The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (47 page)

And then a structure so formidable, and at the same time so sweepingly graceful that he didn’t credit it, all breast-shaped roofs and girded battlements on which sentries with glittering helms and shields paced beneath long colored pennants that fluttered in the breeze.

He plucked at the sleeve of the man in front of him, a stocky Jew whose fringed undergarment peeped from his shirt. “What is the fortress?”

“Why, the House of Paradise, home of the Shah!” The man peered at him worriedly. “You are bloodied, friend.”

“Nothing, a small accident.”

They poured down the long approach road, and as they drew near he saw that the main section of the palace was protected by a wide moat. The drawbridge was raised, but on the near side of the moat, next to a plaza that served as the palace’s great portal, was a hall through whose doors the crowd entered.

Inside was a space half as large as the Cathedral of St. Sofia in Constantinople. The floor was marble; the walls and the lofty ceilings were stone,
cleverly chinked so daylight softly illuminated the interior. It was the Hall of Pillars, for next to all four walls were stone columns, elegantly wrought and fluted. Where each column joined the floor, its base had been carved into the legs and paws of a variety of animals.

The hall was half filled when Rob arrived, and immediately people entered behind him, pressing him in among the party of Jews. Roped-off sections left open aisles down the length of the hall. Rob stood and watched, noting everything with a new intensity, for his time in the
carcan
had impressed upon him that he was a foreigner; actions that he would think of as natural the Persians might consider bizarre and threatening, and he was aware his life might depend on correctly sensing how they behaved and thought.

He observed that men of the upper class, wearing embroidered trousers and tunics and silk turbans and brocaded shoes, rode into the hall on horseback through a separate entrance. Each was halted approximately one hundred and fifty paces from the throne by attendants who took his horse in return for a coin, and from that privileged point they proceeded on foot among the poor.

Petty officials in gray clothing and turbans now passed among the people and called out requests for the identities of those with petitions, and Rob made his way to the aisle and laboriously spelled out his name to one of these aides, who recorded it on a curiously thin and unsubstantial-looking parchment.

A tall man had entered the raised portion at the front of the hall, on which sat a large throne. Rob was too far away to see detail, but the man wasn’t the Shah, for he seated himself at a smaller throne below and to the right of the royal place.

“Who is that?” Rob asked the Jew to whom he had spoken previously.

“It is the Grand Vizier, the holy Imam Mirza-aboul Qandrasseh.” The Jew looked at Rob uneasily, for it had not gone unnoticed that he was a petitioner.

Al
ā
-al-Dawla Shah strode onto the platform, undid a sword belt, and placed the scabbard on the floor as he took the throne. Everyone in the Hall of Pillars performed the
ravi zemin
while the Imam Qandrasseh invoked the favor of Allah upon those who would seek justice of the Lion of Persia.

At once the audience began. Rob could hear clearly neither the supplicants nor the enthroned, despite the hush that suddenly fell. But whenever a principal spoke, his words were repeated in loud voices by others stationed at strategic locations in the hall, and in this way the words of the participants were faithfully brought to all.

The first case involved two weather-beaten shepherds from the village of Ardistan, who had walked two days to reach Ispahan to bring their dispute before the Shah. They were in fierce disagreement over the ownership of a new kid. One man owned the dame, a doe that had long been barren and unreceptive. The other said he had readied the doe for successful mounting by the male goat and therefore now claimed half-ownership of the kid.

“Did you use magic?” the Imam asked.

“Excellency, I did but reach in with a feather and make her hot,” the man said, and the crowd roared and stamped its feet. In a moment the Imam indicated that the Shah found in favor of the feather wielder.

It was an entertainment for most of those present. The Shah never spoke. Perhaps he conveyed his wishes to Qandrasseh by signal, but all questions and decisions appeared to come from the Imam, who did not suffer fools.

A severe schoolteacher, with his hair oiled and his little beard cut to a perfect point, and dressed in an ornate embroidered tunic that looked like a rich man’s castoff, presented a petition for the establishment of a new school in the town of Nain.

“Are there not already two schools in the town of Nain?” Qandrasseh asked sharply.

“They are poor schools taught by unworthy men, Excellency,” the teacher replied smoothly. A small murmur of disapproval arose from the crowd.

