The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  It didn’t look very different from Novidunum — the same kind of stone and wooden houses, similar Gothic men standing about in trousers. Only there were fewer walls in this trading post, because it was only a trading post and not a fort. The barbarians built no walls against the Romans. I’d never reflected on this before, and it seemed odd: they certainly had reason to fear the Romans. But then, the Romans would only invade to punish them. They didn’t want the barbarian lands, and the barbarians did want the Roman ones.

  Athanaric came back with two horses, extorted from some Gothic trader or perhaps from a nobleman. We were up and riding into the lands of the Theruingi before I had any more time to think. It was just starting to get dark.

  We did rest that night, though I had feared we wouldn’t. Athanaric stopped at some little town about an hour after sunset (gallop, gallop, gallop) and went up to the biggest house. We were shown in by the slaves, there was considerable discussion in Gothic, and then we were hospitably treated by the nobleman of the house, who seemed acquainted with Athanaric. The bed was full of bugs, but I was too tired to care.

  We proceeded at a more moderate pace the next day, because we had to keep the same horses. Even so, we arrived at Fritigern’s settlement well before the evening. It was a town about the size of Novidunum, set in the midst of a broad patch of farmland. In the middle of the town, which was the usual rough thatched stone-and-timber affair, stood a large Roman villa with a tiled roof and Corinthian columns. It looked quite old; the roof of one of the wings had fallen in and been replaced with thatch. Gothic Dacia had been a Roman province once, in the long-ago days of the Good Emperors. Perhaps this villa was a relic of that short occupation.

  We were surrounded by a crowd of people from the moment we entered the town, but Athanaric paid no attention to them. He rode straight up to the villa, drew rein, and made a little speech in Gothic; I caught his name and my own, but little more. Some people came out of the villa, then went back in again. Athanaric sat on his horse and waited.

  “One thing I didn’t tell you,” he said suddenly, turning round in the saddle. “The lady Amalberga will have some attendants who’ll have been treating her, some women. Don’t be too dismissive with them. They don’t have doctors here, and all the nursing work is done by women, midwives and wisewomen. Some of the wisewomen are quite well born, and are respected. Don’t just assume that they’re slaves.”

  I was astonished. Before I could think of anything to say, the doors of the villa opened again and a man came out, followed by a crowd of armed attendants. He was tall and thin, very fair, with a beard that was almost white; his strong nose was sunburned and his eyes a very pale blue, glasslike. He was dressed in a rich cloak with an imported purple edging, and he wore a gold chain around his neck. The cost of the jewels on his sword hilt could support a family for life.

  Athanaric jumped off his horse. “Most excellent Fritigern!” he exclaimed; he went over to the other and they embraced.

  Fritigern was pleased to see us. When I was introduced he shook hands with me, and thanked me for coming in faultless Greek. His dear wife, he said, was indeed ill; her attendants had thought at first she might recover, but now they weren’t so sure. He could not but be overjoyed to have a Roman doctor for her. My fame had reached across the river, and he had thought of sending for me himself but had been uncertain of how this would be regarded by the Roman authorities. He was most grateful (turning back to Athanaric), most grateful that his noble cousin had seen fit to bring me. Did I need some refreshment before visiting the patient, or would I see her right away? The eyes rested on me for a moment, with an indecipherable expression.

  “I would prefer to see the lady immediately,” I said, reckoning that I could always eat after starting the treatment.

  Fritigern’s eyes darkened slightly and he smiled. Apparently I’d said the right thing. He gestured to two of his attendants and barked a command in Gothic, and they escorted me off. As I left, Athanaric was taking Fritigern’s arm and starting to ask questions.

  Lady Amalberga was in one of the larger rooms at the back of the villa. My escort stood outside the door and knocked; from beyond it came the sound of women arguing shrilly in Gothic. The escort knocked again; one of the women shouted something, then continued arguing. We went in.

