Keptah bowed to her with the reverence one gives to a goddess, and held the goblet to her lips, and she drank the contents in one painful swallow, for her throat was constricted. Then over Keptah’s shoulder she saw someone, and her glazed eyes immediately became intent, yet deeply loving and pleading. Keptah followed her long glance and saw that Iris had come into the room, wrapped in white wool against the chill, her golden braids flowing almost to her knees.
The Grecian woman came at once to Aurelia, and smoothed the wet dark hair with gentle solicitude, her blue eyes studying the cyanotic and bloated face of the sufferer. Aurelia forgot everyone else in the room but her friend. She lifted her shaking hand and took Iris’ hand, and between the two women passed an eloquent if unheard exchange.
Then Aurelia fell back on her cushions and looked straightly at Keptah. “It is said that Julius Caesar was cut from his mother’s dying womb in order to save his life. Can you not do this to me? What is my life compared with my husband’s happiness?”
“What I have given you will induce almost immediate labor, Lady,” said Keptah, avoiding her eyes. “The result is with God only.”
“But the child is far from term,” groaned the unhappy lady.
“Not too far, hardly less than seven weeks,” said the physician. “I have seen younger survive.”
Lucanus came into the chamber and stood beside the physician, his face streaked with the evidence of his tears. He and his mother filled the room with beauty and stateliness and stature, and even the tall and patrician Keptah was diminished. The cool late winter wind blew out the curtain at the window. Covered brass bowls of hot embers were wrapped in wool and placed about Aurelia’s convulsed body. Her mind brightened as death approached. Iris knelt beside her, for Aurelia would not release her hand. She said to the freed-woman, in a feeble voice, “All that I have I deliver to you. Do not weep. You have been my friend, and friends are more than birth, more than money, more than station, more even than Rome itself. I beg of you what you will give in any event: devotion and love, and all your heart.”
Lucanus, standing beside the waiting Keptah, was confusedly amazed. What was this that Aurelia was telling his mother? What meant this strange and cryptic conversation, and why did his mother only cry silently and not question? Then he forgot all this in his passionate concern for Aurelia, for a change had come over her face, a starkness as though she were listening to something only she could hear with her soul. Her swollen body grew instantly rigid, and she threw out her arms, arched her back in a sudden convulsion. Her neck stretched, her shoulders raised themselves, and a vast subterranean groan came less from her throat than somewhere deep in her flesh. Her eyes protruded; her tongue lashed at her purpling lips.
“Watch,” said Keptah in a low voice to Lucanus. He threw aside the rugs on the bed and turned back Aurelia’s shift. The mounded bluish belly, veined like marble, was palpitating strongly; muscular waves ran over it. Then from her birth canal there issued a swift gush of mingled blood and water, and the chamber was filled with the smell of it. Keptah thrust his long lean fingers into the poor lady’s body, and she groaned again, and Iris took both the writhing hands and held them tightly. One of the nurses began to whimper, and the other two fell on their knees and helplessly prayed. Now Aurelia gave herself up to a steady groaning until the sound seemed part of the chamber itself, and part of the equinoctial wind.
Lucanus knew what to do. He pressed both his hands at the top of the mound and rhythmically assisted the rippling muscles in their attempts to thrust the child from its mother’s flesh. But the muscles were strictured by Aurelia’s convulsions; they were like resisting iron under Lucanus’ hands. He closed his eyes and let his sensitive hands and fingers do their office, and when a muscular wave weakened he gave it his strength.
The convulsions of Aurelia’s disease were preventing the child’s delivery, but still Keptah hesitated before the awful thing he now knew he must do. He had a most terrible decision to make. The child would most probably die upon delivery, or be born dead. Still, there was a chance it would be a viable birth, and a slighter chance that the child would survive. In order that this could happen, however, the convulsed cervix would have to be enlarged by the knife and the child forcibly delivered. Aurelia, then, would die of hemorrhage, her parts severed. The child’s head could not be reached by forceps in this present condition, for it had not as yet descended to the mouth of the womb because of its prematurity, and also the convulsions of Aurelia’s body. Worse still, Keptah now believed, on a fresh examination, that the child was presenting itself improperly in a breech position. “Oh, my God!” he moaned aloud.
