Vergil in Averno vm-2

by Avram Davidson

  “Hundreds …”

  And so Vergil came to know, knowledge swift and heavy and as sickening as a blow, what that dull, recurrent, and deep demand for “… Hecatombs …” had really meant. Hundreds were to be sacrificed indeed. But it was not hundreds of oxen that were meant. Hundreds of men.

  “Your Honor had spoken once to me of blowing one blast of the trumpets and bringing down the legion. Has — ”

  “ ‘Send one signal,’ is what I said,” Casca corrected him, almost absently. True: the trumpet-blowing had been mimed. “I was about to inform you that there must actually be three: one to the Commander of the Legion, one to the Viceroy, and one. . for one last chance we must give them to shrink back from this series of — obviously — false trials of so many Roman citizens. . and one to Averno. I — ” A new and sudden thought struck him. “Would you bear this last one? We would give you an armed escort. You are already known there, so — ”

  Vergil had begun to consider the manner in which he might do this, when he was of a sudden overwhelmed by memories of why it was perhaps not the best thing in the world — for himself, for Cadmus, for Armin. He forced himself to stop thinking thus, useless catalogue of names, useless waste of time — “Ser Legate, here is what happened,” he began. Got no farther.

  “You would not wish to. Very well. Tell me later why not. One moment later.” He pointed to an open set of tablets. “Take up the style, if you please, me ser, and write these words: S. Apponal Casca, Legate Imperial, to the Very Rich City of Averno, Greetings. This is the decree. All trials and all other judicial processes are to be estopped and to stay estopped and in abeyance till further notice. Utterly forbidden that You execute any sentences of capital nature. At once acknowledge obedience. Now seal it. — Decurion!”

  “Ser!”

  “Send this.”

  “Ser!”

  The decurion saluted, left the room, could be heard barking his orders. Send this! Not, take your decade and bring this, this — and, if so, Vergil tried to imagine the entire ten men on their mounts riding calmly and confidently up to the gated walls of the Very Rich (very filthy, very decadent, very bad) City: he could imagine it. He could, even, imagine a one or at most a two of the cavalrymen thus matter-of-factly delivering these orders; what he could not, in this case, imagine, was the reaction thereto. “Would the Legate Imperial not consider assigning the entire force of the soldiery here encamped to this task?”

  “And leave this post unmanned? Messages must pass, must be exchanged, you know. If I were well, if you were willing — However. What. A thought. Just now. An obvious one. What, what, what …”

  But someone else had had that thought, someone from whose mind it had not escaped; from nowhere, there he stood before them.

  The lictor.

  “Your Honor. Permission to draw a third ration.”

  “Granted.”

  “Your Honor. Permission to depart on duty.”

  “Go.”

  “Ser. Hail and farewell.”

  “Hail and farewell.”

  In a moment Vergil saw through the tiny window three men on horseback: two soldiers, armed as usual, one with the sealed tablets and the tablets’ purple badges, and the lictor, bearing the fasces. Naught else. Place there might be and time there might come, that so-far august emblem of order and of cogent rule and of well-tempered strictness sink, as all emblems might, and be degraded: not here and not yet. Vergil heard the hooves depart at a slow and steady pace, now almost soft upon the enclosed ground of the guard-station post, now hollow upon the bridge, then (with a single, threefold whoop of human voice) at the gallop along the stone-paved, the Imperial road.

  Twice more did he, at command, indite the burthen of that message on other tablets. To the Commandant, the Legion: One cohort at once to Averno, in danger of sedition, misprision, and misrule. CASCA. (No need to add, “Have all in ready if more be needed”; it would be done. Automatically.) The Commandant would of course notify the Viceroy and this did not of course excuse the Legate from doing the same; the Legate did the same. At rather greater length, but not at much greater. One man sufficed for each message. The decurion departed, reappeared, departed; once Casca murmured something to him, the decurion responded with an official-sounding syllable; later Vergil was to learn that this ensured Iohan would receive a soldier’s meal: bread, garlic, salt, parsley, and the rough-and-ready wine of the ration; next the Legate put his hands before his face, at once removed them.

