The Physician

by Noah Gordon

  Cullen was accompanied by a man dressed in stained brown trousers and a ragged gray kirtle; he said this was Seredy, whom he had hired as servant and interpreter.

  To Rob’s surprise, he learned that he was no longer in Bohemia but unknowingly had crossed into the country of Hungary two days before. The village they had so transformed was called Vac. Though bread and cheese were available from the inhabitants, provision and other supplies were dear.

  The caravan had originated in the town of Ulm, in the duchy of Schwaben.

  “Fritta is a German,” Cullen confided. “He doesn’t appear to go out of his way to be pleasant but it’s advisable to get along with him, for there are reliable reports that Magyar bandits are preying on lone travelers and small parties, and there’s not another large caravan in this vicinity.”

  News of the bandits appeared to be general knowledge, and as they moved toward the table other applicants joined the line. Directly behind Rob, to his interest, there were three Jews.

  “In such a caravan one must travel with both gentlefolk and vermin,” Cullen said loudly. Rob was watching the three men in their dark caftans and leather hats. They were conversing with one another in still another strange language, but it seemed that the eyes of the man closest to him flickered when Cullen spoke, as if he understood what had been said. Rob looked away.

  When they reached Fritta’s table Cullen took care of his own business and then was kind enough to offer Seredy as Rob’s translator.

  The caravan master, experienced and quick in conducting such interviews, efficiently learned his name, business, and destination.

  “He wants you to understand that the caravan doesn’t go to Persia,” Seredy said. “Beyond Constantinople you must make another arrangement.”

  Rob nodded, then the German spoke at length.

  “The fee you must pay to Master Fritta is the equal of twenty-two English silver pennies, but he wishes no more of these, for it is in English pennies that my Master Cullen will pay and Master Fritta says he can’t easily dispose of too many. Are you able to pay in deniers, he asks.”

  “I am.”

  “He’ll take twenty-seven deniers,” Seredy said too smoothly.

  Rob hesitated. He had deniers because he had sold the Specific in France and Germany, but he was ignorant of the fair rate of exchange.

  “Twenty-three,” a voice said directly behind him, so low he thought he had imagined it.

  “Twenty-three deniers,” he said firmly.

  The caravan master accepted the offer icily, looking straight into his eyes.

  “You must provide your own provision and supply. Should you lag or be forced to drop out you’ll be left behind,” the translator said. “He says the caravan will leave here composed of some ninety separate parties totaling more than one hundred and twenty men. He demands one sentry for each ten parties, so every twelve days you will have to stand guard all night.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Newcomers must take a place at the end of the line of march, where the dust is worst and the traveler is most vulnerable. You’ll follow Master Cullen and his daughter. Each time somebody ahead of you drops out, you may move up a single place. Each party to join the caravan hereafter will travel behind you.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And should you practice your profession of barber-surgeon to the members of the caravan, you must share all earnings equally with Master Fritta.”

  “No,” he said at once, for it was unjust that he should have to give one-half of his earnings to this German.

  Cullen cleared his throat. Glancing at the Scot, Rob saw apprehension in his face and remembered what he had said about the Magyar bandits.

  “Offer ten, take thirty,” the low voice behind him said.

  “I’ll agree to give up ten percent of my earnings,” Rob said.

  Fritta uttered a single laconic word which Rob took to be the Teutonic equivalent of “goose shit”; then he made another short sound.

  “Forty, he says.”

  “Tell him twenty.”

  They agreed on thirty percent. As he thanked Cullen for the use of the interpreter and walked away, Rob glanced quickly at the three Jews. They were men of medium height, with faces tanned to swarthiness. The man who had stood directly behind him had a fleshy nose and large lips over a full brown beard shot with gray. He didn’t look at Rob but stepped toward the table with the total concentration of someone who has already tested an adversary.