The teacher continued to read the petition, which advised the hiring of a governor for the proposed school, with such detailed, specific, and irrelevant requirements for the position that a tittering occurred, for it was obvious the description would fit only the reader himself.

“Enough,” Qandrasseh said. “This petition is sly and self-serving, therefore an insult to the Shah. Let this man be caned twenty times by the
kelonter,
and may it please Allah.”

Soldiers appeared flourishing batons, the sight of which made Rob’s bruises throb, and the teacher was led away, protesting volubly.

There was little enjoyment in the next case—two elderly noblemen in expensive silk clothing who had a mild difference of opinion concerning grazing rights. It prompted what seemed an interminable soft-voiced discussion of ancient agreements made by men long dead, while the audience yawned and whispered complaints about the ventilation in the crowded hall and the aching in their tired legs. They showed no emotion when the verdict was reached.

“Let Jesse ben Benjamin, a Jew of England, come forward,” someone called.

His name hung in the air and then bounced echo-like through the hall as it was repeated again and again. He limped down the long carpeted aisle, aware of his filthy torn caftan and the battered leather Jew’s hat that matched his ill-used face.

At last he approached the throne and performed the
ravi zemin
three times, as he had observed to be proper.

When he straightened he saw the Imam in
mullah
black, his nose a hatchet imbedded in a willful face framed by an iron-gray beard.

The Shah wore the white turban of a religious man who had been to Mecca, but into its folds had been slipped a thin gold coronet. His long white tunic was of smooth, light-looking stuff worked with blue and gold thread. Dark blue wrappings covered his lower legs and his pointed shoes were blue embroidered with blood-red. He appeared vacuous and unseeing, the picture of a man who was inattentive because he was bored.

“An
Inghiliz,
” observed the Imam. “You are at present our only
Ingbiliz,
our only European. Why have you come to our Persia?”

“As a seeker of truth.”

“Do you wish to embrace the true religion?” asked Qandresseh, not unkindly.

“No, for we already agree there is no Allah but He, the most merciful,” Rob said, blessing the long hours spent under the tutelage of Simon ben ha-Levi, the scholarly trader. “It is written in the Qu’ran, ‘I will not worship that which you worship, nor will you worship that which I worship … You have your religion and I my religion.’”

He must be brief, he reminded himself.

Unemotionally and keeping his language spare, he recounted how he had been in the jungle of western Persia when a beast had sprung upon him.

The Shah seemed to begin to listen.

“In the place of my birth, panthers do not exist. I had no weapon, nor did I know how to fight such a creature.”

He told how his life had been saved by Al
ā
-al-Dawla Shah, hunter of wildcats like his father Abdallah Shah who had slain the lion of Kashan. The people closest to the throne began to applaud their ruler with sharp little cries of approbation. Murmurs rippled through the hall as the repeaters passed the story out into the crowds who were too far from the throne to have heard it.

Qandrasseh sat motionless but Rob thought from his eyes that the Imam was not pleased with the story nor the reaction it drew from the crowd.

“Now hasten,
Inghiliz,
” he said coolly, “and declare what it is that you request at the feet of the one true Shah.”

Rob took a steadying breath. “Since it is also written that one who saves a life is responsible for it, I ask the Shah’s help in making my life as valuable as possible.” He recounted his futile attempt to be accepted as a student in Ibn Sina’s school for physicians.

The story of the panther had now spread to the far corners of the hall, and the great auditorium shook under the steady thunder of stamping feet.

Doubtless Al
ā
Shah was accustomed to fear and obedience but perhaps it had been a long time since he had been spontaneously cheered. From the look of his face, the sound came to him like the sweetest music.

“Hah!” The one true Shah leaned forward, his eyes shining, and Rob knew he was remembered in the incident of the killing of the panther.

His eyes held Rob’s for a moment and then he turned to the Imam and spoke for the first time since the beginning of the audience.

“Give the Hebrew a
calaat,
” he said.

For some reason, people laughed.