  “Now there is time for you to tell me why you did not wish to return. I do not wish to return, think not this is any sort of reproach; speak on.”

  Had it been only that “one moment later”? And not, say, an hour? He began to, indeed, “speak on.” Told the listening Legate how he had felt himself all but hustled off from and out of the stinking Rich City; some gifts, few, perfunctory, and an order for a money payment — and no extremely extraordinarily munificent one — cashable in either Puteoli or Naples, within a distinctly limited period of time. How, when he would further discuss his work there, came once more, at once, the familiar congee against which one felt there was no appeal: All right to go now, Wizard. How he had protested having heard no decision, no word, even, of refusal, denial, in regard to his plans for the fire-fields and how inflammable airs might be piped, and boiling water from the springs. Responsum: Master Vergil need give himself no further immediate concern in the matter. The Council of Magnates of the Very Rich City has even now already commenced giving Master Vergil’s plans the attention they so much merit, attention the most profound…. Master Vergil will wish to mount, his horse and boy even now are waiting for him….

  … and so they were. . though he had given no order.

  An idea had flashed and shimmered while Vergil, aware of hands poised to press as he walked toward his servant and his horse, several of the magnates walking alongside him — seeming not so much anxious to see the last of him as preoccupied with other, deeper matters. This idea formed itself into a word he had not, dared not speak. Poppaea. He had and dared speak another name, though. “I will wish to pay my respects to King Cadmus before I — ”

  And one man’s emphatic “Nuh!” was not quite overspoken by another’s. “King Cadmus is at present engaged in fasting, meditation, and prayer, and — ”

  And, “Therefore!” said Iohan.

  Stooped, folded hands.

  Vergil hesitated. Shrugged. Mounted.

  “Clearly they wanted me gone directly and wanted me not to return,” he concluded his recapitulation to Casca.

  Casca’s haggard face twitched. “ ‘Clearly’? Not to me, ‘clearly.’ ”

  Nor, in one second, was it “clearly” to Vergil either. This, all this, which he had just described — had it happened? It had not happened! What had happened was much simpler. — Simpler? Well. . briefer. He and Iohan had decided to leave, and the mare -

  Why had the mare so suddenly gone antic, gone into one of her moods, her “little ways,” taken them would they or would they not by way of the least likely exit, the straight-topped Dung Gate, whence no man of social stature entered or left? — instead of via the arched way of the Great Gate? No answer came in words, but as though in some vision, a scene of mist contained within a crystal, he saw something. . someone. . waiting beneath an arch…. His name is Borbo.

  His name is — what?

  Over a table hung a rose, and deep within that table’s surface a man stood beneath an arch, outlined by light, though else was dim: a figure brutal, strong, and coarse, watching the approach of a runner, of one running in a race, watching with a steady eye. This former’s broad, blunt face had something of the look of an experienced gladiator, but there was in it no element of that caution akin to fear. And in his huge hands (huger, yet, his arms! his shoulders!) a hammer, huge. Who? What?

  “Borbo is his name. A butcher is what he is. With his hammer he stuns the oxen. And when they stumble, then he plunges in the knife.”

  And then Vergil heard t
he voice — another and a different voice, not the voice that had just spoken — this voice never came from that butcher beneath the arch (where, the arch?); it was toneless and dry and — he now realized, a trifle tired — it was as though some clerk was reading something, one who reads a document read sundry times before, yet need be read once more, before the signet is affixed. . one Vergil, a wizard, sorcerer, nigromant and necromant. From him the protection of the Laws and the Magnates of the Very Rich City is withdrawn, and he is proclaimed Outlaw. He may be duped, drugged, drawn, stabbed, strangled, stoned; he may be poniarded, poisoned, bludgeoned, thrust through, or cast down. It be licit that he be burned or bled or hamstrung or hanged….

