The Physician

  He and Yussuf sat and ate the fruit late one night in the House of Wisdom. The library was deserted.

  “I have gone back in time,” Yussuf said. “Far as I am able. Into antiquity. Even the Egyptians, whose embalming fame you know, were taught it was evil and a disfigurement of the dead to open the abdomen.”

  “But … when they made their mummies?”

  “They were hypocrites. They paid despised men called paraschistes to sin by making the forbidden initial incision. As soon as they made the cut the paraschistes fled lest they be stoned to death, an acknowledgment of guilt that allowed the respectable embalmers to empty the abdomen of organs and get on with their preservation.”

  “Did they study the organs they removed? Did they leave behind written observations?”

  “They embalmed for five thousand years, altogether eviscerating almost three-quarters of a billion human beings who had died of every ill, and they stored the viscera in vessels of clay, limestone, or alabaster, or simply threw them away. But there is no evidence that they ever studied the organs.

  “The Greeks—now that was different. And it happened in the same Nile region.” Yussuf helped himself to more dates. “Alexander the Great stormed through this Persia of ours like a beautiful, youthful god of war, nine hundred years before the birth of Mohammed. He conquered the ancient world, and at the northwestern end of the Nile River delta, on a strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis, he founded a graceful city to which he gave his own name.

  “Ten years later he was dead of a swamp fever, but Alexandria already was a center of Greek culture. In the breakup of the Alexandrian empire, Egypt and the new city fell to Ptolemy of Macedonia, one of the most scholarly of Alexander’s associates. Ptolemy established the Museum of Alexandria, the world’s first university, and the great Alexandria Library. All branches of knowledge prospered, but the school of medicine attracted the most promising students of the entire world. For the first and only time in man’s long history, anatomy became the keystone, and dissection of the human body was practiced on an extensive scale for the next three hundred years.”

  Rob leaned forward eagerly. “Then it is possible to read their descriptions of the diseases that afflict the internal organs?”

  Yussuf shook his head. “The books of their magnificent library were lost when Julius Caesar’s legions sacked Alexandria thirty years before the start of the Christian era. The Romans destroyed most of the writings of the Alexandrian physicians. Celsus collected what little was left and tried to preserve it in his work entitled De re medicina, but there is only one brief mention of ‘distemper seated in the large intestine principally affecting that part where I mentioned the cecum to be, accompanied by violent inflammation and vehement pains, particularly on the right side.’ ”

  Rob grunted in disappointment. “I know the quotation. Ibn Sina uses it when he teaches.”

  Yussuf shrugged. “So my delving into the past leaves you exactly where you were when I began. The descriptions you are seeking do not exist.”

  Rob nodded gloomily. “Why do you suppose that the only brief moment in history when physicians opened human beings came with the Greeks?”

  “They did not have the advantage of a single strong God who forbade them to desecrate the work of His creation. Instead, they had all those fornicators, those weak and squabbling gods and goddesses.” The librarian spat a mouthful of date seeds into his cupped palm and smiled sweetly. “They could dissect because they were, after all, only barbarians, Hakim,” he said.

  67

  TWO ARRIVALS

  Her pregnancy was too far advanced to permit her to ride, but Mary went on foot in order to buy the foodstuffs needed for her family, leading the donkey which bore her purchases and Rob J., who rode in a sling on the animal’s back. The burden of her unborn child tired her and vexed her back, and she moved slowly from one marketplace to another. As she generally did when she attended the Armenian market, she stopped in the leather shop to share a sherbet and a hot loaf of thin Persian bread with Prisca.

  Prisca always appeared happy to see her former employer and the baby she had suckled, but today she was especially voluble. Mary had been trying hard to learn the Persian tongue, but she could make out only a few words.

  Stranger. From afar. Same as the hakim. Like you.

  It was with no enlightenment and mutual frustration that the two women parted, and that evening Mary was irked as she reported the incident to her husband.

