Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell Page A

footsteps, appearing from nowhere when he attended slaves who were ill, and how he had watched the ministrations of Keptah from a doorway, from behind a curtain, or from some shy and anxious distance. His presence had often irritated Keptah. Boys were inquisitive little animals; they liked to look on violence or pain, some primitive savagery stirring them to excitement. Keptah had considered Lucanus in this manner, until tonight.
     
    He said, “It is a strange Star, is it not?” and intently awaited the answer.
     
    “Yes,” said Lucanus. “It is strange. And beautiful. I feel it is telling us something.” His voice was that of a young man, and not a child, and Keptah, who had rarely heard him speak before, became aware of that voice for the first time.
     
    “And what, Lucanus, do you think it is telling us?”
     
    Lucanus was silent. His fair brows contracted. “I do not know. But this I know, that someday it shall be revealed to me.”
     
    Keptah nodded to himself. He put his dark hand on the white shoulder of the boy and pressed it. “That I know,” he murmured. He turned Lucanus to him, and the boy, surprised, looked at him shyly and closely. Keptah studied the serene and beautiful face, the strong outlines under the delicacy, the ardent curve of the mouth, the passion in the blue eyes.
     
    “I am to be your teacher,” he said, and he smiled. “So it was commanded tonight by the great Diodorus.”
     
    Lucanus’ face glowed with joy and amazement. “And then,” continued Keptah, with gentleness, “you shall be sent by the master to Alexandria for further study.”
     
    Lucanus caught the slave’s hand and kissed it vehemently. “I am your slave, noble Keptah!” he cried, and pressed the swart hand to his breast in a moving and rapturous gesture. Keptah put his other hand on the boy’s head, as if in blessing.
     
    “You have never feared me, Lucanus?”
     
    “No.” The boy’s face expressed wonderment. “I have only honored you in my heart, Master,”
     
    Keptah laughed a little, sadly. “Do not call me ‘Master,’ Lucanus. The noble Diodorus would not approve. He has an immense sense of the proprieties.”
     
    He thought of Diodorus with regret, and not with his usual amusement. It is true, he thought, that there are greater and more eternal things than his absurd and iron ‘realities’. But I was wrong, and cruel, the night the slaves danced so uproariously, to attempt to disillusion him. It is well that I did not succeed.
     
    The Star shone down resplendently on the man and the boy, its rays widening, drowning out all the lesser stars and planets, sending them fleeing across the curve of the sky towards the dawn. Keptah watched it again, forgetting Lucanus, and Lucanus fixed his gaze on that duskily carved and Oriental profile. Lucanus asked, “Who are you, Keptah?”
     
    Keptah was silent for long moments, as if asking himself questions and receiving answers. Then, without looking at Lucanus, he began to speak.
     
    “I am a Chaldean. That I was told years ago, though I did not know at first, coming to the house of Priscus as a babe, and a slave. My father was a Kalu, that is to mean a priest, but who my mother was I do not know to this day. But there was a journey when I was still in my mother’s arms; my father knew mysterious things and he was on his way — to a distant country.” He stared fixedly at the Star. “He believed, wrongly, that it had been ordained for him to see — ” He halted, and moved restlessly.
     
    “On the way to that country the caravan in which he and my mother and I were traveling was set upon by thieves and slavemasters. My parents were killed. I, an infant, was sold with the remaining men and women and children into slavery, and Priscus purchased me and brought me to his house in Jerusalem, and then to Rome.”
     
    Lucanus waited for him to continue, but Keptah was silent. His cryptic face was majestic with a cold and forbidding