“And what does he say of that?” asked Cusa, avidly.
“He said that Rome was already lost, but that man is not lost, a sophistry I did not refrain from pointing out to him. Man is his own executioner; he hangs himself on his own cross; he is his own disease, his own fate, his own death. His civilizations are an expression of him. But our young physician has no concern for civilizations. He thinks only of the oppressed and the despised and the rejected, who are so because their nation is rotten and because they have made it so. Nevertheless, he is as fixed in his narrow idea as a fly in amber. Men suffer from men, I tell him, but he replies that something amorphous like society is the torturer of man. Only God, thinks he, and the powerful He has created, are the oppressors.”
Keptah turned to Cusa, who was reflecting on this. As he had asked many times before, he asked now, “You are certain it was plague on that ship?”
“Master Keptah, of a certainty it was. I have described the symptoms over and over to you, and the look of the dead, and the buboes and the bloody vomit.”
Keptah nodded. “Even though I know much I cannot tell you, my good Cusa, I am still amazed at what you have told me.”
Cusa peered at Keptah curiously in the warm gold and scarlet sun set. “You are very mysterious. I myself believe him touched with divinity. He is a protégé of Chiron; there is no doubt of that. I try to remember it when he most exasperates me.”
Keptah was silent a little, then he said, “There is something else which devours and saddens him besides his sorrow over Diodorus.”
Cusa brightened, for he was as bad a gossip as his wife, Calliope. For the first time he told Keptah of the hidden lady in the litter who had come to say farewell to Lucanus on the docks of Alexandria. “I saw her white hand,” he said, with relish, “though not her face. But the hand was remarkably small and beautiful, and I have never seen an ugly woman with a hand like that, nor a truly lovely woman who had an ugly hand. And Lucanus came back to the ship with a dead still face, and his eyes were sunken with grief and despair. Incidentally, he had kissed that hand.”
Keptah sat up and stroked his chin; there was a look of excitement in his expression. “A lady! Ladies do not come down to docks crowded with slaves and rabble to say farewell unless they love and are loved. Ah, it is all of a piece! He has renounced the lady, and all ladies, because of his obsession. Nevertheless, I rejoice. Let us continue to hope. If the lady has a litter and slaves, then she has money, and a woman in love and with money is as relentless and audacious and unshakable as a tiger. He will see her again!”
“She will have to be very ruthless indeed,” said Cusa, wryly. “But again, it is possible you are right. He spent many nights wandering around the ship like a shade, unspeaking. I also heard him cry out in his sleep, mournfully, as one cries for the lost.”
Lucanus sat with his mother and brothers and sister in the evening. He was even more quiet than usual. He looked at the shadowed green valleys and the sunset-lit hills; the air was iridescent, as if filled with powdered jewels, and in the darker hollows of the gardens the fireflies began to sparkle silently.
The flesh of Iris had lost its rosy glow and had become palely translucent, like mother-of-pearl, and the blue of her eyes had intensified with the silent serenity of resigned sorrow. Lucanus was filled with pride and pity; he saw her not only as his mother but as a wife and a woman, and he often wondered what her thoughts were, and her desires. Sometimes he was shy with her. Sometimes she amazed him by her acceptance of events and the death of her beloved husband. He would have preferred rebellion and anger against fate. Once she had said to him, “I know that Diodorus lives, and that someday I will join him in gladness and joy, for God is good, and He will not disappoint His children.” There were times when she had an impenetrable mystery for Lucanus.
She loved her own children by Diodorus, little Aurelia and Gaius Octavius, but she seemed to love the son of Diodorus and Aurelia even more. The merry Priscus was affectionate and devoted, and adored his stepmother, and for all his affable nature he had a deep sense of responsibility, though he was hardly five years old. He was as a father towards his little sister, whose hair resembled her mother’s and whose soft brown eyes glimmered with sweetness, and towards his little brother, not yet two, who toddled gravely about on the grass and inspected flowers like a philosopher. Little Gaius recalled his father astonishingly, and sometimes this amused Lucanus. But Priscus stirred his heart with pain, for his face was the face of his dead sister, Rubria, and he had Rubria’s vivacity and gaiety.
Gaius wished to inspect the fireflies, but Iris caught him just as he stumbled and held him on her knee, kissing him. Her golden hair was illuminated briefly by a last lance of sunlight before it expired behind the darkening hills with their gilded crests. Gaius inspected his mother’s face seriously, then leaned his dark round head against her bosom, and she bent over him. “Though he barely speaks as yet,” said Iris, “he has the most profound thoughts and asks the most profound questions of the world.” She glanced at Lucanus. “Like his dear and beloved brother,” she added, softly.
Lucanus said nothing; he had tried, all these months, to hold himself apart from his family for terror of loving them too much. He was filled with a wild restlessness and anxiety. He must leave as soon as possible or these children and their mother would seize his heart and break it with grief in their hands. He watched the burnished moon quivering over one hill. To him the moon was like an old skull, weathered with sorrow and tragedy. Its beauty, therefore, did not move him, for it was the beauty of death, just as in love there is always that threatening beauty.
