun and the moon, making the night and the day.”

  “This ball of a world, with its surface of sea and land, mountains and rivers and forests and deserts and places of ice—is it hollow or solid? And if it is solid, what is the nature of its interior?”

  The old man smiled and shrugged, in his element now and enjoying himself. “We cannot know. The earth is enormous, as you understand, who have ridden and walked over a vast piece of it. And we are but tiny men who cannot burrow deeply enough to answer such a question.”

  “But if you were able to look within the center of the earth—would you?”

  “Of course!”

  “Yet you are able to peer inside the human body, but you do not.”

  Ibn Sina’s smile faded. “Mankind is close to savagery and must live by rules. If not, we would sink into our own animal nature and perish. One of our rules forbids the mutilation of the dead, who will one day be rescued from their graves by the Prophet.”

  “Why do people suffer from abdominal distemper?”

  Ibn Sina shrugged. “Open the belly of a hog and study the puzzle. The pig’s organs are identical to the organs of man.”

  “You are certain of this, Master?”

  “Yes. So it has been written since the time of Galen, whose fellow Greeks would not let him cut up humans. The Jews and the Christians have a similar prohibition. All men share this abhorrence of dissection.” Ibn Sina looked at him with tender concern. “You have overcome much to become a physician. But you must practice your healing within the rule of religion and the general will of men. If you do not, their power will destroy you,” he said.

  Rob rode home gazing at the sky until the points of light swam before his eyes. Of the planets he could find only the moon and Saturn, and a glowing that might have been Jupiter, for it shed a steady brilliance amidst the starry glittering.

  He realized Ibn Sina was not a demigod. The Prince of Physicians was simply an aging scholar caught between medicine and the faith in which he had been piously reared. Rob loved the old man all the more for his human limitations but he had a sense of being somehow cheated, like a small boy realizing the frailties of his father.

  When he reached Yehuddiyyeh he was reflective while he saw to the needs of the brown horse. Inside the house Mary and the child were asleep, and he undressed with quiet care and then lay awake, thinking on what might cause distemper of the abdomen.

  In the middle of the night Mary awoke urgently and ran outside, where she retched and was ill. He followed; obsessed by the disease that had taken her father, he was aware that vomiting was its first sign. Though she objected, he examined her when she reentered the house, but her abdomen was soft and there was no fever.

  At last they returned to their pallet.

  “Rob!” she called at length. And again: “My Rob,” a cry of distress, as from a nightmare.

  “Hush, or you will wake him,” he whispered. He was surprised, for he hadn’t known her to have bad dreams. He stroked her head and comforted her, and she pulled him to her with a desperate strength.

  “I’m here, Mary. I’m here, O my love.” He spoke soft, quiet things to her until she calmed, endearments in English and Persian and the Tongue.

  Once again a short time later she started but then she touched his face and sighed and cradled his head in her arms, and Rob lay with his cheek on his wife’s soft breast until the sweet slow thudding of her heart pulled him also into his rest.

  65

  KARIM

  The warming sun drew pale green shoots out of the earth as spring surged into Ispahan. Birds flashed through the air carrying straw and nesting twigs in their beaks, and the runoff gushed from brooks and wadis into the River of Life, which roared as its waters rose. It was as if Rob had taken the hands of the earth into his own and could feel nature’s boundless, eternal vitality. Among other evidences of fertility was Mary’s. Her nausea continued and worsened, and this time they didn’t need Fara to tell them she was pregnant. He was delighted but Mary was moody, quicker to show irritation than heretofore. He spent more time than ever with his son. The little face lighted when Rob J. saw him, and the baby crowed and wriggled like a tail-wagging puppy. Rob taught him to yank at his father with joy.

  “Pull Da’s beard,” he said, and felt pride in the strength of the tugging.

  “Pull Da’s ears.”

  “Pull Da’s nose.”

  The same week that the child took his first tentative, unsteady steps, he also began to talk. It was no wonder that his first word was Da. The sound of the small creature addressing him filled Rob with such awed love that he found his good fortune hard to believe.

  On a mild afternoon he persuaded Mary to walk to the Armenian market with him while he carried Rob J. At the market he set the baby down near the leather booth so Rob J. could take several shaky steps toward Prisca, and the former wet nurse screamed with delight and swept the child into her arms.

  On the way home through Yehuddiyyeh they smiled and greeted this one and that, for if no woman had taken Mary into her heart since Fara had left, neither did anyone curse the European Other any more, and the Jews of the quarter had grown accustomed to her presence.

  Later, while Mary was cooking their pilah and Rob was pruning one of the apricot trees, two of the small daughters of Mica Halevi the Baker ran from the house next door and played in the garden with his son. Rob delighted in the sound of their childish shrieks and foolishness.