  The newcomers were ordered to take their positions in the line of march during the afternoon and make camp in place that night, for the caravan would set off right after dawn. Rob found his location between Cullen and the Jews, unhitched Horse, and led him to grass a few rods away. The inhabitants of Vac were taking their last opportunity to profit from the windfall by selling provision, and a farmer came by and held up eggs and yellow cheese for which he wanted four deniers, a shocking price. Instead of paying, Rob bartered away three bottles of the Universal Specific and gained his supper.

  While he ate he watched his neighbors watching him. In the camp in front of his, Seredy fetched the water but Cullen’s daughter did the cooking. She was very tall and had red hair. There were five men in the campsite behind his. When he had finished cleaning up after the meal, he walked to where the Jews were brushing their animals. They had good horses as well as two pack mules, one of which presumably carried the tent they had raised. They watched silently as Rob walked to the man who had stood behind him during his dealing with Fritta.

  “I am Rob J. Cole. I wish to thank you.”

  “For nothing, for nothing.” He lifted the brush from the horse’s back. “I am Meir ben Asher.” He introduced his companions. Two had been with him when Rob had first seen them in the line: Gershom ben Shemuel, who had a wen on his nose and was short and looked as tough as a chunk of wood, and Judah haCohen, sharp-nosed and small-mouthed, with a bear’s glossy black hair and the same sort of beard. The other two were younger. Simon ben ha-Levi was thin and serious, almost a man, a beanpole with a wispy beard. And Tuveh ben Meir was a boy of twelve, large for his age as Rob had been.

  “My son,” Meir said.

  No one else talked. They watched him very carefully.

  “You are merchants?”

  Meir nodded. “Once our family lived in the town of Hameln in Germany. Ten years ago we all moved to Angora, in the Byzantine, from which we travel both east and west, buying and selling.”

  “What do you buy and sell?”

  Meir shrugged. “A little of this, a bit of that.”

  Rob was delighted with the answer. He had spent hours thinking of spurious details to tell about himself, and now he saw it was unnecessary; businessmen didn’t reveal too much.

  “Where do you travel?” the young man named Simon said, startling Rob, who had decided only Meir knew English.

  “Persia.”

  “Persia. Excellent! You have family there?”

  “No, I go there to buy. One or two herbs, perhaps a few medicinals.”

  “Ah,” Meir said. The Jews looked at one another, accepting it instantly.

  It was the moment to leave, and he bade them good night.

  Cullen had been staring over at them while he talked to the Jews, and when Rob approached his camp the Scot seemed to have lost most of his initial warmth.

  He introduced his daughter Margaret without enthusiasm, although the girl greeted Rob politely enough.

  Up close, her red hair was something that would be pleasant to touch. Her eyes were cool and sad. Her high round cheekbones seemed large as a man’s fist and her nose and jaw were comely but not delicate. Her face and arms were unfashionably freckled and he wasn’t accustomed to a woman being so tall.

  While he was trying to decide whether she was beautiful, Fritta came along and spoke briefly to Seredy.

  “He wishes Master Cole to be a sentry this night,” the interpreter said.

  So as dusk fell Rob began to walk his post, which start
ed with the Cullens’ site and extended through eight camps beyond his own.

  As he walked, he saw what a strange mixture the caravan had brought together. Next to a covered cart an olive-skinned woman with yellow hair nursed a baby while her husband squatted near the fire and greased his harnesses. Two men sat and cleaned weapons. A boy fed grain to three fat hens in a crude wooden cage. A cadaverous man and his fat woman glared at one another and quarreled in what Rob believed to be French.

  On his third circuit of the area, as he passed the Jews’ camp he saw that they stood together and swayed, chanting what he realized was their evening prayer.

  A large white moon began to ride up from the forest beyond the village and he felt tireless and confident, for suddenly he was part of an army of more than one hundred and twenty men, and that wasn’t the same as traveling through a strange and hostile land by yourself.

  Four times during the night he challenged somebody and found it was one of the men going beyond the camp to answer a call of nature.

  Toward morning, when he was becoming unbearably sleepy, the Cullen girl came out of her father’s tent. She passed close by him without acknowledging his presence. He saw her clearly in the washed light of the moon. Her dress looked very black and her long feet, which must have been wet with dew, looked very white.

