Dear and Glorious Physician (22 page)

“No,” said Keptah. “I am not for sale, Master.” His voice rose to hard coldness. “Rome has been unfortunate for you, I observe. I beg you to remember that you trusted me implicitly before you returned there, that your father trusted me and was deeply attached to me, that the Lady Aurelia took me into her confidence, and that I have never deceived you, not once in your life, except when I thought, in all mercy, that the truth would hurt you. May I leave, Master?”

“No,” said Diodorus. He still stared at the floor. It was not proper for a Roman to apologize to one lesser than he, but he said, “I am sorry.”

Keptah was astonished and moved. He lifted one of Diodorus’ hands and kissed it. He said, “Master, you know how deeply I honor God. If it will help you to confide in me, though I prefer that you do not for your own sake, I swear by His Most Holy Name that I will never betray you, that on the instant of the confidence I shall forget it.”

Diodorus studied him gloomily. “Then I must tell you the vile thing I have done, the lying thing, in Rome, not only because you are my friend but because I am confused, and because — ” He paused. He drew a deep breath. “There is a senator who is a friend of Carvilius Ulpian, and only his wealth and his mercilessness and reputation for cruel vengeance keep his secret unknown to all save Carvilius. I discussed a certain matter with my brother-in-law, and he then imparted that senator’s secret to me. I suspect, by the way, that the senator has some hold over Carvilius that would ruin him if he does not keep silent. You see how suspicious I have become!”

Keptah waited. Diodorus slowly flushed. “I did what the senator did. He loved a slave in his household, on one of his estates in Sicily. He freed her. His wife was barren, and he divorced his wife. Then he applied to a genealogist who invented a fine lineage for his freed-woman, and he married her with honor, and she is a great favorite in Rome, and a worthy matron.”

Keptah frowned. “I see, Master. You have applied yourself to that same genealogist and have invented a distinguished Grecian lineage for Iris.” He was enormously relieved.

“Yes,” said Diodorus, sullenly.

Keptah felt the first joy he had felt in many months. Then his face darkened. “You forget, Master, that your whole household knows that Iris was once a slave. How can you assure yourself that so many will not babble?”

“In that lineage,” said Diodorus, ignoring the remark, “I have had it written that Iris was stolen from her distinguished family in Cos by slave dealers who were attracted by her childish beauty, and that only lately was it discovered who she really was. Her parents died of grief; it was found that they had bequeathed their fortune to their kidnapped child, a very respectable fortune.”

Keptah pondered on this quizzically. “Good, Master,” he said at last. “Then you need not have confessed to me that the lineage was invented. Why did you do so?”

Diodorus shook his head slowly from side to side. “There had to be one man to whom I could not lie, or would not lie. Strange that it had to be you! I preferred, from some perversity, that you knew the truth.”

“And so, while wanting to confide in me, you still threatened me.”

Diodorus looked up at him with some of his former irascibleness. “For a wise man you are very obtuse!” He stood up and again paced up and down. “Carvilius Ulpian knows the truth also. But he will not speak of it, not even to Cornelia, sister to my dead wife. For many reasons.”

Diodorus stopped his pacing. He spoke with his back to the physician, and his voice was very low. “I have loved Iris since we were children together. She can still bear sons. I can conceive of marrying no other woman, not even a woman from any of the grandest families in Rome. You do not know the Roman women! They have lost all womanliness. They engage in business! They have become fraudulent and dissolute men. They move about Rome in their gilded litters, unaccompanied, and can quote you the latest stock prices with the facility of bankers! Many prefer not to marry, but they have many lovers. To such degeneracy has Rome fallen. I will not filthy my mouth with the list of their abominable practices.”

He clenched his hands together. “I have had many strange dreams in which the Lady Aurelia has come to me smiling, not as a shade as we are taught, but in full and youthful bloom, with love in her eyes and comfort in her hands. She has urged me to marry Iris, whom she called her ‘sister’.” He swung upon Keptah and challenged him with his beetling eyes. “You think me superstitious? Would you, in your occult way, declare, as you have often done, that dreams are only the fulfillment of secret wishes?”

