The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  It was so. When Alā came to the stables Karim walked directly behind the ruler and his face wore the broadest of smiles as he followed the Shah to his two friends.

  The grin became less confident as the Shah leaned forward to listen to Mirdin Askari, who was audibly muttering words in the Tongue as he prostrated himself in the ravi zemin.

  “Come! You must speak Persian and tell us what you are saying,” Alā snapped.

  “It is a benediction, Sire. A blessing Jews offer when they see the King,” Mirdin managed to say. “ ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has given of His glory to flesh and man.’ “

  “The Dhimmis offer prayer of thanks when they see their Shah?” Alā said, amazed and pleased.

  Rob knew it was a berakhah said by the pious upon sighting any king but neither he nor Mirdin saw any reason to point this out, and Alā was in a splendid mood as he swung onto his white horse and they rode after him into the quiet countryside.

  “I’m told you have taken a European wife,” he called to Rob, twisting in the saddle.

  “That’s true, Excellency.”

  “I have heard she has hair the color of henna.”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “A female’s hair should be black.”

  Rob couldn’t argue with a king and saw no need; he was grateful to have a woman Alā didn’t value.

  The day was spent much as the first in which Rob had ridden in the Shah’s company, save that now they traveled with two others to share the burden of the monarch’s attention, so there was less strain and more pleasure than on the previous occasion. Alā was delighted to discover in Mirdin a profound knowledge of Persian history, and as they rode slowly into the hills the two talked of the ancient sacking of Persepolis by Alexander, which the Persian in Alā decried and the militarist in him applauded. At midmorning in a shady spot Alā practiced against Karim with the scimitar, and while they whirled and the swords clanged and clashed, Mirdin and Rob talked quietly of surgical ligatures, discussing the relative merits of silk, linen thread (which they both agreed decomposed too easily), horsehair and, Ibn Sina’s favorite, human hair. At midday there was rich food and drink under the shade of the king’s tent, and the three took turns being bested at the Shah’s Game, although Mirdin fought valiantly and in one contest almost succeeded in winning, making victory all the more sweet for Alā.

  Within Alā’s secret cave the four soaked companionably, loosening their bodies in the warm water of the pool and their spirits with an unending supply of fine drink.

  Karim rolled the wine on his tongue appreciatively before swallowing and then favored Alā with his smile. “I was a beggar boy. Have I told you that, Excellency?”

  Alā returned the smile and shook his head.

  “A beggar boy now drinks the wine of the King of Kings.”

  “Yes. I choose as my friends a beggar boy and a pair of Jews.” ALā’s laughter was louder and more sustained than theirs. “For my Chief of Chairs I have lofty and noble plans, and I have long liked this Dhimmi,” he said, giving Rob a friendly, slightly drunken shove. “And now another Dhimmi appears to be an excellent man, worthy of notice. You must stay in Ispahan when you finish the madrassa, Mirdin Askari, and become a physician to my court.”

  Mirdin colored in discomfort. “Sire, you do me honor. I beg you not to take offense, but I ask your good will in allowing me to return home to the lands along the great gulf when I become hakim. My father is old and ailing. I shall be the first physician in our line, and before he dies I wish him to see me settled in the bosom of our family.”

  Alā nodded carelessly. “What does it do, this family that lives on the great gulf?”

  “Our men have traveled the shores as long as any can remember, buying pearls from the divers, Majesty.”

  “Pearls! That is good, for I acquire pearls when I can find good ones. You shall be the making of your kinsmen, Dhimmi, for you must tell them to search out the largest perfect pearl and bring it to me, and I will buy it and make your family rich.”

  They were weaving in their saddles by the time they rode home. Alā strove to sit erect and addressed them with a fondness that might or might not survive the painful sobering that was certain to follow. When they reached the royal stables and his attendants and sycophants closed in and hovered, the Shah chose to flaunt them.

  “We are four friends!” he shouted within the hearing of half the court. “Just four good men who are friends!”

  It was repeated quickly and traveled through the city, as all gossip did that involved the Shah.