  He made as much noise as possible while walking in the opposite direction from the one she had taken, but he watched from afar until he saw her safely back, and then he began to walk again.

  At first light he quit his post and made a hurried breakfast of bread and cheese. While he ate, the Jews assembled outside their tent for sunrise devotions. Perhaps they would be an annoyance, for they seemed an exceedingly worshipful people. They strapped little black boxes on their foreheads and wound thin leather strips around their forearms until their limbs resembled the barber poles on Rob’s wagon, then they lost themselves alarmingly in reverie, covering their heads with prayer shawls. He was relieved when they were done.

  He had Horse harnessed too early, and had to wait. Although those at the head of the caravan set out shortly after daybreak, the sun was well up before it was his turn. Cullen led on a rawboned white horse, followed by his servant Seredy riding a scruffy gray mare and leading three packhorses. Why did two people need three pack animals? The daughter sat a proud black. Rob thought the haunches of both the horse and the woman were admirable, and he followed them gladly.

  26

  PARSI

  They settled at once into the routine of the journey. For the first three days both the Scots and the Jews regarded him politely and left him alone, perhaps made uneasy by his battered face and the bizarre markings on the wagon. Privacy had never displeased him, and he was content to be left to his thoughts.

  The girl rode in front of him constantly, and inevitably he watched her even after they made camp. She appeared to have two black dresses, one of which she washed whenever there was opportunity. She was obviously a sufficiently seasoned traveler not to fret over discomforts but there was about her, and about Cullen, an air of barely concealed melancholy; he assumed from their clothing that they were in mourning.

  Sometimes she sang softly.

  On the fourth morning, when the caravan was slow to move, she dismounted and led her horse, stretching her legs. He looked down at her walking close by his wagon and smiled at her. Her eyes were enormous, as deep a blue as irises can be. Her high-boned face had long, sensitive planes. Her mouth was large and ripe like everything about her, yet curiously quick and expressive.

  “What’s the language of your songs?”

  “Gaelic. What we call the Erse.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Och. How is a Sassenach to recognize the Erse?”

  “What is a Sassenach?”

  “It’s our name for those who live south of Scotland.”

  “I sense the word isn’t a compliment.”

  “Ah, it is not,” she admitted, and this time smiled.

  “Mary Margaret!” her father called sharply. She moved to him at once, a daughter accustomed to obeying.

  Mary Margaret?

  She must be near the age Anne Mary would be now, he realized uneasily. His sister’s hair was brown when she was a little girl, but there had been reddish tints …

  The girl was not Anne Mary, he reminded himself firmly. He knew he must stop seeing his sister in every woman who wasn’t elderly, for it was the sort of pastime that might become a form of madness.

  There was no need to dwell on it, since he had no real interest in James Cullen’s daughter. There were more than enough soft things in the world, and he decided that he’d stay away from this one.

  Her father evidently determined to give him a second chance at conversation, perhaps because he hadn’t seen him talking again to the Jews. On their fifth night on the road James Cullen came to visit, bearing a jug of barley liquor, and Rob said words of welcome and accepted a friendly pull from the bottle.

  “You know sheep, Master Cole?”

  Cullen beamed when he said he didn’t, ready to educate him.

  “There are sheep and there are sheep. In Kilmarnock, site of the Cullen holding, ewes often run as small as twelve stone in weight. I’m told that in the East we’ll find ewes twice that size, with long hair instead of short—denser fleece than the beasts of Scotland, so full of richness that when the wool is spun and made up into goods, it will shed rain.”

  Cullen said he planned to buy breeding stock when he found the best, and bring it back to Kilmarnock with him.

  That would take ready capital, a goodly amount of trading money, Rob told himself, and realized why Cullen needed packhorses. It might be better if the Scot also had bodyguards, he reflected.

  “It’s a far journey you’re on. You’ll be a long time away from your sheep holding.”