On a signal from Keptah, Lucanus put his ear to Aurelia’s heaving breast. He looked with alarm at the physician, for the lady’s heart was perceptibly weaker, even though it bounded like a terrorized thing. Moreover, Aurelia’s agony was becoming more than she could bear. When Lucanus saw Keptah’s dusky and trembling hand reaching for a short sharp knife he bit his lip strongly, and he was filled with a wild and impotent rage.
He bent over Aurelia then, and took her icily wet face in his hands. By force of his will he brought her glaring eyes to his, and he began to murmur hypnotically. “You have no pain,” he repeated, over and over. “The pain has gone. You are very sleepy and tired. The pain has gone — you are very sleepy — you are relaxing — the pain has gone — you will sleep now.....”
Aurelia saw his eyes and heard his voice. His eyes were like brilliant blue moons to her, swimming in darkness. They filled all the universe, brightening instant by instant. And everything rocked gently to his voice; she could feel that she was floating on a lightless but infinitely comforting sea, without pain. A blissful sensation encompassed her, a lightness, a delivery from anguish. All was explained, all was understood, all was joy and peace. She did not feel the slashing of the knife in her vitals, nor the cataract of her blood. She was without body. She smiled, and the smile seemed to be returned from some far depth that was rising to meet her, a depth pervaded by love and tenderness and compassion. “Mama,” she said faintly, and with contentment, and then she was still.
Lucanus lifted his head and looked at Keptah, and he was filled with the very corroding gall of bitterness. “She has gone,” he said.
But Keptah was drawing the legs of the infant from the mother’s body, thin, grotesquely bent legs, small to doll-likeness, and bluish. Now its minute belly appeared with increasing speed, then its tiny chest, and then its blood-wet head, hardly larger than an apple. Its face was a wax face, streaked with blood, as was all of its body, and the puppet eyes were closed, its mouth breathless.
Then the child lay between its mother’s dead legs, as motionless as she and in a pool of her blood. Iris put her head beside Aurelia’s still cheek, and her wails filled the room in which the groaning had ceased, and it was like a continuation of the lamentable sound.
It was over; none of the lives had been saved. Keptah covered his face with his hands as he knelt at the foot of the bed. Lucanus straightened up rigidly. His very body seemed to burst with cold fury and detestation and outrage. Two had died meaninglessly, and for no good purpose. Two, again, had been done to death by the savage hand of God. “No!” cried Lucanus, vehemently. “No!”
He ran to the foot of the bed and lifted the unbreathing child in his arms. For an instant its lightness appalled him. It weighed less than the puppet he had given Rubria years ago. Its flesh was cold and pallid, its face blue, its head lolling. Lucanus forced open the infantile lips and thrust his finger into the throat. He drew out a coil of blood and mucus. No one heeded him as he caught up a warmed rug and wrapped the child in it. He opened the incredibly small mouth again, held the child to his face and forced deep breaths into its throat and lungs. He concentrated all his attention, all his will, on the babe. Iris continued to wail, and Keptah to kneel and pray for the two souls which had left their bodies, and the nurses lamented, their heads pressed to the floor.
“Live!” Luca
nus commanded the child, and great drops of sweat poured from his flesh and drenched his garments. And his strong breath went in and out of the throat of the infant, like life itself, grim and purposeful, not to be denied. His fingers gently but firmly circled the child’s chest, compressing then quickly relieving as he held the little one against his heart with his left hand and arm and breathed steadily into its throat.
Iris drew a coverlet over Aurelia’s dead and quiet face, and her wailing died away as she saw the faint and peaceful smile on her mistress’ lips. The patch of gray sky darkened with a coming storm; there was the distant sound of thunder, and then a flash of lightning. The slave nurses continued to sob and groan and pray for the dead. Keptah sat back on his heels, his head fallen. The wind and thunder mingled their voices.
