The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  I sealed it very carefully, terrified that someone would read it, then went back to bed. Before I went to sleep I realized I’d have to find some other way to get the opium.

  In the end I wrote to Athanaric about the drugs. He had seemed interested in the well-being of the troops on the frontier, and I thought he quite liked me, so he might be willing to arrange to have the drugs sent from Alexandria. He could certainly license Philon to send them in the state post. I wrote him a very respectful letter, begging him to arrange for Philon to buy me the opium and a few other simples, and I enclosed a sardonyx ring to pay for them; I also enclosed a letter to Philon explaining the situation. I sent this letter and the letter to Thorion by imperial courier to Constantinople. Then I threw myself into my work and tried not to worry about it.

  The first long winter passed, and the earth renewed itself with flowers. The whole delta seemed to be a mass of purple, white, and gold; violets flowered by every stone, the bushes were white with hawthorn, and every stretch of open land shone with buttercups. I had never seen so many birds: ducks and herons, hoopoes, swallows, cuckoos, swans, crows, and hundreds of others whose names I didn’t know. Storks nested on the roof of the presidium. More temperate lands have a temperate spring, but the Thracian season was a bacchanalian revel. It was impossible not to be happy. And on one radiant morning in late May, Athanaric walked into the main ward of the hospital while I was doing my rounds.

  He swaggered in, carrying a heavy pair of saddlebags slung over one shoulder. “Chariton of Ephesus!” he shouted down the building; and when I turned from examining my patient, he swung the saddlebags round in the air and tossed them to me. “There’re the drugs Your Grace requested.”

  I caught them and staggered. I looked at the bags, then looked at Athanaric, who stood with his thumb hitched through his sword belt, grinning. “Bless you!” I said fervently, and began undoing the straps. There indeed they were: everything I’d asked for, and even some opium-poppy seeds, all ready to be planted; a thick letter from Philon too. I could have kissed Athanaric. I stood there and gloated.

  “Your friend Philon packed them up for you,” said Athanaric. “He says there’s some change left from the sale of that ring. I told him to keep it, and gave him a license to use the post to send more.”

  “Bless you,” I said again, and beamed at Athanaric. He looked very well. The trousers no longer seemed so barbaric now that I was wearing some myself, and his face was bright from the wind and with his smile. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. “— Your Excellency,” I added hurriedly: the last thing I wanted was to offend him, after the favor he had just done me. “Do you have time to stay for dinner with me?”

  He grinned again. “No time for dinner, no. I’m taking a message from the court to Sirmium; I just came through Novidunum to deliver those. Some other time, perhaps? I should be in Thrace for a while now; I’ve been sent to rearrange the posts along the frontier.”

  “You’ll let me buy you a drink, at least?”

  “There’s a thought.” He glanced round the hospital. “You don’t seem very busy.” Most of the beds were empty.

  “It’s the weather,” I told him. “Anyone who’s going to die does so in the winter, and I can’t say I blame them. It would be too painful to leave the world when it looks like this.”

  We went to the camp’s tavern, and I bought a flask of the finest wine they had, a rather sticky, strong red brought up the coast from the province of Europa. It was the middle of the morning, and quite a few of the men who were off duty were sitting about having something to drink; there was nowhere for us to sit. Athanaric whistled, and everyone looked at him. “I am Athanaric, the son of Ermaneric of Sardica,” he announced. “I need somewhere to sit with my friend.”

  Immediately all the Goths in the tavern scrambled to their feet, grunting and bowing. Athanaric took a seat at the best table, and I put the flask of wine down, then started to fetch the water. But I didn’t need to. The tavern-keeper rushed over with a flask of fresh water and his finest mixing bowl; he rushed off and came back with a pair of his own Egyptian glass drinking cups. He bowed to Athanaric and said something in Gothic; Athanaric responded in the same language and dismissed him with a wave of the hand. He looked at me and laughed. “Barbarian royalty,” he stated.

  “I heard about your uncle,” I said. In fact, since coming to Novidunum I’d heard quite a bit about him; many of the soldiers were Theruingian Goths, and all the rest had fought against King Athanaric’s people.