  “With some friends, wariness is necessary,” Ibn Sina cautioned Rob one morning about a week later.

  They were at an entertainment given for the Shah by Fath Ali, a wealthy man whose mercantile firm was responsible for selling wines to the House of Paradise and most of the nobles of the court. Rob was happy to see Ibn Sina. Since Rob’s marriage, with typical sensitivity the Chief Physician seldom asked for his company in the evening. Now they strolled past Karim, who was surrounded by admiring courtiers, and Rob thought that his friend appeared to be as much a prisoner as an object of adulation.

  Their presence was demanded by the fact that each was the recipient of a calaat, but Rob was bored with royal entertainments; while they might differ in detail, they were cursed by a general sameness. In addition, he was resentful of the demands on his time. “I would greatly prefer to be working in the maristan where I belong,” he said.

  Ibn Sina looked about cautiously. They were walking alone on the merchant’s estate and would have a brief period of freedom, since Alā had entered Fath Ali’s haram moments before.

  “You must never forget that dealing with a monarch is not like dealing with an ordinary man,” Ibn Sina said. “A king is not like you or me. He drops a hand carelessly and someone like us is put to death. Or he wiggles a finger and someone is allowed to live. That is absolute power, and no man born of woman is able to resist it. It drives even the best of monarchs slightly mad.”

  Rob shrugged. “I never seek the Shah’s company, nor have I any desire to stew in politics.”

  Ibn Sina nodded in approval. “There is this about monarchs in the East: they like to choose physicians as their viziers, feeling that healers somehow already have Allah’s attention. I know how easy it is to answer the lure of such an appointment and I have drunk the intoxicating wine of power. Twice when I was younger I accepted the title of Vizier in Hamadhān. It was more dangerous than the practice of medicine. After the first time, I narrowly escaped execution. I was thrown into the castle-prison called Fardajān, where I languished for months. After I was released from Fardajān, Vizier or not, I knew I couldn’t stay in Hamadhān in safety. With al-Juzjani and my household I made my way to Ispahan, where I have been under Alā’s protection ever since.”

  They turned back, retracing their steps toward the gardens in which the entertainment was being held.

  “Fortunate for Persia that Alā allows great physicians to pursue their profession,” Rob said.

  Ibn Sina smiled. “It fits his plans to be known as a great king who fosters the arts and the sciences,” he said drily. “Even when he was a young man, he hungered after an empire of influence. Now he must seek to make it wider, trying to eat up his enemies before they devour him.”

  “The Seljuks.”

  “Oh, I should fear the Seljuks most if I were Vizier in Ispahan,” Ibn Sina said. “But it is Mahmud of Ghazna whom Alā watches most intently, for the two are cut from the same fabric. Alā has made four raids into India, capturing twenty-eight war elephants. Mahmud is closer to the source, he has raided India more often and has more than fifty war elephants. Alā envies and fears him. It is Mahmud who must be eliminated next if Alā is to proceed with his dream.”

  Ibn Sina stopped and placed a hand on Rob’s arm. “You must take great care. It is said by thoughtful men that Qandrasseh’s days are numbered as Vizier. And that a young physician will take his place.”


  Rob said nothing, but he remembered suddenly that Alā had spoken of having “lofty and noble plans” for Karim.

  “If it is true, Qandrasseh will strike without mercy at anyone he may see as the friend or supporter of his rival. It isn’t enough to have no political ambitions for yourself. When a physician deals with those in power he must learn to bend and sway or he will not survive.”

  Rob wasn’t certain he would be skilled at bending and swaying.

  “Don’t be overconcerned,” Ibn Sina said. “Alā changes his mind often and swiftly, and one cannot plan on what he will do in the future.”

  They resumed walking and reached the gardens shortly before the subject of their discussion returned from Fath Ali’s haram, looking relaxed and in a good mood.

  Halfway through the afternoon, Rob began to wonder whether Ibn Sina ever had been host to an entertainment for his Shah and protector. He went up to Khuff and casually asked the question.

  The grizzled Captain of the Gates slitted his eyes in concentration, then he nodded. “A few years since,” he said.

