by Noah Gordon
“What are the signs of this disease?”
Sadi ibn Dehbid demurred, for he was no physician and didn’t bother his head with such matters. He knew only that no one save the Christian’s daughter would go near him.
“The Christian has a daughter?”
Sadi could not describe the sick man or his daughter but said that Boudi the Camel Trader, who was with the caravan, had seen them both.
Together they sought out the camel trader, a sly-eyed, wizened man who spat red saliva from between teeth blackened from chewing betel nut.
Boudi barely remembered the Christians, he said, but when Rob pressed a coin on him his memory improved until he recalled that he had seen them five days’ travel to the west, half a day beyond the town of Datur. The father was middle-aged, with long gray hair and no beard. He had worn foreign clothing black as a mullah’s robes. The woman was young and tall and had curious hair a little lighter in color than henna.
Rob looked at him in dismay. “How ill did the European appear?”
Boudi smiled pleasantly. “I do not know, master. III.”
“Were there servants?”
“I saw no one attending them.”
Doubtless the hirelings had run off, Rob told himself. “Did she appear to have sufficient food?”
“I myself gave her a basket of pulse and three loaves of bread, master.”
Now Rob fixed him with a stare that frightened Boudi. “Why did you give her foodstuffs?”
The camel trader shrugged. He turned and rummaged in a sack, and pulled out a knife, hilt first. There were fancier knives to be found in every Persian marketplace but it was the proof, for the last time Rob had seen it, this dagger had swung from the belt of James Geikie Cullen.
He knew if he confided in Karim and Mirdin they would insist on accompanying him, and he wanted to go alone. He left word for them with Yussuf-ul-Gamal. “Tell them I’m called off on a personal matter and will explain on my return,” he said to the librarian.
Of others, he told only Jalal.
“Going away for a time? But why?”
“It’s important. It involves a woman …”
“Of course it does,” Jalal muttered. The bonesetter was cranky until he found that there were enough apprentices to serve the clinic without discomforting him, and then he nodded.
Rob left next morning. It was a long trip and undue haste would have worked against him, yet he kept the brown gelding moving, for always in his mind was the picture of a woman alone in a foreign wilderness with her sick father.
It was summer weather and the runoff waters of spring already had evaporated under the coppery sun, so that the salty dust of Persia coated him and insinuated itself into his saddle pack. He ate it in his food and drank a thin film of it in his water. Everywhere he saw wildflowers turned brown, but he passed people tilling the rocky soil by turning the little moisture to irrigate the vines and date trees, as had been done for thousands of years.
He was grimly purposeful and no one challenged or delayed him, and at dusk of the fourth day he passed the town of Datur. Nothing could be done in the dark, but next morning he was riding at sunrise. At midmorning in the tiny village of Gusheh, a merchant accepted his coin, bit it, and then told him everyone knew of the Christians. They were in a house off Ahmad’s wadi, a short ride due west.
The wadi eluded him but he came upon two goatherds, an old man and a boy. At his question about the whereabouts of Christians, the old man spat.
Rob drew his weapon. He had an almost-forgotten ugliness in him. The old man could sense it and, with his eyes on the broadsword, he raised his arm and pointed.
Rob rode in that direction. When he was out of range, the younger goatherd put a stone in his sling and launched it. He could hear it rattling in the rocks behind him.
He came upon the wadi suddenly. The old riverbed was mostly dry but had been flooded earlier in the season, for in shady places there was still green growth. He followed it a good way before he saw the little house built of mud and stone. She was standing outside boiling a wash and when she saw him she sprang away like a wild thing, into the house. By the time he was off his horse, she had dragged something heavy against the door.
“Mary.”
“Is it you?”
“Yes.”
There was a silence, then a grating sound as she moved the rock. The door opened a crack, and then wider.
He realized she had never seen him in the beard or the Persian garb, although the leather Jew’s hat was the one she knew.
She was holding her father’s sword. The ordeal was in her face, which was thin, making her eyes and the large cheekbones and long thin nose all the more prominent. There were blisters on her lips, which he recalled happened to her when she was exhausted. Her cheeks were sooty except for two lines washed by tears from the smoky fire. But she blinked and he could see her become as sensible as he remembered.
“Please. Will you help him?” she said, and led Rob quickly into the house.
* * *
His heart sank when he saw James Cullen. He didn’t need to take the sheepman’s hands to know he was dying. She must have known too, but she looked at him as though she expected him to heal her father with a touch.
There hung over the house the fetid stink of Cullen’s insides.
“He has had the flux?”
She nodded wearily and recited the details in a flat voice. The fever had begun weeks before with vomiting and a terrible pain in the right side of his abdomen. Mary had nursed him carefully. After a time his temperature had subsided and to her great relief he had begun to get well. For several weeks he had made steady gains and was almost recovered, and then the symptoms had recurred, this time with even greater severity.
