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

by Avram Davidson

  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 the
y 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!