  The room was magnificent, but dirty. There were rushes across the mosaic of the floor, the brocade coverlet of the bed was stained with blood, and a bowl of vomit stood in the corner beside a full chamberpot, both swarming with flies. A baby was in a cot in the other corner, sleeping. The two women who were arguing stood in the middle of the room. They were both of middle age. One was small and dark, and wore a plain gray woolen gown; the other was tall and fair, in a fine blue cloak and much jewelry. Amalberga lay motionless on the great bed, awake but exhausted. She was a beautiful woman, very blonde, with a gentle face; she was a year or two younger than I. She was extremely pale; her eyes were bright with fever. Her white arms were covered with blood-swollen leeches.

  The small dark woman screeched at my escort, and they shouted back, waving at me. I bowed vaguely toward the lady. “I am Chariton of Ephesus,” I said slowly in Latin, “a doctor from the camp of Novidunum. The most excellent Athanaric brought me to treat the lady Amalberga.”

  There was considerable commotion. The small dark woman shouted at the men, and they gobbled in their barbarian tongue. The fair woman in the jewelry stared, then flushed red, then asked in Latin if I would excuse her, but was it true that I was a eunuch? (The Goths have no eunuchs among them.) When I replied that it was, she said that it was most improper for a man to touch the lady Amalberga. The small dark woman gave another screech and started laughing. I found out afterward that she found the whole idea of eunuchs ridiculous, and was convinced from the first that I was a woman.

  Suddenly Amalberga herself intervened. “If you can help me,” she said in a firm clear voice and good Greek, “I will be grateful.”

  “I will do my best,” I said, and went to examine her. The small woman moved to stop me, but Amalberga prevented her with two sharp words, and she contented herself with hustling the escort out of the room. I went on with the examination.

  The lady was not gravely ill, to my relief — if she had been I could have done very little about it. She was feverish and in some pain, but it was nothing from which she couldn’t have recovered. But she had lost quite a lot of blood, and the wisewoman, the one in the jewelry, had insisted on “imitating the Romans” and bleeding her, weakening her further. The dark woman, who was a midwife, had the sense to dislike this procedure, and it was this that had caused their argument.

  I took all the leeches off, telling the wisewoman as I did so that the Romans who employed frequent bleedings were ignorant quacks — though I tried to be tactful, and praised her own moderation in using leeches rather than the knife. The body has its own wisdom, I said, and when the patient is already losing blood, the doctor must never force out any more. The wisewoman listened carefully, ashamed rather than angry; I found out afterward that like many well-born Goths, she deeply admired all things Roman. She probably wouldn’t have tried the bleedings to reduce fever if she hadn’t thought it the Roman thing to do. But she gave my words an exaggerated respect, because I was a Roman doctor and, what was more, an imported one from the other end of the empire. The midwife spoke no tongue but Gothic, but was pleased to see the leeches go.

  I then gave the lady some honeywater and opium — a small quantity on a sponge, since she’d been vomiting. Then I had the other two move her and clean her up with boiled water and a cleansing solution. (They refused to let me do this myself; no man, not even a eunuch, could touch Lord Fritigern’s wife about the private parts!) I gave her some warm compresses to ease the pain and asked the slaves to clean the room. By this time the opium was having some effect, so I gave Amalberga the rest of the dose in some oxymel. With the earlier dose and the compresses and the clean sheets to soothe her, she managed to keep it down, and
in a few minutes she went to sleep. She had been very tired, but, kept awake by the pain, she hadn’t been able to rest properly since giving birth a week before.

  The other women were delighted to see her resting so peacefully, and they praised me to Heaven. They found I’d had nothing to eat, so asked the slaves to bring me something, and then the wisewoman asked me about the opium and the rest of my medical gear. We were unpacking it all and discussing herbs when Fritigern and Athanaric knocked at the door. I’d been sitting there with a piece of bread in one hand and a box of dried bryony in the other, but I put them down and jumped up. The women did too. They opened the door, talking in an excited undertone in Gothic and making hushing noises.

