An Echo in the Darkness(31)

“You have my gratitude,” Celsus said, rising, the blankets falling in a heap around his sandaled feet. As he stepped away, Hadassah took the blankets up and folded them, putting them away beneath the worktable. Celsus readjusted his crumpled cape. “I needed to rest awhile,” he said. He glanced at Hadassah and then back at Alexander. “Maybe I’ll drop by again and read some of your cases.”

Alexander put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Make it in the morning then. I hardly have space to take a breath the rest of the day.” He pushed the partition aside, setting the sections together so that the front of the booth was wide open, indicating he was ready to see patients.

Several were already waiting outside.

Celsus went out and climbed into the litter. “Hold,” he said as the two slaves lifted him. “What was in that drink you gave me?” he called to Alexander, who was positioning a small table at the front of the booth where Hadassah was setting up an inkpot and scrolls.

Alexander laughed. “A little of this and that. Let me know if it works.”

Celsus gave the carriers directions and leaned back into the folds of his cape. He looked back as they bore him away and saw that patients were already pressing forward—and he frowned, for rather than cluster around Alexander, the physician, they drew close to the quiet woman in veils.

Hadassah, unaware she was the subject of scrutiny, dropped half a dozen grains of dried lampblack into the inkhorn and added water. She mixed it carefully and took up her iron stylus. “Name, please,” she said to the man who took the stool beside the writing table where she worked. She dipped the stylus into the ink and poised the tip over the waxed tablet on which she wrote the most rudimentary of information: name and complaint. The information would later be transferred onto parchment scrolls and the waxed tablet rubbed smooth for use the next day. Several scrolls were already stored in the back of the booth and included long lists of patients whom Alexander had treated, along with their physical complaints and symptoms and prescribed treatments and results.

“Boethus,” the man told her flatly. “How long will it be before I can see the physician? I haven’t much time.”

She wrote his name down. “He’ll be with you as soon as he can,” she said gently. Everyone had urgent needs, and it was difficult to tell how long Alexander would take with each patient. Some had conditions that fascinated him, and he spent more time questioning and examining them. She glanced at the man through her veils. He was deeply tanned and thin, his hands gnarled and stained from hard work. His short hair was salted with gray, and the lines about his eyes and mouth were deeply cut. “What’s your occupation?”

“I was a stuppator,” he said glumly.

Hadassah wrote his occupation beside his name. A caulker of ships. Tedious, backbreaking work. “Your complaint?” He sat silent, staring off at nothing. “Boethus,” she said, placing the stylus between her two hands. “Why did you come to see the physician?”

He looked back at her, his fingers spreading on his thighs and digging in as though he were trying to keep himself together. “Can’t sleep. Can’t eat. And I’ve had a constant headache for the last few days.”

Hadassah poised the stylus again and wrote meticulously. She felt him watching each stroke she made, as though fascinated. “I worked up until a few weeks ago,” he said, “but there’s been no work for me lately. Fewer ships are coming in, and the overseers hire the younger men to do the work.”

Hadassah lifted her head. “Have you a family, Boethus?”

“A wife, four children.” The lines in his face deepened, and his face grew even paler. He frowned as she laid down the quill. “I’ll find a way to pay for the physician’s services. I swear.”

“You needn’t worry about that, Boethus.”

“Easy for you to say, but if I get sick to death, what’ll happen to them?”

Hadassah understood his fear. She had seen countless families living in the streets, begging for a piece of bread, while just a few feet from them was a lavish temple and palaces built into the hillsides. “Tell me about your family.”

He began by telling the names and ages of his son and three daughters. He spoke of his hardworking wife. The deep love he had for her was apparent in his words. Hadassah’s gentle manner and quiet questions of concern encouraged him, until he was hunching forward, pouring out his deepest fears about what would become of his children and his wife if he couldn’t find work soon. The landlord was wanting his rent for the small tenement where the family lived, and Boethus had no money to give him. He didn’t know what he was going to do. And now, to add to all his other burdens, he was sick and getting sicker with each day.