But I could hardly say all that to Athanaric. “You should rest for a few more days,” I told him. “And eat your barley broth. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He swore again in Latin. “Of all the eunuchs in the world,” he said as I left the room, “why does the only virtuous one have to serve the archbishop?”
“You haven’t met all the eunuchs in the world,” I replied, pausing and looking back. “How do you know the rest aren’t virtuous too?”
Two days after this I woke up feeling queasy and hot. It was a damp, chill day in late December, and usually I was cold in the mornings, but I found I had thrown off the blanket and lay there sweating.
I had patients to visit that day, five cases who had not yet reached a crisis and a dozen convalescents. But when I got up I found that my muscles ached and my stomach churned; plainly I was not up to a full day’s work. Moreover, it would be extremely irresponsible for me to carry on with the visits and risk transmitting the fever to my patients; in their weakened state it could be fatal. I gave Agatha, one of the nuns, a couple of drachmae to run around to the patients and say that I was ill. I sent some recommendations for their treatment to each, and prepared some simples for them; I also gave them the names of some other doctors, in case they needed personal attention. Then I went back to bed. Amundora came up and offered me some fresh cumin bread and hot honeyed wine — both delicacies that she must have bought for me, as she never ate them herself. But I was feeling quite sick by then, and couldn’t bear even the smell of them. I thanked her, but told her that all I needed was rest. She hovered uncertainly in the doorway. “Eh, you look ill!” she told me. “Well, I will be in the house all day; just shout if you need anything.”
I told her I would. When she left the room, I vomited into the chamberpot.
I had never in my life been gravely ill. I’d had colds, of course, and a few tertian fevers, but nothing like this. I felt utterly wretched, and by the middle of the afternoon utterly exhausted as well. It was plainly the same fever as Athanaric's, though whether I had caught it from him or from some other patient it was impossible to say. I prepared myself a sponge with some opium and honeywater and sucked on that after vomiting, hoping to put myself to sleep and so calm the spasms, but it didn’t seem to help much. I couldn’t keep anything else down, though I tried hemlock for the fever, and nard and aloe for the nausea.
Amundora came in again in the middle of the afternoon and gave a wail of dismay. She took out the overflowing chamberpot and washed the floor, then wanted to wash me as well. “Just leave me alone,” I told her. “I’ll be all right. I know this fever: it comes on fiercely but it goes quickly.”
She left me reluctantly, then came back with some more water. I asked her to dip the sponge in it and she did, then handed it to me, looking unhappy. Plain water’s not good in acute illnesses, I thought instinctively. It ought to be honeywater at the least, or maybe a mixture of honeywater and brine. And the opium.
But it was too much effort to explain all this to Amundora. I took the sponge of plain water and put it in my dry mouth, shivering. The nun’s face, dark and worried, seemed to float a long way off. I wished that Maia were there with me.
“You’re too sick to treat yourself,” said Amundora. “I will send out for another doctor.”
“No!” I told her, rousing myself finally at this. “It’s all right. No one else will do anything that I’m not doing now. All I need is to rest. Leave me alone!”
I put my head down on the pillow; I heard her footsteps go to the door, pause, then go on down the stairs. I started to cry, unable to help myself. It was very hot and dark here, and I wanted Maia. I was sick again, but didn’t need the chamberpot: my stomach was clenched up and dry, full of nothing but wind and pain. The spasms went on for a long, long time.
It grew darker. Someone came in and shouted at me, shook me. Mumbling and sobbing, I told them to go away, but couldn’t remember when they went.
The next thing I knew someone had lit an oil lamp and was standing looking at me. “Maia?” I asked. I tried to sit up, but the movement made me sick again. The visitor came over, put a hand to my forehead, and took my pulse. It was Philon.
“When did this start?” Philon asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“Just this morning,” said Amundora. “I thought he looked very ill, but he wouldn’t let me send for anyone. Then when I went up after evening prayers, he was in a stupor and didn’t hear me, so I remembered that Your Beneficence was his master, and I ran straight over.”
Philon was examining my eyes. “It’s a very dangerous fever,” he said. “I’ve seen two or three cases of it this past month: they’ve all died. He should have let you send earlier: I’m glad you fetched me tonight. Come on, Chariton, you’re awake now, anyway. Let’s have a look at you.”
“No,” I said. “Go away. Leave me alone.”
“Could you fetch a brazier?” Philon said to Amundora. “This room is very cold. And I need to boil some water.”
“At once!” said Amundora, and bustled from the room. Philon turned back to me.
“Leave me alone!” I begged.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Philon. He started loosening my tunic, which stank enough to turn anyone’s stomach. Then he stopped suddenly.
“What’s this?” he asked.
I began to cry. Philon stared at me; his face seemed to hang there for ages: the square beard and the familiar brown eyes, now wide with astonishment. The pupils seemed to flood with the darkness and the face to waver like a reflection in the water, trembling, fading out into the heat and the blackness, leaving me alone.
