The Scarlet Fig

Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone,

Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

by

Avram Davidson

Introduction

THE SCARLET FIG is the third and last Vergil Magus novel to come from Avram Davidson’s pen. It is steeped in the millieu of its predecessor works, The Phoenix And The Mirror and Vergil In Averno, and — perhaps more comprehensively than any other of his works — in the knowledge, lore, mysteries and other enquiries that engaged Avram’s mind in the production of his magnum opus.

As Avram explained in his introduction to The Phoenix and the Mirror: “From the Dark Ages to the Renascence the popular view of the ancient world as reflected in the Vergilean Legends was far from the historical and actual one in more than the acceptance of legend and magic and myth. It is a world of never-never, and yet it is a world true to its own curious lights — a backward projection of medievalism, an awed and confused transmogrification of quasi-forgotten ancient science.”

This process of transmogrification takes place in THE SCARLET FIG in endlessly inventive ways; in the substitution of SQPR for SPQR, in the conflation of the two Diomedes (of Argos and of Thrace) into a single figure, in the delightful neologism of Byzantinople.

The ancients held the world to be immersed in a “universal aether”, a sea of knowledge. Avram too existed in just such an aether: into this sea he would dip his nets and draw up the strangest of fish, and set them gently before his readers. One manifestation of this was the vast card files that Avram established to support his Vergil sequence (and for which Avram employed the working title The Encyclopaedia of the World of Vergil Magus), copiously cross-referenced, full of tangential connections and cryptic references across a huge array of source texts. A selection of these cards are reproduced in an appendix to this volume and they demonstrate the scale of Avram’s ambition for the Vergil sequence.

Drawing from this unique resource, THE SCARLET FIG teems with all manner of wonders and strange notions, all vividly rendered: Castor and Pollux, harpies, basilisks, the satyr-infested Isle of the Lotophages, Sindibaldo, the origins of perspective, Phoenician dyes, the derivation of that most Dutch of birds — the Flemingoe, the magical powers of wand and twig (also known as virga, a play on Virgil in Latin).

THE SCARLET FIG is in many ways a paean to the love of knowledge, of pure knowledge, the knowledge which gives meaning and context to our world. Vergil’s world is experienced as much through the gaining and giving — the interchange — of knowledge as it is experienced through Vergil’s physical journeying, adventures and sensations. This happy marriage of the intellect and the senses, viewed through the looking glass of “unhistory”, makes the THE SCARLET FIG one of the finest expressions of Avram Davidson’s art.

Phillip Rose London, England.

I

Yellow Rome; or, Vergil and the Vestal Virgin

In Rome Yellow Rome! Yellow Rome! — a man was being led to public execution. Aristocrats might be quietly and secretly slain, but this was no aristocrat. Some common thug, a street-robber by night, or a house-breaker, thick and shambling, ill-made and ill-looking, he had killed a cobbler’s apprentice for a stiver — the smallest coin. The lictor went first, carrying the bundle of rods which might be used to flog the criminal (but wouldn’t) wrapped around the single-edged axe which might be used to cut off his head (but wouldn’t). It was a symbol only, and the lictor looked bored and disdainful. Next, arms bound behind him at the elbows, legs hobbled with ropes, the felon stumbled, followed, between two files of soldiers. Grasping him fast by a noose round his neck came the common hangman: one might have had them change clothes and places and scarcely told them apart.

“Well, ‘one Vergil, a natural of Rome, and no mere denizen,’ do they have anything to do with this in Naples … I say nothing of the Bail of Brundisy …?” The wauling was Quint’s, to be heard above the clamor of the throng. There was in his voice some light and affectionate taunt that Vergil had not been born in the City itself but nearer to where he now lived by the great Voe of Naples than to Yellow Rome itself. The so-well-paved Appian Way went straight and strait between Yellow Rome and Brundisy, but there branched off a branch of it for Naples. A young mage, not yet very well-established in his profession (or in public fame) did well to travel now and then to the Imperial capital, and gently press the thought that there was one (himself) useful to be friend of a friend (Quint) with a friend (the rich Etruscan) to the court Imperial, to the Oliphaunt Throne … not to be lightly named: whomsoever sate upon it.

Vergil pressed his bearded lips to Quint’s smooth ear-hole, said loud and sharp, throngs and thugs, all right: but neither one was anything to this particular display.

The throng howled, as the throng always would.

“Chin up, cock! Brave it out!”

“They’ll stretch that short neck!”

“Hang the hangman! A louse for the hangman!”

“You’ll scrag no more widdies nor prentices!”

“Up tails all!”

“Die! For a lousy stiver? Die! Die with a hard club, die!”

The wretch’s face changed expression, but it changed slowly: now he had the sly look of a pig who had broken into a pea-patch, now he was pleased at the attention, now he scowled as some thick and gross insult struck home, now he looked desperately from side to side; always the hangy forced him on, as close to him as the butcher to the ox. All this passed before Vergil and before Quint, and they stood and looked on; Vergil was Quint’s guest, and Quint was the guest of Someone Important in Yellow Rome. Even a wizard, even if he did not want wealth, was willing to draw near to wealth, if he were young and new and scarcely known. And near to power, even if that sort of power he did not much want. Soon enough this procession would pass by, and then they would cross, cross safely on foot, for in Rome (and in Rome alone) no wheeled vehicle might pass through the streets in the day time.

In that case, in a sudden silence, what hooves were those, and what wheels? Quint, that Roman of Romans, knew at once: and would tell Vergil soon enough … if he did not ask. The mob broke into noise again, its inalienable right, and though it was still shouting, it seemed to be shouting the same something, though not all at the same time. Half the yammering throng faced the nice little wagonette and its nice little mule, and the woman, half-veiled, who was in it. Her small slave-girl holding the sea-silk sunshade or ombello was beginning to be inattentive a bit and a bit the sunshade slipped.

And half the vulgus faced the procession and shouted and gestured, pointing, pointing —

The lictor had strode on, eyes down; and in fact by then he had gotten ahead of the procession and seemed rather to have forgotten it: lictors, too, have their secret private thoughts.

The soldiery slogged along in its fixed rhythms, paying no attention at all to the thing its ranks confined; probably thinking of the evening’s rations: bread, salt, garlic, parsley (growing in ruins and waste places, rank as weeds), wine, perhaps a bit of dried meat or a bit of dried fish — tunny harpooned in the bloody trapping pens, for instance, “from the rise of the rainy Pleiades[1] to the setting of bright Arcturus” — and the anticipated meal with its perhaps, treat, meant far more to them than any execution of a sentence of death. Death, to an old soldier, was more boring than exciting.

The hangman, whose attention was so suddenly besought by many cries and movements, pressed on. Vergil noticed that the hangman pressed on.

What Quint, with his blood shot eyes, pale thin face and dark thin hair, noticed, was not known to Vergil.

Who made up the mob rabbling and howling? The meanest class of citizenry, whose leather badges and SQPR[2] stamped in gilt served to prove citizenship, made up the largest part. They had no money to buy anything and no mind to read anything, so a procession to the gibbet was an absolute gift for them.

Men, too, from all the peoples of the Empery were there: fair Franks with long hair and Celts with short and Egyptians with none; pale Berbars from the Solitudes of Syrtica and of As’hara, sand as high as mountains and hills of solid stone pierced with holes where the Troglodytes live; dark Numidians who had seen the Sphynges flying in their thousands to drink of the waters at the sources of the Nile — of all other waters drink they not, of all the waters of Ægypt drink they not — and Gauls with bearded chops, the wailing of whose dead fills the islands and the highlands of the misty great green darkling Sea of Atlantis between shore to shore of whose vasty waters might no bird fly; and Æthiops with emeraulds in their ears. Many indeed could be seen (though not so many) to be aliens from outside the Empery, and even the Œconomium.

Vergil was indifferent at seeing or smelling the so-called Foul or Infamous Crafts such as the knackers and the carriers of dogs’ dung for the tanneries, for he still had the muck of the farmyards and the fernbrooks on his legs and feet, and the odors of dead beasts and dung-heaps were fresher to his nose-holes than those of ambergrise and nard.

And here and there, as so often of late (and some said, more and more often, and they darkly mumbled their gums about laws graven on the twelve Iron Tablets about the artificial production of monsters and other omens … no one of course was ever able to find such laws) here and there through the mass went wandering a satyr or a centaur of, say, the size of a goat-kid. There were no weanling Lapiths to be seen, however; and who would know one, had there been? memory of one Ciuco, a night-soil-man little wittier than a wittold, in Vergil’s home-hamlet in the Bail of Brundusy, who used to stop any one too purblind to avoid him, and confide, “My granddam, now, she seen a Laypith, she seen ‘un ‘ith a horn in the muddle o’ his forrid: which be the reason, she bein’ then six months gorn wi’ child, that I has six finger on my left ‘and.” What the logical, or even the illogical connection between the two things was, no one was ever able to conjecture; certainly all local priests denied that ever there had been stories — “myths”, you might call them — of monoceroid Lapiths; and neither was anyone, lay or cleric, able to credit Cluco’s being able to invent such a story. But, however invented, tell it he did, lustrum after lustrum, decade after decade, to whomever could not trot faster than he could, and who — usually was glad or let us say willing enough to avoid the presence of Ciuco, polydactylous or not (for rhododactylos assuredly he wasn’t, and neither was he rosy-scented) by the dole of a very small coin or a not-quite-so-small chunk of bread: at which see Ciuco become unseen; this may or may not have been more profitable than the night-soil business, but was certainly much easier.

When one mentions the size of a goat-kid one refers to the centaurs, for the satyrs were man-sized, and very near each creature was someone (invariably a shill) mentioning confidentially the name of the thaumaturge who’d made it, in some such words as, “That ‘un’s the work of that same Septimus as keeps his crib atween Apollo’s Court and the Steps of Woe.” — why would anyone want a confected satyr or centaur? perhaps one of those newly-rich who kept a baby oliphaunt in his atrium might want one, and for the same reason: show.

Thieves were there in the vulgus; as they could not steal the golden spikes from the ridge-poles of the temples and the other public buildings, they cut the thongs of purses with their knives so much sharper than mere razors; sellers of snacks were there, for many a man had neither cook nor kitchen to dress a meal of victuals, and if he turned aside into a cheap eating-place he might miss something: but whether a rabbleman stewed hog-palates in vinegar or cut the thongs of purses or did, as was the right of citizens, nothing at all, something there had now changed and perhaps everything had changed. But the hangman wished to behave as though nothing had happened. The lictor, whose attention was now besought by many cries and movements, strode on, eyes down, and in fact by now he had gotten away ahead of the procession. The hangman pressed on. A bit the woman’s sunshade slipped and a bit the veil, revealing to Vergil a face of such extraordinary loveliness and purity that his breath was stopped.

The word coming up from the populus now was pardon: the hangman would not stop for it; why should he? He received the deadman’s clothes as a perquisite even if they were rags (and they were not always rags) they had their value and their price as ingredients of the Black Rite; he got to receive everything which was, or at the time of imprisonment had been, on the body of the dead-man-to-be; and he also received his fee for making the liveman’s body dead by pushing it off the ladder at the gibbet and at once leaping onto his shoulders and jumping up and down on them — thus assuring that the caitiff’s neck must break if it had not already broken by the drop. Of these benefits the hangman would receive none at all in case of pardon, so why should he stop for it? and lastly, it would deprive him of all the pleasure of the death scene: the hangman, howl the mob as it would, would not stop. And who might stop him?

(The lictor, fasces bundled into his arms, was by now very far ahead, stooped, aloof, deep in thought: of what, who could say, perhaps that time there was, ere Roma’s woes began … perhaps not.)

Who else? Himself, the August Caesar? where was he? not here. From what other place, then, did the musty multitude seem to think that help might arrive. The woman in the wagonette commenced to rise, in a slow and flowing motion like an hieratical dancer: though, perhaps actually not: only … somehow … it seemed so. The brute would not see her. Vergil caught her eye, and, again, that ambiguous impression, that impression deep yet perhaps false. Had he caught her eye at all? Erect, like a statue of the golden age, she seemed.

The lictor, perhaps grown somewhat aware of the hideous shriek and hum from that mass of men — here and there some women: not trulls alone: vendors of fragrant citrons, of pickled samphire for relish, of sieves and baskets in many sizes, fishwives going down to the river to renew supplies of mullet and sardines and dogfish with double-lobed livers; others — the lictor turned: at once saw all. Quint, keenly enjoying everything, was telling Vergil nothing; scarcely he raised a thin and hairy hand to brush the ever-deliquescent ointment from his bleary eyes — his physicians were generally agreed twas from an excess of some humor, but they never yet agreed on which humor, though there were not many, but prescribed this salve or that; they might as well, Vergil thought, have told him to graze grass like an ox … whoever saw a blear-eyes ox? And, Ow! shouted the throng, and Yow! shouted the throng. “Pardon! Pardon!” it howled. And, ever and again, “Up-tails, all!” and “A louse for the hangman!”

The hangman may or may not have gotten a louse (close-pressed in that stinking swarm, it would have been no surprise if he had) but what he very quickly got was the lictor at his side; and the lictor said to him, more in astonishment than anger, “where are you going, turd of a toad? Don’t you see the high-born Virgin lady? Stop! — Or I’ll let the populus have you, and may they eat your arse sans salt.”

The Vestal meanwhile remained standing in her wagon all but motionless, the very image of aristocratic calm and grace. Silence took a while. When things were almost silent, the felon seemed to emerge from his daze. One could almost read — no, one could read — the play of thoughts coursing over across his sword-slashed and much-confused face. Where was he? What was happening? Why had they stopped? Why was everything quiet? Answer: they were arrived and halted at the killing place; any minute now he might have a small and ill-tasting coin thrust into his mouth and feel nothing beneath his feet, and a sharp brief pain in his neck. With a sound like the lowing of a yearling ox he spread his hobbled legs, and pissed.

The swarm went wild with laughter. Only the lictor’s leather and legal face, the vestal’s marmoreal countenance, did not change, for all that her little maid, hand hiding mouth, seemed to whisper in her ear. At length silence was again achieved, and in that silence — though the punks and pogues still rolled their painted eyes and smirked at potential clients — the Vestal rose completely to attention, put out her white arm and hand and in a lovely ringing tone declared, “I pardon that man.” No one word more. And sat down. It had been a completely legal formula, sans emotion. “I divorce you; herewith your dower-fund.” “Slave, thou art henceforth free.” “Bear witness: I sell this horse-stud to Lucas for six solids.” I pardon that man. Not one word more. And sat down.

The crowd went wild again. A soldier in a swift second slashed the bonds about the elbows; another slightly stooped and severed those around the ankles, For a second more the thug gaped. Then he started to run at a stumbling trot. Many hands caught at him: he fought against them. Many cries of, “Not yet, man!”

“Not yet! Thank the holy lady! Go and kiss the Virgin’s foot! Thank her for your life!”

But one might as well have spoken to a pig escaped from the shambles; loose, was he? Then he meant to stay loose. And this meant to flee. For a full minute (so Vergil guessed) the absurd scene continued, the pardoned man butting furiously against the arms and bodies which would have had him first do his duty by giving thanks for that pardon; the crowd all of one mind now (the whores most of all: could it have been they fancied a slight upon that one quality which they universally lacked, and lacked, one might say, almost by definition?), the crowd’s sense of amour propre was seriously offended; while the lictor covered his grim face with his free hand and gazed through his spread and ringless features as though he could not believe his eyes — And then herself the Vestal: something which might have been a mere flicker of rueful amusement passed over her fine face and was in an instant gone (more than Caesar’s wife must a Vestal Virgin be above suspicion, she must be above suspicion even of vulgar emotion). She raised her hand at an angle to her wrist, slightly pushed it away from her; the other hand fluttered the colored leathers on the mule’s neck. The crowd released the fool felon and laughed to hear his running feet; at once made way for the Vestal’s wee carriage, and saluted her with the utmost respect. Did the little maid murmur something, something, anything, with well-practiced and almost motionless lips? did the sea-silk sunshade dip for a second a fraction of an inch in a particular direction? this was not certain.

A mule was not a horse, all horses were hysterical more or less, the most placid old cob was likely to behave like a northish bear-shirt if — if, whatever; this could differ from cob to cob — horse to horse. But mules were mysterious creatures, that this one was a small mule did not make its potential mystery any less small; probably it had been bred for the sevice it now performed out of a pony-mare by one of the jack-donkeys of the northern lands, lighter in build and in size than the asses of the south, and brought to Rome or its countryside for just this purpose. And in view of what was about to happen it was necessary to consider also the probable history of the street-bed. Quint might know just when the street had last been paved, Vergil not. But in some short moment he envisioned the scene — a man engaged in ramming the gravel turning aside for a moment to go piss or to get a drink of water, another workman not waiting for his return or not even considering the matter of had the gravel been rammed sufficiently — and it had not — the second workman perhaps, then, mechanically setting down the pave-stone; the first workman returning and, likely even without so much as a shrug, picking up his implement and moving a few feet to commence the work of ramming a bit further on. And then the passing of the years, the rains, many years of rains, the not-fully-packed gravel shifting, moving; then perhaps the fall of a heavier stone from an improperly-laden wagon passing by in the torchlight: the paving stone sustaining a crack not observed in the night, more years passing, the incessant traffic at last splitting the pave-stone. Somehow the inspectors had missed it … or, their reports ignored … the night traffic cared nothing for any bad spot which their heavy wagons could lurch across … had, anyway, the drivers and teamsters, no time to spend on complaints: into the city by nightfall, in-cargo laded off, out-cargo laded on, out of the city by nightrise: so.

A horse, had it felt a sunken spot behind it … if it felt it … would either have strained forward or strained backward. An ass would have stopped. And stayed. Time to put something under the wheel. But the mule, even the small, supposedly sophisticated mule, reacted entirely differently. The mule was, after all, the Symbol of Unbridled Lust — though why this should be so when the mule was sterile, was hard to say; the mule (this particular one) had somehow missed the sunken spot. Now it somehow backed up a trifle. Now it felt it. The wheel not right! The wheel sinking! The entire universe of a sudden gone awry! The mule at once went insane: the mule screamed, rolled back its eyes, laid down its ears, made as if to stand on its hind legs — on its forelegs — to lie down and roll over — it was at once evident that there was nothing the mule might not do.

In a second the little slave girl had jumped out of the car to safety, held up her wrists, thin as carrots, at an absolutely useless angle for the Vestal to lean upon. The crowd gave a great groan. It was no slight thing to witness the fall of a Vestal Virgin. Should she be killed, for a space of time at least there would be only five “sisters” to hold safe the hearths of Rome … who knew what might happen during such an interregnum. Many in the crowd believed that seeing such a sight obliged one to fast; many even believed that whoso saw such would — must! — within the year surely die. From the crowd a great groan. Many rushed forward … Vergil amongst them … some seized the mule … some seized the car … some seized hold of their knives, such as each man wore at his belt, or was no man: to cut reins, traces … one man alone seized the Vestal by the arm … by the upper and the lower arm … It lasted a second. The mule was suddenly calm and collected: panic? what panic? The car was suddenly steady and safe. The knives were all suddenly back in their belts, absit omen lest any delator or informer should occasion to ask, How didst thou come to bare thy knife unto the high-born Virgin Lady? a man might well be well-dead before an explanation were forthcoming. A man might receive a most pressing intimation to slip the short sword between any twain ribs he preferred, thus to prevent his family from attainder and his property from escheatal. Might. Might not. A man might receive a silver pottle or an ember-scuttle enchased with gold, as reward. Might. Might not.

It was all so very suddenly done. So very suddenly her arm was free from Vergil’s steadying hands. In a second’s time; less than it took a drop of water to fall from the clock — And in that second, while a flame of fire seemed to run up both his hands and arms and through his heart and thence into his manly parts (Touched a Vestal! Touched the Virgin’s naked arm!); in that second their eyes chanced to meet. Certain it was (this time) that for another fraction of a second the Vestal’s eyes really met Vergil’s eyes — then they were gone — then she was gone herself — and three thoughts like three bolts of lightning, so swift that before one fades away the other flashes, passed across his mind.

What color are her eyes?

It is death by the Tarpæan Rock to have carnal congress with a Vestal

Her virgin’s vows expire in her thirty-fifth year.

The woman’s age then, he did not know How old was he then, we will not say.

She was gone at once, long enough had she tarried at the sordid scene beneath the walls of saffron-colored stone, sallow where long suns had beat upon them; not swiftly yet very steadily the small carriage departed, the mule’s ears aprick, heading back towards the temple of Vesta up there beneath the Palantine. It might be that her watch hours approached, of guarding and tending the sacred fire. Or it might be that she sought rest and refreshment after the noise and dust and glare. Where had she been? Secluded though they generally were, the Vestals were allowed to take the air at intervals: perhaps to worship at another temple, perhaps to pray before two-faced Janus, he with red mouth straining and with face all grim, as the Oracles of Maro had it. Scraps of thought flitted through Vergil’s mind. Only a Vestal Virgin might drive a wheeled vehicle through day-time Rome (but ah gods! the hideous rumbling noisy nights!). Should she be accused of inchastity, two defenses were open to her: she might draw off a ship foundered on some shoal in the Tiber … using only a single thread. The Tiber at Rome was full of shoals, but as this knowledge was elementary and universal, ships (as distinct from bumboats) very seldom came as high as Rome, Or … she might instead carry water in a sieve. A brave option; small wonder they were seldom accused. Only a Vestal might pardon a man on the way to execution. No one might pardon a vestal caught in flagrant delight, or convicted after trial — Meherc! that a priestess of fire, should be tried by water! — she was buried alive in a tomb at once sealed shut, and a grim byword pointed out her last and only choice: starve while the lamp burned, or drink the oil and live a while longer in the dark, whichever, the glory of the world would soon enough pass, and with it, too: the beauty, the damps, the chills, the plots, the pests, the fevers, and the fleas, of eternal Rome. Of Yellow Rome, Yellow Rome.

“Good fortune to that man,” Vergil said, shaking his head as though to dispel the flimsies of bad dreams.

Quint made a scoffing sound, such as only the tutelage of the costliest of rhetors could have produced. “Did you see that animal face? He will be caught for another dirty crime and condemned again and this time surely hanged for it within the year — if not, indeed, the week — and should he encounter another Vestal?”

Vergil asked if the Vestals always set the felon free. Quint considered. “First you must meet your felon face to face,” he said, shrugging. Quint was a great shrugger. “Then — of the current Six, you mean?” Instantly it occurred to him that Vergil would scarcely have meant the Six current in the reign of King Tarquin the Proud or Judah King of the Jews, and he went on to capitulate them. “Clothilda pardons everyone. Volumnia pardons no one. Honoria, would you believe it, gravely casts dice to decide. Carries them with her in a monopede’s shoe — a monopede’s shoe! Don’t know who made it or where. Makes a game of going around to the cordwainers and asking each one if he could make up a pair from it. Don’t know which to be most afraid of, the Grand Uniped, or such, a million parasangs away in Unipedia, so to speak — I don’t know what hide it is made of, lovely grain it has. Has the most exquisite tiny stitches, triple-looped — or of the Vestal right in front of them. Don’t know whether to turn green or shit a roof-tile! Usually mutter something about not having the right thread, or the right wax.”

Vergil did not ask how Quint had ascertained it was the shoe of a monopede, for he might have given some such answer as, “Everybody know it,” or, “Because there is only one” — in which case respect for him would be diminished.

“Aurelia pardons now and then. — the dice? They are the most ordinary dice; sort of spoils the story, doesn’t it? Stories are often spoiled like that: tiresome.” Respect for him increased. “Lenora, they say, never drives that way, so as not to have to choose. He quirked his mouth, hunched his shoulders, flung out his hand and fluttered his fingers, with what might just be perceived as a very slight emphasis of the digit of infamy. “Soft-hearted Lenora, eh? — but they are all brutes, these fellows. Kindness to them is cruelty to others.”

And Quint told a recent report, not even to be designated as a rumor, that the man just freed had once been a provincial gladiator of the lowest sort, probably expelled for incompetence. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “You saw that sword-scarred face. No brow. No chin. Some ancestral taint, I’d venture.” A gesture; then, “They sell very good bread with opium seed over there.”

Vergil’s question almost burst forth. “But which one was she?” She was only one of six sacred women in the service of the goddess of the hearth, without which there could really be no home, and hence, no Rome: but which one was she? The bread did smell good: they say there was at least one bake-shop in the capital for every province in the Empire. One does not doubt.

Quint turned to Vergil, immediately (he, Quint) a man of the most scornful urban world. “But my dear fellow, you know nothing! — mage though you are — Well … how could you, down there in Naples? She is Claudia.”

“And does she often spare?”

Quint started again his rigamarole, stopped. Sincerely he seemed in doubt. Then, somewhat surprised, said that he did not know. That the matter had never — in his presence — come up before. Then he fell silent, merely gestured to his important friend’s litters (only two of many, of course) which were waiting for them: quite in the Roman fashion: not too very far from the appointed place. He certainly did not ask, “Handsome woman, is she not?” or, “What did you think of her?” or “Do you fancy her?” One simply never asked such questions about a Vestal Virgin. It was a long way up to the Tarpæan Rock when you had to climb.

But it was only a short way down when you were pushed.

There were nights when Vergil slept like a farmer, and nights when he could not sleep, or slept but ill. That night he fell soon into slumber, for thank the gods, in that very quiet — and very, very rich — quarter of Rome, where Lucas, Quint’s Etruscan friend, had one of his villas, there was neither wagon traffic nor roistering. Whence, then, came that noise, a mere murmur at first, then tumult and clamor? Vergil must have left his bed the better to observe and to hearken — what, then, a horrid shock, to realize that his arms were bound behind him at the elbows and his feet confined by straps or ropes so that he might take no very long steps and certainly could not run. He turned to ask a terrified question of the man nearest to him, an intent and stinking fellow in a dirty tunicle; but this one held, looped around his hands and arms, a rope; and the rope was noosed round Vergil’s neck. It did not choke him, not so long as he kept up with his keeper. “But what then?” he begged the fellow. “But what then?” The shunsoap made no answer, but steadily lead him along, as a knacker leads the nag before stopping him, stunning him, stabbing him, skinning him, and then cutting him up: hooves, hide, and pizzle to the glue-maker, and the other parts, too — Suddenly the sound of the vulgus ceased, then resumed in another note and another register.

Then ceased again.

A woman’s voice, strong and level and chill. “I pardon that man.” Their gazes met. She showed her shock. Her eyes were blue and clear.

It was yet dark when he awoke, but Rome generally awoke in the yet dark; a few lamps had already been kindled in the corridor; he noticed this abstractedly as he rushed to Quint: but Quint was already rushing to him. They met in the lesser atrium with the dull red walls where a few servants passed hither and thither like wraiths, thin vapors rising from the vessels in their hands. The heavy master of the household had either not yet aroused, or was occupied elsewhere; had he been present their own respective business, however much it agitated them, must need wait: but present he was not. At first their confrontation was in silence, there were sighs and moanings inarticulate, but not words. Then Quint said, and his voice trembled, “I have had such a dream!”

“And I —”

“Dreams are best kept silent, except to a qualified interpreter — or to a closemost friend —”

“Yes….”

“I am older, let me speak first,” said Quint. Vergil staying silent, he went on to speak his words, clutching the other’s his arms, as though he would draw him to himself. “Did you notice?” Quint asked. “Did you notice that old pedlar-dame in yesterday’s mob? selling baskets and sieves? She passed through my dream at an angle and then I saw the woman, I mean the woman … the real woman … I saw the woman holding the sieve … Claudia it was … it was Claudia … she held the sieve — you know what that means — and my heart went chill and swollen and I peered to see if the sieve did indeed hold the water, or if it had merely let it slip through and the mesh still wet. But she held it upside-down, she held it upside-down! What does that mean? And she looked at me and I saw that her eyes were very blue and very clear,” Quint’s own eyes, Vergil saw in the increasing light of early day, were very red, and quite without salve or ointment; “and she looked past me and she looked at you and her eyes went wide and I remarked her voice, I shall always remember her voice: it was level and strong and clear, and she pointed her hand at you and she said, ‘Thou art the man!’ And what that means, I dare not think: but I would that you would leave our Yellow Rome at once.”

After Vergil had spoken in turn, Quint leaned closer, and almost, somehow, he expected to see a thin cold breath from Quint’s mouth, like that from the basins of hot water for a quick early morning wash even now hurried past them by a few diligent slaves: but slavery makes for diligence … and makes it, much. Quint asked, “What is the meaning of this two-part dream? Does one part come from the Gate of Ivory and is false? does one part issue from the Gate of Horn and is it true? Is the whole dream one of evil omen? or of good? If we say, Good, in that she pardons you? of some sentence of death, it is sure, for if it were merely a matter of a fine … prison … the dungeon … or the scourge —” here Vergil shuddered, Quint went on — “how many men yearly die beneath the lash, merely, the lash? how many in the dungeon, where even a reflection of the light of the sun or the moon never shines? … let alone in the mere prison? where sometimes a gleam of sunlight creeps as it were uncertainly amongst the filthy littered rushes or the trampled straw … or now and then a beam of moonlight is reflected by a burnished mazer or a pewter plate polished like a mirror? For that matter,” he babbled, as they stood, crouched, in the atrium, close together; “for that matter,” he went on, “when a mere fine, merely the matter of a fine has broke a man’s bench, his bancus become ruptus, his lands his fields his house his yards his loft his laboratory all his goods his gear his tools his attire and even the very dead embers of his hearth for potash, and even the broken pisspot in the corner of his house of office: all, all, sold to pay the fine — eh? — how many, sinking beneath shame and broken spirit, the fine like blazing fire, consumes all means of earning food?”

Quint, beside himself, was now unwittingly imitating the gestures, the very vocal tricks, of any advocate seen and heard in Apollo’s Court. He swept the air with his hands, he bulged his eyes, he stood on his tip-toes, he touched his ear-lobe with a finger. “But all of these minor penalties,” this was a new Quint to Vergil and no longer the sophisticate, the man-about-Rome, the cynical; “and if the enemy of the enemies of mine enemy does not die of the stinking pox, then let him live … let him live under these minor penalties; and these allegedly the lesser of evils, the Vestal Virgin may not pardon: not a farthing, not a fig: not the theft of enough crushed walnut paste to cover the toenail of an infant child: none!”

To sum up: he, Vergil, once with brief (an advocate: ‘twas very brief: eh?) … if the Vestal Virgin in this probably vatic dream — and every dream in one way or another must be vatic, must be prophetic, else why is a dream dreamed? if he, Vergil, is the one whom the Vestal pardons, she can be pardoning him only from sentence of death. Not from charge of a crime meriting death, no, from sentence of death. And what can he, Vergil, have done or what would he do, to merit?

Dared he, would Vergil dare? to love her? —

And as for the other dream, and her cry of “Thou art the man!” if this was not accusative, then what was it? Could it be exculpatory? all things were, some barely, possible: but … he would believe that this Virgin’s exclamation was exculpatory? then he would believe anything … let him, if he would, believe —

But let him first flee. And if not to the end of the Empery, then at least from Yellow Rome. To be, at least, a while more safe.

Where would he safest be? from the accusations of the vatic voice in a state of dream —? whither flees the frightened child? he flees to home.

And now and for a long time: Naples was home.

… whence he might, if he would, if he need, having taken stock, flee again…

But why at once …? Why, because there was no set time indicated in these dreams. Who knows but what even now delators and informants were bespeaking those who bespoke the soldiery, He laid his hands upon the Virgin’s naked flesh, and, Act quickly, he may soon escape and flee …

Also, did he wait, tarry … opportunity … temptation … lust …

Thus: at once.

It is tiresome to say what everyone knows, in this case that some things are more easily said than done. There was no ship at a wharf behind a signboard reading Home, At Once. They had to wait until Quint’s friend, their host, was readily willing to see them, then it was needful (Quint thought) that Vergil should leave the City by a round-about way and not by means of the broader streets, and essential (Vergil thought) that Quint should not be seen with him; and was a long time persuading him of this, and even Vergil had a chore preventing him that he might not even, as he put it, “put bread in your wallet” for the journey, in Vergil’s old doe-skin budget, bread: had Vergil yielded at all, they would likely have wandered half over Rome to find some particular bake-shop. With or without opium-seed. Even, yes indeed! Quint might bethink him, bread is not enough! and insist they obtain cheese and salame-sausage! — at which, by sod and staff! might Vergil give himself up for lost —

Vergil was therefore long in leaving, and he neither drew reign of his borrowed horse, a gentle stalwart grey with dappled haunches (the Etruscan … a bit mysterious, like most his kind; and like most his kind: rich … had many horses, asked no questions) nor looked back till he had reached the rise by the third mile-stone. Then he halted, and turned. No pursuit? None … though he was uneasy in recalling that a dream, like a curse, might sometimes wait as much as seven years for fulfillment. No sign of pursuit, nor yet he was not easy. Ease is not always to the wise; was he wise? Some knowledge had he gained, but had he gained wisdom?

And lifting his eyes from the Appian Road he saw in the setting sun the cloud of dust raised by the hooves of the beasts being driven into the city to be slaughtered early next morning for sale in the markets, and the dust was faintly yellow. He saw in the suddenly visible middle distance the gold-spiked roofs, and stonework in marble the color of the hair of a fair-haired woman, brickwork the shade of straw, tiles a tint between that of the lemon of Sicily and a bright marigold blowing in the wind. He saw the glittering roofs and glowing golden buildings of Rome by the Tawny Tiber. In the yellow dust of the yellow dusk he saw the city of Yellow Rome … of Yellow Rome …

Yellow Rome.

He turned and urged on his horse. It was a long way to Naples.

II

The Port of Naples

Back in Naples, he first turned the horse over to the stableman, with instructions to care for it after the journey and then return it with the next string of mounts going to the capital. The man would not take money from him, saying, “There’s no one that doesn’t know of his name, ser. That rich Etruscan? Fufluns Cato? He could buy and sell Yellow Rome, several times over … and a generous payer, we hear, as well.”

Vergil had wanted only to return to his house for a moment, pause, pack, and flee. To what point of peril had his involvement with the mantic arts brought him: Mantova, daughter of Tiresias, had established those arts and thereby and therewith founded Mantua … Mantua … the name seemed to speak to him with the vatic voice. But what was Mantua to him? at all? the Dame Mantova, her arms three black goats on a field of golden asphodel … He hastened him to his house, all thought of Mantova and Mantua gone a-glim; Cosmo Nungo would be there … one hoped … the man was an artisan, an artificer, an alchymist … the man was not what one more rigid than Vergil could call dependable. The talk of the Art in Naples was that Cosmo Nungo had (some said) three times (some said, seven) achieved projection — and each time, in his haste to sell the gold to gamble and to drink (“Let the mourner bury his dead, and the reveler hasten to his wine,” was Cosmo Nungo’s favorite proverb; hint enough to the wise: who or rather what had “died” in order for projection to succeed?) each time had in his haste forgotten the steps. Naples slurred over the small detail: “Cosmo could make,” and that was all. “Why that damned old rotten robe, Cosmo Nungo, man, when thee can make?” The man merely showed his mouthful of yellow broken teeth, and shrugged.

Sometimes Cosmo Nungo the artisan felt close enough to his origins (for he came of citizen stock) to wear his toga — grimy, nearer grey than white: but ah! the prestige! Sometimes he wore the remnants of tabard and trews. But generally he wore his work-robe and this was basically a mass of patches: squares which had once been madder, rectangles of dyers’ green, triangles of indigo, and shapeless pieces steeped in woad: whatever he had been able to pick up as he passed between one workshop and another, all sewed into his loose ragged cloak of (originally) grey or brown: and all of them and it: very, very dirty.

The rough robe of Cosmo Nungo the artificer had missed its annual washing for more years than one or two — glue, sawdust, paint, plaster, gesso, even here and there a glistening fleck of gold which he had probably stolen, the gold dust pinch by pinch, the gold leaf, leaf by leaf, grease, gypsum, here a smear of color and there a smear of oil. Vergil encountered Cosmo Nungo the alchymist fairly often, and sometimes employed him in one task or another: too poor, Cosmo Nungo, too inconsistent, too irresponsible, ever to have gained (or, if he had gained, not kept) the status of a master craftsman; always able to get employment and never able to keep it. Cosmo Nungo would steal the gold leaf from under the master’s nose and sell it to buy wine — the gold leaf, not the nose: though, had he been able to sell the nose for wine, be sure he would have stolen it, too — going without pay, often, when the employer was himself poor but the work went well; stealer of bread, lover of music, playing on the rebec with stained fingers, foul of mouth but in his love of arts very sweet…. “Solitary, mad, and indolant; shockingly eccentric, and unreliable” — Cosmo Nungo.

He had, Cosmo Nungo, a half-way face — that is, his face was half-way between crimson and scarlet — with a turned-up nose, a mouthful of yellow crooked teeth, and a small twist of white beard. Seeing him with his red, red face bent so near his work that the nose, had it not been fixed by nature at such an angle, would have touched said work, one might have assumed that his sight was bad; but Cosmo Nungo could recognize a drink of wine the length of a street away. Some other occasion, then, must be found to explain such close attention: and the explanation was — his work? He loved it. He loved something else, too, besides work and wine. He loved to gamble.

The story was well-known how, playing at the die and dice one lowering Winter day with a less tender toss-pot, the carver Valerian, luck fell, cast after cast, to Cosmo Nungo. How he mocked at Valerian! cast after cast, coin after coin, win after win, joke after joke, jibe after jibe. Ah — sweet little Hercules with the parasol? ah? ah? there goes the cabbage-money, Val! Will the old ‘oman sleep with thee, Val? You’ll have to play with it, Val! no foining or futtering this week, Val! it’s mine, all of it’s mine!

He raked in the heap of mean coins, he was not gracious in victory. Cosmo crowed. Valerian said nothing, produced a two-obol piece from his toothless gob, cast … won … cast … won. The luck was turned, clean turned. Cosmo Nungo lost coin after coin, cursed — cast — lost — tossed — lost again — Coin after mean coin moved from the one pile to the other. The vile wine with vile water was all drunk, even the water itself was all drunk, the stinking cheap oil failed in the little lamp, outside it began to snow: the two old villains played on in the dimness and the cold.

Val gave a great hoot of triumph — started to rake in the pile of scanty stivers — a cry from old Cosmo Nungo: Wait! Another throw!

Val paused. “Have thee another oboi, son of a sow?” No, Cosmo Nungo conceded that he had not, rapidly unlaced his right shoe (the left had long ago lost its lachet: the god knows how). “Shoes ain’t shiners!” was old Val’s sneer. And Nungo: “Call ‘em a oboi each! Valley them sandles at a stiver, one by one! Don’t be mean! Don’t ‘ee be no Longobard! Call the twin shoe a twain obol!”

In the face of the taunt that he might be as mean as a Longobard, Val grunted, agreed by gesture; see the shoes join the coins, see Cosmo Nungo cast — see him lose! Hear him curse! Val assumed a careless air. “Lamp’s gone out? So’s the game! What! Be it snowing? First time this year. Hands off!” Val smacked Cosmo Nungo across the paws. “Them is mine, now!”

See Cosmo Nungo’s yellow broken crooked grin. “I’ll pay thee the pair stivers tomorrow, lea’ me have me shoes!”

“Leave thee nothing! Thee’ll shit tomorrow … do thee eat tonight … the which I doubt: no cabbage-money? no cabbage!”

Cosmo Nungo was incredulous. What! surely his old ally Valerian was no Longobard, and — But the taunt, worked once, did not work twice. Cosmo, cursing, wished the parasol of Hercules — never mind where. Then he walked home. Cursing, barefoot, in the snow.

Barefoot in the snow!

Next day he got a small advance from an unusually tolerant guild-master, bought a pair of shoes. Not a new pair, you may be sure.

Much did Vergil wish to pause, then flee. But to Vergil, pause, by definition meant brief. Whereas to Cosmo Nungo, pause meant talk. And this day he wanted to talk of Vergil’s lesser loadstone, Great Adamanth, and, perhaps of even greater loadstones, Negedbarzel, it might be, and the legendary lapis ferrum attrahens, Exhaurio Antepotentis.

To Vergil, now, entering in haste, the older man said, “Ars requiret totum hominem, Master, and so we term —” His master said, hurriedly, casting a swift sad look round the lower elaboratory with its ranks of instruments, “Yes, I know that art requires the presence of the entire man, but I must now —” useless. Cosmo Nungo had the bit between his broken teeth, and was galloping down the track.

“The loadstone, ser, we term the heraclion, that is to say, the Lion of Hercules. And it is our function, ser, as alchymists, to slay that lion. To annul the adamanth, ser, and make naught the magnet. ‘Transmutation,’ ser? To be sure. There is more than one transmutation. For ensample,” he took hold of the border of Vergil’s robe, not yet was his master to be awarded the right to wear the Golden Garment; this was a shabby raveling travel robe, tucked in at the waist, with not a shred of gold about it. “For ensample, to transmute orpiment,” continued the inexorable Nungo; “orpiment — that is, auripigmentum — to make from it what we calls realgar, King’s Yellow, that is, or sand-áraca, sand-áraca, sanddraco, ‘the dragon in the sand,’ we call it, too. And this transmutation is one of your basic excersizes in occamy —”

Thoughts of haste, even fear, diminished; “Five hours’ fire in the sealed crucible should do it, I think. Eh?”

“Yes, sir. It should, But sometimes the perentice doesn’t know how to find the fire, or how to fix it, nor even how to set his crucible, let alone how to make the proper lute to seal it. Nor sometimes he doesn’t even know about the five hours …” Vergil suddenly considered that he might have to break the man’s fingers, but Cosmo loosed the robe of his own motion. Vergil strode on. Adamanths! Realgar! Anon!

The Nungo trotted after him, still babbling. “Though some say, ser, that sandáraca is a resin, ser, and not a mineral. Sandrake, sand-dragon,” he intoned, “dragon-sand … as it sopped up the shed.”

Vergil, about to call aloud the name of Polydore, his house-servant; at this last word from the Nungo he had to repeat, “The, ah, shed?”

“Ser. Yes. The blood that was shed by the dragon in the combat, ser. In the great combat. The Combat on the Sand.” For one sole moment Vergil had a vision, quick and filled with red: a typical scene in the Arena, its floor all sand; the usual scene in the Arena: a gladiator had received his death-wounds, and the lepers licensed to do so rushed forward to drink his life’s blood in hopes of a cure. May it do them much good, he thought. One wound was nigh the navel and one between the collar-bone and the left pap. For the sake of decency, wounds in either groin were not licensed; nor were those above the torc; one does not know why not. It was sometimes very sad to see the lepers, who had run so fast, walk off with hanging hands and lagging legs, for the blood of a dead gladiator was, of course, not licensed to be drunk at all. Though only necrophiles would want to. But … hold! a dragon had no pap, no navel! and who had ever seen a dragon in the Arena? Nungo must have been speaking an alchemical metaphor, like The lion of Hercules or The shining golden vessels and the sullen bronze or — Enough! “Polydore!” he cried. The house-servant’s deep and drawling voice answered him from aloft.

“Your portfolio’s freshly packed, my Ser,” he called.

So that was done … Next: to his work, left aside for the trip north. He wanted to essay the fabrication of a salamander; first he checked the athenor to see it was in order: no controlled heat? — no salamander. It checked well. After that there were supplies to be gotten, for example naphtha, charcoal and sulfur. At no distant date he meant to make a grand trial of all types of charcoal and to see how they compared; perhaps he should do that now? No … he was suddenly too eager to wait for that. He would see what the suppliers’ had on hand now. Tests of the wood of all charable trees was far too slow a task; he would for now content himself with considering holm-oak; many decried its wood as being afflicted always with a hostile dryad, so that its fire was too hot, greasy, smoky, sappy. What would this mean in terms of charcoal? Well, one would see … Wouldn’t one?

Sulfur, too. And napth.

“Oliver is a well-tried wood for charcoal,” said Arland, his regular supplier. “Your olive gives a slow, true fire, me ser. Nothing so steady as oliver, me think.” To be sure that the appearance of olive-wood in commerce was almost a guarantee of its being old wood; the Jews, it was said, would neither eat nor tithe the fruit of a tree less than three years old, considering it too young: but many times three years must pass before the olive would bear, indeed, a generation must pass before the olive would bear. No one would cut down an olive tree for its wood, it taking so long to replace. Time alone should assure that its gross and fatty humors would have been outgrown … the common faith agreed that if one paused by a grove of silver-leaved olive trees at noon and paused in the heat and silence, one would hear the softly hissing sound of the trees “drying out” … to say nothing of the results of the charring process, the ricks of wood burning in the carefully-stacked kilns almost without air.

“A sack of olive, then,” Vergil said. “And a sack of holm-oak. To be —”

“To be delivered. Yes, me ser.” The man was almost as black as a charcoal burner in the hills himself, but just as pecunia non olet — money does not stink — said of the public sale to the wool-fullers, of the stale and rotting contents of the public urinals — so perhaps it might be said that money does not smudge. Might.

Now for sulphur, punk, and all the other ingredients.

There was no trade, likely, that lacked premises which attracted a number of loafers. A charcoal warehouse, though, would not, of course shelter as many as a vintner’s. A vintner might sometimes turn to an experienced old nose and gorgel and say, “See what you think of this” — this being usually a taste from either a very new barrel or a very old one — and the experienced old nose or gorgel would sample it, rolling it round on his tongue after sniffing, swallow; and say, judiciously, something like, lacks body … too thick … smells faint, doctor it up … too thin … too raw … too old: make tolerable vinegar, though…. Now and then the old nose (advertizing its age and experience with assorted red swellings and pumples and streaks of pseudo-Tyrian purple) would put on a performance which a veteran thespian might relish, before pronouncing the test-liquor to be first rate: champion! But although a master charcoal dealer might indeed sometimes turn to an old dustbag retired from the trade and having never washed since, might hand over a black nugget with a “See what you think of this,” what could the old veteran do? crack the black bit, smell of it, taste of it, smear it on his grimey paw; and mutter that it was too dry … to moist … to old … fit to shoe an ass … or perhaps sometime, Not up to thy reg’lar standard but the cheap trade will take it … one would be moved only by respect for the standards of the trade, not a stimulus equal to bibbing wine; therefore loafers in this particular warehouse were thin upon the ground; nevertheless there were a few: just before turning away Vergil heard one saying to another something which made him suddenly pause and feign an adjustment of tunic and hose and belt-band.

A thin-bodied man with a large, naked veinous head had observed, “Tis said that tother day in little Yellow Rome a man did seize a Vestal by her little naked arm!”

And another standabout remarked, the while smoothing the skin of his face in which long secretions of charcoal-dust had enlarged the pores so that one had seen very small coins which were smaller, “Tis said twere done to save her little life from a little mule as had the hyderphoby and did go to bit she on the little sacred bod-dy —”

In a part of his mind Vergil acknowledged his awareness that the lavish use of the diminutive identified the users as true Neopolitans of the lower classes, for whom all the daintier pleasures of life would be very diminutive indeed; but most of his mind just then forebore philology and social comment. A third speaker was, if not elaborately clean, too clean to have spent much time sleeping on empty charcoal sacks; his comment was that, “In the reign of the Divinely Favored Marius there was such an incident, as sundry witnesses averred, that the man in the question did wrap his toga well-around his arm, up and down, before offering his elbow to the high-born virgin vestal to apport herself thereon; Tully sayeth, anent the chaste Lucrece, sayeth Tully —” By the man’s manner and faint Greek accent Vergil accompted him an old pedagogue pensioned off by his old master, an attorney … not so very lavishly pensioned, either. The fellow wound up with, “But as to indeed if to touch a virgin Vestal on her naked flesh whatsoever is a violation of law or merely of a custom having not quite the force of law, deponent sayeth not: it is not for a mere freeman such as your humble servant to comment thereupon.”

Hear now Pores, in a tone of admiration, say, “Ah, thou comports thy little self far too humble, Demosthese Mesalla, what? a great little scholard like thee.”

To linger longer in adjusting his dress would have been to attract even a little more attention than Vergil wanted; off with him! The conversation told that the news had reached Naples well before him — how, was vain to ask — and that reaction to it was ambiguous. Not at all ambiguous was the conviction to quit himself of Naples at once directly; Naples, where even the loafers in the archway already spoke of the incident in terms of the chaste Lucrece. His dream, like that of Quint, was coming more and more to seem vatic indeed. Above the bank-bong-rattleclamor of the swarming street came to his ears the sound of two instruments whose music together generally intended one sole thing. He moved closer towards it, while allowing nothing more in his manner to hint of any such thing.

Charcoal might come into Naples packed on horses, mules, or asses; it might come loaded aboard a ship of burden; even one might see a quarter-of-a-rick abaft the back of someone deeply bowed, stunted, smutched, splay-footed, gnome-like: naphtha came by ship alone; and, having crested the hill of the Reins-makers, Vergil prepared to come down the precipitate slope towards port, his eyes on his feet and his feet at an angle. Espying a pair of feet wearing shoes so high that almost they merited to be called boots — automatically, he looked up. And found himself looking into a pair of eyes: so deep-set, so cold and grey, so cruel: that almost he stopped and gaped. But dropped his eyes again. And wandered on. There had been, he noted, several pairs of such boots — thick-soled and adorned with nails. Somewhat further on he paused and feigned to pause and do this and that to his own shoes. And looked back. They still stood as they were clumped together, short black robes and short black cloaks. They were looking the other way, so frankly he gave over pretense and straightened up and stared. Someone coming along caught his stare, turned to see, saw, turned back. From the portion of cooked tripe he carried in a cracked pannikin, evidently he was one of the vast mob who did not “keep their own kitchen;” he said to Vergil, one citizen to another, “Ever see that like afore in our itty-bitty street?”

“No” — truthfully — “who?”

“Calls themselves ‘Slaves of the Immortal Gods,’ know what that means? no Isis, no Cybele, no Diana of Ephesus, no; only our good old native citizen gods and goddesses, down with all forring deities, Respect! Our good old native citizen gods, fluking foreigners pulling all our itty-bitty jobs away. ‘Tis said th’emperor is behind ‘em, shouldn’t like to meet ‘em in a hobscure halleyway; pre puce! My tripe’s a-gitting cold! won’t she yell at me!” And hustled off.

Dismal, Vergil asked himself: was Vesta “a good old native citizen goddess”? Dismal, conceded that the matter admitted of no discussion: oh she was! And … “the emperor was behind them”? this ugly snooping coven? Best be gone!

A stripling came down the street, hands holding the fipple flute on which he blew, and behind him a gobbo, bowed down probably by the sorrow of his condition — it was good luck to touch the puckle of such a one, but it was scarce good luck to have it! — and certainly bowed down by the drum he bore and beat upon. Every few minutes the stripling called out in his crisp fresh tones, “Drink the sweet waters of Corsica and taste her fragrant acorn meal! drink the sweet waters of Corsica and taste her fragrant acorn meal!” And at once the gobbo declared, in his hoarse voice, “The voyage having been accried enduring two full days and to say this is the third day, the stout ship Zeno her adventured navigation until isle Corsica shall be cried no further day! All cargo and any baggage a-larger than a common portmantle must be aboard afore ye night do fall. ‘What shore, what shore! What coast of people?’”

And, “Corsica! Corsica!” cried out the stripling. “Stout ship Zenos leaves at first light for port Loriano on ye isle Corsica! This ship shall sail with such despatch as the goddus does admit and shall not stop at Ostia I repeat shall not stop at Ostia but sails with full despatch for port Loriano on isle Corsica at first daylight in the morrow from the great mole a-nigh the Mole of Lucullus and take notice that her owners and master have avowed to offer a fine fat freemartin for the safety of this voyage and to burn her fat and thighs on the foreshore by the Temple of Neptune!”

And with a final invitation to drink the sweet water of Corsica and taste her fragrant acorn meal, the young man began again to sound his fipple flute and the gobbo to beat upon his drum; and they passed on until they should stop for announcement before another “island” of tenements and warehouses. And Vergil pondered what he had just heard!

Corsica! He had no pressing business in Corsica, nothing waited him there — yes! something did! Safety awaited him there! True, that Corsica was nearer to Rome than Naples was, Corsica was north of Rome — but the ship was not going to stop at Ostia, the port of Rome — assuming (and it could be only an assumption) that They were out looking for him, for Vergil, there was nothing to suggest to Them that he would go to Corsica — besides: Corsica was not only northwards from Rome, but was also westwards of Rome — ships left thence as well as came there — westwards the Mediterranean was an open sea and he might get him gone if need from the Empery itself by the opening of the Straits of Hercules … at least until this excitement died down, as surely it must….

“I am off again,” he told Polydore and Cosmo Nungo. “Do not use the athenor, or any other furnaces save one, and have the fire banked. Clean the smoke-vents and keep them clean. Hire no one. Let none guest have the house, save by my hand and seal. Has my portmantle been repacked with fresh things? Hail and farewell!”

Zenos was a fine ensample of the old black ship, it did indeed have purp le cheeks with its masts and spars made red with minium; the white sails and the red, black, and purple went very well together. That is, all this had once been so. But many years carrying sacks of wheat and barley and giant jars of oil and eel and tunny and olives in brine, many years of buffeting by the angered seas and wind and salt, had stripped Zenos of every trace of color; even her once-white sails were dirty and dulled. She no longer released the scent of fresh-sawed oak and pine and cedar, she stank of bilges and of all the rotting off-shake and sullage and spillage of many cargoes. Vergil settled his portmantle next to the pack of rations which the porter had carried aboard at his direction. There were to be sure ships which victualed their passengers, but not Zenos, and not for this voyage. He did not need to fumble to reassure himself of his gold, he felt it securely settled where he had set it: here a little and there a little, so it would not be obvious and neither would it unbalance him. And besides his supply of food and the portmantle with changes of clothing he carried a few sundry other articles in his old doe-skin budget. Claudia! I flee into exile for thee!

So said his heart. Aloud, his voice said, “Set it down there. Here is your agreed fee. And here is one coin more.”

Aboard ship: night, the stars and the sound of spray.

The sudden thought, he had found, was like a flash of lightning, and might be compared with the practical consideration, which was like the small dull light of the oil-lamp or the stinking rush-light soaked in suet, lard or tallow and sold at four to the copperkin (in the language of accompt the smallest coin was called the obol and in flash usage this was the stiver: never, though, did it quite lose its old, old name of copperkin, little copper thought it contained anymore … old speech died eventually, but it died hard). The flash of lightning lit up the nighttime sky in greater detail than the noonday sun, a man might note a dragon on the distant horizon in a flash of lightning: in an instant it was gone, see descend again nox niger, the black night. Such a consideration as, Gather thy clothes for the washer-woman was a dim light indeed, and by its glow no one would like to write a poem; but unless one wanted to be deemed a stinkard….

The thought flashed cross his mind, Petition the Emperor To what end? Suppose he asked a reward for saving the Vestal from a fall … if it were granted, then he was safe…. Si licitem, was the way the Emperor concluded his replies to those petitions he was pleased to approve; if licit; if it were not licit, too bad: of course the Imperial Prerogative (which automatically made all things licit) was something else. The Emperor could slide sideways from granting a reward by a pious hope that the immortal gods might requite the petitioner: still, did not this legitimize, post facto, the petitioner’s act? Who dared say Nay? Hope flared in Vergil’s heart. And in another moment, realizing that the petitioner must give a full description of himself, including where he was to be found, he had a picture of himself waiting, waiting … waiting … all very well if you tilled a farm and had petitioned to be free of mill-tax. But did he wish to be bound to any place, any one place? And suppose the marmosets (as they were called, the little fellows who — despite whatever high-flown titles — attended to the Emperor’s niggling small affairs for him) suppose the marmosets, perhaps in accord with the Archiflamen, decided that it was not licet? Did Vergil really want to call attention to himself and his deed? let everyone know where he might be found, should it come to that, by the lictor with his bundle of rods bound around a single-headed axe? He had no reason to think that he had actually been identified, though to be sure the Vestal herself had surely noticed him (noticed! had the same flame of fire run up her arms and down through her heart and into her privy female parts? she was a sacred and a holy woman: but she was a woman!) and even in the dreams which he and Quint had dreamed, she was not shy of declaring that notice —

The flash of lightning died away quite, leaving him in darkness. He had had a madcap notion, but it was gone, he would certainly send no message to the Palace Imperial; the Vestal would stay in Rome, she would certainly not go to Corsica, and if she had a great desire to drink of its sweet waters and to taste of its fragrant acorn meal, why! they might be brought to her; she would stay in Yellow Rome to feed the sacred fire, and had assuredly no desire to attend her own public funeral while she was still alive. And he? He would certainly never come near to Yellow Rome again for a very long time. A very long time.

“This one here, to thy left — shall we cut his heart and take his purse and cast him privily to the monsters of the deep?” — what was this?

He realized instantly that this was the pair of foreign men, his fellow-passengers, who were they, he’d asked the bosun; Corsicans? And the man had answered, carelessly, “Carthagans,” and turned to his ropes. Vergil had spent enough time in Sidon to ken well the Punic speech, was not Tyre (“Toor,” they called it there, from its towering rocky citadel) the next city on the Punic coast of the Levant, and had it not in Africa founded Carthage? Instantly, too, he realized this was a trick: did he cry for the captain the Punes would loudly scorn him for not kenning a familiar-enough shipboard-type of jest or jape: neither was this either jest or jape. He stretched, yawned, slipped off his shoes and explored the skin between one set of toes with the toes of the other foot. “Scorn him,” almost by second nature they did already scorn him; their first encounter on the ship he had greeted them. They paid him no more mind than if a hen had farted. Big men, vastly bearded, there was a suffused rosiness in their skin but it was not a European rosiness. Wild, fantastic, handsome men. Arrogant, too. What did they here? Corsica had been a Punic fief once, indeed, but that was long ago. Odd. What did they here?

“Doesn’t understand,” murmured one; almost at the same time the other grunted, “The dolt wots nothing.” It had been a trick, done to test if he could ken their speech. At once they switched to Latin.

That is, one of them did. With an almost theatrical gesture and a sort of sub-theatrical voice, he quoted the proverb, “‘Like burning Elba in the dark of night.’” The forges of Elba were famous to the point of commonplace. Vergil said to himself, Like Elba, yes: in the dark of night, a light to guide by; ashore, in daytime, it would probably bewilder, with its guideless mazeways between the toiling, moiling forges — the Labyrinths of Elba, they were called. Olive-shaded Elba, shades of the days there before the Age of Iron; say, also, olive-haunted Elba; and where was oft-seen the pallid cheek-bones of the Frank, come to buy well-worked forged iron for the battle-hammer and the spiked battle-flail called “morning-star.”

But aloud Vergil merely said, “Some little sight.”

The Pune who had not spoken to him growled in his native tongue, “Ruman dog, die costive!” And at once the other remarked, in a tone of one already tired of the talk, “My brother does not know Latin well,” and turned aside. What was the point of this charade or masquerade? why had they not simply kept aside to themselves? A moment’s thought told him that the answer lay in the brisk wet wind: in this corner of the ship one was more sheltered; though this might cease in an instant, did the wind or ship change course — outwardly, he merely gave a sleepy grunt, and stretched some more, pulling his mauntle over him.

