Dear and Glorious Physician (10 page)

Lucanus loved the glaring city, and was excited by it. He saw men and women entering small and pillared temples, doves and young kids in their arms. He saw the bright banners, and smelled the warmth of hay and the pungency of dust. He hoped that Keptah would take him to the physician’s favorite wineshop, but Keptah passed it without a glance. Roman soldiers flirted with girls in bright garments; they were particularly attracted to maidens with veils. They chaffed the young females, and dark eyes flashed in the sunlight. The din was a palpable presence in the hot and spicy air, which had an overtone of dung and garlic in it. Diodorus spoke of Rome, that Imperial City, but Lucanus thought that no city could have such odors and enticement. Women stood on balconies, and from within some of the houses came the twanging of lyres, and laughter, and then the scent of orange blossoms and roses from gardens behind high walls.

Keptah trotted along on his ass, withdrawn and secret, and, to Lucanus, a depressing presence in all this color. A group of sailors in loincloths, and with great golden rings in their ears, were quarreling on a corner, their blackened faces fierce and violent, their gestures vehement. Their strange voices, speaking in a tongue Lucanus did not recognize, clamored in the heat, and a knife glittered. Keptah moved along as if he were alone. Lucanus sighed. There was more to life than philosophy. Hot bodies pressed around his donkey, and there was an acridness of sweat everywhere. Dry palms, sifting with dust, scattered themselves along the streets. Peddlers, carrying trays of sweetmeats, blown with flies, shrilled their wares and ran after the boy and man on bare brown feet, and then, discomfited, cried curses upon them. Beggars sat against walls, wailing, rattling their cups, their beards tangled and filthy. Women offered flowers in baskets, and old men with staffs walked unseeingly through the welter as if they were no longer of this world. A group of goats being driven by a boy blocked passage momentarily, and the animals whimpered and skittered and danced. As always, Lucanus was enchanted. He laughed at an insolent monkey on a man’s shoulders, and wanted to inspect a shop of parrots.

The streets became quieter and dimmer, and Lucanus was conscious of few walkers and fewer vehicles. Now the buildings, old and decrepit, had an air of gloom. The noises of the city faded. The howls of dogs diminished. Lucanus, subdued, trotted beside Keptah, and asked, “Where are we going? I have never been here before.”

“Quiet,” said Keptah, in a faint, hoarse voice from within his hood. “I have waited for a long time for a reply to a message, and it came only today.”

The air was chillier here, the cobbled stones wet and glistening as though it had rained, the walls of the houses shut and somber. The hoofs of the asses raised echoes and astringent dust. A rill of gutter water ran over the stones, dark and slimy, and it made a throaty sound, and stank. Walls of dark stone rose on each side of the closed street, and no voices rang from them. But once or twice Lucanus heard the soft howling of unseen cats, and he thought of Isis, the hoary goddess of the Egyptians, and hidden rites, and the mysteries of the East. The boy shivered; the dewy sweat turned cold on his flesh and he wished he had brought a cloak.

Then, abruptly, Keptah reined in his gray ass and made a gesture to the boy. They had halted before a tall wall of basalt, black and blank. No window pierced its strong and forbidding emptiness. No sound of life sounded from behind its height. Only a small door stood in its repellent facade. Keptah dismounted, and dismally Lucanus followed. Keptah, not speaking, knocked on the door as if signaling. The rapping echoed from walled side to side. Keptah waited; then he knocked again. This time there was a rattling of chains, and the withdrawing of bolts. The door opened with a complaint of hinges. The aperture widened and an old man in a rough gray tunic stood there, an incredibly small one with a long white beard and the brightest brown eyes Lucanus had ever seen — the eyes of a smiling and wondering child. Keys clanked at the hempen girdle, and his feet were bare.

He spoke to Keptah in an incomprehensible tongue, quick and welcoming, and he bowed deeply. And all the time his eyes darted over Lucanus with curiosity. He opened the door wide, bowed again, and stepped aside.

Lucanus blinked, dazzled. Beyond the door lay a vast garden of silken grass, date palms, shining trees, fountains, and beds of roses and lilies, and all manner of other flowers. The garden basked in sunlight as if of another world. Clumps of willows blew like green cataracts in the softest and sweetest wind. The fountains sang and the trees answered. At some distance, in this brightness and perfume, stood a square building, low and radiant, made of white marble, and beyond it stood still another building of gray granite, with arched windows shuttered against the light, and as silent as a sepulcher.

Paths of yellow stone wound through the gardens, and marble benches were scattered here and there in clear dark shade, protected from the sun. Never had Lucanus seen such beauty and tranquillity, and yet there was an air of dignity and withdrawal in the gardens and about the buildings, and the silence was unbroken by a single voice, nor was there anyone visible in the grounds or about the marble edifice or the other building. The boy was astonished. He stood in bemusement as the door closed after him and Keptah, and he was not aware of the careful thrust of bolts and the clang of chains.