  He knew what Prisca had been trying to tell her, for the rumor had quickly reached the maristan. “A European is newly arrived in Ispahan.”

  “From what country?”

  “England. He’s a merchant.”

  “An Englishman?” She stared. Her face was flushed, and he noted the interest and excitement in her eyes and the way her hand remained unnoticed at her breast.

  “Why have you not gone to him at once?”

  “Mary …”

  “But you must! Do you know where he is staying?”

  “He’s in the Armenian quarter, that’s why Prisca knew of him. It’s said that at first he would consent to stay only with Christians.” Rob smiled. “But when he saw the hovels in which the few, poor Armenian Christians live, he quickly rented a finer house from a Muslim.”

  “You must write a message. Ask him to come to us for an evening meal.”

  “I don’t even know his name.”

  “What matter? Hire a messenger. Anyone in the Armenian quarter will direct him,” she said. “Rob! He will have tidings.”

  The last thing he wanted was dangerous contact with an English Christian. But he knew he couldn’t deny her this opportunity to hear of places closer to her heart than Persia, so he sat and wrote the letter.

  “I am Bostock. Charles Bostock.”

  At a glance, Rob remembered. On his first return to London after becoming the barber-surgeon’s boy, he and Barber had ridden for two days in the protection of Bostock’s long line of packhorses laden with salt from the brine works at Arundel. In camp they had juggled and the merchant had given Rob tuppence to spend when he reached London.

  “Jesse ben Benjamin. Physician of this place.”

  “Your invitation was writ in English. And you speak my language.”

  The answer could only be the one Rob had established in Ispahan. “I was reared in the town of Leeds.” He was more amused than concerned. Fourteen years had passed. The puppy he had once been had grown into a strange sort of a dog, he told himself, and there was little likelihood that Bostock could connect that juggling boy with this over-tall Jewish physician to whose Persian home Bostock had been drawn.

  “And this is my wife Mary, who is a Scot from the north country.”

  “Mistress.”

  Mary had ached for finery but her ponderous belly had made her best blue dress an impossibility and she wore a loose, tentlike black gown. But her scrubbed red hair gleamed richly. She wore an embroidered headband and her only piece of jewelry, a little crochet of seed pearls that hung between her brows.

  Bostock still had long hair held back with bows and ribbons, but now his hair was more gray than yellow. The ornate red velvet suit he wore, complete with soiled embroidery, was too warm for the clime and too costly for the occasion. Never were eyes so sharply weighing, Rob thought, so obviously calculating the worth of every animal, the house, their raiment, each piece of furniture. And with a mixture of curiosity and distaste assessing the swarthy and bearded Jew, the Celtic red-haired wife so perfectly ripe with child, and the sleeping baby who was further proof of the shameful union of this mixed pair.

  Despite his unhidden displeasure the visitor yearned to hear English as eagerly as they, and all three soon were chattering. Rob and Mary could not restrain themselves and their questions poured forth.

  “Have you intelligence of Scots’ lands?”

  “Was it good times or bad when you departed London?”

  “Was it peace there?”

>   “Was Canute still the king?”

  Bostock was made to sing for his supper, though the latest news was almost two years old. He knew naught of the lands of the Scots nor of the north of England. Times had remained prosperous and London was growing apace, with more dwellings being raised each year and the ships straining the facilities of the Thames. Two months before he had left England, Bostock reported, King Canute had died a natural death, and the day he had landed in Calais he learned of the death of Robert I, Duke of Normandy.

  “Bastards now rule on both sides of the Channel. In Normandy, Robert’s illegitimate son William, although he is still a boy, has become Duke of Normandy with the help of his dead father’s friends and kinsmen.

  “In England, succession rightfully belonged to Harthacnut, the son of Canute and Queen Emma, but for years Harthacnut has made an un-British life in Denmark and so the throne has been usurped by his younger half-brother. Harold Harefoot, whom Canute had acknowledged to be his bastard son out of a little-known Northampton woman named Aelfgifu, is now the King of England.”

