CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

A LETTER FROM TOLEDO

Next to Nuño Fierro, Miguel de Montenegro was the best physician Yonah had ever met. Known as “the physician to bishops” because of his frequent consultation by the prelates of the Church, he was a valuable friend to someone in Yonah’s position. His practice overlapped Yonah’s, but the two physicians had been able to support each other without any feeling of competition. Montenegro had overseen the apprenticeship of Pedro Palma and recently had made Palma his partner.

“But Pedro has gaps in his knowledge and experience,” Montenegro told Yonah one day as they relaxed over a glass of wine in a Saragossa taberna. “I especially feel he requires more experience in the science of anatomy. He would learn a lot by working with you, if the occasion arose.”

Each of them knew that Montenegro was asking Yonah to allow Palma to dissect with him.

It was difficult for Yonah to refuse him anything, but since he had married he had become very conscious of his responsibilities to Adriana, and he didn’t want to risk her safety. “I think you are an excellent surgeon and therefore should teach him yourself, as your friend Nuño taught me,” he said.

Montenegro nodded, understanding his decision and accepting it without rancor. “How is your wife faring, Ramón?”

“She is the same, Miguel.”

“Ah. Well, as you know, sometimes these things take their own time. She is such a charming woman. You will please extend my greetings?” he said, and Yonah nodded and finished his wine.

*   *   *

He was unable to guess whether Adriana was barren or whether the fault lay within him, because to his knowledge he had never impregnated a woman. Their inability to conceive was the only unhappiness in their marriage. Yonah knew how much his wife wanted a family and it hurt him to see sadness creep into her eyes when she looked at other women’s children.

When he had consulted Montenegro the two of them had studied the available medical literature together and had decided to give her an infusion of pulse, camphor, sugar, barley water, and ground mandrake root in wine, reported to be the prescription of the Islamic physician Ali ibn Ridwan. For two years Adriana had been faithfully taking that dosage and a number of other medications, but with no results.

They led a quiet and orderly existence. To keep up appearances Adriana accompanied him to church several Sundays a month but otherwise seldom went to town, where she was treated with respect as the physician’s wife. She kept an enlarged kitchen garden, and she and Yonah slowly but steadily had brought to fruition more of the orchard and the olive grove. She greatly enjoyed working on their own land like a peón.

It was a satisfying time for Yonah. In addition to the wife he loved, he had work that he cherished, and even the pleasures of scholarship. Only a few months after their arrival from Pradogrande he had reached the final page of The Canon of Medicine. Almost reluctantly he had translated the last folio of Hebrew characters—a warning to physicians that patients who were in a feeble state, as well as those who had diarrhea or nausea, should not be bled.

And then at last he was able to write on his own sheet of paper the final words:

The Seal of the Work, and an Act of Thanks.

May this our compendious discourse upon the general principles pertaining to the science of medicine be found sufficient.

 

Our next task will be to compile the work

on Simples, with the permission of

Allah. May He be our

aid, and Him do we

thank for all His

innumerable

mercies.

 

The end of the first book of

the Canon of Medicine of

Avicenna the Chief

of Physicians.

Yonah used fine sand to blot the ink and carefully shook it off, then he added the page to the pile of manuscript that rose an impressive distance from the surface of his table. He was filled with a special joy that he thought must come only to writers and scholars who have labored at great length and in perfect loneliness to complete a work, and regretted that Nuño Fierro could not see the end product of the task he had set for his apprentice.

Yonah put the Spanish Avicenna away on a shelf and the Hebrew Avicenna back into its hiding niche in the wall, exchanging it for the second half of Nuño’s assignment, the Maimonides book on medical aphorisms. And with the time left before Adriana summoned him to their dinner, he sat again at his writing table and began to translate the first page.

*   *   *

They saw few people socially. When Adriana had first arrived in Saragossa they had had Montenegro to dinner. The small, energetic physician was a widower, and he had reciprocated by bringing them to a good dinner at an inn in the city, beginning a pattern they had enjoyed with him ever since.

Adriana was fascinated with the history of their house. “Tell me about the people who have lived here, Ramón,” she said. She was interested to learn that Reyna Fadique had served as housekeeper to all three of the physicians who had made the hacienda their home. “How unusual a woman she must be, to be able to satisfy three different maestros of her house,” she said. “I would like very much to meet her.”

Yonah hoped she would forget that request, but she didn’t, until finally he rode to deliver an invitation to Reyna. Each of them accepted congratulations, for both had been married since their last meeting. Work was proceeding splendidly on the house that was on its way to becoming an inn, and Reyna said she was pleased to hear that his bride had invited her, and Álvaro—whose last name turned out to be Saravía—to dinner in the house where she had been a servant for so long.

When they came, bearing gifts of a honeycomb and wine, the two women seemed overly polite to one another for a time. Yonah and the white-haired Álvaro went to walk the land, leaving the women to become acquainted. Álvaro had grown up on a small farm and he praised the efforts Yonah and Adriana had made to bring back some of the trees. “If you continue to save trees, it would be most useful to build a small barn near the orchard and the olive grove on the upper slope of the hill, where farm implements and picked fruit could be stored.”

It seemed a good suggestion, and they were discussing the cost of the labor and the quantity of stones that would be needed for the walls, when they returned to find the women beaming at one another and talking volubly. The meal was pleasant, and Adriana and Reyna, clearly already friends, embraced when the guests took their leave.