  Clearly, Alā would have had no interest in the first wife, old Pious Reza, so it was virtually certain that he had claimed sovereign right to Despina. Rob pictured the Shah climbing the circular staircase in the stone tower while Khuff guarded the approach.

  Mounting the girl’s small, voluptuous body.

  Fascinated now, Rob studied the three men, each surrounded by idolizing and deferring nobles. The Shah was ringed by his usual attendance of arse kissers. Ibn Sina, grave and composed, quietly answered questions of scholarly looking men. Karim, as always nowadays, was virtually hidden by the admirers who sought to speak to him, to touch his clothing, to bathe in the excitement and glow of his sought-after presence.

  This Persia seemed to seek to make every man a cuckold in turn.

  He felt natural and right with surgical instruments in his hand, as if they were interchangeable parts of his own body. Al-Juzjani gave him more and more of his own precious time, showing him with painstaking patience how to do every procedure. The Persians had ways of immobilizing and desensitizing patients. When hemp was soaked in barley water for days and the infusion was swallowed, it allowed someone to remain conscious but deadened the pain. Rob spent two weeks with the master pharmacists of the khazanat-ul-sharaf learning to mix concoctions that put patients to sleep. The substances were unpredictable and hard to control, but sometimes they allowed surgeons to operate without the convulsive shudderings and moans and screams of pain.

  The recipes seemed to him more like magic than medicine.

  Take the flesh of a sheep. Free it from fat and cut it into lumps, piling the pieces of meat over and around a goodly amount of braised henbane seeds. Set this in an earthenware jar beneath a heap of horse dung until worms are generated. Then place the worms in a glass vessel until they shrivel up. When required for use, take two parts of these and one part of powdered opium, and instill this into the nose of the patient.

  Opium was derived from the juice of an Eastern flower, the poppy. It was grown in Ispahan fields but the demand outpaced the supply, for it was used in the mosque rites of Ismaili Muslims as well as in medicines, so some of it was imported from Turkey and from Ghazna. It was the base of all pain-killing formulae.

  Take pure opium and nutmeg. Grind and cook them together and allow them to soak in old wine for forty days. Keep on putting the bottle in the sun. Soon it will be a paste. When a pill is made from this and administered to anyone, he will at once fall unconscious and be without sensation.

  They used another prescription most of the time, because it was the one that was preferred by Ibn Sina:

  Take equal parts of henbane, opium, euphorbia and licorice seeds. Grind each of them separately and mix the whole together in a mortar. Place some of the mixture upon any kind of food and whosoever eats thereof will fall asleep immediately.

  Despite Rob’s suspicion that al-Juzjani resented his relationship with Ibn Sina, he was soon busily using all the instruments of surgery. Al-Juzjani’s other clerks thought the new apprentice had more than his share of choice work and grew surly, taking out their jealousy on Rob by mutterings and mean insults. Rob didn’t care, for he was learning more than he had dared dream was possible. One afternoon, having for the first time performed alone the procedure that dazzled him above all others in surgery—the couching of eyes blinded by cataracts—he at tempted to thank al-Juzjani, but the surgeon interrupted him brusquely.

  “You’ve the knack for cutting flesh. It’s not something many clerks have, and my special instruction is selfish, for I’ll get a great amount of work from you.”

  It was true. Day after day he did amputations, repaired every kind of wound, tapped into abdomens to relieve the pressure of accumulated fluids in the peritoneal cavity, removed piles, stripped varicose veins …

  “I think you begin to like cutting too much,” Mirdin said shrewdly as they sat together in Mirdin’s house one evening over the Shah’s Game. In the next room, Fara listened while Mary put her sons to sleep with a lullaby in the Erse, the language of the Scots.

  “I am drawn to it,” Rob admitted. Lately he had given thought to becoming a surgeon after winning the designation of hakim. In England surgeons were considered below physicians in status, but in Persia they were addressed by the special title of ustad and enjoyed equal respect and prosperity.

