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

by Avram Davidson

  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?