  Fritigern came in silently and stood staring at his wife, who lay there peacefully asleep, her blonde hair spread over the pillow. He walked up to the bed, took one of her hands and kissed it, stroked her hair. Then he went over and looked at the baby, who was just waking up and grunting into the mattress. Then he looked at me. Without a word, he took the gold chain from around his neck and put in into my hands. He stared at his wife for another moment, then left in silence.

  “He loves the lady Amalberga very dearly,” Athanaric told me when we were riding home three days later. “As far as he’s concerned, you’ve earned not just that gold trinket, but his friendship for life. She will continue her recovery, I hope?”

  “No fear about that,” I said. All Amalberga had really needed was a good rest and a sensible diet with plenty of fluids. I hadn’t said as much to Fritigern, but the real cause of her illness had been her attendants. When I took my leave she was already sitting up and wanting to nurse her baby. She too had asked whether it was true that I was a eunuch. When I said yes, she’d told me that the midwife thought I was really a woman. “No,” I said, “among the Romans, women don’t study medicine.” She frowned at this, looking at me with some surprise; then she smiled. “So there is one way in which our customs are superior to yours.” I laughed, and said that many would think so. “Well, then, Chariton,” she said, “I thank you for your attendance on a foreigner like myself. Please take this as a token of my gratitude.” She offered me a ring set with pearls. I told her that her husband had already been most generous. “Then let me be generous as well,” she said, smiling. “I don’t wish to be outdone by him!” I told her that I was amply rewarded by her recovery, but I took the ring.

  “You don’t need to worry about her,” I told Athanaric now. “And that wisewoman, Areagni, has tolerably good sense when she isn’t trying to imitate Xanthos. I don’t think she’ll go in for bloodletting again. It’s a pity she can’t read; I’d like to lend her my Hippocrates.”

  Athanaric chuckled. “I thought you’d be offended at the very idea of women practicing medicine.”

  “Why should you think that?” I asked, before reflecting that this was dangerous territory for me. “There are plenty of midwives in Roman lands, and many of them are sensible and competent women,” I added hastily. “On the whole they do less harm than quacks like Xanthos. With a proper Hippocratic training they could be as skilled as any other practitioner.”

  “In other words, Hippocrates is so powerful he could even make a doctor out of a woman?”

  “If you like,” I said, “yes.”

  “Idolator,” Athanaric said pleasantly. “Well, it’s good you got on with the wisewoman; they’re more likely to call you again if Areagni likes you too.”

  “Do you need to do more spying, then?”

  Athanaric ran a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t spying. I was consulting with the most noble Fritigern. I won’t need an excuse when I come to do it again.” He dropped his hand and looked at me keenly for a moment, smiling. “If I tell you what we consulted on, will you hold it under your oath?”

  “Of course,” I said, surprised that he would tell me at all.

  “There is a new race of men who have come from the northeast, from beyond the lands of the Halani. They do not build houses, nor do they ever set their hands on a plow, but, like the Halani, they live in wagons and spend most of their lives upon the backs of their horses. They are without law or religion, inconstant to their allies, but they burn with a desire for gold and for the goods of their neighbors, and they are most savage fighters. They are called the Huns, and there are many thousands upon thousands of them. They have already defeated the Greuthungian Goths, and King Athanaric has led the Theruingi against them — and lost. They have been devastating the northern part of Gothic Dacia, and many people have been ruined by them. They say that it is useless to oppose them, and the only course left is to flee. The question is, where should the people go? They are penned in between the river and the Huns, with the Sarmatians to their west and the Euxine to the east. King Athanaric has fortified his borders, but even he openly talks of invading Sarmatia and taking the land, if the defenses fail. But Fritigern has another idea.” Athanaric smiled, his hands tightening on the reins until his horse curvetted nervously. Plainly the idea excited him. “Fritigern wants to take the Theruingi into Thrace.”

  I caught my breath. “Invade? And he told you that?”