Cullen’s face appeared pale and sunken, and his eyes dull. His pulse was barely perceptible. He was racked with alternating fever and chills, and had both diarrhea and vomiting.
“The servants thought it was the plague. They ran away,” she said.
“No. Not the plague.” The vomitus wasn’t black and there were no buboes. Small consolation. His abdomen had hardened on the right side until it was boardlike. When Rob pressed on it, Cullen—although he appeared to be lost in the deep softness of coma—screamed.
Rob knew what it was. The last time he had seen it, he had juggled and sang so a little boy could die without fright.
“A distemper of the large intestine. Sometimes they call it the side sickness. It is a poison that began in his gut and has spread through his body.”
“What has caused it?”
He shook his head. “Perhaps the bowel has become kinked or there is an obstruction.” They both recognized the hopelessness of his ignorance.
He worked hard over James Cullen, trying anything that might possibly help. He gave enemas of milky chamomile tea and when they didn’t do anything he administered doses of rhubarb and salts. He applied hot packs to the abdomen, but by then he knew it was no use.
He stayed next to the Scot’s bed. He would have sent Mary into the next room to get some of the rest she had denied herself, but he knew the end was near and reasoned she would have plenty of time to rest later.
In the middle of the night Cullen just gave a little leap, a small start.
“It’s all right, Da,” Mary whispered, rubbing his hands, and there was a slipping away, so quiet and easy that for a little while neither she nor Rob knew that her father was no longer alive.
* * *
She had given up shaving him a few days before he died and there was gray beard to be scraped from his face. Rob combed his hair and held the body in his arms while she washed it, dry-eyed. “I am glad to do this. I wasn’t allowed to help with my mother,” she said.
Cullen had a long scar on the right thigh. “He got that chasing a wild boar into the brush, when I was eleven. He had to spend the winter in the house. We made a crèche together for Yuletide and it was then I came to know him.”
After her father had
been prepared, Rob carried more water from the brook and heated it on the fire. While she bathed he dug a grave, which proved devilishly hard, for the soil was mostly stone and he hadn’t a proper tool. In the end he used Cullen’s sword and a stout sharpened branch for prying, and his bare hands. When the grave was ready, he fashioned a rood of two sticks lashed together with the dead man’s belt.
She wore the black dress in which he had first seen her. He carried Cullen in a winding sheet that was a wool blanket they had brought from their home, so beautiful and warm he regretted placing it in the grave.
It required a Holy Mass of Requiem and he couldn’t even speak a proper burial prayer, not trusting himself to get the Latin right. But a psalm that had been one of Mam’s came to mind.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
He closed the grave and fixed the cross. When he walked away she remained kneeling, her eyes closed and her lips moving with words only her own mind could hear.
He gave her time to be alone in the house. She had told him about turning loose their two horses to forage for themselves on the thin growth in the wadi, and he rode out to find the animals.
He saw they had built a pen with a thornbush fence. Inside he found the bones of four sheep, probably killed by animals and eaten. Doubtless Cullen had bought many more sheep that had been stolen by humans.
Crazy Scot! He never could have brought a flock all the way to Scotland. And now he would not bring himself home either, and his daughter was left alone in an unfriendly land.
At one end of the stony little valley Rob discovered the remains of Cullen’s white horse. Perhaps it had broken a leg and had been easy prey; the carcass was almost consumed, but he recognized the work of jackals and went back to the fresh grave and armored it in heavy, flat stones that would prevent the beasts from digging up the body.
He came upon her black mount at the other end of the wadi, as far from the jackals’ feast as it had been able to get. It wasn’t difficult to put a halter on the horse, which appeared eager for the safety and security of servitude.
When he returned to the house he found her composed but pale. “What would I have done, had you not appeared?”
He smiled at her, remembering the barricaded door and the sword in her hand. “What was needed.”
She was tightly controlled. “I would like to return to Ispahan with you.”
“I want that.” His heart leaped, but he was chastened by her next words.
“There is a caravanserai there?”
“Yes. Busily trafficked.”
“Then I’ll join a protected caravan traveling west. And make my way to a port where I may be able to book passage home.”
He went to her and took her hands, the first time he had touched her. Her fingers were rough from work, unlike a haram woman’s hands, but he didn’t want to release them. “Mary, I made a terrible mistake. I can’t let you go again.”
Her steady eyes contemplated him.
“Come with me to Ispahan, but live there with me.”
It would have been easier if he hadn’t felt constrained to speak guiltily of Jesse ben Benjamin and the need for pretense.
It was as if a current ran between their fingers, but he saw anger in her eyes, a kind of horror. “So many lies,” she said, quietly. She pulled herself away from him and went outside.
He went to the door and watched her walking away from the house over the broken ground of the riverbed.
She was gone long enough for him to worry, but she returned.
“Tell me why it is worth the deception.”
He forced himself to put it into words, an embarrassment he undertook because he wanted her and knew the truth was her due.