  But he had reservations. “Surgery is satisfying so far as it goes. But we’re limited to operating on the outside of the bag of skin. The inside of the body is a mystery handed down in books more than a thousand years old. We know almost nothing about the internal body.”

  “That’s the way it must be,” Mirdin said placidly, and took a rukh with one of his own foot soldiers. “Christians, Jews, and Muslims agree it is sin to desecrate the human form.”

  “I don’t speak of desecration. I speak of surgery, I speak of dissection. The ancients didn’t cripple their science with admonitions of sin, and what little we now know came from the early Greeks, who had the freedom to open the body and study it. They dissected the dead and observed how man is fashioned within. For a brief moment in those long-ago days their brilliance illuminated all of medicine, and then the world fell into darkness.” He brooded and the game suffered, so that Mirdin quickly captured the other rukh and one of his camels.

  “I think,” Rob said at length, almost idly, “that during all these long centuries of dark ignorance, there have been small, secret fires.”

  Now Mirdin’s attention was drawn from the board.

  “Men who have had the strength to dissect dead humans in stealth. Defying the priests in order to do the Lord’s work as physicians.”

  Mirdin stared. “Dear God. They would be treated as witches.”

  “They would not have been able to report their knowledge, but at least they would have gained it for themselves.”

  Mirdin now looked alarmed.

  Rob smiled at him. “No, I would not,” he said gently. “I have enough trouble pretending to be a Jew. I simply do not have the necessary variety of courage.”

  “We must show gratitude for tiny blessings,” Mirdin said drily. He had been made sufficiently uneasy and diverted so that now he played poorly, giving up an elephant and two horses in swift succession, but Rob hadn’t yet learned enough about pressing through to victory. Quickly and coolly Mirdin rallied his forces and, within a dozen moves, to Rob’s chagrin he was once again forced to experience shahtreng, the anguish of the king.

  54

  MARY’S EXPECTATIONS

  Mary had no female friend other than Fara, but the Jewess was enough. The two women learned to sit for hours and talk to one another, communications devoid of the questions and answers characterizing most social conversation. Sometimes Mary talked and Fara listened to an outpouring of Gaelic she didn’t understand, sometimes Fara spoke the Tongue to an uncomprehending Mary.

  The words were curiously unimportant. What mattered was the play o
f emotions across the facial features, the expressions of the hands, what was in the voice, secrets conveyed by the eyes.

  Thus they shared their feelings and for Mary it was an advantage, for she spoke of things she wouldn’t have mentioned to one she had known so short a time. She revealed her sorrow over the loss of her father; her loneliness for the Christian Mass; the power of her longing when she awoke from dreaming of the young and beautiful woman Jura Cullen once had been, and then had to lie in the little Yehuddiyyeh house as, like a cold and loathsome creature, the realization crept into her mind that her mother was long dead. And she spoke of things she wouldn’t have mentioned no matter how long she and Fara had been friends: of how she loved him so much that sometimes it caused a trembling she couldn’t control; of moments when desire flooded her with such warmth that for the first time she understood mares in heat; of how she would never again watch a ram mounting a ewe without thinking of her limbs around Rob, his taste in her mouth, the smell of his firm warm flesh in her nostrils, the hot magical extension of her husband making her one with him as they strove to get him into the core of her body.

  She didn’t know if Fara spoke of such things but her eyes and ears told her that betimes what Mirdin’s wife talked about was intimate and important, and the two dissimilar women became linked by love and high regard, a bond of friendship.

  One morning Mirdin laughed and clapped Rob’s shoulder in delight. “You’ve obeyed the commandment to multiply. She’s expecting a child, you European ram!”

  “It isn’t so!”

  “It is so,” Mirdin said firmly. “You’ll see. In this, Fara is never wrong.”

  Two mornings later Mary paled after eating her breakfast and spewed up the food and drink, requiring Rob to clean and scrape the packed-earth floor and carry in fresh sand. That week she began regularly to be plagued by vomiting, and when her monthly flow was absent, no doubt remained. It should have been no surprise, for they’d been unflagging in their love-making; but she’d long since begun to think that perhaps God didn’t favor the union.