The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

by Avram Davidson

  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 barb
el

  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*. 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 g
oing 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.