Then Keptah started and leaped to his feet. For there was a new sound in the room, frail and thin as the cry of a young fledgling. It died away, then rose stronger. Keptah ran to Lucanus and exclaimed with awe, “The boy lives! He is not dead!”
But Lucanus did not see or hear him. His fingers moved steadfastly; he poured his breath and his will and his life into the infinitesimal body. The child stirred against his heart, fragilely, like a struggling bird. Its bloodstained face lost its pallor, flushed deeply. One hand, unbelievably minute, thrust against the woolen rug.
“It lives!” cried Keptah, overcome with joy. “It breathes! It is a miracle from God!”
No one but Iris saw Diodorus enter the room, staggering like a drunken man. She went to him and fell on her knees before him and wound her arms about his own knees, and wept aloud.
Chapter Fourteen
Lucanus was reading the seventh book of Herodotus, in which he had written of Xerxes, who had wept at a victory. Then the uncle of Xerxes, Artabanus, had come to him in consolation, and said, “Sire, first you congratulate yourself and then you weep,” to which Xerxes replied, “I was struck with pity at the thought of the brevity of all human life, when I realized that, out of these multitudes, not a single individual will still be alive a hundred years from now.”
Artabanus had replied, “In life we have other experiences more pitiable than that. Our lifetime is indeed as brief as you say, and yet there is not a single individual, either in this army or in the world, so constitutionally happy that in this span, brief as it is, he will not find himself wishing, not once but many times over, that he were dead and not alive.”
“Yes.” Lucanus put aside the book and leaned his head on his hand and stared blankly at a hot yellow beam of summer sunshine falling on his sandaled foot. He studied much at home now, fleeing from the schoolroom the moment lessons were over to escape the slaves, who persisted on bowing to him, or touching his garments, or falling on their knees before him, imploring for his intercession with the gods. It horrified and repelled him that he, who was so hopelessly estranged from God, should be begged to be the intermediary between the suffering and Him. He shrank from adoring eyes and lifted hands. He wanted to shout, “I tell you, He hates us! He gives us life so that we may die in darkness; He gives us eyes so we may see the ugliness of death; He gives us love so that He may destroy us! Better to worship Charon than Him!”
But he could not speak this, though it seethed desperately in his heart. Since he had saved the life of little Priscus the slaves devoutly believed that he had been touched divinely. He could go no longer to the hospital, nor would he visit a sick slave in the company of Keptah. This had gone on for six months. He would soon leave for Alexandria, where he would be only one of many anonymous and browbeaten students, the son of a former slave, the protege of a kindhearted Roman. In the meantime he kept his door shut against those who came humbly to it; he would put his hands over his ears that he might not hear their importunities spoken to his mother and her sad and pitying replies. He studied dead drawings of anatomy with Keptah, but he would not listen to the living. When Keptah had once reproached him he had cried out frantically, “Shall I tell them what I believe, that God is their Enemy? Surely I will say that if you press me to talk with them! And what will it avail them then? I am no liar.”
“You are like a Parthian archer, who, retreating, hurls poisoned darts over his shoulder,” said Keptah. “I tell you, He pursues you and you shall not escape Him. Your darts wound Him, but still He pursues in His love, not His hatred.” Nevertheless, the physician understood with the deepest pity.
A bee hummed through the uncurtained window and lighted on the rolled book near Lucanus’ slack hand. Its golden wings trembled; it daintily explored the scroll. Its delicate legs wandered nervously. All at once it lifted itself and lighted on the back of Lucanus’ fingers. He saw its huge and brilliant eyes, and he sighed. He rose gently and slowly and went to the window and let the little creature fly from him, and he watched its shining flight until it disappeared. There was a great aching in him, and a parchness in his eyes. Oh, the innocent who lived only that they might die! Lucanus rested his forehead on the window sill and felt in himself a tremendous compassion and love for all that lived, was tortured, withered, and fell into dust, from a bee to a man, from a leaf to a child, from a tree to an ox, from a star to a spider. He wanted to encompass life in his arms, to console it, to murmur love and comfort to it, and, holding it thus, to challenge its Destroyer.