“Come,” said Keptah, and Lucanus followed him over the soft grass. Birds of all colors peered down at him from gilded branches. The fountains murmured. The roses moved and exhaled warm fragrance. The lilies lifted their white chalices and breathed out their holy perfume, and bees hovered over them and thrust their golden bodies deeply into the cups. And then for the first time Lucanus was conscious of a sound he had missed before; it was a sound hardly perceptible by the ear, not song, not chanting, but a faint combination of both. It was part of the brilliant air, part of the fountains, part of the wind, and yet a human voice.

Keptah led Lucanus, in silence, across the grass and towards the square low building of marble, which had no windows and no porticoes. A bronze door carved with strange figures glimmered in all that whiteness, and this opened. “Enter,” said Keptah. Lucanus, even in his bemusement, was startled. No hand had opened the door; it had moved seemingly of itself, and with no creak of hinges. Lucanus stood on the threshold and hesitated before entering. Keptah murmured, “Speak nothing; ask no questions. I will leave you for a while.” The door closed before his face and Lucanus was alone.

Though there were no windows, and no open door, the bare whiteness of the large room was suffused with a swimming and pearly light, which deepened, brightened, faded, then brightened again. It was impossible to see the source of the light, pulsing like a peaceful heart. It was one with a spiciness like incense, which came from everywhere and nowhere. Lucanus sensed at once that he was in a temple, but what kind of a temple he did not know, and for some inexplicable reason he began to tremble.

Then in the center of the room was the strangest thing of all, not an altar, but something that struck a quick fear to the soul of the boy. On a wide central platform of three low white steps of marble stood the great symbol of the most infamous thing in the world, the symbol of the vilest criminality and death. It was a huge Cross, seemingly made of transparent alabaster, and it towered almost to the flat ceiling of smooth stone. Lucanus’ fear changed to awe and amazement. The Cross soared alone, and there was nothing in the temple but its simple and dreadful majesty, and no sound but absolute silence.

The light pulsed and waned, and the Cross waited. But Lucanus stood for a long time looking at it, his heart beating loudly in his ears. A few times, a very few times, he had seen a crucified man on one of the hills near Antioch, and he had been moved to tears and a nameless anger. And then he had seen the golden cross in Keptah’s hand on the night of the Star, over two years ago. He had almost forgotten.

Timidly, walking slowly so as not to disturb this sanctified silence, and not to quicken the ebbing and flowing radiance, he approached the Cross, and stood at the foot of the glistening shallow stairs looking up at it. Its mighty arms stretched far above him. It had a waiting and unearthly quality, cool and expectant. Its body was fixed and powerful, yet airy as light. It appeared less than stone now, to the boy, but something sentient and eternal, immovable in its vastness, carved in grandeur.

Lucanus stood and looked at it, and could not turn aside. There was nothing in him now but an unnamable anticipation. His throat throbbed. Without his volition his knees bent and he knelt on the first step and clasped his hands, never looking away from the Cross. It loomed over him, and he felt some awful prescience in it, and yet it was as if the arms hovered over him protectingly. Now the light in the temple quickened, like the reflection of the moon on wide wings.

There were no thoughts in Lucanus, no awareness of flesh, only a deep wonderment and something like joy touched with grief. He knelt for a long time, his blue gaze lifted high to the Cross, his hands clasped.

He did not know at what moment the Cross began to brighten, and at what moment the Cross itself began to ripple with pale rosy shadows. It was as if his soul became aware of it long before his conscious mind, and so he was not alarmed. He was also dreamily aware of an unseen Presence, which was one with the Cross, one with the light, and one with himself. The Presence was like a shaft of deeper luminosity, and full of enormous masculine tenderness. Lucanus said aloud through pale lips, “The Unknown God.”

During the past two years his youth and the abundance of his life, his passionate enjoyment of knowledge, his ambitions, his dearest love for Rubria, his sense of belonging to the world and to those who loved him, his dedication to medicine and his engrossment with Keptah, the very joyousness and buoyancy of his age, and his leaping health and delight in all things had obscured, made dim and illusory, what he had known or felt as a child. Even the Unknown God had become one of the Pantheon, and the aspects, tales, and benevolences of goddesses had intrigued his young heart with a tremendous fantasy of beauty. His days, for over two years, lay like a colored and vivid river behind him and before him, full of promise. Cusa was a Skeptic, and Lucanus had come to question things humorously, even the dreams and mysteries he had known as a child. As if he knew, Keptah himself had spoken less and less of the Unknown God, and had confined himself to lessons in medicine. Sometimes his morose and withdrawn face had made Lucanus feel a sense of uneasy guilt.

And now in these moments his life became as a phantom, the life of a very young child, and he was again in the presence of the grand Miracle, which did not reproach him but only welcomed him. He did not understand the meaning of the Cross with his mind; only his heart understood and it as yet had no words.