  “Where are Edward and Alfred, the two princes Emma bore by King Aethelred before her marriage to King Canute?” Rob asked.

  “They are in Normandy under the protection of Duke William’s court, and it may be presumed that they are gazing across the Channel with great interest,” Bostock said.

  Starved as they were for details of home, by now the smells of Mary’s meal had made all three hungry for food as well, and the merchant’s eyes warmed somewhat when he saw what she had prepared in his honor.

  A brace of pheasants, well oiled and frequently basted, stuffed in the Persian manner with rice and grapes, and pot-cooked slowly and long. A summer salad. Sweet melons. An apricot-and-honey tart. Not least, a skin of good pinkish wine, bought at expense and peril. Mary had gone with Rob to the Jewish market, where at first Hinda had vehemently denied she had wine, glancing about fearfully to see who had overheard their request. After much pleading and the exchange of three times the ordinary cost, a wineskin had been dug from the middle of a bag of grain and Mary had carried it home hidden from the mullahs in the sling next to her sleeping child.

  Bostock devoted himself to the meal but presently, after a great belch, declared that he would be leaving for Europe in a few days’ time.

  “Reaching Constantinople on churchly business, I couldn’t resist continuing eastward. Know you that the King of England will elevate to thane any merchant-adventurer who dares to make three trips to open foreign parts to English trade? Well, that is true, and it’s a fine way for a free man to attain noble rank and at the same time gain high profits. ‘Silks,’ I thought. If I might follow the Silk Road I could bring back cargo that would allow me to buy London! I was happy to reach Persia, where I have bought, instead of silks, rugs and fine weavings. But I shall never return here, for there’s little profit in it—I must pay a small army to get them back to England.”

  When Rob sought to find similarity in their eastward routes of travel, Bostock revealed that from England he had gone first to Rome. “Combining business with an errand for Aethelnoth, the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the Lateran Palace, Pope Benedict IX promised me ample reward for expeditiones in terra et mari and commanded me in the name of Christ Jesus to ply my merchant’s way to Constantinople, there to deliver papal letters to Patriarch Alexius.”

  “A papal legate!” Mary exclaimed.

  Less a legate than a messenger, Rob surmised drily, though it was plain Bostock enjoyed Mary’s wonder.

  “For six hundred years, Eastern Church has disputed Western Church,” the merchant said, thick with importance. “In Constantinople Alexius is viewed as the Pope’s equal, to Holy Rome’s aversion. The Patriarch’s damned bearded priests marry—they marry! And they neither pray to Jesus and Mary nor treat the Trinity with sufficient awe. Thus the letters of complaint are carried to and fro.”

  The ewer was empty and Rob took it into the next room to replenish it from the wineskin.

  “Are you a Christian?”

  “I am,” she said.

  “Then how have you become chattel to this Jew? Were you taken by pirates or Muslims and sold to him?”

  “I am his wife,” she said clearly.

  In the next room Rob paused in the task of filling the ewer with wine and listened, his lips drawn in a mirthless grin. So great was the Englishman’s contempt for him that Bostock didn’t bother to lower his voice.

  “I would accommodate my caravan for you and the child. You could have a litter and bearers until you’ve given birth and are able to sit a horse.”

  “It is not a possibility, Master Bostock. I am my husband’s, gladly and by agreement,” Mary said, but she thanked him coolly.

  He replied with grave courtesy that it was Christian duty, what he would want another man to offer his own daughter if, Jesus forbid, she might find herself in similar circumstances.

  Rob Cole returned wishing to do Bostock bodily harm, but Jesse ben Benjamin behaved with Eastern hospitality, pouring wine for his guest instead of throttling him. Conversation was resentful and sparse, however. The English merchant departed almost immediately after he was done eating, and Rob and Mary were left with one another.

  They were occupied with their own thoughts as they gathered up the ruins of the meal.

  Finally she said, “Shall we ever go home?”