When I next woke the awful nausea was gone and I felt very thirsty. I tried to sit up, and someone put a supporting hand behind my head and held a cup to my lips. It was a mixture of honeywater and brine, scented with nard and with something bitter as well — hemlock, I thought. I drank some, then looked up to see who was giving it to me. Philon.
“Finish it,” he ordered. I finished it, and he put the cup down.
“How do you feel now?” he asked me.
“Much better,” I said. My voice sounded foreign: a hollow whisper. I’d heard that tone from others, and noted the weakness of convalescence. It was strange to recognize it in myself. “Tired. You . . . did you —”
“Did I find out that you’re a woman? I could hardly miss it, could I? I never felt such a fool in my life. My own assistant, who lived in my own house for more than two years, and I took his word for it that he was a eunuch when it should have been glaringly obvious that he was nothing of the sort. That she was nothing of the sort. Lie still! It’s a cruel fever, that, and you need to get your strength back.”
I lay still. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to cry. “Have you . . . who have you told?”
He snorted and patted my arm, very gently. “No one. The nuns in your house don’t know, and I haven’t so much as whispered about it to Deborah. I hold it under my oath. Is that what the archbishop discovered?”
I nodded.
“An old man, and a bishop, and he spotted it immediately! And I am a trained doctor and couldn’t see it in two years!”
“I think anyone who did see it would see it immediately,” I said; I’d thought about this. “Once you are used to one idea about what I am, it is that much harder to see me as something different.”
Philon sighed. “I never felt such a fool in my life,” he repeated. “I suppose that you’re the daughter of Theodoros of Ephesus, then?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that . . . well, never mind.”
“I know what you thought. I overheard you one night, talking about it with Deborah. I’m sorry, Philon.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I wanted to learn the art. I don’t suppose I would have run away if it hadn’t been for Father’s wanting me to marry Festinus; but once I had fled, I had to come here. Can you understand that? I know it was indecent, and dishonest, but all my life I’d wan
ted to study here.”
Philon gave an odd smile. “As a matter of fact, I can understand.” He sighed, then took my pulse. “You’ll recover,” he told me. “This disease is a fierce one, but you should recover quickly.”
“The patient I treated who had it recovered well,” I said.
“Oh, so you’ve seen it too? As a matter of fact, you’re the first one I’ve seen survive it. You must have managed your patient very well.”
“He was a strong young man.”
“And you’re a strong young woman. I shall never get used to that. I never would have taken you on if I’d known. Don’t excite yourself: I could no more advise you to turn your back on medicine now than I could turn my back on it myself. Do you know, I had to fight to study it too? My parents were very devout, and I was brought up to study the Torah. When I’d finished in Alexandria, they sent me to Tiberias to study at the patriarchal courts. I spent a year there, going through the laws of Moses, and then one morning I woke up and realized that I was twenty and I didn’t care at all for the laws of Moses: I wanted to practice the art of healing. I was already married then, and we had the baby — and I hadn’t read even a chapter of Hippocrates. But I ran away from Tiberias and came back to Alexandria. My father was furious. He refused to support me unless I went back to Tiberias. So I left home. My father-in-law wanted Deborah to divorce me and marry someone else, but she wanted to stay with me, bless her. There was a Jewish doctor at the Museum then, a man named Themistion. Adamantios was his pupil too. I went to him and begged him to teach me. He was reluctant — I knew nothing but the Torah, and he was like Adamantios, a well-educated man and a Platonist. He thought it would be better if I obeyed my father. In the end I offered to be his servant and undertake personal tasks for him if he would teach me, and he saw how desperate I was and agreed. I agreed to take you on because I could see the same passion in you. If I’d known you were a woman, I would have doubted that; I would have told you to go home to your family. But that would have been wrong, because we are alike. By the Holy Name, my girl, don’t cry! Do you want some barley broth?”
As Philon had said, I recovered quickly. I was back on my feet, though still shakily, on the next day, but Philon advised me strictly not to strain myself, so I rested at home, reading Dioskourides’ On Medicines. One of the archbishop’s slaves came from the palace to ask how I was and returned reassured. (I gathered afterward that Athanasios had meant to come himself but had been talked out of it by Theophilos. “He said that you would be angry if I caught the illness myself,” he told me later. “He said right,” I replied. “I would have been angry and you would have been dead. You haven’t looked after yourself properly, and something much gentler than that could be fatal to you.” Athanasios chuckled.)
The next morning there was another knock on the door and in swaggered Athanaric. “Greetings, Your Grace,” he said — a pun on my name that was rather better than he intended, since it’s charis, not Chariton, that means “grace.” “I thought I would look in and see how you were recovering from the little present I gave you. I’m sorry about that.”
“I have other patients besides you,” I said. “I might have picked this up anywhere. Would Your Excellency like to sit down? I’m sorry, I’m not really prepared for visitors.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” he said, sitting down at the writing desk. “Eternal God, you have a lot of books!”
I did by that time. Alexandria is a great city for books. Papyrus is cheap in Egypt, and scribes can make a fortune copying works and selling them by the library. My Hippocrates and Galen had been joined by Herophilos and Erasistratos, Dioskourides and Celsus, Krateuas and Nikandros and Oribasios — all the medical authorities. My bookcase was full, and my writing desk half submerged.