  “Everybody’s heard of him in this part of the world.” Athanaric poured the wine and some of the water into the mixing bowl, and I tipped the mixture into his cup. “That’s one of the reasons I enjoy visiting the region. What does Your Grace think of Thrace?”

  “I like it,” I said, finding to my surprise that this was true. Partly it was just that the countryside was so beautiful just now, in the spring. But I liked the open space around me, after the dirt and crowding of Alexandria; I liked the responsibility of the hospital, felt pleasure and pride whenever I thought about what I was doing with it. I liked being master of my own house and respected in the fort. I was even starting to like riding, now that my muscles were getting used to it and it wasn’t so cold. “In many ways I like it as much as Alexandria.”

  “Do you indeed!” said Athanaric. “Well, you seem to have fitted yourself in, all right. The grooms at the posting station told me that you were the cleverest doctor in Thrace, and could cure colic and the mange. I wouldn’t have thought it of such a perfect Alexandrian. And you are certainly doing your job. Sebastianus thinks you must be a lineal descendant of Asklepios. He says you cure the sick like a miracle worker.”

  “That’s not true,” I told him. “We can’t cure everyone, and the cures we do have are the result of Hippocratic medicine, not miracles.”

  He grinned. “Of course. How could I ignore the immortal Hippocrates?” He raised his cup. “I’m pleased it’s all worked out so well. My friend Sebastianus is happy, the troops are well looked after, and even you are not displeased. Much health!”

  “Much health!” I returned. “But I will need a steady supply of the opium. The seeds may not grow here, and even if they do, it will take time to establish a supply from them.”

  “Send money to your friend, and I’ll see that the posts take it.”

  “Next time you’re in Novidunum, you’ll have to come to dinner,” I told him happily.

  “So you can be sure that, as your guest-friend, I’ve got to help you? Very well. But I’d do it anyway, you know: I want the men to be treated well.”

  “You can give me the news, too,” I told him, smiling.

  He gave me a bit of it before leaving. It seemed that Archbishop Peter was safely at Rome, enjoying the hospitality of the Roman archbishop, Damasus. The western church was inclined to the Nicene theology, and the western emperor disinclined to interfere with it: Peter was safe as he would not have been anywhere in the East. His Arian rival, Lucius, had tired of persecuting Alexandrian Nicenes and gone off to the Nitrian desert to flog monks. Philon and his family were well; yes, Athanaric had seen them himself; he had brought them my letter in person after delivering some messages to the prefect. Theogenes had taken his examination and gone back to Antioch with Theophila, but Philon had another student. “I like your Philon,” Athanaric declared, finishing the wine. “He’s a brilliant doctor, I suppose?”

  “The best in Alexandria,” I said warmly.

  “Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? To teach you.” Athanaric put down his cup and rose. “I’m off to Sirmium, then! Ave atque vale, as they say. I’ll see you next time I pass through Novidunum.”

  He went out of the tavern directly to the posting station and jumped on a horse. It was standing ready saddled for him, with another set of saddlebags over its shoulders. He turned it, waved, and rode off splendidly, dashing through the fort at full gallop, sending the pigeons and chickens flying in a scatter of wings. Down the hill, o
ut the gate, and onto the road. Only couriers ride like that: gallop, gallop, gallop, twelve miles in an hour or less to the next posting station; off one horse and onto the next, and gallop, gallop, gallop again. It must be four hundred miles from Novidunum to Sirmium in the West, and Athanaric would do it in a few days.

  I sighed, watching him leave, then went back to my work. I could find it in my heart to wish him back in Novidunum soon.

  I got another two letters from Thorion in the next week. The first had been written some time before but sent by ship and delayed during bad weather. It was indiscreet, but did not have the open confession in its address that had been so frightening in the last one. “What do you mean, telling me to say you’re dead?” he asked. “I wish you would come away from that godforsaken spot on the edge of the world, but I can’t do anything about it if you won’t, and I’m not going to turn my back on you. But do come to your senses, Charition, please! You can’t go on as you are now. Someone’s bound to find out. What’s wrong with a normal life, what do you mean, ‘suffocate’? I don’t understand you. My house is yours when you change your mind.”