  “I left it in the reliable care of trusted kinsmen. It was a hard decision, but … Six months before I left Scotland I buried my wife of twenty-two years.” Cullen grimaced and put the jug to his mouth for a long swallow.

  That would explain their rue, Rob thought. The barber-surgeon in him made him ask what had caused her to die.

  Cullen coughed. “There were growths in both her breasts, hard lumps. She just grew pale and weak, lost appetite and will. Finally there was terrible pain. She took a time to die but was gone before I believed it could be so. Her name was Jura. Well… I stayed drunk for six weeks but found it no escape. For years I’d engaged in idle talk about buying fine stock in Anatolia, never thinking it would come to pass. I just decided to go.”

  He offered the jug and didn’t seem offended when Rob shook his head. “Piss time,” he said, and smiled gently. He had already finished a large amount of the jug’s contents and when he attempted to clamber to his feet and leave, Rob had to assist him.

  “A good night, Master Cullen. Please come again.”

  “A good night, Master Cole.”

  Watching him walk away unsteadily, Rob reflected that he hadn’t once mentioned his daughter.

  The following afternoon a French factor named Felix Roux, thirty-eighth in the line of march, was thrown when his horse shied at a badger. He struck the ground badly, with the full weight of his body on his left forearm, breaking the bone so the limb hung askew. Kerl Fritta sent for the barber-surgeon, who set the bone and immobilized the arm, a painful procedure. Rob struggled to inform Roux that although the arm would give him hell’s pain when he rode, he would still be able to travel with the caravan. Finally he had to send for Seredy to tell the patient how to handle the sling.

  He was thoughtful on his way back to his own wagon. He had agreed to treat sick travelers several times a week. Although he tipped Seredy generously, he knew he couldn’t continue to use James Cullen’s manservant as interpreter.

  Back at his wagon, he saw Simon ben ha-Levi sitting on the ground nearby, mending a saddle cinch, and he walked up to the thin young Jew.

  “Do you have French and German?”


  The youth nodded while holding a saddle strap close to his mouth and biting off the waxed thread.

  Rob talked and ha-Levi listened. In the end, since the terms were generous and the time required wasn’t great, he agreed to interpret for the barber-surgeon.

  Rob was pleased. “How do you have so many languages?”

  “We’re merchants between nations. We travel constantly, with family connections in the markets of many countries. Languages are part of our business. For example, young Tuveh is studying the language of the Mandarins, for in three years he’ll travel the Silk Road and go to work with my uncle’s firm.” His uncle, Issachar ben Nachum, he said, headed a large branch of their family in Kai Feng Fu, from which every three years he sent a caravan of silks, pepper, and other Oriental exotics to Meshed, in Persia. And every three years since he was a small boy, Simon and other males of his family had traveled from their home in Angora to Meshed, from which they accompanied a caravan of the rich goods back to the East Frankish Kingdom.

  Rob J. felt a quickening within him. “You know the Persian language?”

  “Of course. Parsi.”

  Rob looked at him blankly.

  “It’s called Parsi.”

  “Will you teach it to me?”

  Simon ben ha-Levi hesitated, because this was a different matter. This could take a good deal of his time.

  “I’ll pay well.”

  “Why do you want Parsi?”

  “I’ll need the language when I reach Persia.”

  “You want to do business on a regular basis? Return to Persia again and again to buy herbs and pharmaceuticals, the way we do for silks and spices?”

  “Perhaps.” Rob J. shrugged, a gesture worthy of Meir ben Asher. “A bit of this, a little of that.”

  Simon grinned. He began to scratch out a first lesson in the dirt with a stick, but it was unsatisfactory and Rob went to the wagon and got his drawing things and a clean round of beechwood. Simon started him in the Parsi language exactly as Mam had taught him to read English many years earlier, by teaching him the alphabet. Parsi letters were composed of dots and squiggly lines. Christ’s blood! The written language resembled pigeon shit, bird tracks, curled wood shavings, worms trying to fuck each other.