Adriana discussed them warmly as she emptied the table of the remains of the dinner. “She feels like a mother to you, and I think she is eager to be a grandmother. She asked me if there was perhaps a bun in the oven.”

Yonah was aghast, knowing his wife’s sadness and sensitivity about the subject of pregnancy. “What did you say?”

Adriana smiled. “I told her not yet, because until now we have only been practicing,” she said.

*   *   *

On the first day of February Yonah rode head down against the wind to attend the annual meeting of the physicians of Aragon. Despite the bitter weather eight other physicians attended to hear Yonah deliver a talk about the circulation of the blood according to Avicenna. It was well received and drew questions and good discussion, after which Miguel de Montenegro read a letter that had been delivered to him out of the mail packet of the Saragossa diocese.

To Miguel de Montenegro, physician, I send the greetings of the Toledo diocese, and the hope that you are in good health.

I am assistant to the Most Reverend Enrique Sagasta, auxiliary bishop of Toledo. Bishop Sagasta is head of the Office of Religious Faith in the Toledo See, in which capacity there has come to his attention a nobleman of Tembleque who has been grievously afflicted.

Count Fernán Vasca is his name. A knight of Calatrava who has been an exceedingly generous friend of Holy Mother Church, he has a malady that has left him mute and frozen as any stone, yet painfully in life.

Several physicians have been consulted in his behalf without avail. Recalling the high esteem in which you are held, Bishop Sagasta prays that you may be able to come to Castille. The Church, and His Reverence, would consider it a most gracious favor if you will come or, if you are unable, if you will recommend this patient to another skilled physician of your acquaintance, the local physicians having failed in their attempts to help Count Vasca.

The bishop is assured that you or another of your choosing will be well compensated, with double payment if the physician is able to bring about a cure.

Thank you for your attention.

Yours in Christ,

Padre Francisco Rivera de la Espina,

Order of Preachers

“I cannot go,” Montenegro said. “I am growing old. It is bad enough I must travel to sick bishops. Once I start answering the summonses for sick laymen in their districts, I am truly lost. Nor can Pedro Palma go, for he is too new a physician.

“Is anyone else interested in this matter?” he asked, but there were only grins and a shuffling of feet by those in attendance.

“It is a long way to ride. And noblemen are notoriously small payers,” offered a physician from Ocaña, to general laughter.

“Well, the bishop guarantees payment,” Montenegro pointed out. “Although I do not know either this Bishop Sagasta or the priest who wrote the letter.”

“I know the priest,” Yonah heard himself saying. “Padre Espina served for a time in Saragossa. He seemed to me to be a most worthy priest.”

Still, nobody showed further interest in the matter, and Miguel de Montenegro shrugged and placed the letter back in his pocket.

*   *   *

Of course Yonah would not even consider going to Toledo, he told himself at first.

He didn’t wish to leave Adriana. Tembleque was too far away, and the time needed for such a trip would be great.

If he owed anything to the count of Tembleque, it was revenge.

Yet he seemed to hear Nuño’s voice asking if a physician had the right to treat only those members of humanity of whom he approved, or for whom he held respect or affection.

That day and the next, slowly he came to admit to himself that he had unfinished pieces of his life in Tembleque.

Only by responding to Padre Espina’s summons to Montenegro, which seemed fated, could he attempt to answer the questions that had always weighed on him, about the murders that had destroyed his family.

*   *   *

At first Adriana asked him not to go. Then she asked that she be allowed to go with him.

The journey itself could be difficult and dangerous, and he had no idea what he might find when he got there. “It is not possible,” he said gently.

It would have been easier if he had seen anger in her eyes, but what he saw was fright. Several times he had been called to travel a distance for a consultation, and she had been alone for two or three days. But this would be an extended absence.

“I am coming back to you,” he told her.

When he said he would leave her enough money for any emergency, she was angered. “What if I take it and just go away?” she said.

He brought her behind the house and showed her where he had buried the leather bag containing Manuel Fierro’s money, and then had built a manure pile above it. “You are able to take it all if ever you truly wish to leave me.”

“It would be too much digging,” she said, and he took her into his arms and kissed her and comforted her.

He went to Álvaro Saravía, who promised to visit Adriana once a week, to make certain that firewood would always be stacked where she could get it easily, and that there would always be a pile of hay where she could fork it into the horses’ stalls.

Miguel de Montenegro and Pedro Palma were not enthusiastic about caring for Yonah’s patients for an extended time, but they didn’t refuse him. “You must ever watch out for noblemen. Once cured they will screw the physician,” Montenegro said.

Yonah decided not to take the gray Arabian, because age had begun to slow the horse. Manuel Fierro’s black mare was still strong and he took her instead. Adriana packed a saddlebag with two loaves, fried meat, dried peas, a sack of raisins. He kissed her and left quickly in a morning mist.

He rode the horse southwest at an easy trot. For the first time, being free to travel didn’t lift his gypsy spirits. His wife’s face stayed in his mind and he had a terrible urge to turn the horse about and ride home, but he did not.

He made good progress. That night he camped behind a windbreak of trees in a brown field that was distant from Saragossa. “You did well,” he told the mare as he unburdened her of the saddle. “You are a wonderful animal, Hermana,” he said, stroking and patting the black horse.