  Athanaric shook his head, then tossed it back, laughing. “Fritigern fight Rome? He adores Rome! You must have seen that. No, he wishes to beg His Sacred Majesty to receive the Theruingi as a federate state within the empire and grant them some of the Thracian lands that are now deserted. The emperor would then be able to tax the lands, and would have a source of Gothic recruits for his armies.” Athanaric grinned at me. “Fritigern asked me whether I thought the emperor would like this plan. I didn’t tell him plainly that I knew the emperor would jump at it; I just said that I’d report it to the master of the offices, and bring him the answer when I could. But the emperor will jump at it, all the same.”

  “What about King Athanaric?” I asked. “Would he agree to become a client of Rome?”

  “Never in a thousand years.” Athanaric laughed, dismissing his uncle with a wave of the hand. “This is Fritigern’s idea. And Fritigern is quite keen to keep it secret. He wants to lead the greater part of the people across the Danube, and be king of the client state. You wouldn’t have thought he was that powerful, would you, from looking at his house? He looks no more than an ordinary country gentleman. Well, he can summon up a thousand swordsmen within a few days. He’ll probably be crossing the river by this time next year.”

  We were both silent for a time. Athanaric rode with a smile on his face, his eyes bright. I thought of the Goths crossing the river, settling on the wastelands of Thrace, paying taxes to the emperors, and the thought somehow made me uneasy. There could not be two powers in the state; and if the emperor was one, where did that leave a Gothic king?

  “Will they want to live as Romans?” I asked Athanaric. “I know they admire Rome, but it’s easier to admire it from a distance than when you’re sitting under the eagles.”

  “Of course they want to live as Romans!” Athanaric exclaimed in real annoyance. I realized only then that the prospect of the Goths coming into Thrace delighted him. Of course; it was what his father had done, and what he had been brought up to. Perhaps he felt that when others came, he himself would have a home.

  “You look at them from the other side of the Danube and think ‘noble barbarians,’ don’t you? There’s nothing noble about the way they live. They are almost always at war — the nobles among themselves, the Theruingi with the Greuthungi, the Goths with the Sarmatians, and all of them with us. They live by the sword, and they’re ruled by whoever is strongest. Sebastianus calls Lupicinus ignorant because he’s never read Homer; Fritigern can’t read at all, not even his own name. Where would your Hippocrates be without books, eh? Lost in oblivion, and you’d be practicing like Xanthos, out of what you learned from your father. You look at Rome and you see a force that killed your friends in Alexandria; they look at Rome and see a power that rules the world through law, peace, and learning. From Armenia to Britain, from Africa to the Rhine, one government, two c
ommon languages, and a thousand years of civilization. Here we are, a Greek eunuch from Amida and Ephesus, and the son of a Gothic prince and an Illyrian lady, differing in our native languages, our customs, our faiths — and we are both Romans. That is stronger than any of the divisions between us; that keeps the peace. Why shouldn’t the Theruingi love Rome and live happily under Roman rule?”

  I couldn’t answer. I was watching his face and listening to his voice, and the words suddenly didn’t seem to matter much. He had a wonderful light in his eyes, and he spoke rapidly in that quick staccato Greek, driving his words with the dashing splendor with which he rode his horses. My throat felt tight.

  “What’s the matter?” Athanaric asked, breaking from his enthusiasm into a surprised concern.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I hope you are right. When do we reach the Danube? I’m not a Hun; I’m not used to living on horseback.”

  He laughed, and I concentrated on my riding. It was not true, of course, that there was nothing wrong. I could have checked my symptoms off one by one, but from an authority other than Hippocrates.

  But my words are broken on my tongue

  Over my skin light fires run

  I see nothing, and my ears hum.

  Violently a cold sweat shakes me

  Paler than grass the fever makes me

  Near to death your presence takes me.

  Oh Holy Christ, I thought, why should this happen to me now? Why should it happen to me at all? I mustn’t let it happen. Nothing can come of it, and I don’t even trust Athanaric. Not really. And I wouldn’t give up medicine for him, even if he’d have me, and he wouldn’t have me, not having known me as Chariton all this time. Oh Christ, when did this start to happen? For I knew it must have been creeping up on me for some time, and it was only when my whole body felt the force of it that I admitted to myself, in an instant, that I was in love.