Keptah said seriously, “I believe, in this case, that you are not superstitious, that you are not trying to rationalize a deep desire for which you torment yourself guiltily. Before the Lady Aurelia died Iris came to her.” And he told Diodorus what Aurelia had said to the freed-woman with such urgency and such hope.

While Keptah was speaking, Diodorus’ face changed and paled. He fell into his chair. Then he bowed his head in his hands and groaned. Keptah was alarmed. He had expected relief and joy, but Diodorus appeared stricken almost to death.

“So,” he said in that groaning voice, “I did not deceive my poor wife at all! She always knew that I was unfaithful to her in my heart!

But she did not know how I struggled against it; she did not know how much I loved her. What she must have endured, and what loneliness and sadness! It was not enough that her daughter had died. It was not enough that she expired giving me a son. I must take from her what is most dear to a woman. And she suffered all that in silence, and with devotion and tenderness.”

“You are wrong, Master!” exclaimed Keptah, coming closer to him. “The Lady Aurelia may not have been a learned woman, or a sophisticated one. But she understood all that there was to be understood. She was a good woman.”

He wished, with some wildness and pity, that Diodorus were a less complicated, less intelligent, and less difficult man, and given less to a morbid habit of critically inspecting himself. He would invent guilt for himself even if there were no guilt at all!

Diodorus dropped his hands wearily from his face. His features were streaked with redness from the pressure of his fingers, and though he had not wept his eyes were congested.

He said, very quietly, “It is all very well. But now I see I can never marry Iris. My conscience will not permit it. Nor will I take her to Rome with me. It is done. Life is over.”

Diodorus summoned Iris to him that afternoon.

On her way, accompanied by a slave, with the infant, she addressed Aurelia in the very depths of her soul. “He has called me to him, Lady. You know how we have loved each other, and how we were never unfaithful to you, for we loved you also. I can go to him now and say to him, ‘Where thou art, Caius, there am I, Caia’. Dearest friend, we will remember you with love and the most precious of memories. If we are blessed with children, we shall name the first girl for you, kindest of friends.”

Her joy was so bursting that her beautiful face shone with light. She had bound her golden hair with white ribbons, and her stola was carefully draped, the fluted edges rippling over her high and snowy arches. She was as radiant as a young goddess, and her throat was rosy with her rapidly pulsating blood. She had much to do to keep from running in her rapture.

She entered the library alone, and the blue ecstasy of her eyes was like a flash of sky. Diodorus, standing at his table, felt an overwhelming agony of despair and passion and love at the sight of her, and he thought that Aphrodite, rising from the waves, had never presented such an aspect of radiance and perfect beauty to a stunned world. He had not fully remembered the marvel of her hair, the whiteness of her flesh, the molded snow of her arms, the iridescence of her flesh. But it was not only her beauty which stupefied him; she had an emanation, to him, of some divinity clothed in light, untouched by human pollution. She wore her wonderful loveliness as simply and innocently as a lily, and as purely.

He stood by his table clothed in his short military tunic and armor, his short broadsword buckled at his belt. His helmet lay on the table beside him, and it was evident that he was about to go to Antioch. There was an air of haste and abruptness about him, a cold militarism, a remoteness. And it was this air that made Iris stop suddenly on the threshold and held her against falling on her knees before him and kissing his hand. A sharp sense of calamity came to her, and the light passed from her face. This worn and leaner man, this haughty and formidable man, was not the Diodorus she knew. He was a stranger.

“Greetings, noble Master,” she murmured, and the sense of calamity deepened in her. “I trust you had a pleasant journey home.”

“Come in, Iris,” he said, and turned his eagle face in profile to her, and she saw its iron restraint. “I shall not keep you long. I have been told of the tender and maternal care you have given my son, for which mere gold will not suffice. But it is all I have to offer.”

Iris looked at him with a heartbroken smile. “You owe me nothing, Master,” she said, faintly. “It was a joy to mother your son, who is like a young Mars, and full of merriment.” She stopped. Her throat and breast ached painfully.