“You shall come with me,” the grizzled officer said. He would be an old man before many years, but for now he was still powerful and strong. He wore a short helm of polished metal, a leather doublet over a brown military tunic, and sandals with leather thongs. His wounds spoke for him: the ridges of healed sword cuts stood out whitely on both massive brown arms, his left ear was flattened, and his mouth was permanently crooked because of an old piercing wound below his right cheekbone.

“I am Khuff,” he said. “Captain of the Gates. I inherit chores such as yourself.” His eyes went to Rob’s raw neck and he smiled. “The
carcan?”

“Yes.”

“The
carcan
is a bastard,” Khuff said admiringly.

They left the Hall of Pillars and walked toward the stables. Now on the long green field men galloped their horses at one another, wheeling and brandishing long shafts like reversed shepherd’s crooks, but no one fell.

“They seek to strike each other?”

“They seek to strike a ball. It is ball-and-stick, a horsemen’s game.” Khuff studied him. “There is much you don’t know. Do you understand about the
calaat?”

Rob shook his head.

“In ancient times when someone found favor in the eyes of a Persian king, the monarch would remove a
calaat,
an item of his own clothing, and bestow it as a token of his pleasure. The custom has come down through
the ages as a sign of royal favor. Now the ‘royal garment’ consists of a living, a suit of clothes, a house, and a horse.”

Rob felt numb. “Then am I rich?”

Khuff grinned at him as though he were a fool. “A
calaat
is a singular honor but varies widely in its sumptuousness. An ambassador from a nation that has been Persia’s close ally in war would be given the most costly raiment, a palace close in splendor to the House of Paradise, and a remarkable steed whose harness and trappings are encrusted with precious stones. But you are not an ambassador.”

Behind the stables was a vast stock pen that enclosed a swirling sea of horses. Barber had always said that in selecting a horse one should look for an animal with a head like a princess and a hind like a fat whore. Rob saw a gray that fit the description perfectly and had additional regality in the eyes.

“Can I have that mare?” he asked, pointing it out. Khuff didn’t bother to answer that it was a horse for a prince, but a wry smile did strange things to his twisted mouth. The Captain of the Gates unhitched a saddled horse and mounted. He rode into the milling mass and skillfully separated from the herd an adequate but dispirited brown gelding with short, sturdy legs and strong shoulders.

Khuff showed him a large tulip brand on the horse’s near thigh. “Al
ā
Shah is the only horse breeder in Persia, and this is his mark. This horse may be traded for another bearing the tulip but must never be sold. If he should die, cut off the skin with the mark on it and I will exchange it for another horse.”

Khuff gave him a purse containing fewer coins than Rob might earn by selling the Specific at a single entertainment. In a nearby warehouse the Captain of the Gates searched until he found a serviceable saddle from the army’s stores. The clothing he issued was similarly well made but plain, consisting of loose trousers that fastened at the waist with a drawstring; linen wrappings that went around each leg outside the pants, like bandages worn from ankle to knee; a loose shirt called a
khamisa
that hung over the trousers, knee-length; a tunic called a
durra;
two coats for the different seasons, one short and light, the other long and lined with sheepskin; a cone-shaped turban support called a
qalansuwa;
and a brown turban.

“Do you have green?”

“This is better. The green turban is poor, heavy stuff, worn by students and the poorest of the poor.”

“Nevertheless I want it,” Rob insisted, and Khuff gave him the cheap green turban and a hard look of scorn.

Minions with watchful eyes leaped to do the captain’s bidding when he called for his personal horse, which turned out to be an Arab stallion bearing resemblance to the gray mare Rob had coveted. Riding the placid brown gelding and carrying a cloth bag laden with his new garments, he rode behind Khuff like a squire, all the way to Yehuddiyyeh. For a long time they wended the narrow streets of the Jewish quarter, until finally Khuff reined up at a small house of old, dark-red brick. There was a small stable, merely a roof on four poles, and a tiny garden in which a lizard blinked at Rob and then vanished into a crack in the stone wall. Four overgrown apricot trees cast their shade on thornbushes that would have to be cut out. Inside the house were three rooms, one with an earthen floor and two with floors of the same red brick as the walls, worn into shallow troughs by the feet of many generations. The dried mummy of a mouse lay in a corner of the dirt-floored room and the faint, cloying stink of its decay hung in the air.