The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (84 page)

He wasn’t feverish as he had been during the attack that had brought him to the
maristan,
nor was his abdomen rigid. Rob prescribed frequent dosing with a honey-and-wine infusion, which Qasim took to eagerly since he was a drinker and had been sorely tried by the enforced religious abstinence.

Qasim spent several pleasant weeks, slightly inebriated as he lazed about the hospital exchanging views and opinions. There was much to gossip about. The latest news was that Imam Qandrasseh had deserted the city, despite his obvious political and tactical victory over the Shah.

It was rumored Qandrasseh had fled to the Seljuk Turks, and that when he returned it would be with an attacking Seljuk army to depose Al
ā
and place a strict Islamic religionist—perhaps himself?—on the throne of Persia. In the meantime, life was unchanged and pairs of somber
mullahs
continued to patrol the streets, for the wily old Imam had left his disciple, Musa Ibn Abbas, as keeper of the faith in Ispahan.

The Shah remained in the House of Paradise as if in hiding. He didn’t hold audiences. Rob hadn’t heard from Al
ā
since Karim had been put to death. There was no summoning to entertainment, no hunting or games or invitations to the court. When a physician was required at the House
of Paradise in place of the indisposed Ibn Sina, al-Juzjani or someone else was demanded, but never Rob.

But a gift for the new son had come from the Shah.

It arrived following the Hebrew naming of the baby. This time Rob knew enough to invite the neighbors himself. Reb Asher Jacobi the
mohel
asked that the child might grow in vigor to a life of good works, and cut off the foreskin. The babe was given suck on a wine sop to quiet his yowl of pain and in the Tongue was declared to be Tam, son of Jesse.

Al
ā
had bestowed no gift when little Rob J. was born, but now he sent a handsome small rug, light blue wool interwoven with lustrous silk threads of the same shade and embossed in darker blue with the crest of the royal Samanid family.

Rob thought it a handsome rug and would have laid it on the floor next to the cradle, but Mary, who was pettish following the birth, said she didn’t want it there. Instead, she bought a sandalwood chest that would protect it from moths and put it away.

Rob participated in an examining board. He knew he was there in Ibn Sina’s absence and it shamed him that someone might think him presumptuous enough to assume he could take the place of the Prince of Physicians.

But there was no help for it, so he did his best. He prepared for the board as though he were a candidate himself and not an examiner. He asked thoughtful questions designed not to undo a candidate but to bring out knowledge, and he listened attentively to the answers. The board examined four candidates and made three physicians. There was embarrassment over the fourth man. Gabri Beidhawi had been a medical clerk for five years. He had failed the testing twice before, but his father was a rich and powerful man who had flattered and cozened the
hadji
Davout Hosein, the administrator of the
madrassa,
and Hosein had requested that Beidhawi be tested again.

Rob had been a student with Beidhawi and knew him for a lazy wastrel, careless and callous in treating patients. During the third examining he showed himself to be ill prepared.

Rob knew what Ibn Sina would have done. “I reject the candidate,” he said firmly and with little regret. The other examiners hastened to concur, and the board was adjourned.

Several days after the examinations, Ibn Sina came to the
maristan.

“Welcome back, Master!” Rob said, gladdened.

Ibn Sina shook his head. “I haven’t returned.” He appeared tired and worn, and he told Rob he had come for an evaluation which he wished performed by al-Juzjani and Jesse ben Benjamin.

They sat with him in an examining room and talked with him, gathering the history of his complaint as he had taught them to do.

He had waited at home, hoping soon to resume his duties, he told them. But he had never recovered from the twin shocks of losing first Reza and then Despina, and he had begun to look and feel poorly.

He had felt lassitude and weakness, an inability to make the effort required for the simplest of tasks. At first he had attributed his symptoms to acute melancholia. “For we all know well that the spirit can do terrible and strange things to the body.”

But lately his bowel movements had become explosive and his stools had been besmeared with mucus, pus, and blood; and so he had requested this medical examination.

They performed the search as though they would never have another chance to inspect a human being. They overlooked nothing. Ibn Sina sat with sweet patience and allowed them to prod and press and thump and listen and question.

When they were through, al-Juzjani was pale but put on an optimistic face. “It is the bloody flux, Master, brought on by the aggravation of your emotions.”

But Rob’s intuition had told him something else. He looked at his beloved teacher. “I believe it is schirri, the early stages.”

Ibn Sina blinked once. “Cancer of the intestine?” he said, as calmly as if talking to a patient he had never met.

Rob nodded, trying not to think of the slow torture of the disease.

Al-Juzjani was ruddy with rage at being overruled, but Ibn Sina soothed him. That is why he had asked for the two of them, Rob realized—he had known al-Juzjani would be so blinded with love he would be unable to find a loathsome truth.

Rob’s legs felt weak. He took Ibn Sina’s hands in his own, and their eyes met and held. “You are still strong, Master. You must keep your bowels open, to guard against the accumulation of black bile that would cause the cancer to grow.”

The Chief Physician nodded.

“I pray I’ve made an error in diagnosis,” Rob said.

Ibn Sina favored him with a small smile. “Prayer can do no hurt.”

He told Ibn Sina he would like to visit him soon and pass an evening with the Shah’s Game, and the old man said Jesse ben Benjamin would always be welcome in his house.

69

GREEN MELONS

On a dry and dusty day near the end of the summer, out of the haze to the northeast came a caravan of one hundred and sixteen belled camels. The beasts, all in a line and spewing ropy saliva under the exertion of carrying heavy loads of iron ore, wound into Ispahan late in the afternoon. Al
ā
had hoped Dhan Vangalil would use the ore to make many weapons of blue patterned steel. Tests by the swordsmith, alas, subsequently would prove the iron in the ore to be too soft for that purpose, but by nightfall news brought by the caravan had created a stir of excitement among some in the city.