  He was astonished. “Of course we shall.”

  “Bostock was not my only chance?”

  “I swear it.”

  Her eyes glistened. “He’s right to hire a protecting army. The journey is so dangerous … how shall two children travel so far and survive?”

  There was more of her than fit, but he took her carefully into his arms. “After we reach Constantinople we will be Christians, and we will join a strong caravan.”

  “And between here and Constantinople?”

  “I learned the secret as I traveled here.” He helped her to lower herself to the mat. It was difficult for her now, because no matter how she lay, soon some part of her ached. He held her and stroked her head, talking to her as though telling a comforting story to a child. “From Ispahan to Constantinople I shall remain Jesse ben Benjamin. And we shall be taken in by Jewish village after Jewish village, and fed and safeguarded and guided, like a man crossing a dangerous stream by stepping from one safe rock to another.” He touched her face. Placing his palm on the great warm stomach he felt the unborn child move and was filled with gratitude and pity. That is how it would happen, he assured himself. But he couldn’t tell her when it would come to pass.

  He had become accustomed to sleeping with his body curled around the huge hardness of her stomach but one night he was awakened to feel wetness as well as warmth, and when he had gathered his wits he struggled into his clothes and ran for Nitka the Midwife. Although she was accustomed to people hammering on her door while the world slept, she emerged cranky and snappish, ordering him to be quiet and patient.

  “She has cast out her water.”

  “All right, all right,” she grumbled.

  Soon they made a caravan through the black street, Rob lighting the way with a torch, Nitka following with a great bag of washed rags, trailed by her two burly sons grunting and gasping under the weight of the birthing chair.

  Chofni and Shemuel set the chair next to the fireplace like a throne and Nitka ordered Rob to kindle a fire, for in the middle of the night the air was cool. Mary climbed into the chair like a naked queen. When the sons left they carried away Rob J. for safekeeping during his mother’s labor. In Yehuddiyyeh neighbors did such things for one another, even when one of them was a goya.

  Mary lost her royal bearing with the first pain, and the grunting, grinding cry that issued from her throat filled Rob with dismay. The chair was of stout construction so it could withstand any amount of bucking and thrashing and Nitka went about the task of folding and stacking her rags, obviously undisturbed as Mary gripped the handles at the side of the chair and so
bbed.

  Her legs trembled all the time but during the terrible cramping they shook and jerked. After the third pain Rob stood behind her and pulled her shoulders against the back of the chair. Mary showed her teeth and snarled like a wolf; he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had bitten him or howled.

  He had cut off men’s limbs and become inured to every foul disease, but he felt the blood rushing from his head. The midwife looked at him hard and, taking a fold of flesh on his arm between her wiry fingers, she squeezed. The painful pinch restored his senses and he did not disgrace himself.

  “Out,” Nitka said. “Out, out!”

  So he went into the garden and stood in the dark, listening to the sounds that followed him out of the house. It was cool and quiet; he thought briefly about vipers coming out of the stone wall and decided he didn’t care. He lost track of time, but eventually knew that the fire would be in need of tending, so he went back inside to replenish it.

  When he looked at Mary, her knees were spread wide.

  “Now you will bear down,” Nitka commanded sternly. “Work, my friend. Work!”

  Transfixed, he saw the crown of the baby’s head appear between his wife’s thighs, like the pate of a monk with a wet red tonsure, and he fled for the garden again. He was there a long time until he heard the thin wail, then he went back in and saw the infant.

  “Another boy,” Nitka said briskly, clearing mucus from the tiny mouth with the tip of her little finger.

  The thick, ropy umbilicus looked blue in the thin light of dawn.

  “It was much easier than the first time,” Mary told him.

  Nitka cleaned and comforted, and gave Rob the afterbirth to bury in the garden. The midwife accepted generous payment with a satisfied nod and went home.

  When they were alone in their bedchamber they embraced, then Mary asked for water and christened the child Thomas Scott Cole.