Searching his face hopelessly, she felt a deeper pang and a thrust of anxiety, forgetting herself. Was he ill? Why that expression of pent anguish, that pale harshness of lip, that bitter wrinkling of the forehead? She exclaimed with fear, “Master, all is not well with you! Were you ill of the fever of Rome?” She came to him then, her heart shaking with love and fright, and her blue eyes fastened themselves intently and searchingly on his profile. He would not look at her. His hand was on his helmet, the tendons rising in it. Diodorus! she cried inwardly. My soul’s beloved! Do you not know that I would joyously give my life for you? Tell me what troubles you.

Diodorus still would not look at her. He dared not. He caught the fragrance of her flesh, warm and youthful and sweet as a flower. His hand clenched on the helmet in a spasm of acute agony.

He spoke as if she had not spoken. “In my last letter to you, Iris, I asked if you would return to Rome with me when I go from this malignant place forever, in order to care for my son.” He paused. The grayish-brown flesh about his averted eyes tightened. “But now I cannot ask it of you. Your son leaves in three weeks for Alexandria. You will wish to be near him. As a gift, and a sign of my esteem for you, I am giving you Cusa, who will help to tutor Lucanus in Alexandria, and Calliope, who is now his wife, for a handmaiden to you. Moreover, I will deposit five thousand gold sesterces for you in order that you may live in comfort in some small house near the university, and each December the same amount will be delivered to you. I comprehend, of course, that all this is but a poor return for what you and your son have done for me, but it is all I have.”

Terror, loss, and dismay seized Iris. She stared at Diodorus disbelievingly.

“You are sending me away from you, Master — forever!” she cried, and pressed her hands against her breast. “Forever, Diodorus? I am so hateful in your eyes?” Tears began to flow down her white cheeks.

“I am trying only to be just,” said Diodorus, in a stifled voice. “I thought that you would prefer to be near your son. I understand that it will be hard to part from Priscus, to whom you have been as a mother, as my own mother was to you. But life is all parting.” He had heard the torment in her voice, her incredulous torment and disbelief. “You must not think me ungrateful.”

Then he turned his face swiftly to her, and it changed. “Do you think this easy for me?” he asked, roughly. “Nevertheless, this is my will, for there is no other way.”

“Then, in some unpardonable fashion, I have most terribly displeased you,” faltered Iris. He no longer loves me, she thought, with abysmal and overwhelming despair and bereavement. He has found a lady in Rome to marry; I am now an inconvenience and embarrassment to him. He would forget I ever lived.

She was weak with her suffering; she wanted to lie down on the floor and pass into merciful insensibility, or die. An aridity like the dust in the mouth of a moribund man dried her lips, her tongue, and her heart throbbed with a crushing pain. Let me go as the humblest slave in your household, she implored him silently. Let me not even enter your sight. But do not send me from you, in the name of all the gods! It will be enough just to lie under the same roof with you, to glimpse you from afar, to hear the echo of your voice. How can I live otherwise?

“Iris,” he said, then stopped. He could not change his mind. He dared never see the young woman again. He thought of Aurelia, and it seemed to him that she regarded him sternly, demanding this awful sacrifice to assuage his guilt.

He put his helmet on his head. He could not look at Iris again, for his arms felt powerless and empty, and he knew that he must flee from this room if he was to save himself. “You will want to prepare for your journey with your son,” he said, looking blindly at the floor. “Iris. We shall not see each other again. I have ordered my son returned to this house tomorrow morning, with his nurse.” He paused. “Iris, I wish you all the blessings of the gods, and all happiness.”

She groped for a chair and sat down, her head on her breast, her arms fallen. Then she began to speak in a low voice, but very clear. “Master, I can take nothing from you. What I have done, if it is of any importance at all, was for love — for love — of Aurelia and the child. To take the smallest gift would be an insult to them. And to me.”

Diodorus began to walk towards the door. Then he was overpowered with his mighty desolation and sorrow and longing. He stopped, his back to her. “Nevertheless,” he said, dimly, “I am a Roman, and must express my gratitude some way.”