  There were worse people than the Jews of Yehuddiyyeh, he told himself, and wor
se places to be than Ispahan.

  One day, hearing that al-Juzjani was to teach a class in dissection of a pig, Rob volunteered to assist. The animal in question proved to be a stout boar with tusks as fierce as a small elephant’s, mean porcine eyes, a long body covered with coarse gray bristles, and a robust hairy pizzle. The pig had been dead for a day or so and smelled it, but it had been fed on grain and the predominant odor when the stomach was opened was of beery fermentation, slightly sour. Rob had learned that such odors were not bad or good; all smells were of interest, since each told a story. But neither his nose nor his eyes nor his searching hands taught him anything about abdominal distemper as he searched the belly and gut for signs. Al-Juzjani, more interested in teaching his class than in allowing Rob access to his pig, was justifiably irritated by the amount of time he spent grubbing.

  After the class, no wiser than before, Rob went to meet with Ibn Sina in the maristan. He knew at first sight of the Chief Physician that something untoward had taken place.

  “My Despina and Karim Harun. They have been arrested.”

  “Sit, Master, and ease yourself,” he said gently, for Ibn Sina was shaken and puzzled and old-looking.

  It was the realization of Rob’s most dreadful fears. He forced himself to ask the questions that were required and was not surprised to learn that the charges were adultery and fornication.

  Qandrasseh’s agents had followed Karim to Ibn Sina’s house that morning. Mullahs and soldiers had burst into the stone tower and found the lovers.

  “What of the eunuch?”

  For the time it takes to blink, Ibn Sina looked at him and Rob hated himself, aware of all that was revealed by his question. But Ibn Sina only shook his head.

  “Wasif is dead. Had they not killed him by stealth, they would not have gained entrance to the tower.”

  “How can we help Karim and Despina?”

  “Only Alā Shah can help them,” Ibn Sina said. “We must petition him.”

  As Rob and Ibn Sina rode through the streets of Ispahan the people turned their eyes away, unwilling to shame Ibn Sina with their pity.

  At the House of Paradise they were greeted by the Captain of the Gates with the courtesy usually shown to the Prince of Physicians, but they were ushered into an anteroom instead of the Shah’s presence.

  Farhad left them and returned presently to tell them the king regretted he could not spend time with them that day.

  “We shall wait,” Ibn Sina said. “Perhaps an opportunity will present itself.”

  Farhad was glad to see the mighty fallen; he smiled at Rob as he bowed.

  All that afternoon they waited, and then Rob took Ibn Sina home.

  In the morning they returned. Again Farhad was careful to be courteous. They were led to the same anteroom and allowed to languish, but it became clear the king wouldn’t see them.

  Nevertheless, they waited.

  Ibn Sina seldom spoke. Once, he sighed. “She has ever been as a daughter to me,” he said. And, after a time: “It is easier for the Shah to treat Qandrasseh’s bold stroke as a small defeat than to challenge the Vizier.”

  Throughout the second day they sat in the House of Paradise. Gradually they understood that, despite the eminence of the Prince of Physicians and the fact that Karim was Alā’s favorite, the king would do nothing.

  “He is willing to concede Karim to Qandrasseh,” Rob said bleakly. “As though they were playing the Shah’s Game and Karim is a piece that will not be grievously missed.”

  “In two days there will be an audience,” Ibn Sina said. “We must make it easy for the Shah to help them. I will make public request that the king grant them mercy. I am the woman’s husband and Karim is the beloved of the people. They will roar to support my request to save their hero of the chatir. The Shah will allow it to appear that he grants mercy because of the will of his subjects.” If this happened, Ibn Sina said, Karim might be given twenty strokes and Despina beaten and sentenced to confinement for life in her master’s house.

  But as they left the House of Paradise they came upon al-Juzjani, who had been awaiting them. The master surgeon loved Ibn Sina as much as any man. Out of that love, he brought him bad news.

  Karim and Despina had been taken before an Islamic court. Testimony had been given by three witnesses, each an ordained mullah. Doubtless to avoid torture, neither Despina nor Karim had attempted to offer a defense.

  The presiding mufti had sentenced each of them to death on the following morning.

  “The woman Despina will be decapitated. Karim Harun will have his belly ripped.”

  They gazed at one another in dismay. Rob waited for Ibn Sina to tell al-Juzjani how Karim and Despina yet might be saved, but the old man shook his head. “We cannot avert the sentence,” he said heavily. “We can only make certain their end is merciful.”