  The other letter had been written in April, and was far less cheerful. “I’ve just heard that Father’s dead,” Thorion wrote in it. “He died of a pleurisy during the winter; I’ve only just heard. Johannes is managing the estates now, till I can come live on them. But I can’t go home yet, and there’s no point. I feel wretched; I should have gone home before. He was very unhappy these last years, with you gone and me in Constantinople and half his horses sold. I should kill that Festinus, it’s all his fault. Father was a good man; he couldn’t help being a coward. I wish you could be with me, Charition.”

  I remembered my dream. But that seemed to cheat grief, to picture my father dead. I tried for another memory, and saw him scrabbling at the floor, pleading his innocence of treason to Festinus. But as Thorion had said, Father couldn’t help being a coward: it was unfair to remember him like that. We had never been close, but he had been kind and affectionate. At last I thought of him coming home after presiding over some public festival, taking off his gilded laurel wreath and throwing it into the air, whooping with pleasure because his chariot had won the race, hugging me and Thorion and Maia and giving presents to everyone in the house. Then I did cry a little. I cut my hair and put on my black Egyptian cloak in mourning. When people asked me what it was for, I told them an old friend and patron had died. But I didn’t mention my father’s name. It had been necessary in Alexandria to have a story to explain myself, but it was not necessary now, and it was better to bury the past. I had abandoned my father — but if I had not run away, I still wouldn’t have been with him in his illness. I would have been with Festinus, suffering God knows what while he governed some distant province. Despite what Sebastianus thought, I was no Asklepios. Even in my dream I had been unable to heal the dead.

  It was only a month or so later that I saw Athanaric again. I was at a camp two days’ ride up the river, doing my lecture on tourniquets. This camp was quite small: a watchtower with a half-dozen men to guard it. The men sat at the foot of the tower in the open air and gaped at me while I talked to them. It was still early in the morning, but already the sun was hot; the shade of the woods was full of mosquitoes, and no one was paying much attention. Then suddenly one of the soldiers gave a yell, and Athanaric rode up at a gallop, his cloak tossed over his shoulder and the sun glittering on the hilt of his sword. He pulled the horse to a stop almost on top of us and leaped down. “There you are!” he told me. “Are these all patients, or can you leave them?”

  “What is your name?” demanded the decurion of the watchtower officiously, ashamed at having been caught out in his lack of vigilance.

  “Athanaric son of Ermaneric of Sardica, curiosus of the agentes in rebus.”

  This produced the usual effect; the men all stood up and grunted respectfully. “Do you have a patient for me?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Yes. A private patient, if you like. The wife of a rich and powerful man, who’ll pay you well if you cure her.”

  “I’m not supposed to take private patients more than half a day’s ride from Novidunum,” I said doubtfully. And why was Athanaric riding posthaste to fetch me to somebody’s wife? Whose wife? A governor’s?

  “Sebastianus won’t mind this one,” he stated, waving aside my objection. “And she’s less than a full day’s journey from Novidunum.”

  Not a governor’s wife. The governor of Scythia was based at Tomis, twenty miles down the coast from Histria. That was more than a day’s journey, unless you used the imperial posts.

  “Where?” I asked bluntly, unable to work it out.

  “Across the river.” Athanaric waved his hand at the brown flood of the Danube and the forests the other side of it. I gaped, and he went on. “It’s probably quickest to cross at Novidunum. But we must hurry. Take your own horse from here, but leave it at the next posting station; I want to be there by tomorrow evening. The woman’s been ill for a week already, by my reckoning. You have your medical things? Good, let’s go.”

  The next thing I knew I was in the saddle and galloping after Athanaric. I didn’t bounce about quite as much as I used to, but I was no courier, and was too hard pressed with keeping up to have time to think about much else.

  Gallop, gallop, gallop; change horses; gallop, gallop, gallop. And so to Novidunum by late afternoon, though it was two days away for me at a normal pace on the one horse. I felt jolted to bits. But Athanaric didn’t give me time for rest; he dragged me straight down to the river and into a boat, shouting at the boatmen in Gothic to make them hurry. I sat in the back of the boat in a stupor for the first part of the crossing. Then I shook myself and asked, “Whose wife?”