“Die ithyphallic, die!” the one Pune grated, grinding his teeth.

But his brother, if brother he really was, it was widely held that all Punes looked alike, had more on his mind than routine if sincere insult. “You are sure that they know it?” he asked, referring to … and in a moment revealing what he was referring to: “the long road to the pass of gold?”

“They know it, they know it, they all know it! Yes! Yes! Juno!”

“And does she know, too?”

“She knows everything else. She knows what we say now, slut! bawd! vulva!”

“Let her know, then. The long road…. You are quite sure? Yes, yes, very well … Only … even on the Greatmap of Reuben the Moor, it does not — Very well. — So. She knows about the gold. And the teeth? The teeth?”

“She does not allow the teeth.”

A string of curses followed; not all of them Punic … Vergil was not sure what some of them were, others he knew referred to the masturbation of the Egyptian sky-god (to which the Ægyptians attributed great cosmological significance), to the servitude of a great Punic hero as umbrella-bearer to a Queen of Lybya; others he simply did not recognize, though some of them he thought might be in the tongue of Tartis Land, and at some phrases he could not even guess, merely assuming by their tone that they, too, were curses. Suddenly Vergil decided that he simply did not care about the matter at all, made an effort to forget them: succeeded. Long later he was much to wish that he hadn’t. The Punes hissed, muttered, gurgled throatily; Vergil slept.

But that wish was after he once again remembered.

III

Isle Corsica

Deptune was pleased enough with the devoted offering to bring Zenos safe to Corsica. The next day as promised, the “fine, fat freemartin” was sprinkled with the hieratical white barley-meal, banged on the head, had its neck cut with despatch, gave up layers of the fat which were, together with anyway portions of its thighs, burned on the altar by the foreshore. There followed one of the best veal dinners — the master of Zenos just fancying himself as no mean cook — which Vergil had ever eaten.

And that night in the small room in the small inn where he was lucky to lodge alone merely because the Pune Brothers, swart beards and brows on a background of darkly rosy skin, on seeing him as they entered had turned backs without a word and walked away to (he supposed) lodge elsewhere — the innkeeper spat towards their retreating forms: Vergil at once assumed that this was an indication of social discontent with the Island’s former lordship, but, on seeing it followed by two more globs of spittle, and a knock on a wooden wall-post, changed his opinion: it was merely a commonplace precaution — had they chosen to remain he would have needs shared the room’s sole bed with them, or slept upon the floor. And although he had slept three-in-a-bed many times before, and could tell more than three tales about that, he much preferred to sleep alone.

In general, and in particular.

But he did not sleep quite alone after all.

The rough furniture of the inn’s sleeping-room, he noticed, was of oak, a cheap enough wood, the forests of Corsica must be full of them; giant specimens standing frequently alone even where there were no forests. The table, bed, and stool had likely been fashioned from an aged oak which had lain itself down to die in some storm; the Corsicans would not willingly cut the giver of the nourishing oaken-nuts — besides which, the tree was sacred, a fact not alone depending on its often majestic girth and stature. Neither was the oaken-tree holy just because the misteltoe chose to grow upon it, for misteltoe also grew upon other trees, the apple, lime, elm, maple, willow, and poplar, and was indeed a magical plant because it sustained itself on nothing … unless indeed upon the air … and then too because it was engendered by lightning; that heavenly meteor and messenger, even a lamb struck by lightning was holy, and so was the place where it was stricken: bidensal, such were called. The oaken-tree was held sacred by man because in one significant particular it resembled man: that is, a most important part of it resembled a most important part of man — one need not be a Druid to recognize that the acorn looked very like the glans peeping forth from the partially retracted foreskin. But such matters as this: which came first, and why it should be so, must await another occasion for thought. And yet there was the old saying, “As the scent of the walnut tree inciteth to lust, so the sight of the oaken-tree inciteth to awe.”

He did not know where the woman had come from, he was half-asleep. In the darkness, how could he have told what color were her eyes? He put his arms around her, grateful for her presence, and proceeded to do what a normal man would do; not knowing or caring or even thinking if he would find the visit on the bill in the morning, or if it were more complicated than that. Neither did he know where the light had come from, later, the light in which he had seen an older woman in the same soft white dress ask, with an air of concern, “What ails thee Claudia? thou didst neither eat nor drink.”

And the answer came, in a now well-remembered voice (had she spoken? before then?), “Oh, Volumnia, I have had such a longing to drink the sweet waters of Corsica, and to taste its fragrant acorn-meal —”

Volumnia’s face changed from concern to surprise and then to perplexity. “Well, I suppose we could send —” Then her face grew horrified. “Claudia! the goddess forbid, that thou be pregnant!”

— and Claudia saying, slowly, oh so slowly, “One night a man slept in my arms all night. His eyes were grey-green, his arms were strong, his chest broad, his waist was slim. We made love, Volumnia.” He heard Volumnia’s scream, and then he awoke, wet.

Loriano, and the mountains round about it; as a port alone it was not much different than other Roman ports … smaller than Naples or Ostia, of course … but the streets adjacent to the harbor in Naples or Ostia spoke (he now realized) of a broad and modern hinterland. One never saw there as one saw here, numbers of women in antique costume squatting on the pave, market-sacks or market-baskets by their sides, long lustrous hair not dressed and not confined, streaming down their backs. A point of interest, if not more, and a mildly welcome diversion from the fact that much of the merchandise displayed was at least a little bit old-fashioned when not indeed outmoded, or in poorer condition than similar goods on the Gallic or Italian mainland; and sometimes frankly battered or broken. A question: Who would buy these writing-tablets with their covers chipped or here or there a binding-ribband torn short or entirely missing? An answer: Someone who badly needed a writing-tablet in any better condition than the one he already had. Who.

Yet there was no particular air of poverty, if the vegetables were of fewer varieties and smaller selection — only one kind of celery, for example, or asparagus — they were fresh and sturdy. If the grain-seller displayed more spelt than wheat, if the wheat was dusty and looked ill, the spelt was certainly good enough spelt. Good enough to eat … a sudden thought cut short his chuckle, and he went and stood by a table where a middle-aged woman … she must have been all of thirty-five … was stirring something in a pot over charcoal burning in an earthen jar on a raised fire-hearth. “A small bowl of acorn-meal, Mother,” he said, “and a glass of water and a small glass of wine.”

The acorn-meal was fragrant; he had forgotten how good it could be: Brundusy, even Calabria, that bower of many flowering chestnut trees, had not a better bowl of meal to offer. The wine was dark-red, dark as the sea at fall of night, and it was only slightly raw and strong; but, he thought thankfully, did not taste of pitch. Such sophistication had perhaps yet to reach Corsica. The water —

“I though the waters here were sweet!”

“Well, I don’t sell the stuff from the mountains springs, just I get enough to make the meal; it costs more,” she said, defensively. “If you must have the mountain waters, walk up into the mountains!” She turned away, annoyed.

The man next to Vergil laughed. “It don’t take much to make them angry here, in Corsica. ‘Walk up into the mountains’ — how sturdy are your shoes? How sharp is your knife? Will you give him a token to take with him, Abundiata, to keep him safe? — besides, the sour minerals in the local wells do be good for the spleen, they say. The Greeks, they say, did remove the spleens to make the runners run faster. Shouldn’t care to have such an operation like that, even with mandragora taken first.” And with this last, to boot — should Vergil bootless stand — the man turned back to his porridge, which he had mixed with (probably) ewes’ milk, and drank it from the bowl. Vergil used his spoon, he’d thought it safer to bring only a small plain wooden spoon, not even one of horn. The fewer temptations for those who might hold to the old views that a foreigner’s goods were in public domain, the better. Aubenry, the taking of a deceased traveller’s goods by the local sovereigns, was long ago banned within the Empire, anyway (Corsica was within the Empire, though under which King within the Empire was a matter on which Corsica was not well-agreed: and neither was the Empire, and neither were the Kings). It was a perpetual temptation for causing travellers to become deceased, and one reason why foreign merchants tended to cluster within their own walled trading-posts, protected by their own laws, their own manners, their own magic — though the practice of burying an armed man beneath the gate-posts on perpetual guard-duty was now most strongly discouraged. The practice of raising the dead man in order to have him testify was also strongly discouraged now, too; it tended to have an inhibiting effect on the other witnesses and on attorneys and magistrates alike. And there was the case of a sacrificed guardsman in Bouge, whose reply to all questions was, I stand mute. Little one could do, the Chief Judge complained bitterly, to a man who was already dead.

Did a necromancer (using the word in the strictest sense) merely consult the dead?

Or did he, as many said, torment them?

In either case, a fearsome thought.

Bookstores never failed to entertain or please; seeing the board marked Sergius, Books, in he went. A young man with a blue chin and prominent half-hooded eyes gave him a small nod. The odor of old papyrus, old parchment, orris-root and cedar-oil to keep off the worm and damp decay; old ink and old dust, all assured him of the Books. But a glance at the mostly empty shelves and at the young man did not, somehow, assure him of the other word on the sign-board. “Sergius?” he asked.

At once the young man’s face assumed an air of sad. “His foot treads no more on earth, me ser,” he said. “My wife and I,” there was nothing visible of My Wife, but a rich olor of cheap scent guaranteed that she had not been gone for long: he nodded; “are just now disposing of the stocks left us by our uncle, the late and deceased Sergius. And we can make my ser a very special, very special price, as we want the space.” And Vergil thought that he might indeed pick up the contents of the shop for no more than he had in his purse; but where would he put it?

Right at eye-level was a codex entitled Aristotle was The Pupil of Plato. And indeed he was. Vergil had no great taste for metaphysic, but he took the book out into his hand. A glance at its pages sufficed to content him that someone … perhaps “the late and deceased Sergius” … had gotten hold of some loose signatures of a volume of Aristotle also late and deceased, plus some fragments of a Plato which had perhaps gone through the Siege of Syracuse, not without damage; and had conflated them. He started to replace it; a hairy hand forfended him.

“A very special price for this,” urged the young man with the blue chin. “What does my ser offer?”

His ser hesitated a bittle, seeking a tactful way to tell that he would offer nothing-at-all, the backs of the sheets being too stained to serve even for notes; when the codex, jostled by the motion of Vergil’s hand to restore it to the shelf and the motion of Nephew-to-Sergius’s hand to prevent its restore to the shelf: gave up the struggle and allowed something to sift its way out from between the pages and launch itself, Dædalus-like, into the air. They both lunged and caught it between them.

It was a page of papyrus of about half the full measure of ten inches by six; the title, writ large and miniated, read For Loss of Vigor in the Night. Vergil and the nephew, at once interested (as would be any man and most women), regarded closely. It began, conventionally enough, Take Ye; then followed the names and quantities of the medicaments, as follows:

hawksweed ane scruple

and of lion’s paw and wolf’s ban. do. each each

a pinch of the pulv. beard of the fish called brabell or barbel

ane half of ane half an. Ozz. of worm-Lyon

a pigeon-quill of powder of licorn

Moll well and make into twenty pillules with wax. As necessary, Take.

Vergil’s opinion, which had startled at the catfish whiskers, hesitated at the vermilion (would they ever learn that color had no cure? … would he ever learn that it had?), grew faint, and he lost interest after the unicorn’s horn; anyway a tautology, wouldn’t you agree? It was something merely fit for the so-called Apuleius Barbaricus the Herbalist, for a barbarian and for an ass. “For loss of vigor in the night,” indeed; he might as well recommend it to Quint for his sore eyes. A finger even hairier than Quint’s pointed to a line scribbled in Greek. Nephew’s.

Verbaseum sayeth other. “And when does he not?” asked Vergil, somewhat cross; was it for this he came so far?

But Nephew-to-Sergius had more than the scribble in mind; the finger had pointed to a line half-way down the page, For Vengence upon Enemys Take Ye and the rest was bare. “What’s this on the blank of the page?” he asked, the finger hovering above a brownish stain.

“I fear it is blood,” Vergil said, reluctantly.

“I fear it is blood!” No fear showed upon the face with the half-lidded eyes; instead a fearful joy showed there. “Oh, how valued, this page! How they shall pay us for it! Not with coppers, not with silvers, but with golds!”

“Who shall pay you, man?”

“They!” cried Nephew, clasping the half-page of papyrus to his bosom. “The very They! The same They as meet in the dark to play things —”

Vergil, with a shrug, left him still rejoicing, and making no more offer of a special price; but hardly had he left the shop when he heard the fellow hurrying behind him, then alongside him, and a hand swart with hair thrust into his own hand a small bouquin which very vaguely he recollected having seen, all by itself on a lower shelf. “Really, I fear that I can hardly afford —” he began.

But Nephew, still holding the loose page (and it showed no sign that it had ever been bound into a book) a-clutch, shook his head and grinned. “No charge! Reward! Finder’s fee! You shall have a good voyage! Hail and —”

The farewell floated over his shoulder as he ran back to his shop. Vergil briefly glanced at the bouquin; the cover had the machiolated look of serpent’s skin, but, badly worn at one corner, showed a very thin piece of board between two split-shaven sheetlets of calf’s-hide. Someone had gone to a bit of trouble in binding this … it fit easily into his pouch … he slipped it out again for a better look…. Periplus of the Coast of Mauretayne … if he did not care for it, he need merely chuck it away; it had cost him nought.

And at least it made no pretence about any loss of vigor in the night.

Alexander Magnus, it was well-known, always carried with him and had under his pillow in the night but two items, neither what one might regard as a talisman: though perhaps he so regarded them. One was a knife, or dagger. And the other was a book written on the skin of an entire huge serpent or (some said) dragon.

But what that book was, no one surely knew, though many would wish to know.

And many guessed.

As Vergil passed the table where he had had the (faintly) fragrant bowl of acorn-meal, the food-wife called to him. “As you didn’t find my water sweet enough,” she said, with some show of apology, “I wish to make it up to you —” “No need, no need to —” “But I wish to,” she said, with some emphasis. “Here is new-baked bread of fine-sifted flour,” and surely useless to explain that he much preferred it to be, always, of unsifted; as like as possible to that of his childhood? He never could make it clear to anyone else not raised on the farms; even to them, not always.

“And here,” she said, as he drew near, willing, merely, to oblige her and leave no ill-will to abound; “here is honey, fresh and gold and sweet.”

He seemed suddenly aware of traces of that morning’s sour water, tasting of the god knows what minerals, still in his mouth; would be glad enough to thrust it away with fresh honey; seemingly by the way she emphasized the word, she felt aware of that. He sat down willingly enough on the rude bench by the rough table, and watched her slice the bread and pour the honey over it, which she did with an unstinting hand. A word of his old master, Illyriodorus, well-known for art and philosophy throughout the Attic lands, came into his mind as she re-arranged the slices and folded a napkin for him. “To be generous, what is that? To one, bread and honey,” by-words for generosity, “means a thick slice of fresh bread well-spread with all the richness of the hive; to another it means a thin slice from a stale loaf, sprinkled with a thin measure of honeyed water. Yet each may regard himself as generous. And if one be rich and one be poor, each is … generous …” The old man smoothed his vast white beard, only faintly yellowed here and there, and they waited for him to go on. But he did not go on. In the expectant silence they realized (at least Vergil did) that a poor man could certes be deemed generous if he could afford no more than a thin slice with thin hydromel, to give it forth to others: but suppose it were the rich man who did so? And. And all the while he was thinking this, and thinking of the bees humming around the violets and other flowers as they prepared to make the sweet honey of Mount Hymettus, known where even the name of Illyriodorus was not, although his School was located at its foot; all this while Vergil, without thinking, was sitting down, was spreading the napkin to save his tunic; even as he lifted the first piece to his mouth and was nodding his thanks to her, he was thinking: but surely the venerable did not mean merely to give a lesson in commonplace morality? surely he meant a metaphor? and what did the metaphor mean —

A taste of such bitterness burst from the sweetness of the honey as made him almost want to retch, it spread with incredible rapidity to his throat, and further down, even before he had more than swallowed a morsel of it — “His face! Look at his face!” And the woman burst into a peaen of laughter, loud and mocking and filled with great glee, laughter echoed by the small crowd which had (unnoticed by him) gathered to watch: hoots, shouts, even from one old woman, cackles: and the man who only a little bit earlier had addressed the food-wife as Abundiata and remarked that it didn’t take much to make them angry, there in Corsica — even this one was taking no care to restrain his swollen face from laughing, face split so wide that Vergil could plainly see the chewed dough to which he had reduced his food lying thick upon the tongue and teeth. “O crown and staff! look at his face!” A phrase from the Natura of that learned admiral came to him, that honey wine made with poisonous honey is, after maturing, quite harmless, and that there is nothing better than this honey, mixed with costum, for improving the skin of women, or, mixed with aloes, for the treatment of bruises[3]. It tasted as though it had already been mixed with aloes; he felt as though he had already been bruised.

“Oh, holy Hercules, how he don’t like it!”

“Mercury, rex rhabdon, he can’t take the bitter boxwood with the sweet!”

And the queæn Abundiata shrieked, half-helpless with laughter, “The water was too bitter for him! — how the honey, then, foreign fine-taster?”

A sick rage rose up in him like bile, such gross abuse of the laws of hospitality would scarcely have been expected of a Barbar-pack abusing a prisoner of war, rage seemed fair to undo him, he clutched the knife at his belt: still they hooted, and still they jeered: a small boy, who by the mere fact his nose was clean showed he was of good family, peered up into Vergil’s face to seek out the show of shame and pain; finding, laughed aloud with great delight; the knife meant nothing to them, probably even the gossoon had a sharp tickler of his own, and could pierce the femoral artery whilst a grown man lunged —

— and laugh while he pierced it —

No, the knife meant nothing to them, but something else did. A sound of fierce barking and loud baying in an instant drove off the pack of starveling dogs, eaters of dung (if the swine did not beat them to it), that had snarled and snapped even though they knew nothing of what was going on, save that they might with license snarl and snap, turned ragged tails and scabby rumps and fled, squealing as though they’d been kicked by heavy boots: they had not. Women leaped on tables, men rapidly threw their cloaks round their left arms and wrapped them against sharp teeth, the while drawing their own knives with their right ones; all, all looked swiftly round to check where the huge sounds might be (saw them not). And even then they did not understand. It did not take much to make them angry. But it took much to make them grasp … well … not very much, after all.

In a second or so and without transition the dogs’ menacing howls and barks sounded from the thick, thick branches of an over-hanging tree. And then one word came from every straining mouth: “Gunta! Gunta!”

The sneering child be-pissed himself, fell over his own feet, set up a shrill scream of sharpest fear: no one moved to help him. The food-wife cast her headcloth over her face and howling in terror, turned to flee.

Pure desire for power was not enough; many men greatly desired power, and not a few women: witness Flora, the famous Regma, who had reigned for decades via those to whom (in the words of that irascible Israelite, Samuelides) she was royally related “through blood and bed”: before finally it was assumed that she held all in her own right — still she signed herself proudly: Daughter, Mother, Regent, Wife, and Queen. But Regma was not Gunta. Thank the god; enough was sufficient. Pure desire for power was not enough, and malignancy was not enough, envy and the willingness to suffer great sacrifice was not enough. Learning was not alone enough: the Druids learned as much and the scant handful who composed the Order of Sages and Mages, holding, each a willow wand as rod and sceptre, had learned far more. Of one willing to be a Gunta, that he was of Greek speech went without saying (of course it need not be his sole or native speech), for he had to be a Bridegroom of Persephone and no man could experience the Mysteries of Attic Eleusis, eat of the basket, drink of the cymbal, and see the sun rise at midnight, who was not of Greek speech: capable of understanding the ceremonial words.

He who would be a Gunta — or be able to be one, would he or not would he — need he be a passed scholar of a white school, of any recognized school of philosophy, and of a black school, too, as it might be in Toledo or Sevilla, “those sewers of several sundry thousand devils.” Need he have slept an hundred successive nights untorn among the war-hounds of Molossia (by definition, in Epirate Molossia, for there were not an hundred Molossian hounds in any one place in the world elsewhere): and he need have slain the hippotayne in the reedy covert of the fens: for in the open water would not do; even that dandled boy-king of the Ægyptim had slain an hippotayne in the open water. And the man had in dark of night to have slipped past the sleeping swarm of bee-priestesses, all armed with stings, offered up any of the Twelve Great Talismans upon the altar of Diana of Ephesus (much more dangerous than fighting there with wild beasts) and kissed her many clustering teats; a thing it was strictly forbidden at any time to do soever, on penalty of being buried unburned in an urn. (And the penalty for touching a Vestal — and did this penalty perhaps not pursue him with slow deliberate haste?)

Who had done all this and these then had command of all the dogs of the dead, of those dead being shedders of human blood in time of peace, and having died unpurified on land and sea: though any dog of such a one which was not dead itself was in no wise subject to summons or command. That the Gunta had to feed each dog once in every extra-lunar month (of which there were seven in each cycle of nineteen years) with the heart of a man who had never begat a child? Rumor: lying, untrue, and false.

Mostly….

And not least of the frightening and terrifying aspect of the matter was that the beasts might drink no living water, but only the black stagnant water of a sunless cave might they suck, for The waters of life cannot pass through the jaws of a dead dog; and that the dogs of hell (whence even heroes might not be summoned) when summoned could even climb trees, not alone in pursuit but to escout and espy whither had the quarry fled. So men say.

There were may schools of philosophy, worshippers of numerous gods and goddesses, and divers cults of mystical enlightenment: all offered protections of sundry sorts. But all were on one thing agreed, There is no guard against the Gunta. Against this, the efforts of the Gunta, all amulets and talismans and charms and wards were all alike in vain. The squatter’s thrall sunk so deeply in the mire and the Emperor upon the Oliphaunt Throne, were alike incapable of immunity against him who summoned his servants from the dark battalions of the dead. For the Gunta made to serve him the dogs of the unrefusing and unpurified dead, and such dead had had many a sufficiency of dogs, and of such dead there was never any lack.

Nor of any such dogs.

In less time than it takes to let fly a break of wind all, all, were gone: all save one; also a cook-stall woman, she looked at him as if a bit distressed, but in no wise disconcerted by a possible attack from the hounds: she busied herself with her pots.

He felt sick, sickened (for one reason) by the penetrating bitterness of the bitter honey made from the nectar of the bitter boxwood flower, and sickened to realize that he had used his power as if it were that of the Gunta — in part; it was another power: if he had not been born with it then it was bestowed upon him, he yet knowing nought about it, whenas a babe before his head had closed — used that power upon a clot of dolts in a huddled port for which “provincial” was perhaps too kind a word. He had gained much; had he gained mastery? evidently not. To terrify yokels was not mastery. It was subjugation.

“Soldier,” said the woman who had not fled, from her own bench and table among the cook-pots; “Soldier,” and this could only refer to his rank in the Rites of Mithras; so many Mithrians being of the Soldiery that any initiates were held to hold at least courtesy rank as a soldier … but Mithras was a man’s mystery alone: so how knew she him or what he was? he wore no emblem, indeed it was strictly banned. “Matron,” he said, trying to collect himself and his wits, and making a slight bow.

“Corsican boxwood honey is always bitter,” she said, “I’m surprised you did not know. Some folk here are brutes indeed, you’ll not require me to beg pardon for them. — but here’s a cup of sweet water and here’s a bowl of fragrant acorn-meal: be pleased to cleanse your palate.” Drink the sweet waters of Corsica and taste its — let him be a long time before believing any street-cries again. Gingerly, and with hesitation, he supped of the porridge.

“It is scented with something more than acorn,” he said. “I know it and yet I know it not.”

“Would you know it in the dark?”

A short laugh. “It does not reek of the stinking lily, I am sure.” His wood spoon scraped the meal-filled mazer. A breath of the sea came through the food-smells: Porridge, parsnips, several sorts of fish, vinegar, wine, offals grilled on char. The sea would not go away.

“No … no … there’s no garlic in it. Still good, though.”

“Yes … good … my palate is quite cleansed now. I thank you, Matron.” He made no great show of thanks, nor apologized for having spoiled her trade: it was not seemly. And she merely nodded her acknowledgements. Then he picked his way atween the contents of the spilled cook-pots; it looked like vomit and already drew flies and, in the increasing heat of the day, smelled ill. Lord of Z’bub and lord of Z’bul: the Sidonians knew that more than sounds of words associated flies with dung. Faw! O pópoi! he waved his hand and he quickened his step.

The streets were still and empty and once he heard the hasty sound of a quickly-shuttered window. A shallow shop-front gaped. No one was there … now … and whoever had been there had not quite bothered to empty it before fleeing: a length of purple-grey sausage sat upon a cutting-board, one shoe still a-dangle, and the knife dropped next to it. He picked up the entire chunk as he passed, but only ate the partly-cut slice, spitting out the casing. The odor rose to him, it certainly lacked not of the stinking lily; was it up to the standards of Quint’s granny? probably not, though it wasn’t too bad by country standards, even if probably made from the sorry carcase of a cargo-beast. Garlic and cumin and coriander had gone into it, and the tongue burning black berries of Ind the More, via the great black pepper-barns in Rome … in Yellow Rome … a throng of images came into his mind, but he did not care for them to linger. He ought not to have gone there, and it was going to be a long while before he went again. Why linger by the shallow yellow Tiber when the great blue Bay of Naples lay at the bottom of the hill? … thinking of the pepper-berries led him to consider the far-off folk of the Indoo Sea, which folk constantly spet blood: and no man knoweth why … though they be in sound good thrift and health…. Others say, they put somewhat in their mouths, as it were a comfit, to make them spit blood: it would be a wonder of the world should this be true: yet who can believe it? for why? … but out of India, always something new….

Something moved in the narrow street as his footsteps echoed, something crawled and twisted; the sudden passage of a bird across the sky, far too sudden — and he with his mind intent on other matters — to say if it were a bird of good meeting or some ill-omened fowl: it made him think of yet another thing so devoutly believed about the Gunta: that he could fly! And Vergil recalled in a Bill of Indictment and Indiction which had read, that the said Gryphol called the Cozener and also the Falcon not being one of the unhidden ones on high did presume to fly unbidden over the domains of our sovereign Lord the Emperor to the displeasure and disquiet of said sovereign Lord his crown and staff and throne and of his subjects on the ground below … Did Vergil indeed have such power he might not be making his way on foot along a squalid lane, but might have flown o’er the white-waved sea like Icarus and Dædalus — though neither one came to good end —

Something crawled and twisted and then rolled over with its back to a building; a temple, with its fine fronting of Parian marble scored and scarred from the rough wooden stalls of the street vendors having been roughly shoved against it again and again for at least a score of years — so much for the piety of Loriano-in-Corsica — equal, evidently, to its good manners! An old man lay there, only a bit propped up, and, face twisted in terror, held up and out a twisted, trembling hand. Perhaps such a useless gesture had he once before made, too late to ward off some lumbering wine-wain laded with heavy tuns and barrels and before which he had stumbled. One of his legs had been badly broken very long ago and badly-set — likelier never set at all — the grotesque angle (angles!) into which it had frozen. The other leg was merely crooked. The god had not been pleased to cure him, he had heard no vatic voice! if ever he’d tried to slumber in some temple of healing; and perhaps, by the look of his hands, horny as hooves, perhaps he had crawled along the streets of Loriano for far more than half a life-time — midst mud and dung and hurtful stones, stones —

On the spur of the moment Vergil handed over the thick chunk of sausage. The crippled beggar snatched it up at once and saved his breath: why bother to thank the demiurge? the god himself had worked a miracle! He spoke no word, but Vergil, continuing his walk, heard behind him the snapping grinding sound of the old man’s braken teeth and the gumbling, gobbling sound of the old man’s gorzel and gullet. Like a starveling dog! he thought.

And shameful memory engulfed him like a hot and stinking tide … then ebbed. Perhaps the god at last had hearkened to an old man’s prayer (it could be that the old one, unable to offer a hecatomb of oxen, had offered one of lice: had there not been a notorious case in Yellow Rome of someone who had offered a hecatomb of mice!)and all of Vergil’s preparations to play the Gunta and perhaps the entire incident itself had been only so that the crippled beggar might have, for once, a fine seasoned chunk of salame sausage in his mouth to wolf. The thought came to Vergil, why, then, had whichever god not merely moved the owner of the sausage-shop to make the beggar a gift of the hunky bit of meat? Answer came at once: the gods are chary of miracles, lest they become too cheap, and folk lose faith in prayer and offerings. For surely if the owner of a sausage-shop should give half a salame to an old crippled beggar it would have been a greater miracle than if Vergil should empty that quarter of the town by conjuring up the loud and rowdy ghosts of the dogs of the murd’rous dead.

The small city had disgusted him; was this a place of refuge? He let his feet take him along a small road, quite without pave, and tending upward. Common sense advised him to return to the port and see what ships had come in: and whence, and whither; but a long look downwards and around told him that no new hulls lay in the harbor or in the roadstead — farther out a few sails showed, but be sure they were but fisher-boats; going whither-soever, came they back by fall of night. In tales told to pass an hour of idleness a traveller often took passage of a sudden on a fishing-smack, eventually finding high adventure. But in tiresome fact, it would not do, it would not do. Fishers were the most conservative of faring-men, always eager to spend the night ashore; scarcely knowing any strange waters, anyway; and were he, foolishly and in despite, to offer them a full purse to have him aboard and make course for any foreign haven or strange coast of people? likely, almost certain, someone would give the signal to bind him ahind the elbows. Soon enough — when the conveniency of their tasks allowed — they would turn him over to the harbormaster, saying, “The one would go a-roving, and offered us this purse to take him with.”

Later, but soon enough, some portion of that purse would come back their way … not a very large portion, but more than made up for the risks which accepting of the alien’s mad offer might entail: storms of wind, sea-monsters, ship-wrack, pirates, hostile shores … life indeed was not a tale told to pass an hour of idleness…. What scene was this?

This was a man fleeing screaming across a field of yellow broomplant and scenting lavendar while a perfect storm of fire roared behind him: and behind the fire ran a group of men, also (by the enraged and open-mouthed and straining look on their faces) also roaring … by the look on their faces alone: Vergil could not hear them above the sound of the fire. One of the pursuers held as he ran a torch in one of his hands; in the other was clenched that wicked implement longer than a common knife, shorter than a common sword, the well-honed harb, without which (it was said) a Punic man felt naked. A man needed no torch in the daylight, this man was one of the brothers-passengers aboard of the Zenos, his name (Vergil knew) was Hamdibal, if indeed “Baal was his beloved,” Vergil did not know; but neither he nor any other man needed a torch in level daylight, so why then did he have it? Why, in order to set the fire; why else?

Vergil had studied fire in Sidon, for the sage Sidonians, zealots to learn, had learned it of Haephæstus himself, whom the Ebrew-folk call Tuval-cain, and the Romans, Vulcan; first and greatest of the limping smiths (hence the saying, All smiths are lame,[4] so to say, though a man be greatly-skilled, yet he must have a fault).

Roaring, the man who fled, fled onward across the field; the men roared after him; Vergil did not roar, but Vergil ran, too; and he ran towards the fire.

There was something wrong with the fire, with the flames. The sound they made was familiar enough, but Vergil had not studied fire at Sidon without learning that fire could have many colors: but not this color. It was wrong, it was all wrong.

When all the hosts of Græcia sacked Prima’s topless castle-town and burned his lofty towers, well-peopled Sidon, that Punic city mart of many merchants, became famous for the arts of fire. By the Art of fire did Sidon molt glass and smelt copper, bronze, and brass. Nought was known anywhere of fire, its creation, composition, and application, which was not known in Sidon: and known better. Did the Punes of Cartha Gedasha have that coin? Vergil would now turn it over, and pay them with its other side.

He could hear the voices of the pursers now, “Thief! Stealer of teeth! you would steal the teeth? Die, bugger of swine!” But these words only entered into the antechamber of his mind, his mind was intent upon his running, scarcely he noticed the fleeing man and his very largely unlovely face, blood seeping down the seams of it, a rope of snot swinging from one nostril — why did it not detach and fall? — He noticed that the running men had stopped running and were watching him, mouths still agape but silent now; and very vaguely he was aware that the steps of the running man had slowed and perhaps the man himself was watching him.

Vergil ran into the fire.

Behind him, someone groaned. Someone behind him sucked in a great breath. Both, as if that other had felt great pain. But he himself felt no pain as the tongues of flame licked around him; as the tongues of flame licked around him he made only a sound of faint disgust … they felt faintly loathsome, as if — for example — he had touched that ropy plug of mucus hanging and swinging from the fugitive’s nare; there was something wrong with the fire: there was no slightest trace of heat. The fire was false. So — therefor — was the maker of it. Videlixet Hamdibal the Pune.

Behind, Vergil heard … probably too faint to be heard by the men pursuing … a faint gasp or sigh, slithering noises, a faint fall of gravel and soil: which seemed to tell him that the fugitive was taking advantage of the situation and making his escape via some sunken path or gulley. Slowly the “fire” sank down, ebbed, vanished. The Punes seemed to gather a moment together, to … swell … there was not other word for it … to gather themselves as water gathers itself upon a brim or berm or brink … about to pour themselves forward in an attack upon him. He felt for his own knife: no harb, he used it chiefly to cut his food: well aware how useless a weapon it was. Swiftly he bethought himself, scarce thinking of it thought by thought, should he employ the employment of the squid, send a pseudo-Vergil scuttling across the field at an angle, to be pursued whilst the real Vergil swiftly turned and ran? or should he concentrate all his innermost zeal to make himself “dark” and then vanish? no: as to this last, it could only be employed, if at all, during the “dark” of the moon; and if employed at all would leave him exhausted for far too long a time to come. Or should he —

There had appeared from nowhere a line of people who, looking neither to right nor left, interposed themselves as they walked, between Vergil and the Punes. There seemed something almost hieratical about them, something of the procession in the temple, and some one of them, clearly he could not see who, was holding up a Something: and it was the mysterious piece of parchment (who had parched it?) which Vergil had earlier found atween the pages of Aristotle Was the Pupil of Plato in the half-emptied establishment of Sergius: Books only that morning. He felt an absolute presentiment (or, merely, sentiment) that these were “The They who plan things in the dark;” it was not dark.

But it was darkening.

“You do well to turn back to town, Master,” someone said to him. He, Vergil, knew that he had certainly not turned at all. He knew also that he had seen the man before. The fellow was of no particularly outstanding appearance early in middle-age, figure already slackening, thickening: it was the one he had already twice that day seen by the open-air cook-stall: once he had commented that “it didn’t take much to make them angry there in Corsica,” and once he had joined in the mocking laughter over the crude jape of the bitter boxwood honey; Vergil had had enough of that matter. “You do well to turn back to town, Master. The day darkens, and this Isle Corsica is nay place, you ken, for strange travellers when the sun goeth down, and in the null of the moon.” Out of the corner of his own eye Vergil observed the very last of The They, who had come out of nowhere, going back into nowhere. It was all very strange. Why should a dried streak of blood upon a dessicated page be at all of interest to any? let alone of such value as to prompt such an intervention? It was all most mysterious.

Casually he turned to the man, himself now turning aside and hitching up his clothing as one who gins to go, and casually asked, “Are there many Punes in Corsica?”

“More and more all the time, Master.” Then the man was going.

But Vergil was not going with him.

Neither were the Punes going “back to town”. With — from one, and well he knew which one — a last furious cry and curse of, “Turd-eating Rumani dog! May your buboes swell!” they melted into the melting spreading shadows of the long-concluding day: and were themselves gone. Quite.

A name sprang up in his mind, where it had for some while been hovering and capering and gesturing for his attention: Sindibaldo of Sicilia. Sindibaldo of Sicilia, a much-travelled merchant, with a beard streaked in grey, always fond of sea-faring stories and of traveller’s tales; never a warehouse of precious bales of broidered cloth or gemstones which he preferred to any tale of any island in the desert of the sea, wherein said island was found no son of Deucalion and no blower of fire with his hollow tube, nay fanner of flame from the smoking ember, and such an unknow island hospitting unknow beasts and birds and plants of strange fruits bearing likenesses of creature and carl, such a place far ago in the heart of the hollow of the Erythraean or of the Indoo Sea did Sindibaldo of Sicilia once love keenly more than any palace full of mansions rich. — But what of this?

Of this: one such tale he told and retold was of an isle hidden by the booming breakers whereunto (the isle) came an huge bird which fed its young upon the young of oliphaunts; was the Isle Corsica such a one? Absurd. Corsica was in the main familiar Inland Sea, mediate between the terrains of Europe and Africa and East of Hither Asia. There were no oliphaunts in Corsica, and had never been. In which case —

In which case … but did not the word teeth in the Punic tongues mean, commercially, the teeth of oliphaunts? in common speech: elephant? And was not the talk in the Punic tongues usually of commerce? was not the mere thought of a Punic philosophy risible in the extreme? a Punic physician? if one had a toothache would one go to a Pune? who lived in a house designed by a Punic architect? or slept in a Punic bed? set up a marble sculptured by a Punic sculptor? or a painting by a Punic painter? In which case…. But was Isle Corsica in any way such an island told in such tales as those of Sindibaldo? tales of the Brachmans, tales of Thule, such tales as the grandam tells as she wipes the milk off her moustache? certes the matter of the blower of fire as seen in the scented field of lavendar and broom this afternoon — even so: No.

Vergil noted his feet taking him back to the thin white path which glimmered in the gloaming. He was not heading back to town. Was this sensible of him? It was not sensible. What lay in the interior of Corsica? but valleys, mountains, valleys, gullies, gorges, peaks and cols and spurs, and mountains, mountains, mountains; and rams so wild that they could not be sheared, but folk need must gather off bushes, shrubs, trunks of trees, and rocks, the rough, rough wool the beasts had shed. And why in the names of all the gods and goddesses was he heading inland at this time of the death of day, and at the dearth of the moon, with no destination? Precisely, the answer he did not have; but imprecisely the answer he had. Something in him knew where he was going and why, and that was why he was going. Thinking of Illyriodorus, came to him the phrase, the vegetable mind, for so taught the philosophers, that even vegetation had a sort of spirit or soul, and hence a sort of mind: what thoughts were thought by the men and women who had been changed to plants by some gust or fury or even pity of a deity? what and how now thought Narcissus? Hyacinth? or Laurel, Lotus, or Anemone?

Vergil could not say. His steps were not constrained, he was surely not bewitched, nothing, really, prevented him from turning round and going back. By and by he became aware that he was trying to analyze a scent, a strong pervasive odor, and when, once, he came to a fork in the footpath, he shrugged and idly chose one; in a moment or so it became clear that his choice was a wrong one, for the smell grew dim and thin: he turned and retraced.

The odor, the scent, waxed strong. It grew overwhelming. In the last light of the death of the day he saw them sitting, as though waiting for him, at the base of a tree. It was a large tree, but that was not it; he knew what was it, and he knew who they were, they were all of them women: were they meeting in the dark to plot? they were certainly readied for a ceremony, he could see the elements of it carefully set out upon something very much like an altar. Their dresses were white and loose; their hair was loose and dark: there were wreaths upon their hair. The scent of the walnut tree now seemed to fill the air. One of them arose, and, coming forward presented him the ceremonial vessels. With a well-practised manner she said to him (he knew her, they had spoke before), she said to him as she held out the goblet and the bowl, “Soldier. Drink the sweet water of Corsica, and taste its fragrant acorn-meal.”

The fire had died down. But now, as the women slowly undid their robes, someone stopped and gently blew upon it.

Coming or (as now) going, one had to be fairly close to Loriano to see its lights of nights, the foreshore was that low, and besides: what lights? respectable men and women had no business out of doors after the cover-fire was sounded by the beat of drums — most of the ruder sort of people had neither sand-glass nor water-clock to tell them the time — and other sorts of men and women used no lights. But even far out at sea one could smell the presence of Loriano, smell its inextinguishable odor of cooking oil and excrement and wood-smoke and urine. It was better than a light-house and it cost far less. Here the Pharos at Alexandria, that wonder of the ages, was deprecated by a ridiculous local legend which had jack-ass loads of wood toiling up a ramp by day and night to fuel a perpetual fire for the benefit of ships at sea — the Lorianos all thought this a great joke: idiocy! Let the ships keep at sea till break the day and then find their own way to port … or, would they and did they not, let them flounder, founder and sink. Think of the salvage and the booty! The Lorianos would rather pluck waterlogged cargo off the shore for nothing than buy it dry for even a pittance. Loriano and its people were useful.

But they were not nice.

Loriano! Hail; and farewell!

IV

Young Vergil

As he was staring at the bottoms of the weathered planks of the moss-encrusted, ragged-eaten door, a foot or so beneath the level of the turfy ground, the door sank as it were backwards: what dread feet he saw, then! At once his eyes flew upwards. Swift, his thought-mind told him, “This is a particularly hideous old man dressed up as a particularly hideous old woman!” In a second, he changed his opinion at once. Later, some, he was to conclude that he had at first been right. More than this, or other than this, he did not for a much longer time suspect.

Getting up his courage to proceed, perceiving certain several things a-hang beside the door, he was in an instant both startled and afeared. But for an instant only: then he relaxed, recognizing them for the masks, simulate faces, which some clever hands were wont to make for this festival, this play, or that; sometimes out of painted cloth, sometimes out of cloth and scraps of trash-parchment glued together, sometimes out of untanned leather, sometimes out of leather, tanned. They were dreadfully like.

They stank dreadfully, too.

Down to the door. As in some long-familiar tale, told whilst peeling chestnuts round the winter fire, had “he rapped on the warlock’s door and the door opened instantly —” “— as though someone were standing right behind it?” — “— as though someone were standing right behind it!” “— and a voice spoke, saying?” “— and a voice, spoke, saying —” But he had instantly forgotten those kitchen congregations and their well-familiar stories. The door had not so much as creaked even a little on its leathern hinges; he was canny enough to test by the easiest method some sticky traces found afterwards adhering to his clothing; for with taste and scent, no argument, and taste and scent reported them to have been made by neat’s-foot oil. No magic, no sorcery; next to the pressings of the olive itself, or bread or wine, or milk or cheese, could there be a more common domestic substance? What witchery was here? none; what suspicion of alien herbs or of leaves or fruits of trees growing by Rivers Lethe, Abana, Oxus, or what-so-far-off sites and streams? None, not one.

The creature glared at him.

Vergil’s father had once been servant to a wandering astrologer, and had a habit of repeating under his breath, scraps of what he had learned; always winding up with the same word of advice, indicative that he, his son, was not to be expected to spend all his days at the plow, the harrow, the ox-goad, and the pruning or the trenching tool. “Taurus upon the Cusps of the Ram,” the boy would hear him repeating; “Taurus upon the Cusps of the Ram … Lord Saturn, ever a malign stellation … Lord Saturn … a malign stellation … avert the omen … Orion’s Dog is barking let not our fields all burn …” the boy would always remember that deep rumble-mutter; “Study, Mariu. Go thou and learn. Find thy book and mind it … Orions Dog … Sagittary on the Cusps of … Sagittary …”

Coming down to the main road from the home foot-path, narrow by definition, its berm bright with the yellow oxalis and the lacy-white membranes of the wild carrot, you saw ahead of you the stone obelisk with the blackish near-globe on top, whose words marked the boundary of the limits of the city (“Great City” it still called itself, but that was the mere after-glow of glory, for City-State it was no more). Always, even then, there was a mythic air of ill-being about that spot; “Don’t touch it, get away!” was sure to meet any surge of small boys towards the monument — surely a sentiment more than purely political; and although brats of the beggar-class, themselves outcasts, wearing the duck’s-foot sign on their rags — “oliphaunt-boys,” they were called in scorn, some said in connection with an hereditary disease, others saw in it a reference to their being descendants of Hannibal’s mahouts, still living out and living under the immemorial invasion and defeat — although such brats, snouts crested with unwiped snot, clambered and sat upon the plinth of the obelisk oft enough: firstly, this just proved its unseemliness; secondly, one did not play with such, one ignored them like the fly-worms in the horse-nuggets plashed across the road.

THOSE UNDER PROSCRIPTION MAY NOT PASS THIS POINT

UNDER PENALTY OF STRANGULATION,

LAPIDATION, OR DECAPITATION.

By decree. S&PB

But — more: had a recusant rebel or exile returned sans permission been judicially slain at its base, or what were those stains? A clump of pines whose crowns were like rounded spread-out sunshades grew and shed needles, else only the cypress, the ilex, and the poplar met the eyes. Eventually the Spartans, as they lumbered by, were not only to fell every single tree for timber, but to destroy the obelisk itself by using it as a target for their ballistas; and the round, dark, red-streaked lump, once fallen, Herk Duk had had his helots smash it into bits and the fragments he distributed as talismans. For Herk Duk knew nothing of cast-out Brindusian malcontents, but Herk Duk knew much about cold iron. A trickle of water seeped from the berm even in the month of drouth, and there one might find the violet, unwoven by Sappho for all the poetic epithet, and the simple shallow chalice of the wild rose, its pale pink and white a copy of the flesh-tints where the sun had not much stroked the skin. A boy might kneel and gladly press his nose to both wildflowers, making feint to drink there rather than from the deeper, common spring and pool.

“This side, Brindisy be,” said a boy’s father (perhaps they were going to market with one calf or one colt, a shoat or a young sheep, say, a ewe-tep or a shearling: never more, back then). “And we be Brindisy-folk. Brindisy be foederate with Rome, Mariu. — Here we turn, so; beast, sooo, beast, sooo! We turn, here, and we remain on the soil of our city-state,” (for so he called it, though in truth its statehood was gone, subsumed in that foederate status); “We have the right to go further, Son, and to return, as the wicked again whom that inscription declares have not. But we don’t do so. Not today. And that way lead to Neapoly, which it were a kingdom once, now declined into a dukery or dogery, with its own doge; oh, a rare and rich city, too! Sooo! Keep the creature on the road-path, Mariu; if any man’s beast-creature strays and eats in our field, or, it may be, tilth, be sure we ‘pound it till his owner pay — I see of no ‘scriptin that this field’s owner be doing different — no one puts up a notice, All Beasts May Graze Here! — No! Switch ‘un, Mariu! Haul ‘un by the snout!”

And small Marius would be vigorously obedient, then, for he knew that the switch might fall on shanks not the hairy ones, did a small boy not be observant and obedient. One would not wish to tell one’s father how boys sometimes played forgetfully or furtively or fearfully round about the obelisk with its almost-round meteor-stone on top; or, how, sometimes turning half-aside and hoicking up tunicals to relieve themselves, boys might play rude games. This coarse play of theirs, they barely realizing that young boys are but young men not grown, was only once the subject of comment by any older person. That fellow Bruno, thin as the broth from thrice-boiled bones, had chosen to make his necessity his sport: scarce had he seen how far he spurted, when he (and they all) observed an elder woman pass nearbye: she wore the matron’s saffron veil upon her head and loose-tied beneath her chin; likely the wife of some citizen, but not, since she went afoot, of any rich citizen. The Bruno pretended for a second that he would spray her, too. She did not pause, but she, as she turned away, spoke only the brief words one said to those with neither pride nor shame. “You have no face,” she said. “You have no face.”

He answered with a hoot; next, mistaking a mere look from another boy for a scornful one, gave him a shove, a painful dig with an elbow. And said, therewith, something very ugly.

Outrage, he, “Mariu,” felt first, then a hate like heat, then a something like convulsion. A confusion and a trembling in the air. Shouts. Fears. Tears. Fleeing and tripping. Terror. Clamor. Alien sound.

Later, peace restored, the lads recounted what they now decided had, after all, really happened. “Then Mariu say to his wee black doggy, ‘Seek ‘eem! Seek!’ And wee doggy goed ‘reuch! reuch!’ and Bruno he piddle and he leap afar off! Har ho! Where’d he go, wee blacky dog, Mariu, man?”

“Mariu” made some sufficient mumble, and none pressed him for more; for he knew, and perhaps they knew, too, that there had been no black dog.

Of something which had happened to him in his earlier childhood, he had no clear picture, and had never tried to make clear the one he had: as though an actor would not interrupt his role to turn aside and look off-stage. He himself had come on stage, so to speak, that winter day with a falling of large soft snowflakes when the old shepherd, coming upon him in the hills behind Brindusy, had exclaimed (now he could hear him: even now), “Eh! Child! Whence comest thou, and whither doest thou go? naked, cold, and all alone …” Had he the child been lost from the house of his father, sturdy old Publius Vergilius Mago? merely lost? soon returned? had he been earlier stolen, later escaped, and then and thus found? Or had he been a child adopted into that family, his true origin as unknown and perhaps unknowable as though he were the Peacock in the Vase of Hermes?

Then, too, in earlier, very early memory, lying on the fleece or, rather, the sheep-fell, which was his only bed, in first dim-light before his aunt grumbled the fire brighter and himself onto his feet to do his chores and stints; even a taste of the boiled spelt or millet-mush yet hours away; before that, lying more-or-less awake in the grey dimness hearkening to the dame snore (different sounds she had made at different hours when his father’s usual bed-place alongside of him was empty for a while), always in that uncanny time he was aware of uncanny things: for one, his eyes wobbled round about and round and for long whiles he could not focus them; for another, one testicle would crawl up into a cave, tiny cave in his own tiny small body, and, in its own time later, come ambling out and sidle down again; the third play-thought-time-untold-of-thing, he would peep at the poker and make it roll from one corner of the fireside to another. Or shift the broom. Or —

No other boys ever said they knew of these things not, but they said nothing of knowing them at all, though they spoke often enough of another early morning thing of which he also knew. So he kept himself quiet. By and by his eyes became stronger and his stones stayed down and it must have been about then that he ceased to push his breath the secret way he knew and to shift broom and poker. And forgot it all. Came the incident of the wrath of Bruno, he had neither thought nor sought, the old familiar pressure came by its own; barely he knew how to suck back what he had forced. And it is dangerous, he thought. I must be taking care.

It was a while before he made a resolve …

The boys had broken into talk.

“Numa — they say? You know? Numa? they say his cave? — ” “He, Numa, you know, the warlock? they say — old Numa! Can give you a good luckstone, and —”

“— his cave — Numa’s cave? it be, they say, the gate to Hell!”

“My grandsir? you know, my grandsir? Numa, he be a man-sibyl, Numa? my grandsir say so, and —”

No one waited to hear more about his grandsire, they crowded each other, they pushed on the other, raised their voices to compete. “Numa? Hey, say, Numa? You know, bridges between men and the gods? Numa, he —”

And, “He give my old gaffer, once, a potion again the fevers, and he never took no money off him: Numa …”

It happened, as it often will, that all voices went silent at one same time: “Zeus prime,” it was the custom to say, and so one said it; there was not time for even a second one to say it, into the slight silence slid the Bruno: “Numa? He haven’t got no more power,” he said this in a taunting, mocking tone, with no concern for the primacy of Zeus (or Jove, as others say). “He haven’t got nothing — he’ve grown too old!” Whereupon several shifted their opinions, for all the world like citizens in some public assembly, quick to echo the loudest voice. But Mariu said no word at all.

A man might be too old to plow, and yet know the best day to start the plowing.

It was a while before he made a resolve to see Old Numa in his house-and-cave.

And a while longer before actually he went to see him.

The creature glared at him.

Why was he, Mariu, here? What was he, Mariu, here to find? How was he to do it? Some stray memory, stray but yet purposeful, entered his mind … of a milestone set by a path in a hollow, in a small wasteland of thicket and thistle and rubble and rock … perhaps memorable only because it was otherwise so unmemorable? No. If he wanted the best view of the bay, to contemplate the galleys crawling over the seas … sometimes they did not crawl but with oars put up and sails full of wind they skimmed along the main … from Greece … to Greece, or farther … much, much farther … perhaps as far as ancient Carthage, much loved by Juno, stained with purple and heavy with gold … perhaps (not merely unlikely, but almost impossible … still … still … that which was almost impossible was possible) perhaps, via the canal which joined the sweet fresh waters of the Nile to the salt waves of the Arabian Recess and past the Gate of Tears and thence into the vast fetches of the Erythraean Ocean and the Indoo Sea and entire way to the Golden Chersonese and its far-distant City of Lions and thus to many-fabled Cipangu (risks, hazards, horrids, stinking shallows, shoals, and depths without bottom) — Merely to contemplate: one had to walk even that mile, at least that mile, and to encounter that milepost. And then to pass it.

And, now, Numa was that milepost.

The boy stepped forward.

The creature glared at him swiftly thrust out a palm as black as an apeling’s. Its hung-agape mouth had a long spittle on the dropping-forward lower lip, this lip it folded back over some browned and crooked numbs of teeth, and in a harsh voice of curious tone, “Money,” it said. “Wisdom and wonder is not to be had for nought.”

Not, without thought, for think on the words he did, but as quick as any reflex, he handed over the peeled oaken wand, as some tale or other round about the chestnut-scented nightfire had indicated that he should (chestnuts in the fire, chestnut-wood with its ruddy heart … or was it carob? memory of, earlier, chestnut flowers scenting all the world). Scorn, and hateful scorn upon the creatures’ face. “Where is the wee white bit of silver for my master?” the harsh, high voice demanded, “What, no’ even a copper piece, such as the hostler-thrall may have at stables? Why cam ye here, saucy boy, saunce coin?”

Another voice now the boy heard, from the murkiest region of the room behind the door; at hearing this (to him) wordless grumble, Mariu at once understood that it was a voice of power, and that the grumble was not directed to him. The creature must have realized it, too, for it flinched, withdrew into itself a bit, yet gan a-whining for all that. “A peeled oaken-switch, lord warlock, shall I seeth it for thy supper? Or roast it by the coals like a fatling-kid?” Still its sarcasm, yes, hate, was strong and live, like the strong, thrang odor of some loathesome beast (and it lacked not that, either, the boy thought). He made a half-step back.

The other voice spoke again. “Belike we’ll lay it along thy humps and haunches, Caca, mayhap twill be this rotten head of thine we’ll seeth in pot, Caca, or thy runny rump, dern scabs and all. What! Caca, still stand thee there? Boy! Push it aside, come over the threshold, enter, enter, pleased to be coming in.”

It came not to push; the strange thrawn doorkeeper drew aside, and, sending the boy one last evil look, gat it gone — presumably to the cave which common talk agreed lay behind the heavy dark curtain at the rear of the house proper. But — as to the warlock’s voice! — for the warlock himself he could see nought of, save some large shape amidst the shadow and the smoke — to be sure the voice had begun with all the power of a king — and then of sudden, turned sweet. So that long later he was reminded of the famous play upon words which turned Ptolemaios, the name of Ægypt’s king, who had sent an hundred thousand only slightly suspected subjects to toil in his silver mines; turned Ptolemaios into Apo Melitos: Made-of-Honey. Aye, but they were subtle folk, there in Grecian Ægypt — and, aye! they had need to be. Haply it had amused them there, moiling by torchlight at the black ore — but, well! Claude was Ptolemy now, a philosopher for a king, a cosmographer, and … well … one must hope — no abuser of power. And as the boy was pleased to be coming in (and pleased he may have been, but he was not delighted), the warlock spoke again in his made-of-honey voice, “When the novice approaches the adyt, all clothing and other possessions should be cast off, charm, chest-cloth, ring and ringlet; there should be no retained objects.” To be sure the boy had heard a muckle tales of sacred washings, immersions, lustrations, ablutions, and so his fingers began working at fibula, belt, knot, and pouch — scarcely knowing where to begin, his fingers roved and roamed; but something stirred within him which demanded precedence, a mighty great caveat was growing, and a strong and cool caution alongside of it: they pushed his fingers away and they made smooth his face and voice.

“I am not to do this now, my lord bridge-builder.”

A gust of air made the smoke billow up, but it made it billow in such a manner as to clear away the reek and fume where the warlock sate. Of nothing was the boy so much reminded as of the sight he had seen once in the market on a festal-day, an artist had for sale a pair of tablets made with colors of heated wax on slabs of wood. “This shows Mount Somma as she was before, as tall and strong as Mount Vesuviu. And this other shows she as she be now.” In the figure of the warlock Mariu instantly felt he could discern the shape and features of a fine, great man; but concealed, as it were collapsed, inside the slumped and sunken figure sitting in the chimney-corner chair-seat, clutching his requisite sword in ane great twisted, spotted fist; and to be sure, to be sure, a wolfskin kirtel hung loosely slung about him, and it still smelled so, one might think it freshly cut, or not so freshly staled upon: or was that but the lingering scent of the thrall Caca?

“Wolfskin,” but what did wolves smell like, really? A something which he later on came to think of as common sense, told the boy that, smell like what they may, live wolves and cured wolves’ hides (well-cured or ill —) were not likely to be found together. This thought was like a streak of cool in the midst of a feeling perhaps not really hot, and yet why did his heart swell so? and why did his breath labor?

This place was no flowerbed of spices. And —

What bleary eyes the old man had! It was not sure that he blinked now for a show of seeing you, or —

At once, the invitation to shed garb and gear now having been declined, at once the old wizard’s manner changed; his very tone, too. Gone was the royal We, and gone, also the made-of-honey voice. “Marius, hail,” Numa mumbled, in an eldritch toothless voice, as though lost in the palate.

“They do call you, ‘Marius,’ and not ‘Vergil’?”

Automatic formality, “Vergilius Marius Mago,” almost he’d said “Maro,” why? “of the —”

A cracked and dirty, very dirty palm confronted him flat up and out. “I know your gens, I know your tribe. Your agnomen I know, and I know your cognomen, too. Your great-grandmother, she had six toes upon either foot, and such is the reason for the family secret, why she would never never let thy great-grandser see her barefeeted. And I know where your blacksmith uncle had the scar of the burn by which he gat his smity-art, where none accidence could cause a burn to be. Your dam smiled upon me once, twas on the Gules of August, when the ewes do oester, Canabras was Consul then, and I gave her a small and rufous stone —”

“I have it yet in my pouch, as a luck-piece, a ward-piece, but I didn’t know it came from her … or from you, Messer Numa …”

The gum-welling eyes, reddled yellow and washed-pale and almost infant blue, played upon him, half-shut. ‘Aye, I have had great wealth, affording great gifts. And have had great costs. Yet maychance I be not so poor as I seem so to thee, Vergil. Maychance I need make no show of wealth. Or that I keep it by me in a secret place for a secret purport. What brings ye here to me, my wean? If ought else than that ye’ve learned you’ve some’at ‘ithin you that other lads have not. Shall I rid you of it? Take but that part-peeled oaken-switch — Oh? I shall not? Well, well, place that switch (wand, some call it) in the corner here, a-tween my sword,” grunting a bit he stood the sheathed sword on the floor; “a-tween my sword and my stave. Now see you against where now you stand, yet another part-peeled stick — a willow. Move yand wand to me; it was cut in the catkin-drooping grove of Persephone, strewing its pollen like gold, hard upon the misty bank of River Ocean, in whose baths the Bear hath no share — and so it may be made, may be made, I say, a sovereign ward against the bruin — move it, now! Thus. Aye. It moves. It ought not, ought it? Thou hast touched it not with either hand nor foot. Ah, thou rascal wean! Nevertheless, it does move.”