“It’s being chosen. As though God has said, ‘In the creation of human beings I made mistakes and I charge you with working to correct some of my errors.’ It isn’t a thing I desired. It sought me out.”
His words frightened her. “Surely that is blasphemy, to set yourself as one who corrects God’s mistakes?”
“No, no,” he said gently. “A good physician is but His instrument.”
She nodded, and now he thought he saw in her eyes a glimmer of understanding, perhaps even envy.
“I would always share you with a mistress.”
Somehow she had sensed Despina, he thought foolishly. “I want only you,” he said.
“No, you want your work and it will come first, before family, before anything. But I have loved you so, Rob. And want to be your wife.”
He put his arms around her.
“Cullens are married in the Church,” she said into his shoulder.
“Even if we could find a priest in Persia he wouldn’t marry a Christian woman and a Jew. We must tell people we were married in Constantinople. When I finish my medical training we’ll return to England and be properly wed.”
“And meantime?” she said bleakly.
“A hand-held marriage.” He took both of her hands in his.
They regarded one another soberly. “There should be words, even with a hand-held marriage,” she said.
“Mary Cullen, I take you for my wife,” he said thickly. “I promise to cherish and protect you, and you have my love.” He wished the words were better but he was deeply moved and didn’t feel in control of his tongue.
“Robert Jeremy Cole, I take you for husband,” she said clearly. “I promise to go where you go and ever to seek your well-being. You have had my love since first I saw you.”
She gripped his hands so hard they hurt and he could feel her vitality, a throbbing. He was aware that the fresh grave outside made joy indecent, yet he felt a wild mixture of emotions and he told himself their vows had been better than many he had heard in a church.
He packed her belongings on the brown horse and she rode the black. He would trade the pack off between the animals, transferring it each morning. On the rare occasions when the way was smooth and flat, both he and Mary sat the one horse, but most of the time she rode and he led the way on foot. It made for slow travel, but he wasn’t in a hurry.
She was more given to silence than he recalled and he made no move to touch her, sensitive to her grief. Camping in a brushy clearing by the side of the road on the second night of their trip to Ispahan, he lay awake and listened to her finally weeping.
“If you’re God’s helper, correcting mistakes, why could you not save him?”
“I don’t know enough.”
The weeping had been a long time coming and now she couldn’t stop. He took her into his arms. While they lay with her head on his shoulder, he began to kiss her wet face and finally her mouth, which was soft and welcoming and tasted as he remembered. He rubbed her back and stroked the lovely hollow at the base of her spine and then, as their kiss hardened and he felt her tongue, he groped through her underclothing.
She was weeping again but open to his fingers and spreading to accept him.
What he felt more than passion was an overriding regard for her and a thanksgiving. Their joining was a delicate, tender rocking in which they scarcely moved at all. It went on and on, on and on, until it ended exquisitely for him; seeking to heal he was healed, and seeking to comfort he was comforted, but to bring her some measure of solace he had to finish her with his hand.
Afterward he held her and talked softly, telling her of Ispahan and Yehuddiyyeh, and the madrassa and the hospital, and Ibn Sina. An
d of his friends the Muslim and the Jew, Mirdin and Karim.
“Do they have wives?”
“Mirdin has a wife. Karim has a lot of women.”
They fell asleep wrapped in one another.
He was awakened in the harsh gray light of morning by the creaking of saddle leather, the slow thudding of hooves in the dusty road, someone’s ragged coughing, men talking as they sat their walking beasts.
Looking over her shoulder through the thorny brush that separated their hiding place from the road, he watched a force of mounted soldiers riding past. They were fierce-looking, carrying the same eastern swords as Alā’s men but with bows that were shorter than the Persian variety. They wore ragged robes and once-white turbans stained dark with sweat and dirt, and they exuded a stink that reached Rob where he lay in agony, waiting for one of his horses to give him away or for a rider to glance through the bushes and see him and the sleeping woman.
A familiar face came into view and he recognized Hadad Khan, the hot-tempered Seljuk ambassador to the court of the Alā Shah.
These were Seljuks, then. And riding next to white-haired Hadad Khan was another figure known to him, a mullah named Musa Ibn Abbas, chief aide to the Imam Mirza-aboul Qandrasseh, the Persian Vizier.
Rob saw a total of six other mullahs and counted ninety-six horse soldiers. There was no knowing how many had ridden past while he slept.
Neither his horse nor Mary’s whinnied or made any other sound to reveal their presence, and eventually the last Seljuk rode past and Rob dared to breathe, listening to their sounds growing fainter.
Presently he kissed his wife to waken her and then lost no time breaking their rude camp and starting on their way, for he had found a reason for hurrying.
50
THE CHATIR
“Married?” Karim said. He looked at Rob and grinned.
“A wife! I didn’t expect you would heed my advice,” Mirdin said, beaming. “Who arranged this match?”