Agrippa's Daughter (18 page)

It was true that Berenice was dying and as a dying woman set no great store by drapes or blinds; but as the queen of Chalcis and the first princess of the Jews, she reacted to what was certainly the worst instance of
lèse majesté
she had ever encountered. She was weak and without strength, yet by sheer force of will she managed to find her feet, stood wavering, and cried out for the madman to stop and cease and desist with his madness. He paid no attention to her. He was now engaged in tearing down a set of portieres that separated this, her bedchamber, from her sitting room. The portieres were hung from a huge brass rod set into a molding over the wide doorway, but under the strength of the madman the brass rod bent and then came down with a wild crash.

“Stop it! Stop it!” cried Berenice.

As if she did not exist, he strode into her sitting room and ripped away the drapes that concealed a long balcony that looked out over Gennesaret, as the Romans called it. Behind these drapes were more cane blinds, and as he began to tear them loose, the tall, red-headed woman he had been observing out of the corners of his eyes flung herself upon him. Without pausing in his work, he shook her off, and such was the force with which he shrugged her away that she tripped over the tangle of drapes and sprawled upon the floor. As she rolled over, her long legs exposed, he glanced with satisfaction on her shapely nakedness and then returned to the work of destroying the cane blinds. She screamed. She screamed tentatively—and then several times with vigor. The big man in white paid no attention to her, and no one else came to her aid.

She now dragged at the huge brass curtain rod, hoping to free it as a weapon, and had just pulled it loose when the blinds fell and a mighty ocean of yellow sunlight poured into the room. Blinking and blinded, she swung the brass pole at the madman, who caught it and took it away from her.

“You will die for this!” she cried. “You will die! You will die!”

“That’s better,” replied the madman throwing the brass pole out into the lake and grasping the shaking, furious Berenice by the arms.

“Let go of me!”

“I think now you can rest. At least the air is breathable, and there’s enough light to cheer one a bit.”

“Let go of me!”

“In a moment. Back to bed now.”

“How dare you? Let go of me! Who are you?”

He lifted her in his arms now, as easily as one lifts an infant, and for all her frustrated rage, she could not help but react to the way she was lifted from the ground and cradled in this big man’s arms. Like all very tall women, she had substituted the dream for the fact of being cradled in a man’s arms. No one had ever picked her up like this; it was unthinkable and impossible.

“I am your physician,” he answered her.

“Put me down!”

“In a moment—in your bed.” And he bent over her bed and laid her there as easily and gently as he would a doll or a tiny child. “There.”

She lay there a moment and stared at him, her green eyes blazing, her loose red hair framing her magnificent head, the coppery skin so pale now and drawn so tightly over the high cheekbones. As Shimeon watched her, he wondered whether this was indeed the most beautiful woman in Israel, as some said, or perhaps only the most devilish. He had no set opinion, and he clung rigidly and intelligently to his own objectivity. He would attempt to cure her; only that.

“My physician,” she whispered in scorn. “You will be no one’s physician. For the first fifty lashes you will feel pain and scream and plead. Then you will feel nothing.

“Gabo!” she cried.

And then when nothing happened, “Adam! Adam Benur!”

And when still nothing happened, at the top of her lungs, “Adam Benur!”

“You will only strain your throat and hurt your voice screaming like that,” Shimeon said gently. “Your brother, the king, sent them both away. At first, we attempted to make the big man understand and help me, but he’s not very intelligent, is he?”

She bit her lips and said nothing.

“So for today, we sent him away with Gabo. No one is within call now. No one but you and me. And I don’t think it’s good for you to threaten me with hideous deaths. In the first place, I don’t believe you would carry out such threats, and in the second place, the whole process is not constructive. You are sick. I want to heal you.”

“Sick? I am not sick!”

“No? Then why did you lie here in the darkness and alone, day after day?”

Again, she retreated into silence, and he went on, in brisk professional tones, “Since I do not practice the laying on of hands, I can’t put this at the devil’s doorstep. Perhaps the evil spirits have taken hold of your soul; I cannot say there is no truth in that sort of thing, although in Greece, where I studied medicine, they reject it entirely. Since I must treat you in the Greek manner, I would say that other factors are responsible, a sluggish digestion, insufficient exercise, and a certain amount of guilt for your treatment of Polemon and others. I will prescribe a physic and a good tonic for the blood, and of course sunlight and fresh air.”