Numa sat back a moment, breathing somewhat harder than before. Then he sat again forward.

“So, now ye have moved it to thy home-garth, without anyone a-sees it move, save my servant, which had come forth again, I needed it, the thrall, y’see, for some’at and such and so. Ye planted the withe well, and when it had greened thrice three times, ye’d cut an other such switch from it, and ye brought it here with thee, plus three small sorbus-fruits from the garden in the Castle of the Crown, same as is be-called Castle of the Hawk. Those things ye had done —”

Numa was saying all this with such absolute and matter-of-fact certainty as almost to take the boy’s breath away. “Sir,” said the boy, “No, sir, no I have not.”

The witchman smiled, and a vulpine smile it was, too; and like a very shabby old he-fox he seemed, too. “My wean,” he began — and very little did Vergil feel like that one’s wean, and very little did he wish to be such, either —“My wean, those of us who speak with vatic voice, sibyls and such-like, ye see, ‘prophets,’ as the Ebrews call ‘em, we sometimes describe as of the past or present that which, really, we descry in the future. D’ye see.”

In whatever space or place there was which lay behind the heavy crusted hanging cloth (and greatly dirty it was, too) thrall Caca had been muttering, muttering, and by the sodden sound and echo, stirred a something with a long stick in a large pot. A moment’s silence, the curtain moved sluggishly and the thrall stood within the room once more. Numa made moist his lips. “Thou has, Vergiliu, in a secret place about thee, a puny piece of silver. Give it to the thing. Go.”

The ancient epicene horror, Caca, all rags and stench and hate, now crept forward, its hand hunched out. The boy dropped the coin. Numa sank back into his chair, eyes closed. The fug inside was dimlight as by a sour and reeking fire. He was outside again, he stumbled a bit at the sunken threshold. Overhead gleamed the glittering stars.

Overhead gleamed the glittering stars; actually, directly overhead the stars were as yet faint and few and pale, full and bright they shone at or near the farther horizon. From the nearer horizon enough light glowed from the setted sun so as to keep, for the moment, most things clear enough. He was glad of that, and did not tarry, but made haste to get onto a main-travelled path. Words of what he had heard repeated themselves in his ears. “I can show you, Marius, a way and ways, Marius! to tell South from North and West from East, without regard to the position of the sun. And I can show you, Marius, Mariu, Vergiliu, boy: Vergil! I can show how to devise maps! arts which only twenty men and several have in all the whole world, Vergil!” and he ambled and rambled on and about the knowledges and powers he could impart, until Marius (he did think, now he thought about it, that best of all his name he liked Vergil) wondered, then, why if Numa knew all this, he chose to live, or suffered himself to live, like, almost, a beast in a lair.

He had yet to learn that great powers did not necessarily mean great prosperity.

And he wondered as well, right then and there, how came he to recall having heard those words, when well he knew, once he thought about it, that he had never actually heard them? … from Numa … or from anybody else. Was this, then, in some manner of illustration the vatic voice?

For, surely, now and before, it spoke of things he did not merely desire, it spoke of things, once glimpsed, which he lusted for to know. A direction-finding art! And how to make — not alone, for any doge might have one for money, not alone to have maps — but to know how to make maps! Compared to this, what was that some subtle something inside of him which could move willow-wands, cause pokers to roll, and could simulate the Power of the Dog? It was less … much less …

Later, of course, he realized that one thing had nothing to do with the other; rather, that one thing had much to do with the other: but that one thing did not occlude the other.

Several generations back, someone’s cousin had been married to someone’s brother-in-law, and not even then a first cousin. But although, even then, Vergil’s family had not been related to this other family, it had been thus connected. A very faint sense of this connection had shed upon a certain woman, Emma by name, the last of an earlier generation, a semblance of being some sort of twice-great-aunt. When he was small, he had thought My Emma, as he had also thought of another old woman as My Grandma; for all he knew, every small boy had an emma, too. Sometimes, not often, his own aunt, his own mother’s sister, who had taken the place of his own mother in the household; sometimes, not often, she had said, his aunt, “Take this to your Emma” … a festal cake, it might have been, a stuffed tripe, a new-enough kerchief, itself replaced by one bought more newly yet (the elder Marius had been a great one for kerchiefs, buying them for his sister-in-law whenever he’d gotten a coin more than he’d reckoned as his bottom price for a beast sold at market. Once only had he bought her a small bauble of glass and brass, immediately she had asked, “What about marriage, then?” and Father had withdrawn to muck out the byre, not returning for several hours; and after that he had confined his purchases to kerchiefs), a honeycomb in a dish deep enough to contain the drippings, a small flask of oil … such-like things.

Emma lived within what was a half an hour’s walk for a small boy; it was of course less than that now, yet he went there less often. Emma’s daughters lived in another village now, Emma’s son had died, and Emma’s daughter-in-law, Euphronia: a woman of no sweetness of temper, had married again, and her husband was her match. And old Emma lived on, and lived with them, the gods save us from such a fate as that! Aunt had paid them a visit, had not felt she’d been made to feel welcomed; her next small gift, carried by the boy “Mariu,” had been disparaged by the now-chief woman of old Emma’s house, and been deprecated as precisely that: small. As “Mariu” had, in all child innocence, reported.

After that, the aunt sent things seldom, and Emma (her humble gifts: two eggs, say, still warm in some straw in a tiny basket she’d made herself) sent things no more at all. Nor, evidently, was allowed to.

This man had brought with him to the marriage a son of his own first wedding. And this was the boy Bruno, who had soon enough taken upon himself to exemplify all the grudges of that house.

From time to time one would see the three of them doing butcher’s business out of a wheelbarrow in which a slaughtered pig had been taken from the shambles; they raised swine, took each, live, as far as the abattoir (where it had by law to be killed so the tax could be collected), then wheeled it, dead, just past the official limits of the town, where they sold it, cut by cut. By thus avoiding setting up a booth or stall within the lines of the population, they saved a certain amount of money. They were rough people and sold their rough-cut pork to other rough people — either those rough by nature or rendered perhaps rougher by poverty, which seldom smoothes the manners.

Thus, they cried, “Fresh pork for sale!” and hacked, awkwardly (perhaps cutting up even a skinny swine in a wheelbarrow was not the easiest of work: but they paid no public market fee; ah! they paid no fee!), and slashed, awkwardly. And … so the boy, not yet much called Vergil, thought … had they been but a bit more brazen, to be sure they would have cried, “Hog’s liver! Fair fresh hog’s meat! A penny for half a snout, and a halfpenny for the tail,” from the very base of the obelisk itself. Once or twice he saw them slow the barrow as they came to the monument, they seemed almost to hesitate — but they did not dare.

By and by the boy, Marius, had summed up some few certain things: Did he walk with his own father, a man rather taller than the average, and did they encounter Bruno, he scowled, that one. But he passed them by, or he let them pass him by. And that was all. For then. Did Marius encounter him, of a sudden, face to face, or with his, Marius’s friends, he got no more from the Bruno than a lowering look. One had learned that it was useless to smile at him … unless one had use for a sneer, which was all that one got in return. But, more than once — indeed, almost often — if Marius were walking by himself, all alone, a stone or a short piece of wood or a small chunk of a broken-brick or such-like rubble, would sail past his head: at once, did he turn quickly around, who was there, arms still and looking somewhere else? Bruno. Was who. Of course one could walk quickly towards him, one could even run towards him. And he would run away, laughing his unlovely laugh.

And for all that Vergil had the longer limbs, and for all his anger, he could never catch the lout. In fact … that is, it was probably a fact, but never put to the test … had Bruno belonged, or had his family belonged, to any even small confraternity or society, he, Bruno, if matched among other contesting athletes at one of the set competitions, with their limbs oiled, and dusted with any of the socially-approved colors of dust; Bruno, if started off by the tran-tran of the starter’s trumpet, might have been able to win a race. And, hence, a prize, not of money value, but a prize.

But his family cared for none of those things.

What they cared for was, that Bruno, when the barrow was not at use for wheeling a scrawny shoat, head lolling loosely in a puddle of congealing blood (later carefully removed for a blood-pudding, and never mind what loose bristles and worse, even, filth one might find in the pudding: they could be simply spat out), should wheel the barrow as near along the public path to someone else’s land, anyone else’s land so long as someone/anyone was known to be elsewhere at the moment, as might be: and then Bruno would steal as many of someone else’s chestnuts, even beechnuts or acorns, mast was mast, as many and as much as he could stuff into a sack. And dump the sack into the barrow. This to be repeated as often as Bruno felt like it. Usually not for very long, for he was no lover of labor; but so long as he brought back something, neither father nor stepmother was likely to make much matter of it. For, if they dared, they would (and sometimes did) let their pigs gather mast right off the ground on others’ land. But they seldom dared, save only if they knew the owners or tenants or their keepers were afar off and gone elsewhere. Therefore even a sackload of stolen stuff in a barrow was to them a victory of purest gain.

They laughed, likely, when speaking of it.

And although they were slovens even in the manner in which they dressed the carcasses, still, a fire they had to make to boil water and scald the swine somewhat so as scrape the bristles off … almost off … and into the embers of the fire they tossed the trotters of the pig, to loosen the skin so as the easier to rip it off the slotted feet (figure what nice matter had accumulated between the slots), buyers how grubby or how gruff expected at least a somewhat clean couples of pigsfeet. And Bruno liked to nibble on these toasted skin-flaps. What did he with them, after nibbling?

Once, Vergil (Mariu, Marius) was walking that way, alone: something struck him, clut! Between his shoulders; swift, he swiveled round; something struck him, clut! Upon his chest. Facing him was Bruno, no dissembling now, as to who had or who had not, thrown; no readiness to run: he stood, as it were, between his father and his stepmother and (eyes drawn, instantly, to the ground; what saw he, the Boy Vergil, there? the nasty suckets of the swine’s foot-flaps, moist from the Bruno’s mouth, saw he there), and Bruno called out, “Ya! Foh! Oliphaunt-boy! Grey-eyes! Son of a bitch!” and “Bastard!”

More shocked than angry, the boy’s eyes now went at once to the faces of the older couple; at once (he expected) one of them would give the Bruno a cuff — no such thing. Bruno held his nose (it had but a bit before snuffed up without dismay the stinking contents of the unemptied hog’s guts), then, releasing it, cried out his insults yet again. Surely, if the parents did not wish to cuff him publicly, at least they would speak to him — no such thing. They spoke nothing. “Pfew!” cried Bruno, making anyway a show of holding his nose (not free of smuts, itself); “O pópoi!” and again he called out his insults. Vergil’s eyes kept turning from the parents to the son; at any moment one of the elders would turn and give a look of deep disprovai. Surely. A gesture, then — Surely?

Husband and wife stood there, their faces carved out of dark marble, they heard nothing, they saw nothing: she with her huge dugs and haunches; he with his head as hairless as a snake’s. Then, almost as though on signal, each, both, they opened their mouths.

“Hogsmeat, fresh, fresh!” he called. And she —

“Cheap, cheap! A stiver off!”

“There are persons and places where one with the wit may learn more,” Numa had said. “Of course, ‘In the woods,’ of course, of course.” His large hands, broken with age, moved, then, as though rather dismissing what everyone knew … knew, in this case, what was meant by “In the woods.”

“There are certain schools, ‘secret schools,’ some call them; they are as secret as the smoke from Etna, from Mongibel’s dark stithy; and of these, likely the best is in Sevilla. You would laugh, were I to tell you the price, now you would laugh, but afterwards you would not laugh; besides … you might never have to pay it. And in Athens there are sundry schools, sundry seigniories of learningship, as it were,” he spoke on, he spoke lower than before, almost as though he were talking … not to the boy, there … not to the thrall creeping along the wall with — was that a rat in one hand, which he was holding by the tail? “the thing” slouched away into the shadows, the curtain-hanging moved and then moved no more: the slight sounds of the stick stirring in the tub began again. “… Illyriodorus,” the warlock was saying, “though he and I were never fellow, sour wine would turn sweet in that one’s mouth. Nevertheless.” What that nevertheless might bode, Vergil was not, then and there, to know.

And by and by the old sorcerer, if that was what Numa was, said, Go.

He had gone. So. His thoughts had much occupied him in the going. Suddenly he realized, not exactly that he did not know where he was, for well he seemed to know the way, but that had he known in his everyday mind it was likely he would have gone another way. Though, as he clearly realized in a moment, he should have come this precise way through the woods. It was still somedel light.

“My child! My boy! Mar! My Mar!”

“Emma!” They embraced. She was grown rather smaller and lighter, he thought. She still kept her old, usual place: a section of a log with one end hewn and sunken in the ground, the upper one long ago adzed shorter and then smoothed for a seat. Her ankles, her feet, he saw, were vastly swollen. Scarce, he supposed, might she totter from her bed to her seat in the dooryard. She kissed him yet again, then murmured something which he could not at first catch; then he knew he had, after all, caught it, for it was repeated by a voice now raised within the house, where the light of one (he saw it could be no more) tiny lamp yellowed, slightly, the shadows by the partly-opened door. The voice had been going on, going on, but in his happiness to have again the dearly-loved old woman to hug, and in his guilt at not having wished enough to have come before this long time despite the possibility of a scene with Bruno, he had not picked up what that voice had been droning; it suddenly seemed that people had been murmuring, muttering, whispering, droning at him all the afternoon and evening …

“… sits all day and does no work and yet wants water,” the voice burst out into a higher note, “let her drink her own,” and the voice droned down again.

The dim sweet face turned to him and her age-softened hand held out a broken cup to him. He nodded, took it. He knew where the spring was. In a moment he was back; she did not even nod her thanks, but drank at once. And drank. He went softly once again and filled the cup. This time, as she finished, she signalled something to him. Suddenly he found an egg in his hand. Poor old woman, she had no pet, somehow she had always a hen about, pecking and dipping its head at the bits she fed it from her own bread. An egg: that was always a treat she had for him. He nodded gratefully, bent over, ready to throw back his head and drink it so soon as he had cracked the shell; suddenly of a sudden some huge shape had swum swiftly out of the darkness, and had deftly snatched the very egg from his hand: the woman Euphronia it was: and she made some ugly scornful sound in her thick throat, and swiftly she was gone. She did not even bother to shout at him, for well she knew that she had wounded not alone one but two people; and that her sudden swooping-down had startled more than a shout; moreover, she now had the egg.

Sudden tears flowed on old Emma’s cheek. And much I would, he felt the words, it was more than thought and it was other than speech; the dame Euphronia had snatched off Emma’s egg? And much I would that she would find scald Cacas rat inside of it; what noise now issued from the house? No mere scream, but full-voiced ullulations of terror, welling forth, and louder and louder — He blew a kiss to the old one, Emma, and, light-footed, soft-footed, so hurried away into the gathering darkness. He knew that for now, at least, no one would follow him.

And not long afterwards he thought of a sort of equation.

Numa: Power without goodness.

Emma: Goodness without power.

And for long afterwards he thought of that equation. And when he learned well how to write letters, he wrote that down. But there were things, he was learning, and things he was to go on learning, questions without answers and answers without questions, and statements beyond orderings; things and thoughts which could not be written down: not written down as simply as an equation: things not writable, things not to be written. At all.

Some time had passed. It was another day.

You require to be a mage; we have none such about here. About, where, then, did they have one such? Or more than one …? Was there an order of them? Numa had spoken of a man in Athens, and of schools in Sevilla. Clearly, he, Numa, had met and known the man; it was not clear if he had gone to such a school or schools, or even if he had been in Sevilla at all. Of course one might ask. Suppose, though, that asking such a question and receiving an answer to it were but part of a sequence, and of a limited sequence, too. Would it be well to begin, so to speak, using it up? It was far from being thrice three years, at which time he would be under some sort of command to return to Numa. But not yet.

What yet?

Seeing, he fell asleep again. He had been mistaken. It was not a dream and he was not at sea. He was in a forest, there ahead of him was Numa’s house: but what a change! It lay fallen in, in ruins, and the grass, the creeper, and the vine had grown over it. Moss lay upon the shattered boards. Someone or something was panting heavily nearby.

How near? He turned his head. Caca was there, the fouled clothes sloughing and in tatters. Caca was there, on all fours, with offals in the mouth. Observed, the creature dropped them between the forepaws, and snarled, like any dog. There were sounds from behind, swifter than thought something sounded, whirling, whistling, past Vergil’s ears, and Caca leaped, writhed, fell back twisting, lay dead with a crossbowman’s bolt in the side.

Overhead, the glittering — It was a dream. He was awake and on the deck of a ship. He recognized the tawny shores of land, needed no cry of, “What land? what coast of people?” which was the traditional question asked of the pilot. Brundisium lay near ahead, and there he had been born; thence the Appian Way led whither all roads led: to Yellow Rome. He had much to do, it was some weeks before, even, he bethought him of the port; then one day he heard the fluter and the middle drum which signalled that a ship was in preparation for a voyage, and that all who would go with her had better hasten to be on board. In fact, as he walked towards the water he heard one man ask another, “What keeps her here? I thought she’d gone by now?” He asked as one might ask an idle question. And, as easily, the one he’d asked made answer. “It seems they await one sole passenger more,” and they strolled away, easy of mind as it appeared, as well they may be, whose way is not with water.

Now he heard a hoot and a whistle and a yammer of words which, for the most part, were really no words at all; he recognized the voice of Bruno. Bruno he had not seen often, lately, but once in recent months: he saw him peeling a scab off some portion of his unsweet person, deeply intent upon the matter, as one examining a leaf from some sibyl. But now the fellow was at another occupation: as often, he was jeering at someone. And of a sudden, no longer hidden from Vergil’s view by trees, there went along and alone, who but the nigromant, Numa, of whom Bruno had sneered that he had no more power, that he was grown too old: none the younger just now. What had brought him forth from his feculent den? the young Vergil wondered … asked himself, did he want to be like Numa? No. Was that the price one paid for wisdom; some said the price was one eye: No. No more than he wanted to be like Bruno. At all. Still …

What had brought Numa forth? For sure, only an errand which he could never even trust his thrall Caca to do … fetch a small jug or gourd of water (was he not holding something like that in his farther hand?), say, from the live waters of a running brook; not to wash with, God knows … perhaps for a certain ceremony or spell requiring a certain hour … if indeed he was on a quest and if indeed his quest sought water … Or perhaps “the thing” had since died (in which case it had been no dream). And now the flutist and the drummer suddenly broke off their music; certain men appeared upon the side of the vessel, voices called, voices answered, gestures made, gestures returned; and now it seemed evident that Numa, stooped and slow, was the “one sole passenger more” for which the ship was waiting? And then where was he going? Likely enough, where the ship was going … if not beyond. He seemed indeed very, very old. And he did not hasten him.

Half-loping behind Numa at a half-safe pace (willing to wound, but half afraid to strike), came the lout Bruno, ever enjoying to harass someone for nought … or ought. “Quack! Quack! Duck-foot!” he gabbled, only meaning but to mock; “quack-quack, duck-foot! Numa! Foh! Pfew!” he held his snout between his fingers. Old Numa turned and looked: no word he said, then; he only turned to look. The louse-bub chuckled his booby pleasure at seeing another either vexed or (better yet!) in pain. “Pfew! Numa! Foh! Clout-rag! Suck!”

And Numa, old Numa? He, as he turned away, spoke only the brief words said to those without pride or shame; Vergil meanwhile (suddenly, in fact, he could not have said why) bethought him of what he’d seen a-hanging and a-stinking before Numa’s door; and of the vatic voice. And of the vatic voice, what?

And Numa, old Numa (tattered, dirty, old evil Numa: but still …)? He, as he turned away, spoke only the brief words said to those without pride or shame. “You have no face,” he said. “You have no face.”

And, in a moment, even before the Bruno began his shrill and terrified and endless scream, Vergil perceived that this was now quite true. And was utterly sure that he knew where that face now was: it was hanging by the door of Caca’s cave.

V

Interlude At Sea

From Corsica’s Loriano (its trade, though limited, had even so a somewhat antic tone to it: henna, senna, leeches, peaches, chamois hides, and musk) he had taken water on a tramp trader crawling longside the littoral of the Ligurians … coming from Naples, Zenos had swung north towards Elba in order to take advantage of the wind, and to avoid the Gulf of Dread; now there was another wind to catch, and another course to take. It did seem to him, though, that this, naturally, other course was not taking them at all past Liguria, where in ancient days … so men said … the piddle of lynxes had solidified to form amber: always a great article of trade — Liguria, and the lands of the Franks, and then of the Catalands: where were they? He would soon enough see places not those at all; and, by and by, seeing the vast Herculean Columns and scenting the wild cold wind off the Sea of Atlantis — seeing the gryphons wheeling, gyring overhead …

“What shore?” he asked the helmsman, captain, and crew, “what shore? what coast of people?” But they answered him not, were shifty and silent, not with any great insolence, but with the evasion of those who do not answer because they merely do not choose to and because they do not have to. He soon saw that strict truth did not form any part of the philosophy of the masters, mates, and crewmen of a tramp trader. And why should it? when it did not suit them? They were merchant-men and merchants do not invariably deliver the merchandise as ordered and paid for. There was, after all, nothing in particular for Vergil in the lands of the Catalands, any more than there had been in Frankland or Liguria. He had wanted an escape? Very well, he had gotten one. He shrugged. And he made himself easy. He would see. From the moment of his final shrug he relaxed. The shipmen relaxed, too. Then ho! for the lands of the Troglodytes and of the Estridge-Eaters and those who sold the shaggy skins of wild men (such as Punes hanged up in their Temples to Bel, Melcarth, and Juno … particularly to Juno), also, the great plume feathers of great birds which could not fly, and those who traded the horns of strange wild goats (scraped translucent thin) full of sand of gold; traded them for cloth of scarlet and crimson, small bronze bridle bells and copper cauldrons (in series of ever-diminishing size so they fitted one inside the other) and cloaks of softest finest wool dyed the color of russet leaves such as lie so thickly of autumns in the Shadowed Valley And now and then, for boot, these dwellers on the western shores past the dragon-guarded Garden, handsful of beryl and of moonstones they gave, and tourmalines, agates, jasper, jade, and jet. What was strict truth on such a voyage? Oliphaunts baying on the beaches, and Black men in hooded cloaks who sold salt in slices of many colors which the Empery knew not salt to be: rose-red slices, yellow, blue, and green.

And in the night came a play of light atop the mast. “The corposants, the corposants,” cried one, and crew and captain alike covered their faces. Vergil however observed the blue-green green-blue shimmer, a single source or twinned he could not tell; then recalled that the corposants are Castor and Pollux come down again from the sky.

They had of course some time since passed Tingitana, a name not without memory or meaning to Vergil. To the larboard lay the city Tingitana, Tengis or Tingitayne, its once-great port now drowsing in the sun; crowned with its acropolis or cássaba set off by crumbling walls. Vergil, who had been in more than one such neighborhood, watched with more indifference than interest; a once-royal palace and its precincts to be sure, decorated in a sort of non-style, and stinking with old stale. There would be a so-called snake-charmer lurking there for chance visitors, nose bloody from the bites of a serpent which was perhaps far from being charmed by it all. Should he go ashore when the master went, who was shortly going there on ship’s business? Besides the shabby mountebank there would be, but outdoors, harlots in the local style, grossly fat, eyes painted widely in many colors, and almost certain to pass on the itch, if not more. Or, if tired of the ship’s fare, he might dine at some place upon the foreshore: rough tough ram-lamb grilled upon a spit over a fire of embers of vine cuttings. Bad wine, gussied up with gods-know-what. Go look at the Hall of the Suffetes, where no one suffeted nowadays. The walled small enclosure of the Roman proconsul and viceroy. Such a place surely did not rate a king. Tingitana. Bah. It did not smell as ill as filthy-stinking Zeyla-Zayla: and let that suffice for it.

“You did not leave Corsica in haste by account of some sacrilege or manslaying, I suppose, my ser?” — the captain. A-smiling.

“Not I.” — Vergil. With much effort, suppressing a shudder. “Why?”

The man pointed with a hand like the claw of one of the ganter striding birds. “Yonder wee vessel is what we calls the justice-boat. What do I mean? Soon be seen. And heard.”

The wee vessel, ends turned up like some fanciful slipper, came alongside and disgorged an official of the port, assisted by two serjants-at-mace. “Ho, Plauto! take any good prizes?” he greeted.

A thin grin was all that skinny skipper allowed this sally. “None I’d share with you,” he said. Adding, “Festus.”

Festus at first made great show of mimicking a man unrolling a scroll of great import, but dropped it almost at once. Dropped the show, that is, not the scroll. He cast a swift, reckoning glance round the shabby ship (fit to vye with the Zenos, as sister-vessel in this regard), “You haven’t got the right hand of the Colossus of Rhodes,” he said, with feigned disdain.

“Ha! How do you know that I hadn’t had it, and sold it in Marsala?”

“Because it wouldn’t fit in this meager holk,” said Festus, promptly. “Matter of fact, I’ve been in women that had more room.”

Plauto was momentarily torn between an obvious desire to slap his thigh, and the need to make a show of injured pride; contented himself with, “What! You don’t mean to say it’s been stolen again? Who now?”

Festus shrugged. “Tiridates, King of Ermony the More … so men say … get to it … all right, then: have you got aboard of you, concealed or not concealed, one Polycarpo of Ecbatan, black-a-vized chap with very broad shoulders, wanted for spittin in the Sacred Fire a-kindled by the Magus Zoroaster himself? Swear it by Apollo and Juno and by all the other gods and goddesses whose names end in o —”

“Haven’t got it. I swear it by Apollo and Juno, and so on.”

“Have you a father and son called Fat Procopio and Thin Procopio, both marked with the shackles and the scourge, and wanted for murdering the widow Pessaleya of Apuleia and running with her treasure, to wit —”

“Not got. Swear it — and a wicked widow, I’ll lay she was, too —”

The inspector or procurator or whatever his title was, glanced once or twice at Vergil, who was already nervous enough, and said nothing; meanwhile, as the official read his Wanted list, the two serjants were prowling up and down, peering under sails and poking coils of rope with their maces, clambering below decks and glancing all around. Technically, Tingitayne was a port of the Empery like any other port of the Empery. Gaza. Naples. Marsella. Palermo. In the matter of geography, however, Tingitana (for why should a place have only one name? a human being has at least three! eh?) Tingitana was the port at the western end of the Midland Sea. It was well to know who did enter and who did leave. Even the Arabian Recess had its guards, although thither swam all the cargo-ships laded full of wealth of the Indoo Ocean and the Erythræan Sea; there passed not by Tingitane a tithe of such wealth: elephant and emerauld … pepper, pearls, and gold.

“In the olden days, Doctor,” said the official, “a very rich and busy commerce swarmed here. But now we almost slumber and sleep.”

It was as though the man had been reading his mind. A certain coldness suffused his heart. Here it was. “Ah, you know me, then,” said Vergil.

A bow, small but respectful. “At first I knew you not, ser. And then I reckoned that I knew you, yea. But not more. You were a-wearing of your green robe trimmed with fur when I had seen you at the Ceremonial, with the great gold ring upon your thumb. And later, I am sure, at the Straw Market.” Vergil had not the slightest memory of ever having seen the man in Rome, but the man’s memories provided the clues as to when the man had seen him. Along with the doctorate and the doctoral ring Vergil had, as was customary, received a small purse of gold: three golden solids and a golden paleólogus (this last of a paler cast, it was perhaps slightly flushed with silver: he had made no assay). Most of the gratuity had gone to pay his debts: board and lodging, of course, and the final purchase of the robe and ring as well, and his share of the costs of the Ceremonial. And out of what remained he had — true enough — gone to the Straw Market and, after much cheapening, bought a straw chair to send to Illyriodorus in Athens; with it he had sent the softest, thickest, most supple of sheep-fells, hoping that straw chair and sheepskin seat cushion would be easier on his old teacher’s aged bones than the plain hard benches. Any philosopher might tell you that the simple life was the most proper one, and (rolling up his eyes) that the superior man not merely ought to be, but was, satisfied with bread for all his meat and a clean scallop shell to dip his water for all his drink, a hollow bone to hold all his clean salt, and a wooden bench for all his seat and selle and seige. To be sure that Illyriodorus, if you were to give him (say) a flask of oil of nard, would never rub it in his aged oxters or dress his senatorial beard — he would make haste to have some student sell it quietly and then give the money to a worthy fund — for the relief and sustentation (say) of widows of philosophers slain at the capture of Corinth. But Vergil had observed the old man wince when sitting down and heard him say, “If my old goose had not died, gladly would she yield me some breast-feathers to stuff a small pillow, for when the rump dwindles, then the bones grow sore.” Illyriodorus would not be one for ostentatious suffering, he would fold the thicky sheep-fell and fit it in the chair to sit upon. Gladly …

“And how now, Doctor,” asked official Festus, “did you find our Yellow Rome?” Vergil answered, lightly, quickly, “Very easily.” Communications from those of higher rank to those of lower might be considered privileged communications, in that the former are privileged to communicate things of a very slightly humorous nature and are also privileged to hear in return sounds of amusement at least somewhat more than the same remarks would engender from one of equal rank; not that the laughter would need to be obsequious but that whatever was said would indeed seem funnier than if from an equal, or an inferior.

When the chuckles had not quite died away, Vergil then asked, equally lightly, equally quickly, “And what news do you hear from ‘our Yellow Rome’? — We have just come from Corsica, where we don’t hear much …” — No, said Festus, he supposed that in Corsica they didn’t hear much … more chuckles … “What we hears? We hears,” Festus considered the matter, brightened a bit, said, “Well. We hears that Himself the August Caesar continues in good health,” Vergil made a murmur of gratification. And this was no mere obsequiousness, either: for unless Himself the August Caesar were some very great tyrant — which he sometimes was — one would naturally wish him to continue in good health: for, whilst he did so, it was not very likely that hard-faced men with newly-sharpened swords would be dispatched hither and yon with instructions to return with newly-severed heads. And who knew, in such an event, whose? — or wished to? Still … as for the Slaves of the Immortal Gods …

Festus continued to ponder, index finger pressed against the wart upon his chin; his face moved. “Ah, we hears, also, that Old Scipio that great gaffer-oliphaunt, who’d been there in Caesar’s Park since, some say, since King Hanibal’s time, anyway was there when I was a boy;” generations of Romans had known Old Scipio, had fed him leafy twigs and oranges and cakes, and gone for rides upon his rugous back: “has died.” Vergil raised his brows and made a murmur of regret; what else? “And — ah, yes! What a tale of news! As some criminal dog attemptimated to seize ahold of them holy Vestal Virgins, but pious citizens drove him off — who? a rogue, they say, with no neck and a low brow and uge sword-slashes across of his ugly face — why? we’ve no idea —” Vergil, who had stopped breathing, breathed again.

Now see and hear Captain Plauto stoop and stare up into the face of Festus. “Well, that let’s you off — nary sword-slash do I see!”

Loud laughter.

The serjants-at-mace returned from below decks, from the way they furtively wiped their beards and from the sad, sour smell of them, one assumed that the ship’s wine had been broached and hospitality (one would not wish to say: gratuity) given; Festus tugged at his belt, half-turned to go, turned back. “Come ashore with us, Doctor, and taste our victuals. Meet the Viceroy. See the Trogs … we don’t oft have any here to see …”

Plauto said, “Go, Doctor, do. We’ll see you ashore and bring you back with us, no fear we’ll leave you for the Troglodytes to eat!”

He had not thought to go ashore, but it hardly seemed tactful to refuse; the Viceroy was, after all, in the place of the roy, the king, the Emperor, and one did not want to cause a question to arise.

The victuals were much as Vergil had thought that they would be, and so was almost everything else. One thing only he had not expected. Now to visit the Viceroy, Festus had said. He must have had an influence with his superior for which rank alone would not suffice, that he had merely walked into the man’s office, taking Vergil with him by the arm. Influence, however, or not, he (and his visitor) stood stock-still once they were a pace or two inside the door; for someone else was there before them. Standing with one hand on the viceregal chair almost as though posing for a sculptor was the viceroy himself, and he had the stiff look of one who has learned very successfully to control his passions but not to like doing so. Someone was facing him, and Vergil knew this one at once, was almost paralyzed to see him now and here … not with fear but with astonishment; protocol forbade that he should at the moment move or speak, but he doubted he could in any event have moved or spoken.

Even the most intense of confrontations produces its moment of silence, its moments, and this one was almost at once broken — not by the entrance of Festus and Vergil, but by its own weight and measure: silence could not bear the emotion of the one who next spoke. “We are against Rome,” the man said, “because Rome is against Nature! Three times it is that you have destroyed our city and from even before that you have tried to bar the whole world from us; how have you dared? Juno designed that our city, and not yours,” what hatred and contempt and barely-controlled rage lay in that one word, yours, “be the center of the world, and she gave us tokens that this should be so, she gave us her armor and her chariot: to no other city in the world did she do this, only to Carthage she did this.” He was a huge man with a huge chest and as he spoke the word Carthage he seemed to grow huger and as he took in deeper breaths the vastness of his chest became even more apparent, and his color went deeper and took on more and more of that red color which was the meaning of the word Punic, his eyes were bledshotten, almost he trembled and in another moment he would tremble. “Where is her armor and where is her chariot? If not for certain Carthagans abroad who bought — and for no small sums, I inform you — one wheel of her chariot and one heel-piece of her armor,” here he did tremble, his deep voice trembled, his arms and his legs twitched: thus might a man behave in the presence of his enemy and adversaries: not that he feared of them, but that he was so in rage of them — “if not for that, we should have nought relish and nought taste of our lady Ishterah, Juno as she is also called: Juno! But I tell you, though you have expelled Nature as with a pitchfork, yet she shall always return. This sole wheel shall have a mate, and those twain wheels shall bear a holy chariot and this chariot shall bear the lady’s image, clad in mail, the length of every street in Rome through which a chariot may pass, and this heel-piece of her armor shall trample every snake in Rome — now go!” Great must have been the self-control of him, that his voice neither trembled nor broke when he flung out the words, Now go!

And he himself went.

Much loved of Juno, ancient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold. Thrice indeed had Rome destroyed that city; and now, it seemed, a fourth time, again it was rising and again it spoke defiance. Was it so that Juno still hated Mars, the father of Romulus? What boded this for the pax Romana, and all who dwelt within the Empery of Rome? Much loved of Juno….

And after the polite recital of, if you are well then I am well and it is well, the viceroy asked, still formal, “Is there anything which I can do for you, Doctor Vergil?”

“Lord Viceroy … the Lord Viceroy can tell me if that man just now here … is he not called Hemdibal? Might I not have seen him in Corsica?”

By the calm tone of the viceroy they might have been speaking of some superannuated senator; “I am sure that he has many names and is seen in many places. I sent for someone to explain to me the presence of certain ships in the circumjacent sea, and there came this one. ‘Hemdibal’? No such name it was he said. He said he is Josaias, King of Carthage.”

More for the sake of having something to do in order to distract his mind from the discomfort of the ship’s motion (do what he might, he could not rid himself of the very deep feeling that it was an irrational motion, that the sea ought to be as firm as the land: this was the common Roman notion, more-or-less, for the Romans did not love the sea), he began seeking and searching if there were things in his pouch which he might shift to his budget — that staunch old doe-skin budget — or things in his budget which he might shift to his pouch — poke, they had called it at home, Some thief slit the thongs and made off with the poke, may curs devour his collions! And in so doing he, Vergil, came upon a small piece of sheepskin with the fleece-side inside. Instantly he was again in Verona, where he had gone to speak with Sparga, the great Sparga, the only man of whom it was said, by name, that he had made a homuncule; Sparga illa, that one.

Sparga had not much wanted to talk about the homuncule. “The experiment was, philosophically speaking, a success. But the experience was a shock. Endeavor thee not to make homuncules, Messer Vergil, thou philosophe, thee.”

“It must have been a great wonder,” said that philosophe, he, reluctant to leave the subject.

Sparga, his face like some low range of mountains seen from a higher peak in the dry season when all is sere and stark, said, “Here is a wonder.” And placed a patch of cloth in his hand, tumbling out the contents. “Do you take especial interest in gold, ser? Most men do.”

There were the two rings, of the palest yellow metal, scarcely might he believe that they were gold. Sparga the alchemist was reading his doubts upon his face. “This is not true gold, Messer Vergil, this is electrum, and electrum of a very special kind. Short of scraping somewhat of the metal itself, which I am loath to do as it would damage, and putting the scrape to the assay by fire and crucible, a precise analysis is not possible. Neither would it yield to the touchstone. But there is very good reason otherwise to say the substance of the rings consists in 67 parts of gold to 31 parts of silver; some say that the other two parts are of simple copper-bronze — as though bronze itself is so simple and there were not a muckle formulas for bronze. However, others say,” and here a smile as thin as a ray of winter sunlight passed swift over the craggy countenance of the occamyst; Vergil had a sudden insight, a sudden insight: knew that others was a modest obliquity for the name of Sparga himself; “… others say that the two lesser parts are orichalchion, that mysterious ore of copper itself tinctured somehow with gold, there in the distant mountain matrix of Eva, the lands of Greece. Wizard’s Electrum, it is called, this semplum of which the twain rings are wrought. You may examine them. Do.” And Vergil picked up one, and then the other. The first was wrought in a design of great extension and complexity, as it were some serpentine thing coiling in and out and roundabout and just as the eye thought it had discerned an end and a beginning, lo! the eye was fain admit itself wrong: yet ever the seeking mind was convinced that an end there was, and a beginning, eke.

“This is either the Worm Ouroborus,” Vergil said, referring to the device of a serpent swallowing its own tail, the symbol of eternal wisdom; “or the Gordian Knot…. Anent which,” his mind was not contented to stay even with the marvel before him but hurried swiftly aside to another one. “… anent which I have ever questioned that Magnus Alexander in truth fulfilled the prophecy told of ‘whoso would untie that great knotted cable of cormel-bark would rule Asia’; he did but take his sword and slash it!”

“Yet he did rule Asia,” murmured Sparga.

“‘He did rule Asia,’ but he ruled Asia by virtue of some other marvel, that marvel which was Magnus Alexander,” insisted Vergil.

Still murmuring, Sparga, “Even so. Oft one reads and one hears that the Philosopher’s Egg may be sliced open with a single stroke of a sword, its wonders to expose. But never does one hear or read an explanation which is satisfactory, as to what.” Sparga used more vessels of crystal and glass than Vergil was accustomed to seeing in an elaboratory: how they all sparkled there in the summer sunshine of Verona! “… as to what is the Philosopher’s Egg and as to which sword or what sword.”

The subject was fascinating, but Vergil with a sigh unvoiced set that one ring adown and took up the other. And this was ornamented and enchased with a design of many small flowers; his eyes were keen enough to make out, to his great enchantment and pleasure that every petal of every flower was itself a smaller flower; and he felt certain that, were his eyes keen enough, he might find that these tiny flowers were composed of flowers tinier yet. “Each ring, Master Sparga,” he said, murmuring low, “is a marvel. Why have I never heard of them?”

“Why be so sure that you have never heard of them?”

Of a sudden Vergil felt a shock as they lay in his palm or was it in his mind? he ne’er knew. “What, ser? Messer Sparga! Can it be that one is the ring called Senex, which makes young men old? and that this other is the ring called Juvens which makes old men young?”

The occamyst slightly oppressed his lips, edges so fine and sharp that might they have been carven by a crisping-tool. “A marvel it would be indeed, were a young man to wish to be old! To wisdom, a hard road!”

Vergil, with a slight gesture and a questioning look, requested that he might have water from the nearby jug; Sparga did not allow him leave by speech or motion, but he poured him water with his own hand. The jug was very curiously wrought, with sylvan scenes drawn upon it, such as a spring emptying into a rocky pool overhung with trees. The water was as cool and fresh as though it had just now run purling from such a source indeed. “Thank you. — perhaps old in wisdom is the proper meaning of it. Eh?”

“And is the other geste to become young in wisdom? Eh, indeed.” To this Vergil had no answer. “Unless,” Sparga, “that herewith Natura hath prepared an almighty jest of the other sort: that the rings be tried on unwittingly, a gamble very great, and the outcome not surely known; be not tempted, ser. Swiftly I forfend such temptation!” In an instant Sparga had taken up the two rings and twisted them with a motion for which deft was insufficient, lo! one ring was fixed curled inside the other. And … hold: “Curled inside the other?” there was something almost shockingly odd about the angle there … “Pentalepto of Scythia,” Vergil said, slowly (and the chymist soft said Ahhh), “accounted how he slipped, one day as he was walking the walk of the mazes and calculating his steps as he stepped, miscalculated, and slipped sideways and downways, as the Magna Homero has it, ananta katanta paranta, upalong, sidealong, downalong; and so fell he into that otherworld and universe in which even the geometry is clean different. There were the dragons feeding Anthony in the fattening pen. Anthony cried to him for help, but Pentalepto suffered so much as he stood there sickened by the strangest strangeness of it all in the harsh prismatic light, that it was with an almighty effort he broke back amongst us. And as for Anthony —”

Vergil threw a sharp glance at Sparga, who merely took out from anywhere a small box carved in great detail showing the lyngworme coiled about the legs of Frotho Dragonslayer the suitor of that Thora (so the Northish annals told), and he with his sword couched high and ready to slash down; there was no egg present; and from the box the Sparga plucked a patch of some gloriously yellow sheepfell, and wrapped the twined twain rings up in it, and, opening his guest’s clenched fingers, slipped the tiny pacquet inside onto his palm. “This and these be thine,” he said. “These and this be thine.” It was, the guest Vergil felt, perhaps almost a formula as from a rescript. Of one thing and alone one thing was Vergil sure. To make a great matter of this great matter would be a mistake: “Thank you, Master Sparga,” said Vergil.

“Sadly do I note that the day wanes shorter and that you will never tarry, nor I press you never so much.”

And as he was saying this, he was moving along, Vergil perforce moving that pace ahead of him, and almost it seemed that guest was escorting host to the hole of the door; so deftly did Sparga give the congée. And the posts by the sides and the lintel up above were carven in strange carvings of designs, and one was that of an incoiling coiling without end, and the other was a continual wreath of flowers of whose petals were other flowers made, and so on so. “When next we meet, Ser Juvens,” Sparga (Sparga illa) said, “you are to riddle Ser Senex the riddle of this riddling,” and as he was so saying he was closing him the door. Vergil went alone to the inn with his head full of many thoughts. Always he kept with him in his pouchet or poke that scrap-piece of the (he was sure, quite sure) the Golden Fleece which contained the twain two rings so strangely flexed together. The sun was going down, down over Verona, as it was downgoing everywhere in that Zone of the Climates, but he saw it as it were going down upon the great Voe of Naples in an immense crowd of clouds of rosy-colored flame. And within it was a cloud of gold. To the Southwest lay the Isle of Inarime or Isehia and to the Southwest the Isle of Goats, or Capria. And within his heart lay much wonder at the wonders endless of the world.

He said nothing as he went.

Vergil was not used to the house-high waves of the Great Green Sea of Atlantis (what sensible man ever was?) … and no ordinary house of a man’s height plus half of a man’s height, but of those towering tenements called islands … might not waves so high sweep clear over actual islands? With such thoughts one ought not to entertain oneself in such rough weather on such rough sea; the Romans had a saying, Only Greeks and fools go much to sea. Odd that to the Romans, Greece was the epitome of sea-faring, while the Greeks themselves said Ship-shape as a Punicman: what said the Punes? perhaps they praised the ships of Tartis. Although the Carthagans, still rough-mannered colonials compared to the mellow Punic folk of Tyre and Sidon, the Carthagans were not at all likely to praise any place but Carthage … though, as any schoolboy knew, Carthage had been destroyed.

Destroyed, too: Vergil’s hope that he might in unvexed security return from Tingitayne.

Groping his hand into his budget for a clean cloth to wipe his mouth, he encountered a small bouguin, what was it but that Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne which Nephew-to-Sergius had given him to boot in Corsica. Seldom could Vergil resist the seduction of a new book and however old chronologically or corporally this one was, twas new to him: he read in it till the seas seemed monstrous rough, then slipped it back away. Every atom in his body seemed now at war with every other atom, he covered his body from the spume and spray and fell into a dull state in which he half-dreamed he was in the bough of a tree, the while drinking an infusion of sage and ginger for his stomach: there seemed a conversation going on between two men whose voices he could not then identify, familiar though they seemed. Ginger is cheap this season, one was saying; ginger is cheap, a pound of ginger now costs no more than a sheep. Cheerful and jocular was his voice. And another, graver and somedel pettish: Why should any wise man sicken or die who has sage growing in his garden-herbs?

Vergil dozed, slumbered, awoke, tossed as the ship, tossed, slumbered, awoke, and finally fell into a state in which wakefulness and doze and daze and sleep and fretful confusion were all alike mixed. All jests about sea-sickness fell into the abyss. He was wounded with a mortal wound and the first sickening shock thereof continued, shocking and sickening, without abatement. Whither did the vessel go? This was no offshore sea, rolling merely restlessly between Negroponte and the Grecian main, or between Italy and Corsica, or off the lands of the Ligurians. Something was deeply different and deeply wrong: this sea had neither bottom nor shores! He strove to leave his body and go soaring aloft to spy out where they might be and then inform and guide the sea-men of the ship; but the waves, the winds, the spume and spray, beat him back, beat him back, beat him down: and thus he continued and abode long a while.

He awoke into a different world. To his starboard spread a quiet sea; quiet but not at all sluggish like the waters of the Putrid Sea adjacent to the Paleus Maeotis and whose size — their sizes — remained a mystery: a light wind stirred the waters as it stirred his hair.

The noises of the ship — the creaking of the planks and timbers, the rattling of the ropes, the luffing of the sails — all still continued, but not loudly nor frantically. To his larboard stretched the land: now tawny, now green, trees dotted the coast and hills, and along the edge of it were white and yellow sands. The sunlight there was different: the sunlight, fractured, shattered, was reflected from a million shattered crystals (themselves not seen); the sunlight was reflected by the facets of a spadai æon of atoms; and these reflections sparkled without dazzling: unstinted … untainted … and untorn. The captain, Plauto, greeted him, in rather an abstract manner.

“What shore?” asked Vergil. “What coast of people?”

Plauto opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged. “Well, ser. It is the old story. We have been carried off our course by storm. We had intended to make for the Islands,” a slight emphasis here, “… our usual way … then to come back into the Mainland by a southwest route,” his arms and hands described a rough triangle — from the Mainland to the Islands (whichever islands they were), from the Islands to the Mainland — it was a large enough triangle, and, had it been completed, would have saved the ship from hugging quite a section of the coast. As for trading opportunities missed along that section, this, as it occurred to Vergil, must have occurred to Plauto as well. However. There was perhaps therewith those Islands which had so much made visiting them worth the while that Plauto had never ceased to do so, even though it meant that, season after season, venture after venture, never once in his life did he forbear to do so; recking nothing of the neglected possibilities of the mute commerce and the trading post, into which that curious marketing so oft developed.

“… and to speak the truth —”

“As is your invariable way of speaking,” Vergil said, gravely. He could hardly overlook this opportunity of sticking the long needle in, of reminding Plauto, now more-or-less his friend, of that trick and decept by which he had lured Vergil aboard his scummy bark in the first place; easily lying about his course and destination in order to get the stranger’s passage-fee. But Plauto, either expecting no sarcasm or accepting this description of himself — certainly the way in which he would wish to be seen — as accurate, Plauto nodded. “— to speak the truth, Ser Doctor, I don’t know this coast and shore at all. And though we shall soon need water …” Plauto did not continue the sentence. He did not need to; its implications were obvious. And — head for a green section, as likely to have water (else why and how was it green?), why … bless you … the water was as likely to flow underground as not. And Plauto and his men were not tap-roots.

Vergil scanned the coast. Then he nodded. Gestured. “That blink of white? That will be the rock called The Skull. Just past it will be a small cove, and at the head of the cove a small trickle of water. Very small. And very slow. Not enough to fill the butts. But enough to give us a drink. All of us. And then …” He paused to intensify the effect. “And then … after half a day’s sail, we come to the region called Huldah.”

Plauto’s face quickened. His face showed more nor one emotion. “Ah, ser! And here I thought that you were an entire stranger to these lands! The Skull! The region called Huldah! I have heard of them! My thanks, Ser Doctor! My thanks —” Here he seemed just a bit troubled, literally swept the look off his face with his hand, called out something to the crew. Vergil saw the helmsman’s arms and shoulders move. Presently the ship was seen to stand down the vast bay and proceed more closely along the shore.

VI

The Region Called Huldah

We should sight it, then, after that headland there,” Plauto had said, meaning The Region Called Huldah. And Vergil had nodded.

But when they rounded “that headland, there,” they did not sight it … or anything else. Whatever lay beyond was shrouded from them, from sea to sky, as if by a series of pleated white gauze screens and curtains, seemingly one behind another, such as often veiled the throne and person of some exotic Berbar queen in her native court. Vergil looked quizzically at Plauto. And that one rubbed the bridge of his sun-scorched nose, and then slowly shook his puzzled head. Said, “I don’t know what to make of this. Never seen anything exactly like it. Smoke? It don’t look like smoke. And neither can we smell it. Mist? It don’t look like mist, either. It’s not the weather for fog. Nor it’s not the time of year for haze … besides which, it’s not the color as haze would be. But one thing about it as I can tell you —”

And Vergil waited, and then gave some slight questioning sound.

“— I can tell you, my ser, that we are not going to try to hug a shore which we can’t see. Rocks, reefs, shoals, shallows … who can know what might lie there? Eh? Doctor? What do you say?”

Vergil said that he thought he’d like to make a fire. “Right here where I now stand.” Plauto called something. As a crewman appeared with the thin skin of hammered-flat iron and the box of sand on which the few cook-fires were built (lest the direct heats of the fire should infect the wooden surface of the ship), Vergil busied himself with items from his old doe-skin budget. He accepted the few pieces of charcoal which the crewmen next offered him, and to this he added some black shards of his own; bringing samples which he had taken with him when in Naples: not that he had much needed them just then or expected to need them on this or any voyage, but merely that in his haste he had not taken them out of the pack again. Miraculously and somehow, a living coal had been saved afire throughout all the commotions of the storm; Vergil declined it with great politeness. Neither did he accept the offer of Plauto’s tinder-box, its scorched linen, and its flint and steel. Carefully he arranged the charcoal, as though might some grave bird engaged in nidification as the time of the laying of the eggs drew nigh. He bowed his head. The men, assuming he was engaged in prayer, grew silent. In his innermost mind he bethought himself once again in the Sunken School abaft the Fuel Market in Sidon.

And gradually a piece of charcoal reddened.

He had no hollow tube, but, placing his head quite near, himself his own “blower of fire,” he let his warm breath play about the heap. And then all the charcoal was alight.

Next he added a few leaves of sage, and some shaved root of zinziber, the “ginger” of his uneasy recent dream, and one drop only of Olor of Benjamin (benjoin, some called it). Atop this all he placed a sole feather of the swallow, which, released from the wicker cage never so far at sea, would always — wise bird! inerrably head for land, so that a keen-eyed master of a ship might follow o’er the white-waved seas, as the sweet singer of Anglia had put it. And then he fanned with the fan which Plauto had waiting; woven, it was of palm leaves: be there even so much as a single tree upon this hidden shore, likely it would be a palm. And like called, even silently, to like.

The winds blew slowly as before, there was no gust, the sails did not crack, did not luff, neither did there appear (as it might be) an eagle of the mountains with a white goose in its talons as it (the eagle) cried aloud its defiance to the world and air: but steadily as they concentrated all their gaze, those upon the ship saw gradually the gauzy curtains as though one by one drawn back. And the exotic queen — did she stand there before them? Was this indeed “the Veil of Isis”?

What stood there before them was a stretch of coast, like any stretch of coast. Nothing was different. In which case … why had all been so oddly veiled? … why veiled at all?

But suppose something was a little different. A sea bird, wide of wing, wheeled near the ship, then — with a cry — for whom, in that empty sky, to hear? — wheeled away. “Master Plauto,” said Vergil, “hold up your hand, so,” he demonstrated; “and look through the spaces between your fingers. And there, at about the fifth finger, do you think … what? … there is a creek mouthing into the sea?”

“I … do … think … so …” the master of the craft breathed, half intent only upon the accidents of the scene, and half in wonder of its incidents. Then he dropped all this as he might drop a garment, and uttered orders, curt and crisp. The helm turned. The oars were set into the tholes. The sail dropped down. The ship moved now upon its own motion. And Vergil, with a gesture, handed over the fire — just … now … a common fire … to the crewman in charge of such. And closed his old, soft, doe-skin budget. And strode up to the bow and looked.

There she disembogues…. Since, perhaps, the day the waters of Deucalion’s Flood drained off the face of earth, this quiet little river had loosed its waters into the slaunting bay, itself of no great eye-catching quality, and so shy, that river’s nymph, that scarce she revealed herself at all: why, therefor, that shielding white veil? One would see. Perhaps. Limpid, and, seemingly, pure, the creek did not even hint of any nearby settlement of the sons and daughters of Deucalion: and perhaps there was none. Even the sounds of the oars striking the waters were small, birds sang and, some of them, white and crimson, rose-red-and-green, were revealed in flight. More and more and thicker and thicker the trees grew, till some of the branches on one side (Plauto, be sure, his keen eyes had not failed to note the currents stealing down to the left, and so he had gestured that the ship keep the right) lightly struck the spars. The river slowly swerved, slowly the ship swerved with it, till, stealing round one more curve, entered upon yet another bay, large enough (thought Vergil) for all the ships of Tartis, plus all those of Rome as well, to ride at anchor; or to execute — all! all! — maneouvres there. A sound of mixed astonishment and delight rose from their throats, to see this hidden treasure; for, evidently, though Plauto … and perhaps all of them … had heard … of the region called Huldah, evidently they had not heard — or none of them had much believed — of this great hidden bay therein. And at the opposite end lay the cultivated lands, the fields of grazing cattle, the orchards neatly set out, the planted gardens, and the settlement of houses.

Houses … there was not much remarkable about most of them … even at this distance he perceived that the relation of thatched roofs to tiled had increased … it had been doing so as they began to pass out of the region of the flat-roofed buildings: clearly there was more than enough vegetation here to supply thatch, which meant that there was either more rain, or more irrigation. Even the existence of so large a river (though very large, compared to the Po, or even the Tiber, it was not) came as a surprise. And there, atop of a small hill — perhaps only distance made it small — was an entirely different structure. Details still were sparse. But instinctively he knew that this was a house. The house. The great house of Huldah. However unusual, however ignorant he was of who might live in it.

The house …

And behind, how far behind he had yet to learn, was, almost a low mountain, an escarpment, like some crouching half-familiar beast. A weasel. A genet. Or … a cat. And did not the word mean … was not any of the words … in what language? he knew, he knew —

Huldah.

“Shall we set ashore on the side?” asked Plauto, quietly. “Or … there seems to be … there is a mole — Eh?”

“There,” equally quietly: Vergil. “I shall walk up.” Implicit: to The House. “I apprehend no danger. I shall go alone.”

“Ser. Yes, my ser. There.”

A woman’s face was looking at him from out a parting in the scented bushes (“The entire wilderness is one vast pharmacon”; of what were these bushes making him think? what soothing draught had long ago his mother (scarcely remembered) made for him to drink, and for what childhood illness? what matter, some tisane, some herbal, fragrant, strong intinction; was he now ill? he felt not ill.). Outward and a bit upward her dark face with its ruddy traces looked at him; she was half-bent over a pair of dogs of the old Ægyptian race, tails a-curl, thick chests, thin loins, thin legs. She wore a close-fitted cap of rust-colored leather, edges coming down almost to her magic, mantic face; her age? neither old nor young: what a richness was in her half-slight half-smile! Silver armil, a silvern bracelet, a thin silver bangle on her thin dark wrist. She saw him, she knew him; though he felt he knew her, yet he knew he knew her not. She let her hands loosen at the dogs’ collars (of scarlet-dyed leather, they surely came from the Lands of the Catalands) and the dogs moved towards him saunce menace and they sniffed at his hands. All the whimsy and all the wit of all the world was in her look; pretty? she was not pretty, that infant charm and grace was not here, was not hers; neither was she handsome, that more adult comeliness: no. “See,” said she, said to her dogs; “See, Paulo, see Narcisso, Vergil is here. He is here.”

Her look was of another world and race; a queen to queens she’d mayhap been, in long-far-sunk Atlantis. “A sign to eat and drink, Marius, a sop,” she said, she made a slight movement and the bangles sang like good sound coins upon the counter. “A sop of poppy-cake in wine,” it was no question she meant no ill, he felt no fear. He felt that he could linger near her fay face and its faint dry smile, though flotillas foundered. And “the region called Agysimbai, where the monocorns assemble,” perhaps she was from there, or near? Her slightly sere cheek. He would stoop to kiss it …

“A broth of hens’ flesh and of hares’, for you are surely weary; say: what of those who num the honey-sweet and scarlet fig, are they well? or do they waste away from doing nought?” A slight smile, her bangles clinked … one kiss … he knew her not … one …

He had commenced to sense the outlines of a very rich country, very dry, very sere; very rich in hidden riches. Wealth between the wind-basted huge sand-smoothed boulders the size of houses, wealth of hidden streams of water surfacing for a measure here and there, and in such place were trees of bearing jujube fruit, in taste half-date, half-fig. Land of secret webs of ways to mines of moonstones and porphyry. Sounds faintly at first of music in the night, tambours, seekers, lutes plucked with silver plectrum; the great red-brown castle way about her, way dry and not quite sly about her. Dry and slow. In Ostia an eating-place of three or four or five tables kept by an old eunuch who called himself King Pouf. “How will my lord be served?” the hermaphrodites would murmur to the transvestites and they to the aunties. Oracles, jewelers, gemsters, silver snakes on the anklets, bodies writhing hard to drape about some other. Was it clear she was endowed and physically possessed of these scenes and seeings and of others, say the dim great red room in that blackstone city in Asia Minore?

But in the language of metaphor she was not a locked city, no mere city was she: hints, flashes of wit, here a question, there a geste; now and then their eyes met and much passed in such moments, though he was not at all sure of all which passed. Her love was not that of youth, to pass away like the sands in the swift winds …

He had been shown to his room that first night by someone who understood no language which he did, but pointed out very civilly the jar of plain cool water for drinking and the jar of warmed and lightly scented water for washing; and who left two lamps, both alight, and a vessel of oil. Vergil took off his tunic and took up the book called Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne; how had she known his name? his names, well two to them … This book opened at a touch, almost. Would there be anything in it which would shed any light, more than the two lamps? Evidently a page, at least, was missing. Abruptly the succedant one began:

gion called Huldah. Below this Region is a haven of sufficient depth for most ships, and also sufficient water to sustain till the next. In this haven, called Maldacos, is procured for its own weight in Steel of Toledo or of Damasheque, the substance called Cake of Maldacos, translucent as wax, yielding an unction with the bitter and fragrant female scent simil to Mother-of Myrrh in its season, which so enciteth the Stallions. Tis well-known, and to the just and great discomfort of captains in cavalry: nought will suffice but to convey it by camel, packed in rhinoceros scrotum, the natural olor of quich doth render the fragrance of the other neutral and null, if it be not opened; and when it yer be opened, swiftly smear it where thou wishest: on tress, on rocks, or thorny pricket-shrubs, having behind you the right quarter of the wind: then wae! ye captains of horse! farewell to the good order of your ranks! But one must have the mastery of this Art; a mere prentice may be trampled, and or worse. But now weigh anchor and enough of this and take the tide at spring of day

Various thoughts molested his mind, then one thought said, enough of this; he blew out one of the lamps and washed his hands and face and feet and got into bed. And then he blew out the other lamp.

