Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 1 - The Fort at River's Bend

"What? What is it?"

"That thing on your breast, the mark."

My stomach swooped and I felt goose-flesh break out across my shoulders.

"What about it? What have you discovered?"

"It's what I thought it was, some kind of skin blemish, almost definitely harmless."

"You have read the scroll, then, the one from the wooden chest in Camulod?"

"Of course, and it contained nothing of relevance to what you described about your experience with Mordechai — nothing at all that might confirm your fears. You have a blemish there, not any kind of lesion, and, in my belief, most certainly not leprosy."

I heard a roaring in my ears and the room began to spin about me, so that I had to grip the edge of the table with both hands and breathe deeply. Luke sat watching me, a faint smile playing about his lips. When I had control of myself again, and my breathing had returned to normal, I let go of the table's edge and sat up straighter, expelling one last, deep breath in a great "whoosh" of air. His smile grew broader then and he clapped his hands together.

"I can see you feel better already."

I nodded, not yet prepared to trust my voice to speak without wavering.

"Excellent, now hear what I have to say. In any normal case, I would have prescribed exposure to the sun and air for such a thing. But your fears to date have rendered your affliction abnormal to the point of precluding such treatment, in addition to which it has been winter, too cold to go bare-chested. All of that has changed now and the warm weather is coming. From now on, as much as you are able in fine weather, I want you to go unclothed above the waist. The browning effect of the sun will likely mend what ails you, no matter what it is, and render the thing less conspicuous."

"I may do that?"

"May? Of course you may! There is nothing wrong with you, Caius, nor has there been. My original diagnosis now holds true. The sum of my experience, and that of my colleagues down the ages, tells me that you have never been exposed to contagion for long enough to have contracted leprosy, so will you accept that now, once and for all?"

I nodded again, more slowly now, aware of the incredible sensations of relief and delivery from danger that were surging riotously through my breast and in my mind. "Thank you, my friend," I said, my voice almost inaudible even to me. "You will never know the extent of my gratitude to know that I am clean and unfouled." An image came into my mind, filling my awareness—the image of his lovely, deeply carved and glowing citrus wood chest. For all this time, throughout my agonized imaginings, it had contained the healing balm that would put my mind to rest. And then my curiosity stirred.

"So what did the scroll have to say about blood and contagion?"

"Nothing directly concerned with your condition, as I said." Luke folded his arms and leaned back against the wall behind his bench. "It was written by a physician called Oppius, Quinctilius Oppius, a renowned and celebrated teacher in the diagnosis of disease, at Alexandria during the reign of the Emperor Galerius, a hundred years or so ago. Oppius was a great admirer of the work of Galen— have you heard of him? Well, Galen was the greatest physician who ever lived, greater even than Aesculapius. He was born in Pergamum, where his father was an architect, and he studied anatomy in Alexandria before going to Rome, where he remained for forty years, first as personal physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and then, after Marcus's death, to the emperors Lucius Verus, Commodus and Septimius Severus. Galen was a wondrous writer, inscribing all of his findings and theories on the practice of his art. His treatise On Anatomical Procedure is the greatest medical text ever written, but he wrote also on healing methods, De methodo medendi, and on the natural faculties, and on the movement of the muscles.

"Galen had been dead a hundred years before Oppius began his work, following the great physician's methods and procedures. It was while Oppius was engaged in working in Asia Minor, at a time when a military action concurred with an outbreak of plague and the medical facilities were overwhelmed, that he became aware of an anomaly that caused the spread of plague infection, in a military ward, among legionaries whose wounds should never have become infected. Oppius formed a theory that these infections might have been caused by the overuse of bandage wrappings that had previously been used to bind plague victims. The wrappings had been washed between uses, of course, but apparently they had not been boiled, which would have been mandatory in less hectic times. We have known for centuries that boiling water cleanses it of impurities. Anyway, Oppius launched himself upon a program to explore this theory of his, and later wrote the treatise that I found long afterward, contending that the careless application of bloody, pus-stained bandages, improperly washed, to open wounds could spread contagion."

I sat blinking at him. "Does that sound feasible to you?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I am not prepared to state an opinion. Pus is part of the healing process, formed by the body's natural purging of the toxins that contaminate a wound or a sore. From that position, knowing that it is an effluent full of contaminants, no sane physician would ever dream of introducing pus from one man's wounds into another's."

"Consciously, you mean."

He stared at me. "Aye. That is what I mean. But the bandages Oppius used in his studies were clean and washed."

"Some boiled, but some not?"

"Yes, and I see what you are implying, but we have only the words of Oppius, written a hundred years ago and more, from which we can infer any difference between the two. And let me be explicit: his findings in this case, and his proposal that the application of heat, in the boiling process, may make a material difference to the dressings, seem outlandish to me."

"I accept that, but ... " I was perplexed, and totally aware that I was beyond my depth in discussing such matters, and yet a point had occurred to me and I wanted to present it.

"We know, Luke, those of us who have any knowledge of the art of smithing championed by Publius Varrus, that the application of heat—extreme heat—invariably has the most salutary effect on iron, the hardest metal known to man. Cold iron is practically impossible to work. Heat it red-hot, however, and you may work your will on it. Heat it white-hot, and you may tie it in knots ... " I paused, considering my own words. "I know that cloth bandages, dressings, have nothing akin to metal in their make-up, but heat applied to them is heat in either instance. Is it not, then, conceivable that the link, if there is a link, may lie in the heat, the temperature itself, rather than in the material being heated?"

Lucanus stood up at that point, smiling broadly and tightening his belt. "I have no idea," he answered. "You may be right, my friend, and you may be completely wrong. Neither of us has the means of gauging the truth, in either direction. Nonetheless, I like the way you think. It has a clarity that is all too uncommon among those around us. I promise you that I will think on this, and try to see if I can find some way to investigate this matter further without endangering the health of anyone. In the meantime, I have promised Shelagh that I will wait on her before first light, before she leaves her rooms to join the excursion. I will talk more of this with you later. In the meantime, try to remember that there is nothing wrong with you. You are completely healthy, without flaw, apart from one small blemish that the sun will obliterate. Farewell." He left me then, allowing me to dwell on my reprieve and on my sudden, swift return to health.

Mere moments later, Ded had stormed into the kitchens looking for Rufio, and I had been up and out into the predawn freshness, joining the bustle already long under way in the crowded street in front of the old Praesidium, so that as the sun arose, it shone directly into my new, unblemished outlook on life.