He was filled with ecstasy, as if visions had opened before him, magnificent, yet dolorous with supernatural sorrow beyond the comprehension of men.

The flickerings on the Cross became deeper in hue and more intense, so that the white walls, floor and ceiling paled like clouds, and were as tenuous. Slowly, moment by moment, the rosy and unquiet hue resembled the flowing shadows of blood, welling, falling and drifting from the arms down the whole enormous body of the Cross. The pearly luminousness that flowed through the temple moved swifter, as if ethereal presences were gathering in greater concentration. The boy was conscious of no fear, only of growing wonderment and love so profound that his body could hardly contain it. The scarlet reflections from the Cross glimmered on his face, his white tunic, his clasped hands, and in his eyes, and on his bent knees.

Slowly, drawn as if by a spell, he stood up and mounted the shallow steps and stood on the level with the Cross. It was a tree of intermingling red and white, palpitating with a force unknown to him. He dared to put out his hand and touch it; it was cool to his touch, and yet it vibrated slightly. All at once he was overcome with a passion beyond rapture; he felt himself drawn into the very heart of the Cross. His legs weakened under him and he slipped to the platform and wound his arms about the shaft and leaned his cheek against it, and without the slightest conscious knowledge his whole body trembled with adoration and the deepest peace he had ever known. He closed his eyes; he was at the core of the universe.

The bronze door opened silently, as if touched by an unseen hand, and four men stood on the threshold, one of whom was Keptah. They stood in the aperture and saw the prostrate boy, his arms embracing the foot of the Cross, his cheek against its shaft. Three of the men, much taller and broader even than Keptah, smiled tenderly and glanced at each other. They approached the platform on feet seemingly shod in velvet, and they stood without a word and contemplated the Cross for several moments. Then all four knelt, bowed their heads on their breasts, and closed their eyes. Their lips moved in prayer.

Three of the men were dressed as stately kings, for they were kings in truth. Their tunics and their robes shimmered with crimson, blue, and white and the most delicate jade. Girdles of hammered gold, inlaid with barbarous jewels, clasped their waists. Headdresses of the purest white silk were bound about their heads, sewn with gems that glimmered in the celestial light. About their necks hung huge broad necklaces of gold and silver, one reaching down to the other, and then another, and fringed with precious metals, and intricately webbed with jewels of many colors. Their bare brown arms bore broad and gemmed circlets below the shoulder and about the wrists, and their feet were shod in golden sandals. Their Eastern faces were blackened by desert suns, and their short beards were virile and glistened with scented oils. From under thick black brows their Orient eyes gleamed like full dark stars, and their noses were the noses of eagles, beaked and masterful, and more than a little wild, as were their red lips.

When he became aware of Keptah and the strangers Lucanus did not know. But it did not seem strange to him that they were there, and he gazed at them with quiet acceptance, and waited, his arms still embracing the Cross. When they rose he did not move, for it was as if they had forgotten him or did not see him. They left the temple, and he drowsed or slept again, and this was something he could not explain to himself later. He had the deepest reluctance to leave the Cross; while he lay there he sensed safety and peace and the fulfillment of all desire.

Keptah stood apart from the strangers in the garden while they communed with each other, bending their ears towards the speaker in the deepest gravity and then nodding. They spoke in a tongue even Keptah did not know, but which had familiar resonances to him, as if he were hearing echoes of his childhood.

Then, as if coming to a conclusion, they smiled at Keptah affectionately, and one of the strangers approached him, and when he knelt the stranger put his hand on his head in blessing. He spoke now so that Keptah could understand.

“You are not mistaken, my brother,” he said. “You were truly right. The boy is one of us. But he cannot be admitted to the Brotherhood, and why he cannot I dare not say. There is another way and light for him, through long and arid places, gray and desolate, and he must find them. For God has work for him to do before he reaches his ultimate journey, and a unique message to give him. Do not be disappointed; do not weep. You have done well, and God is pleased with you. Many will be called from the utmost ends of the earth, and when and how they are chosen is not in our hands, but only in God’s. Teach him what you can teach him, then let him go, but be sure he will not wander in darkness, and that he will come again to the Cross.”

One of them looked musingly over the garden, as if seeing a far vision. “He will come to her, and sit at her knees,” he murmured. “She will speak to him of the things she pondered in her heart, and about which she will speak to no other man. She is hardly older in years than Lucanus himself, and she too must suffer her anguish, which she accepted on the night of the angelic annunciation. He will see her beauty and sweetness, and hear her tender voice. But that is in the future, and it is not ordained for now.”

“I have wanted to see her, and touch her robe,” said Keptah, his voice trembling. “I have dreamt of the vision of the babe in her arms.”

“You will see,” said one of the strangers, in a low tone. “If not here, then in heaven.”

“Mysterious are the ways of God,” said still another. “We can but obey.”

“I have nothing to give,” said Keptah.