He woke but once in the night; very distantly he heard the hunting cry of the yænas, Flesh-flesh! Flesh-flesh! Merely to hear that frightful cry was to make attempt to flee: attempt usually more fatal than to stay. But it was far off and by soft sounds he perceived it was the hour when the ox lows in its stall: if the oxen were not sore afraid, no more, then, was he. He gave a slight tug to his sheet and let his limbs go loose.

“Ah,” she said, by and by, “you note the armils. Silver and gold are fairly cheap, but craftsmanship is costlier … unless, of course, one is a Barbar chieftess,” her hands made gesture of immense and rolling fat, and for a moment her face assumed a look of cowlike imbecility mingled with a haughtiness not learned in any school of high manners; he laughed. “… and who counts wealth only by weight and mass, and to whom the niceness of work well-done is nothing. Shall you see my armils more closely?” He made as if to lean over and examine them; for a second she pulled her hands away, she hid one behind her back, one she rested on her chest just below the collar-bone as though it might relieve some silly feigned insult. And in another second, Vergil almost helpless with laughter, she brought them both forth and down. “To get them off there requires a certain trick of moving my wrists and hands,” she moved them, not with instant effect —

“Do not bother,” he said: impulsively.

Lightly, “Tut,” she said: in another second had them off, held them in her palms, the armils, then forth to him.

“These are very curious and odd,” he murmured, for indeed they made any polite sham and perfunctory praise out of the question … if, indeed, it had ever been in the question.

“Yes, very curious …”

“They are very old, I think.”

“Yes, very old, I think …”

“And not made from entirely pure silver.”

Almost eagerly she moved even closer to him and nodded her head entirely eagerly. “I think so, too. But I don’t know what else for sure may have been molten in with the silver … or even if it came from the dark matrix already mixed with, well, whatever it is mixed with: if only one single other metal, and perhaps there are several. It doesn’t tarnish quickly, as other silvers do …”

He lay his fingers here and there upon them. “And perhaps if we learned how to refine and part them, it might be that we would find them to be not just impurities to be discarded, but purities to be discovered; not alone different names, but different uses as well …” His fingers ceased to move. “The signs,” he said.

“Yes, the signs.” She chuckled. “I gave them all names, you see, when I was young, still so young that these would slip off my wrists unless they were padded — and of course I didn’t want them to be padded, so I walked around like this —” then Vergil laughed — “as though my hands had been painted with henna and were still wet, and —”

“And what did you name the signs, then?”

In a beam of silvered sunlight he observed the motes dancing.

“Oh, childish nonsense!”

“A boon! Tell me!”

She made no more demur. “I think that this one is the white ewe for the sun and this one the black ram for the earth, see with what pains it is stippled there? — and these others, I am not sure what they are, or even if they were made at the same time or by the same artist; sometimes one sees strange creatures pictured, are they real creatures from so far ago far that one does not know them? or did someone dream them, perhaps after gluttoning too much thick food too soon before sleep? These others, they are odd. As though one might picture a crayfish or a scorpion who had never really seen a —”

The fragrance as of some fragrant wood fairly freshly sawn, was most pervasive; did he know that wood? he did: what was its name or nature? he did not know. He feigned a scowl. “Their names! The Court insists to know their names!”

She feigned fright. “Mercy, the Court! Oh, well, if I must (I Must!), well, the ewe, I suppose it is a ewe, I called ‘Pony-lamb’ and the ram, if it’s not meant to be a black ram, what then, O Court? But these, these others … I don’t really think that I entirely … what? oh, I called the ram, simply, ‘Spots’ … I hadn’t yet reasoned that it was meant to be black …”

He lifted his eyes and looked at her. “And the others? whom you are not entirely sure you like?”

She gave him a swift look, not astonished, but indeed surprised, for she had not finished that phrase, and he had guessed how she meant to, and he was right. “Well … there is no simply to these others. This one I called Arristamurrista. And this one I called Arretagoretta. And this one I called Arrantoparanto. But I never told their names to anyone after the first time, when they laughed at me. My Father said, ‘This is neither Punic nor Latin.’ And my Mother said, ‘Nor Berbar nor Etruscan.’ They were laughing fondly, of course, but I — So now you know all, O Court.”

Musingly, he said, “That is certainly a singular sort of ‘childish nonsense’. Where —”

Without emphasis she said, “I heard their names inside, how shall I explain it? no: I felt their names … inside of me … as though in a rhythm … Well!” She laughed, gave her head a certain shake, adjusted her head-cloth: already he had come to delight even in the way she would sometimes laugh, sometimes give her head a certain shake, even in the way she adjusted her head-cloth or cap afterwards.

Vergil said, “The Court now has you in its power.”

“Ishtar and Melitta! It has?” In a less-pretended tone, she said, “You did sound just like an advocate, you know. Have you spent much time hanging around them? In Apollo’s Court, perhaps? Or —”

Now he gave his head a shake (but he wore no kerchief, no attorney’s robe or cap). “Enough time. As much as I could stand. I’ve been a litigant —”

“Oh, that’s bad!”

“ ‘Bad’? Even worse. I was an advocate once, myself.” He made a face.

She made one back. “Were you a good one? Is there a good one?”

By now he had left off wearing robes, trews, tunic; adjusting to the climate, he had on only a short kilt, rather like the Ægyptians wore, but simpler. “A very bad one. And I lost my case. Well, both my cases, including the only one I ever pleaded. My client made quite a thing of paying me the copperkin,” referring to the minimal sum paid even to the losing lawyer; the smallest of small coins, however much debased since original coinage, still it retained its olden name of copperkin. Huldah laughed a slow, rich laugh. “And he said, ‘Take an old scoundrel’s advice and go plant the white spelt and millet in the mountains.’ ” He imitated the client’s imitation of a supposed rustic accent, “ ‘and never come back here no more.’ ”

“And did you? Never go back, I mean?”

He had been gazing at the motes in the beam of sunlight once again, not idly: he had been wondering if this would help him identify whatever kind of tree had made the floor; it was certainly not of cedar … and yet, like cedar, it gave off a characteristic scent. In the concentrated light he could see the grain, like the grain in ivory: it told him nothing. All this in a second, then he answered her question, “Never if I could help it, I assure you. But I still retain the Single Privilege, of course.”

“Oh, of course!” and now she laughed lustily; it was a matter of common knowledge (and, Vergil thought, common was a very proper adjective for it), more or less, that being a qualified advocate entitled one to a single privilege outside the court, to wit, “to break wind in the presence of the cooling-room slave in the Bath at Huta Hippodopolis:” that remote and almost certainly mythical town in which tales of absurdities were commonly set. Huldah lifted her head as she laughed.

He might, of course, simply have asked about the floor.

Scarcely much of a thought he gave more to the ship that brought him. He was aware of shapes on the shore: the vessel itself careened and being scraped, then caulked, perhaps … even … painted. Slow groups lading things aboard once it was righted and floated once again; once or twice vaguely he saw the forms of men carrying burthens ashore from it. A slow trade of sorts was being done; he did not care. One time as an afterthought he’d been aware he’d seen a caffile of men and beasts preparing to be off — off where, he knew he did not know; it was too much to consider, even, that neither did he care; as shadowy as a scarce-remembered dream the thought later flitted through his mind that he’d heard them talk of the need to carry water: so he supposed a journey to or through a dry land was entailed; he passed on …

Huldah … Huldah herself a dry land, no facile lushness there, path-trails thin as filigree; yet a rich land, with many a concealed spring and many an occulted deep, deep well. A rich land, she, lying alone. Her eyes … at first he’d thought them ever so slightly, ever so skillfully painted: but soon he saw that none artifice had done this work. And faint her half-shy, half-sly smile. Never raised, her voice. She: richer than the ransom of a richer city. Sometimes she wore the two silver armils on the one same arm, though not always the self-same arm each time. Hear their tinkling, hear them now and then ringing.

Huldah and he together in her atrium one day, plants in half-buried jars and pots roundabout. She, after drawing lines in the sands in the atrium, straight, curved, wavering: shores, she said. Coasts: she said, slopes; rivers which once had flowed and flowed no more, rivers which flowed yet and always, and rivers which flowed only sometimes. Huldah at length drew another line, and this (she said) was “the long road to the Pass of Gold …” After silence, said she, “It runs through the heartland of Five-Limbed Uluvendas, the Great Bull of the Woods and Plains.” And, after another silence, said she, “Now none know this way save me and thee. Well,” she said, “of course all my people here know it, but, for one thing, scarcely they know that they know it. And what they know, know it or not, they would not betray. Not while three sticks of this house stand together.”

Not while three sticks of this house stand together: surely a figure of speech: Diomedes, good at the war-cry and no mention of Diomedes (who had fought Greeks and Trojans, goddesses and gods) teaching his horses to feed on human flesh in peace or war. Diomedes —

Suddenly he said it aloud, “Diomedes, good at the war-cry.”

She looked at him, slightly she moved the slight lines at the corners of her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. “Here!” said Huldah. “He’d need be!”

No word said, a while. Then Vergil: “Come ships seldom here?” he asked. “Black ships, galleys, galleons, carracks made brave with paint of red?”

A gesture (hear her silver bangles sing!). “As thee see. Seldom come ships here…. That is well,” she said. Said she, “Well that it is so.”

Again they were speaking of silver, silver … the pale and shining … there were priestesses who called it The Tears of Diana; clearly they had known it only as droplets to set like so many beads upon the bottom border of a necklace; had never set gaze upon the black or the dark brown matrix, the mother of ore itself from which silver was refined. It was, though, perhaps possible, that they spoke in a slaunting way (safer in Thessalia than in the Thebaid) of the tears of those hundred myriad slaves which toiled in the silver mines of Ægypt to make yet richer the already immensely rich House of Ptolemy. Yet Claud was King of that nation now; if not altogether a philosopher, yet an astronomer and geographer; had he need for the serfdom? or worse than serfdom — for serfs slaved in the sunlight — in the rain, too: yes: but there was no rain in Ægypt nor in the great Garth of Tambuqtoun, where the very houses, seemingly built of slabs and pillars of many-colored marble, were actually wrought of the mines of many-colored salt — was it for crude, rude wish for further wealth that women and men moiled in the mines for salt and silver? Was there no truth in the soft-told tales that this was the common fate of all thought disaffected to the King and Court of this great House of Ptolemy? Surely no one who had measured the earth as with measuring-rods and had seen overhead the clear and glittering stars and counted them all and given them names which had had no names before — Surely King Claud, author of that great book Almageste, might see fit to break the bands binding those bound to toil in darkness. One must hope … and one must hope, as well, some day to learn what any of this had to do with Diana … though to be sure if tears were silver, tears were salt as well. The Fair White Maiden, or Matron occymists often called the moon. Back to the scene before him. “These twain armils or bracelets,” he said, “that is, their silver, may contain some traces of copper as well?” Copper. The Rudy Man. That was the sun. And therefore: Therefore: The Fair White Matron Wedded to the Ruddy Man … Therefore?

He had, by grammar, made a sentence. A statement. But by tone, it was a question. Vitruvius and his architectural jars which swallowed sound, as the vatic chauldrons of Dordona produced it: Vitruvius would clean comprehend this. But an antic notion: produced it? released it? consider if the words of some drama, swallowed up in some theater, should echo forth from the sacred soup kettles in the oaken-wooded holy hills of Aelian Dodona? — or the words of an emperor thus absorbed from an audience chamber? what might pilgrim worshipers make of it? … antic indeed …

“Or some metal not quite known,” she said. “ — or no longer known —”

“Like that missing wind no longer found in the Rose of All the Winds?”

Her face and its considering, sometimes almost brooding, look: her face, the lightest shade of dark … for dark had as many shades as light … her face, on either side of which now grew a richer tint with a slight flush reminiscent of the second bloom of the twice-blooming roses of Paestum, her face. “Or some metal not quite known?” here she it was who asked a question. Yet there was in it a sentence, a declaration of fact — me Herc! here he was, a thousand miles or more from the black navel-stone of all the world, upon the marshes of the Maurs and of the Troglodytes, and he bethought him now of rhetoric!

“But one?” he asked. “Only one? One such not-quite-known-metal alone?”

Reflectively: “Well … I speak now of silver. Certainly I believe that with silver, that behind silver, or within silver, there sometimes lies secluded a severalty of metals otherwise —

“— not quite known,” he finished. He repeated. “And what —”

“Of one I know nothing more, save that it is of a silvery sheen, and yet coarser … and yet stronger, baser, harsher. Of another, I only know that it is somehow finer than silver. Neither of these tarnish; does the moon-Diana tarnish? And of course one knows of silver and lead, of silver in lead, as one does of copper … and perhaps bronze.” Thus she said, speaking to him easily enough. The motes of dust suddenly danced again in the sunlit air. He turned his eyes to see if she had noticed. And, as he did, heard a voice, a man’s voice: Speak to me never of bronze: low, intense, quick. Astonished, he recognized it. It was his own voice. And yet he knew that his mouth was closed, and that he had, actually, said nothing. She heard the voice clearly, clearly she had understood him, she showed no change of countenance, she lifted not her eyes nor made no sign. The vatic voice … After a moment she went on, “But I am also thinking of something called antimony …”

But, then and thereafter, forever more, she never spoke to him of bronze.

In his ordinary voice and manner, asked, “You believe that there is antimony?”

Emphatically: “I know that there is antimony And that it is not a fantasy, not a legend nor a myth. It is nothing like, oh, the tears of the daughters of Meleager turning into amber. And I believe that it is quite true it has a melting point below that of lead. I know it so.” How she knew it, he asked her not.

They were sitting facing one another then, and she had leaned slightly forward and placed her light hand atop of his own right hand, so much heavier. She knew many things, this one, this woman whom Vergil was coming to know. “Had you this silver from your Father?” he asked, on the impulse. “Or was your Mother privy to the secrets of those secret ores, as are you?” He did not ask if mother or father had been privy to or had given her the way of those secret airs, those gauze-like veils of mist or what were they, by means of which she concealed her coasts from the knowledge of alien ships, vessels not expected. She had her own motives and her own mantic arts. Her own means and methods. He asked himself, had he a hidden harbor, the key to a rich coast and an even-richer hinterland — and: suddenly: he wished he had — would he want to make it known to hordes and hosts of interlopers, stinking ships laded with cheap pots made hideous with “decorations” of Gorgons’ heads, and cheap cloth dyed bright and gaudy with colors certain to fade at the first washing or, at most, the second? merchandise certainly not sold cheaply? — he remembered the broken trash in the market at Loriana of Corsica — ships which might unlade those who would break and tear and wound the earth for its ores and enslave the people to work it, and set up fires and furnaces which would poison and would taint the air and sully the soil with the sweet venomous fumes of mercury? cut down such trees as did not turn black and useless? Would he — No. He would not. And neither would she, and neither did she.

Huldah, perhaps kenning nothing of these thoughts … perhaps … Huldah told him of her father, he the son of a Carthagan mother and a Roman sire: but she never said if he were of that illustrious bastard race for whom Scipion had builded a whole city of settlement in Aspamia; nor did Vergil ask. She did not move to remove his other hand upon her right one. She told him, too, of her mother, daughter of Cyrenia. “They Lybyans are not all of the Barbarians’ race,” said she. “Not all of them are Barberi.” Mother, daughter of a Lybyan woman and an Etruscan father. At every level in Yellow Rome and amongst the Romans, one encountered Etruscans. The very religion of the Romans was tightly knotted in with that of the augurs and haruspeces of Etruscany: wherever the omens were taken, whenever the auspices were sought, one heard the language of the Etruscans. And yet no Roman spoke nor understood the language of the Etruscans.

Save Vergil.

He had spoken in it to her once, without emphasis or any sidelong or upward look which might say, Observe and hearken now to this rare thing which I am doing, and be astonished, thou … And she had responded to him in that tongue, herself showing nothing extraordinary. And so they had spoken in it, oft. There was more and more to her each time he was with her, and each time he spoke to her; and now, their hands adjoined, he was looking into her eyes, eyes the color of a certain agate-stone, and in the darker part of them he looked: and he saw within them (in her phrase) Far ago far. Within the darkness of her eyes, so different from his own grey-green ones, he saw within the darkness of her eyes the embers of ancient watchfires upon distant coasts, strange and distant but in no way fearful, and he saw also that sometimes those embers glowed in travelers’ fires in many remote interiors. He was realizing, had come to realize, that Huldah was a continent, one of and unto herself; and that knowing Huldah was to know, gradually, and with certainty, as it were the certain roads of such a continent, its paths and peaks and climates, its stars seen from different angles in the night-time skies. In himself, he was, as it might be, saying: I have known Asia the Less and Asia the More, I have known all of Europe, I have known Africa. And now I am knowing Huldah.

“Of silver and its sorts,” she said now, “I have learned much. And from them, and not alone from them.”

He told her now of some of the simpler signs of the occymists. “Sometimes they too mean silver when they say Diana —”

Nearby an aeolian harp sang its sweet and unconstrained music, played only by the winds; from somewhat farther away, a dull repetitive sound told that someone was pounding grain in a wooden mortar with a wooden pestle; he would have found the task monotonous, but whoever was husking now might not: there was, to be sure, a pleasure in even the most simple accomplishment, and, as the old country-folk had it, Many a little makes a lot. And, besides, those who tilled the earth for bread required that the grain be husked and ground before it might be baked. Baking might indeed be thought of as the first occymy. “And how,” she asked, as always, keen to learn of new things; “and how do they draw Diana —?”

Suddenly the thought came to him that the astrological sigil for she, often called The Mirror of Venus, might not be for Venus at all; might be for Diana, that the cross-piece supposedly the mirror’s handle, might be nothing of the sort: that Diana was by truth not alone goddess of the supernal moon, but ruled here below as patroness of the cross-road. This required more thought before he speak of it. Instead, he smiled a slight smile. “They do not ‘draw Diana …’ For they have another name for that symbol, they call it Luna, and they draw it as the crescent moon. When they do, that is.”

Out the door he could see a few several trees swaying a bit in the afternoon trade-wind; a few of them were palms, he could not yet identify the others. Did the spice called grains of paradise grow hereabout? And, if so, upon a tree, like the true pepper of India extra Indium? He would soon ask … and if no one answered, he would ask the trees: this, too, he had learned when learning “in the wood,” not as far from home as he was now. And now, seeing that she was puzzled, on he went to explain. Amongst almost all alchemists there obtained a jealousy very great. “You would be sad, I think, to see them with their prentices. For years they keep them at low tasks … and by that I don’t mean feeding the fire under this alembic, or following orders and directions about that pelican — which, when one is a high occymist, seems fairly low — no, I mean that they employ them at tasks such as sweeping and cleaning, things which any even half intelligent child may do. Oh, I suppose they save the hire or the price of an even half-intelligent child, but after a while it becomes evident that the apprentice must be allowed to work at some higher task, or what is he apprenticed to? And a full-scale occymist, if he has a full-scale elaboratory, really needs the assistance of something more than an even half-intelligent child, besides the fact that prentices tend to outgrow their childhoods. The master alchymist, needs, I say, something like a compeer. So then he begins to teach his man — true, Mary of Ægypt was a woman, but perhaps she needed no one to teach her — teach the man the symbols and sigils of the craft, so that while he is working in one corner of the elaboratory, his aid can be working in another; if he is on the second floor, the assistant can be working on the third. And, too, the master must needs sometimes go away.”

He, Vergil, himself, had must have need gone away: he’d had no apprentice and was perhaps very fortunate to have had Cosmo Nungo; perhaps not. He would see, when he would go back; when would he go back? Already he had begun to think of it: but only to think of it. “… sometimes go away. Will the works-in-progress wait for his return? Suppose something requiring a steady heat … how much steady? … and for how long? when and how to change it … or, if … and what next? and after that? If the work is something which requires a steady heat and nothing more, sometimes he may seal the vessel and place it about halfway down into the smoking warmth of a dungpile. And go off with his doors locked and his gates closed for such and such a time … the dungpile is rather like an horlogue, and it may go on long unattended: but then it is to be readjusted, you know, wound up,’ if it is that kind of horlogue, or water poured into the tank, if it is that kind of horlogue: just so, a steady heat as the dungheap gives, so that the very peasants —”

Here she spoke into his slight pause for breath. “Peasants, yes,” she said. “We were all after all descended from peasants, all of us. Salt of the earth, as we well know. Who feeds us all? Peasants. Even the pets and the philosophers and the city matrons in their saffron veils, know of the intense association of peasants with food. With plowing. And with cattle. With what do the peasants plow? with cattle,” she answered herself: “And what do cattle supply?” Instantly she said, “Dung.”

“Yes, dung. One can only get leather from the ox once. Milk? A time comes when cows no longer yield milk. Older bullocks may be converted into meat; who would kill younger ones for it? But all cattle … oxen, cows, calves, bullocks … all yield dung: Sometimes called nature; of which it is said, Though you expel nature with a pitchfork yet she will always return. Lands which yield no wood still yield a fuel in the form of dung. And another form of heat-from-dung — the very peasants to whom occymy isn’t even a name, wrap their raw green cheeses well and thrust them into the dungpile to ripen in that steady heat —”

She said, even-toned and sober of face, that one must hope that they were very well wrapped. “Especially if one were fond of cheese;” and before he could take formal notice, at once said, “But nature … ‘even kings must live by nature;’ what do the very kings do about occymy?” And then it was that he began to speak of that; and he spoke of that for long.

VII

A Pitcher of Silver and a Golden Bowl

The work of which we speak, Serenity,” I told the Doge of Naples after meat in the presence of his courtiers, their masks of obsequity barely concealing sneers of contempt; “is incomparably the greatest work of occymy the world has ever known; there are some lemon-pips caught in your beard, Doge. Allow me.” I adjusted my court robe of blue damasseck weave with the gold-embroidered stars, and leaned over. Of course, although my manner was quite greatly respectful, I maintained no silence as I preened his ducal beard. We all know, I must suppose, the story of the two Ebrew men observing the wagoner, “A sorry fellow as to piety,” said one. “Look: even while he is praying, he greases his axles.”

And said the other: “Lo, a lovely man and truly one of piety: even while he greases his axles, he prays!”

The depths, the extents, the metaphors and allegories and symbols thereof, the realization that occymy contains and embraces everything and that everything is contained in and embraced by occymy, As above, so below: as below, so above, macrocosm and microcosm — of all this the mass of men know nothing; doges, sometimes kings, know nothing. Three things of it alone engage their minds: the Philosophers’ Stone, whereby base metal may be transmuted into gold; the Elixir of Life, by means of which one may … barring violence … live (so they say) forever; and the Universal Solvent, which term is self-descriptive, and in which the mass of men (including even doges, kings) have no interest. Nor do they have much interest in how raw substances may be taken from the rough matrix of the earth and, having been passed through the furnace, the athenor, the alembic, the instrument called the pelican, and the other devices used in the elaboratory — become things clean different and pure: salt, sulfur, realgar, orpimentum, sand-dragon, antimony, copper, brass, or bronze — the list is endless. And little do they reck of the teachings of the metaphysical alchemists wandering the roads heedless of the rulings of the Wardens of the Ways, each philosopher with his staff and his pet goose (that most faithful and most wise of birds): that wisdom is the Philosophers’ Stone, that love is the Elixir of Life and contentment the Universal Solvent.

The Doge allowed me; my collions creep to consider what other things he might well have allowed me, so long as he could have hoped to gain knowledge of alchemy His impatience was not due to my fingers fidgeting about his chin. Courtiers would say that Duke Tauro of Naples could not even drink sweetened water and lemon-juice without some slop and mess, and of course they would be right. “The work who you say!” he boomed, like the sound of the estridge in the wilderness at night-time, haunting down its enemy and shooting forth blue-green flames to light the way; a sound which only added to my task. Really! plucking pulp pips from the beard of an imbecile doge not much cannier than any estridge, boom and all.

Cappadoce had its beauty too, outside the black walls of its black-stone-builded city; despite however black a heart ruled thereover, Cappadoce had its beauty too: the “diligent” almond trees blossoming early each year, every tree a froth of pink as the first of flowering trees each year: hence: diligent; the gardens of fragrant quincunxes of quince trees; the twain oranges, the bitter and the sweet; and the twain so sweetly-smelling citron fruit, one small as plums though ovoid and the other large as melons; lemons with blossoms white as lace: and the scented apricockes. Some call this vast and fruiting orchard, Mannello or Marmeland. One does not know why. The Matter sayeth not.*

But the King of Cappadoce (for example) ate and drank with the most exquisite grace and care and (for example) even had his table-drinks filtered — Body of Bacchus! thankful am I never to have been inside his private tent at the marge of his black-stone-city, to see with what manner he ate and drank therein; it pleased Nemesis, the deity of destiny, that no devoir ever took me to Cappadoce while that one had his scrawny scut upon its throne; the thought made shiver me. It might make shiver me more to hear his Cappadocian (Cephtiu, Caphtor, Cappaductiya, Cappadocia, Cappadoce: are the scholars content?) Majesty in his tones softer than the combings of the wool-vine, smoother and soother than silken or samite. “Sup, a pray you, Ser Traveler, of the special wine in this special cup which I have had prepared for you: old rich wine as needs no spring water and softened still soother with Attic honey and true galbanum and I shall sip of it afore you, my ser.” See him sip a sup and see him swallow and see the traveler relax and skim swiftly his forefinger over his sweaty brow. Would the Doge of Naples stoop to the poisoned drop sweetened in opobalsamum, ho ho! the poisoned one would cry aloud a glotted cry and expire then and there as one who had swallowed hippomane in his hippocrass, and kicking, kicking the embroidered covers off the table in his death’s agony — the horse-mania is not the gentlest ailment — The Doge of Naples would not stoop to that. If vexed he would perhaps seize ahold of you and bruise your weazand with one hairy hand or crack every one of your ribs with his hug of the bear or he might fell you with a fall of a fist and break the bridge of your nose with a cry of, Just a taste, now be careful! but if the Doge would ever use a drop or two (pretend him capable of an attempt at subtlety) from the wee black bottle, every one in the Dining Chamber would know of it; but He of Cappadoce, ah!

Cappadoce and other States of western Little Asia, glimpse there a scene at random: does alum glitter on that goat-strewn hill? would it not taint the soil? much cared goats about tainted soil, if a prickle of grass broke the ground a goat would eat it: Alum of Little Asia, keep in mind: alum? … well … hill slick and pale as a woman’s pap….

Children or folk of low degree, think they not, Kings are served first: “‘Rank has its privileges’?” but those who have had meat at a royal or ducal court know that tis not so: for one, despite the privilege of rank, one who holds a crown or coronet is held free of greed, though privilege may so entitle him, first to eat; it is high fine style to forego the privilege and let others be served before; also, though a thousand precautions are taken that no venom finds its way into the king’s dish, suppose some does? A thousand times better that someone else eat it first. A rare table is a royal one, and gazelle (or as it might be) is a fine dish, small, tender, rare in more ways than one: see a large platter of roast gazelle appear, a few men so like the king that might they be his uncles raise their eyes and look upon it with anticipation; before which one of the kinsman of the noble stirrup does the dish pause first? (I was not there, this I but heard). See, too, the king himself lift up his royal head, speak no word, make no gesture, guided merely by this look alone the servant places the platter before Himself. Who then takes but a morsel, out of ceremony, and lets the roast pass on. Eh? So?

No.

There the gazelle, that so seldom-found dish, so richly dressed and savory, there it is set and there it stays, stays settled; and the king (He of Cappadoce, I mean) eats of it, head, haunch, harslet, he crunches the brown crisp crackled skin and sucks the dainty pettitoes and the richly yielding marrow-bones. Now and then a kinsman steals a look, but that is all he is suffered to steal. Others may enjoy the smell. Only the king enjoys the meat. He leaves perhaps a drop or two of sauce, a spot or so of grease. Only a spot or so. Gazelle is too good to be greasy.

Not even the greatly-welcomed foreign guest has gotten so much as a drachm or scruple of the costly sauce, though in all other things the foreign guest (not I, you may be assured) is greatly honored. Not for a moment does the king so much as allude to the gazelle, in fact — what gazelle? the gazelle, running more swiftly even than Time, a creature living nine times the lifespan of a corby, the corby itself living nine times the lifespan of a man (so sayeth that great physician Chiron the Centaur): a gazelle: the King had consumed it in a quarter of an hour — in fact … what gazelle? And scarcely for a moment does the king fail to praise the foreign guest who has travelled hither, a most learned alchymist and natural philosopher, one who has studied the chameleon and the crocodile and knows the uses of the alembic as another man might know the uses of … well, any commonplace thing. A comb. An oil scraper in the baths.

Nor would the Cappadocian King in the length of a single meal, the entire durance of it, even once leave the table pleading (or leaving assumed) a corporal necessity during which absence let a still-fearful guest suspect the King took an antidote against a slow-acting venom: no. Far from it. See him by dulcet gesture as one who takes for granted a thing for which indulgence will be allowed; a movement of the brows and an exquisitely molded moue of the mouth, receive back the same cup before it could be quite emptied and hold the same so his favored small son might sip from it and then and not before then with lovely gratitude send the cup back and by and by, not that one would see, but one would hear the Cappadocian King and his dandelled son relieve their bladders into a traditionally golden basin held by some thrall on bended knees.

Meanwhile the Queen, wearing a robe of horrible richness, was sitting in the Queen’s place, and the King sometimes spoke to her, as protocol — not to say good manners — required. Good manners were required. Perhaps not more. She made no slightest answer nor regarded him her lord at all nor changed her face, but continued eating; the King never seemed actually to have asked her a question and hence never required an answer. The general meal may have been heavy with such items as a roast brawn with a candied quince atween its white tushes, and a broiled mutton with gilded horns (the gazelle did not count; in fact — what gazelle?), but portions of these did not appear on the Queen’s silver plate (the King’s were of gold); perhaps she found them too heavy. Principally on her plate appeared small birds: francolins, peredrix, the delicate ortolan, dove-squabs farced with grated chestnuts and pistuquim and chopped figs or jujubes; and very neatly indeed she broke their tiny bones or pulled them from their softened spines and sockets. She ate steadily, she partook copious amounts of the rich, sweet flawns with a jeweled spoon, and of pasties and of other pastries; but she had gained no flesh, the flesh had melted away from beneath her sallow skin a long time ago, and the skin hung or rested loosely, loosely, upon the skull in flaps and folds. She was very much older than the King, it was evident, and could hardly have been the Mother of the young child a sitting in his lap. But whom the King married and by marriage made his Queen and who was the Mother of his children were of clean different things. The several men at the table who so greatly resembled the King spoke (seldom) to the King, but spoke him as to one’s Father, which was curious indeed, and (seldom) to the Queen, and as to one’s Mother, which was most curious: some appeared anxious and haggard, and some resigned … and haggard: but as for age and appearance they might have been his older brothers. Or, as I have said, his uncles. Very curious.

It must not be thought that the King himself ate no dainties, and merely subsisted on meat, like a Hun; far from it. I recall it being mentioned that he was very fond of certain little cakes made of the finest sifted wheat flour, moiled in a mortar with oil of opium; also that he much liked small cheese tarts, the fillings of which were confected out of mothers’ milk, richer than that of ewes.

She wore much gold — rings almost as large as armils and armils almost as large as greaves and a coronet only slightly smaller than a crown. One might have thought her the Queen Dowager, did not the King Himself say, sometimes, something like this: “The weather has been beautiful, my wife, and I hope that you have enjoyed it much.” The Queen’s reply was to quarter a fricaseed peacock/pullet with her fingers and then to wipe her fingers on some bits of mealy bread and then to give the bits of bread to her small white doggies of the Malta breed. She seemed old, quite, quite old, this Queen; perhaps it was a marriage pro forma, a marriage for reasons of state; but, yet — One wondered, too, at the source of the gold. Had the King robbed it from the Arimaspeans or from shroffs or griffins or projected it by alchymical means in his own well-famed elaboratory or earned it by the more simple way of debasing his own currency?

At night the same small child (possibly the one named Ozymandias, who but then that King of the Cappadocians had had so many sons and they all had names, unlike those of a certain not very philoprogenitive King of Phrygia who merely gave his sons numbers), at night the same small child … not ever once out of the guest’s eyes for a moment long enough for a drop of wine to distill its way down the cup’s smooth sides — would by indulgence spend the night sleeping in the guest traveler’s tent upon a scarlet fleece after having lisped him a lullaby, perhaps the one in the Chrestomathy beginning

Though perhaps not. It would have been a rare guest not by now charmed out of all thoughts of suspicion. I would be such a rare one and would not have been there; had I ever been asked? Yes. The night would pass and the day and even it might be the month. Business would be done (one would not hurry business) and the guest would agree to sell his secret and … the King of Cappadocea after all not being able to guarantee the safety and security of guest and gear outside his own borders, see finally the guest philosopher and occymist accept a parchment of accompt scaled with several sundry seals, guaranteeing payment of … say … an hundred thousand golden solids to be paid over at the Agency of the Kingdom of Cappadocea in Mickelgarth, Byzantinope, that great city. And see (I would not see, merely I have heard) the traveler-alchemist in full good health and let him even travel a day’s march past the last of the Marches of Cappadocea and then see him well suddenly part his lips a bit puzzled and roll a bit his eyes bemused and fall silently off his horse or camel, and dead by the time he struck upon the foreign soil. And see the caravan-men, rather bored than otherwise, remove the rich gifts and the parchment of accompt and even the very clothing upon the immediately-buried body (immediately buried except for the head, of course, that being brought back to Cappadocea, for the King to look upon — once — after which it was laid upon an ant-hill until it was in such cleanly state to be set atop the Tower of Skulls; each Eastern King having his own Tower of Skulls, chiefly for the amusement and instruction of the children, but often for the instruction of others: principally that of the councillors, ministers, and wives of the aforesaid Kings of the East; and now and then their own heads … but this is already a sufficiently long digression ….)

And by the time the body of the foreign guest and occymist had slid off his mount for the last time, the King of the Very Valiant and Prosperous Kingdom of the Cappadocians and his dandeled son had taken the antidote both of them. In very vain for the guest to have thought I shall drink of every cup and eat of every dish and I shall take the most puissant antidote and thus beshrew the venom and I shall live long and richly, in vain.

For only the king of that country knew that poison (I did not know it, that is, not for certain, but I suspected that it had in its original form been sprinkled in the calyx of a flower (perhaps the simple shallow chalice of the wild white rose and the pink nectarium within) sure to be sipped of by at least one bee of the hive from which came the honey added to the wine for, not the first cup of wine, of one thereafter) and only the King of that country knew that antidote and only he knew also the necessary and essential manner of the taking it.

And here let me make mention, merely, of the kistos, a small knife, the handle of which is bound with the skin of a green viper or other poison snake, and can be used to cut venomous plants in safety.

So ergo let his manner be never so cultivated and let him discourse the poems of Pindar never so well and the science of Algibberonius and let him point out in the heaven Bootes, the cold Ox-Car, wherein shines bright Arcturus: I would have none of it, not even to be in the same country with it.

They say that King died poor, in exile and in want. But they say that he died old.

The Doge of Naples was too clumsy to be a poisoner, too simple to be a tyrant, too stupid to know one poet or one star from another; if there was a difference between the chameleon and the crocodile, he did not know it; he was even too slovenly to keep the pulp of the lemonade out of his beard. Let me, therefore, pluck it out and wipe it off as the price of living free of tyranny and poison. King Stork wears many crowns. Long live King Log!

As a further exemplum of what I have been saying (and as a sort of flourish, if you will), I went on to recite an exemplary paragraph. “Menalaus of the light-hair led them to the house, to be seated on benches and on chairs. Then he said, ‘Let water for the hands be brought in a beautiful pitcher of silver and pour it out over a bowl of gold, that the guests may wash, and spread a polished table by their side. Your Serenity,” I said, “will not have failed to notice the alchymical — the occymal — symbols: ‘Menalaus of the light-hair’ is obviously the sun with its rays, and the pitcher of silver and the bowl of gold are, equally obviously, the — ”[6]

The Doge would have failed to notice a golden scorpion with a silver sting unless it had stung him in a very private part; I was speaking over his head. Not either to any of the courtiers was I speaking, for though they were slyer they were not wiser. Among the guards lined up was one not at all a full-time guardsman, he was an armorer, frequently hauled up by the Camerlengo because he made such a good appearance with his strong body and his full black beard, when he would have much rather been working at the whetstone and the forge. I meant to fetch his attention, pique his interest, stimulate his understanding of the fact that a mage was not a mere magician. And when, as he some day must, he determined to leave the ducal service, it was my intention to engage him in my own; his hands made very neat repairs, I’d noticed. And his weapons’ edges were, among all, most keen. Tynus, his name was.

The Doge’s attention, as usual, was slow. He was always at least a bit behind. “The work who?” he demanded.

“I am obliged to you for your patience with me, Doge. — A learned Greek.”

He had asked me a question about occymy. He had gotten an answer.

And had had his beard wiped too. His noble court, as corrupt as all, or anyway almost all noble courts, sat about scarcely listening, idly picking at the pig and poultry bones which had already been well-picked. The Doge kept open table. Now and then the courtiers turned their backs or raised their hands to sneer. Nothing would make them change their feculent ways, which could only be modified if now and then one of them had his nose broken or his ribs cracked or his throat-box bruised, or was turned into a toad or made to vanish, reappearing under a far-distant sky where the Dog-Star rose at dawn and foul animals were not confined to the arena because, for one thing, there was no arena there, and, for another, foul animals were there at large, wild and not confined; sometimes such people were returned to tell the tale. Then, for a while, landmarks were respected, peasants did not lose their farms to enclosers, and bribes were only moderate and pro forma. Therefore they turned their backs or their faces away before they presumed sneer.

A Greek, a Greek, a learned Greek! Duke Tauro knew where he was not (not where alchymical secrets were learned by murder instead of by experiment and by patient labor). Alpha from Delta he scarcely knew, Gamma from Digamma why certes he did not know; he knew oranges from lemons — at least in the form of juice — he knew tolerable from intolerable corruption — and he knew that Greeks were learned. Why, let him ask the very slave who washed his feet, “Ah, what say the frogs in that show-chorus, slave, what?” — hear the slave at once answer, do you hear? at once! answer, “Brekekekex koax koax, ‘Your Serenity.’ ” Now, there was learning!

“Then make me gold, Body of Bacchus!” shouted Doge Tauro, why was this withheld from him? Meherc, magno, hornero, caca pudenda! “Make” A slight, a mysterious thought came unformed to him: “Eh?”

“Ah, Doge. Your Serenity is right to say, eh? The Doge has put the ducal finger upon it. For one thing, do we have the complete Work? The scrolls or codex look complete, but they may have been confected from scraps … scraps and wreckage collected in the wake of the wars which have ravaged Greece and the Grecian lands in all the centuries since ancient times … So that is one problem. And another problem is, in regard to this great Work, although the gist of the text is obvious, as for ensample, the well-wrought vessels and the shining gold, perhaps properly a chapter-heading — but what does it precisely mean?

“You see … Doge….”

The Doge did not perhaps entirely see. He saw, where he had hoped to see a heap of gold solidi or a pile of glittering golden ducats, he saw Vergil. Called “Magus.” Only Vergil he saw.

He saw me.

“All mage men are mad!” exclaimed the Doge. Then he saw his mage man slightly open the right hand, saw a sparkle, saw the hand come up, come out, extend, open wide. Something there upon the palm: a very small imago of Doge Tauro himself upon his well-known huge horse Troyano, or, rather, on that horse’s imago. It was well-wrought. Was it not well-wrought?

And was it not wrought of gold?

I passed it to him.

He held it up between first finger and thumb. All (all there a-nigh him, that is) might see it. And all did. And a slight stir there was amongst them all, by one, by that particular one, whom all knew would have the golden Duke upon the golden horse, and all moved aside so that the Duke, Dux, the Doge, might let have: he did not move. Only his eyes moved and they moved towards me. They moved again to me.

I made some movements of my own. I moved my mouth. Somewhat sad, my mouth. Not quite absolutely sad, my mouth. Not quite smiling, my mouth. I moved my hand. Hapless, my hand? Empty, my hand. The courtiers murmured. The courtiers moved … a bit … about. And beneath the table and upon the floor, amongst the scraps and spittles and phlegms and bones, the mastives rooted in the reeds and rushes; the servants had not, to be sure, swept out the old such, but had lately added some new: wormwood, its fresh and bitter odor somewhat concealing the ill smell of the others; and amongst all this the mastives rooted and rottled and made all men fear them with their small sharp teeth — all men (including me) save Doge Tauro, that is, who now and then pounded them upon the head and under the chin with his shaggy fists, then see them fawn and grovel.

The Doge was not altogether happy (the Doge was not absolutely unhappy either; the Doge now had a golden horse, and a golden Doge), but the Doge was not the least puzzled. The Doge apprehended perfectly that — for now, at least — there was no more gold.

He turned at once (for him: at once) to move a previous question. “What name this great Work, who? book who?”

The courtiers rustled and fidgeted, of all things they were not accustomed to hear their duke speak of books; they never spoke of them. Sooner they would speak of the chameleon and the crocodile … but not much sooner. “Ah, that is very curious, Duke,” I said, wondering how much longer this charade must last. I had something in the athenor … almost always I had something in the athenor … “Its name is the same as the oath. Magno Homero. Just so. Great Homer is the name of the mysterious book on occymy. One does not know why.” If I had told him that the name if the mysterious book was Caca Pudenda, he would not have been any more bemused. He would certainly have believed. “Yes,” I said. “Consider, for example, the verse,” I could see that Tynus was listening, “the verse, And Ulysses brought all the treasure thither.” The Bull was wearing a robe of deepest red, and it made his always ruddy face more rufous yet; perhaps, too, the mention of treasure raised a flush. Tauro was not especially greedy as these things go, but he had great expenses — how they robbed him! — “And Ulysses brought all the treasure thither. The gold and the stubborn bronze and the finely-woven raiment. May raiment, for example, mean the woven filter-cloth? that the bronze be used as a flux for the projection into gold? or that the bronze itself is to be projected into gold? and is stubborn in reduction? But here is the difficulty, that bronze is not all that stubborn in reduction.” Tynus, I saw, standing tall and attent with his halberd, Tynus slightly nodded. “By the way, Dux, they say that Ulysses was the founder of Olisboa, in the land of the Lusitaynes, where, where, tis said, the wild mares oft conceive by the west wind: such colts do not live long, so one hears —”

“And neither doth the wind that gets ‘em,” growled the Duke. This was not merely promising, this was astounding; had the Doge caught a wit, as one may catch an ague? Thus encouraged, I continued. “Another text from the Magno Homero, mi Lord: For a month only I remained, taking joy in my children, my wedded wife, and my wealth — does this mean that the Great Work took but a month? No modern philosophers would consider so short a time possible; Magno Homero gives us much to ponder. — and then to Ægypt did my spirit bid me voyage. The ‘voyage’ of course is the journey into the elaboratory where all works of philosophy and occymy take place; Ægypt, by Ægypt is meant Great Ægypt, another name for the elaboratory: the regressus ad utero, this journey. — when I had fitted out my ships, we may be sure that by ships is meant not mere sea-vessels, but vessels for alchymy; fitted out, baked new clay pipes for the alembic, perhaps — this teaches us not to use twice-used pipes, do you see — Nine ships I fitted out, this may well mean nine vapor-baths, vulgarly called ‘Double-boilers,’ such as those devised by Mary of Ægypt, she who also made a Major Speculum … fitted out, and the host gathered speedily.”

I had him, I could tell that I had him, not the Doge, no: Tynus. He had forgotten even to pretend that he was not intent on what I was saying. “Now, Dux,” I went on, “ ‘the host,’ is that not perhaps the Philosophers’ Stone? The image of the gold ‘gathering’ in the upper section of the bath like butter gathering in the churn is an infinitely intriguing one, of course all alchymical images are intriguing, but that of course hardly means that they are all true.” I sighed.

All the while I had been giving this succinct exegesis of the mysterious text, just as the interest of the metal-worker Tynus had increased, so the light of wit had been dying out of the Doge’s eyes, being replaced by a sort of glaze. He plucked at his red, red robe.

“Mad,” muttered the Doge. “All mages? Mad.”

But the Doge did not sound quite utterly convinced of this. He turned his head a bit, and gazed at me out of the corners of his eyes.

And the secrets of that Eastern King of Cappadoce? One does not know. They must have been of much worth. His knowledge of alchymy was fabulous. Yet he died poor. He died in exile and he died poor. He died old, too. Very old, violently, by murder. So one hears.

VIII

The Teeth of the Oliphaunt

Later, in the deeps of that night, he heard that sound which was the sound … along with the lionel’s roar … preeminently the sound of Africa: the voice of an oliphaunt, baying on the beach. — the beach? surely he had not become entirely disoriented in the darkness? (the lamp had quite expired and not even a glowing coal marked where it had burned, supported on the tripod of three ithyphallic satyrs) … and, surely, the beach — where still lay the ship, its sides now scraped and caulked and painted, still slowly being laded full of dried dates which would grow dryer yet before ever they reached their final market (and who knew where or when that would be); dates and salts, and jars of some strange oils, and more: he knew not what more: surely the beach did not lie in the direction whence came that great sound of baying and that clash of tushes? No. It did not; he was able to orient himself by something as simple as the head of the bed; the sound grew louder. What ailed the beast? for this was no mere adventitious cry of warning or of menace; perhaps the beast was in rut … perhaps it was in pain …

Sound of anguished (he soon decided) baying, cries of alarm from the awakening household, sight of torches and of the smoke of torches and of little flecks of fire floating off the torches: hastily Vergil donned a garment and a pair of sandals, and gat him down to the scene.

Heard, as he went, Huldah’s voice. Also anguished.

Huldah was no cossetted nor dandled woman-child, feeding pulse or poppy-seed out of her palm to the pea-hens; Huldah would smite the wild sow and her sounder, did they come to root in the plantings so carefully planted. “You have your mast in the woods!” would she say as she smote them; “Get hence!” Thee and me, the wild sow and her speckled weans would slay and eat: from Huldah they turned with a snuffle and a squeal or two. And they got them hence.

“Very well,” said she, breaking into the silence which she had maintained throughout his telling of his tale; “I asked, You answered. Now I know of at least one king and occymy … But a thing you forgot to say. In the matter of his, whatever-it-was, buried deep in the steadily fermenting flameless fire and heat of the dung-heaps of his midden …”

“Yes?” he asked.

“Was he fond of cheese?”

He scanned her face for any sign of laughter; none was there: but then he scanned her eyes. “The Court will sentence you to six taps with a wet bullrush if—”

Again she begged mercy from the court: what patience, what relish of strange things and odd, what had those agate eyes seen? not but yesterday she had told him of having sailed round the farthest shores of Lybya (so far away that scarce the name of Africa still clung to it) in the farthest south[7], until one day the sun rose from a quite contrary corner of the sky. When he, after a moment of astonishment, “Then you have made the circumnavigation as Hanno of Carthage, and the Herodotus has been wrong to doubt it!” And she: “Yes.” No more. “Yes.”

Rather, he felt himself like some pedagogue, stuffy lecturer in the furred and hooded academic gown, droning on at great length about the need to refresh that heat-producing dung-heap with new-made dung: as though she had never observed such things for herself, as though there were no dung-heaps in the lands along and behind her coasts: as though, in fact, the milk served them twice and thrice daily had been milked from trees.

He hasted to the conclusion of his discourse — already, he feared, over-long delayed. The occymist was obliged, eventually, by necessity to teach his apprentice to follow his the master’s secret notes … but so very often the master could not bring himself to disclose his greatest secrets: and in such a case (it was the very common case) he taught him to read a special and simpler cypher in which the most simple notes disclosed only the most simple knowledge: boil this, thrice … let this cool … for such and such a space of time … place such and such a substance in the pelican and add such and such an amount of water … or whatever the liquid medium was …

And so on.

In which case, should the apprentice take it into his mind to run off to another occymist, he had not taken with him the knowledge the most valuable.

Very often, of course, the apprentice, made sullen by the fairly useless passing of the years and himself so very insufficiently instructed, did run off. And very often he ran off to yet another occymist (where else?) whose long-time apprentice had also run off … and for the same reason. Ignorance was thus exchanged. Imagine a twain conversations about that time.

“What is this?”

“Master. An Alembic.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Master. Whatever I am told to.”

A sound as of steam. “No….” the word fool unspoken, but hanging in the air; “No … what had he have you do with it?”

The man searching his mind and keeping wise his face. “Well … Master …”

And, at more or less the same time. “Tell me,” a wave of a hand much-stained with the acids of the elaboratory; “tell me what you recognize?”

“Master. — This is an athanor. And this … I had not seen before. It does look like a threble pelican.”

Master purses his lips, neither very favorably nor very unfavorably impressed. “At least you can adduce from minor to major. Well. And this?”

Time for a quick change of subject. While the new applicant searched his memory. “Master. I did see the Peacock in the Vase of Hermes —”

A look of pleasure, at once quelled. “Did, eh? Tell me about it.”

Time for frankness. “ ‘Tell’? I can tell nought. But, if I am allowed colors and a surface to limn upon, I could show you, my ser.”

“The colors are over here. And here is clean papyrus and a brush. So —”

Time for further frankness. “What terms does the master propose?”

See anger play with caution on the master’s face.

Time enough to divulge … later … that the new candidate had seen it … once … the day that he arrived.

Ignorance not merely exchanged, but compounded.

And did not many and many an adept die leaving many and many a privy greatbook behind, which no one was ever able to decipher? Many. And many.

“Here is a half a gold paleologue for thee. I made it —,” he said, with a look of sudden cunning upon his face which would not have long deceived the idiot boy who sloped about the streets and with a scoop dog-pure for the tanners; “myself. But have chosen to cast it in a mold, so. It does not pay to leave unminted gold around. Did he ever … project?”

“Oh, thank you, master! Well … master …”

Ah, the elaborations of Naples! There were those so dim and mirk that the invention of a new lamp would perhaps have been of more service than that of a new metal, cellars like crypts, not cleaned since the lustrations of the year that Junius Plato was emperor, lit chiefly by the glow of the small furnace; large and bright and airy rooms with fresh plaister fresh painted a creamy yellow, so different from the others where the gypsum fell off in flakes all grimed from the dirt of all the long dirty years … elaboratories whose masters were indeed haggard and gant with feverish eyes sunken from sickening hopes, still intent every minute with expectation that this time the pot would indeed be pregnant with a glory like a new-coined sun … elaboratories where the master briskly worked on stinking caustics designed to wash wool clean so as to weave well: — actually places where pentangles were enscribed on floors rough-swept for the purpose … and little enough that did to the purpose … the purpose being to project, an intention much the same as to transmute, the step just before the step transmuted … masters of an age to be still hearty and hail and in good thrift, but swaying and sick from the inhalations of the sophic sulphur and the sophic mercury intended to liberate gold from (as they thought) the frowsy atoms which concealed it …

“And you, madam,” he said, without preamble, “how did you know that I would be coming, that you called me by name? Names?”

“Oh,” she said, “Huldah told me.”

He thought she had not understood, and disdained to press the matter. But it was not she who had misunderstood. Therefore changed he the subject; “Keep you always the estuary of your river veiled, and indeed all your coast?”

“By no means. Only against those undesired. Sometimes even from Babylone people come,” what a great ellision! were none desired from less far away than Babylone? “— come, have come, and some came lately. And we trade. The speech of Babylone is near to the Punic speech in substance and in essence; have you seen how they keep records?” She took down a few small wooden boxes from a shelf and opened them, one by one. In each was something wrapped in scarlet tow, a slab of sun-baked mud with very odd markings incised upon them. He had seen such things before, but he did not tell her so. At least not directly. “This one is from Charyx Spasini,” she said, scanning the tag.

“… ‘of the long water walls?”

“That very same. And this is from Dura-Europos … or is it Duros-Europa?”

“Let us look and see.”

“Oh no. They don’t use the Latin or Greek names, though they must all know them; for that matter, really, they all know Latin or Greek. Latin and Greek. But there you are — clerks! clerks! — always maintaining their mysteries; o pópoi — phu upon them — and this one is from Babylone itself. Think of that.”

And he, pretending ignorance there on the sort of collonade, a roof set up on posts outside her house (for she did not seem to feel the need of any house-as-fortress … in fact there were no walls around the settlement), pretending ignorance he said, “But I thought Babylone had been destroyed.”

She gave him a swift and quizzical look. “Babylone Destroyed is like Thrice-Vanquished Carthage, it is always being vanquished and destroyed. But they are on the main routes, just where one needs a city to be, so a while afterwards they are builded up again, a mile from where they were before. And some Imperial Decree says the new city is to be called Philadelphia Paradoxica or Theopompa Abbadabba. Scythia Pelloponesia. But inside of a week everybody is calling them ‘Babylone’ or ‘Carthage’ all over again. And then the parchments have it, oh Hippodupos Hippodupolis, also called Smerg, something like that, I’m sure you’ve seen it a hundred times,” and gave him the same look.

“You are very cynical,” he said. She made a small defiant mock pout. He kissed her. She embraced him, pressing close. “Ah, that’s what I like,” he said, by and by: “none of those false embraces which a woman initiates with her arms spread wide and then she switches her head the other way until almost you fear it will fall off: and thus she gives you the air behind her ear to kiss; why do they bother?”

“Pretense,” she said. “The silly game. And you are supposed not to notice and kiss the air behind her ear with a great big smack —”

He nodded. “And one wonders if one smells that rank, and later learns that she has been equitating her mule-groom, who could not in any way smell less rank —”

“— but there’s no pretense here.”

“No.” He could not help but see the dust-motes dancing slowly in a shaft of that marvelous sparkling sunshine; “No … Not here … And won’t you come with me, then, Huldah, and we two can show the world — and even more: ourselves — how to live without pretense, and the silly game?”

She looked at him, he felt the quickening sorrow that she did not at all look like saying yes: but there was no pretense there, there in those agate eyes. “You wouldn’t be content to live long here,” she said, “and I wouldn’t be content to live away from here, and from Five-Limbed Uluvendas. Do you know why I am named Huldah? Oh, not just that matter of the genet and the weasel and the cat — it’s because that is the name of here. This place is called Huldah and I am this place and it’s not possible for me to forsake it.”

“But, you see …”

“I don’t see …”

“… you know …”

“I don’t know …”

He held her in his arms. “I am half-mad to stay here with you and I am half-mad to turn, and return to Naples and all my work, my works, damn all kings, back there … always centered there. Half, I cannot leave, and half, I cannot stay. What am I to do, Huldah?”

She retreated just a bit from him, perhaps a slightly deeper flush or blush, a slightly higher color in her cheeks; so well-looking, that touch of deep rose in that face, darker than sallow. “Why … you must leave in a short while, while you still have a ship going the way which you must go. And then you must see to your work … your works … And then, if you will, you will return. And then,” she paused, “and then we shall have our own Mute Trade … our own Silent Commerce and exchange.” She referred, he knew, to that most ancient way of business, sometimes called the Dumb or Mute Trade, or the Silent Commerce, a form devised long and long ago as a compromise between the desire for trade and the mutual trepidations of those trading: in this system, the merchants from over the sea would come to a place suitable for landing and in a place where they knew there were peoples who had something to sell and wanted to buy but who desired not the proximity usually attendant on buying or selling. One man of the ship would row ashore in a skiff and set forth an old piece of sail on the sand and on it place articles such as scarlet-weave, glass vessels, iron knives and arrow-heads: whatever. And then row back out to the ship and wait. Presently to the beach would come the people of the land, survey the merchandise, and leave raw gold or elephant or gemstones — what they had to offer to the amount they thought right — and retreat into the forest. Presently the shipman would land again, take up the goods if satisfied, and depart. Sometimes several trips were needed before the satisfaction of both parties was achieved. Of course there was the possibility of theft, cheats, murders: but in such cases no further trade was conducted on such beaches. (Interlopers unaware of this tended to lose their goods and their lives fairly swiftly).

“Each of us shall set down what each has to offer,” said Huldah. “And then we shall part again. And we shall consider, you and I, if each accounts the other’s offer worth the full value of what the other wants.

“And then … we shall see. Shan’t we. You will have supposed,” she said “that other men have been here and have asked, ‘Let me stay here, Huldah,’ and I have sent them all away, some with a pleasant word and a present; and some with such sayings as, ‘First fetch me what lies upon the Golden Table of Apollo in the South — would you wish to know what lies there? then you must go forth, venture, and seek; I don’t urge it’ — or some like words, largely worthless: why rob Apollo, never has Apollo robbed me, and perhaps risk a dragonvisit, or a plague or mice? And to some, some very, very few, who have said, ‘Come with me away, thou Huldah,’ to them I have said what I have said to you, just now.” Only a breath she tarried, then asked the question which troubled and trembled in his heart: “How many have returned, of either sort? Oh, none have returned. Not one. Not even a single, single one.”

He parted from her, then walked across the scented floor of scented wood, to the end of the room, that long room; then he walked back. He stood before her again, but they did not then embrace again. “I see it must be so,” he said. “You are not a woman who says no merely in order that I should try persuade her to say yes. And so, surely not as a consideration of commerce, but just as a gift from me to thee,” from his pouch he took the patch of golden fleece and from it he took the two rings of orichalcum in their incredible juxtaposition; saying further, “This is neither the Riddle of the Sphynx nor yet the Gordian knot.”

“Yet a rare thing, of great value,” she said. “I felt … something … not describable … when you placed it in my hand. I am not necessarily expected to solve this matter. But it abides with me as a thing of memory of you, not that I should forget, but this is a memory which I can touch. Well. You will go. And now I tell you what I have told no other. I shall, after a reasonable while plus a, shall we say, even an unreasonable while, expect your coming. Your return. I shall arrange for the Veil of Isis to lift, upon your approach. Make a plan, a sketch, a map and notes, of this place — a periplus, call it. Or a chart. Not forgetting the headland. And on that headland, when the moon is dark, if I sense your approach, I shall light a fire for you to see—”

“Ah, I wish it were the Pharos of Alexandria!”

“— it is not. — a fire for you to see, and by which to guide you.” She fell silent, contemplating, brow pressed down, lips uttering soft thought he could not hear; then her face opened and she smiled on him. “And in case, by reason of cloud or rain, over which my skill is limited — it is easier, if not easy, to make rain than to make rain cease — you might not see the fire, or should the winds bring you too far out of sight as you pass by this fire, I shall kindle it and fuel it with scented wood alone: calamus and quinnamon and citron-wood and of the roots of nard and of the twigs of thyme, of juniper, cedar, and of such sundry others as, of yet, I do not know.