  The arch, beneath which the butcher stood: where?

  The arch of the Great Gate, whence, it had been thought Vergil and his servant would emerge upon their leaving the Very Rich City. . was where. They had been hurried, huddled, headed thither; and thither they would certainly have gone, had it not been for the sudden madness of the mare. It was a minor madness, but it was enough to have saved their lives; thus:

  The scene of he and his servant having been hastened forth by sundry magnates to his, Vergil’s, and his, Iohan’s, doom and death — this, which one moment ago he had imagined had happened — this had indeed not happened. But it had been intended to have happened. The decree of outlawry had covered many contingencies, but it had not covered the contingency of a runaway horse. Idly, Vergil looked at his palm, thinking, I must give her some handfuls of best white barley. His hand was empty. His mouth, fallen silent, was empty, too; he fumbled for his cup, his cup was also empty; his cup, his mouth were equal dry.

  To Casca: “Is there among these damnable documents one which proclaims my own outlawry?”

  From Casca: “You may look. But does it matter. Averno shall not come to us, for all its documents. We shall go to Averno. Despite them.”

  Again that echo in his ear, his damnable, his echo-trapping ear.

  I do not go to Rome.

  Ah, no? But it may be that Rome shall come to you.

  To Casca: “Can we do nothing, then, but wait?”

  From Casca: “We can do nothing, then, but wait.”

  And, whilst they waited?

  The magnates had, almost casually, proclaimed a State of Siege, as was, of course, their entire and proper right in law, and needed no pretensions that sapping operations were underway round about (and under) the walls, the black walls; it was, if one cared to call it so, a legal fiction: and the precise distinctions between a State of Siege and a State of War were no doubt of immense interest to the jurisconsults and their students in Apollo’s Court. But here, as for the most part, it was a distinction without a difference. This had entitled the magnates to close shut the three known openings of the Very Rich City: the Great Gate, the Dung Gate, and the Water Gate, and to set booms across its canal, to station guards (read “troops”) all round about the place. And so on.

  Being no jurisconsults themselves, however, they had also ripped up the roads a good way through and into the mountains — roads? mere and narrow paths! At least some of the rocks ripped from the roads had been poised behind basketries and fences and heavy nets above the narrow passes, ready to be loosed at a word. At a word? Nay, at a gesture. A signal, be it weft or whistle. And loosed, of course, would be: though not as planned. So Averno had arranged to stay secret and secure, untroubled (the magnates, untroubled) during the few, very few days needed to carry out plans; after which -

  But no city, not Averno with its three gates in its black walls (did the “bright tappetties” still hang there? wondered Vergil), not a city with twelve gates, nor even Thebes with its proverbial hundred, or be it Babylon the Great or be it even Rome — no city can ever entirely secure itself from anyone’s getting in. Or getting out. There is always a sewer or a tunnel, remembered by one or two. There is. . somewhere. . always some forgotten drain, some archaic watercourse, a century, centuries, dried (or, perhaps, not entirely dried). Some crack, some cranny, a fissure through the riven caverns neath the earth, ones where no fires burned, on no map known to anyone, but nevertheless known: to someone. Somewhere an underground passage and somewhere a slanting shaft, dug, past times, in time of war by who knows? Oscans, Umbrians, Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, Carthagines, Saracens; what matter?. . long ago stopped up. . and long ago rediscovered. . by whom? who knows? what matter?. . and tunneled through again. Where there are customs and excises, there are smugglers. And so on. So on.

  Thus: Wherever there is a barrier to getting in, someone, given time, will find a way through or past the barrier. And whenever there is a ban on getting out, someone will know a way to slip past the ban.

  And some will start to do so at the first intimation of such a ban, some for one reason and some for another, and some will need no other reason than this one: Where things have become bad, things will become worse, and why wait?