  Athanaric gave a jump, as though he’d been thinking of something else. “Lord Fritigern's,” he said. “Her name’s Amalberga. They say she gave birth to a son just over a week ago, after a difficult labor, and has been ill since — unless she’s dead already. If she’s not dead and if you can cure her, Fritigern will be very grateful.”

  “Is he a cousin of yours?”

  He glanced at me and smiled. “More or less. It’s his wife who’s my cousin. She’s a remarkable woman; I hope you can help her. But he’s one of the chief men among the Theruingi, second only to the king. He’s inclined to be friendly to Rome — he’s a Christian, and admires Roman law. I’d like to keep him friendly. And I want some information from him.”

  “So you’re now ‘inspecting the posts’ in Gothic Dacia,” I said sourly. “Are there any?”

  He laughed. “None. I am moved by pure family feeling to try to help my noble kinsman in his need. But it won’t hurt him to talk to me — in fact, I heard that he was asking to talk to me. People are swarming like ants who’ve had their nest flooded, all up and down the Danube. They say a new race of men has sprung up out of the earth and is sweeping like a blizzard from the high mountains, killing all before it. The king has been fortifying the passes through the mountains to the northeast. His Illustriousness the master of the offices of His Sacred Majesty wants to know what’s going on. So I arrive at Fritigern’s with a skilled Greek doctor to treat his wife, and hope that Fritigern will be pleased and informative. Does that satisfy Your Grace’s scruples?”

  “Not really. I don’t like being made part of a spying mission. But I will treat the patient, if no one objects to me.”

  “Why should they object?”

  “I’m a foreigner and a eunuch, I’ve come to spy on them, and I don’t even speak their language.”

  “You speak some Latin, don’t you?”

  “A little.” I’d had to brush up on it since arriving in Scythia; some of the troops spoke nothing else.

  “Well, everyone who’s anyone among the Goths speaks Latin, and Fritigern and Amalberga speak Greek as well. And you’re a mighty sorcerer, whose fame has reached them already. They’ll be delighted.”

  “Oh, by Artemis the Great!”

  Athana
ric stopped smiling and looked at me rather grimly. “Half Novidunum believes you’re a sorcerer. More than half. Some of them are pleased about it, others are afraid. I’d be careful if I were you, Chariton. Sorcery is a dangerous thing to be charged with. There was a man put to death at Carnuntum only last month for cutting up a donkey; he said it was just to stop his hair from falling out, but no one believed him. And he was the nephew of the praetorian prefect, too. And it’s rumored that you cut up a man.”

  I bit my lip. “Who told you that?”

  “One of your colleagues at the hospital. An older man, dark, with half an ear missing. I went to Novidunum first, looking for you, and he was very eager to tell me all about your sorcerous practices.”

  “That’s Xanthos,” I said, relieved. “He hates me because I supplanted him. Everyone knows that; they won’t take him seriously.”

  “Chariton, your own servants think you’re a sorcerer! I don’t know whether it’s true that you cut up a dead man or not. I know that they do dissections in Alexandria. But you’re not in Alexandria now, and people on the frontier don’t understand these things.”

  I said nothing. I had in fact done a dissection on a patient who died of lockjaw. The disease is fairly common on the frontier, and I thought I might understand it better if I knew how it affected the body. I’d done it in a spare room at night and stitched the body up again afterward, then dressed him and had him buried; I’d thought nobody knew. Xanthos must have been spying on me. Athanaric was probably right: it was better to leave such researches to the scholars at the Temple. My dissection had not brought me much knowledge anyway.

  Athanaric continued to watch me carefully. “It would be a great pity if I got you away from the rack in Egypt,” he said, “only to have you die on it in Thrace.”

  I sighed and nodded. The boat bumped against the opposite shore and we climbed out. I almost tripped; my legs were still unsteady from the riding. Athanaric, of course, ran up the bank, shouting for horses. I clutched my medical bag and looked around, realizing with a shudder that I was outside the Roman Empire.