“So even though you might not see the guiding fire, yet you shall know that it be there, I shall send a wind of far fetch so that the air and breeze shall bring you scented notice of me, for I am Huldah, and I am the headland and the winding river and the sheltering port as well.” (And all the while as, later, he was bound away, he saw her in the sheltering port’s placid wavelets and in the undulations of the winding river and in the cliffs and crannies of the headlands: and even, her face burned upon the waters of the open sea for many leagues and many.) Yet another moment she hesitated, and then she said, without change of countenance or voice, “And don’t fear, thou Messer Vergil, that however long thou tarriest, if even past time that I have ceased to wait daily for thy coming, that ever I shall make that fire a funeral fire —”

“Absit omen!” and thrice he spet upon that perfumed floor and thrice he rapped his knuckle-bones upon the wooden pillar he stood next to, so that the dryad which had dwelt within the tree, and might dwell there still, should hearken and prevent any possibility of coming true the words which the woman had said should not come true: she had had the thought: therein a danger. And Absit omen, he said, yet once again.

He met her eyes, those agate-colored eyes, in which he had seen the gleamings and the glisterings of far-off fires in nights by far-distant shores and in distant lands of interior. “I, more worth than that,” she said.

“Ah, Huldah—”

“For I am, after all, Huldah of Huldah. And I am far more worth than that.” She stopped and stooped and picked up her little cat-creature, which he had not seen nor heard enter the room. It made a sound to her, and she held it close her face, and the two faces looked upon him. A slight and aimless question he now asked of her, as one will do, to break silence. “What is biss’s name?” he asked.

And, in an odd, and yet it appeared and seemed an appropriate, tone, the question was answered him. “My name is Huldah,” said the creature.

Long he stayed there, and now and then he rose and paced, up and down, up and down that fragrant perfumed floor made of a wood whose name he had somehow never yet asked; fragrance he had never known before but which he knew he would never forget and would recognize were he ever to scent it again, even on the phoenix pyre, did the Fates yield him even that; and then he stood there long again, till the very fire upon the hearth burned down and he saw the embers dying, dying, and it seemed to him that he saw the dying embers of Carthage, Troy and Babylone, and it seemed to him that he saw them reflected in two pairs of eyes, and long he stayed there, then, again.

When he heard sounds of footfalls upon the path he did not, really, rouse himself. But out of his reverie he asked. “What thing, and who?”

It seemed the man’s voice was full of much relief. “The boat, Ser Vergil. She’s full, and fit, and ready now to sail upon the morning’s tide;” the early mornings tide that meant. He had known, been knowing, that this must very soon come, but had put the knowing away from him: could do so no more. Huldah had gone, and the knowledge of his own going had now come.

“Go, then,” said Vergil. “I follow.” Follow, then, he did, when he had quickly dressed. He did not attempt to seek out Huldah again. But all the walk to the harbor and the small ship, all along as he walked, he felt himself accompanied by someone, a someone who kept out of sight. A light-limbed and a body light of weight.

Whence, then, Huldah? How came she here? Was she named for the place, or the place for her? Was there a woman named Roma in the village midst the marsh of Tiber ere Romulus butted his downy, unclosed head to force yet further milk from the she-vulp’s yielding paps? or not? Useless to ask; the Sybil at Cumae may have noted it in her books of leaves, but … the Sybil, where was she? and your mothers, do they live forever? Who Huldah’s parents were and where they had come from, these things he knew: but as to why they had left the tideless Inland Sea to settle here upon the Coasts of Ocean, this she had not told him. How did she live? She had of course her farms and fruit trees, her hares and poultry, including those harsh-voiced speckled fowl which seemed to live as much in the trees as on the ground, and of course her doves and dovecots, whence the so small eggs on which she sometimes breakfasted. Her milch-goats … And she traded. Others along that shore were obliged to use the “mute” or “dumb” or “silent” trade, but she, being trusted, not; Sometimes ships came from as far-off as Babylone: none, though, whilst he had tarried there. “Gold and grain, I buy. Local grain I sometimes buy, if there be abundance and surfeit of it,” she had said. “If there is surplus, there, away, and the grainbins cannot hold it all, they bring it hither, and I buy. Though, when I foresee drought or a bad crop coming, or when I reck a year of the locusts coming, then I send my word abroad, and grain I buy from over-the-seas; and I provide it to my people here and I sell it to those who come from the Interiors, and from far along the coasts…. far away far … as far as from the borders of those eat no grain, but only the wild fruit flesh of the forests do they eat.”

And, “Gems? Gold? Gem comes not in abundantly, but it comes and I take of it. Perfect stones, only: nothing flawed. Gold? The people of this land and of the lands behind and past the lands behind, though fairly steadily they come to sell me gold, they never come to buy it. They have their own sources, far away far, I see … others may see it too, I suppose … but so far ….” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“And elephant?” he had asked. Such a look fled swiftly along her face. “Five-limbed Uluvendas, though long he lives, though long he lives, does not live forever.” Why not buy and sell the obviously very old elephant? — “Uluvendas?” he asked. — “Five-limbed Uluvendas,” she answered.

For a moment he paused; then, “The oliphaunt!” he exclaimed. She did not at once reply, but he saw that he was correct. (Later, when he had the time to consult the Olden Books, he realized that according to the Law of Letters, as laid down by the Punes, who had invented letters, from uluvend to oliphaunt was no great change: and that the original word had passed from the Hethits of northern Asia Minore to the Greeks of western Asia Minore: the very thought of there having been oliphaunts in that continent struck him with great force as a most antic notion: yet there it was: and was it any more antic than the fact that there had not alone been lionels in Asia Minore but lionels in Greece as well? and yet now behold: in Africa, whence always something new, today: oliphaunts and lionels alike … and cockodrills as well: and in India: lionels, oliphaunts and cockodrills. It beseemed him, then, that there was even more of a unitas in the universe than ever he had thought before.)

She went on, “So some have asked, Why not sell the obviously very old elephant? surely you must know the dying place, that race thereof, and might have it gathered and sell it, no fear that your precious ones have been slaughtered for their teeth? — but he may have been so slain,” she said, “by those who thought to sell the teeth long time later … But I do not allow Five-limbed Uluvendas to be slain on my shores and slopes, nor into the Interior … as far as my word may reach … and it reaches far … far away far. But — always — always — there are those who wish to slay Uluvendas; for his flesh, yes, but they don’t come from far away far to murder him for his flesh alone: for his teeth, his teeth of elephant, they come to murder him from far away far.” The certain look, such as came into her face when she spoke of Five-limbed Uluvendas, lingered long, but even long must leave after even length of time.

And a voice, as though echoing, if not from a thousand caverns forth, yet echoing, echoing, he could not remember whence, nor from whom, nor whose the voice; She does not allow the teeth … teeth … teeth …

And was if for this reason that she, Huldah, desired to remain there, there, in the Region called Huldah? whence, though by many parted ways, one reached, eventually, the long road to the Pass of Gold?

Likely he would never know.

Towards the port, all along he walked, in the entering of the day, he felt himself accompanied by someone, a someone who kept out of sight A light-limbed, and a body light of weight.

It was Huldah for sure.

But which Huldah he did not know.

IX

The Scarlet Fig

Sea monsters lay rotting on the beach in shoals, where had he read that? in The Strabo, perhaps. It seemed as true now as ever. At some sound of distress, as Vergil muffled up his face (not his whole face, only that part of it below the bridge of his nose: the lower face, which the Masked Men called the thag — a part of the body which had no name among all the other people of the world), the helmsman said, “Yea, they do stink intensely bad, but I rather smell they on the beach, and they dead, than fear they, saunce smell, in the water, and they alive.”

“From what cause are they dead, helmsman?”

“That I dunno, Messer, ‘t’s a rare sight, but un sees it now and then — by Here and Merc!” and he pushed hard at the helm.

Vergil heard, or perhaps only felt, the ship shiver as it nudged a shoal; it hung for a moment, then swung loose and free. Said the seaman, “There did not use to be so many shallows … and sometimes you gets into a false channel which it’s so choked with weeds and hardly you may go through … navigation, now, that’s harder than it was, ‘longside these shores … ‘less we goes out so deep, to deep, deep sea. We do fear the deeps, and we fear the Punic sea-fleets more.”

“They say it was the Punes who first invented navigation —”

“They say. And some of them wants, beseemingly, to keep a monopole upon it.”

Vergil gave a soft sigh, and said no more. Much had he heard this voyage on the subject: Carthage had relinquished this and that: Carthage had been destroyed: and even so and even now, some New Carthage savagely still harried and pursued ships of other provenance if this could be done outside the explicit area of the Empery. And … sometimes even if it could not.

And Vergil, remembering that rage which he had seen upon that Punic face in Tingitana (and what had become of that sad, sick, hopelessly hopeful man who was called “Jugurthas VI, Titular King of Tingitana”? whom Vergil had so long ago encountered? — he did not know, and though it would be an aggrandizement of the fact to say he did not care, it would not be much of one), Vergil, recollecting what he considered the holy rage of the man who was, after all, not merely One Hemdibal, a merchant and a shroff: a Pune, but actually … or actually called … Josaias, King of Carthage! wherever Carthage now actually was: Vergil could hardly wonder that the shipmen, mere maggots though the Carthagans might consider them, shivered as they spoke of it.

… much loved by Juno, ancient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold …

It would take indeed much purple, worth its weight in gold though it was, and much, much gold, for any newer Carthage to attempt once again, after three resounding defeats and one sky-shattering destruction, to contend with Rome.

Which by no means guaranteed that this could not be once again assayed.

The ship sailed on, onward sailed the ship, sometimes it did not sail, but then see the seamen up and out with their oars; on they went. They went on. One day they raised an island he, by cert, had never seen before: out of the faint pink flushes of dawn that streaked the sky whose stars were well-nigh pallid where they lingered still at all, an island raised itself watch by watch out of the sea; mountains for surely he could discern. And at least one thin line of smoke anent the shore, so one for sure blower of fire there must be upon or by that shore, whether almost he bent himself into the fire to blow with his naked breath or whether merely he leaned over to it and blowed with a hollow tube which might be any length. Watch by watch and a half, the island showed itself to be two islands. The blue outlines became green. Mountains on the one island still half-hidden in a mist, crags upon the other island and their outlines clearer by each straining stroke of oar. And a most, then, curious thing: the line of smoke stopped, then it began again, then it was estopped again, and then at last it rose and rose upon the sleepy air.

Vergil asked aloud the question traditional to be asked of passenger to pilot, much as What thing? was asked of pilot unto pilot, were they near enough for that; Vergil asked, as he had asked a muckle times before, “What coast? What shore of people?” The pilot moved to speak to him, and turned a bit his head; the pilot turned his head again, and to him did not speak. But someone else did speak, as near as the curl of hair above his ear-hole.

“It is an outpost, or a settlement, as one might say, of the Guaramanty folk,” the shipper said, and he eyed him in his eye, so closely that Vergil might see the little man within that eye. And smell the dates, and even more, the onions, which the man had eaten and which the languid airs had not wafted away with any waft of wind. The line of smoke still rose up, straight up.

“ ‘The Guaramanty folk,’ ” Vergil repeated. “ ‘The Guaramanty folk?’ Why, that folk surely dwell a yond the desert and a yond a river of the interior in which the Herodote does relate the cockodrills copulate and crawl, the lump-lizards they are more common called; and their stunky excrements be valued much for that they fix well such perfumery as might otherwise evaporate and pass, such as your nard, radix, or that root by eminence —” and here he ceased this line of speech, for he felt that he might else in another moment gin to fall into a sing-song utterance of one who has read little but read it much, whatever the it of it, and loves to speak of it aloud. “However came the Guaramanty folk to dwell upon islands in the wide great stream of Ocean?”

The shipper of that shabby ship (and yet no dauncier vessel showed itself, nor had he seen any such for long and long) still fixed him with his eye and even bathed him in his unsweet breath. “Why, me lord ser, to be sure that great dog-holding people do indeed mostly dwell where me lord ser does wisely say; this is merely a settlement of some. And as to why they sojourne here so far from their natterai and natal home, why, leave we a go ashore and your lordshift mought ask of them whiles the rest of us do fill the barrels and the great jars a-full of frish water.”

Surely it was to see new peoples and strange peoples and stranger sights and seeings that Vergil had chose to linger on this ship and not taken his congée and waited in Tingitayne for a next vessel to return Romewards or even by reason of luck, to Naples itself: after he had assured himself that no search was being made for him, no writ of seizure ran for that passing, flashing moment of the Virgin Vestal. So he did not bother to remind the master of the craft of what Huldah had once, and he had heard her, had once assured the shipmen that the water of a certain spring she pointed out (the silvery bangles or armils tinkling on her slender wrists) would never spoil nor taint nor breed no vermin howso long it might tarry in the containers (her slender wrists, her slender hands and fingers on his flesh: enough!).

And then they were upon the beach, and some crowd of people stood a bit apart, not frightened, no, but perhaps shy. And one other man stepped forward and he and the shipper clasped each others’ hands and for a moment it seemed their fingers made motions one or more upon the others; then Vergil looked about him: a sweet shore, with leaning trees, a gentle coast of gentle people; they did laugh gentle laughter when he spoke to them in Latin, then they came closer and of their own motion, and the language which they spoke was soft and they spoke it slowly and they smiled. He did not of course know the lingua of the Guaramanty and so he did not know if this was it at all.

“Where are you going?” he called to the crewmen. “We have only just come ashore,” for they were wading out to their vessel, which they had not deigned to beach.

“Let your heart be easy, ser and lord,” the captain called. “This poor fellow hath been a cast away here some long time while, so long the while that he has not eaten bread nor ought of his familiar diet,” as he spoke he turned his head and spoke over his shoulder and kept on wading into the deepening shallow. “So soon as we have victualed him and give him fresh clouts to wear upon his carc and as the poet says, ‘Wine to make his face shine,’ we do return with goods for trade.” He scuttled up the side of the craft after his crewmen, calling loud, “Fear the folk not, taste their quaint grub and drink their liquid fruit, we’ll not be half a smallish sand-glass.” He shouted a word, merely a syllable, towards the shore, Vergil knew it not, clearly the islanders knew it well; at once, almost, one of them offered a vessel with a tempting liquor within, repeating what seemed the same word the shipman called.

Vergil sniffed it; it was very fragrant. He sipped of it; it was quite delicious; without further delay he drained it down, without further thought he held the vessel out, noting only that it was old: where the handle had been was rubbed quite smooth with use: but it was clean. With a happy murmur the people filled it from a larger jug; no doubt —

He left the thought forgotten, and he drank again. Again, the slow and simple laughter of the locals. They were naked, and they were not ashamed. He paused, the cup at his lip. “Guaramanties?” They chuckled and they said something; it was not quite the same word, but it seemed similar. Was their name simel, but not the same? Did they imitate him, not with total success? They touched him, they rubbed his skin, they ran their fingers through his hair, they touched his virile member as it had been, say, his nose … all: very, very, gently. Gently they pulled at him, gently they pushed at him, gently they drew him to where a larger number of them reclined between the sunlight and the shade. And here the same slow, soft, smiling scene was repeated.

The sunlight had wandered quite a ways away and the shade had gone all long when Vergil, seeing of a sudden through a gap atween the trees the ship far off under sail, chuckled aloud. “Well they have diddled me!” he said. “They recognized by the semaphores of the smoke that they had a fellow-member of some league and coven here ashore, and, as twas clear to them at once, as tis clear to me now, there would not fit in comfort or perhaps in supplies yet another man aboard the ship, they simply set me on this shore and took him aboard instead. Well done, was well and clever done!” and here he laughed until the tears, swam down into his beard.

And all the islanders laughed with him. It was not likely that they understood at all why he was a-laugh, but they were all quick to merriment anyway; in a moment they had turned away from him and gan a languid game of tossing some golden fruit from one to another, and this amused him quite as much as had the contemplation of the trickery. “And now it is my own turn to wait until some ship of men from that world of sweat and sorrow, wars and woes, may find me here. And if this be not so swift, well, well enough.” Here he made gestures to them that he was thirsty, but it seemed they heard him not. He forced himself to think of a word, no force had force with him, but soon enough he thought he recked it well enough. “Nawm!” he called. “Mawn!” he called. “Num-num. Numma!” It must have been near enough, for at once a one of them let throw the fruit and turned aside and poured him somewhat from the great jug. And he drank of it, drank he of it deep. “I am tired,” he muttered. “I would not think more. I would sleep.” And he fell laxly on his back and in a moment he turned slowly to one side, as little loath as the babb that turneth in the womb.

Slowly seeketh the mind of a man who hath travelled over far lands and dreameth in the folly of his heart. ‘Would that I were here, or would that I were there,’ and many are the wishes he conceiveth. And yet he too is fated to lie low in dust and blood amongst the dead. And do the dead have dreams?[8]

Perhaps he felt the warmth of the sun retreating from the sands. Perhaps the chill he felt was that of night. Was dew falling? was all the world gone damp? It was in no way unpleasant, merely he wondered. Merely he wondered what voice he heard, calling from afar, in scrannel tones a-calling, “The Mother of the Owl is cold, is cold! The Mother of the Owl is cold …”

Somehow he knew the old one’s name was Teter, and that in him there was no harm. And somehow he knew that the large one’s name was Alcinoüs. Somehow he knew that these were no names ever they gave themselves.

And somehow he knew that Alcinoüs meant to kill him. Although, somehow, he knew not why. There were many things he knew not now, and sometimes his mind seemed clear and sometimes it did not. Sometimes he thought, Now the Black Dream again again. And sometimes he did not.

Despite the taken-for-granted teaches of the organized and historical religion, the goat-footed nymphs were nought but the she-forms of the goat-footed satyrs. Another article of faith a-shattered … not through the scornful preaching of some peripatetic philosopher or from any word of home-grown cynic; but from the simple sight. His sight was clearer now. Often. “Numph,” said the old one, jerking his lugs (“ears” they could scarce be called) to the scarp of rock and shale and scree, through which over and down floated a whisp, a fraction, a ghost of a breeze: “Numph” — and hardly had his nares recognized a slight new scent, scarcely had he time more than to reflect on that well-known vowel-shift: hybris to hubris, Ludda to Lydda, Cumae to Kyme, Tur to Tyre, than she appeared, far less dainty than dumpty, thumping rather than tripping, tween tree and tree; in her hair flowers … or … anyway what looked like parsnip greens; the nymph was scarcely of the sort seen on krater or in illumed pages of parchment. The nymph of that island, someone had writted, smites the hearts of men as twere the face and form of Elen of Troy. Vergil swiftly thought on all this with a sinking of the spirit (his spirit must have risen if it could sink at all now) at the sight of this figure, this native of the rocks: low-hipped of body, long of head, heavy and almost horse-like yellow teeth broken here and there, huge nose, huge chin: could only allow himself, astonnied, to listen to the vatic voice (who knew if Troy had yet burned in war or if Troy and war and burning were yet to come?) “Was this the face that launched the thousand ships, and burned the topless towers of Ilium?” — “Numph,” emphasized old Teter. “Numph.”

Vergil felt rather somewhat the same surprise as once, when so very young a man as scarcely to be called a man at all, after even so some long time (to him, then, some long time) of not having seen a certain sight, a certain she had bared her breast to him: a gesture in the great game between the sexes (“The silly game,” who had said that? certain it was not that certain she, he’d instantly bethought him), but where he’d thought to have seen something like the size and shape and color of one-half the small fruit of the rose-mulberry, he saw instead something like an omelette made from the egg of a damned odd bird. And the voice of Emmalina murmured at his ear-well, “Now you know what a woman’s nipple looks like.” And what am I supposed to do about it? was his thought. Emmalina solved the mystery, said to the servant, unseen by him till then, “Give me the child.”

The satyrs had sometimes been beset by children of men (though certainly and surely not by any children of the Lotophages, and indeed they left the one the other entirely alone: why did the satyrs never drink of the liquid of the Scarlet Fig nor eat of its fruit? because it reminded them of honey they conceited it was of honey-taste, a laithly taste to them. The satyrs were always enemy to the bee.) … beset by children of men, who hooted and cast stones. In saying, “children of men,” this is metaphor as used by the ever-licensed poet; one does not mean boys and girls. The crew of foreign ships is meant, or some of the crew; crews very seldom being recruited from aristocrates or philosophes. Nor would one suppose them to be the crews of ships of Tartis: the Tartis-system, though in decay, would from ancient usage and experience well know better than to antagonize any on any shore or coast. Men off casually-come-thither ships of the less dulcet ports of empery had sometimes hooted and cast stones. Did thee and me ask them why, the whores’ gets, they would stone thee and me. The satyrs were perhaps not very deep of apprehension, yet perhaps they were … Beset, they fled to their homes in the rocks, to eat of their harsh, dull diet: the prickly eringion, for example, which grows only on salt sea-sand or on rugged, stoney waste and is by mankind used only as antidote for deadly nightshade; such things as those they ate.

But of the soothing Scarlet Fig, ate they never, not.

Folk thought that satyrs were funny. It was common and frequent at festivals for some to be got up as satyrs — the horns all wrong and the ears all wrong — mincing along or conveyed along in wagon, wearing protrusive artifacts fashioned of wood and leather; and folk would laugh, for folk thought that satyrs were funny. But they were not funny. Word could not convey their sometime brutal malignity.

There were no happy satyrs.

Often he had seen them eating samphire, raw, on crag-faces where, he might have, moments earlier, have made his oath, even the chamois and the rock-tibbu dared not adventure; once, in such a place, just, he had seen them copulating, fast and bloody and fierce. Twice he had encountered a set of them mumbling off the splintered ground handfulls of windfalls of some small stone-fruit which lay in ragged heaps smelling as sour as an unwashed rustic wine-press; two simply moved away as even sheep would move away; old Teter remained squatting and munching; and one had stamped off, making that noise deep in his chest; and one, before leaving, had looked at him — for a swift flash of time like a glint off a shard of glass — had looked into his face, and spat the small fruit-stone at his, the man’s chest. Perhaps — ah no! the first time the satyr had spet the stone on the man’s back; it was the second time that one spat it almost in his face, but hit his chest: the spittle had left a stain, a smear. Samphire and stone-fruit often had he seen them eat … harsh eryngion carobs, often; pod and all … and the fleshy leaves of some thick succulent, and stalks of giant fennel and mallows in the marsh, he had seen them eat.

He had seen them crushing between their inhuman teeth the seeds and stalks of the common asphodella: a lily, edible, but just quite barely.

One need be very well-fed indeed to admire a mead of golden asphodel indeed from an æsthetic viewpoint alone, and from as far away as possible. It damned well stank, for one thing. Its seeds were hard to gather and hard to grind, for another. Hard-handed, hard-hearted masters would feed the mealy mush of asphodella to their slaves; wild men and satyrs would crunch it and munch it, seeds, stalks, and all. It was, in short, well-suited to feed the common ghosts in hell, whilst the shades of kings and queens and heroes dined off golden apples in The Islands of the Blessed; far, far beyond the twain Pillars of Melcarth or Hercul or Atlas (take your pick), nigh unto the inhumanely wide and wild waters of the great dark grey and green Atlantis Sea, there where Melcarth bathed. So The Matter sayeth. And more, The Matter sayeth not.

Asphodel the man knew, samphire, small stone-fruit he knew, eryngion and carobs, succulents and fennel and mallows of the marsh he knew: and he knew the satyrs ate them for their meat.

What else did the satyrs eat?

What else.

Once, abruptly and terrifyingly, he had turned a corner of some natural buttress below the cliffs, and there squatted a band or sept of them: all stained with blood, they were eating … well, one of them was eating … the still-green content of a goat-kid’s maw. And the rest of them were eating the goat-kid. There was of course, no fire.

After that, he made him careful where he walked. And in what mind and manner. By now he was quite sure that the insolence of the satyrs towards him was daily growing; they must not have been used to the near-presence of a man so much, and it hostiled them. By now he was sure in particular of one such sullen satyr in particular, a shaggy, scarred bull-buck with half-coil horns turning sharply aside which did not quite match; and he was sure, too, of the thick, thick nails upon the creature’s so-odd hands or paws (though in no manner odd for a satyr) thick, thick spotted yellow-brown nails they were, like … in a way … the nails upon the toes of some rough country man of the human folk. And he was sure, too, of the bull-buck’s member: in full view, one could hardly call it his privy member: set, like those of all bull-buck satyrs, at a prominent angle forward and upward; this phallus, then, though not in full truth ithyphallic (those of the younger bucks, dark-glans half-slid forward had half-protruding from the hoodskin more like those of some men, like so many men, like so many acorns: and it seemed to him, to this man, that he himself for long had felt assured that this was why the oak was most sacred of sacral trees, in that it sembled, this generative part of this tree, this acorn, that same part of man himself) — and, he felt, this man, that he felt, this man, he felt he knew his name was Vergil (Vergilius M., carved thin and deep into the small wooden spoon still in the pouch he still had been able to keep with him), and this feeling was a now fairly new one, for, living among the satyrs, almost, and living much upon their own wild fresh food (he had not eaten any flesh-meat-food): and no more upon the sweet and yielding fruit and its liquid juices used of the island men and women, he felt, too, that his mind was clearer now than foretime.

Clearer now than foretime, but not at all by all means clear, “foretime” itself was not clear; uncertainties and fears swirled about him in more ways than that now. So much more often, rocks fell upon him: stones, then, they had not gotten to rocks; stones clinked and clicked and clattered, rather like the clattering and clicking of the satyr hooves. Stones bouncing off the hills and clifts and clephts upon him, not hurled (it seemed), merely they had been scruffed and kicked down upon him; not by an accident had their compact turds — good that they were compact! — had their dungins been thrown … not yet … could the satyrs throw things, actually? one did not know … of much other was he uncertain, also fearful, and it was the uncertain nature of his fears, and the fearfulness of his uncertainties which lunged and rippled in his mind and heart.

— dungballs like some small dark-brown fruits; idly the thought, as he now and then saw them smoking and could feel, from very near, their natural heat, hot from the hotter heats of the natural bodies that produced them; idly the thought that one might dry them and use them for fuel … or, saunce drying, heap them and husband their heats: level them: and thus they would supply a heat which, if not fiercely hot, would be steady hot, keeping a closed container very warm and a steady rate of warmth … something one could not say of other heats, perhaps not even under the steadiest of attendance and attention. Nor remembered why he’d thought this (alchemy! occymy! such odd words!), nor what, further it meant or even could mean either … it hardly mattered … the mists still swirled somewhat in his head, hardly did it even matter that the bull-buck satyr with the rather crooked horns had, very clearly — if anything was clear — determined to kill him.

Near the great Pillars, someone (Hercules, Mercules, Herodotus, Helcarth, Melcarth: who were they? who were they?) had said, there lived the people called … called … the words now thick-a-mist in Vergil’s mind … ah! called Atlanteans; who were said to eat no sentient things and … and what? The rude winds rule the mists, the old heath-hags say. As anyone may say, may see, but … The notion that by eating one’s like, however distantly like — The Atlanteans eat no living thing and never dream — there!

Where?

— that eating, awake, one’s like, like by reason of life, might cause a semblance of life to appear during sleep, this was a thought he thought might be interesting to examine; but so swiftly as the thought had come, even so swiftly had it gone.

And there was the crook-horn much-scarred satyr, the brazen bull-buck (was he hateful of the man because the man had merely looked upon the nymph and smelled of her in her season and her heat?), high upon a ledge, quite easily they leaped from ledge to ledge, his eyes ruddled and his swarty-beardy face set between a rictus and a scowl, his shag hip pressed straining against a boulder, and now the man did not feel that he himself could move, and yet he saw the boulder move.

There were rumors that there were islands in the west where great dogs roamed, and the shipskipper had said that the people of this island were of the far-off Guaramanty folk: the Guaramanties were famous for their dogs, anyone might cite you the story of King Cyril of Guaramantia, made captive and captive carried away by the Berbari; one thousand of his own trained dogs-of-war, cuffed and caressed by his own hands, fed from his own fingers with bread warmed even briefly in his own oxters that they might know his own-most scent, wearing his own scarlet harness; one thousand of them, so men said, had traced and tracked him down across the leagues and leagues of desert, full of dead men’s cities where the dead had turned to stone and yet still stood, oddly, upon pedestals, men and women made into marble — had tracked him along at first by night and then at first in early dawn and then in level daylight, then they gat them close to earth and crawled upon their bellies like the lizards so that none saw them and then at length in moonless night had in full force attacked and roaring in their rage had the Guaramanty war-dogs girt their own king’s captors round about and then attacked and tore their royal master’s captors into mere offals, so soon to be bloated and fly-blown: all but himself the Emir of Berbary who scorned not to squat and crouch between King Cyril’s legs like any petty-dog: whence he half-arose and at Cyril’s command unloosed his bounds: and then King Cyril allowed his dogs one half-day’s feasting upon the dead, after which he took the scarlet harness off the body of Sargo, his single dog which died (died of joy, some said, to lick his Royal Master’s hands) and fastened it upon the trembling body of the Emir and marched him back with his nape in a leash which Cyril held himself. The list of that one’s ransom would fill many a thick great codex and the last item on that lengthy list was all and every woman in the Emirs house held: which and whom he gat. He scorned to sink his poise on any single one of them, merely he kept them ever at turning the querns to grind the meal from which was baked the very bread which fed his, King Cyril’s thousand dogs of war: anyone might cite you this story

Often.

If, now, as the boulder trembled and the boulder moved and Vergil, illaday, could not move; if all the dogs alleged to roam what western island and if all the dogs of all the Guaramanties and if all the hounds of all Molossia (where sang all the singing cauldrons of high Dodona’s oakenshaws with all their vatic voices) and if every dog of every dead had been summoned by the power of every Gunta: there could not have risen such a hellish clamor as rose then amidst the crags. All color fled the face of half-maddened Alcinoüs, his dirty-fleecy legs trembled and he be-pissed himself: then he turned and fled. All the satyrs fled, save only old Teter, who was too old to flee: he crawled up to Vergil, his half-human face torn with terror, and Vergil, recalling the old tale of a sudden gained power to move and moved the old creature tween his own legs, to assure him that he be safe. Shapes of darkness lurched and shambled swiftly through the meads and marshes and up among the crags. No single satyr, not the biggest bull-buck, even, made that noise in his chest; but quite another sort of noises they were making: dost ever hear the hare scream out when the weasel pounce upon him? suppose the hare the size of buck or bull, then conjecture hearing how that sounds … and by how many made.

“I now remember who am I,” the man cried out. “I am Vergil Marius Mago! Let this doing now be done!”

And he sank and set himself upon his knees and he clasped old uncomprehending Teter round the old thing’s neck and he held him and he wept.

In a lagoon near where the islanders some times took their rest (ha! were they not always at rest?), or tended to their single fire (although how they remembered always to feed it, he could not imagine), odd birds waded and, seemingly, fed: for they quite often bent down their heads with the peculiar beaks and dipped them in the waters, surely not to drink, for the waters were not fresh. Their heads were not alone of them peculiar; their legs so long and thin the birds gave the impression of walking on stilts. And their plumage was entirely pink, much resembling a certain confection of marchipane, the specialty of a certain shop which sold sweetmeats, half-way upon the hill back there in Naples. Somehow he thought that the name of these birds was Flemingo, though why such a bird, very clearly a creature of the warm south, should be called after the natives of Flaunders, in the cool north, indeed he could not say. Now and then the island-folk, Guaramanties or Guaramanchies or however they called themselves, would sing all of them together, and beat time with sticks upon some naturally-hollowed logs: then all the wild, gaunt, pink birds would dance in time to the music: twas a rare fine sight, indeed. Flemingoes.

After some while, turning from the crags towards the sea, he saw the waves coming in, like students to a school. His mind, seeing them, was in an instant back a measure of years: when he, he himself a student, too: a single portmantle containing all his garb and gear, lived with others such — they shared one floor, one mess, one servant, and one set of books (they were very worn books, and for that matter, it was a very worn servant, too lacking one eye and one ear about his large and tufty head) — and all took turn and turn about. He could not imagine why a copse of exotic palm-trees was growing in the middle of their commons room now, he did not remember them, but there they were; and there were many things which he could neither imagine nor remember. It was said of such a group of student thriftbudgets that even a load of grass or hay served them at least three, even four, times: once to stuff their pallet-ticks; once, the stuffing having worn so flat or thin that they could feel the grain of the boards beneath, once to strew upon the floor in lieu of reeds or carpet; a third once, the strewing being grown thinner yet … and, for that matter, grosser, too! … to fuel the fire; and the fourth and last once the ashes served to polish knives and spoons.

Such a group of students was called a res, which was cant for a word not generally thought safe to use in public use: the thing, then, let it be called. At stated times they elected two consuls for themselves. Anselmo was Emperor then: arms, a shield of silver with five red roses. Rose, said to be in his honor (they relished even the touch of servility, that they might safely sneer upon it when in secret: Here’s two cheeks for you-know-who, one of them was sure enough to say when setting his naked buttocks on the cloak while dressing in the morn). Rose was the lining of their ragged cloaks, and they considered it themselves a brave sight and gesture with one motion to throw back the cloaks over the right shoulder as they walked along the lane: whereat passers-by or shop- or stall-keepers were expected to say, “The roses bloom …” Their particular res occupied the third floor and rooftop room of a tenement which clung like a wasp-nest to the surviving section of the curtain-wall of the Castello of Orland the Proud; the Castello of course itself was long gone, only here and there a stone of that famed honey-color was pointed out as being of such provenance. It was considered rather brave of them, the students, not to mind The Crone Below (so they called her when the door was at bolt); this was the old woman Iadwicka who lived in one room on the street floor and had a better beard than any of they students. Iadwicka in pits in part of the yard kept vipers and fed them with rats bought off the outcaste boys at five-a-stiver: one copperkin for five. Of which vipers she day by day killed such-and-such a number and them she stewed with honey and with dill till all the meat left all the bones: flesh and flour, vetch-meal and verjuice and broth she moiled in a mull and divided the mass into trochees of the lesser theriac[9]; this did she of the forenoons, and all the afternoons the hooded pothecaries in their hooded cloaks (none ragged) and their prentice-boys came upon their rounds and bought them up by weight in the scales the boys did tote, to be used as ingredient for many receipts and prescriptives.

It was considered rather brave of them to dwell there unmindful of the vipers (questioned, Were they a-feared? answered, that the vipers kept down the mice; sometimes, added, the fleas, or the lice, as well), but it was considered far from good taste to hiss. Once only someone did this, an ill-favored lumpkin whom none much liked; but so unskillfully that his imposture was soon discovered; instead of rueful laughter and rough good cheer which clearly and stupidly he had expected, they rated him at some long length, nor yielding to point out his bumpy skin and stinking feet and how ill he got his lessons; then they fined him. He was sullen after that a good long time and they by and by had reason to believe that he was mad, but they tried nothing to cure him. Merely they passed him by for mess-duty, fearing lest he introduce who knew what into the food, the while they wondered what to do with him. But soon he did it to himself, donned his cloak and went by ladder to the roof-peak and cast himself off.

“What a rare rose bloomed that day!” a pothecary’s prentice said, though his master growled and cuffed him for it.

They the students of that res dyed all of them their cloaks black from the linings out, and said it was for mourning, but in truth they knew it was for shame.

But why grew the grove of exotic palm-trees from the middle of their commons-rooms? Palms of such a sort, nor giant stalks of fennel, did not use to grow in Naples, nor samphire in the crannies of their raddled house-walls.

Fortunatus, the laughter of the Neopolitan court of its heavy Doge still ringing in his ears (only a certain sage, by name Vergil, had not laughed scornfully with the others: but did he not, behind his civil mask smile a bittle? — perhaps he did, a bittle, smile), Fortunatus scuttled through the door which the majordomo’s fingersnap had caused to be opened for him, half he turned for one further bow, but perceiving that the majordomo was already hastening off, Fortunatus gave half a shrug, then went his way. The courtly kindness had not ended with the gift of the purse which held fast on its thong against his belly (to be sure it was not a very heavy purse, but twas heavier than Fortunatus’s own purse ever was), for a torch parted from the cluster by the gate and a torchbearer said, trotting over before Fortunatus could vanish into the black, “If the Master Philosopher will just give me the directions — The house of Messer Magus, of course I so often —” Fortunatus, after a somewhat startled look to see that the sage, Vergil, had indeed come away from the levée and was standing right behind him, declared, “The Alley of the Hornscrapers, which lies yet other side of Oxen Shambles, past Fodder Lane. Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

Rapted in talk about the Latitudes and Zones (seldom he gat a chance for such talk … with Vergil or with anyone else), almost he forgot to make his single stop, by Poultry Court. Vergil observed with light surprise that the flemincoe or Flemengoe birds were wading in the puddle where live ducks were sometimes set to paddle and freshen before becoming dead ducks. The tall pink birds seemed quite at home, though Vergil had no thought that ever he had seen them in Naples before at all. Strange sights, well, some said these were strange times: likely they were right.

“Who in the bloody little hell knocks at such an hour?”

“Poulterer, the Doge’s Torchbearer; open, open, ope!”

“May his Grace’s torch be set to my house and out-sheds if me taxes be not already fully paid and tallies isshied — What, Messer Fortunatu? What?” The man startled at the sight of Vergil, but gave him a deep nod as good as any bow; it was difficult to bow at a tiny window which showed little but one’s face and neck.

“My man, at once, at once, one quarter of a hen-chicken, at once! Yes, yes, yes, yes.” Fortunatus at once resumed talk of the Zone in which lay Great Zeugma, known as the richest toll-bridge in the world, as it crosseth River Eupherate; but soon the thunk! thunk! of the cleaver on the block distracted him.

“Fo! the thick chickeny stenk o’ the place,” the torchman said, staring down the family, and the neighbors, and perhaps a score or so of onlookers who seemed to have appeared from nowhere to speculate and point … until eyed down, for the torchman wore a livery which all knew, and by the proud stance and glance of him he might have been the Master of the Doge’s guard. (Did he pose, thus, there, of course, they would have cuffed him).

At his house in the Alley of the Hornscrapers — the Alley was full of the strong, rich olor of neats’-horn, which none who ever smelled of it ever forget; to which added sundry stenks from the Ox Shambles: let the Fisc term cattle-butchering one of the Infamous Trades and tax it as such, that made it smell no sweeter. Not that Fortunatus showed any sign of noticing. He fumbled now in his own ratty purse, so different from the one which held the ducal bounty; gave the torchbearer sundry copper coins, received his thanks. Somewhat hesitantly he said, “I do not usually invite people to my chamber, but if the Messer Vergil would care to climb aloft —?”

The sage Messer Vergil would feel honored. There was merely a slight problem. The torchbearer, saying, “If Messer Magus would care to go aloft a bit, I shall be pleased to wait below, and I haves a spare torch to enlight him home,” Vergil nodded his assent. The Master Philosopher suddenly pointed into the shadows, “Did you drop a coin?” asked he; and whilst the torchbearer peered and gaped, Fortunatus swiftly, deftly, furtively, found the end of a rope concealed somewhere, and hauled upon it, then as swiftly hid it away again. Down slid a ladder. Up went Fortunatus, Vergil following after. Below they heard the torchman mutter, as he clinked his coins and counted them, that he saw nowt missing, but thanked Messer Fortunatu none the less.

“Please to step carefully as you enters,” said Messer Fortunatus. He let the ladder stay where it was, and tied the rope fast. “Down there in the street be dangers,” he muttered. “Did you see the way some of yon rabble looked upon me? They would have rabbled me and stole away my quartern hen-chicken, if they could. — but here be safety.”

By dim light (and no doubt even without it) as easily as if it were level daylight, Fortunatus moved about. He unsmoored the fire, blew the sleeping coals a-bright, added a few more, lit a spill, by it lit his lamp, swiftly, carefully, blew out the spill. He took the quarter a hen-chicken in its wrapping of clean cabbage-leaf, dropped it, cabbage-leaf and all, along with an onion, a parsnip, a cluft of garlic, a juniper berry, a single peppercorn, and the two small pippins whose selection from the sideboard of the Doge had made so much merriment (Did he know it was customary to take both hands full of the gilded sweetmeats — including the rosy marchipanes — when the Doge gestured, saying, Have what you will, and …? No, he did not.); dropped all into his sole black chauldron, covered all with a fiasco of rain water deftly drained from the cistern-on-the roof, and put his meal (supper? it would be supper, dawn-dish, noon-mess and all to him, with his scanty and disciplined diet) to cook upon the embers. From the one lamp lit, he lit others, all the others … that is, all both of the others …

Vergil looked round the room, the his, Fortunatus’s room, crazy and cranky (but his!), at the top of the house, with no way thither into it now from inside or outside the building. He saw the books, scrolls, the massive folios (oliphaunt folios, some called them, either because elephant was part of the bindings or because they were the size, so to speak, of oliphaunts), instruments, plans, charts whereby one could instantly tell the hour and half-the-hour (even on rainy or cloudy days), pictures (of the Great Gnomon at Syene, for ensample), the tiny plants which he maintained, in his cranky way, purified the air (Mercules! it did need such, in this neighborhood!); globes celestial and terrestrial and crowded cabinets; and that odd, odd bird of unknown provenance, silent bird, sitting silent on its perch (the whisper in the lane had it that Fortunatus had frequent converse with it in a foreign tongue). It would munch the remnants of his meal, whatever his meal might be; no meal at all? then the bird, too, would make do with no meal at all; at such times the neighbors said that they could tell it was Hunger Day, for all day long the bird plucked the strings of an ancient lute a-hanging by its perch: every note from umma to summa, one after the other, all day long, all the long, long, day.

If any one was untactly enough to sound such series of notes on his own lute: “Leave off!” (at once), “Leave off! Tis Fortunatus’s bird, gone gant!”

But little cared Fortunatus for any of this. Here he might be (even if, by his own choice, he was not now) alone. Here no one could (unless he himself chose) disturb him. Here he, and not others, put his own value on things. The whisper, indeed, the loud and raucous rumble in the lane, said nothing about Fortunatus’s life concerning women, … or, for that matter, boys or girls or men … But a statue of a beautiful she, half life-size, stood int the corner. Many a Patrician of the Kingdom of Naples (the Kingdom was extinct: not the title) would have given many a golden solid or golden pæleólogus for to have it: Haro the sculptor had groaned it up himself by ropes and pullies, and selected a choice-most nook for it in the best light, purely out of respect for a fellow-artificer; Fortunatus used it to dry his breeches on in the hot weather, the while he went bare … though in the cold he set the brazier of heated ashes by it, (the while himself he shivered), lest it freeze and crack.

Having attended to the matter of food (it would remind him by savory smell when it was ready, he was not one of your hour-glass or water-clock cooks), he prepared to sit him down — and suddenly bethought himself that he had a guest; “Is the sage, Vergil, interested in the mathematics?” he asked.

“It would be a further favor,” the sage Vergil began, but one word attended the ear of the Master Philosopher.

“ ‘A favor’ yes. A favor. One may ask a favor? ah?. By the boon and bounty of the learned Doge …” (many had called Tauro many things, referring to his habits, his parents, his coarseness, and his size: no one before, under the Consulate of Heaven, had, surely, ever called him learned!)

“… Doge, I now have enough for parchment, pens, ink, pounce … one thing Doge’s boon and bounty cannot bring me … If I might come to the house of the sage Vergil and copy but one passage out of the great book Almagest …?”

“Come whenso you will and copy what you please. I shall advise them at the door and inform them in the library. Might the hour of noon be to the Master Philosopher’s convenience? The light —”

It would not. “At the hour of — at the hour mentioned, according to my own calculation mathmatical, the most-favorable spirits would not be in the ascendant …”

So, thought Vergil; even Fortunatus feared the hour of noon, when, since men cast no shadows, one could not tell real men from false: the Demon, the Dukos, the Simulacre and the Sand-Jack shed no shade. Well, so be it. The sage Vergil, with a murmur and a gesture, made the Master Fortunatus free of whatso hour ever he might desire. The sage Vergil wore a civil face, yet, beneath the civil face, did he not smile a bittle? Beneath the civil face, he did smile … a bittle.

Making nought of his host’s thanks, swift he pressed him that he had a favor of his own to ask: see the philosopher startle in surprise. “Can the Master tell me ought of, how shall I call it, hath it yet a name? device and art whereby to depict things a-dwindle in the distance, yet all in proper ratio?”

Fortunatus understood instantly; “Proportion, this we call proportion and perspective, what would see perspectively?”

A bit amazed as, it seemed, being instantly understood. Vergil said, “Whatever you please … a man beyond houses, a house in between trees yet a farther away from them somewhat … a doorway in a building on a pier and beyond it the end of a pier and moored thereto a boat … whatever —”

Before Vergil had finished the words, Fortunatus had quickly taken up a much-used piece of papyrus (a more than-once-palimpsest it seemed), turned it over to its back on which the lineaments of whatever had been there were now but so many — or so few — grey ghosts, slapped it flat on the table and gave it another slap as it were he feared it would flee, else; took up a very small piece of charcoal, drew a single stroke with it, evidently discovered, suddenly, that it was blunt — as any boy too small to be trusted yet in breeches might have told him at a glance — gave it a sudden snap, as a hungry dog might give a morsel; and commenced, swiftly, almost savagely, to draw lines.

“Your ichnography is not enough,” Fortunatus breathed; stroke, stroke; “Your divisional construction is not enough;” stroke, stroke: did the strokes, what was the word? converge —? “Your sudivisional construction is not enough,” stroke, stroke, stroke. “Observe, you Vergil —” (no mention of sage now: You Vergil. Well and good, he might not be “sage,” but he was, was he not? you Vergil. It was somehow a great comfort, much more than mere adjectives of flattery) … stroke … stroke “Observe, observe, observe! What is I say, essential, is your point of convergence; your vanishing point is essential …”

There on the old and soiled apyrus, amidst the strokes and lines, or upon the strokes and lines: suddenly there had appeared a doorway, beyond the doorway a mole or pier, perceptibly a distance, though no large distance, away; at the edge of the dock was, in scarce time at all, ‘a boat and all her apparell’ moored fore and aft, scratch, scratch, stroke, stroke. The wide gates of a harbor …

“It is not a fantasma!” exclaimed Fortunatus. Suddenly Vergil could smell the garlic, could he not smell, also, basil among the small pots of plants? it was some while yet before a seasoned cook would add the basil to the cook-pot — “Not a fantasma, at all, as say those fools, maledictions fall upon them! It is a truth, a philosophic truth, I say: the circle can be squared!” He was panting now, as a man panteth upon a woman. “Gold projected out of dross, indeed! As well project dross out of gold!” One could hear, among the thick and heavy breath of passion, the hard sound of grinding teeth. In a second or a score of seconds, doorway, dock, ship, harbor, horizon were obliterated: and so was all knowledge of the presence of one You Vergil … or of anyone else alone. With an impatient gesture and an abrupt sigh, the old papyrus was swept onto the floor; Fortunatus swilled a half a mouthful of water, spewed it into his palms, rubbed his fingers clean of charcoal, rubbed them dry upon his robe.

Below and all around lay poverty, guarded by riches: Fortunatus cared not at all of either. Now with a bliss-filled sigh he drew an almost perfectly clean sheet of parchment from underneath an almost perfectly clean dust-sheet; and from another place he took up his compass and his protractor and his rule. Now everything in the world fell away from him as though uncreated. He and the pure forms, the Pure Forms, were quite alone, and might love one another to their endlessly full contentment: the Pure Forms: the line, the triangle, the rectangle, the circle and the square. Beauty bare. Beauty bare.

Vergil on tip-toe made his way from the room, paused only for a single backward glance before he turned and made his way down the crannied wall to the ground where the torchbearer awaited, open mouthed and silent and alone.

Silent as well, Vergil gestured to the man, and they set off together through the torch-pierced dark. One thing above all did wonder him, You Vergil, as they went.

He heard, in the otherwise silence, the chafing of the cicadas in the distant trees and fields, and the small but ceaseless lisping of the pitch in the burning torch.

Why, as though intent, did the flamingoe peer over Fortunatus’ shoulder as he drew upon his parchment?

One did not know. One Vergil did not know.

He felt that he must get him to the beach, and seek the comfort of the island-men: faint comfort though it was. On the way thither he saw the gleam of water through the trees; it was not the sea, it was a pool. He thought he might sink into it and refresh his body and be cool and clarify his mind. Trees and shrubs and scented flowers circled round. The man, without much taking thought, sank to his knees and cupped his hands to take up water and to drink. But before thrusting in his close-paired palms upturned, he paused and looked down. As in a dream he gazed and saw a face a-looing up at him.

It was not his face.

Neither was it the face of someone just behind him, for, as he quickly turned, there was no one behind him. As he moved his upper body around and looked again down, he saw that, reflected in the pool was a woman’s face, she seemed somedel troubled and concerned, and he knew that he had seen that face and that look before. And it came to him the word Huldah. He knew he knew it but he knew not how. Huldah meant the genet and the weasel, it also meant the cat, biss, one called it, familiarly. And yet. The Region called Huldah, what did that mean? No answer came, save that in a moment he was on his feet, walking swift away. He had not been swift but a little while ago. He had been as one who walks in a dream. For some reason he thought of the local nymphs, and of the brute impetuous beings who so lusted after them. Not only the satyrs lusted after nymphs; Priapus the son of Aphrodite, he: Protector of Goats, the randy creatures; Priapus “the Ever-Erect,” had lusted after the nymph called Lotis: had she appreciate the honor? no, not she, and when awakened by the braying of an ass (perhaps jealous of his ithyphallic rival), the nymph Lotis changed at once into a lotus-tree: a fact well-known. Whence had she the puissance? some guardian genie, doubtless. Some guardian genie doubtless it was which had substituted another’s face for that of his own, for to dream of seeing one’s own reflection in a dream was the best-known omen of one’s own impending death.

The sea, the sea.

Faintly forming at first; forming, faintly in his mind, the image of a man running quickly, rapidly, ever so swiftly, man running, feet raised high with each step, arm raised high of the man, something in the hand of the arm raised high of the man; it had seemed (and how could this be?) that the man was skimming ever so swiftly over the surface of a languid sea: to one side of the man, a low-lying bank of cloud: quite quite dark, the cloud, and the cloud quite low. This vision was oft repeated, did that mean it was merely some vision oft repeated, or did it mean that what was seen in this vision, this image, this vision of the day, was it of something which he had often seen? Who was he? Who was “Who”? The he himself of whom he now knew more (his mind less clouded), some certainty there (here), of this than before. He was You Vergil now, he was a certain man, hight Vergil, a thaumaturge, a philosophe and necromaunt; that was certainly certain, a certain man, hight Vergil, that was a line from a document, rectangulate in shape, and he would now, right now, putting of it off no longer, turn to that said document and read of it: and then he would know more about You Vergil. He turned, there was no document, there were people round about and hemming him in, they were crowding round about him close, this would not do.

Love is a much-reflective surface, who had said that? why?

He shook his head to dislodge this alien and interruptive thought, this would not do, a crowd and throng were hemming him in. Abrech! he called, this certain man, hight Vergil. Abrech! For he knew that the Abrech meant Clear the way, it meant Make clear the way, but he did not know in what language it meant this, certainly not his own, nor how he came to know it.

Out at sea, a cloud.

In his head, a cloud.

They did not clear the way, they were not flouting him, they did not know the word or its usage at all, a way was not made clear for him, they hemmed him in all round about, their light bodies pressing, and all their fingers pointing, pointing to the man at sea, out at sea, that arm of sea between this land and another land (between this island and another island?), man running oh so swiftly coming nearer, nearer, fastly, even desperately running he skimmed along the sea. In the upraised hand of the upraised arm of this man (coming closer, ever closer, this man) was something like a mace, or a, or a — all about him now, this certain man hight You Vergil, as they stood upon the beach, the tawny-sandy beach — Fire! they shouted, they shouted Fire! and though he knew but nothing of it, he found himself shouting Fire! There was no document, rectangulate or any other shape. What had made him believe that there was or even could be a document? This was no place of document, although it may have been mentioned in the Homer and the Homer was a document, was sometimes many documents for sure. King Alexander Magnus, it was well-known, had had such a document of Homer, some said of occamy, some of geography, which was written on the inner skin of a dragon and was three hundred feet long, or so some said: but as to that, if so one said, no one was saying it here, where was here, many other things were missing here. He looked for her, he saw her face all wet with tears; tears (it seemed) ran down her cheeks, but no: it was not tears, even from her wet-sleeked hair the water ran; the tears were his, not hers. Then the … something … o sod and straw and staff! he knew the word, but like the butter in an ill-charmed churn it would not separate, it would not rise … the Something, or the memory of something, did its work once more. No document, no her, no tears; he was standing on a familiar beach and he was shouting Fire! one amongst many shouting and crying the same cry and shout.

From the tip of whatever it was (rhabdon, vergis, bacculum; wand, staff, rod, mace?) held by the swiftly running man, and he ran as though the lionel, the lioness, the pard, were all snarling at his ham-strings (no, twas thicker than any rod, wand, staff … mace? what mace?), from the thing’s tip there came a shimmer and then a line of smoke, came now a gust of flame, was he at the Games of Olympia in hollow, sacred, Elis? nay, he was not. The running man fell upon the tawny beach, the torch — not suffered to reach the ground — swift plucked up and borne away, and the low-lying cloud, clouds, they rolled away over the waters on which the running man had trod, everyone retreating from the low-lain beach to a stand above the mark of highest water; the clouds rolled rolling upon the path o’er which the man had run, racing for his life; rolled with a low thunder and a noise as though in a distance; the sound of an armed camp in the early night. The bearer of the torch had not alone been running to deliver the fire (the fire, one assumed, had at last, or, likelier, once again, through neglect gone out, and it had been needful to go at great hazard to kindle it again … at what hazard! … how unlike these dreamy slothful folk, or any one of them, to make such effort!), he had been running for his very life as well. That path upon the surface of the sea was a spit or causeway so low-lying that even as it lay exposed, a skin of water thin as any membrane covered it over as it lay connecting the lesser island with another island — or else with the main, the muckle land — whatever, and wherever it might lie, might he now not lie upon a couch and unroll a map rectangulate to show him where it lay; a map perhaps drawn from mapless Homer, blind Homer; blind perhaps from looking long and long into the athenor, the alchemist’s furnace, his talk of black ships, what was that but a metaphor for The Work, the projection from base to noble, all blackened in the fires of occymy? Blind, yet also he the true Father of Geography: little gat he for his Fatherhood, for did not

Seven cities claim blind Homer, dead,

Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread …?

Yes.

Yes … but here was neither couch nor map, no document, no Homer and no harpists harping of Priam’s topless Trojan town a-flaming and a-burn, nor of the burning reedy river by the Trojan shore. There were no shouts, no cries, now, but still the murmur of the same, same word: fire, it was, fire … fire, fire (contentedly now) … fire … Someone brought liquid in a large gourd, someone poured it then, carefully, into a large shallow shell, and someone lifted the fallen runner’s hanging head and someone gave him a sip of what was in the shell. Once more, water and the wind and sand and murmuring voices, voices murmuring low, the soft sea-breeze: and now someone brought thither the jar in which the gourd had dipped, a common jar (how came it here, they made no jars, or potters-work of any kind: someone must have brought it there, or, anyway, left it there); a common jar of glazed earthernware, light grey and brown, such as house-dames use to make pickle of cucumber (and swift as the rushing of the tidal bore, almost like an attack: the smells of garlic and the smells of dill: swift! how he remembered, and remembered much: his aunt, his father, the kitchen-corner where such ferments of loaf-dough and cake-dough, of yeast-dough and of other things were oft going on; he remembered this road and that road, and Caca in the cave, and Numa dwelling in the Cave of Caca (or … was “the thing” not named Alcinoüs?) … and the stinking faces hanging at the doorside of the cave … he remembered much, yet not enough; yet faintly knowing there was more); and the exhausted runner — someone had placed a garland on his sweaty head — half-sat upright, half was lifted up; as from the jar, call it crock, then, someone reached and took, hand dripping liquid, took a something which … he knew, he knew, he knew must know … it was the Scarlet Fig and it dripped of its own juice and moisture; “Mm,” murmured the runner. And the others repeated the sound, some in one way, some in another: “Ma mma, manna, manya, nya, nyama …” And all these words at the root meant this one thing, the Scarlet Fig; the Greeks had a word for it. and that word was … Lotus …

Attempts were endless to identify the lotus of Lotusland with the known fruits and roots and flowers of the welladay world. Its like had been “discovered” again and again, and in many a tended garden within the Empery there grew plants asserted with great firmness to be the lotus, of Lotusland, the Land of the Lotophages; these plants, these flowers, fruits, roots and rhyzomes, were of many a different provenance: Lybya, Cilicia, Ægypt, the Lands of the Sinæ and the Serices, and of the Embri whose ewes bear, thrice a year, lambs already horned: no two were the same plant and no two had quite the same effect, some had no effect at all save that produced in the minds of their eaters by virtue of their beliefs in the powers of what they were eating, others were of certain and sure effect: never twice from two different plants the same. The eater might forget for a few moments who he was or why he was there, wherever there was. Whoso ate the pseudo-lotus might dance about as one all aflame, and declare later that he had sung sweet songs and rare, and demand: aghast! Why had no one noted their measures, modes, tunes, tones, words, and so on: to those present merely the eater of that particular “lotus” had moaned or cried discordantly or screamed, made strange sound past description, perhaps by the time of dwindling effect, shouted rather raucously. But no songs had been discerned. Other users of these odd plants might merely subside into a strange trance, saying and doing nothing whatsoever; later to arouse and get them up and declare a recollection of a rich, rich dream: as one embroidered with broidery fit for the favorite of a duke, count, or king: but as for specific memory, why, not one theme, not one scene, not one action, notion, motion, word or sound.

Again and again those learned in leech-craft (and the blood-sucking creatures were named after the craft, and not tother way around) would declare that, by all the tests demanded by the Pseudo-Theophrastus (to identify whom would be easier than to identify what song the sirens sang, a question which Averroes had asked his ministers in vain), the presence of flower, fragrance, and forgetfulness of woe, the alleged lotus in the garden of this magnate and that margrave, ought to be the Lotus … and, indeed, perhaps had ought to be; long journeyings and grave dangers risked — risked, and sometimes encountered — Tiberio torn by lionels, Duke Naimon carried off by a dragon, King Oliver lost to captivity: naming only a few notables by name — the endless numbers of the nameless brave, lost, like those lost before Agamemnon in the forgotten fields where even the asphodella does not grow — yet save for one thing nought was certain, and this the one thing certain: it was not.

The lotus, the lotus, i’seemed, alas, it would not travel: like some “small wine” of distant provenance in the Over-Seas, much esteemed by embassadore, proconsul, viceroy or baill when in its native region, though said official (traveller, trader, captains of ships of burthen or ships of war), however well they poured it through filters into amphorae or kegs, however well-caulked or well-cooped or well-stoppled and well-smoked: what emerged, back home, was invariably a drink flatter than the Plains of Parthia, of less worth, even, than a good common vinegar — so with the rare and strange lotus of Lotusland, where dwell the gentle Lotophages: such wines could not be by any means preserved, and neither could the true and proper lotus.

