Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

I became aware of Lucanus watching me. When I looked at him, he motioned me forward, towards the bed by which he stood. As I approached, the occupant of the bed stood up and looked at me. He was a big man, clean shaven and massive of chest and shoulder and wrapped in a single robe that hung, toga-like, to his ankles. His hair was thick and flaxen fair, hanging in ringlets to his shoulders, and his hands were thrust into the folds of his garment.

"Merlyn, this is my friend Mordechai Emancipatus," Luke said. "Mordechai, I present to you Caius Merlyn Britannicus."

I nodded to the big man, who returned my nod in silence.

"Mordechai, as I have told you, is supreme commander here, much as you are in Camulod," Luke went on. "He is a physician, as you already know, trained with me in Alexandria. He is also the breadwinner here because he is the strongest and, to this time, the least afflicted."

Afflicted! There had been no mention of affliction when Luke and I had talked of this before. I gazed at the man Mordechai in consternation. I could see no sign of sickness about him. I found my tongue at last.

"You are a leper?" I asked him, realizing the futility and stupidity of my question as it left my lips. He nodded solemnly.

"Show him your hand," said Luke.

Mordechai withdrew his left hand from the folds of his robe and stretched it towards me. I could see nothing wrong with it. Lucanus reached out and picked up the nearest lamp, bringing it to where its light showed the hand clearly. In the brightness of the lamp, the skin looked . . . scaly was the only word that occurred to me. Luke moved the light closer and I saw the discoloration of dry, painful-looking lesions, red in the centre fading to a dead whiteness at the edges, between the knuckles and on the joints of the fingers. The light moved again, throwing its brightness now on Mordechai's face. Again, the skin looked, upon close observation, somehow dry and flaky, although no flakes were apparent. The man's face reminded me somehow, and I shied away from the thought, of some kind of animal, familiar and yet strange.

"Note the leonine swelling of the features." Lucanus was speaking in his dry, professional voice and his words jarred me. The animal I had been visualizing was a lion. "A classic symptom of this illness. The whiteness and swelling of the skin around the brows and forehead, and the thickening of the nasal bridge and nostrils characterize and emphasize this leonine appearance. Note also that his eyebrows are quite white, not yellow like his hair. How long have you been afflicted, Mordechai?"

Mordechai shrugged his massive shoulders. "Eight years now."

"And before that? How long had you been tending lepers?"

"Since finishing my last tour with the legions, in Gaul. More than twenty years."

"You are now what? Fifty?"

"Forty-eight, I believe."

"Hmm, that's right, you were several years younger than I, the youngest student of us all, in fact. You look good, my friend, in spite of everything."

A smile flickered briefly on the big man's face. "Not many lepers are told that."

"Undo your robe."

The hair on Mordechai's chest was thick and darker than the hair on his head, but it was patterned with white patches, some small, some large, all roughly circular in appearance. Lucanus pointed these out to me, continuing to speak in his clipped, didactic physician's voice. "The whiteness of the hair over the emerging lesions is another unmistakable symptom, but the disease is notorious for not being uniform in its emergence to view. Sometimes the lesions themselves are white, and frequently scabrous, but they may just as easily be red and pus-filled, easily mistaken for common boils in the early stages of the sickness. As you have heard, Mordechai has had this scourge for eight years but shows remarkably few serious blemishes and is hardly debilitated at all, thank God. I have seen others, and I know you have too, Mordechai, who have degenerated to the point of digital decomposition in far less time than that." He broke off and glanced at me. "You understand digital decomposition? The finger joints and toe joints atrophy and fall away."

I nodded, fascinated, unable to tear my eyes away from Mordechai's piebald chest hair, but from the corner of my eye I saw Lucanus straighten up and look around the huge room.

"Eighteen of you," he murmured. "How many in extremis?"

"Seven," came Mordechai's response.

"How are you treating them? What medicines do you have?"

"Medicines?" Mordechai's bitterness was all the more apparent because he expressed it in a laugh. "I have water, Luke, and home-made soap, cloth bandages and gentleness. What more could I have? Whence would it come?"

Lucanus flicked a glance at me and I cleared my throat nervously. "What about light?" I asked, thinking of the cases of fine wax candles I was transporting to Donuil's father. "Is it always this dark in here?"

Mordechai looked at me kindly, his mouth twisting into a smile. "Most of the time," he answered. "With this sickness, the absence of revealing light is frequently a benison. I am the only one of our community you have seen. Some are not as comely as I am. I am still almost whole, look." He now extended his right hand, and it was sound and pink, unblemished. I coughed again, feeling painfully awkward.

"It was simply . . ." I ran out of words, then began again. "I asked only because I have a box—a large box—of fine wax candles among my possessions. They are a luxury to me, but it occurred to me they might be a blessing to your people here. I would be glad to leave them with you if they could be of use to you."

He inclined his head with great dignity. "Thank you, Master Merlyn. They would be more than useful."

"Good. They are with the rest of your supplies in the wagon. We will unload them directly."

"Wagon?" Mordechai glanced from me to Luke and back to me again. "You bring supplies for us?"

I felt my face grow red. "Lucanus brings them. They are his gift to you, apart from the candles. I merely brought Lucanus." As the two began speaking, the one offering and the other declining gratitude, I looked around the long room again. Its occupants were silent still, most of them gazing at the three of us standing in the middle of the floor, but they were no longer isolated shapes. They sat in small groups of three and four, close to each other, touching and sharing warmth and comfort and strength. I glanced at Luke again and found him watching me.

"Luke, a word with you please, outside."

He excused himself to Mordechai, as did I, and we went out again into the grey daylight, feeling the fresh, cool air snap into our lungs with our first breath. I saw Donuil straighten up in relief as we emerged, but my thoughts were with Lucanus.

"The candles are not in the wagon, Luke. They're on one of the pack- horses, back at the camp. It had occurred to me that Donuil and I might unload the wagon, but that's a task that might better wait until tomorrow, when Mordechai will have had time to think about where to store everything. In the meantime, I'll leave Donuil here with you to help you with anything you might need, while I fetch the candles."

It was almost sunset by the time I returned with the box of candles, and I found Donuil sitting his horse exactly where I had left him hours earlier. There was no sign, however, of the wagon and its team of horses. Donuil told me he had stabled the horses and the wagon in a shed at the side of the longhouse. He also told me how Mordechai's eyes had filled with tears when he saw the profusion of what we had brought for his people. The two physicians had been working ever since I left, he added, cleansing the sick and changing dressings, and as we spoke they emerged from the longhouse, stripped themselves to the waist and began washing vigorously in hot water that was white and pungent from the astringent chemicals Lucanus had added to the pot. Surprisingly, I found an air almost of gaiety pervading the small community now, fostered by the sudden wealth that had come their way.