He had written only one line pertinent to Iris: “I trust that you, my old playmate, my sister in spirit, will consent to return with me, to continue to mother my son.”
Iris sighed. She hoped for much more than that! But her own son would be far in Alexandria, her son so driven, so haunted, so unremittingly grief-stricken, so somber and desolate. Ah, she thought, but he is young, and there is much study and much to be learned. She realized that Lucanus was very like herself in nature as well as in appearance: patient, dedicated, deeply if calmly loving, reserved in speech and in action, living a hidden if vital life, disciplined and somewhat rigid in temperament. He had not yet acquired her present flexibility, her gentle resignation, her profound faith that God was good and not malevolent.
They had always communicated less in speech than in eloquent glance, a slight smile, the smallest gesture, the least inclination of head. There had always been the most profound understanding between them, until Rubria had died. Then Lucanus had withdrawn even from his mother and had stood coldly and repudiatingly at a distance. He had refused to be interested in the child he had saved until today, though Iris tenderly guessed that this was less coldness than a fear of becoming involved once more in personal love for anything, for in love, he believed, there was an ever-present danger and threat of disaster.
She was intensely moved when Lucanus suddenly squatted on his heels in order to bring his face on a level with the baby’s. Priscus was delighted. He reached out and seized Lucanus’ nose. “He has a hand like a gladiator!” exclaimed the young man. “And talons like an eagle!”
Priscus screamed with joy. He released Lucanus’ nose and grasped the young man’s curling forelock and pulled. Lucanus marveled at his strength. Here was a child who only six months ago had lain in his arms like a limp puppet, breathless and blue, limp as melting wax. All at once Lucanus was filled with pride and affection. He held out his arms for the boy, and Priscus promptly threw himself into them. The warmth of his small and sturdy body pierced to Lucanus’ very heart; he kissed the bare brown shoulders, the dimpled knees and elbows. He kissed the eyes so like Rubria’s, and then, very tenderly, the mouth that was a small replica of hers. His eyelids prickled, and his throat tightened. Oh, let me not love again! he prayed to some faceless deity.
He put the protesting infant into Iris’ arms, rose abruptly, and went away. Iris followed him with a long and mournful glance, yet she was consoled.
The morning after the evening of Diodorus’ return to Antioch the tribune commanded that Keptah attend him. The physician entered his master’s library, and his hooded eyes instantly appraised his mental and physical condition. Diodorus’ face was worn and paler, and years seemed to have been added to his features, yet there was a grim quietness about him, and his beaked face had acquired a harder maturity. He was more the Roman than ever, and less simple than he had ever been.
“I am in good health,” he said abruptly, before Keptah could even greet him. “It is not necessary for your medical eyes to scan me. Enough. Within four weeks I shall leave for Rome, with all my household. You are no longer a slave. I understand you have been buying vineyards and olive groves in this vicinity, and that you have some investments in Rome itself. I have no time to waste. I cannot command you as a freedman, I can only ask you. Will you return with me to Rome?”
“Is it necessary to ask me that, Master?”
Diodorus said nothing for a moment. Then he said with that new quietness of his, “I have learned one thing in all those seven months in Rome: a man can never trust another man. If he does, it is at his own peril, and he who denies this is either a liar or a fool. Who was the philosopher who said, ‘Be friendly with all, be intimate with none’? It is not only, as some have said to me in Rome, that man is intrinsically evil, it is that he is never the same man from hour to hour, from day to day. My question was not an insult to you. I was merely inquiring.”
Keptah did not answer. He was full of compassion for this thinner and less vehement man, whose fierce eyes were still dimmed and fixed with grief. A certain buoyancy had gone from the tribune, and his vitality was in abeyance. Yet there was a ferocity and gloom about him.
Diodorus went on, “I thought that when I went to Rome I would foregather with my old comrades, and that they would remember me affectionately. You see what a fool I was. It is true that they greeted me with an affectation of much pleasure. That is because they recalled that I have much influence even with that Tiberius who at least remembers that I am an excellent soldier if not a human being. I thought I would find some surcease in Rome — ” He paused, and a dark shadow ran over his face. He stood up and poured a goblet of wine, then motioned to Keptah to help himself.
“In short, Master,” said Keptah, after he had respectfully sipped his wine, “you discovered that men are no different in Rome than they are in Syria, or in Britain or in Gaul or in Judea or Egypt or in Greece.”
Diodorus put down his goblet slowly, and not with his usual thump. There was a lack of his former emphasis in his manner and his voice. He said, “That is quite true. But then I had been away from Rome a long time, and I had forgotten. I will speak to you about that later.” He began to walk up and down the library with a heavy and sluggish tread. “Why are intelligence and intellect so rare? Why does one have to seek them as one seeks gold?”
“The gods,” said Keptah, wryly, “are still jealous of their wisdom. It is Promethean fire, and when it burns in any man the gods punish him, but his fellows punish him more. It has also been said that you cannot teach a man anything; you can only assist him in finding it within himself. If he has no mind, then all your exhortations, all your lessons, all you attempt to do to improve his environment, all your sacrifices and your ideals will not stir him from his beasthood. For your presumption that he has a mind because he has the shape of a man he will turn and rend you. And I find that a just retribution.”
Diodorus gave him a sharp glance. He poured another goblet of wine and drank deeply of it. Then he looked at the bottom of the goblet and seemed to address it and not Keptah. “I need a mother for my son.”
Keptah’s face changed in alarm. “You have found such a lady in Rome, Master?” He thought of Iris with consternation. But Diodorus was a Roman!
“I have done a vile thing,” said Diodorus, as if Keptah had not spoken. Now he looked at his physician, and his face was stern. “Why do I trust you, you a man who may betray me tomorrow? Shall I bribe you to keep your peace and not bruit it about in Rome? Can I depend on it that you will not whisper it into some trollop’s ear when in your cups — if you are ever in your cups? Will you guarantee that you will not become my enemy this year or next? I think it better for you not to return with me to Rome after all.”
“As you will, Master,” said Keptah, and there was some anger in his voice.
Now Diodorus cast the goblet down with some of his old fire. “After all,” he said, “who would take the word of a former slave against the word of Diodorus?”
Keptah folded his robed arms across his breast. “That is true,” he said. “Therefore you need not confide in me, Master. I have asked for no confidence. For your own peace of mind I prefer that you do not give it.”
“Still, I would feel safer with you in Rome as my physician. I have heard tales! They may not be true, but it is said that Tiberius has rid himself of some intransigent men, including two senators, by bribing their physicians. It is most likely a lie; Tiberius may be coldhearted, but poison is not a soldier’s way of dealing with enemies, even if he does employ informers. However, I have it on excellent authority that many rich and depraved rascals in high places in Rome have bribed the physicians of men whose wives they have coveted, or estates, or some political advantage.” He gave Keptah an odd smile. “When the scandal leaked out, it was not the bribers who were punished. The physicians were usually found in the Tiber a short time later.”
Keptah could not prevent himself from smiling broadly. “The Tiber does not attract me
as a burial place, Master.”
Diodorus laughed shortly, without merriment. “May the Furies take you! You have not yet understood. I need a friend. And I must go to a freedman for one! Is that not ironical?”
“And you found no friend among your comrades in arms, and in your own rank, Master?” asked Keptah.
“No.” Diodorus sat down and regarded the marble floor between his legs. “I see you have answered my question. However, to insure your presence with my household in Rome, and to keep you faithful, I will triple your stipend and give you a house of your own on my estates.”
“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.”
Chapter Fifteen
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 agon
y 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.
Dear and Glorious Physician Page 23