And as for its other, and second-most common name, the Scarlet Fig, why, every other mage or sage one asked on it, would freely declare that, in truth, it was neither scarlet nor a fig: what, then, was it, and what was it, then? The other moiety of those wise in wisdom would but sigh and shrug, declare, I do not know. It was indeed said of the Emperor Marcus, that he himself had made that difficult voyage to the island where lived the gentle Lotophagoi, had eaten of the Scarlet Fig, had drunk of its juices and of the winey sap of its stalk in season; had lingered long enough to have need to eat of its roots or rhyzomes in season when there grew upon the branch no flowers, no fruit, nor flowed from its stalk any dewy sap or juice: the Emperor Marcus constrained (as he had in advance commanded and directed), was eventually obliged by men through gentle force to retire from Lotusland, weeping and sobbing like a small bairn removed from her Mother: what had, then, the very emperor to show to know for his stay there? Moonstones and tourmalines he had to show. Sweet memories of dulcet days and painless, without memories, he had to know, though could not show. Moonstones and tourmalines he had to show. And some slime, some sludge, some nameless slop at the bottoms of vessels — jars, jugs, kegs — he had to show … though actually he had not shown it, having handed them over to his leechcrafters, his apothercaries, and his alchymists, for to make assay and essay, and for to make try and trial of it: the results? … nothing that anyone could ever say was truly worthy of the time and trial: though many were the rumors … and every rumor had its many tongues.

And so and after all of this, did anyone, lord or thrall, enquire: Is there no assoilment for my sorrow? Let then the priest or the philosopher or the wise woman in her secret grove, say several sundry conjectured things: yet at the end of all such, see them all hold up their hands and cast down their eyes: what say they then? No…. None … save thou go and eat of the Scarlet Fig that grows in the land of the gentle Lotophages.

Small comfort, then, to hear further such things, as, This was revealed in olden times by Polydamna, the wife of Thon, that if man and woman should eat and drink of it, though they had seen Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Daughter, Husband, Wife, and Child slain by the pitiless sword, they should not let fall a tear upon their cheeks. Was it true? was true that the Scarlet Fig maketh cease from grief and the many pains that distress both mind and heart, maketh take consolation and be not afraid nor sicken in the soul?

It grew in far-off Lotusland which lay beyond the Columns of Heaven-Upholding Atlas, beyond the Pillars of Mercules, lost in the misty distance of the great grey green Sea of Atlantis; whither ne poor man could, ne no rich man would, adventure there to navigate …

It was not precisely scarlet, a tinge of crimson lay within its color. Rather larger, rather longer, even rather softer than the fig. From a middle distance one might say it was a pomegranate, but coming closer, plain one saw that no pomegranate it was. Its flower was richer than an empery of other flowers, both in color and in olor, more fragrant, richer. Its taste was, though one might call it holy, as more so than the holy eiobab which, though ever so holy compared to things profane, was yet (the eiobab) a thing confected: and the lotus grew, even as rank and common weed, shunned by the starvling asses of rough, scruff coats and coasts, grow: yet aside from that one single and certainly singular environ, grew it nowhere else; and neither it nor its taste nor fragrance nor its forgetfulness of woe might ever be confected.

That which was eat from the cymbal during the Mysteries of Attic Eleusis might be eat by anyone who had the Greek speech and the price of attending: who had “seen the Sun rise at Midnight” had seen perhaps the greatest sight there lay in not alone the Empery but in the Œconomion to be seen. Yet these Great Mysteries might be availed solely because certain men and women of known name and family had arranged for them to be availed. And besides, Vergil had already been some while ago made free of the Eleusinian bridehood and the groomhood, a mystagogue was he, of that and of other mysteries, perhaps lesser known, if not, who shall say: less worthy He had heard the oracles speaking, squeaking, sighing, soughing, groaning, droning from out the chauldrons high in high Dordona’s oakengroves.

And he had learned, through his stay amongst the Lotophages, that balm perpetual for sorrow there was not. Tempted by scent and taste, and with valor born of ignorance, he had drunk so deeply of the liquor of the Scarlet Fig (not yet knowing it to be just that) that he had not even cared upon observing that he had been cast away. Through repeated draughts of the enchanting liquid he had indeed forgot his native land; almost he had forgotten his own language. And for a while he had certainly forgotten the usages of civil man; of man in the complex and civilized world. True that when among the Lotus Eaters he had suffered neither sorrow nor pain, and he had forgotten not alone his concerns and longings and worries: he had forgotten the very conceptions of sorrow, pain, concern and worry. But something there was within him which would not allow him tarry among the naked gentle Lotophages, forgetful of almost all things. Even the Lotophages did long for the comfort of the fruit and drink of the lotus; even, they desired the comfort of the fire that burned at night — though precisely whence they had recovered fire when their own inexorable lentor allowed their single fire to fade away, of this he had little notion.

Something within him had pressed, pressed gently but pressed … after some while … insistently … and so he had left the gentle company of those who, as who had put it? nummed the honey-sweet lotus and drank its fragrant liquor. Huldah had said that. He had as it were torn himself away from the gentle company upon the coast, had forced himself to flee into the wilderness where dwelt the far from always gentle satyrs. Wild honey he had found none, but part of his new diet was locust rather than lotus: the pods of the locust tree, called also carob, or acacia. And, slowly, oh so slowly, his mind had cleared. The mists and fogs had slowly been blown away. Once again he was in the midst of the island folk and gazing at a ship far out at sea.

Little though the Romans loved the sea and little though Vergil had been accustomed to judge of such matters, still, he felt to a certainty that this was not the same ship which had marooned him here. But he felt no such certainty that this vessel would of a certainty put in to this haven. Perhaps they knew not the nature of the land. Perhaps they knew very well and for that reason particularly desired to avoid it. Or … merely … perhaps their course lay elsewhere and they simply had no reason to divert or diverge.

No certainty.

Much perhaps.

Why was he of a sudden striding away from the point whereat he stood? Memory of a previous scene moved his legs and feet, was why. Memory of a more than half fallen-down hutch, doubtless intended for a cabin by some alien long ago: alien, for sure these islanders built no structures at all. Were the nights uncommon cool, simply they slept together … not, to be sure, in one great huddled mass … but rather parted into smaller groups which lay, all of a cuddle, each group by an each. Or else: they crept close together to the fire that burns by night, and fed it, many times and often, while the stars moved: for of fallen wood there was no lack where their groves and small forests grew: and of driftwood upon the beach, which had mayhap grown in far Aspamia or in (even) farthermost Thule, where there is little need for wooden fuel, there being (so men say) stones of black ice which burns like pitch-pine: pyrobolim[10], so some call them.

And in that withering hovel found he … what? His old soft doe-skin budget, for one. And a mass of rags roughly sewn together so as to form a semblance of a cape: this was none of his.

But twould do.

Here (or, there) was the fire that burns by night. Level daylight it was not, yet the fire burned. Now and then someone passing by languidly fed it; eventually that someone, any someone, every someone, would forget to feed it — how ancient this image of fire as a living thing which craved food and must be fed! — forgotten, it would dwindle and die: then see once again that scene of some man, braver or keener of wit than others, swift run along the main to whatever was their only known source of fire (for as to rubbing hard wood against soft, let alone the sophisticated spark of flint and steel and tinder: certes they knew nought). The old cape, almost coming apart in his hands, was fitter for tinder than for any use of clothing, but he had yet another use for it. Swift he sopped it in a shallow pool nearby, swift he wrung it out till it was but damp. Slowly, slowly, the column of smoke rose up, rose up. He cast the sodden cape upon it.

The column of smoke ceased, was estopped.

At once he swept the cloak away.

The smoke at once arose again.

Once more he covered it with the ragged cloak, that cape of rags.

Again the column of smoke was stopped.

Then he culled the mass of rotting cloth away, cast it aside.

The smoke rose and rose: unvexed again, it rose upon the sleepy air.

X

Isle Mazequa

Far out at sea, the thin vertical line which was a ship’s mast slowly, slowly turned, became broader by the width of a sail. Slowly grew broader, larger, nearer.

When he once again gained the beach, it was to see something like a sort of trade going on. These seamen were Sards, he was sure of it: those curious and deliberately lop-sided hats — bonnets, one might almost call them; the wrapped-twice-around-yet-still-loose neckerchiefs of faded red, the yellowish-brown trews — slanders of other seamen traditionally had it that these garments, coming only three-quarters of the way down the legs, had always been originally white but were never washed; Vergil knew their hue came from rough and home-made dye: and then, too, a certain look, undescribable as it was unmistakable: all proclaimed them Sards. There was, to be sure, a certain class of Sard freebooters, but they were not numerous. And certainly the look of these was merely rough, as was the everyday look of poor folk on every day not a festival day; rough, yes … but not ruffianly. Certain things were being passed from hand to hand; he recognized the pearly, opalescent sheen of moonstones, and the fine striking colors of as yet un-cut tourmalines. These one saw fairly often in Lotusland and the island-folk themselves sometimes picked them up and carried them away as idly as children with any unusual rocks or stones. Likely the Lotophages played some simple game with them … and then simply dropped them: there were always more … somewhere …

The Sards, in exchange, were passing over all sorts of rubble: mirrors shattered past hope of sale or trade in any ordinary mart in the whole Œconomium, cups saunce handles though clearly handles they had once had, boxes with broken lids or nay lids at all, scraps of cloth more brightly colored than any of the crewmen’s trews or neckcloths, hats outmoded and much battered: all sorts of rubbish.

When the supply of tourmaline and moonstone showed sign of running low, the Sards produced something as an inducement for more; more was forthcoming. The islanders had not been holding out, merely it had been a trouble to try and seek. Now here was something well-worth the trouble.

The Lotophagi received the sweet wine with soft soft sounds of pleasure. They would not plant the vines nor trench them nor wed them to the poplar and the elm to hold up the grape-heavy branches; and certainly neither would they make them presses nor tred the wine-fruit out with their feet … though possibly if this had been made into a game for them, with music and with song, they might have done so. Briefly. Certainly they had no sophisticated tastes; they did not require hippocras, that vile mixture of very bad wines, itself sophisticate with many bad spices; neither had they developed the corrupt palate which fancies the taste of pitch in wine, and which actually prefers the wine of that sort of grape which was said to have naturally the taste of pine-sap. Wine, sweet wine, did not have to be very, very sweet for them to like it. With soft sounds of pleasure they received and drank of it.

But by and by they did not trouble themselves to go in search of any more moonstone or tourmaline. There was no ivy mingled with the cheap, douce wine. It did not make the Lotophagi run mad, let alone turn anthropophagi like followers of certain drunken cults. Merely they layed them down to sleep.

Of course to the inhabitants they were, for the moments that the novelty lasted, not rubbish at all. And if the hotchpotch and galimaufry was of no actual benefit to them … why, neither were the moonstones or the tourmalines for which they sold them. (Not that it was likely that they considered the matter in any other light than an exchange of presents: baubles for baubles, play-pretties for others of the same.) For that much, of what actual, intrinsic use were the tourmalines, the moonstones, or any other gems or jewels? none whatsoever: they could not be eaten, drunk, nor used as tools. Well … diamonds were sometimes so worked as to be able to cut glass … and an old word which Vergil seldom forgot was that in verbis et herbis et lapides — but here he suddenly dropped all thought of science or art or philosophy; one of the island folk taking notice of his presence with a slight word and slight gesture, see every man jack of the Sard shipmen turn as one. And of that sudden second, freeze.

After a very long moment, one of them (later he learned it was Polycarpu the captain of the craft — it was a small-enough craft, too —) spoke, not without a moving up and down of the apple in his thick neck. His words were in a tone clearly meant to be conciliatory, but Vergil noted well how the seamen, the shipmen, slowly gan to fan out as though to encircle him. “As you may see, me Lord Ser, we are only small folk,” he said … in Punic! surely no folk he had ever encountered, the same being of the “old sea,” the Mediterranean, ever looked less like Punes! … “— small folk, a-trying to do a small deal in what’s they called, ‘semi-precious stones,’ such a trade, we believes, being entirely licit undern the rules of Great Cartage,” and the light burst upon Vergil: it was not that they were Pune, it was that they thought that he was! And, despite his own better nature, he reckoned to have a little sport with them.

“Such being the case,” he endeavored to make his own Sidonian sound as much like Carthagan as he might: no great hard thing, for constant commerce between the old Phoenician cities and the new had kept them from shifting and changing much; “… being the case, how is’t that you have endeavored also to deal in … purple …?”

In a moment he regretted having tried the jape, for the man turned absolutely yellow; had he been of ruddy color, he would have turned white. At once Vergil swift began in Latin, “Nay, but take no notice of my very bad manners, I am a Latin man, the same as you, a citizen of Rome,” briefly he thought of groping in his budget for the old badge of bull’s hide, SQPR, Senatusque Populusque Romanum estamped upon it; but forbore. “— and no Pune at all,” see the natural tan of sea and sun return to the shipman’s face; “and as for whatsoever kind of trade is yours, I care not, for —”

“But you be a mage! else how could you know —?”

Vergil gestured. “I see that some leaves of orchil-flowers have been near enough t’ your wristband to have been crushed upon it … added but a few drops of water, likely when you took a drink, added but a bit of lime, perhaps from a cargo of it: and the result? a smear or smudge of violet color … well … violet color once. And if indeed you propose to make navigations in waters where Carthage, old or new …” He did not finish the sentence. “Violet is not indeed true purple, but … another shirt is what I should suggest.”

The man stretched his arm to see the stain plain, swore, made as if to remove it on the spot, somewhat relaxed.

“ ‘Not indeed true purple,’ no, but near enough to run this sark red, be any Carthagan ships about. Lord Ser, me thanks for a-pointing of it out, I never gave thought … Well, I shall cut and burn this damned wristband in another minute. I say, nay: but only a mage could have discerned of it, and coupled twain and twain thegether.”

His men whispered, muttered, growled. But there were no more movements hinting at encirclement. Said one, in a speaking-tone at last, “If that be clare from just a spackle on a wristband, best we’d best wash and scrape the deck, and check they tayckle for some other tell-tale taint.”

And another urged, “And afore doing of that, be better best to hug up all the orchil and give it to offering for nap tewm —”

“Nap tewm?” asked Vergil.

“Th’owd king. Owd King Naptewm, a whose beard is green, they’m say, and smell’s o’ fish. E nows the dipth of every sea. Better ‘e gets all o’ it than the Cartage men take owt o’ it, and ang us on a tree, such is they manner and wont —”

And yet another shipman uttered his own caution. “After cutting of our hentrials out and grilling same as a relish for they savage dogs.”

But the thick-necked man, and it seemed his neck grew thicker, all but roared his scorn. “You knew what barber we might be trimmed by when you came aboard this adventured navigation! Stay here, then, if you like, and give surrender to your lay of the cargo as lies hid beneath the jars of limekilned and burnded oyster-shells! Stay here, and drink yourselves sotty until you’ve forgotten use of tongue and tool and wander naked as any —”

Very suddenly he stopped and turned a deeper shade and attempted to pretend that, suddenly, no one was aware that Vergil was naked as any islander: that is, as the days they all were born — save only that no natal-cord dangled a-peep from out a belly-band. And, for that matter, neither did they (or he) have even upon them so much as else a belly-band.

Quietly he said, “You will do as you will do. Only but I caution you to taste no drop of this sweet ruddy nectar of the lotus, for I drank of it, I was marooned because of it, and I am naked, now, because of it. I dwell at Naples; is it possible that you can give me a passage in that way?”

One by one they all nodded. Some nodded more soonly, some more slowly, some more deeply.

But they all nodded.

Yes.

The secret of the Castor and Pollux … (“A small ship for so long a name?” “Them be’s the famous Gemini Twins, My Sir. As we only calls they Castor and Pollux for short. Beseeing as how they’d shared the one hegg shell for their gemination, and which it had hample room for they both, we think they’ll take it as a hint so we’ll hall have a suffice of room in this small craft, no much larger has a small hegg shell, ye might say” “I quite see.” “We thought, too, we’d gain a double blessing by such a nime. Has they not seldom is beseen a riding of the wives in tide of storm.” “I quite see.” And Polycarpu, much gratified by his passenger’s grasp of mythology and method, smiled a wide and pleasant smile.)

The secret of the Castor and Pollux … its real purpose was no longer a secret, then. In Rome, debarred by the depredations of the Sea Huns from an easy trade with Tyre, the immemorial source of purple dye in the east; and by the clandestine but none the less effectual blockade by Carthage of its own special sources in the Trans-Herculean west; in Rome, the price of purple, so essential for the best class of clothing dye, had gone nowhere but up. Just as the high price of Indian pepper had had as its result a trade in the pseudo-pepper (called grains of paradise) from Farther Africa — it was by no means the equal of the Indoo or proper pepper, but did well enough as an adulterant thereof — much better than poppy seed, for instance — so there had grown a pressing need for a sort of pseudo-purple (since the unsatisfactory surrogate provided by Averno was in any case no longer currentlyavailable) … a dye-stuff which would stain a robe well enough for it to pass for purple by, anyway, lamp or torch-light. With, anyway, that is, at least a little of the pure purple admixed. Many stratagems were tried, perhaps the best of which was to unravel a robe or a length of cloth estained with pure purple and use the thread so obtained as warp and the impure purple for the woof (or vice versa, if one follows). There was, as with all such tricks, the unwillingness of such a garment to stay fast-colored. But not everyone who wished a purple robe wished to use it often. The secret, or true purpose of the Castor and Pollux, therefore, was to lade aboard a cargo of a paste made from the flowers of the orchil plant, which paste, made quick with lime, oyster-lime or marble-lime (some said with one, some said with both) and water, was declared by anyway some dyers to produce a shade of violet which, mixed subtly … so they hoped … with purple to pass as pourpre, the res itself … by lamplight.

And so it might. For some. And for those absolutely exacting in the matter, and who wished to display their exacting exactitude in the sunlight: why, they might always obtain their desire for enormous, some said for extortionate, prices. And while the mysterious power of Carthage, so oft destroyed, might be growing rich and yet richer by their self-declared monopole of pourpre or porphyro; this mysterious authority called Carthage, wherever Carthage now was, was well-aware of the existence of a trade in orchil-flower, a “purple” both counterfeit and contraband. And so Carthage had declared an utter ban on alien ships in the western-most waters during and largely before and largely after, the season in which the orchil plant was in flower.

Which left not very much season at all.

The Carthage-men would have termed even so small a craft as Castor and Pollux, which had been seeking in the Atlantis islands for a plant-dye substitute for the genuine sea-purple made from a certain shellfish — they would have called the little ship an interloper, perhaps in an even fiercer justification for discountenancing such a venture, they might have called the craft a pirate. For any infringement of any monopole of Carthage the Carthagans regarded not only as a crime against themselves, but as a crime against Nature and against all moral laws soever.

Had not Nature, as exemplified by Juno, preferred Carthage — the “New City” in terms of the old cities of the Levant, but (so twas claimed) an Old City … anyway older … in terms of Rome? queen Dido’s heirs had long offered on the Altar of Juno when King Romulus still played with the nurse-wolf’s paps …

Argument, Vergil well-knew, was useless.

Ishtar of Tarshish[11]! Twas vain!

Talking over this matter with the Captain Polycarpu not so long after coming aboard, the small ship having left the Land of Lotus-Eaters well behind, idly Vergil asked, “Well, Messer Capitan, and have you ever heard of one Hemdibal, a Pune, who calls himself or is sometimes called —”

“Josaias, King of Carthage? Aye, that. Heard too much more nor we like. Crawls up and down the lands and seas, that one, like some gret sarpint-snake. Ben’t no place safe fro him. Or his.” He was a moment silent. Then he shuddered. The notion came to Vergil, not the first coming nor the second, that he might better have taken his passage on some other craft … and, as always, that calm, cool voice, which took not much notice of, were the Dioscuri hatched from one egg or two, said voice had asked him, like a goodlier version of that daemon which the habitants of Araby Felicitous say sits upon the shoulder and whispers in the ear: What “other craft”? it asked. Lotophagea lay on no shipping lane such as connected, say, Ostia and Napoly: which, had it been a lane on land, so frequent usage must have graved grooves into the way.

Thinking best to change the matter, yet, like every man aboard, never once leaving off gazing roundabout the sea for any sign of any ship; Vergil said, “Your sails and shrouds seem much the worse for their wear, Ser Capitan.”

“Stone me with stones if we all don’t know that well! If we hadn’t espeared your smokes, which, by their well-known signal advised of us that a castaway did habit there and twas no mere smoke as they wittold eaterds and drinkards of that Scarlet Fig kape a-burning to toast their foolish feet, we’d perhap be by now at Isle Mazequa, which it lie as due west of Mauretayne as a man may rightly rackon: a renewing of sails and shrouds and sheets and lines alike …”

Vergil murmured something apologete and exculpatory, but Polycarpu waved it away. “Twas meant to be, depend upon it, Ser, if you was to castivate my nativity upon un a they ephermeris, you’d find it so designate.” Vergil expressed his thanks, regretting that, alas, he had no ephemeris along with him. And if Polycarpu had known his natal day, let alone the hour of naissance, (instead of, say, twas the hour our old ewe-crone Mima drapped her last lamb, I heard me grandam say … two days and a full week after that gret storm o wind that bruck the fishing fleet a fierce: the year? Plauto was consul then … or was it Glauto? Marcu was empery … I b’lieve) — why: that would have been a greater marvel than any marvel yet descried by any caster of nativities and drawer of horoscopes since Nabucodonosorus, famed for his herbal diet, had first devised that cleanly and exactive science.

It was a day and half a day before the welcome cry of, “A land I spy! I spy a land!” As was only customary and polite, Vergil had responded with, “What shore? What coast of people?”

The answer came, “Isle Mazequa, as any fool might ken … what shore or coast wast expecting of? Candia, Gret Asia More? or Felick Arabia?” But an older seaman gave the lad a kick and a cuff, explaining, as he turned to Vergil, “ ‘A stripling, a mat, and an oliver tree/ The more ye beat ‘em, the better they be.’ ”

The landfall on that small and rather barren island was late in the day, and so worn were the ropes and cables that they made the tiny harbor under oars, the winds being a bit gusty, so that the captain was fearful and fretful of any strain at all. Hasten round the port-town as they might, they found nothing in the way of already-made sail, or ready-to-use leathern shrouds or cable-ropes. They found a good deal of such as this:

“You are Catus the hide-flenser?”

“For sure I be, and for to sarve ye.”

“Then who is Joquimo the tanner?”

“Hm, well, I am Joquimo the tanner, Catus the hide-flenser he was my lawful brother, these seis months his foot is no more on arth, but I has compacted with his widdy to overtake his trade for sure I can flense an hide ever as good as he could, a peace upon his bones; how may I sarve ye?”

Not the least good, any show of impatience.

“Have you got some good lengths of well-braided leathern shrouds to stay the mast of my little craft as you may see rides at mooring there.”

See Joquimo, a.k.a. the Estate of Catus, peer a careful look to port, at once then say, “I has, Messer; that I has. A-made of jerauph’s hide, be called cameleopard by the general, fit to —”

Polycarpu, the least use or not, burst forth, “Neither sight nor smell has this lone rock of yours ever had of any jerauph or cameleopard! Asides: plain old pizzle-bull his hide be good enow for me; have you —”

“Indeed, indeed, my Messer Capitan sweet; the toughest hide of a plain old pizzle-bull as ever croppit grass or hunched a cow: it be flensed and scraped and cut and tanned and braided and hangit two weeks with weights to stretch it fair, and wants but ane more week for to —”

Which Polycarpu interpreted at its full worth, that is, that the man had nothing of the sort; mayhap he had an old ass’s hide in the stinking tannin-vat, and, given an advance of money and enough time, would endeavor to make treaty with the local butcher to haggle the god knew how long with any farmer who chanced to have a worn-out ox or bull he’d maybe sell; and at every chance Joquimo would swear upon his goodwife’s withered vulva that he simply must have another advance of money or the whole schema would go to waste: for thus it almost ever was in any small civitas: and the months might well (or ill) pass before any set of braided-leathers would the stranger get. And as for getting any of his money back for any reason beneath the ever-conq’ring and undying sun: such a thing had never been known in the history of the world and of the wheeling, glittering stars.

Visits to the man who made leathern buckets and bottles were just as bootless, and, speaking of boots, so was the trip to the isle’s sole and only cordwainer.

Whilst these useless trips and tours continued, gradually one became aware of a work-worn and decent-looking man following at a distance in their train. The distance gradually grew less and less, at length when he and Polycarpu were side-by-side the latter gave the stranger at last a long look which he took as chance to speak. “I am the rope-weaver of this place,” said he. “Mine is the rope-walk, and —”

“’Rope-weaver’! Have you got a new —”

The man shook his dusty head. “Nothing new, ser. I work to order only, and the orders come few, and it takes me time; first I must find the grass.” And he stopped. Waited.

What he did have to offer was soon described. A while ago he had prepared some rope on order for a shipman whose vessel plied between the island and the main of Mauretayne, payment to be made at the semi-annual settling of all debts, according to the custom. “He come home about that time,” said the rope-maker. “Before he ever unladed a jar or bale, he come to the wine-shop … for he never dranked at sea … and sate him down, he did. And then he died: no more years, he had. Nor had he heirs, howesoe’er remote. His boat was sold, and the cargo, and his wee house, and such. His debits were paid. And I? I got me back my ropes. I am not a one,” he concluded, simply, “to dun the dead.”

The ropes were not new, nor were they especially good. But they were better than the ones the Sard ship had.

And so they were good enough.

A larger sail was also offered, and that they took, too. Nor did the crew refrain from grumbling when Polycarpu roused them up at a time when the stars still blazed; “For,” said he, “It belikes me not to wastrel hours, and I feel not safe ontil we be in familiar waters; to work, there! To work!” The mast was stepped down, the old and fraying leather shrouds removed and cast aside for the cordwainer to fetch when he liked and cut them up and boil them down to add to his store of pigs’ pizzles and asses’ hooves and suchlike rubble, to make him glue. The “new” shrouds were but barely fitted in with the re-stepped mast, when a hue ran through the small throng gathered to watch the free show and to offer all their unsolicit advice: that a ship had been seen in the far distance by the watcher on the hill.

“What ship? Of what sort, a ship?” a hundred throats cried out the question. The answer, between gasps (the watcher’s boy had run the way): “A Carthage ship! A Pune! A ship of Carthage! Carthage! Pune!”

XI

Sea-Scene; or, Vergil and the Ox-Thrall

Swiftly they passed a rock off-shore (mentioned in The Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne) which stood into the water above the reaches of the common waves: there crouched a row of harpy-birds, eaters of men; anent whom opinions differ: do they attack, destroy, devour living men? or do they make their meals of dead-men’s-meat alone, as though it were mere sulliage or carrion? They crouched with their folded wings hunched high, their faces glaring out below: so that they looked like so many men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Fearful thought! and fearful sight!

They glowered and somewhat hoist first one foot, then atother, and their wings did twitch a bit: but nay more move they made. Vergil gave them but a glance. Overhead, high, high: the griffins gyred and circled.

In haste, afore they in haste put out to sea, finding after frantic search and enquiry, an aged copy of the Oracles of Maro; dice he easy gat. Tossed for the number of the page, tossed for the number of the line: seven came the first, fourteen came the second. Duplication of felicity? In anguished haste he turned the pages of the coverless codex, pages sullied and filthy with food and wine and with the drippings of the oily lamp; and withal what found he? This: much-loved of Juno, antient Carthage, stained with purple and heavy with gold. Thence, thence it was, that too-much-quoted gravid line? He had never thought of the Maro much; now he was moved to curse it: moved to … did not … And then the cry was, All aboard or left ahind, you magus there, move your narrow marrow-bones!

He moved.

The discus, Vergil could not throw; no race-horse would suffer to bear his untrained weight; and nor could he, limbs oiled and dusted with powder of alabaster, of mica, and of yellow marblestone, neither wrestle nor run the course, but he had one gift which they who waited beneath the echoing portico for the sound of the trumpet had not: he could think two clean different thoughts at once. The boat’s cracked boom sang a sort of woeful keening croon within the hollow; he thought of how he must now swiftly work with his fingers; and he thought as well of the 10th and 12th lines of— not of the Maro! not! — of the vIIth book of Concerning Things Seen in the Summer, the provenance of which is all unknow (some say that the Cumæan Sybil idly threw it in for boot when she finally sold her own prophetic, vatic book of leaves to Tarquin King, the Proud: this is mere legend), videlixet:

Against all Cities of the World may Cartha hope to triumph, save that against Graund Baby lone may Cartha lift no Thing of Bronze nor Iron. And doth Cartha ken this well…. Anent that Soldane of Graund Babylone which did eat grass like ane Ox, a further accompt is given …

That accompt must wait another occasion.

And Babylone was far away.

By some traditional estimate it was the green seas which were the most dangerous. But the sea today was grey, and much it liked him not.

Babylone was as far away as Agamemnon’s purple cloak, but Carthage (wherever Carthage was, nowadays) was not so far. And Carthage still claimed and Carthage still kept, the secret of the purple-yielding sea-shell which had made Carthage rich.

Ships, not indeed ships of war which this Carthage would scarcely dare attack … as yet … as yet … so-called “free” ships, free from the brazen yoke which Juno’s City would impose, might sail ever so far (not of course to the western source of the precious shell, so far kept full-secret) and never so far for dyes like that of the orchil-plant, to supply a mock-purple dye — not so good: but good enough: cheap … better than Averno’s, if not that cheap … besides, as Vergil had good reason for to know, Averno was no more; that “Very Rich City” was now sunk deep deep below the fuming, stinking lake which bore its name … yet ever the swift ships of “the New City” sailed ever so far to intercept. The monopole of Purple she claimed by the favor of Juno as of by natural right. She called this The Compact, and she and her ships enforced this by the cold grey iron and by the pitiless bronze. Byzantinople protected her own vessels with the so-called Greek Fire, but this was in her own home waters and in the Black Sea where neither Carthage nor the Sea Huns anyway had any desire to venture; but Rome, it would seem, once the master of all the Midland Sea and of wide sweeps of its adjacent waters, was now barely the mistress of the wide middle of it. For there was no sign of any Roman fleet nor even ship where he was now, in the western most waters of the wide though not unbounded Inner Sea.

SQPR, indeed!

The winds blew, the spray flew — penny poetry all to the side, it was certainly not, political issue to the side, not one of the best days to be at sea; and the larger vessel was assuredly gaining on the smaller … not because it was larger, because it carried more sail. Its men would not try archery, although the ships were likely within shot, for the winds made the use of either arrows or cross-bolts altogether too chancy and wasteful: and although Carthage would chance, Carthage hated waste. The Punes would wait till they were near enow to grapple; and then, the small ship as it were entrapt in iron claws, hanging helpless in the large one’s grip: then they would board. The large ship acting as an immense sea-drag upon the lesser, then the Punes would board. If death were their decision, then: sword, spear, daggar, harb, club: it made no difference, superior numbers would tell, and tell in short time.

Vergil, peering through the spray, felt a sudden great shock: he was of an instant certain that he saw, among the hateful faces at the pursuer’s rail, the especially hateful countenance of Hemdibal.

Alias, Josaias, King of Carthage!

“In short time?” In perhaps less than one run of the smallest sandglass.

Did Josaias of a sudden, stop and peer and shade his eyes? Did Josaias, darkly-rosey face instantly red with furious blood, recognize him, too? It was too late for Vergil to shield his face, else he might have done so: though of what use? there was no hiding here.

And the man whom he was now sure was Josaias, shook his fist; turned, and —

“Juno!” the Carthagans cried, shouted. “Juno! Juno!”

… much-loved by Juno, antient Carthage … how did it go? what did it matter?

So near were the ships one to tother, that Vergil might well clearly see the mast and flaxen sails of the pursuer straining on their leather lines, the braided leather shroud-ropes which held fast the masts and controlled the sails … the sails and masts of the pursuing ship, that is. That was it. His smaller ship might have hoped to out-run the chaser; the larger ship meant a larger surface to drag against the sea, and even its larger sails might not have sufficed to come within grappling distance … except that the smaller craft had dared to hoist only its own smaller sail: even before the hostile vessel had come charging out of the mist — had there been but a small patch of it, a wind strong enough to fill the sail would have been strong enough to blow the mist away: but it lay thick and lowering and heavy upon the whole face of the sea — there had not been time then, and there surely was not time now, to lower said smaller sail and then bend on the larger; even if they wished to risk (and a risk it certainly would have been, and a deadly risk, too) the braided ropes of rushes: papyrus and iris: which were all they had now (their old leathers worn out and cast away — such had been their haste to leave Isle Mazequa) to hold mast and sail in check. In haste from the report of a Carthagan ship in the cold current between the Columns of Atlas[12] (Pillars of Hercules, some called them: Melcarth’s Fingers), today’s wind would soon have frayed and snapped the rushy ropes, which were not new, but merely newer.

By all the laws of Rome and of the sea and by several treaties, the western part of the Inland, the Mediterranean Sea, was Imperial Roman water: Carthage no longer had the right to have a ship of such a size there; besides, Carthage had been destroyed, and its very site sowed with salt … hadn’t it? But, City destroyed or not, sown with salt or not, set up, secretly, somewhere new or not, this was a Carthage ship upon the salt, salt sea. And that was the kernel in the nut; the best way that Carthage could hope keep secret and occulted the presence of its larger ships in these waters, or in the circumfluent waters of the grey great green Atlantic, was by the most relentless pursuit of any other ships which they might encounter, or by which they might be espied. Smaller Carthagan ships might turn aside, larger ones dared not but pursue such Roman craft which had espied them: they must capture and destroy them and their people. This was a large ship of Carthage, and if it caught them, it meant their death. The Punes would not even tarry to torture, if any Rumani survived the flight they would be drowned instanta.

And Vergil, who had begged this passage out of Lotophagea aboard of the small “free” ship in search of purple-plant … there was no purple-plant on the Lotus Coast, but there was water; also moonstone and tourmaline … Vergil had neither caul nor umbil-cord with him (such are sold in that so-small shop tucked away aneath the Steps of Lamentation in Rome, where traitors’ heads are shown: sometimes the bodies, if not too badly battered for display, propped sitting upright, with their heads upon their laps) as save from drowning either in the circumambient fluid of the womb or in rivers or in the Inland Seas and the vast stream of Ocean … assuming that he lived long enough to leap overboard, that is. Leander had often swum the Hellespont, but no one had ever swum between the Gates of Hercules, never the Bath of Melcarth.

The hostile vessel’s master, mates, and crew had not paused to take up their oars and set them in the tholes and could not take the time now; they had been proceeding under sail, purely, and under sail they must continue. But Vergil’s smaller craft had had its oars out, helped by the skimpy small sail, and at their oars the men continued to strain.

Oft was I wearied when I worked with thee: oft carven on a ship’s oar.

Indeed.

As Vergil watched the half-naked rowers, thinking that the best he could would be to stay out of the way, he observed the men at the oars … or several of them: there were not many at the most, and the captain and the helmsman did not row … he observed some of the men, tunics girded up above the waist, pissing and skiting as they plied and strained. Probably much of this was the effect of fright or sheer terror and not a coincidentally simultaneous working of their bowels and bladders; and because such a situation was always possible, and had been ere Ajax burned the Argive ships, only to be himself spitted on the spikey rock, the rowers always rowed either naked or naked from the hips down. It was not a pleasant sight, and certainly not a pleasant thought: his own thoughts began to turn from it and away from the present: avoidance: but why were his thoughts now turned to a far away and long ago scene in a smokey hut on a distant island in the far-off Sea of Greece? An old man was dying in the hut … had been dying, ignored by almost all … there; and from his own scant store Vergil knowing well that “Against death there grows no simple,” had for no simple sought: some drops of a soothing medicament he had found, one of those which diminished sorrow and alleviated pain: a few turbid drops … ah, but like the rivers called Hermus and Tagus, was it not turbid with gold? … drops of the potent fluid talequale of poppy. The old man had been an ox-thrall: a thrall came with every ten yoke of oxen: such was the custom which had almost the force of law … perhaps was law … what was law? Utmost antiquity is the first principle of the law. Or so the lawyers said; he himself had been a lawyer. Briefly. Very briefly; and had never held a brief since, although, just for the form of it he paid his … how many ducats a year? … forgotten. The old man himself was certainly himself an antiquity, with his tangled white brows and gnarled hands, and feet like the roots of a much-suffering tree: what winds had beat upon him? and what rains? scorched by how many brutal suns? stumbled bruised, upon what number of brutal stones? Mere rhetoric to ask. A lifetime he had toiled with the oxen-kind.

The sounds and sights of the present … the blustering of the present wind, the scraping … creaking … knocking … of the oars, the shouted threats (of his own men there came little sound, of an inner knowledge they knew better than to waste their breath), the splashings of the spume and spray — all had dimmed off along with the sights.

There was not much vision in the island hut, some light from the part-open door a-splay on its worn and broken leather hinges and some broken slats and patches of it through the broken walls, from a few quick embers in the fire where the bitter roots of an ancient olive tree smouldered with a bitter reek. The man muttered broken words Vergil did not ask him to repeat, why bother, what did it matter, the old ox-thrall had but a few breaths left. Vergil gave him the drops in the simple small wooden spoon which, seemingly, he had always carried; but, feeling that he should say something, for the mastery of the balance demanded it, said, ambiguously — even in the face of duty-bound death we children of the bloody womb (squalling from the inst of birth) must bumble and mumble — said, “I am doing what I can for you.” A soft grunt from the dying serf, breath not so labored now, a slight sound as the cracked lips slightly smacked upon the small liquid thick, breath not as labored now, a long moment came and went; then the old ox-thrall’s voice, much less unclear and troubled now, quite coherent and clear, saying (a trifle husky, though: what else?), “And I shall do what I can for the Messer Doctor, my Ser, my thanks …”. Another breath, another pause. “I shall give thee what I can. It may have some vally some day, once, Tis a good strong curse —”

“A curse!” Odd-favored gift indeed!

“Aye, a good ‘un, tis, which I had of my good gaffer on the gret Isle Negroponty. A very good strong curse upon the red oxen, me ser. As it work only on red oxen, no one know why, Nature have gret sport with we, may’ap she provide other good curse and strong on white, black, brindle, spotted …” Well, red oxen were a bit favored, thought to be a somewhat heartier, so: blood-oxen, they were called.

A sudden shift of tone apprised Vergil that the curse-chant had begun: it was no hard task to listen. Nor to remember.

The old slave’s breath wavered, waited, halted, resumed. Chanted:

The old man’s voice moved back to the level of simple talk. He said, “This strong, good curse, as I got of my good gaffer, back there in the gret Isle of Negroponty — a shame he perished of the painful flux — so I used it to get me revenge on more nor one cruel master, and they knew it not. Aa-heh!” — even as his death hovered impatiently, still he found breath for one moment’s sound of triumph and contempt: welladay! was he not entitled? And yet, on the old voice ran, heedless, now, of the lowing of the cattle and the other like sounds, of the heedless voices of the peons hastening by on the farm. “And all you needs to work it with is a scarp of red ox-hide, a —” His breath rattled, a look of slight surprise came onto his face, and then impatient death closed his eyes. A line of ichor oozed from the still-open mouth. Suddenly his nostrils, thatched with clotted hairs, seemed grown very wide. And his nose very sharp.

But there was not such portal of escape now, at sea.

Had the ancient been going to add something? was that last syllable not and? In which case “and” what? One would never know, now. Nor did it matter. Vergil had work to do; scarce had he reached the mid-point of gathering herbs on that far distant isle of Greece and comparing them with the illustrations in the Theophrast on Plants; the text he had of the illustrated manuscript, he strongly suspected of being a mere copy of a copy, and as filled with errors as a pomegranate with pips. Enough time —

He rose, there in the hut, and absently brushed his knees, his hose; chaff and straw had clung there, spiders’ webs and eggs, flecks of dried dung had clung there, husks of barley, and one blade of grass. There was no need for the familiar tests of mirror or feather; no one cared in the least. Tomorrow would do for burial, and if the old man were not now indeed dead (which, indeed, he was), certes he would be by then.

An old ox-thrall.

Then the scene vanished as mist dissolved by wind — though the wind had not quite dissolved this mist — he was back on the small “free” craft flying from the Carthagan corsair … though true corsairs sometimes only plundered and took what they fancied of the cargo and whom they fancied of passengers (if any) or crew … comely women … girls … handsome men … boys … sometimes even ugly old sea-scabs, did the corsair be short of hands. Even if this were merely a Carthagan corsair and not patrol-ship, even if intent chiefly on plunder: was the orchil-paste (shades of purple!) found in the hold: dead men were they all. Vergil heard the terribly laboring breath of the rowers, smelled their bitter stale and stinking scat; the captain had breath to spare, and all he said as he paced, Polycarpu, was, “Row! … Row!” and “Row!” The helmsman also had breath to spare, and he spoke but one sentence: “Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea save us from death!” and he spoke it again and again. And the ship’s master, Polycarpu, walked up and down, to and fro, back and forth, uttering his single, single word.

A sting of spray near-blinded Vergil in one eye. The pursuer was nearer now, one could hear the Cry of Carthage — war-cry, supplication, cry of triumph — Fire burns, water drowns, Carthage hates Rome — the Cry of, “Juno! Juno! Juno!”

All at once he was on his knees, in his hand the leather square from his old, soft, doe-skin budget, miracle! still with him! the leather square with the SQPR (death to counterfeit), Senatusque Populesque Romanum, stamped upon it (long ago) in gilt. For what? to prove to the Punes he was a citizen of Rome? This was no recommendation in the happiest of circumstances, and certainly it would be worse than none to Josaias, who would certainly not fail to remember the meeting with Vergil in the fields on Corsica where and when he had encountered Vergil at the very moment that he was robbed of his intended prey: the “stealer of the teeth” (did Vergil recall what teeth meant? vaguely he thought he might, but the recollection eluded him now, and besides there was no time). So —

He was on his knees, then, in his hands the leather square, initials SQPR still faintly visible although the gilt was long since worn away from the letters. It was all faded now, faded, worn, and, really: greasy; but there was a by-word about what color it had been — “He hath the hide of the red ox, he hath!” — in other words the he was a citizen, and not a mere denizen and subject, of Rome; not alone of Yellow Rome, the City, but of the very entire Empery of Rome … and Rome had chosen the blood-red color of Mars, godly Father of Father Romulus, father-founder of Rome; chosen it for this especial usage. Vergil was on his knees (Mamers, as Quint’s rich friend called the goddus in his native Etruscan tongue: and what matter now? either Quint or …), he, Vergil was chanting the curse upon the red ox — upon? against! why? well … they would soon see. His thumb prickled. The sybils, where are they? and your mothers, do they live forever?

He would soon see.

And why, in the name of any goddus or goddess or spirit or genii, was he, in the midst of the wild wide sea, cursing an ox? — not to stop, not to pause, his right thumb prickled, was that not enough? was that not the gift (besides the gift of her body, a good gift in itself) of the priestess of “those who make plans in the night,” back there beneath the odorous walnut-tree: that his right thumb should prickle as a warning and a guidance? aware of woe —

Spindle made, it was said, of a dead man’s rib boiled in vinegar to make it supple and limber and easy for its shape to change: a thing well-fit for the Norns, those Northish ones whose name was brought south by the Varangian guards to Micklegarth, “Great City,” as they called Byzantinople; Byzance-town; and why should the Norns not spin the fate-threads for the oxen of the isles or wherever their attention was called? … summoned thereto …?

The toiling crew peered at him out of the corners of their eyes; their arm-, leg-, and back-muscles looking like cables strained so that they might crack and snap any moment now; but out of their eyes’ corners shown now some faint lust of hope, to see the magus on his knees; hope, despite the loudening clamor of Juno! Juno! Juno!: and, intrusively, there was coming again the line from the Oracles of Maro … eh? … ah … yes … much loved by Juno, antient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold …

Not to stop nor to pause. Onward.

Now! There would happen —

Nothing happened. Except of course —

“Juno! Juno!”

And that huge, it seemed very huge now, Carthage ship grew steadily nigher.

Either the Curse was, for whatever reason (including, possibly, a lie: even dying men sometimes lie, alas; sometimes even dead men lie … alas …), futile — or, somewhere, an hundred parasangs away, a blood-red ox with pendulous dew-laps and shambling gait, lurching and straining in the furrow of the loamy earth, had of a sudden stumbled: an ox-horn, grass-tied or not, plowing of a sudden, a furrow of its own — and, if so, what good? On the ship’s sodden deck lay a blade of grass, a leaf of common green grass, as to which the Theophrast said nothing: from Abana Balm to Zenobian Zinziber the Theophrast had much to say: about the common bladed grass: nothing. On Vergil’s knee, where it had knelt beside the dying ox-thrall, a leaf of greeny grass. Of … nothing. Grass was nothing.

Vergil thought again of the tenth and twelfth lines (the eleventh was blotted and rubbed) of the viith book of Concerning Things Seen in the Summer, the provenience of which remains unknow, videlixet:

Against all Cities of the World may Cartha hope to triumph, save that against Graund Babylone may Cartha lift no Thing of Bronze nor Iron. And doth Cartha ken this well … Anent that Soldane of Graund Babylone which did eat Grass like ane Ox, a further accompt is given …[13]

The blade of green and common grass which now lay upon the deck, scanty deckling that there was in all that hollow ship, idly that morning before leaving in haste the land, he had carelessly plucked the leaf and into his hat had thrust it; forgotten, it had fallen from the hat, here it was. He imagined just such a thing falling from an ox’s wet muzzle … why had the Babylone soldane eaten grass like an ox? … someday he hoped to know … and he conjectured a vision that the ox was red. And simultaneously he concentrated on the words of the Emperor Julius II, festina (he’d said) lente. Slowly hasten. Lentor inexorable. Very careful feeling indeed, Vergil clove the leaf of grass in two, let fall the half with the rib, placed the other half sideways in the hollow formed by the apposition of his thumbs, carefully brought the arrangement to his lips: and blew. A squeak, a squawk, the leather badge dissolved to dust, there came a sharp sound, then a quite different noise — as loud a crash as the arm of a ballista or some other catapult, suddenly free from tension and striking its bar the instant before the missile was flung forth.

Every braided-leather rope holding the vast sail and heavy mast of the vasty massy Punic ship broke, flew frazzled and writhing, dissolved, vanished. Hair and horn was far now from Vergil’s ken, but Hide had Ceased to abide. The mast, unsupported by the braided-leather shrouds, the mast was down, cracking planks and timbers. The great linen sail flopped flapping every which way, uncontrolled, uncontrollable, useless: down.

The aghast and furious face of Josaias seen in the immense confusion, Vergil saw that himself was seen; seen, observed, identified: what face — Josaias — frightful in hate …!

The great Carthage ship, so suddenly fractured, floundered in the trough between two huge waves; and the tiny galley, with its tiny sail intact (intact, too, the weakling rushy ropes: papyrus, iris) crawled up the inner surface of the greater wave like an insect; climbed and clambered over its top, flowed down the other side. The winds fell and the mists closed in again, as cold and impartial as when they had opened, and from within the mists came an echo of ever-dwindling cries: “Juno! Juno!”

But it was not now the voice of them that triumph, the sound of them that feast.

The rowers rolled their eyes to their captain, he gestured. The oars on one side went up and for the next stroke did not come down, the oars on the other side went row! the small ship swerved on an angle; then both banks of oars played again, but (another gesture of Polycarpu’s) more slowly. The speed was somedel reduced, but so was the sound of the oars: an important consideration when the heavier atoms of the fog carried sound more weightily. Right now the ship of Carthage, assuming it did not sink: a mere assumption: it could not now follow, but no need was there at all to give them even a hint that the smaller craft was changing course nor hint to what direction that course might be. “I had hoped to make for Aspamia or the Baleares or even, ahap, the coasts of Frankland: but twold be belike too far,” the captain said, almost as aside to Vergil. “Right along the rhumb-lines,” is what Vergil at first thought he heard the captain directing the helmsman as he showed him the cartolan, unrolled in his hands. But in a moment he realized that — for what meant obliquities to the meridean for a seaman on such a barco as this? nought. — what Polycarpu must have said was, “Right along the wind-lines,” showing him on the cartolan how the winds … Boreas, Sirocco, Zephyro, Levanto, Septentrio, and all the others (“the Twelve Petals of the Compass-Rose”) … went from here to yon: as though any wind might be directed to follow a line, like a pullet in a spell: they were lines of probability, and no more. But it gave a mighty strong hint to the helmsman, and he might now observe which way the waves were ruffled, and snuff the breezes for the smells of land, with greater confidence. And after no more than a blink or two, the helmsman nodded. No ship might follow a map in a mist, but the mere sight of the cartolan gave him that confidence: in his mind he followed, and he turned his helm. Polycarpu bore away the chart, and … with a deep bow and a most respectful gesture to Vergil (pulling over his head an imaginary toga, like a priest in a temple facing the king of the sacrifice) … resumed his sempiternal striding up and down the deck, up and down, again and again, back and forth.

The man at the helm may … say, rather, should … have been returning his thanks to Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea. But if so, he was not doing it aloud. To vow a fine fat freemartin, as had the skipper of the Zenos, was hardly within his means: a pigeon, perhaps. At least, a squab. Perhaps in mind he was doing so, if he had room in his mind.

Between the rudder and the mast, Vergil, excused from every duty on the rota of duties (Rota. Rato. Arot. Otar. Ator. Taro … and all the rest of it), had now time to think of the duty which he had of late performed, and which was on no roster at all. As a woman, a matron, likely, who wishes to summon a servant in the time of night when all are at slumber, save she herself; does so with a sound both low yet sharp, by clicking her finger-nails; so Vergil stood, feet spread apart and braced and facing the grom grey sea, reviewed the elements of the equation of the spell: and did it not seem as though each element appeared as though summoned? click after click? spume in his face, click.

First, Click! there was the need that the Carthage sail-ropes and mast-shrouds all be of leather, and not of any grass. Click! Then … what were the odds that the leather be made from the hide of a red ox? (… as a dream, somewhere the report of a great pool so vasty as to be termed a sea and contained in a container of bronze or brass, the same being supported by the figures of oxen: supposing these to be made as well of tombac bronze, the oxen … until a patina formed … would indeed be red…) for be sure they’d not be made of cow-hide, though this be stern and stanch enough for any pair of boots or any whip of thongs, yet no hide fit merely for whip or boots — however punished or punishing — would be staunch and stern enough for a ship’s shrouds or sheets: its cables or its ropes, in landsmen’s talk — And the Curse itself must be remembered and recited: recited accurately, too. Click! Click! Click! Next, the memory of Babylone and a blade of grass … absent from the instructions; the old ox-thrall, it was now clear, had died before divulging this about the blade of grass; yet, sure, it had been his intention to divulge it, and therefore it hung in the air and Vergil had breathed it in (else, it had passed into the Universal Æther, and thence had slipped into Vergil’s mind, and, thence, unto his lips and fingers: Click!) Once had Vergil pronounced the Curse and nothing had happened. It had also been needful that, Click! he should have with him a piece of the hide of a red ox. Click! and would he have had this, for certain, had he not been a citizen of Rome Yellow Rome! Yellow Rome! but for all that, the stamp of the citizenship was on red) …? Click! And what of the blade of grass, so common a thing as a leaf of grass, yet a thing extending, as it were, the protection of distant, far-distant Babylone (where kings ate grass and books were built of the muddy earth, upon which grass grew … had not Huldah shown him?) over not-so-distant Carthage — had Carthage been destroyed? Cartha Gedasha, New City, springing up ever anew … How had he, Vergil, merely “chanced” to put a blade of common grass into his hat, just e’er they’d left land that morning? Had not the Curse known it was to be required that day, and had it not required Vergil to take and pluck, take and pluck? Click!

Click!

Pluck!

Click!

Next, what was the sounding of the shrill note upon the broken blade of grass, but what the occymists called The Dissolution, the vanishing — or the appearance — of one substance in another, or the creation therein of a third? — the katalysein, as the Ægyptian occymists called it in their fluent but to tell the truth untinctured, rather sloppy Greek, though this was not the place nor time to parse or purify it. — had he not blown his shrill and grassy note, shrill as ever any wind, would all the elements of the equation have come together, and fulfilled the Curse upon the Red Ox, hair, horn, and hide … hide …?

Click!

Never before in his life had he had more instant and more emphatic evidence of the truth and proof of Illyriodorus’s principle: “In verbis et in herbis … therein lies power.”

He felt as someone who had been long preparing for a certain journey, and who suddenly found himself on the road itself with nothing which had been in the catalogue of things needed for it … indeed, with not even the list itself: But if he had only the memory of the catalogue or list — was this nothing for the journey? far from it. It was, indeed, “something for the journey,” indeed. “Such and such an herb, sure against elf-shot,” thunder-thistle, perhaps, he perhaps had it not — but if the awareness of not having it kept him cautiously away from “blasted oaks” (what brought now to his mind the bidens, the lightning-blasted lamb?) “and all such sites of baleful omen and of elf-shot,” why, wasn’t this as though he had had it? And better than though he had, and had not sense to use it?

Click! 

XII

Tingitayne

As it were idly, but mainly to calm his still leaping heart and throbbing thoughts, he brought forth from his pocket the battered thin old copy of The Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne, and riffled through it, pausing here and there to read …

Ictoon, a haven with no port or town, but containing three flowing streams of good water. Deep-drawing ships, it is said, may enter either from the right or left, but the careful will ever prefer the left, except in the season of myriad heavy rains, when the river … The Harbor-town where is the siege of the Chief of the Kings of White Mauretayne, has a myriad of peoples, and exporteth reeds and rushes, such as those of the sweet flag or iris, which sometimes be of the best quality; you may know this by the scent or olor. Myriads of papyrus plants are here to be found springing up by the rivers and swamps, but they are too coarse to be used for writing or even for wrapping, so they are not prepared in the usual way, but are kept sodden and may be scutched for rope as needed. From this the Chief of Kings derives it is said a myriad of ducats in export duties …

Vergil sighed. The anonymous author or compiler was fond of the word myriad. The pages turned and turned.

… the waters are not sweet which proceed from the brooks of Bubastine, site of a temple to Cybele or Venus who is worshipped here as the genetrix of Genets, valued for their incessant hunting-down of mice and rats. Hither came Algibronius, Geber, or Gibber, whose alchemical texts are by the vulgus called gibberish. The Gebber here examined for minerals useful for his Art, and found, tis said, an excellent unctuous earth for preparing fluxes. But no mines are now worked. Here Gibber commenced to edifix an altar, but did not complete it, preferring … Sarsten by the Sea hath for sale without stint very good wheats and millet and spelt; also a scarlet dye sold in grain. Sarsten above the Sea prepares several special sorts of garlands which retain their scent above a lustrum …

Vergil gave here a great yawn, felt much fatigued. Came hither Gibber, delving, devoting, praying? And decided to erect his altar to the Great and Comely Mother, symbol of the Female Principle in the Universe, but did not finish it —? How like him. Algibronius came once to a symposium at the School of Illyriodorus, stroked much his long thin dark beard and spoke for above an hour by the glass: left with no one (perhaps not even The Old Master) very much enlightened. Yet there was about him an hint of barely banked fires and of almost-quivering excitements at the concealed wonders of the world, could one but take up the mantic sword Inwitsbane and with one stroke cut open the great egg of Zazma the Unknowing, abda ca dabra, and thus incipiate the Yolk of Per sis and the White of Selene and Luna and the Great White Porcine Sow if and so so on: much so on. And then departed abruptly, so much so that he awoke several students: Vergil would have mildly wished to know but never did: whither had he departed.

“Bring her out, bring her a bittle out,” Vergil heard the captain Polycarpu directing. They were standing down a coast, and he had not even heard the landfall called, not never so much as asked the ritual What shore? what coast of people? Had that much time passed as he droused over the Periplus? “Bring her a bittle out,” the captain had said; sure enough the barco swung a small ways out away from shore.

“Which side is the current coming down?” Current coming down? That meant a river.

“Starboard, Carp.”

“Then swing her in, making up the larboard side.”

The helmsman gave a slight grunt, gave Vergil a slight glance, as one should say, After all my years on the water do ye tell me so?

But the shore was, mere, a shore, a dry brown shore as like so many, here and there a small structure with a flat roof, and on yonder hill, of course, there stood a building, inevitably a tower: it was — ah the god — how dull, and Vergil’s eyes fled back to the book, over which he had pored and droused. Of a sudden in the book, a new page, not as usual the mutter of what many springs of water and where, of rocks and reefs, exports, imports: no. At this point, it was clear, the nameless compiler, or, likelier, recompiler, had set himself to copy something quite different, and the calligraphy, the “hand,” grew still and formal. Was this some lines from a Fasti, and if so, which one? Hmm, to see, to see. Somehow, already, skipping ahead and scanning words later even before actually reading carefully the beginning, the principio; somehow he had the feeling that this new entry, if that was quite the word, constituted some sort of a montjoy, that cairn of stones erected to mark the site of a victory in battle.

Hercules, the Roman form of Melcarth, called the Tyrian Hercules, from the Punic Melec-Cartha, King of the City; but sometimes reverenced by the Gauls and Anglians and other Nortishmen as “King Arthur.” Melcarth was ever the chief deity of Tyre (Tur, Turret, Tower) and also of that City rich in Purple her chief African colony, Carthage (from Cartha Gedasha = New City). Some say thus: King Cartha, famous for his deeds of valor, metaphorically termed labors, erected twain columns at the western end of the Midland Sea; beyond which bounds he did no deeds, gestes, jousts. Others say they be named Gibber’s Altar and the Mountain of Atlas: but this is mere legendry. The facts are that twain columns were erected in the Temples of Melcarth at Tyre and later at Carthage by that great architect Hiram. (Note the progression Hiram, Hercules, Melcarth. The H/M and R/L shifts are according to the Laws of Letters as laid down by the Phoenicians or Punes, who invented letters. Is the procession noted?). The true significance of the twain columns is not surely wotted, though some have feigned wit of it, pointing at the double phallus of the Divine Priapus at Pompeii and elsewhere and saying that this signifies the Duplication of Felicity: o pópoi and peh upon them. The true significations of the Columns of Atlas, also miscalled the Pillars (or Gates) of Hercules or Melcarth, eek betermed Hiram’s Fingers, remain therefore one of the Higher Mysteries. Only this much is of a surety known: that their true names hight Jachin and Boaz. Melcarth bathed there. Bathes there still? So The Matter sayeth. And more, The Matter sayeth not.