  Ten people, at least ten, had scrambled, tunneled, squeezed, waded, swum, dug their way out of Averno during its brief State of Siege; ten, at least, of whom the Imperial Authorities (and so, Vergil) had got knowledge. Some had escaped one by one, others at most two by two. They had not all escaped at one same time. Semel and simul? No. Full information of what had happened in Averno, then, was lacking. But the intent of the magnates as expressed in their documents (eventually every one of them read, and in detail: detail adding unto detail, fitting mosaiclike into the picture), the deeds of the magnates, as revealed by those ten who were questioned (Cadmus? No. Poppaea? No. Armin? No.) — and it was, in this case, just that: questioned. Himself the August Caesar had issued a blanket pardon. Not all, despite this, perhaps told all which they could have told.

  The purpose of all this Avernian concealment must have been alone to prevent any interference; the deeds once done (surely the magnates thought), the trials, condemnations, executions of sentences, the “fines” and escheatments, the — in fact — bribes to be paid — and, actually, paid! — why, what else would the Authorities Imperial do but shrug? And pocket the plunder. To bring the matter a step closer in conjecture, suppose, just suppose that some whisper, let alone some shout, had indeed brought the legion out from its barracks not far from Naples; could the legion have gotten there in time, there, to Averno? Despite time, despite obstructions in the way? Supposing the legion to have mustered beneath the black walls, who would dare keep the great gates still barred and a-bolt? Not the magnates of the Very Rich City, to be sure.

  To be sure that not a single pebble would have been let drop from a single crag upon the soldiers of the Empery (no such supposition need obtain in regard to others, either striving to get in or to get out). And here came the cunning of Averno into play: Well could one imagine the mock alarm with which (later. . safely later) they would have replied to any demand for explanation, sure though they expected none. “What? The roads blocked? The pass ambuscaded? The path walled up? But. . and but …” See the eyes roll, the brows furrow, the hands deplore. . “But no!

  “Merely that road, path, and pass, was under repair!” And the canal, should it be asked — the canal was about to be repaired as well. . drained and cleaned. . The work of repair had begun before proclamation of the State of Siege! The workmen of course called back before the blockade could be cleared away. Regret! Immense regret! And next: “Perceive, however, the tangible evidence of this regret: The Very Rich City had of its own will levied upon itself a fine! So and so many purses, many, many purses, of gold. Be pleased to count. And. . hah, the merest formalities!. . a receipt prepared. A seal, a stencil, a monograph — anything! Merely as a form …”

  Averno dealt much in form, in forms, and invariably the forms were crude. Yet by means of such crude forms, Averno had grown rich.

  Had grown very rich.

  Sometime during the time whilst they were waiting for reply from either direction, Vergil became aware of noise within the tiny fort, went without the room to see. There was, had been, a wooden watch-tower, and, a
ttached to this, a mast of sorts was going up: higher up. “Of sorts,” it had been made of several spars now being put together with bolts and bars. There was indeed no crow’s nest, but there was a cross-spar; and, the work of joining the parts being completed, some one of the soldiery was now being hoisted up to this. The decurion, on the instant of Vergil’s appearance, vanished; the men, though ceasing not their labor, gave the newcomer glances not the most welcoming, though it could not be said that they were hostile glances. Almost at once one of them said to the others, “He be himself a mage — hoist away!” Whatever was going on was going on without official sanction, and, for all he could see, though entirely tangible, from what he had just then heard, contained or was intended to contain, some measure of something intangible. Exactly next, the man going up, espying Vergil and having heard no doubt the comment, said, looking down, “Ser Mage, it is that I holds the rank of Raven in the Mysteries, and this gives me clear and far of seeing. — Steady on, there! Bring me up!”

  The Mysteries. Of course! No military encampment however small but would have its lodge or coven devoted to the Mysteries of Mithras! Almost without thinking, Vergil raised his hands, clubbed them as though imitating paws, and gave one low and single sound: low, single, but extremely deep. The soldiers’ heads gave as it were one single nod at once. What ranks within the Mysteries the others might hold it was necessary now neither to inquire nor to display. The one slowly going hoist aloft was Raven. Vergil was Lion. Enough.