This flat statement on his part struck Berenice as being so bald and droll, and Shimeon stood so large and boyish over her couch that she had to resist an inclination to smile. Her anger washed away. She found herself asking his name.

“Shimeon Bengamaliel.”

“Oh. Then you—”

“Yes. Exactly. I bobbed your husband—or erstwhile husband—and thereby got you into this mess, so it is only fair that I should try to get you out of it.”

“What did you say?”

“Getting you into this—”

“No, the word you used. Bobbed—”

Shimeon shrugged.

“And my brother sent you here? Truly?”

“He loves you,” Shimeon said. “Do you imagine that he wants to see you die?”

“And the drapes,” she cried, desperately eager for some reason, not to talk about her brother and herself, “you have ruined them. Do you know what such drapes cost?”

“You are dying—so why should the cost of some drapes matter?”

“I am not dying.”

“You were, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“Then you take away from me all the joy of curing you.”

“Bobbed Polemon—”

“I should have refused.”

“Why?” Berenice demanded.

“Well, look what I started. Heaven knows where it will end!”

“Am I really sick?” she asked suddenly.

“I think that is for you to decide, my lady.”

“Oh?”

“How do you feel? Does the light bother you now?”

“The blinds too. Just look at this room—as if barbarians had been at work in it. But that’s because you’re a Pharisee—you don’t care about anything beautiful, do you, or any refinements—anything Greek is an abomination to you.”

“Oh no, Queen Berenice,” Shimeon said. “Not at all. You must remember that I was educated in Greece, and as far as speech is concerned, I suppose my Greek is better than my Hebrew.”

“Still, Pharisees are no better than barbarians—”

“I suppose some of us are and some of us aren’t.”

“The blinds too. Did you have to tear down the blinds?”

“To let light in and to let air in, you see, Queen Berenice—”

“Why do you call me Queen Berenice?”

“Well, your title,” Shimeon began, when she interrupted again, “I don’t like to be called that—oh, not at all. It makes me feel like an old woman. How old do you think I am?”

“Eighteen? Nineteen?”

She knew he was acting, teasing, pretending, manipulating—yet in some way she was delighted, and it was against every inclination in her to be delighted. The memory of the depression hung over her, like the sick aftermath of a headache, and she found it incredible that she should be lying here, sprawled on her bed in the blazing sunlight, with this tall, wide-shouldered physician beside her bed. Seeking for the misery of only moments ago, she was unable to find it or re-experience it, and she asked him desperately,

“Did you lay hands on me?”

He shook his head quite seriously. “It is not done in our house.”

“Then what lifted the devils from my heart?”

“Who knows,” Shimeon shrugged, “if indeed your sickness was of devils. The Greeks call it simply the heaviness of heart; yet unless, the heart is lightened the patient will die—or lose his mind. Sometimes there is a moment of enough, enough sorrow and guilt and heartache, and then this terrible weight lifts of itself. Do you feel that—a weight lifted from your heart?”

Berenice nodded.

“And you will let me take your pulse now?”

“Why?”

“Why? What do you mean, why? I only want to count your heartbeat.”

“Why? No other physician does it.”

Shimeon took out a tiny sand glass and placed it on the bed. “I measure your pulse against this,” he explained, his voice deep, matter-of-fact, and comforting. “Twelve to eighteen is normal. More or less is cause for concern. With the very old, it is less, but if you were with fever sickness, it would be more.”

“How much more?”

“Shall I tell you all my art? Well, over eighteen would be alarming—over twenty and you would be a sick woman, believe me.” He took her wrist as he spoke, not as anyone else had ever taken it, but with a firm, assured grasp, his second finger seeking the pulse, finding it and remained there with a steady, soft pressure.

“And am I sick?”

“No—but neither are you well. What have you had to eat today?”

“Nothing.”

“Why?”

“I felt no hunger—no desire for food—” Berenice said.