Iris was watching him from under her lashes. She saw the white gloom of his face, the rigidity of his expression, and his withheld eyes. She sighed. Then she said, “I was never a woman of so ardent a temper that I could tell my emotions freely. But you must understand, my dear son, what it means to me to have my family with me, and you home at last after all those years. Is it not wonderful that you have been appointed, through the graciousness of Caesar, to be the Chief Medical Officer in Rome? You will be in the city three days a week only, and then will return here, where the household needs you. And your mother most of all,” she added, in a lower tone.
Lucanus’ lips parted, then he was silent again. He looked at the beautiful ring Diodorus had had made for him; the tribune had intended to present this ring to his adopted son on his return. It had been most cunningly and exquisitely made, a broad and intricately carved band of gold in which was set a large green emerald. On this emerald there had been imposed the golden caduceus, the sign of the physician, the staff entwined by two serpents and surmounted by the wings of Mercury inset with rubies. To Priscus had been left the knightly ring of his father, yet it was not so marvelous and rich as this, and, to Lucanus, it was not half so significant. Diodorus had not forgotten Lucanus in the matter of money. He had made him the beneficiary of a very large sum and had appointed him, in the event of the death of their mother, the guardian of his children. But, Lucanus told himself, though his mother was old, almost thirty-eight, she was in good health and could be expected to live a number of years yet.
He saw that he must speak now, though he had avoided this for over six months, fearing to disturb his mother and heighten her grief. He said, as gently as possible, “I must tell you, Mother. I cannot accept the appointment of Tiberius. I cannot remain here.”
Iris waited. Lucanus gazed at her, expecting tears and protests and disbelief. But Iris waited calmly. Then she said, “Tell me, my son.”
And so he told her, and she listened, her head bent, her hands absently fondling little Gaius, who was falling asleep. Priscus and Aurelia busily pursued the fireflies, and their young chatter and laughter mingled with the evening songs of the birds, and the moon rose higher and the pungent scent of earth and the cypresses and the newly flowering trees became insistent. All at once the tips of the cypresses silvered.
Iris was so silent after Lucanus had finished speak
ing that he said at last, “You do not understand.”
“Yes,” said Iris, “I understand. You are very like Diodorus, my dear son, and this makes me happy. You have the same sternness and discipline of character, the same dedicated duty, rare things in this debauched world. You are aware, of course, that the path you have laid out for yourself is a sorrowful and lonely one, and filled with sharp stones, and lighted by no sun?”
“Yes,” he said. “But that does not matter. I have long known that the world holds no promise of joy for me, or happiness.”
“I had prayed,” said Iris, “that you would marry and bring your wife to this house, and that there would be grandchildren to rejoice me.”
Lucanus shook his head.
“You have not forgotten Rubria,” Iris said, and sighed again.
“I shall never forget her.” Lucanus hesitated, then spoke abruptly. “Mother, I love a woman who seems to me Rubria reborn. It is in her nature that I have found the resemblance, the same gentleness and soft gaiety, the same pureness of character, the same womanly strength. Her name is Sara bas Elazar. That is all I can tell you. To me she mingles in my mind with Rubria so that they are one and the same. Yet as Rubria vanished, so she must vanish from my life.”
This, to Iris, was a great calamity. Tears stood in her eyes. “The love between a man and a woman is a holy thing, my son, and is blessed.”
“It is not for me,” said Lucanus, with firmness, and his mother saw his face. After a while he said, “I have written today to Caesar, thanking him for his offer, but refusing it. Rome has no need of me, as I have told you. The city is full of excellent sanitoria and excellent physicians. There is even a good sanitorium on an island in the Tiber for the most abandoned of slaves and criminals. But in the cities and towns and lost places along the Great Sea there are few places for the sick and the poor.”
Though she understood, Iris was a little baffled. So handsome and gifted a young man, and of such wealth, and with a loving family, and looked upon by Caesar himself with graciousness! Yet he would abandon all these for the faceless multitudes in cities without a name for her.
“I wish to be free,” said Lucanus. “The more wants a man has, the less freedom. I want nothing for myself.” His hands lay still on his knees, and they were like carved stone in the rising moon, and the marvelous ring on his finger faintly glittered. He wore a simple cheap tunic. His wardrobe was as poor and limited as a humble freedman’s. Yet, thought his mother, he has a majesty beyond that of Caesar’s and a nobility like the gods’. Her heart suddenly lightened, and she was mysteriously comforted, and she looked at the darkening sky as if she had heard a voice from it.
The nurses came from the pleasant house behind them for the children, and Iris rose. When the nurses bore the children away she followed them with her blue eyes, which were tenderly misted. Then she put her hand on her son’s shoulder. “God be with you always, my dear Lucanus,” she said, and left him.
Keptah found Lucanus alone in the mellow moonlight under the glossy myrtle trees. The cypresses leaned blackly against the moon, and a great stillness enveloped the gardens. Keptah sat down in Iris’ chair and stared at his old pupil. “You have told your mother,” he stated.