A man named Khendi, the caravan’s captain of drovers, was summoned to the palace to repeat details of the intelligence for the Shah’s own ears, and then he was taken to the
maristan
to tell his tale to the doctors there.

Over a period of months Mahmud, the Sultan of Ghazna, had become gravely ill, with fever and so much pus in his chest that it caused a broad, soft bulge in his back, and his physicians had decided that if Mahmud was to live, this lump would have to be drained.

One of the details Khendi brought was that the Sultan’s back had been smeared with a thin wash of potter’s clay.

“Why was that?” one of the newest physicians asked.

Khendi shrugged, but al-Juzjani, who served as their leader in Ibn Sina’s absence, knew the answer. “The clay must be watched attentively, for the first patch to dry indicates the hottest part of the skin and is therefore the best place for cutting.”

When the surgeons opened the Sultan corruption sprang forth, Khendi said, and to rid Mahmud of the remaining pus, they inserted drains.

“Did the cutting scalpel have a round blade or a pointed one?” al-Juzjani asked.

“Did they dose him for the pain?”

“Were the drains fashioned of tin or of linen wicks?”

“Was the pus dark or white?”

“Were there traces of blood in it?”

“Lords! My lords, I am a drovers’ captain and not a
hakim!”
Khendi exclaimed in anguish. “I have the answers to none of these questions. I know only one thing more, masters.”

“And what is that?” al-Juzjani asked.

“Three days after they cut him, lords, the Sultan of Ghazna was dead.”

They had been two young lions, Al
ā
and Mahmud. Each had come early to his throne to follow a strong father, and each had kept the other in sight while their kingdoms watched, aware that one day they would clash, that Ghazna would eat Persia or Persia would eat Ghazna.

It had never come to pass. They had circled each other warily and at times their forces had skirmished, but each had waited, sensing the time was not right for total war. Yet Mahmud never was out of Al
ā
’s thoughts. Often the Shah dreamed of him. It was always the same dream, with their armies massed and eager and Al
ā
riding out alone toward Mahmud’s fierce Afghan tribesmen, hurling down the single combat call to the Sultan as Ardashir had roared challenge to Ardewan, the survivor to claim his destiny as the true and proven King of Kings.

Now Allah had intervened and Al
ā
would never meet Mahmud in combat. In the four days after the arrival of the camel caravan, three experienced and trusted spies rode separately into Ispahan and spent time in the House of Paradise, and from their reports the Shah began to perceive a clear picture of what had occurred in the capital city of Ghazni.

Immediately following the Sultan’s death, Mahmud’s son Muhammad had attempted to mount the throne but was thwarted by his brother Abu Said Mas
ū
d, a young warrior with the firm support of the army. Within hours, Muhammad was a shackled prisoner and Mas
ū
d had been declared Sultan. Mahmud’s funeral was a wild affair, part grim leavetaking and part frenzied celebration, and when it was through Mas
ū
d had called his chieftains together and declared his intention to do what his father never had done: the army was put on notice that it would march against Ispahan within days.

It was intelligence that would finally bring Al
ā
out of the House of Paradise.

The planned invasion was not unwelcome to him, for two reasons. Mas
ū
d was impetuous and untried, and Al
ā
was pleased by the chance to pit his generalship against the stripling’s. And because there was something in
the Persian soul that loved war, he was shrewd enough to realize that the conflict would be embraced by his people as a foil to the pious restrictions under which the
mullahs
had forced them to live.

He held military meetings that were small celebrations, with wine and women making their appearances at the proper times, as in days gone by. Al
ā
and his commanders pored over their charts and saw that from Ghazna there was only one route that was feasible for a large force. Mas
ū
d must cross the clay ridges and foothills to the north of the Dasht-i-Kavir, skirting the great desert until his army was deep into Hamadh
ā
n. Thence they would turn south.

But Al
ā
decided that a Persian army would march to Hamadh
ā
n and meet them before they could fall upon Ispahan.

The preparations of Al
ā
’s army was the sole topic of conversation, not to be escaped even in the
maristan,
though Rob tried. He didn’t think of the impending war because he wished no part of it. His debt to Al
ā
, while it had been considerable, was paid. The raids in India had convinced him he never wanted to go soldiering again.

So he worried and waited for a royal summons that didn’t come.

In the meantime he worked hard. Qasim’s abdominal pains had disappeared; to the former drover’s delight Rob continued to prescribe a daily portion of wine and returned him to his duties in the charnel house. Rob was caring for more patients than ever, for al-Juzjani had taken on many of the duties of Chief Physician and had turned over a number of his patients to other physicians, Rob among them.

He was stunned to hear that Ibn Sina had volunteered to lead the surgeons who would accompany Al
ā
’s army north. Al-Juzjani, who had gotten over his anger or hidden it, told him.

“A waste, to send such a mind to war.”

Al-Juzjani shrugged. “The Master wishes one last campaign.”

“He is old and won’t survive.”

“He has looked old forever but he hasn’t yet lived sixty years.” Al-Juzjani sighed bitterly. “I believe he hopes an arrow or a spear will find him. It wouldn’t be tragedy to meet a quicker death than now appears to lie in store for him.”

The Prince of Physicians quickly let it be known that he had chosen a party of eleven to accompany him as surgeons to the Persian army. Four were medical students, three were the newest of the young doctors, and four were veteran physicians.

Now al-Juzjani became Chief Physician in title as well as in fact. It was
a grim promotion in that it caused the medical community to realize that Ibn Sina would not be back as their leader.