Iris lifted her head, and she looked at him as at an equal who had unforgivably offended her. He felt her force, and he involuntarily turned on his heel and faced her. She was like a noble statue sitting there, her white stola falling over her breast and her perfect thighs and lying on the high arches of her feet. And she was as colorless as marble. Dignity and pride encompassed her, and her pale lips curved with scorn.

“Diodorus,” she said, and her voice was strong and angry. “There is something I must tell you. I am not a mere handmaiden to be dismissed and turned away. I have held a secret for a long time, because it was the wish of your mother, the Lady Antonia, for she thought it would offend you deeply — as a Roman! However, she gave me permission to tell you this secret when I thought it necessary, and I find it necessary now. After your father died, she legally adopted me, but in secret, as her daughter. The praetor so recorded it, in Rome, before you returned from Jerusalem. And in Rome there is much money waiting for me, which I have not yet used. My husband knew nothing of it. You stare at me as if I were lying! You have only to visit the praetor in Rome.”

She rose slowly and gracefully, and she was like the statue of a goddess carved by Scopas. She filled the library with light and a stately power.

“Do not think,” she said, bitterly, “that I will ever divulge this to anyone, to your humiliation! I will not intrude upon you in Rome, or elsewhere, demanding your acknowledgment as your sister. Never shall I say, ‘The noble tribune, Diodorus, is my adopted brother’, for I know your terrible pride! Your mother loved me, as dear as a daughter. Though you do not know it, she did not wish me to marry my poor Aeneas. But I knew you, Diodorus! I knew that you loved me then, and had always loved me, and that you as a Roman, however, would never consider marrying me, a former slave. To end forever your yearning, your internal struggles, I married Aeneas. I would have consented, before that adoption, to be your mistress, to be the lowliest, to carry wood for your bath. But I was now your mother’s daughter, and I could not offend her memory.”

Diodorus stumbled back to the table, removed his helmet, then stood staring down at it. He was weak with shame. He moistened his lips, tried to speak, then was silent. He coughed dryly, and passed a hand over his forehead. “Let me speak,” he said, almost inaudibly. “And then let us part.” He continued to stare at the helmet. “Do you know what I suffer? Do you know how I love you, and have always loved you? Do you know that only your memory sustained me when I carried the ashes of my wife and my daughter to Rome? Do you know that the darkest nights were brightened by the vision of your face?” He paused, and coughed again. “But I have learned that Aurelia knew of my passion for you. I remember what she must have suffered because of that. I am guilty before her. I must do penance.”

“Oh!” cried Iris, and she was weeping again, and her face was like the sun behind rain. “Oh, you Roman fool, you dear, beloved fool! Certainly Aurelia knew. She knew the very moment she entered your house. We loved you together, and she was content, for she was a lady of sense, and not a dolt-headed man! Not once was she disturbed. You were her husband, and you were an honorable man. Is your soul so small that you dare to insult the large and kindly soul of Aurelia, my friend? While she was bearing your son she had premonitions of death, and confided in me. And before she died she asked me to remain with you forever, and comfort you, and give you happiness. Yet you now insult her!”

She was angered again. She took a step or two towards the door.

Diodorus said, “Wait — my love. I have worse to tell you. While in Rome, I invented a false lineage for you, so that I could marry you with honor.”

She stopped and regarded him with wide eyes, and then with tenderness, and then with a smile, and then with sudden sweet mirth. She ran to the door and called to the wet nurse who was waiting outside. “Bring in the child!” she exclaimed, and when the child was delivered to her she held him in her arms, and he crowed and nuzzled her.

“Your son,” she said to Diodorus. “The son you neglected and would hardly see, because you believed he had caused his mother’s death. The darling boy, who is like both you and Aurelia. Look at him! He does not know you, you fierce Roman.”

Then she thrust the child into his father’s arms and threw back her head and laughed like a girl. Priscus screeched happily, and tugged at Diodorus’ hair. The tribune looked at Iris, and all his delivered soul was in his eyes, and all his love.

“No,” said Iris, and her rosy face dimpled. “You must kiss him first!