Slightly dazed by all this (and perhaps, so, too, the scribe or recompiler, for he seemed to turn with an air of relief to: In Hirnon, the next place of haven and selling and lading are at all times and seasons to be found never less than an hundred holy harlots; and seafarers and men or merchantry always pause to do their devoirs to this Fane of the Genetrix …) But although at some occasions this would of course be of intense interest to Vergil, his appetites thereto seemed for now anulled. Why had all this happened? How, out of the bitter jaws of almost certain death, had he and all folk of this ship and perhap even the very ship itself, escaped with their lives and even their integuments intact? To whom did he owe a debt greater than any thanks? To any king or soldane or senate? to no ships of battle, certes. To whom or what, then?

An old ox-thrall.

Back he was in Tingitayne.

“ ‘King of Carthage,’ nonsense, my good citizen,” said the Proconsul, “there is no ‘King of Carthage.’ What the Viceconsul meant to say is that the fellow calls himself ‘King of Carthage.’ Name is Hemdibal, got it in my books, and I don’t care what he calls himself. What he is, he is a pirate. What those fellows with him are, they are also pirates. Got ships, have they? How many ships did you see? — saw one, just as I thought. Don’t know very much, but a man doesn’t get to be Consul Romanus (which I needn’t remind you I was, before I drew the name of this stinking, fly-blown pest-hole out of the urn according to the ways of our Fathers, as wise today as they were the day they were inst graven on the Iron Tablets), man doesn’t get to be Co-consul of Rome without knowing the difference between the singular and the plural. Don’t talk to me of grammar,” Vergil had not so much as mentioned the subject, “-urn, — us, -a, — i, -o, — a, -um, — us; tollo, tollere, sustuli, sublatum, don’t you see. Rego, regere, rexi, rectum. Singular and plural, indeed.” And he glared at Vergil with pale blue eyes set in a wine-dark face.

And Vergil, stifling any inclinations which he may have had about possibly extrapolating comments along the lines of rexi, rectum, realized full well that a man didn’t often get to be Co-Consul (the Emperor being invariably the other Co-) without being a jacanapes, a dullard, or a fool; the Emperor — whoever he might be — few emperors would ever wish to select anyone else to bear the conjoint consulate who was not all three. And, just to take no chances, the Emperor always saw to it that all the lots provided for the drawing from the urn at the end of his colleague’s term bore the name of whichever stinking, fly-blown pest-hole (distant, too) it had been decided to afflict with the retiring consul (the Imperial Member of the Roman Consulate never retired, of course). It was hoped that this experience would cure whatever Patrician from any further interest in the realm of politics for which his noble blood and subsequent unpopularity entitled him.

That such a holder of the Fool’s License was deemed, for one thing, incapable of contemplating a plot against the Crown Imperial, and, for another, incapable of succeeding in one: goes without saying.

Agrippa Pretorius: always an exception. Lupus was Emperor then (Arms: a wolf sejant on a field of dead men’s bones: so twas said) and, it seemed, Lupus could not do without Agrippa Pretorius … for long. In those odd grey eyes like some cold and shoreless sea whose depths could be neither plumbed nor fathomed, there lay, it seemed, an utter lack of any desire for glory soever. Lupus still feared him? Perhaps. Lupus had only to say to Chief of Guards, “Bring me the head of the Consul Pretorius”? aye … but Lupus, who, be he what else he might be, was nothing like a fool, knew that if he were to do so, it would then be far likelier that Chief of Guards would bring the Consul Pretorius the head of the Emperor Lupus. But it seemed the Emperor needed him. So every now and then Pretorius would be summoned from the farm where he reared his bulls and planted pears and willows, to be made Consul once again. Only thus was Lupus sure to be free of the Marmosets, the thronging little pettymen and functioners who buzzed round the Imperial eyes like a cloud of gnats; afterwards, of course, Pretorius would draw the lot for a fine rich province from the urn. Another tale.

Although it was so hot that the flies, being too tired even to fly, hung limply in clusters from cobwebs whose webbers were too hot to pursue them, the Proconsul was wearing the same woolen tabard and trews which he was sure to have worn at any occasion back in Yellow Rome where the formalities did not require a toga. He was sweating heavily, too. He was a rather heavy man, too, despite the tradition that all Patricians were imperially slim. Yet he rose to his feet quickly enough when the Viceroy entered the pale-blue-plastered room — perhaps — perhaps? certainly not because he recognized in the Viceroy his superior (a mere Member of the Equestrian Order, a mere knight? as his superior? pah …) and certainly not because the Viceroy was saying “I greet Your Upperness, that whom no one has a nicer or more discriminating palate when it comes to date-wine, and the Excise is rather perplexed if the five tuns which have just come in are to be classed as Highest Duty, or —”

“Date-wine? Sickly sweety stuff, fit to buy as treats for whores; Excise! not my department of course … but sometimes the Highest Duty stuff is after all not half-bad, and one wouldn’t want the Fisc to be cheated …”

His words died away into a mumble as he followed the exciseman with quill, ink-pottle, and roll of papyrus. The Viceroy dropped his official politeness as though it had been a rather sweaty towel, and he at the edge of the pool in the Cooling-Room at the bath.

“Of course I have been listening,” he said, and waited just a moment as Vergil automatically looked round for any tell-tale hole-in-the-wall; then, remembering to mind his manners, looked only at an imaginary spot between the Viceroy’s eyes: not that he expected any fascination to be exercized, his spirit paralyzed and subdued like the coney’s quailing before the serpent’s weaving head and fascinating eye — never had he known any Roman official who had this art — but it was well to keep in practice.

“Of course I have been listening,” said the Viceroy, “not only at the wall just now, and a damned fool I’d be if I didn’t: much do I learn that way —”

“Including Your Lordship’s learning the case endings for the neuter gender as well as the declension of two invaluable if irregular verbs. One supposes that a man could learn Latin that way, if one did not already know it and had a lifetime to listen.”

Kept his face quite straight. Officials often enjoyed a joke about other officials, but sometimes thought they were being leered at; in which event they might not enjoy it.

“You are pleased to play with me, Mage, and to enjoy yourself and almost to laugh. But I have also been listening down at the moles and jetties and my people have been listening for me: and you will not enjoy hearing what I have heard; come in, you!”

And the You who came in was a man whom Vergil had seen before on his first, brief stay in Tingitayne, although this time he was without the company of his twain serjeants-at-mace; his name …? his name was …

“Festus!” he exclaimed. Festus … the skipper of the “justice-boat”? Should he mention what he had seen of the fugitives the man had then asked about, seen of them that awesome night of the oliphaunts in “the Region called Huldah?” No. He would not. He would only —

“Have you located the right hand of the Colossus of Rhodes yet, Festus?”

The skipper, as was traditional, scratched his head. “A marvel that you remember my name, me ser. Ah, what? Well, no, but we’ve a report as to they say it’s been located in Neapoly, but changed unto marble … Ah! I perceives as me ser has heard this heself!”

“But … the great Marble Hand has been in Naples as long as I can remember.”[14]

“And the right hand o’ th’ Colossus of Rhodes has been missing, long as I can —”

The Viceroy cleared his throat, and Festus instantly fell silent and stood to attention. “Those memories can wait upon some other occasion. To settle and set aside: You were marooned in Lotophagea?” Vergil nodded. “Marooning, except for reasons the most extreme, has been forbidden by The Law of the Sea since the Rescript of the Divinely Favored Julius I. I shall make complaint on your behalf, Ser Doctor Vergil, to the Admiralty Court; as to next —”

Vergil, aware that perhaps he should remain silent, could not help hazard the suggestion that it might be best be made by himself, in person. “Best it might be, but you shan’t have time. As to next —”

Though vastly astonnied, Vergil said nothing; fixed his attention on the opposite wall, where, who knows how long ago, some plaisterer, not content with having applied the plaister with his own bare hands, as witness the not totally unpleasing swirls which a common harling or screeding-tool would not supply, had briefly placed his hand flat upon the wet surface: and Vergil observed that the man’s index finger lacked the first joint; this quick glance had sufficed to keep his face quite blank; and, as really he did not wish his mind staying blank as well, switched his attention from the wall to the Viceroy’s face. Which was not alone stern, but aseemed a good bit haggard.

As had he not observed on their first meeting.

“As to next, the talk around the water-butts along the fore shore is that you, Doctor Vergil, by some arts magical into which I shall make no enquiry, Festus informing me that he knows of a surety that you do have the doctorate, license being implied …” He had been speaking indeed very fluently, then slowed down, then stopped. Remained a bare second silent. Then resumed again: not indeed slowly, but slower.

“The fact, I understand, is that certainly the ship pursuing you was greatly disabled, though, one hears, not foundered nor sunk. And I must suppose it to have been a ship of Carthage, whatever that may mean. Did you perceive aboard of it any person you know by sight or —”

“The Pune whom I observed on a ship, the Zenos, passing between Naples and Lerica, and later ashore in Corsica; and yet again in your Lordship’s office. I knew him as Hemdibal; you told me he is also called Josaias.”

“King of Carthage,” they finished, simultaneously.

“Yes … Well, Ser, or rather Doctor, I have heard that this same man had evidently recognized you. And has sworn to pursue and to burn you or drown you, posting over every sea …”

“Such a report, if true, has reached here very quickly —”

With a weary gesture, the Viceroy said he sometimes thought the very birds brought words; and Vergil bethought him of the harpy-birds: had they witnessed the scene at sea? were they perhaps grateful to those who provided carrion? if indeed it was carrion-flesh they ate? or were they eager to provoke combat to the death between any groups of men? Fire burns, water drowns, Carthage hates Rome, Harpies are no friend to man …

“The same rumors say he aswore vengeance on, what’s his name, Polycarpu, his ship and crew. Therefore. I have told Polycarpu to take his ship up the coast where there are a few shipwrights and their ways and have his barco repainted, taking not even time to scrape or caulk or make repairs, to fit himself for sea in haste, with new masts and new shrouds and new sails bent on, and to make his way west with all speed. I’ve also told all men with beards to shave them and all men who have no beards to let them grow. Mayhaps these deceipts will bring them safe to Sardland; and further my advice to them is to avoid the western seas for long and long. Until this matter and this menace be cleared up.”

Here the man stopped and ordered by gesture that a tassy be filled for him out of a jug; he drank, he began again to speak.

While it was, of course, treason for a subject to assume a royal or imperial title, still, lawyers might have pretty sport and long make delay over such matters as: was Josaias indeed effectively assuming the title of a kingdom which no longer existed? “I can see the advocates there, prancing and preening in Apollo’s Court; knowing that no Roman judges will now accept that there is such a res as a Kingdom of Carthage … Ah, my Herc and my Merc, it’s all futile! Is there still a Roman fleet, swift to punish violations of the Pax Romana? There must still be, where is it now? — all round about the Italian boot, keeping guard against enemies out of the east. Against a rabble of scum and barbarous dogs in bumboats called Sea Huns! And what of the west, eh? what of the —”

Nothing but the need to swallow the spittle which filled his mouth made the Viceroy stop a moment, and in the silence while the muscles worked in the man’s face and throat, quietly, Vergil asked, “My Lord Ser, regardless of legal status, where is Carthage now?”

A helpless but eloquent gesture, such as the ruffian caitiff Junius had given at the funeral of one whose name differed from his own by a letter: murderer, assassin, blood fresh-washed from his hands; and then a cried, What title had Casar to the Empery? and for the matter of a title delivered Rome over to something worse than an Emperor: to war, to civil war, over to two-faced Janus, with red mouth straining and with teeth all bare … “It, or whatever place these Punic brutes use as base, it must be somewhere, must it not? Even pirates require a base, an armada however hostile can’t subsist on fish alone, can’t draw bread and oil and weaponry in with a net. Tartis …!”

Vergil leaned, the better to hear. Tartis from its ruined and ruinous city near Gades, next trade entrepot north of … of … of Gades! sands of time! yet another name for that pass between the seas: the Great Gates of Gades! … Tartis, that once-great league of kingly sea-traders, established not only before Rome and before Carthage and even before Tyre and Sidon and before the spread-out lands of Greece; Tartis was now like some great sea-orme, its head a-stricken off, yet its coils still twitched … some of them still had life, here and there a trading-post, there and here a castello. Tartis …

“Tartis reports, in that antique and oblique way of Tartis, ceremony interminable; come reports, if one may call them so, that black ships, not our small Midland Sea barco-boats daubed black: but ships of burthen as large as any ships of war, flying, shamelessly, bold as brothel-bawds, some banner we here know is the old Punic banner …” The man paused as though summoning strength to staunch his own rhetoric; went on, more slowly, slowly, on. “One hears that of late these ships do great trade in many far-apart marts: buying wheat which they have some way of boiling and drying out so it neither rots nor rusts nor moulders: buying iron, buying steel, buying old copper, copper, tin, buying timber, tar, and flax, buying leather, buying hide.” He had given name to just about all materiel of war. “I hear of such trade, much, but see no such cargo coming past my Tingitayne, to pause and pay the export-tax. With what do they pay? Why, they pay with purple, and I hear that sometimes they pay with gold, and tales incredible I hear: such as, they pay with silk —

“Silk. I believe it not. Nor do I believe other reports, that they pay with yet something else of value, which it seems folk be shy and coy to name … But of this, enough. So men say. As for you, if these ships be bold enough to enter our Roman sea and swear reprisal on you, it is time that you get gone. Right soon. Now. You are, it seems, wanted at Rome, the August House has want of you, it wants you hard, I wot not why. I do wot that Himself, that Wolf, will have my head if he gets you not. And since you cannot go by sea, by this sea of water, you must go by land, across the sea of stone, the stony land, the Terra Petra: and so even if that Pune or some Pune or other or any posse comitatus all of Punes; if then they swoop down and burn my Tingitayne, stinking sullen sulky Tingitayne, burn it like an hut in a cucumber field: at least word will be gat out that you have gone safe from here and so that wolf will not burn my own brothers’ lands and fields and houses, holding them at guilt by right of frankpledge. Horses are being saddled for you and guide, leave by the black lane at fall of night. These Berbar horsemen can guide themselves by faintest starshine so don’t bother and bootless stand, begging for delay. If you have prayers to pray, go quick to the temple in the courtyard. Dusk falls, it gins and commences to fall right swift, there is time to take neither a woman nor a bath: here is the double purse of gold. I shall offer for you, let us be hopeful. Tell them at home that the Viceroy Caspar at Tingitayne filled his orders full. Go.”

XIII

The Terrapetra

The black lane. Every walled city had its black lane, some going under the wall by tunnelled work of sappery. The black lane! used by such traveling on official business whose departure was not desired by public way in public sight to go … The Emperor wanted him? This was to be the first sign that the Emperor, Lupus, “that Wolf,” had ever heard of him. A sudden tremor: was it the matter of, How didst thou dare to touch the Virgin’s flesh? — No No: it could not be. Else they had either thrown him in fetter and gyve and … Well. If he had now to cross the Land of Stone; time to make a start was best at Night. Onward.

The “black lane” was of course not black, it was of a variety of colors, depending on the colors of the brick or stone of which the backs of buildings were made, through which the lane … winding, winding … passed; and none of them were made of that black, deadly, deathly black stone of which had been builded (so he had heard: much care had he taken to go there never) the capital city of Cappadoce. The principal hue here was of the same tawny lion-color, really quite different from that of Yellow Rome, as were the fronts of most of the buildings of Tingitayne, Tingis, Tingitana: and now, even as the small group of horsemen cantered along, the colors in the setting sun changed the stones to rose, then to a deeper red, then began to take on a purple tone. One might only guess at the nature and function of those buildings: warehouses, whorehouses, temples, homes? Some had never had windows, in some the windows had been carefully blocked up either with brick or with stone, no attempts made to match the tints of the buildings themselves. That a lane should be winding, away from the formal center of the city, was no surprise; but in this winding lane were no shop-fronts, no crowds of buyers or sellers, no loungers or loafers, no odors of edibles, no smoke or smell of combustibles; here was not even one single toddling child, half-naked and half about to cry, such as one encountered so very, very often elsewhere in such a wynd. No one sat hunched, fanning a charcoal brazier on which the evening meal cooked; no one begged with various tales of beggary or even merely whined and held out a dirty palm or showed a possibly interesting sore or a perhaps intriguing deformity.

The sound of the clopping of horse-hooves. Else —

Silence.

And in that silence there came thought a-visiting, a thought of a thing which he had somewhere read — and only some invisible and incorporeal recorder with no other task entrusted could know how much, how very much he himself had read, read, concerning which often had he heard and still he did betimes hear, He seems to read, and yet he neither reads aloud nor moves his mouth!

Briefly the guides had been named to him: the Berbar guides Sylvestro and Amulo, and Caniacus who was one of the Masked Men and wore a dark blue-black domino, far larger than common (common, though, among the Masked Men), which covered what they called the tharg, that part of the face from the bridge of the nose to the chin: and had no name at all, this part of the body, among any other of the peoples of the world. Folk who wished them well said twas because they had an unseemly facial blemish running in their blood and did merely wish to cover it and do others no fright; folk who wished them ill declared them a criminous caste who desired to pass unknown amongst others and espy out what they might steal: and, when they came to steal, first off-stripped the mask, that they be not recognized nor open to identity. They themselves said only this, Thus did my Father and my Mother and their Sires and Dams, so thus do I. Well-known it was, not to venture to ask a twice.

Well: and as Festus, Sylvestro, Amulo, and Caniacus cantered with him down this uncovered lane, this chasym through the city (from which arose but a smothered murmur like some half-distant throng of bees), so this thought visited Vergil: Swiftly darteth the mind of a man who hath travelled over far seas and lands and thinketh in wistfulness of heart ‘I wish that I were here, or there,’ and many are the wishes he wisheth. And yet he too is fated to lie down in blood and dust amongst the dead … well, and what was this but a perhaps more complex statement than this in the Theophrast on Plants, that “Against death there grows no simple”?

Often at evening lightfail there was a cooling-off of the air, but in this black lane perhap even at noon meridian it had not been full hot: and certes it grew no cooler even now: but the same stagnant warmth stayed on. And next for sure the lane was covered over, and Vergil, riding with Sylvestro and Amulo afore him and with Festus and Caniacus ahind him, was sure that now they were indeed riding through cavern or tunnel; he saw nothing looking up, recalled the old word that to a man imprisoned at the bottom of a dry well, heaven was but one ell wide: could not see even that ell. Could hear the echoes of the hooves clatter. Felt all at once a breeze of wind upon his face, still some wet from the sea: looked up and saw above him the glittering stars.

One of the guides said something brief, the two others grunted, perhaps in agreement. Vergil had not known that they had voices. Many a court of kings and sub-kings, so to speak, favored the services of mutes: they could hear no secrets and, did they see of any, of them they could not tell.

Festus, suddenly beside and not behind him, said, “Did you see, me Doctor sage, them twain tall slabs at th’end of lane before went under the ground?”

“I did not take a notice.”

“We who take this lane some often, it’s an old jest of our’n to call they ‘The Pillars of Hercules,’ ” and he made a chuckle but a thin one as if well aware that the jest was very thin, too. Vergil’s reply was an uninflected, “Ah,” there was still the faintest line of blue against one part of the world, with darkness above it and darkness below: then it turned fainter, and green; then it was gone. He let his horse keep canter and company with the others.

But Festus, having made his introduction to the subject, now proceeded with it. “Them real Pillars, as you know of, Ser Lord …” (“Ah.”) “They say … tis said … One day shall come when a gigant shall put hands against them Herculean Columns, you know? and push, you know?… and bring down the sky … you know?”

“Ah. ‘They say.’ And which giant may be, if one may ask?”

“They don’t say.”

“Ah. I rather thought not. Just so. A giant.’ Easy to say. Which giant? Not so easy.”

Festus was a moment silent. Then he said, also. “Ah.” And added, “You be a rare skip tic, Ser.” Vergil was not sure if the man sounded shocked. Or relieved.

They rode on, with occasional stops, to pass round a water-skin, some dates or figs, to dismount very briefly for bodily reliefs. At no time did they gallop; twould have been folly to do so on so dim, and oft-times unseen, paths. At first light they got down for long enough to build a small fire and make some gruel. After this was done, and the fire pissed out, Festus bowed, and said, “Here I must leave you, Doctor, Ser. And return. Have no fear they guides might rob ye: they do not durst. Farewell.” Vergil thanked him, returned the bow; all remounted and went their different ways.

One thing now, as he and the not very talkative Sylvestro and Amulo and the quite silent Masked Man Caniacus cantered on through the thorny wastes, often the bushes covered with what at first he had thought were small white flowers, but soon enough had realized were the shells of snails (if quick, if dead, he did not discover): one comment of the man Festus ran through his mind; there was little in the sameness of the passing scene to divert his thoughts, and for the time being he did not much wish to think of the immediate and ungentle future.

Festus had said, as they sate their last moments warming their hands by the embers, “Ane thing I took notice of, Me Ser Lord Doctor Mage.”

Vergil was glad the fellow had not crammed in every possible title which had come along with the green robe and the thumb-ring; Titular Baron of Brabantia, for one thing; Authorized to Plumb the Depths of the Cloaca Maxima, for another. Well. Magehood obliges. “And what is that one thing, Festus, man?”

“Grey of poll ye departed from our Tingitayne, whenas headed south. Black as tar that poll when ye return.”

Again the vatic voice, like a blow aside the head. Had he? He had!. Hardly pausing to bethink an answer, yet he gave him one; “It was the Fig,” he said. “The Scarlet Fig: makes rough men subtle and old ones young.”

Festus just a moment considered this. Then he gave a deep nod. And handed back the empty bowl to Sylvestro. And asked no further. Of Juvens and Senex? Asked no further.

By and by the waste lands and their thorns and snails gave way to a place of tilled and walled-in green garths of farming folk. No one fled as the four men came riding by on the narrow path between the tilths: a small sign but a certain one that the Pax Romana still obtained, no matter which king or sub-king here held rule. A certain russet in the far-off hills affirmed something which he had for some time now suspected, namely that they had passed from White Mauretayne to Red.

White Mauretayne, its cities of alabaster and elephant-colored marble (actually, many of their buildings did have, anyway, fronts of such stones, however thin-cut) dazzling the coastland in the sun; White Mauretayne was under the nominal suzereignty of Spestibanu, “Chief of Kings” — these were of course petty and not Electoral Kings — and it traded with Aspamia, Lusitayne, Ægypt, Greece, Lybya, and Rome. Red Mauretayne had no coast, save that which, rolled over and over and beat upon by many dry and heavy winds, constantly cast up stones and sands.

Red Mauretayne had neither chiefs nor kings.

It had, however, a wealth of rocks.

And it was Vergil’s devoir to cross it all until coming to Tripolitayne, thence by any northard way to Leptismayna at the end of the Terrapetra, and thence take water to Italy … to any of the Three Italies over which the Emperor was ex officio King. Vergil would have wished to continue on into Ægypt, if only to see those great pyramidal structures which the enslaved Children of the Isræls had builded for King Pharoah, so long and long ago: Treasure Cities, they were called, because of the wealths which the Ægyptim rulers had stored therein: and indeed, each one with its many policies or out-buildings, might rightly be called a city, entire of itself: rather like those palaces in Frankland, each so large as to be counted as an urbs, and had its own mayor.

This Terrapetra, then, was widely-known to be the same length as the entirety of all three parts of Italy; almost he might quail at the prospect: and yet he did not. Some men, in Quint’s phrase, suffered from the itch to write; Vergil, he now acknowledged, suffered from an itch to wander. Suffered from? It was indeed not a suffering, not even a sufferance; it was a joy, as joyful as any experienced in the elaboratory, waiting in an expectation of even greater joy for the joyful release and relief. Even in a land of stone might not many new and strange and quitely unexpected happenings occur?

Such a thing happened even sooner than could have been anticipated.

For, whilst yet the habitations of the sons of men and women, of the blowers of fire, were still thin upon the ground, the four of them had made a usual stop in a fairly secluded spot just a bit off the path; it was an indentation in a ridge of rock, protecting them from the gaze of strangers (peaceful, true, the habitants had seemed: but there be times when even public men would be a while in secret: even kings must live by nature; Vergil’s own Father had a saying for such occasions, did a small boy ask, “where are you going?” hear his sire say, simple, “Where th’ Emp’ror goes on foot” … even Himself the August Caesar did not go everywhere in the carriage of state.) And each had sought a niche or cleft of his own, when hear arise a scream of terror from Amulo and Sylvestro of, The basilisk! The basilisk! whilst, heads hastily covered with their cloaks, they made quick, clumsily, to leap each upon his horse, and flee away (for the first time on this journey) at full gallop. Caniacus alone did not move to do so; almost wedged in his own niche in the stoney clift, he needs could not. Merely he, too, covered his eyes, that they might not meet those of the deadly thing which now crept up along towards him, hissing with its spittley tongue and rattling with its dull red and dull black scales, whipping its thicky blunt tail so as to make a sound … all this, chiefly to affright the intended victim to ope his eyes: then would the basilisk fix him with his pop-eyes and all-penetrating gaze and lo! what once had been a living man of blood and flesh were now a man-like figure, all of stone!

Terrapetra!

Vergil, it had not seen; he, remembering the wise old saw of the Second Emperor, festina lente, slowly hasten, with lentorous stealth picked up a large flat rock (not knowing, even, what he might encover underneath: the creature’s whelp? an alacrand, or scorpio, an asp?), and moving with deliberate haste on tipty-toes, dashed it flat down upon the monster and at once jumped upon the rock and trad with all his might and e’en daunced upon it. “It is safe to look now,” then said he.

Caniacus uncovered his eyes, saw the ugly taloned claws and stumpty tail give their last quiver. Bracing himself with hands prest flat upon the rocky walls of the clift, he rose him up, he stepped forward, he with one sweeping geste removed his mask! his face was pale, unblemished but was pale, he embraced Vergil with both his arms, and pressing close to him, kissed him on the mouth. A second’s work it was, he stepped the half-pace back, drew down his mask, and went forward into the open and gat upon his horse. A light-bodied steed it was, with slender and smooth legs; quite some different from the heavier, shag-footed horses of Europe. Vergil followed suit.

The path was almost wide enough now to be called a road, there were cart-tracks upon it, and so, somehow, they were riding side by side. Vergil turned his head: no one else. Ahead, too, all was empty. Caniacus, reading his movements and perhaps his mind, said, “We shall not see them again. That’s well.” Pressing with a swift and slight movement some fingers against the thin slit in his mask, he leaned a bit to one side, and spat. His voice somedel bit husky; Vergil had not heard him say so many words the whole journey long, so far. Wondered (Vergil), was his voice by nature husky? was it some emotion of the moment? and, for that matter, was his skin naturally pale? was it so by absence of the sun alone? was it pale because his natal color had fled from fear of the basilisk? One might think very much of these matters, but to what end? to what end?

There was a certain sort of person, he or she (more often she, but perhaps not very much more), who, not content to ask a question which was no concern of their’s to ask, would, getting no answer, ask it yet again. Again. Himself, he thought the red-hot bridle and the red-hot bit not too harsh for the mouth of such a one.

Himself, he would not even ask once.

Coming to a rise in the road: before them lay a small city, with a castellated wall. Pointing to it with the light stick with which he only sometimes lightly touched his horse, “The journey,” said Caniacus, “begins here.” Only here? thought Vergil. Up to here, then, he thought, was nil.

Vergil had paused to answer a townsman’s light comment about the clemency of the weather, and took advantage of having the man’s ear to ask the way to the yard of Bodmi the cooper. “Bodmi the cooper,” the man repeated, had begun to gesture with mouth open to say more, had stopped with the next word unsaid, and slightly enclined his head to a young man who had slowed his step. “Bodmi the cooper?” the young man repeated the words, this was (Vergil noted) the third repetition of the name in almost as many seconds. Well, three was, according to the mathematicians, an especially auspicious number: containing, or consisting of, as it did, the first odd plus the first even number.

“Please to come with me, me ser,” and with that the fellow started off, but still he gazed at Vergil, as one perhaps slightly hopeful of a question being answered which had, however, not been asked. This look almost at once faded away. The stripling was well set-up, and dark-eyed with emphatic dark brows and clear skin; however he did not return Vergil’s polite smile. There had been something abstracted, so it seemed, in his expression; almost intent upon waiting for something, expectant the expression as (the phrase came again to Vergil) that of an athlete waiting under the echoing portico for the sound of the trumpet. But, in a moment, seeing that Vergil was indeed coming along with him, the lad turned his face full forward. The trumpet had not sounded. There did not seem to be anything about Vergil in particular which was displeasing to him, and he had, after all, volunteered to be his guide, so there was likely nothing bothersome about his destination either. Of what had the youngling’s look reminded him? Memory for once was instantly obliged to reply: it was the look of a prisoner, who, hearing the sounds of footfall, turns his head, for one brief moment looks through the bars with well-controlled hope on him who walks along, free; and with that short glimpse sees that the one who walks has no message of freedom for him, and — still controlled — turns away his face, and looks at him no more.

Once only Vergil spoke, saying, “It is kind of you to show me the way.” And the young fellow made sole answer in a level sound which was either yea or nay, or neither nay nor yea. Forward they went, the two of them, making their tread upon the uneven paving stones with here and there a spur of grass atween them, and neither spoke more word.

Presently they came to a door in a wall, rather larger than most such, and (Vergil thought) a cooper would need a larger door or gateway than might be required by someone making articles smaller or at any rate narrower than the largest vat or barrel; in they went. A pleasant smell of fresh-cut seasoned wood there was in the yard directly open to the gate, where a man somedel beyond the middle-years of life sat shaving a splint. “Uncle Bodmi, this gentleman wanted you,” the boy said, and, even as the cooper answered with a “Good for you, Rustus,” directly Rustus took his leave. As, plainly, no thanks were desired from Vergil, he offered none.

Bodmi the cooper had, clearly, been shaving splints for many years, one did not take up such a craft in middle life, and his hands continued working on, on, as he gave Vergil a look of polite enquiry. “Master Bodmi, the man Benninaly,” the cooper nodded fairly rapidly, it was clear that no explanation about “the man Benninaly,” introduced by Caniacus, was at all needed; “sent me to see you about getting ‘a couple pair barrels’ for —”

“— for a caravan, yes, me ser: they would be like those setting over there in yan corner, as I’ve yet to repair, with one side concave somewhat so as to set more conveniently again the side of a caravan-beast; but them as I indicate are for the asses to carry the wine-must from the pressing-vat to the vintner’s cellar; and you would be wanting them some size larger, of course.” Vergil nodded his agreement, and for a while they discussed the size somewhat larger, and the kind of wood, and the price to be paid, and when it was to be paid; and … and then they became silent. In such a moment, in one’s boyhood, the custom was to say Zeus Prime, and so, not having said it in years, one said it now. Bodmi repeated the words under his breathy looked at his work with the splint (stave, some called it), seemed satisfied, set it down on a pile, took up another and began to shave it. Without looking up at Vergil, he said, “That lad is one of my brother’s boys, Rustus you see, me ser …”

Vergil nodded, and some comment seeming indicated, said, “An obliging and a comely lad.”

The cooper gave a sound between a gasp and a sigh, and a spasm seemed to take his face for a moment. “That’s the dreaded part of it all,” said he. Almost at once he added, “It is a terrible thing, me ser, to be the Father of man-twins!” His ser said nothing, he knew not what to say; so after a few seconds wait, said he, in a murmur, “Tell me …”

“Ah, ser! what is there to tell? By your way of speech I observe you to be a man of much schooling, and therefore you must know, that such is the doing of immortal Jove … ‘Zeus’ you may call him, Ser … and all of it comes about a cause of that lass Leda … ”

Light, after a fashion, came to Vergil. “Castor and Pollux!” he exclaimed.

“ ‘Castor and Pollux’, just so, Ser. Different ways is the story told by unlearned people, but we here in this long land and wide, we have the right telling of it. Leda, she was taken by Jove in the form of a swan, for the gods and goddesses may semble what forms they will. Aye, and out of one egg came Elen, twice a princess and twice a queen —” There were most certainly more than merely several forms of the story, but Vergil forebore to mention that: for one he did not desire particularly that Bodmi should think him unlearned, and for another he did not wish to distract the man in his telling of his own story — and one which Vergil had never heard before — “— twice a queen,” Bodmi went on; “and from out the other egg came the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, twin brothers they were born, clasping one another in their arms; such was their affection from the moment of birth, a rare sort of birth it was: and the shells, I means the broken-open halves of them one shell, they lies a treasure somewhere in the adyt of a temple, I believes. But I doesn’t of right know where.”

Vergil believed that the man believed, and Vergil was willing enough to know (or, at any rate, to believe) that halves of some huge eggs indeed were lying as treasures in the inner shrine of a temple somewhere, it might be anywhere, one could not be sure: but one could for sure be sure that the huge eggs had never come from within the body of any human woman: many names had that great island where lived the great bird whence issued such great egg, greater by far than any mere estridge egg: one had to make a navigation far down “the bluffs and courses of Azania,” fragrant with frankincense, past solitary stinking Zelya-Zayla, past the courting-places of the oliphaunt, and the Region called Agysimbia where the monoceroses assemble for their balloting; and farther down and farther south than that, almost an inhuman distance for an ordinary vessel to make its way — and perhaps no ordinary vessel indeed ever had made it — Hanno’s, yes … Huldah’s, yes — several names that great red island had, such as Camaracada, Phebolia, Cernea, Meruthias and Maddergaunt, Menuthia, Ophir, and the Great Red Island of the Moon: perhaps others yet to him unknow: and Marius the Tyrian had claimed it was no mere island but a continent, and a note to the Aristotle reported that it roamed with huge wild dogs striped like the Horses of the Sun … which all added together might make testimony that the place existed: testimony … certainly it was not proof … great names aside: perhaps it was not even evidence …

While he had been yet thinking of this aspect of the matter, and allowing his mind a bit to wander, as one gathering off of thorn-bushes the wool of wild muttons not beherded for the fleecing; the cooper, Bodmi, had been speaking again; and so Vergil, off gathering his wool at the ends of the world, had missed something of what had been said, so was brought up short, and quite in much confusion, by what the man Bodmi was saying now: “ … and so one of the twain must go and be a leper … ” What! What!

Bodmi, as much, perhaps, surprised by his customer’s surprise, broke off what he had been saying, almost droning; sate slightly leaning forward on his banc, one end of the splint he was holding atween his feet, and yet his hands went on with their work, went on, went on, the thin shavings falling upon his shoes: man must do his work though the heavens gin fall: perhaps after all the heavens will not continue falling, but man must continue working, all the same.

“Bodmi,” Vergil began.

“Bodmi: You must have patience with me, now, you won’t forget that I am a foreigner for all that we are both under the rule of Rome: I come from a far-off land …” — Bodmi nodded — “… and though you are kind enough to call me learned, still no man can have learned everything.” — Bodmi nodded — “Tell me then, though I don’t wish to cause you pain: why is it that ‘one of the twins must go and be a leper,’ why, Bodmi, why?”

And so the man began again, though this time, the current of his mind and thoughts having been interrupted, and it being necessary to accept that Vergil did not know everything about the matter, he went on without his previous fluency: broken, halting, slowly, as one who endeavors to explain to a child something which the grown man has known so long he has been without the habit of having to explain it.

It was because of the dishonor of, one might say, the ravage, worked on Leda, king’s daughter though she was: not that it wasn’t an honor for a mortal to serve the god, any mortal, any god; if a goddess wanted pleasure of a man, might she take it, too, as Aurora did of Tithonius. But why hadn’t immortal Jove (“Zeus” many call him) assumed, or, if it weren’t assumed, why hadn’t he appeared to Leda in his shape as a man, and courted her as any suitor? or if she needed be tooken saunce consent: again: why not as a man, why! ser! it must have been a shocking thing! forced by a swan! though folk talk of swans as lovely, graceful things, still, they be main powerful brutes, ‘tis said swan can break a man’s leg with the force of its wing! and no more to be beat off, swan, than avoid Nemesis — some say it were Nemesis, not Jove; some say, Jove be Nemesis. Eh! and so therefore thus the reason why one of all man-twins born here syne then had to go and be a leper …

… and still, all through the telling of this dire tale, the sweet scent of the cooping-wood, newly cut, newly sawn, freshly shaved, was fragrant on the air: no slow sad clamor of the leper’s bell and no noisome feculence of the leper’s olor defiled the dry still air …

… Was it not now clear? It was not … well … did the stranger from a far-off land not see how merciful a thing it was that both twins did not always suffer the curse? and, above all things, wasn’t it a most majestic way for one brother to show his love for the other and go away and take all the woe and affliction unto himself? for, sure, twasn’t always that was the way of it; sometimes each refused and the curse took both of them; among very common folk they usually tossed a coin to decide the matter; in far-off times (so one heard, but one heard it often), the child’s father decided: let him decide howas he might, hadn’t the father life and death over his own childer? but that wasn’t the way it was done nowaday.

“How is it done nowaday?” for Vergil could think of no way that such a thing should be done. Could be done. So, … therefore: he asked.

“Nowaday … nowaday?” The man was almost maddingly slow. “Ah, my sire, nowaday. When the brother decide. Whichever one decide. When he conceive to himself in his own mind. And he thinks and he saith unto his own heart, ‘Let me be the one to go and do it, an I shall spare my brother, whom I love, even he.’ Then he go off whatever the time of night or day, go he off unto the Temple of the Dioscuri, of them twain Castor and Pollux, whom Jove hath blessed and set them as stars in the starry sky, and yet of a wonder sometime they come down to yearth again, or, exactly, down to sea; and folk at sea may observe them and several have report it to me, that Castor and Pollux do be seen at play about the mast and spar of a sailing vessel as blazing lights —”

Cried Vergil, “The corposants!”

“The corposants. As some call them. And whichever twin o’ this twain hath first decided, off he go to the Temple of the Dioscuri, the twin sons of Zeus under his other name of Dios; well, and he pray his prayer and he take off his knife-belt and his knife and he place knife and belt atween them twain statues. And so it be so, my sire and me ser …”

Vergil was silent. By and by the cooper, Bodmi the barrel-maker ended the silence. “Them couple pair kags shall be ready this day week and one. In ane octave they shall be ready. Aye,” he said, almost without a pause, “a tragical thing for a man to be the father of man-twins,” and all the while his hands worked on and on, nor had they ever ceased to do so whilst Vergil watched. And when the splints, the staves, had all been shaved, then must they be bent, and then must the rigid hoops engirdle them.

Nemesis.

There was no other way.

Very much later that same day, Vergil was speaking with a local elder man of much repute, called Sapient Longinus; that is to say, he himself was having little to say, for he had wanted to talk about twins, not alone of the lad Rustus, but of all well-known twins: of Castor and of Pollux; of the Cabiri Sancti, Axierus and Axiocersus; of Neleus and Peleus exposed at birth to die yet lived to be Co-Kings of Jolcos; Laogonus and Dardanus alike slain by Achilles beside the reedy river of the Trojan shore; and Valdebron and Heldobran in Aspamia; but Longinus was a Master of Leechcraft, and on this he had much to say Perhaps a few people ever sought him out for conversational purposes, and either for this cause or from this effect, Longinus talked long and much. “And as for the yearb called snapdragon or mandragon,” said Longinus, “the yearb y-called snapdragon, Ser Vergil, when you take your plant called snapdragon and moileth it in a mortar or other vessel made from unbeaten gold, nay, what am I a-saying? ah hah hum, in your vessel of unfired gold, as your Theophrast beareth witness, your yearb, ah ah …”

“— called Snapdragon,” Vergil thought he must interrupt or go mad.

Longinus looked at him benignly. “Jest so, Ser Vergil, your —”

“Doctor Longinus …?”

“Ser Vergil …?”

The drawn-out ululations of a passing pedlar of dried fish caused a pause; then: “Doctor Longinus … have you ever heard … you have perhaps heard … if there are twin brothers … is it so, Messer Doctor Longinus, that unless one of them lays down his knife and knife-belt between the statues of Castor and Pollux, both of such man-twins must contract leprosy …?”

Longinus gazed at him without dismay. He tugged at the tuft of long white hair growing from his right ear. “No,” he said.

“ ‘No’? Then no such dire and baneful usage obtains in this land?”

“No, no, Ser Doctor Vergil. Certain not.”

“But … then …” Was the whole story some mad illusion and delusion —

Longinus pulled at the tuft of long white hair growing from his left ear. “Unless, of course,” he said, “they be both born under the sign of the Gemini. In which case, certainly.” And he looked at Vergil with an untroubled look.

Heads down and muffled against the sun and sand; heads down, all day long, a day in no wise different from all other days without any detail save the incessant repetitions of caravan life … with, now that he came to consider it: somewhat less sand, somewhat less gravel, even; only the dust which moved languidly about the animal’s feet as they made their way, step after every step over the land of stone: suddenly from the caravaneers some sound scarcely articulate enough to be called a murmur, some movements too slight even for gestures: a brief inclination of their heads (muffled, their heads, as their voices; they spoke but seldom with their mouths, reluctant to open them and admit heat, sand, dry air, and dust), they moved themselves a bittle in their saddles … even the bells of the beasts sounded, for a moment, a sound just a slight mite different from the usual discordant clatter. Those bells were never meant to be musical; were one to ask another man of the caffile why did their beasts wear bells, be sure they would have answered, To give notice of where the beasts were: did they wander, unsaddled and unbridled and unladen, out of sight: into some declivity, perhaps, not easily visible in this land of stone.

This land of stone! stone white, stone black, stone grey; very rarely now and then some well of water, some tree, some blades of grass. And might not one of the less cheerful philosophers … likely more nor only one … liken this to a long slow journey through life itself?

He put away from him such thoughts. Mayhap the chief purpose of the bells was to break the limitless monotony of the moments, hours, and days. Even if the men did not say so, and even if they did not recognize that it was so …

And, of course, to warn away the daemons. And the jinn.

Notoriously, they hated the sounds of bells. One did not know why.

His head having raised of its own motion (he had hardly even begun to form the thought, I shall now raise my head to see what this may be); his head being raised, then, he moved his eyes along the near and middle distance: nothing. He peered, he scouted, then, across the long horizon line: something. There, faraway (faraway far! who used to say that? Huldah!), faraway something, as it were the peak of a mountain though he knew of no mountain, peak or col, hereabout or thereabout; and there was a something about it which impressed his vision without informing it. Whatsoever … the … the place … must be the reason of … of what?

He had ceased often to ask questions of Beninally or of Caniacus, for Caniacus had the way of answering low in his husky voice, “I know it not;” and Benninaly (recommended by both Caniacus and the elderly Maur who represented Rome in that inland town — Volubilia Caesariensis, it was termed by Roman fiat: the people called Volb — as the best of the caravaneers then about or likely to be about), Benninaly had his own way with questions … usually … he did not answer them.

However. Caniacus was just then not just there; there was a two or a three of the Masked Men in the caffile, and he preferred much to ride with them, exchanging soft syllables … or, likelier: subtle gestures … of their own kenning only. So.

“What place is that, Benninaly?”

A silence.

A surprise.

An answer. “That is the rough place;” rather it seemed a name by the way spoken rather than merely a description. So …

“What is ‘The Rough Place’, Benninaly?”

“We take to the left by the next great rock” was in no way an obvious answer to his question, but he knew that the man Benninaly would not take bother and make effort to speak, who was commonly silent (not that by now they were not all commonly silent and had been so for the endurance of many days), if it were not a thing of some importance, and the hump or peak rising somewhat to the left of the center of the horizon — probably the reason for their taking the next turn left by the great rock — was abound to be connected in some way with The Rough Place.

And neither did Vergil plague his companions with other questions, as, they might be so: “Do we go presently thither?” or, “Do we go past there?” or “Is it, then, a landmark?” And certainly he never, did silence follow the spare questions which he did ask, rankle with such sharp and nudging words, such as, “I asked you a question, do you not desire to answer it?” or, even worse, “Why do you not desire to answer?” Courtesy forevented, and for that matter, so did common sense; for he rather thought that a man or woman of such a cast of mind and behavior was not destined by Fate to live long enough to transverse the desert. And he desired to live that long.

And longer.

Vergil would save his further questions, if he had further questions, for night-tide round the small fire: and if he were to feel too tired to ask them, it was likely that the other would feel too tired to be asked.

If the answer were important, he would be bound to find it out.

“The Rough Place!” As though these journies o’er the land of stone could be smooth!

The order of the caravan. First came the leaders of the caffile, mounted on the best of horses, then came the merchants riding on the best of mules (best in either case referring to capacity for the journey and not for sleek of looks), and then came the sumpter-mules and the shabby pack-horses fated never to plod across another desert but to be sold for slaughter by the knacker’s men; horse-flesh was not bad (the Northishfolk had a disdain again the eating of horses’ flesh but then Northishfolk worshipped horses, or so it was said; however the Hyperboreans — who lived very far north indeed: beyond the very upwell of the North Wind — sacrificed asses to Apollo … did they then farce them into sausages, like the Alpenese?) Thereafter came the camels (there were no cameleopards) and if there were women in the caravan they rode the camels upon a sort of platform enclosed in a small tent; and if there were no women, then let the camels carry less and if a horse foundered, then might the camels carry what the horse had been carrying (be sure, many a silent squabble with signs and gestures, depending on whose horse — or whose camel; but there was precedent and custom in such matters, and the dispute never came to blows: furthermore, who had excess energy for blows?). After that came the soldiers of the rear-guard, mounted as they might be mounted, for each was hired along with his mount. And after them, the folk afoot, too poor to have or to hire any beast, thankful just for the safety of the caravan and knowing that it would never stop nor stay for any illness or weariness of theirs.

And after that, a space, and after that the dog … a dog who seemingly lived on little more than nothing, for few were the scraps which came his way at fooding times … brought along largely because he would sometimes start up a quail lost from its flock-of-passage: at what time see how swift the slings and stones appeared. Or sometimes he might bark or bell and give notice of strangers.

And after the dog, although sometimes alongside the dog, was a man with an ass — not to be sacrificed to Apollo — panniers on the ass, and in the man’s hands a sort of shovel or spade or scoop: to gather up such dried dung as he might find. And did the dung of this caravan, in this intense and fearful heat (though at night: frightful cold), dry fast enow to be used for the same day’s fire? no it did not, what the man chiefly gathered up was the dung of the caravan which had passed last before … did the cur eat of it first, e’en the hungriest cur might not eat it all: how plentifully the camel-beast, with ever-arrogant face lifting up his tail, might plash the place with its abundant scat and skiting; also the horses and the mules. The experienced carvaneer could easily read these droppings, moist or sere: and the tale of the apt Athenian who had deduced that “there had passed by a caravan of such and such a number of beasts and of such and such a sort … as follows … inclusive a gravid she-camel laded with barley and oil of sinsamin, et cœtera, et cœtera” … lo, this tale was known even to the very boys not yet old enough to pay the wee fee of two stivers at the baths.

But even so, passing by and through these pits and piles and mounds of stone as bright (as dull) as so much molten wax coagulated into odd, grotesque, and phantastic shape, the man with the, as it might be, spade, was at some pains to gather up some, at least, fresh droppings: for dried dung made a smokeless fire, fairly smokeless, and, although one might not have thought so, this was not always desired. Sometimes, as of these times, what was wanted was a smoke and a bitter smoke, and a rank one, curling low. It kept the flies away (flies? in the stony desert? Oh yes! large and small and black or greeny-gold); and, it was believed (so why should it be doubted?), also it kept off and away things which might come a-prowl, at least until the time of the glimmering false dawn, who knows and who might count or reckon the ephrits or ghouls or the larvæ of the unsettled and indignant dead, such as shadows of those who might have died in the desert, and no caffile stopped for to aid them, or even to cast a few handsful of dust upon their corses as a sort of pro forma or pseudo-burial.

Not enough smoke. Benninaly commonly signed and gestured at the nighttime halt. “This is the land of the basilisk and the cockatrisk; more smoke, there, you. More smoke.” Even though the dog growled not (save, a-times, a grumble and a mumble in his sleep) and the capon they had brought along with them to smell out such things seemed to notice nought: More smoke there, you. More smoke.

Life had taught Vergil many things, some of them of easy acquisition, some recondite or arcane, even occulted, occluded; some of them scarcely to be capable of description. Some, however, were plain enough so that when Vergil asked a second time, What is ‘The Rough Place,’ Benninaly, his lips did not move, nor his throat, merely he had asked it in his heart. And, after a long pause, Benninaly, nothing showing of his face but his unmuffled eyes, reddled with the dust, had said, “We take to the left by the next great rock.” He did not add the word road, for it was mostly only a road by rhetorical device, as the Parthians saying robber of wheat-straw when they meant amber, or as the Northismen said orme-path for the muckle sea in which, twas said, the great sea-orme splashed and spouted, ere it crushed the coracles atween its fangs. Yet twas not in its entirety a device rhetorical to call it a road. Though underneath the thin dust seemed to lie now one immensity of solid stone, yet upon that stony surface lay a sort of a faint line, not quite a track: but certainly a trace. And though he could not perceive it now beneath, as he was riding over it, yet, given a rise for them to pass across, he could see it both before and behind, though very faint; reminding him faintly of a stretch-mark upon the body of a woman who has born child.

One day in the Principality of Poyle (some called it Apulia) an older man had taken him upon a certain mountain and pointed out to him far-off lines, faint to be sure, and only to be seen when the light was at the proper angle. “Them be the rows where the Oldern People cultivetted their crop, young scholard,” said he.

“The lines of their plowing?”

And the older man had repeated, “… plowing …” in a certain tone a bit sardonic; then said he, “The yearth be like a woman, for once man have had she, she be never the same again no more.” Adding, after a moment, that he wasn’t sure that “the Oldern People” had had plows. And afterwards, the slow trip down, he had told Vergil to take abundance of thistle for a sign that men had once builded there. And he showed him the fairly rare plant called virginsbreath as sign that men had never builded there, nor so much as delved the ground with digging-tool. And a few things more had he told him about plants and about stones — addlewort, a sure cure for scattered wits, and bloodstone, which would stanch a bleeding wound; and of trees never to be strick by lightning, and weather-signs and things safe to do and things not safe to do, and how to do them and how to do them not. And when, as regards times and seasons and hours. Almost, Vergil had expected to hear him mutter, that Lord Saturn was e’er a malign stellation.

But he did not.

There was, however, save for that sole and faintly suggestive line, no sign that man had ever digged, delved, or builded here; or that even it had ever been a place of verdant virgin loveliness.

By and by, pace never slowing, never quickening, they came to a great grey rock a-sticking up above the desert floor like the standing-stone to mark a grant’s grave: a Titan or a Cyclops, perhaps: and here the line turned left. Here the line turned left, but, save for the gant grey rock behind them now and the was it a low mountain rather nearer or a high mountain yet very far away? — save for these two extrusions from the surface of this world of stone, there was no other difference that Vergil could see. A huge large lump of rock as limp and yellow as a pudding was twin to the one he had seen yesterday, and the heap of rock the size of a house like some great coagulated mass of mulberry juice was twin to the one he had seen the day before yesterday. — was it the day before yesterday? or the day before that? He was no longer sure … of that, of anything else … then the way began to sink slowly into some vast declivity, and the great grey rock behind and the hill (was it a hill?) before them in the distance shimmering with heat alike went out of sight. Vergil adjusted the length of blue and white checked cloth so that it enclosed most of his face, and slumped yet once more into his saddle. Tingitayne slumbering in the sun, Volu-whatever it was, the thick forests of Corsica, even teeming Naples and the once ever-present in his mind and eagerly longed for elaboratory, Yellow Rome straddling the yellow Tiber, the Land of the Lotus-eaters, and even, even “the Region called Huldah” and the battle on the sea, all seemed to subside into a formless and not so much dull as dulled confusion like some dream in which he was dim aware yet uninvolved; of two things alone was he as well aware as if he were wide awake: one was the clear blue eyes of the Vestal Virgin and the lightening stroke touch of her as he held briefly, so briefly — her arm; and the other was of Huldah herself as he looked down into her face and heard her voice, I shall build for you a fire (as though she had not already availed for him a fire from which he got a joyful heat).

I pardon that man! what? what?

“I pardon that man,” someone was saying next to him, and it was no dream, no dream alone, nor was it either a waking dream: Caniacus was riding alongside of him, and — “I pardon that man,” was saying — “had one man slain my Mother and ravished my sister, and had he later, my rage and my desire to flay him slowly still unachieved, still, had he had to come and live here … here … in this one such place … yet: I pardon that man.”

More than half dazed, the immense fatigue and pain accumulating during this journey having subdued his mind, and that aching sleep or drowse into which he had fallen, still bemusing it, Vergil looked up, but the face of Caniacus was masked as usual so he turned his head and looked whither Caniacus was looking. A vast red eroded rock lay before them, how long had he sat lolling and dozing in his saddle-seat? many cracks and caves were in that hill of solid yet eroded stone: they had come up from that sunken place, that declivity, and a high and wide red rock half as large as some small city, as though its virons had been walled and yet its walls thrown down, as though it were a castello of wide extent slumping from age and from immemorial decay, this lay before him now to see: no dream.

And from the cracks and flaws and fissure and ravines, from the caves and from the holes, down from the shelves and cliphts, streamed slowly a muckle many men; each, as he walked slowly … limped … crawled … hobbled … hopped … climbed … each slowly unwinding from round his head and face a concealing head-cloth: how slow, how reluctant, how without (it seemed) will to object, but yielding to the necessity of their condition, like so many men before the block or platform for auction in a slave market, in some mart of slaves, those who submitted to whatever fate had made them property were stripping off their clothes, surrendering a last pretense to privacy and private status and private will: that the prospective buyers, even the pretensive and pretending public, might see their nakedness, their shame, their once proud forms reduced to something not entirely human … not entirely at all did these strip and expose themselves, only they revealed their faces.

Merely from this heap, this red and eroded rock a habitation, the habitants descended and exposed their red, eroded faces: pitted, cracked, falling and fallen down the features of what must be their faces, for what else could they be? Hoarse his voice and strained with effort to control its trembling, Vergil whispered, “My body and my god! Caniacus! what men are these? what place is this?”

And the Masked Man who needed never unmask and never (never but once) did reveal his own unblemished face, he, Caniacus made answer: “You who saved my life: save it never not from such a destiny and fate as this. These are the men who in order to save their own brother-twins from the preordination that one of each pair must accept leprosy else must each and both contract it: these are the brothers who chose to accept in order to save everyone of them his twin, they have come here to endure their lives as lepers, and their brothers of the salvation send them clothes and victuals and all needed needful things, and sometimes things unneedful; it is we the caravans and cafflemen who bring all such to them. This is called The Rough Place …”

It was not until the next day that he was able to follow Benninaly up a winding flight of steps, each step deeply worn in the center from passing feet and some sort of laithly line a-pressed upon the wall nighest each step, worn place in the step and uncleany line upon the wall of the great rough rock where the habitants pressed with their hands (or what was left of them) to steady them as they clumb and clambered, doubtless often pausing to gasp a breath: the vatic voice it seemed to murmur aside his ear-holes something of what dread hands and what dread feet. Benninaly he had seen lately often times carrying packs and bails and articles padded and wrapped in sacking; it must have been hither, out of sight from the shelf of solid rock and shifting scree, that Benninaly had continued to hump them up, stooping forward but stopping not. And now he had gestured Vergil to follow him on one last such trip, and Vergil followed after him. He did not, his feet being shod, disdain to step into the hollows of the steps, but sooner he should have fallen to his death with raw head and bloodied bones than clutch support from the wallside where appeared unctuous line and smear.

At length Benninaly brought him to a large cave not yet occupied, in fact never occupied but prepared for occupancy, with rugs upon the rock floor and tappetties of broider-work upon the rock walls, and furniture-backs of embossed leather: all of the quality as used by the well-to-do. Even, in niches and on shelves, there were books as well, and images of animals. The main several rooms were built about and ventilated by an air-shaft fashioned by largening a natural and deep fissure. Even there was a kitchen with its own air “pipe”: and behind them all, rooms of larder. The caffile had brought stores of dried foodstuffs, with oil and wine and charcoal… “It seems a good place to live,” Vergil said, reluctantly, “— if one must live here, that is. If this is life.”

“Ah, the vanity and uselessness!” cried Benninaly, laying aside his silence as a garment for the nonce not needed. “And besides,” in a lower and unemotional tone, “they soon enough tires of it and ventually they finds an old and greasy hole to slink into and be snug enough … usually.” And added that somewhere in this rocky warren was the dwelling place of one who had been a paramount prince, said still to keep a kind of court and was waited on by some whose kin-family had all died out and no one to send them victuals or ought, or not enough. “But he never show himself … at anyway, never to us. There!” He finished setting up a bronze stand holding many lamps. “Tis fit for — for him who’ll come here. By the caffila in ane year’s time, I ‘xpect … if not before. When his woe can be no more concealed. Eh? Nay. No wives allowed here, unless they be also leprous stricken by such a fate as strikes without the twinly curse, absit omen.” Spet a thrice time, beckoned, left. Vergil followed after.

One day more unlading, then they mounted each man his animal and left that rusty hell.

The congregants had made but not much sound, the travel-company being there, but as the caffila turned long-around to go, there rose from behind them at the foot of the Rough Place, thin at first and scarce to be told from the scree and cry of some haunting bird, then louder and more deep, such a sound and wail of despair and lamentace as he had never heard at any funeral nor any place of pestilence or death judicial. Perhaps some dim thought from his brief day as an advocate at law came now into his mind, that it was the sentence of death which was executed — the man himself was killed.

And it was to this place, life-in-death or death-in-life, that one day must come one nephew of Bodmi the cooper.

One … depending on which loved the other more … or, if not such love?

Both.

Lamentace.

XIV

The Soldier in the Desert

For a long while the horror of the Rough Place stayed with them all, and all were silent, from Benninaly the capitane of the caravan to the mangiest camels which might have been excused for braying out of mere relief that their loads had been lightened, and that the men had not been obliged to tap the stinking water stored in the humps. The land of stone appeared as stoney as ever: but now and then and always just in time they came either to an oasis or a deep, deep well, whither men descended great depths, never the water being near the surface. It beseemed that all the waters of Afric had sunk beneath that stoney carapace: thank the god that evidently another such below the water kept it from sinking quite away into sands subterranean. By and by the taste of that frightful and accursed place ebbed off, it would be wrong to say that they became all cheerful; but one might say that although the weather remained fearful hot by day and frightful cold by night, merely they endured it with a calm endurance.

Yet one day, Vergil, having fallen a bit behind and to aside, was all at once joined by Caniacus and two other of his masked confraternitude. Idly Vergil asked, in the old manner of Italic boatsmen as they raised another, “What thing?”

Quite a thing indeed, they indicated with a many gestures. But only Caniacus spoke, saying, “ ‘The Nephew of the Cockatrisk’, we call it.” And as to, what was it, and why did they call it so, why there followed only sundry shrugs. Also, more gesticulations. Something, it was clear, was presently to be a-seen; and a great wonder it was. By and by Vergil saw what appeared to be an odd-shaped stone, like so many odd-shaped stones in this stony land. As the Masked Men got them down from their beasts, why, so did he. They had begun to shovel at the sands with their hands, and to scoop it up and throw it aside; indeed, they had not quite finished their tasks when he came along, holding his horse’s bridle with his right hand as if he were any page or quire leading his knight’s destrier. And almost he thought he saw just that: a knight upon a destrier, covered with that eternal dust which covered all things, here. The image was one of the best things of the sort that he had ever seen: a statue of a mounted man-at-arms imperial, in exquisite detail: even the rings of the mail upon the man’s baldric seemed to have been chiseled with an eye to an expectation of an inspection far keener than Vergil’s. He asked the men just now clearing way the clinging crowding sands from the horses hooves, “How came that statue here?”