“I see that you did indeed give an accurate report of what you spend your money on,” he continued. “Books. Certainly not clothes or lodgings or luxuries. Wouldn’t it help, though, to have a bigger set of rooms, and a slave to keep them in order for you?”
I eyed him warily. Another attempt at bribery? “I don’t like the bother of all that,” I said. “This arrangement leaves me free to concentrate on the things that interest me.”
“The detachment of the perfect philosopher. And who am I to question it? Tell me, Chariton, have you ever wondered about where your archbishop is leading you?”
Often, of course. But I didn’t want to discuss it with Athanaric. “His Holiness Bishop Athanasios is my patient,” I said. “It’s my job to look after his health. What he does in his own profession is not my affair.”
“Not when it could kill you? What he has done is to oppose the emperor. Oppose four emperors, one after another. His Sacred Majesty tolerates him now for the sake of peace in the city, but you must be able to foresee what will happen when he dies.”
“Your Excellency, I would rather not talk about this.”
“I think it would be better if you did. When Athanasios dies, there is going to be bloodshed. And being a doctor won’t help you if you’re involved; you could be arrested as easily as the craziest fanatic from the Nitrian desert.”
I sighed. Not bribery. Threats. “I’m not going to shed any blood, except perhaps in surgery. Even the most fanatical Arian will hardly arrest me for simply treating my patients.”
“What if your patients are fugitives and criminals? You would be better out of this altogether. Listen, I can give you a recommendation to the post of state physician in some other city. Our most pious Augustus, Lord Valentinian, has established a whole group of doctors in Rome, one for each quarter of the city. They treat the poor free of charge, and the state pays them a good salary. They’d be pleased to get you there, and you’d do very well. You could treat the rabble to your heart’s content and expect a better reward than imprisonment. And if you don’t like Rome, there are other cities. I would hate to see such a good doctor in trouble.”
“Have you finished?”
He looked at me in irritation. “Very well, then, don’t listen to sense!”
He had finished! I had expected a personal threat, something on the lines of “If you don’t leave the city and abandon your patient, I will have to give your name to the authorities.” But perhaps he meant me to assume that. “I thank Your Carefulness for the advice,” I said. “At the moment I am happy to stay in the city with my friends. Don’t let me keep Your Diligence; I’m sure you have a lot of work which requires your attention.”
“Oh, damn your friends!” he exclaimed. “I was trying to help. Farewell, then, Chariton, and good luck!” And with that he went out, slamming the door. I sat in bed and wondered whether I should have paid more attention.
I was still worrying the next week when I met Philon again. He had invited me to dinner, and we’d agreed to meet in Soma Square after the day’s work, since most of my patients were in the west of the city and most of his in the east. I arrived in the square and found Philon sitting in the rubble of the old mausoleum, which was out of the wind. We started off at once down the Canopic Way. Some children were playing a game in the ruins of the old Museum; a goat, browsing among the stones, bleated as the woman who owned it came with her milking pail; a couple of whores smiled from the shadows by a wine shop; at the church of Alexander the lamps were being lit, saffron and silver in the dusk. Then came a shout and the sound of many feet tramping to a drum, and a troop of soldiers came marching up the street, their hobnailed boots ringing on the paving. Everyone else stepped aside and watched them: the children stopped playing; the woman sat holding her goat’s head against her chest to keep it still; the lamplighters disappeared into the church; even the whores watched with set, unsmiling faces. The troops strode past, turned left, and marched off toward the citadel.
“How much trouble do you think there’ll be?” I asked Philon when they were gone and we had started walking again. I didn’t need to say more than that; he knew I meant “when Athanasios dies.”
He sighed. “You know more about that than I
do. You’re in the middle of it. What do you think will happen?”
I said nothing for a minute. “The authorities will send in their own bishop, this fellow Lucius,” I admitted at last, “and the church won’t accept him. There will be a lot of rioting and arrests. I suppose what I really meant was, is it possible to look after my patients and still stay clear of the trouble?”
“I don’t know.” Philon gave me a sympathetic look. “I suppose that depends more on the authorities than on your patients. I would have thought you’d be all right if you stay out of the actual rioting and are discreet about how you treat fugitives. What else were you thinking of doing?”
I told him about Athanaric’s offer.
“State physician at Rome?” he asked. “That was generous of him. He must have been impressed with all he learned about you. Don’t look so surprised — of course he questioned me. He wanted information from you, didn’t he? He asked up at the Temple, and he asked me at home. I don’t think he discovered anything. And I don’t think he could guess . . . that, from what he did learn. So, are you thinking of accepting his offer?”
“No. I don’t trust Athanaric. He can say what he likes here and to me: promises cost him nothing. But he wasn’t actually promising a job, just a word of recommendation. And why should they listen to him in Rome? He’s not Roman, or a doctor; his word won’t mean a thing. They’ve probably hired all the people they need already. And I don’t like the idea of deserting my patients just when they might need me most.”
The Beacon at Alexandria Page 20