“More than that. It was ashes in your mouth.”

“How do you know?”

“Ah—well, how I know is not important. Will you try to eat now if I prescribe for you?”

“What?”

“Wheat mush with butter?”

She made a face.

“It’s good, quite good—very tasty. I want you to eat it and then sleep, and I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

She slept and woke in the hour of dawn. When she had been a child, she had slept like this. It was the peaceful, gentle sleep of childhood. When she was a child, she had awakened like this, at the hour of dawn, with the sweet dawn wind making music in the dry fronds of the palms that grew by the shore of the lake—and in her nostrils the smell of the lake, the wet, remembered smell of Gennesaret. Other things were remembered, too, the sound of the fishermen splashing as they walked their boats into the deep water, the creak of their oars, their sing-song blessing as they went out on their day’s work, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who maketh the fish to swim in the deeps.” The morning birds sang with their chanting. No doubt, on the hilltops there was sunlight already, but in the deep, below sea-level hollow where the lake lay, the shadow was as dark as ink—as dark as the purple ink which the Tyreans extract from the mollusks on their shore and use to dye the robes of emperors and the drapes of queens. But the drapes lay folded by one wall, the blinds stacked by another, and the windows were wide open as the mad Pharisee said they must be; and half awake, Berenice thought of this strange man, so violent in his cures, so positive in his knowledge. He was like the Greek engineers of her childhood, with their mathematics and angles and their sines and cosines, of whom it was whispered that they worshiped no other gods than their mathematics and had no other religion than the truth, of which they were always quite certain. They called themselves Stoics, and Berenice had only a most confused notion of what a Stoic was, and, as she realized now, an equally inadequate notion of what a Pharisee was.

They were setting the nets for tomorrow and gathering in the nets of the day before. In her mind’s eye, Berenice could see the silver fish flopping and twisting; and she threw her bedclothes aside and ran to the balcony—but the mist lay upon the lake, and she could see nothing. But in her nostrils was the smell of charcoal burning as all over Tiberias the fires were lit to cook the gruel and take the chill out of the morning air, and from the city side came the call of the bakers, “My bread is fresh—who buys my bread?” It was a song as old as time, four notes descending, four notes ascending. Berenice remembered it from when she was a child, and then she had an old nurse who said that in her own childhood, in the ancient city of Gadara, the song was the same, the bakers taking their flat, tortillalike breads quick from the red-hot oven, piling them on a wooden plank, and then going from house to house through the streets in the dawning, who buys my bread? Oh, was there ever anything so delicious as that bread, with a lump of sweet butter melted upon it, a bit of rock salt, and then all of it, dripping aroma and goodness, conveyed to the mouth? Was there ever such goodness, hot bread and butter and cold buttermilk to wash it down?

“Gabo!” she cried. “Gabo!” And then ran to her chest of jewels and gold to find a coin. A tiny silver coin called a spaeta. And as Gabo came running in, rubbing her eyes, Berenice told her,

“Go and buy bread from the street vendor!”

“From the street vendor?”

“Yes, from the street vendor.”

“But, mistress, they will be baking in the palace—”

“From the street vendor,” Berenice repeated, allowing a note of warning to creep into her voice. “And cover it to keep it warm. And on the way back, bring sweet butter and buttermilk.”

She had a vast appetite this morning, did Berenice, a savage hunger on top of all the days she had gone without touching food, and she ate and ate of the hot bread and the sweet butter—until at last she was satisfied, full of the swelling sensation of good food, the satisfaction of being awake and alive and replete.

By noontime, she was impatient, striding back and forth, dressed and then undressed and in bed, and then dressed again, and snapping at Gabo,

“Where is he?”

“Who, mistress?”

“The physician, stupid girl. Am I not sick? Or am I well—and no physician is needed? Or does no one care? Well, I’ll teach them to care! Go to my brother! Tell him that the physician is a liar—that he said he would come—and now? Where is he? Go to my brother!”

Gabo fled, and Berenice’s voice whipped her back.

“Where are you going?”

“To your brother, the king.”

“To my brother, the king. To my brother, the king,” Berenice said. “Have you no sense?”