Had it been done to mark a battle? A cairn of stones would have done as well, besides he had hearn never tale nor story of any great battle in the Terrapetra: and in any case would not the victor have sooner arranged for his own (or an Imperial) likeness to have been brought thither from some town where flourished the arts lapidary, or — likelier — arranged for the sculptor to have crossed the desert to carve the monument (he looked for inscription: none could he see: indeed, there was no base nor pedestal … unless they lay under the sands)… “How came that statue here?” asked Vergil.

“Ah, that is the very Nephew of the Cockatrisk, you see. How came he here? Why as to that I do not know, but see you how once he encountered that deadly look, that evil eye” here the men all made apotropaic gestures; it being dry to spit “and in a twinkle it petterfied him into stone —”

Just so; every statue found in desolate places and cities which no longer man inhabiteth, though once populous and green trees grown about, each such image was said by the Masked Men to have been once creatures quick with life, but turned to stone by the cockatrisk or the basilisk (their memories did not go as far back, evidently, to Medusa, her hair full of snakes … evidently some primitive ascription rich with awe, by perhaps the first of the peoples of the Sea Between the Lands ever to have seen the otherwise inexplicable tightly-coiled hair of “dusky Nemon’s swarthy race;” whom the later and wiser would call “the pious and fleecey-haired Æthiopians”). Well … then … “How long has he been here, then?”

Sighs, hums, more shrugs, more gesticulations. “‘How long’? Ah … how long shine the stars by which we navigate this stony sea? … Ah … ‘How long?’ Why my sire he often y-spoke of’t to me, ensaying, ‘Turn to the right a half-turn as you hold your arm out straight to catch the shadow when the Seven Sisters rise, and thence past the Nephew of the Cockatrisk will bring you to sweet pastures inlands …’ Ah … ‘how long?’ Why my grandsire a-spoke of it before my infant ears, ‘how long,’…. And my grandsire hoary —” and this, Vergil had learned, meant the great-grandfather. To attempt to accompt years by such tales was a task most futile … and … eh …?

“They do say, me ser sage, that if one touch this with a wand of wood from the saelic, hælic willow tree, such as grows by the Grave of Proserpini abaft the River Ocean, such a one shall have great portendance.”

Great Portendance. Ho. So. “And have you tried it, any?”

Of course he could not see their faces, but their eyes told him no, they had not, even before Caniacus asked, “And how should we wanderers of the desert and the stony land have gotten such a thing as wand of willow?” Awaiting no answer, at once (one could see the eyes widen, see, almost, the sudden thought, swift as the thunderquarrel but quite saunse blast), “Have you?” Title, civil pretence nought. Just: “Have you?”

The answer of course, though Vergil spoke no word, could, by his motions, be but yes. There was more sand in that place than dust, in color ranged from ox-red to saffron-yellow and every shade in between; they felt no wind as Vergil took out his old soft doe-skin budget from the saddle bag, yet the sands began to move and slide: and from this slide and drift and movement came a sound, faint as whispers, the sound of a music. What it may have seemed to the Masked Men, he did not know; but something, it must have meant, for they covered their ears (their ears were of course covered in cloth: they pressed their hands over the already covered ears; they seemed distressed, they hissed: he heard them): to him it was the music of the wind in the willow-trees of that misty Grove Persephone. And forth he drew the three small sticks, each no longer than his hand, each concave at one end and convex at the other and he fitted them together, and he stood there with, in his hand, the willow-wand of the Order of Sages and Mages. And he touched the stone horse of the soldier all of stone.

Perhaps it was not necessary to say the words, might the touch suffice, but he had begun to say them anyway: “Rex Rhabdon, from the glare of the basilisk and the venom of the cockatrisk, sweet messenger Mercury; King of the Canny Rod, deliver us …” A moment still the horse and his rider stood as motionless as they had motionless stood for ages. Then the horse whinnied, he moved his hooves a-slaunt upon the sands; some grains of them fell off …

The music of the sands had stopped, the Masked Men took away their hands, the soldier upon the horse slightly moved the targe upon his arm, slightly shifted it as if so to gain a better grip; brought forth from his side the sword. And gave the full salute. And then, dust falling from lips:

“Vergilius Marius Mago, Citizen of Rome?” (“Soldier: Yes.”)

“Himself the August Caesar no longer desires that you come to August Rome forthwith or at all. Instead you are strictly inhibited to enter Yellow Rome or come within the Third Mile Post in any direction, for the balance of the term of this Indiction: and herein fail not to obey. Rome has spoken. The matter is ended.” Again he gave Vergil the full salute, kneed his horse, turned, and cantered forth at easy pace towards — as far as Vergil could see or calculate — absolutely nowhere at all.

As far as Vergil knew. Perhaps the Masked Men knew … a something … for one by one they took up each a handful of sand, a moment held it, then cast it slightly in the direction of the man-at-arms.

Who in one moment more went quite out of sight.

From the sands a-covering the rocky surface underneath, there came, of course, no sound more.

They rejoined the caffile, the Masked Men falling behind to whisper or gesture what they might. None other gave indication that they had seen anything — though seen they must have. Vergil, having taken apart the willow-wand and replaced it carefully, felt now some wonder that no one else seemed to wonder. Perhaps they had seen so many wonders … and it occurred to him, simply, they did not care. Eventually, to those who move across the land of stone in their yearly movements, not in carrying cargo but in search of pasture, they would certainly care when a long-time landmark had disappeared: but doubtless, one way or another, they would adjust. They had managed before that stony figure had appeared and, someday and somehow, they would manage again.

How long had the soldier stood there, turned to stone? … ages … generations … How else could he have endured? In a way that he could not know, it was necessary that he had endured. But how could a man who in the regular course of things would long ago have died and turned to dust have received a message from someone not yet to be born, for another man not yet to be born? Vergil did not and could not know. He recalled, however, having heard of someone who long ago had said, History is but a cycle; as the cycles of years, so are the cycles of the times; and when I harp of burning Troy I do not know if I sing of things past or if I prophecy of things yet to come …

He was now, so to speak, unsummoned to Yellow Rome? He was on the contrary, forbidden to approach thither for … for how many years remained of the current Indiction, that fifteen-year term of appraisal and valuation of all lands taxable throughout the Empery? Forgotten: he would yet recall. It was said that Soldan Moyses, King of Thule, remembered everything which had ever happened since Deucalion’s Flood; sea-birds brought him tidings, it was said, which they had been told by other birds yet. A thing remarkable indeed, yet in no wise beyond belief; for one had observed, many times, and many times more, congregations of birds, of many sorts of birds, sitting on stones and rocks and twigs and trees, doing nought as far as one could see and hear save conversing to one another in great gabbles and babbles and in songs of sounds. What more likely than that they were exchanging news of tidings near and far? — and always, at the end of these conventicles, hear the birds chaunt … chaunt … something … and group by group, see fly away in all directions. Vergil was not Soldan Moyses, King of Thule, but in regard to which year of which Indiction this was — ah! it must be the First Indiction, for Lupus, that wolf, had not yet been the Elected Emperor for a term of fifteen years, the term of an Indiction, though his term of rule as an Emperor, of course, was the same as the term of the lepers’ term in that Rough Place: for life.

For a moment, dallying upon his mount, vaguely Vergil thought of taking in his hands the willow rod again: then he recollected that he had unpicked it and packed it away.

Gently he pressed his knees to the steed’s side, and was soon enough in his accustomed place aside Benninaly, capitaine of the caffila, who paid him as usual, no mind at all. Vergil was heading, at a steady pace, whither all in the file were heading. For a moment he forgot quite where was that. The bare and lifeless sands lay all about.

Great Portendance … yes … but portendance of what?

Vergil felt perplexed.

XV

Alexandria

It was not until he came to Alexandria (and it was some great long while until; much had passed until) that he came at last and at least to the spoor of the other armil … and how came he to have the one silver bangle of the pair and he now sought the other? … another tale: in its place … in its place … not a furlong from the site where lieth Great Alexander, lapt in honey and wrapt in gold: which tomb all must visit whom Fortuna takes thither to Alexandria: near that great Canopic Way itself. Not until then did he find the man — not the last man but the next-to-the-last-man of whom the Sibyl spoke, had spoken, in that voice as from a thousand caverns echoing forth — the man: tall and gant and with one eye (even as she’d said) the color of Sidonian glass and the tother eye of a common brown color. Seeing him, and with but a lurch of his heart, into the shop, swift, Vergil went.

He drew forth the sketch he’d made and showed it; the papyrus had been oft unfolded, and was by then much worn, and very smutched. The shopkeeper glanced at it, with the usual Alexandrian elegance and politesse, but without much real interest, then of a sudden gave a sudden nod, looked up. “You have it, then?” asked Vergil.

“My don, I have it not; I had it. I bought it from a —”

“When? Where? Where is it now?”

A most exquisite shrug. “It has been sold some time ago, some time ago, my don, to a younger man than either you or I; very young, in fact; his name is inconnu to me, and so is his abiding-place. Would my don care for wine? Some native beer to refresh — a thing most curious, the bangle, and I wonder not that my don — eh? Well, no, but as I have seen him more than once before, daresay that I shall see him more than once again. A goblet of the honey-hearted wine? forgive me, I shall press no more the offer. Ah. No more of him I know save that he unmuffled his face and he paused but little at my modest price, and so I brought it down but little. He paid me … ah well … I will but say that had I but its twain and twin, I need must ask a piece of gold imperial for it, of th’ old coinage, mind. — Yea, he entered, he unmuffled his face, and he had rid …” A moment the jeweller rolled his odd matched eyes, then, “… a white barb as went a bit dauncingly in her gait. I have some other silvern armil, ser, cunningly-wreaked, and set with green chalcedony — My don! Ser! Serrah! The god is with you, the Dios unself! Zeus! Serapion! There goeth she now, and he must be aback of her! Go swift—!”

Vergil went swift. Having but some modest care not over-much to startle the barb, he did not run but walked rapidly and stopped a pace or three afront of her; held up his own hand with the unfolden papyrus which had the armil sketched upon it. His eyes encountered those of the rider, eyes dark beneath emphatic dark brows, and those eyes did not rest upon him, but the rider urged his horse — Then stopped. At last had noticed the sketch. Another noted the stop, was at once beside him with, “Sweet water from the Nilus brought, young lord? A copperkin a cup —” saw his water was not wanted, instantly was gone.

“You have this silver bracelin, my serrah? I shall pay ane gold imperial for it, of the old coinage: or ask me more, I do entreat!”

For a moment the man said and did nothing. The white barb danced a bit and he was obliged to ride a few steps away; then back he came, it seemed reluctantly. The voice muffled, said he, “I have it not. I bought it for my brother. He hath it now.”

A shaggy Northishman stalked by, mouth open somewhat between blond-bearded lips, and two black Nubians with estridge-plumes in hair looked round them as they walked. Alexandria was a pearl of all the earth for all to see. Why indeed did Vergil want the other silvern armil so? Because it had been hers and as long as he would have them he would have a share in her? He reckoned not for sure why, he did want it. “As you gave it him — your brother — and I have come far to find it — he is free to give it me! That is, e’er what his price, I pay it.”

The riding-man now free and safe from the deep dusts of any desert and of any land of stone, went on to unwrap his head and face; more muffled than ever (the barb daunced on, he had only one hand free), his voice as he was doing this, spoke only a few words, dull or almost sullen. “It has no price. I shall not say you where he is. I gave it him for the great love,” a last word followed, which might have been he or it might have been we: the headcloth came clean off. The man was certainly young, the young man showed no sign of having ever met him, would clearly sooner ride around him and be off: but Vergil knew at once that they indeed once met.

“Hold! Stay!” cried Vergil. The young man stopped and looked at him without even a slight change upon his face, healthy young face, dark-eyed, with well-defined dark brows, though the face was not without sign of care and cark. They looked at each other a moment without sound (and the exquisitely well-mannered throng flowed all around); the young man stroked his perfect skin with perfect fingers. “But do you recollect me not? You are the nephew of Bodmi the Cooper! Is your name not Rustus? Rustus, we have met —”

Something painful, painful, and very, very deep showed a moment in the young man’s face. He made a level sound which was either yea or nay, or neither yea nor nay. Something like a shadow fled across his face. “Serrah, I know you not, nor know you me.” He would ride on.

“But Rustus —!”

One last few words the other said. “Ser,” said he, “I am Justus. Rustus is my brother, twin.” Eyes already gone past Vergil, the man rode away; eyes gone dead to all elegance and all vanities, eyes gone dead to all save a passage through a red, eroded land.

finis libris 4:00 p.m.

Bremerton, Washington

<8-14–89>

Afterword by Grania Davis

The Scarlet Fig is the third and final novel in Avram Davidson’s remarkable Vergil Magus trilogy Here we see Vergil, hair and beard long-grown and wind-blown, riding across the dry stone desert. He is no longer the well-robed Mage of Yellow Rome. His journey has alchemically transformed him from Mage to man.

The silken arm of a Vestal Virgin initiated his flight and eventual banishment from Rome. The tanned arms and jingling armils of Huldah gave him safe haven and the pleasures of human love and companionship for a brief time, until it was time to journey again. The journey was long, and filled with dangers and wonders. He was marooned on the Isle of the Lotophages (I love those Satyrs!), where he drank the intoxicating nectar of the scarlet fig. He battled a warship of Carthage off the coast of Mauretayne, with wizardry, not arms. He rode with a caravan across the sea of sands in North Africa, through the Rough Place, which was very rough indeed. He eventually reached Alexandria. Time had passed. Vergil had consulted a Sybil, noted, but not described, alas. How much timeless time elapsed? We do not know. In Alexandria he learned of the tragic fate of the twins, and of Huldah’s armil. Here the novel ends, with many tantalizing questions unresolved.

Does the fate of the armil, sold in an Alexandrian shop, reveal tragic events in the Region of Huldah? Has Huldah been overrun by the North African hordes of Carthage, as Henry Wessells suggests? It is certainly plausible, else why would Huldah’s armil be for sale in a shop? Yet if Avram Davidson had lived long enough to complete his nine-volume “trinity of Vergil Magus trilogies,” would the holy grail quest for Huldah’s armil eventually lead Vergil back to Huldah herself?

As the journey transformed Vergil from Mage to man, so did Avram Davidson’s journey into the world of Vergil alchemically transform the author from man to Mage. For a long while, during the later part of his life, Avram Davidson became so engrossed in his research into the Vergil Magus mythos that he almost left off writing the novels themselves. Among his papers we found boxes and boxes of notes. Files of notecards were carefully hand-annotated and cross-referenced into a sort of Vergil Magus Encyclopaedia, with every bit of arcane knowledge that could be used in the project, until the quest for knowledge became more important to Avram than the project itself.

How did Avram Davidson become so engrossed in the Roman poet, Vergil, who evolved into the mediaeval sorcerer, Vergil Magus? In the dedication to this book, Avram credits Sam Moskowitz for encouraging him to speak on any topic. But why did he choose the topic of Vergil, Roman poet/ Vergil, mediaeval Magus?

Let’s time-travel back to the winter of 1961-2. Avram Davidson and I were married and living in New York. As a Californian, I was used to getting out a lot, and I soon discovered that in wintry New York, out meant indoors. And where better to spend the snowy winter days than the magnificent Metropolitan Museum of Art? Avram and I lingered in the galleries and exhibits. Then we discovered the basement, which was a treasure trove filled with a wonderful assortment of small objects, including a splendid collection of antique Italian ceramics.

There we noticed a Venetian glass vessel with the image of a finely robed mediaeval man suspended from a basket beneath an Italian stone tower. The placard told us that the man was Vergil the magician. A princess of the realm, who offered to lift him into her bower in the basket, had lured him into this predicament. She was an enchantress who tricked him, and left him suspended halfway up the tower overnight, so that come morning, the townspeople could see and jeer the mighty Magus in the basket. Ah Vergil, ah Avram, ever the romantics.

Was this amusing Venetian vessel, spotted on a wintry New York afternoon, one of the sparks that kindled Avram Davidson’s lifelong journey into the world of Vergil Magus? I cannot say for sure, but shortly afterward he began work on The Phoenix and the Mirror, the first novel in the Vergil Magus trilogy, and the proposed trinity of trilogies. In The Phoenix and the Mirror, and the later Vergil in Averno, we see ancient Rome, not from a contemporary viewpoint, but from a mediaeval vantage. It is a time-shift that is unique in the literature of shifting time.

How did Vergil, the Roman poet, evolve into Vergil, the mediaeval magus? The Phoenix and the Mirror was published in 1969, when Avram was far from frosty New York, sojourning in tropical British Honduras (now Belize). In his “Author’s Note,” Avram writes: During the Middle Ages a copious and curious group of legends became associated with the name of Vergil, attributing to the author of The Aeneid and The Georgics all manner of heroic, scientific, and magical powers — to such an extent, indeed, that most of the world forgot that Vergil had been a poet, and looked upon him as a nigromancer, or sorcerer. From the Dark Ages to the Renascence the popular view of the ancient world as reflected in the Vergilean Legends was far from the historical and actual one in more than the acceptance of legend and magic and myth. It is a world of never-never, and yet it is a world true to its own curious lights — a backward projection of medievalism, an awed and confused transmogrification of quasi-forgotten ancient science, a world which slumbered much — but whose dreams were far from dull.

It is this Vergil who guided Dante through the afterlife, and this world and its dreams that captured Avram’s imagination for the remainder of his life. Two decades of extensive research elapsed between the publication of The Phoenix and the Mirror in the sixties, and the dark and deep Vergil in Averno in 1987. Drafts of The Scarlet Fig date from 1989, and the work continued until Avram’s passing in 1993. More than a decade passed before the novel was at last edited for publication in this volume.

I had studied Latin in school, and was very excited to see this project evolve, as a genre unto itself. Later I had the good fortune to visit some of the sites of ancient Rome (British readers are fortunate to have easy access to the splendid sites at Hadrian’s Wall, Londinium, Bath, etc.). I journeyed to Volubilis in modern Morocco, beautifully preserved and famed for its toxic lead water pipes. Encountering Vergil in faraway far Volubilis, in this third novel, set the geographical stage and renewed the excitement for me.

Vergil’s journey can almost be traced on a modern map: from Yellow Rome to Naples; then by sea to Corsica of the bittersweet honey, thence to the misty and magical Region of Huldah, and the mysterious Isle of the Lotophages. Again by sea to Tingitayne in Mauritania, on the West African coast; then across the land of stone in the deserts of North Africa through Volubilis in Morocco, and finally to Alexandria in Egypt.

Seeing this book published at long last, after its long and difficult journey, is like observing a mediaeval miracle. Avram wrote many drafts of this novel. Chapters and portions were scattered among his papers, and were often too faded to read. He had sent a mostly complete draft to critic and author Gregory Feeley for comment. That was the draft we decided to use. If Avram had sent it out, it must have been worth sending.

But there were many gaps, and missing material that had to be painstakingly reconstructed from earlier and partial drafts. I had to dumpster-dive deep into the musty and dusty boxes of The Avram Davidson Archive to locate fragments and earlier drafts that contained the missing bits. Editing The Scarlet Fig was a true work of literary archaeology.

Handwritten Afterscripts completed the text. At the end of one draft we found the following note: Avram Davidson finished this 3rd vol of the once-proped 9 volume work VERGIL MAGUS approximately a quarter-century after having finished the first: entirely without the same joy and exultation.

Another draft, with the same 1989 date, ends with this entirely different handwritten note: Historical note: This finishes the first draft of the 3rd volume of VERGIL MAGUS, just about one quarter-century after I finished the ist volume. In celebration whereof, the Authorities have declared an Eclipse of the Moon. Author’s summation: “It beats working.”

Two Afterscripts, one bitter, another sweet. Two moods, one discouraged, another elated. Which best fits Avram’s final summation of his final novel? Both.

The steadfast editorial work of esteemed co-editor Henry Wessells, and the ongoing encouragement, efforts and patience of more-than-esteemed British publisher Phillip Rose, finally enabled this book to be published. I want to thank Eileen Gunn, Ser Reno Odlin, and Gregory Feeley for preserving and sharing Vergil Magus materials. I also wish to thank Melisa and Richard Michaels of Embiid Publications, for help when I needed it.

There will be no further Vergil Magus novels from Avram’s pen, and we will never learn the fate of Huldah, alas. But the excitement and love that Avram felt for Vergil, his realm and his lore, have been carefully preserved for the reader like a rare treasure of ancient and mediaeval Rome.

— Grania Davis

Appendix I

Quint’s Eye Ointments

from the 1988 draft of “Yellow Rome”

Quint had said, “I first went to the physician Cimolus, and told him that I had a flux of the eyes occasioned by an excess of a humor; he gave me an ointment of purple purslane mixed with milk and honey He said it could not fail to heal me, but in the event I had a particularly stubborn case, to see him again; in no event, he warned me, was I to go to Doctor Diagoras, because Diagoras was a notorious quack. I took the salve that Cimolus gave me, and it smelled so good I ate it, but it did not help me in the least. So —”

Vergil asked, “What did you do then?” It was their first meeting.

“Why, then, naturally, I went to Diagoras.”

“Naturally And he —”

“Blamed it on an excess of a humor, and gave me an ointment of opium. It smelled very nice. In fact, it smelled so nice, that I couldn’t help tasting it. And, do you know, it tasted so nice, that I kept on tasting it. The next thing I knew, my servant said that I had slept the whole night and all the day away. But although I’d had some very pleasant dreams, my eyes were no better.”

“Naturally.”

“So for a while I did nothing. But my eyes kept bothering me. I’d heard good things of a Greek physician, Tlepolemos. He blamed it on an excess of a humor, and gave me an ointment of dill roots soaked in water. It smelled lovely, but made me belch quite a lot, and, really, my eyes were no better. But I remembered that Tlepolemos had warned me against another Greek, his name was Scamander, and Tlepolemos said that Scamander was the man who’d poisoned Socrates. So I went to him — Scamander, not Socrates, of course.”

“Of course.”

Quint took a sip of his wine. “So I asked Scamander if he’d really poisoned Socrates, and he said No, that was another Greek, named —”

“Tlepolemos?”

“However did you know? Well. You needn’t tell me. You mages have your ways. And then Scamander gave me a very keen look, and he said he could see that, as the result of an excess of a humor, my eyes were badly inflamed. Naturally, I was —”

“Impressed. Naturally.”

Quint went on, “Well, Scamander explained that lots of doctors made up their ointments with suet or lard, which was far too thick. Whereas, he used veal-fat, more delicate. Made sense, I thought. And he gave me a preparation of anise root pounded up well with saffron and wine in veal-fat. It smelled so nice that my cook thought it must be a new sauce for the barley; I must say, it wasn’t bad. But of course I had to send for some more, and I warned the cook to stay away from it, or I’d have him scourged. And I used the stuff until I quite ran out.”

“And your eyes?”

Quint helped himself to a snail farced with ground gammon. “Oh, it made them rather worse; I felt that from the start. Why did I go on taking it? Why, because it smelled so nice.”

Vergil sighed. He rather thought that he had heard enough about Quint, evidently a mere slave to his sense of smell. But clearly Quint did not think so. “Well, I mentioned all this to the dowager, Hypatia. And she said, ‘Oh, you poor man! I know just the thing! Black-flower boiled with iris juice! And I know just the apothecary to see for it — he gets his herbs fresh from the country —’ which is a thing you hardly ever hear of, you know,” he said, as an aside, to Vergil. Who said that he knew.

“All those bundles of herbs lying around. Like my granny’s kitchen when she was going to make salame-sausage,” Quint said. “Your average apothecary’s shop, I mean. She used only the best garlic, regardless of price. Eudoxius of Sessa.”

Vergil was quite sure that Eudoxius of Sessa was not the name of Quint’s granny, however good her garlic, but Quint had mentioned the name as though he expected Vergil to know it. Vergil had never heard of him. And said so. “What, never heard of Eudoxius of Sessa? The man to whom all the old senators used to go and see when they had trouble with swollen veins?” And seeing that Vergil did not understand, Quint, with a grin and a quick graphic gesture, made clear exactly which veins were meant; and Vergil understood that the old senators’ trouble was that they “had trouble” because the veins would not get swollen — a not infrequent problem of old men, whether of senatorial rank or not. “His herbs were fresh, all right, place was like a greengrocer’s; man had agents who’d stay in the country districts, mountains, woods, buying stuff early in the morning from all the canny herb-women who’d been gathering it; they’d send it on to Rome, post-haste, by horseback, in great baskets which the riders had strict orders to sprinkle regularly with cool water in order to keep them fresh. He also kept a good line in otto of rose. How his place smelled!” — But Vergil felt that they had heard quite enough of Eudoxius of Sessa, and about his herbs, and, in fact, about Quint’s eyes and all the nostrums with which he’d doctored them; tactfully, he led the conversation into other channels. And presently they parted.

But that was how he and Quint first met, and from this first meeting grew their friendship. Whenever Vergil visited Yellow Rome, he made a point of meeting Quint.

Sore eyes and ointments, smells and all.

Appendix II

The Nine Roses of Rome (1988)

The Nine Roses of Rome consisted of the Six Vestal Virgins, the Empress, a woman of the people selected by lot, and a ninth, who was never publicly identified, but was popularly believed to be The Sybil. The only one who received pay was the woman of the people, who was entitled to every lamb struck by lightning; this happened more often than one might think. What the Nine Roses did was even more of a mystery, as no man was allowed to be present, not the Archiflamen, not the Emperor; not even a eunuch: not a castrate priest of Cybele, not even a natural-born eunuch; not even Cumus, who was allowed to help bathe the Empress and to be present at the Women’s Mysteries, dressed as a woman; and whose gifts included that of making fire by striking his dexter hand against his opposite thigh. Several sacred lamps were thus lit at intervals, but not the sacred fire of Vesta: and, indeed a certain ancient family was charged with the task of keeping guard over Cumus at intervals (which they did with much grace by dining him among the patricians), just to make sure that Cumus did not at those times assume the likeness of a woman and somehow pass as one of the Roses, he was supposed to have at various times been both a priest and a priestess, python and pythonissa, at Delphos. But enough, for now, of Cumus. Popular and current belief no longer held that the Roses recited rhymes to ward off the Gauls, but there was always a whisper that only the Roses kept at bay The Death of Rome. As one Vestal had always to tend the fire, a question inevitable: who, then, was actuually the Ninth? Common sense made very doubtful the truth of the suggestion that one of the group had the power to divide herself in to, pro hac vice. The year that Hugo was the co-consul, “and kept the King’s sword,” a certain Stilicho, merely for suggesting when in wine that there was always a secret seventh Vestal to replace whichever of the regular Six had to go piss, was sent, and in chains, to that city on the far southern frontier of Lybya on route to the Guaramantes and their dogs, where the houses are made of slabs of salt — rose-colored salt, one hears — and then, tooo, onehears that it took only a month for his skin to slough off, instead of the usual year. (The skin, stuffed with fragrant gentian flowers and with yellow oxalis, is on view or not on view somewhere in the warren of the Palatine, where unlicensed cults are compelled to worship, lest their gods be wroth with Rome; and as for Stilicho himself, does he indeed receive worship by the ophioloters in the darkness, who can say?) The Nine Roses of Rome.

The magnate Latulus, who had at one time owned half of Sicily, rich in grain, and was thus said to have his finger-marks on every loaf of bread baked in Rome, had determined to buy the Empire … or, at least, the Crown Imperial — as he might buy another field of wheat. He visited all the Kings — every single King — made immense presents and promised more if he were elected to the next vacancy: no one refused. Averroës was Emperor then. Averroës would ride spirited horses. On one public occasion publicly changed his mount for an even more spirited one on the breath of the moment: at the first prick of the spurs it not only threw him but trampled on him — “If it had been one of the Thracian stallions trained by King Diomedes to deal with unwanted guests” (a problem with which not only kings are vexed), “they would have eaten him as well!” said Quint to Vergil, rubbing his ever-sore eyes: but Quint’s eyes, like the horses of Diomedes, were besides the point, the point was that the Emperor was dead (“he has bought his own death,” the Levantines in Rome said), that there was not, as there sometimes — seldom — was, an emperor-designate, no one could charge or should even suspect conspiracy (well, “no one,” there was, as there always is, some antique ninny-dizzard: he muttered that the priests of Poseidon Horse-breaker, offended by some neglected sacrifice, et sic cetera; sure it was that Poseidon/Neptune was no greatly popular deity with the ever-sea-sick-prone Romans: several passers-by threw used orange-rinds at the antique ninny-dizzard and several others threw used sponges at him, not used at the Baths but used by patrons of the public cloaca to wipe themselves: vox populi, vox dei, and the antiquity withdrew himself in ungainly haste, presumably to mutter in some less public space); and Latulus was elected Emperor by the electoral kings.

The canny corn-factor evidently lost his senses as he gained the Crown, and, once having mounted the Elephant Throne, that ugly, elephant chair which symbolized Roman dominion over Asia and Africa and — counting the small herd descended from Hannibal’s elephants, which had ever since been eating its way through the Pontine Forests — Europe; at once began to play the fool. None of his japes and follies more shocked the people than his sending a loud and gaudy procession to the Nine Roses (who existence was supposed to be quietly and politely ignored) asking “humbly” for “advice.” Mention of the Roses always brought to Vergil something which was not exactly a vague memory: the phrase The Death of Rome and the odd, alliterative syllables, Atilla Totilla Bobadilla[15], which made no sense: being a mage sometimes informed him not only of morethan he wanted to know but of more than (sometimes) he knew at the time of being informed.

A reply to Latulus did come — inscribed in the ink of a scuttlefish on the much-scraped skin of a bidens, a lamb struck by lightning and which thus had never known the butcher’s knife — cooly containing the single word Delphos. Latulus struck his pumply forehead with the flat of his warty hand … no one had ever been able to dismiss Latulus contemptibly as “just another pretty boy” (this he well-knew, and, “Was Socrates comely?” he asked; “Was Æsop?” — rhetorical questions which would have had more force if it had not been generally known that Latulus believed Socrates had told fables and that Æsop had stolen the Golden Fleece) and cried Of course! why had he not thought of that himself? “It was because he did not have the time,” murmured Vergil in Quint’s ear, referring to the Emperor’s well-known habit of assigning preposterous and impossible tasks (draining the Putrid Sea, for example; or turning the Adriatic into a carp-pond), invariably adding, “I would do it myself, if I had the time …” Quint snorted, and even, for a moment, left off rubbing his eyes.

Off went the rich gifts — chauldrons of gold filled with gold coins; back came the Oracular answer, reducing the single word of the beloved women to a single letter, phi. Faster than fire the news spread, and in a trice the Emperor — who, alas, did have a notoriously bad digestion — became know as Flatulus. It took much to erode the immense dignity of the Imperial Office; and the final blow which slpit that great rock was a Decretal forbidding “the issuance or utterance of vulgar sounds or noises when Himself the August Caesar passed by.” The usually subservient Conscript Fathers of the Senate immediately convened, and, first, ordered the Imperial Guard to discharge their allegiance to the present Himself, on pain of not being paid the customary gift at honorable discharge of a farm (invariably someone else’s farm, but what would you?); and, second, ordered Phlatulus the choice of abdicating, committing suicide, or being whipped from the throne with an eel-skin. The man was of noble family, he did behave like a child, and the ancient republican law (never amended or repealed) provides that this was the only instrument with which the magistrates — of whom the Senate was the highest order — might publicly flog a boy of the Blood. Petulantly but promptly, and farting indignantly, the Emperor abdicated; and retired to one of his innumerable and private estates, whence he did — having so little dignity — from time to time return to Rome under cover of one of the numerable legal reasons for doing so: to consult a physician or an astrologer, to offer sacrifice at one of the temples found only in Rome (Juno of the Two-Headed Heifer, for example, a goddess much favored by the simple … or simple-minded … and pious farmers of the days of King Numa, but whose cultus was by now shrunk to almost nothing nothing and whose temple was little more than a mud hogan crouched under the portico of the Inspection Entrance of the Cloaca Maxima, of which perhaps Vitruvius had said that it — the Cloaca Maxima, Rome’s chief sewer — was in the aggregate as massive as the Pyramids, and infinitely more utile. The pilgrimages, if such they could be called, were very much welcomed by the temple’s priest, who otherwise depended for sustenance upon his small plot of samphire, which his wife hawked in the streets out of two larg jars — one sort in pickle, with garlic and onion, and one sort in brine, without, the old priest-farmer, when asked if this were not a dreadful trade, denied with emphasis that samphire could only be found flourishing in the clefta of cliffs; he called this a vulgar superstition, and he said that it grew as well upon the level land as would so many cucumbers. Nevertheless he was very glad to receive the worship and the offerings of the former Emperor, and, indeed, had some notion that it was compulsory for those in that status; and muttered very complimentary things about the Pax Romana. But these pelrinages were made rather furtively, and in a closed litter, for the populus took much joy in greeting their late liege with jeers, hoots, poots, and other manner of vulgar sounds and noises; until, finally, he gave them up altogether, and crossing o’er the perfumed sea, confined his urban trips to Messina, Palermo, Syracuse, on that tri-cornered island, where, even if he no longer owned a half of it, he was received with respect. But, after no great passage of time, he, still acting the clown, tripped and fell into one of hsi own eel-ponds and vanished or dissolved at once in a flurry of blood drawn by those ferocious teeth, and only his ring, found by draining the pool and slaying and examining each eel, every single eel) remained to identify him. Their flesh was offered to the slaves, who, one and all, refused to eat of it.

The then-Emperor ordered five minutes of official mourning.

After that, no one sent messages overtly to the Nine Roses of Rome, who were left, unvexed, to continue, at intervals, and covertly, their apotropaic activities against The Death of Rome. Leaving to sound and resound in Vergil’s min the meaningless and yet, somehow, fearsome syllables, Attilla Totilla Bobadilla … and, like an echo of a drum-beat, the final syllables: ilia … ilia …

“This fire which Cumus is said to kindle,” began Quint, interrupting his friend’s echoes.

“Not ‘said to,’” Vergil corrected. “He does. I have seen him do it. Twice. Once at the extinguishing and re-lighting of the lamps in the adyt of the Temple of the Magna Mater. And once, when that great storm of the Consulate of Peppin blew out the torches in the Oratory of Orpheus; that was rare music, and the Head sang so —”

“Rarely, I am sure,” said Quint in his best languid manner. “But I wanted to ask you about the fire …?”

Vergil considered a moment or two. “The Sages of Sidon,” he said at last, “are of two schools in the matter. One, called the school of Odishu, holds that there are twenty-three different and distinct sorts of fire, which they distinguish by substance, by essence, and by fluouressence. These I found very hard … not impossible, but very hard. The other, called the School of Shelemon, holds — as do I — that these distinctions are over-subtle; and maintains that there are but seven. The third lowest is that brought about by striking the hand upon the thigh … which hand, and which thigh, does not matter, according to Shelemon: but it matters very much according to Odishu, who rates them as, respectively, second and third lowest so that we cannot admit the fire of Cumus to be of very high order. It would not serve you to light cedar-wood, for instance.” The sacred fire of Vesta, for instance, was of cedar-wood, and that of Haddad, specifically of cedar of Lebanon.

Fire produced by Cumus, Vergil explained, consisted of scattered sparks, of a pale blue-green color, not unlike that of certain fungus shining in the woods at night. These were caught in a sort of punk, which, blown upon and made to smolder, were transferred to a wad of tow; and thence to the pith of papyrus reed, and at that point you had a fire which would serve for most purposes.

Quint said that he thought the same effect could be had by rubbing two dowagers together. “Or the same number of rather elderly catamites.” Vergil laughed, but on that subject said no more, and began to discuss why the question was not yet solved, if the blood of dragons was hot or cold; and from there he passed to a rather nice point in Theophrastus on Plants, in which both illustration and text was precise and clear, but precisely and clearly differed from each other. Quint, although it was not his subject, offered several reasonable suggestions, and did not revert to the previous subject. It was one of Quint’s great values as a friend that he did not push. It was one of Vergil’s drawbacks that he could not endure those who did.

By that time … about the time of the five-minutes court mourning for (Ph)latulus — white truffles might not be served, nor might readings from any author save those named Pseudo-anything go uninterrupted, and everyone was forbidden to belch or break wind without paying a forfeit of the price of a palmful of pine-nuts … by that time Junius was Emperor; and Junius loved Vergil very much.

The mystery, however, remained.

Appendix III

In the Region Called Azania

from The Notebook of Vergil Magus

In the Region called Azania, seawards from the Region calle Agysimba (confuse it never with the Region called Abbysinia), Agysymba, where the monoceroids assemble to vote — one random of rhinoes to go slowly to the fertile valley called Of The Niger, a second random of rhinoes be off towards the teemy foothills of the Mountains of the Moon (where grow the gigant aloes, worth more than e’en those of Socotra, could they be but had more than once in an indiction): and so on, decreed by vote — further the rhinoid assembly did vote to ostracize and exile and to hold as Rogues (here a slight earthquake shook my house) a certain old he, a certain old she, and another certain old he; at each vote they struck the earth once. Say you, “They have no names,” say you? Not as you nor I, but they have every which one an odor, a smell, a certain scent so sharp that even those Landlopers who pass to and fro and dwell among their midst and sometimes hazard to ride upon their scaley backs to the squall discomfort of the traitor-birds: say they, such Landlopers, the smelch of them rhino be distinguishable clearly one from tother. let sic and such a stenk never come a-nigh us, did they vote as they assembled. As for foreign affairs, they did ban passage and grazage and accession for waterquells to ane rogue oliphaunt with one tattered ear and a shivered tush. But as for barring him from all the rivers and streams of water, the assembly considered (as always) that all rivers and streams of water were of such a nature that it be not for any band of beasts (even such a noble band of beasts as that of the council of the nose-horned) to consider it might ban accession: but that all might drink therefrom … even … and as alway the monoceroids went slowly on this … even the stinking crotty: Old Crotty Crackbone. Even he. And then each pachyderm struck the ground — once — twice — thrice — with a right fore-hoof, and with no more say or scene went each group its own separate way, eventually to part into singles. And on hearing this enormous three-fold thud … thud … thud … the oliphaunts, wise in wisdom, murmured, That was well. And sent word the way west. But the vasty hippotayne in the rushes of the reedy rivers and the shady coverts of the fen murmured, That was not well: for the hippotayne liketh not to concede equal, and when such concession is forced from him by the thrice-quivering earth, he groweth grom indeed and opes his massy mouth and roars. And the Landlopers, when they hear this, hasten thither with much calves of oxen and with great wastes of fruit in hope that they might find hippotayne still grom and obtain from him some counsel and some charm to fall upon the oliphaunt and slay him for the treasure of his mouth (dean no. 22–23).

Appendix IV

The Great Globe

from the so called fragments of Vergil in the Cabe

The Mage Vergil was walking through the Great Piazza in Naples with a few friends — Clemens the alchemist for one, Ser Minnimus Rufus the dwarf Knight for another: afoot for once and not upon his favored pony-cob; others — and hangers-on. The main sight in the Piazza was the Great Hand holding the Great Globe. Was it the remains of an immense imperial figure? whose? was it a hapax legomenon in stone, there having been no statue? a lusus natura? It was an absolute belief in Naples that the Globe was hollow and had room inside for ample: thus a tale, that Once at midnight the Equestrian N.N. had galloped thither, followed slowly by a gathering throng; had beat upon the enormous orb. Moments later the throng did find a dew-heel of a scabbard and the buckle off a helm, heard confused noises of within; nought more, ever. Save, now, the fixed faith: Room for a mounted man in armor. Vergil wondered: might a chiromaunt trace the lines of the huge Hand and thus discover — what? Clemens scoffed. The lines were incomplete … the palm held the Globe … the lines of the Globe were themselves incomplete, thus…. Vergil demurred. Where the Globe rested, there the Globe was blank, saunce regard as where it rested. Ser Minnimus was not so sure. Concealed from sight must be the outline of all land between the Peninsula of the Britains and the great Island of Zipangu. Said Vergil — “But there is no land between the Peninsula of the Britains and the great Island of Zipangu,” said Vergil. Yet again. For the smallest (by very far, the smallest: “I have had rings which weigh more than this one does,” a quip from Quint: he did not make it to the small Knight’s face) Knight in all the Empery of Rome did not seem altogether satisfied. “But what,” he asked, “of the birds? Of the great flight of the birds in the Consulate of Calpurnius Otto? — eh, dan Vergil.”

They chancing to be passing by a flight of steps, Vergil sat down and adjusted a buskin which perhaps did not need adjusting. Some attempts had been made to ward the steps from thoroughfare — wooden hatchment, painfully painted with now-peeling paint, Accursed be all who make caca here, may cullevers bite their bottoms, the letters cramped to allow a picture of serpents straining upward with fangs all bared — but enough space there was for Vergil to sit upon the steps (Granite of Ganadium, he noted absently). He looked the small stalwart man level face to level face (he would wonder later and perhaps he might enquire: who had lived here, when estopped, why barred and not rented: for it had not been cheap to have brought hither steps fashioned of granite of Ganadium, granite being the most endurant of stanes as herculine is the most endurant of furs; for now: other thoughts), “Ser Rufus,” he said. “Consider.” Ser Minnimus Rufus, face to face, eye to eye, gave full show of considering.

For just a portion of a moment the knightly eyes had left their attention to the Vergil Mage’s, and Ser Minnimus Rufus remarked, “Almost I’m sorry that this house is closed and that we can’t come in. I am always fascinated by the interiors of things — vehicles, buildings, women —”

“But attend, Ser Minnimus, attend —”

Ser Minnimus looked away no more. He attended.

The great flight of the fowl in the consulate of Calpurnius Otto had been certainly a matter of wide consideration and had become even a set subject for the boys at the rhetors’ schools. Vergil went briefly over the matter with the thick small knight. — There had been strong great gales into the west of Europe, blowing from the Sea of Atlantis — Three days they had been blowing, agreed Ser Minimus: his broad brow concave, his nose somedel retrousse, somewhat auburn his hair, and his beard cut short. A faded red the plaster now so largely broken off the front of the closeted house on the steps of which Vergil now sat. — and upon the early morning of the fourth day there was seen, first seen, over the lands of the Friesians and the Beiges, flying straight in from the wide vast sea, a skyful of birds such as none had seen before. High, too high up for any arrow, bolt or quarrel or slung of shot to reach, but every so often some single fowl of that throng had fall dead upon the earth: a fowl, a bird, of what origin such a welkin of them? Gone over the lands of the Friesians and the Beiges, next the immensity of bird had descended into rest upon the fields of the Burgundians: and ate them full of all the planted grain until the land was bare; then gate they up and resumed their sundimming flights. Passing over the broad lands of the Loringians and the Swabians, their dung descended in hot torrents, burying and burning the barley, wheat, and rye; so that had it not been for the crops already gat into the granaries and the rootcrops still under the surface of the earth, stark famine had gripped them all in those lands.

And the very stanes of the walled cities and the monuments upon the temple walls had been scored deep by the acid scourings of the vast-flying bird-hordes, and so might the marks thereof be seen till now. So Ser Minnimus agreed and nodded, nodded, eyes into Vergil’s eyes. — Flying yet across the territories of the Bayers, the Avars, and the Gepides, gradually the flocks flew lower and slower, and word of them passed ahead by couriers’ horses as they rested them two day and half a day in the Forests of Pannonia, thet the weight of them brack all the branches off of all the trees: not alone that they ate them up every single acorn and filbert and walnut and every other nut of food upon which many depended not for mere refreshment or a muncheon but for prost food, making their bread, for ensample, of acorn and of chestnut meal, nutmeal for their polenta and gruel as had it been of barley: the fell fowl consumed the lot. So, so as they lifted off and swarmed away like locusts, these birds, the forests of Pannonia they began to sicken and to die: might none trenching nor any accustomed and benevolent dunging help a stivers worth: the forests failed entire and complete. And now all the lands of Pannonia are but broad fields, horned cattle and the fleecy ewe graze where once in time the green-clad hunter went to slay the antlered roebuck and the broadchest stag, the white-tusked boar and e’en the westward outreaches of the wooley byzont of Byzontinople, and the southmost clamors of the gigant urus with the high-held, wide-reaching horns.

Thence the flocks of intrusive fowls borne on the diminishing winds and gales though from ane horizont to tother horizont the birds still flew, ower the shelly seacoasts of Bohemia, ower the Ister and the Dunave, the lands of the Moraves and the Moldaves: hourly lower and hourly slower, what time they settled yet again in their tremendous settlings: atween the Wends and the Wallachs they sate them, sometimes twittering upon the breaking branches and betimes squatting on the very grounds like so many small small swine: then gan they their rut to make, masses covering masses, their sensual screeching closing out whatever sounds, all the day they shuddered, he upon she; and whilst they delved, there crept up and down upon them on silent feet the Bulgars in their thousands and the Petchenegs by tribes, all with broad nets such as not alone the fowlers use but even the nets with which the fishers draw through rivers and through lakes: these they cast over the heedless birds, in their ecstasies refusing flight. There came upon them eekit the Polones with brooms and clubs, and nameless hordes and yortes: Soon the noise of the great beatings and clubbings drowned out even the shrill delights of cock and hen; vast as their number was, they rose not up to flee while the hosts of hungry men rained blows upon them, cotched all in snares which they did not cotch in nets nor simply brute to death with winnowing-fans and grain-flails and cudgels and whatsoever sticks they might in haste seize up or break off. Rods, bastoons, and bacculas.

For three more days this slaughter so continued, meanwhile a blizzard of plucked feathers blew along the whole zone of clime as leaves do blow in the season of falling leaves, what time the canny peasant gathers the fallen leaves as unsown crops and stores tham in barton and in byre to spread for the cattle to dung upon, and then he spreads them on his fields and round the roots of hungry trees — so all about did the feathers serve for leaves. Salt from every store of salt and every lick thereof was brought and every barrel keg firkin hoghead and vessel whatsoever was filled with corns of salt to conserve the flesh of the odd-fowl; and fires the smoke of which went up to take the place in the briefly empty skies where but a few days afore flew the vasty massy masses of the birds, for the smoking of them: and yet and yea, they, the folk of men, ate swiftly of them that could not in any way be conserved, grilling their tender flesh by the fires and crisping them upon the coals, licks of flames spurting higher as the fat —

“Even so,” said Ser Minnimus Rufus. “Even so have I seen in the shops of such as serve rare things for sales, such as the tiny, saddled sea-horses, the serrate morses’ teeth and the spirally tushes of the nare-whales, have I seen what they swore upon Nemesis and Belial and Bogbella and sundry sorts of ghouls and ghad-she-whats, that they were dried and desiccated corses of said marvel-birds as rode across Europe from ane part to other as like to passengers upon ships they birds rode upon the enorment winds — and yet, Ser Vergil: did they look unto me as mere doves or pigeon-birds, whereas one should think such marvels might hap to have the forms of pococks or phaynixes —”

“That a marvel, rather in itself, that they did not,” said the sage, Vergil, his grey-green eyes a-looking into the brown-with-just-a-hint-of-ruddy-color, those of the dwarly knight.

Who asked, “Well, and then and thence, whence cam they, my Master and my Mage? if not from some large land —”

Clemens had begun again, after some short while silent, to huff and puff, like unto the sibylant soft sounds as make move the lid of the vapor-bath, that Bath of Mary[16]; but he for a marvel (yet another marvel!) said nothing — said nom word. Left it to his friend the Magus Mago to espeak it all. Who, “Consider, Ser Knight, my Minnimus Rufus: what such a great land it would take to breed and nourish such an infinity of living birds as nigh estroyed our land of Europe whilst merely they passed over! Consider, then, what immensities of plains! of forests! of fruitful fields! in order to maintain such an amplitude of birdery! Vast continents, it may be said —”

Breathed the sturdy-small-and-compact Knight, “Yes … yes ….”

Soberly, almost (it might be fancied) slightly sadly, slowly said the Magus Vergil, “Now, could it be that of such vast continents not a single syllable would have reached our ears from the Strabo and the Herodote? from even Magno Homero, the chief of geographers as of occymists — From that waste of ocean has come to us not a single ship — not a sole wayfarer or stranger, cast upon our coasts by strength of storm or missenchance — no alien tree wandering slowly upon vasty seas, uproot by tempest on some distant shore—”

That member of the Knightly Order, so small and yet so full of power that might he be called a full fist of a man, a pygme-measure of a man, listened as becomes a man of sense and sound of mind; he listened to the logic which he recognized he could not refute, nor neither did he … as becomes a man of vertue … regret that he could not. Only he cast his eyes a-back down the wynde towards the Great Piazza where stood that grand globe, and askit he one sole question: “The birds, then … whence? Wherefore … birds?”

A whiff of burning wooden coals and cooking meat came wafting and wifting up the wynde, the realities of life intruding, as ever they would, upon the conjectures and the wherefores. Asked, in the manner of the rhetors, Vergil, “Whence that far-, far-northern goose-bird whose eggs no man hath seen? From out the depth and bosom of the sea, out from a barnacle, whence. Whence the coral and the pearl? Out of the shells of the sea, whence. Out from the sea itself came those marvel-birds. In an instant, called up by gales of wind. Why? As a warning against unreasonable lust, so say philosophers. Say others —” here he smiled; the dwarve knew that thus the mage included himself, by that modest oblique term; “— Say tothers: nay, not so. That the immense swarm was a lusus natura? Yes, of course: intended what to teach? For teach it did, as clearly as any clamoring bronze from high Dodona’s oaken shaws where vatic cauldrons moan mysterious tide. Himself the August Caesar was persuaded that, just as immense swarms of birds swept in from the west to the affliction of the empery, just so immense swarms of men were soon to be hasting in from the east, to the affliction of the empery. And that wise our troops and those of our confœderates and our allies posted to the border marches, so that …”

Small Ser Minnimus nodded slowly. He knew which that followed. So that when the great Hordes of Gogmagog, of whom no man Roman had ever heard, swept in from the fathomless east, pushing the Huns ahead of them and driving before their advance the Sarmatians and the Scythians like leaves before the winds: the Imperial forces were more than ready, and drove down upon them from three sides (some say: from four) and caught them in snares and in fowlers’ nets, and captured so many that the slave markets were nigh glutted: and of those they captured not, many indeed they clubbed to death …

And as Vergil was slowly ceasing to speak, a man came slowly down the wynde, dressed in the manner of a country-dweller, a small-to-medium landowner who came perhaps twice a month to the city, perhaps once a month to Brindusy and once a month to Naples; such a man of rather past the middle of his age came along the street, slowly and bemused and looking down. That a small throng of people were gathered in the street rather surprised but did not very much startle or bother him. He a bit lifted his head and, as it was Vergil whom he from happenstance faced, to Vergil he said, “Pray pardon, my dan, I am going up into this house here …”

Not showing his great surprise, Vergil stood, and stood aside, and said, “Surely, my Ser. But I fear this house is closed —”

Said the country laird, just a bittle smiling, and very, very civilly, “It will open for me, my dan. I thank —” A look of bewilderment commenced to crawl over his face, was succeeded by dismay. He looked at the wooden hatchment, at the signs. Caught his breath. Swallowed (they could hear) his spittle. Said: “I fear I’ve made a silly mistake. This is the wrong house. I seek the home of the brothers Lars and Ares Gibbeus, how can I have thought this was their house? where I am always welcome,” his eyes ran every which way about the ruinous building, sought the eyes of the others. “I was their guest here but a few weeks ago, two brothers? do you know their names? Gibbeus? Lars and Ares? one is marked by the smallpox and tother is not … is … not … this is not their house ….” All around the fellow looked. Slowly his body began to tremble. Then slightly to twitch. “A house plaistered in red plaster, well kept up, my sers. And,” here his face slightly brightened, “the steps are excellent steps, no mere flagstones, but a-made with Ganadian granite —” Vergil did but a very small gesture. Of a sudden it was quite plain that the country gentleman now observed the granite steps, now observed the faded and crumbled red plaster. So clear was his alarm that not one spoke to break the silence.

The silence was broken by a grizzled Æthiop with the customary jewel in his ear. He led a good roan stone-horse along; few would care to ride, mounted, in such a confined and curving way. “Good day, good Roman people,” he said, looking at the huddle of folk with politely controlled interest. And slowed his step. Ser Minnimus perhaps compared the roan to his own pony.

It was Clemens who spoke up. With a gesture — “What do you know about this house, my ras?” asked he.

By just the slightest change of countenance and motion of head the Æthiop indicated that the use of the word (in his own land) of respect had not been missed. “This house. Ah. Well. My cousin-german lives but small way from here, and I pass by month by month to see him. A few fresh thing from country I bring him — lettuce, dormice, comb-of-honey. Sausage. Snail.” He made a slightly deprecatory movement of his mouth. “You cannot get good snail in city market. This house?” He gave it a brief look. “It has been empty as long as I remember, and that is many year. Many year. I have heard that it did belong to a pair of brethren who departed to fight upon the marches of the eastern border in the invasion long ago. That great invasion. Ah, their names. I do not remember of their names.” A bit, next, his face brightened. “But I recall of this I heard: That one was marked with the smallpox. And one was not.” He gazed calmly upon them all. The country patron sat very abruptly upon the second step, gave a gesture as might be seen within a drama acted on a stage, of one abandoning himself to wrack and wreck upon the deck of a driven ship.

Buried his face in one hand.

Vergil, not really knowing anything precisely appropriate to ask, asked, “Where is Ser Minnimus Rufus?”

A man with a bald head and a crowded face, of the sort who are supposed to answer small questions in every small community, said, “Ser Minnimus has gone back down the wynde to the Great Piazza, whereunto one assumes he has gone to look again upon the great globe. Whereunto he was a much attracted, Ser Minnimus.” And fell silent and wiped his hands upon his tunical (of a dark bottle-green, with but a very few black patches).

The Æthiop, who had seemed about to walk off, he and his horse, now paused and declared, with a most obliging air, “Ah, that great globe. Oh that great globe of stone with the map of all the world graved upon of it. One is assured, good Roman people, that it is well-known to afford room and space for a man in armor mounted upon a mount.” And he gazed upon them with a benign look, as one well-satisfied of having told folks something of much interest of which they had never heard before.

Almost an indiction had passed and Vergil had finally accomplished his intention of making, for use in his elaboratory, a copy of the great globe of Crates, with the nations and zones and climes shown; however, with much more detail. Using his compass and his master-rod and many other such tools, soon enough (taking advantage of weather, warm and yet dry) he had prepared with wood and wire a framework such as often sculptors use in making models, a framework in the Piazza near the orb which the gigantic hand belonging to no gigant stood as it had stood perhaps since the Titans’ times. His well-scraped wettened parchment-hides he had plaistered over the stone bolus and trimmed them neatly into gores; then transferred them to the framework. And it, to his elaboratory. Now, save for a few details … here a degree, so a city, there a sigil … the map was ready for the painters, then the smooth-polishers, then for the semi-public exhibition which he had promised the Camerlengo of the Dogedom of Naples, who took a sincere — if not profound — interest in such matters. (As for the brute Doge, unless the cartographical orb could be induced to disgorge gold … or, at the least … sweetmeats … he would have none of it.)

Today, the Gules of August, although the globe was, he said, still imperfect, still Vergil was showing it to a few friends who would not be able to attend the formal first-viewing; and to a group of foreign visitors — foreign visitors were always present, it seemed. Sacandia, Dacia, Ermony the More …. The Mage stood with a thin unpointed lance in his hand, and he pointed here, he pointed there, mentioned the obliquity of the ecliptic and the retrogressive precessions of the equinox — by vertue of an adamanth stane above and an adamanth stane below, the Great Globe hanged there in the midst of the middle of the air —

“Have you not finished inditing lines of lands in that great space yon, Lord Vergil?” asked an astrologer from Graund Babylone with a scented beard, pointing with his own rule-stick all a-stuck with gaudy golden lines and pretty petty gems.

The Lord Vergil very, very slightly smiled. “That is the surface of the largest sea in the world, thou dan astrologue,” he said. “That is the Great Green Sea of Atlantis, and it stretches between the Peninsula of the Britains unto the far-off Isle called Zipangu. Across that wide wild sea may no bird hope to fly. In all that space, there is nom land at all. Not at all. None.” He rapped there, lightly, thrice with the rod.

Within the globe there sounded a thumping and a knuckling. There came a sound somewhat like that of a tailor tearing a large linen cloth and a butcher ripping apart a rather thicky membrane. A point of light appeared. Sword in hand, clad in byzant skin and a dinty cuirasse, face burned by many suns, out burst Ser Minnimus Rufus, unseen for endless years, and with the wrath of all the Roman gods upon his wrothy face.

Appendix V

The Encyclopaedia of the World of Vergil Magus

The fictitious tales of Vergil Magus were but one part of a vast project that occupied the later part of Avram Davidson’s (1923–1993) life. The fictions were written to engage the reader, but it was the factual and mythic realm, and quasi-historic lore of Vergil Magus that much engaged Avram himself.

His numerous reference books, Pliny the Elder and the like, were extensively hand-annotated with notes and comments for the Vergil project. He had devised a sort of Vergil Magus Encyclopaedia, with a flexible system of page numbering called “Dean Numbers” (named after the late Dean Dickensheet), so that new material could be easily inserted. And he prepared the file boxes of handwritten notecards to keep track of all this data.

Avram wrote (in The Best of Avram Davidson Doubleday, 1979): “As of the date I write this (July 19, 1977) I have at hand twenty-five large notebooks and over five thousand file cards. The ensuing year of my life is to be mainly devoted to reworking it all, and so producing The Encyclopedia of the World of Vergil Magus.”

Was all of this information gathering and cross-referencing a distraction from the novels and tales themselves? Certainly he did not live to complete The Encyclopaedia (his usual preferred spelling), or the proposed 9-volume trinity of Vergil Magus trilogies. If Avram in his later years had spent the countless man-hours of labour on the Vergil Magus fictions, rather than the encyclopedic world building, he might have achieved some of the prosperity that eluded him. But who can say how an author’s mind should work? Especially an author with such a rich and complex mind as Avram Davidson.

I hope one day, a well-endowed university library will acquire The Avram Davidson Archive, and teams of enthusiastic students will catalog this mountain of raw material, and put together the jigsaw puzzles of Avram Davidson’s last great work.

In the meantime, here is a selection of the Vergil Magus Notecards, from A-Y (there are no cards for letters K, X, or Z), focusing on references to The Scarlet Fig. There are 6 shoebox-size file boxes, each containing hundreds and hundreds of these cards, far too many for me to count. I can envision them illustrated and published as an arcane Tarot-like deck.

I will leave it to future scholars to define their precise meaning. For now I present them to readers as a tantalizing glimpse, to puzzle and wonder at how a great writer’s mind works.

— Grania Davis

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