He became acutely aware of the house sounds, and a child’s laughter. The child was very young, the daughter of a slave woman who was nursing little Priscus. Iris was the guardian now of the son of Diodorus; she had carried him to this house a few hours after his birth, bringing with her the wet nurse and another slave. It was Iris who fondled Priscus and tended him, never leaving him a moment during the first precarious month of his life. It was Iris who saw his first toothless smile and heard his first affectionate murmur. She dandled him on her knee; she slept beside his little bed. His faintest sound brought her running. She wove his garments and sewed them. She rocked his cradle when he was fretful; she hovered over him, crooning. She washed his tiny body. She was never apart from him.
Lucanus heard his mother’s voice now, and the gurgling answer of the infant boy. Her aureate head passed outside Lucanus’ window; she was carrying Priscus in her arms, tight against her breast. The child’s face looked over her shoulder, and his eyes met the eyes of Lucanus. The youth winced, for the small face was the face of Rubria, and he could not endure it. Priscus grinned joyously, for he was a merry soul with affability towards all. In spite of himself Lucanus smiled in answer. The baby threw back his head and screeched joyously, and nuzzled Iris’ ear. She was taking him into the cool of the small garden at the rear of the house. There she would sit under a great tree, murmuring and singing until the boy slept. The sun rode towards the west, and the air was wide, diffused with gold, humming with secret life. The scent of earth, of flowers, of grass mingled with the tawny light, and somewhere a slave woman hummed as she went about her duties. Palms clapped and swayed, and birds arrowed from tree to tree, the sunlight on their wings like gilt.
Lucanus went out into the garden. Iris had picked a white flower, and Priscus, on her knee, was busily examining it. He was still small for his age, but he was plump and restless and eager, his dark eyes brimming with delight in being and seeing. He was naked except for a white napkin; his little breast was broad and brown. Black tendrils curled about his ears and neck and forehead. Small though he was, he had strength that was almost incredible in one so young, and in one born prematurely. He looked like a minute warrior, but his smile was Rubria’s smile, winning and sweet, with a hint of mischief, and the expression in his eyes, melting and seeking, was Rubria’s. For this reason Lucanus usually avoided the child. Priscus saw him before Iris did, and he screeched happily again and waved the flower as if in greeting.
Iris smiled at her son, hiding her constant anxiety for him. “See,” she said, “is this not an archer, or a wrestler, or a charioteer? His muscles are veritable breastplates.” The child’s mouth was still milky from his recent nursing, and he bounced on Iris?
?? knee so that she laughed as she restrained him. Lucanus held out a finger, and Priscus seized it, examined it keenly, then put it into his mouth. Lucanus smiled. He felt towards the child as a father. Then he frowned. “It is strange that Diodorus remains in Rome so long. One would consider he would give thought to his son.”
He exclaimed, “Eheu! He has teeth!”
“Four,” said Iris, proudly. “Is it not marvelous?” Her face was as purely colored and as young as a girl’s. After a moment she said abstractedly, “Diodorus? Yes, it is almost six months. This time he will not return until he has permission to leave Antioch. So he has written to me. I imagine,” she added, with a faint smile, “that he is browbeating Carvilius Ulpian without mercy, and haunting the Palatine. He can bear Syria no longer, and is determined to retire to his estates. I believe he has now worn Caesar to a shadow, for he is an obstinate man and has considerable influence.”
She smoothed the baby’s agile head. Diodorus had carried the ashes of his daughter and his wife to Rome for entombment in his family’s cemetery. Iris knew that this had been a dolorous journey, and one without comfort. Diodorus, after Aurelia’s death, had become speechless, and then had left for Rome, and it was many weeks before he had written briefly to tell of his plans and to inquire after his son. There had been indifference in the inquiry; he had seen Priscus only a few times and had betrayed no emotion of any kind. But his last letter had quickened. He was convinced that Syria was malefic with regard to his family. When he returned, it would be only to gather up his household and to brief his successor, and then he would leave this ‘malignant’ land forever. His child would be brought up in the land of his fathers, in the sight of the Seven Hills, under the protection of his gods.