  “Then there are things to be done,” al-Juzjani said quietly. “Bribes to be paid. And instead of the medical clerk in the kelonter’s prison we must substitute a physician we trust.”

  Despite the warmth of the spring air, Rob was chilled. “Let it be me,” he said.

  That night he was sleepless. He rose before dawn and rode the brown horse through the dark city. At Ibn Sina’s house he half expected to see the eunuch Wasif in the gloom. There was neither light nor life in the tower rooms.

  Ibn Sina gave him a jar of grape juice. “It is heavily infused with opiates and a powder of pure hempseed called buing,” he said. “Herein lies the risk. They must drink a lot of it. But if either of them drinks too much to walk when they are summoned, you shall die with them.”

  Rob nodded to show he understood. “God’s mercy.”

  “God’s mercy,” Ibn Sina said. He was chanting from the Qu’ran before Rob left the room.

  At the prison he told the sentry he was the physician and was given an escort. They went first to the women’s cells, in one of which a woman could be heard alternately singing and sobbing.

  He was afraid the terrible sound came from Despina but it didn’t; in a tiny cell, she waited. She was unwashed and unperfumed and her hair hung in lank locks. Her small, finely made body was clad in a dirty black garment.

  He set down the jar of buing and went to her and lifted her veil.

  “I have brought something for you to drink.”

  To him she would ever after be femina, a combination of Anne Mary his sister, Mary his wife, the whore who had serviced him in the carriage on the maidan, and every female put upon by the world.

  There were unshed tears in her eyes but she refused the buing.

  “You must drink. It will help you.”

  She shook her head. Soon I will be in Paradise, the fearful eyes begged him to believe. “Give it to him,” she whispered, and Rob bade her goodbye.

  The footsteps echoed as he followed the soldier along a corridor, down two short flights of stairs, into another stone tunnel and then another tiny cell.

  His friend was pale.

  “So, European.”

  “So, Karim.”

  They embraced, holding each other hard.

  “Is she …?”

  “I’ve seen her. She is well.”

  Karim sighed. “I hadn’t talked with her for weeks! It was just to hear her voice, you understand? I was certain I wasn’t followed, that day.”

  Rob nodded.

  Karim’s mouth trembled. Offered the jar, he grasped it and drank deeply, finishing two-thirds of the liquid before handing it back.

  “It will work. Ibn Sina mixed it himself.”

  “The old man you worship. Often I dreamed of poisoning him so I could have her.”

  “Every man has wicked thoughts. You wouldn’t carry them out.” For some reason it seemed vital that Karim should know this before the narcotic took effect. “You understand?”

  Karim nodded. Rob watched closely, fearful he had drunk too much buing. If the infusion worked quickly, a mufti’s court would reconvene to kill a second physician.

  Karim
’s eyes drooped. He remained awake but chose not to talk. Rob stayed with him in silence until finally he heard footsteps approaching.

  “Karim.”

  He blinked. “Is it now?”

  “Think of winning the chatir,” Rob said gently. The footsteps stopped, the door opened; they were three soldiers and two mullahs.” Think of the happiest day of your life.”

  “Zaki-Omar could be a kindly man,” Karim said. He favored Rob with a small, vacant smile.

  Two of the soldiers took his arms. Rob followed directly behind them, out of the cell, down the stone corridor, up the two flights of stairs, into the courtyard where the sun smote a brassy blow. The morning was soft and beautiful, an ultimate cruelty. He could see Karim’s knees buckle as he walked but any observer would think it was caused by fear. They went past the double row of carcan victims to the blocks, scene of his nightmares.

  Something awful already lay next to a black-gowned form on imbrued ground, but the buing cheated the mullahs; Karim did not see her.

  The executioner seemed scarcely older than Rob, a short, beefy man with huge arms and indifferent eyes. His strength and skill and the keenest whetted blades were what Ibn Sina’s money had bought.

  Karim’s eyes were glazed as the soldiers brought him forward. There were no goodbyes; the executioner’s stroke was swift and certain. The point came up into the heart and brought death at once as the wielder had been bribed to do, and Rob heard his friend make a sound like a loud discontented sigh.

  It was left to Rob to see that Despina and Karim were carried from the prison to a cemetery outside the city walls. He paid well for prayer to be chanted over both new graves, a bitter irony: the praying mullahs were found among those who had witnessed the deaths.

  When the funeral was over, Rob finished the infusion that remained in the jar and allowed the brown horse to carry him back unguided.

  But as they neared the House of Paradise he reined up and studied it. The palace was particularly beautiful that day, its colorful pennons streaming and fluttering in the spring breeze and the sun glittering on the guidons and halberds and making dazzle of the sentries’ weapons.