Lucanus moved restlessly. “I have told her. She understands.”
“You have the most amazing view of life,” said Keptah. “As I do not have that view, though honoring yours, I can only be astonished. Yet, of course, it was ordained.”
“By whom?” asked Lucanus, contemptuously. “I have ordained my life.”
Keptah shook his head. “No.” He paused a moment. “You are also in error about a number of things, and this error must be corrected or you will not truly find your way. To you nature is chaotic, swept with the winds of anarchy, senseless, inspired only by violence, and clamorous but essentially purposeless life. Civilization, to you, is man’s pathetic attempt to bring order to nature, to regulate it into some form of meaning, to guide its pointlessness into some semblance of significance. To you nature in its seeding, its growth, its death is a sum without an equation, a circle encompassing nothingness, a tree that flowers and bears fruit and dies in a grim desert. Such thoughts are lethal; they are freighted with death.”
“What else?” said Lucanus, impatiently. He thought that Keptah was becoming as tedious as Joseph ben Gamliel.
Again Keptah shook his head. “You are wrong. Nature is absolute order, ruled by absolute and immutable laws laid down at the beginning of the universe by God. Civilizations, so long as they agree with nature and its laws, such as creation, freedom of growth, the dignity of all that lives, and beauty of form, and reverence for the being of God and their own being, survive. Once they turn to rigidity and anonymousness under the State, and regulation of large and small forms to one flowerless level, the degradation of the best to the fruitless masses of men, the rejection of freedom for all — then nature must destroy them, through wars or pestilences or quick decay. You are in the midst, in these days, of the workings of the Law.”
“We are only continuing the endless conversations on the same matter which we have had all these months,” said Lucanus, wearily.
“I will not discuss it again,” said Keptah. “I only wish to remind you that you are wrong. Man is not the poor, voiceless, and suffering creature you think he is. He is a Fury, born of Hecate, and only One can save him from his self-determined fate.”
He waited for the stubborn Lucanus to speak, but he did not. Then Keptah said, “Are you of flesh and blood, and not stone? Your concern for men is impersonal, though compassionate. I fear it is even vengeful. You are still young. The world is full of kind and loving women. You should have a wife.”
Lucanus flushed and turned to him angrily. “Who are you to speak so? You have never married.”
Keptah looked at him strangely. “Aeneas and Diodorus were not the only men who loved your mother. I have known Iris since she was a child. You think me presumptuous, I who was once a slave?”
“I think of no man as a slave,” said Lucanus. He stared at Keptah, and his hard young face softened for a moment.
“But all men are slaves. They have willed it so. Only God can free them, He who gave them freedom at their birth, though they have renounced it and always will renounce it.” Keptah stood up. Then, without speaking again, he left Lucanus.
Lucanus looked at the sky, which was now exploding with blazing stars. He suddenly thought of the Star he had seen as a child. The Egyptian astronomers had told him of that Star. It was only a Nova. At first they had believed it a meteor, but it had moved too slowly, had been too brilliant, too steadfast in its passage. It had vanished by the next night. Lucanus remembered the deep stirring of his heart when he had seen that Star, the passionate and nameless assurance which had come to him, the intense joy. Now he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sensation of profound loss and sorrow, and he covered his face with his hands.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next day, Plotius, the captain of Caesar’s own Praetorians, arrived at the house of Diodorus in his official chariot, surrounded by a picked detachment of the guards. As he had visited this house often since Diodorus’ death and had become very fond of Keptah, whom he honored as a wise man, his visit aroused no consternation. Keptah invited him to have refreshments, but Plotius said, “I have not come today for a fruitful gossip with you, my good Keptah. I have come on orders of Caesar. He wishes to see the son of Diodorus, Lucanus, at once.”
When Keptah showed some alarm, Plotius smiled. “You will remember that Caesar delivered the funeral oration. He has repeatedly mentioned, in my presence, his deep regard for Diodorus, and his determination to honor his memory. I believe that Lucanus sent him a message yesterday, and he wishes to discuss the contents of that message with him.”
“I think I know what it is,” said Keptah. “Lucanus has refused the appointment of Chief Medical Officer in Rome.”
“Is the physician mad?” said Plotius, marveling and nodding.
/> “In a manner of speaking,” said Keptah.
Plotius, in his armor and clothed with the strongest laws of Rome, accompanied Keptah into the bright gardens where Lucanus was playing, like a child, with his brothers and sister. Little Aurelia was riding on his back; he was pretending to be an untamed horse, to the delight of the children, and he was making ferocious noises and tossing his yellow head. Plotius thought it a most beautiful scene. He was also amazed at Lucanus’ handsomeness. But when the young physician saw his visitors he removed Aurelia from his back and waved away the disappointed children, who ran off to play at the far end of the gardens. Priscus returned after a moment, fascinated as always by the armored soldier who often brought him sweetmeats and declared him to be the young Diodorus himself.