Category:

Without warning, her father grabbed the wooden stool leaning against the corner of the gate, left there from the days when the family had enjoyed the services of a doorman. Before Roxannah could cry a warning, he swung the heavy stool sideways at the bailiff's head. The man had the nimble reactions of someone who found himself in the path of swinging furniture on a regular basis. The stool missed his head by a wide arc, but the momentum of her father's violent motion carried him forward, throwing off his already unsteady balance.

He swayed as he tried to regain his equilibrium and failed, crashing roughly into the stone wall. Even all the way inside the house they could hear the sickening crack as his head slammed into the masonry. Bouncing, he pitched backward, arms flailing as he fell and landed on the limestone path bordering the herb garden.

The bailiff took one look at the trail of scarlet that flowed from the still man's temple and beat a hasty retreat. Her mother screamed. Roxannah flew past her rigid form into the hallway and down the three uneven steps that led to the courtyard.

Her father stirred when she knelt by his side. With a moan, he opened bleary eyes. "My head!"

Roxannah swallowed as blood pooled on the worn stone. She laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. "You crashed into the wall. Can you sit up?"

He slapped her hand away. "You imbecile! Of course I can't sit up. Can't you see I am half dead?"

"Shall I fetch you a physician?"

Staring at the scarlet coating the fingers he had raised to his temple, he gasped. "Yes! Hurry!"

Roxannah sprang to her feet. By now, her mother had made her way to the courtyard and stood frozen, her face bone white. Roxannah gave her a quick embrace. "I am going for the physician. Perhaps you should cover him with a blanket? He is shivering."

She slapped her forehead. "Why did I not think of it? I don't know what I would do without you." She raced back inside the house.

Her father raised a hand as Roxannah turned to leave. "Girl! Not that idiot who tended me last time. He has the brains of a chicken."

"Who shall I fetch, Father?" 

"That Jew from Elephantine."

Roxannah tried to remember who he meant. "The one who serves at the palace?"

He huffed an impatient breath. "His reputation is adequate."

Roxannah swallowed a groan. How were they to afford a court physician? They had barely managed to pay the fees of the neighborhood healer who had seen to her father's last illness.

She had no idea where this physician resided. Which way should she go? Their house was located in the old royal town, the prosperous neighborhood that spread southeast of the palace. A half-hour's walk to the west lay a warren of five or six streets where many Jewish residents lived in proximity to one another. But another cluster of Jews had settled to the east, in the Artisans' Village, preferring to intermingle with the cosmopolitan people of Susa. Gathering her scarf more closely around her head, Roxannah ran west toward the Jewish quarter. Even if the physician did not live there, someone should be able to tell her where to find him.

By the time she arrived at her destination, she had a stitch in her side. A boy playing in the street pointed her to immaculate whitewashed walls encircling a sprawling property. Roxannah banged against the iron-studded cedar gate. She was about to bellow for the physician when a man of middle years opened the door softly. The pristine linen scarf wrapped about his head marked him a servant.

"My father... has been hurt!" She huffed the words in a winded gasp. "I need the physician."

Given her old, faded clothing, she half expected to be turned away at the door. But with a short bow, the servant invited her into a lush courtyard and indicated a stone bench. "Wait here, if you please. I will fetch my master." He spoke Persian in the cultured tones of an aristocrat, sounding like no ordinary servant she had ever met.

Roxannah pressed her palms together to keep them steady. "Hurry, please. My father hit his head and is bleeding badly."

The man nodded. "He will be with you in a moment." With a swish of his long tunic, he disappeared through the carved door leading into the house.

Roxannah knelt to rinse her hands in the clear waters of a shallow, rectangular pool. She grew aware of the perfume of hundreds of blooming roses and, turning, noticed for the first time the profusion of colors that surrounded her—soft pink, buttery yellow, rich cream, pearly white—dotting the roomy courtyard and climbing from a half dozen arbors. The physician had turned his home into a tiny paradise of calm and color. Sitting at the edge of the stone bench, she turned her back on the heavenly view and glued her eyes to the closed door instead.