Read Online Two for Joy by Mary Reed, Eric Mayer - Free Book Online Page B

emperors had accorded Michael the respect due such a man. Hadn’t they seen with their own eyes the lofty officials dispatched to visit him as Justinian’s emissaries?
    As to whether this display of magnanimity would serve to placate the restless populace as much as Justinian apparently imagined or would simply encourage further support for the heretics, John could not say.
    So the showy entourage made its way through the bustle of the circular Forum of Constantine, past the rotunda of the senate house and the towering column surmounted not by some ragged stylite but a gleaming statue of the city’s founder, and through the much smaller but still busy Forum Tauri beyond which the Mese forked. Here they turned not south, towards the Golden Gate and the Via Egnatia which would have taken them, after weeks of hard and dangerous travel, to the ancient capital Rome itself, but toward the west.
    Only when they were beyond the inner city’s wall and away from the crowds did John speak. “Do you wish to stop and rest for a time?” he asked Aurelius.
    “I would rather continue and have the journey over with that much sooner.” Although the senator spoke without taking his gaze from the flat stones of the roadway in front of them John could see the pallor of his face. Recalling Justinian’s comment about sending the senator to the shrine for a cure, he couldn’t help remembering Philo’s reference to the emperor’s cruel concept of mercy.
    “Have you consulted Gaius about this ailment?” he asked, concerned.
    “Unfortunately, yes. He had me taking a vile concoction of naphtha which, I have heard, can kill as easily as cure. But since it failed to render either service to me, he has demanded I fast for three days. If the stone has not passed by then, he intends to play the surgeon.”
    They were riding through one of the cemeteries that dominated the area between the inner and outer walls of the city. Modest burial mounds and grave markers were scattered around and between sheltering cypress trees. Aurelius waved his hand at the tranquil scene, adding in an undertone, “If worse comes to worse, I’d as soon rest here in three days’ time than lie under that drunkard’s knife. The pain has been so desperate that I have actually contemplated visiting my country estate and sacrificing to Salus. On the other hand, now there’s the matter of this shrine we’re visiting. Many have dreamt cures for their ailments there, or so I have heard.”
    John remained silent.
    Aurelius continued thoughtfully, as much to himself as to his companion. “Consider the well-known case of Aquilinus. He was starving to death after a fever because he was unable to keep nourishment in him. When his physician could do nothing, he went to St Michael’s shrine, carried there, so they say, by one of his servants. And what happened but at the shrine Aquilinus dreamt he would be cured by dipping his foot into some strange sludge of wine and pepper and honey. Oh, his physician was doubtless much put out and, I am willing to wager, called it a cure flying in the face of medical knowledge and probably much worse. But since the man was half dead anyway, he determined he would do as he dreamt and did so and indeed was cured.”
    John pointed out sympathetically that as far as treating illness was concerned, sometimes in battling them it was necessary to face the knife.
    Aurelius laughed harshly. “You preach to me in the same manner in which I lecture my son! What you say is true enough, John. But a warrior does not have his legs trussed up over his head while the physician standing behind him—how may I put this delicately—coaxes the cursed stone along in a fashion that would make even a powdered court page blush. I could endure the knife that follows without flinching, but not the indignity that precedes it.”
    “We can’t always choose what we must endure. Indignity, at least, can be survived.”
    The senator realized that his words had been