Somehow he knew the answer without knowing how he knew it.
“It’s the Empire that’s wanted, my lord,” the madwoman mumbled, scuffling about for another handful of fish tripes to fling to her horde of pets. The bitter, nasty smell of their staling and spraying brought the basil leave to his nose again, but not before he was reminded of creatures more noisome — and more dangerous — than a pack of cats.
“Cornelia,” he said, half aloud . . . though his conscious thoughts had been elsewhere . . . Cornelia . . . musk and roses . . . but for the present and indefinite future, more dangerous than any, more dangerous than all. If I must search the dark halls of Hell, then let Hell itself be harrowed. . . .
“Cornelia,” he repeated.
“The Empire is what’s wanted. Leo! Myra! Nettlecomb! Orpheus! Hither to me, my conies. Dame Allegra will feed ye. She’s not for the fire, nay . . .”
The old woman’s voice died away. Was it the Samaritans who claimed that after the destruction of their temple by Pompey the gift of prophecy had passed to children, fools, and madmen? There was no use calling to this one, now. In her hut, on her sack of straw, warm and verminous and covered with cats as with a blanket, Dame Allegra had bid the day good-bye. It was time, Vergil considered, that he do the same.
Below and later, in his bedchamber, he considered his own day, and some of the questions it posed. Why did the manticores, who shunned light, collect lamps? How long would he have to postpone his attempt at their habitations? Would it not have been better had he never gone there? What did the proconsul hope to find in Egypt — rest? Plunder? Wisdom? How did Allegra know that he had been with the Queen of Carsus? What was “the fire?” How long would it take to make the speculum? How long would Cornelia wait? How could he still love her? How could he not?
He cleared his mind of all these questions by constructing in it a diagram of great potency and then concentrating on the center of this, in which lay absolute nothingness. Gradually, slowly at first, then more rapidly, the diagram faded away and simultaneously something else took shape in the center before the gaze of his inner eyes.
A door.
He saw himself get up, walk forward, open and step through it. He saw it close, saw it fade and vanish. Once again there was nothingness.
The humming was that of bees. He could not see them any more than he could see Mount Hymettus. He could smell the sweet scent of the violets growing on its slope, though, the rich carpet of flowers nourishing the bees. Illiriodorus sat upon his stool, and he at the old man’s feet, happy in knowing that the old philosopher was alive; vaguely troubled at recalling he had dreamed he was long dead. “A handful of wheat will do, my son,” Illiriodorus was saying. The other students weren’t present; whether they were in the Agora or where they were, Vergil neither knew nor cared.
“A handful of wheat, the flight of a flock of birds, the liver of a victim, an oracle or a prophecy. The truth exists and the truth can be known. It exists in everything and you exist in everything and therefore it exists in you.”
“Yes,” said Vergil.
“Since the truth exists in you, as well as existing outside of you, it is only necessary to bring it — somehow — out from inside, up from below, down from above. For this the focus is necessary, the precipitator. A speculum of virgin bronze will do as well. In this particular instance, perhaps it will do better than those others I mentioned.”
“Yes,” said Vergil. There was a small table by the sage’s side, and on the table was a bowl of honey, the fragrant and delicious honey of Mount Hymettus. Leisurely, he reached his hand toward it.
“No,” said Illiriodorus, warding off Vergil’s hand with his own. The bowl fell, falling slowly, striking the floor with the noise of a bell. Illiriodorus smiled, raised his hand in farewell. The sound of the bell echoed infinitely and echoed forever.
There was a painted room and in it lay a figure with waving hair and full lips, a figure that was human-like, but as a great doll might be human-like. This figure, which was neither man nor woman, made an agonized face and turned the face away from him. But he was in front of it, facing it; he was always facing it. The creature groaned, closed its eyes, opened them a moment later — hopefully, fearfully.
“Still there,” it said. “Still there,” moaned the epicene voice.
He said nothing.
The room was brightly, almost garishly, painted, as it might have been by a somewhat talented child, with the figures of people whose faces — eyes round as circles rimmed all about with long lashes; red spheres for cheeks; double cupid’s-bow mouths — whose faces were turned full frontward but whose bodies stood sideways underneath trees almost their own size and alongside flowers even taller; with the pictures of striped and dotted birds, blue dogs, red cats, green marmosets . . . an almost insane panorama which, still, arrested rather than repelled.
“I have had this dream before,” whimpered the figure on the bed, sexless as a doll. “I know I have, and I have caused it to be written down and I have referred it to the Wise Men and the Chaldeans and I have consulted learned Jews and even the Women Who Serve ‘Ditissa . . . no one has given me a good interpretation, not one.” It looked at him, consumed with woe and self-pity and a measure of genuine foreboding and horror.
It wept a little and it sniveled.
He said nothing.
“I would give you what you desire, if I knew what it was. You smell of Rome to me, and of all known things I fear of the Romans. They burn and they slay and they carry off captives. Go away!” it screamed. “I will not have this dream! Go away! Go . . .”
He was in a chamber hewn out of solid rock. A candelabrum of three lamps supplied thin light. The room was not large, and it was crowded. Matrons wrapped about the head with gauzy veils were there, and those whose dirt and ragged nakedness proclaimed them to be slaves of the lowest sort. A patrician was there, next to him an apprentice boy, next to him a girl in a rustic robe. Vergil seemed to be up toward the front; others, whom he could not see, pressed close around him.
Up at the very front was a table bearing vessels, some of common use, others whose function and design were unknown to him. To one side stood an old man with a long gray beard, his countenance thin so that the bones showed.
“Yet a little while, my children,” he said, “and all this shall pass away. Why do they persecute us, indeed? And why do they harry us? Have we swords? Do we plot rebellion? Are we bandits or brigands, pirates or thieves, to be treated thus? Ah, no, my children. We are weak, we are few, we are humble, we are peaceable. We are here to worship our Lord and Savior Daniel Christ, who gave His flesh to be eaten by lions and His blood to be licked by them, in order that we might be saved and have everlasting life.”
The congregation murmured a word, evidently in response, which Vergil did not know.
“And as for those lost in heresy,” the old man declared, his face becoming burning-fierce, “worse than those who merely persecute our bodies — as for those who say that our Lord and Savior Daniel Christ did not die in the lion’s den, let them be anathema!” The crowd responded with the same short word as before. “And those who claim that The Christ is yet to come and that he will bear some other name or die some other death, let them be anathema!” Again, the response. “Let them be harried, let them be persecuted, may their flesh be torn and their blood spilt! May they be hanged and nailed upon the limbs of trees! For the Lord Daniel suffered pain and agony for them, and they refuse His sacrifice! Woe! Woe! Woe!”
He took a deep breath and opened his mouth again, but before he could speak a girl screamed. The room was suddenly full of soldiers, seizing and binding all who were there. For just an instant the old man shrank back, his tongue running in and out of his mouth like a snake’s tongue. Then he thrust himself forward, his face almost truculent, and offered his wrists to the cords.
Heart numb and swollen and cold with fear, Vergil waited, but no one touched him. No one noticed him. All were silent, all went dim, all vani
shed from his sight.
• • •
The lulling noise, as of waves lapping against a hull, died away. Light, with reticulations of darkness, shone upon his eyelids, and Vergil awoke. The morning had come, brightening through the thin plates of horn in the window lattice. He was in his own room once again.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE FRONT PART of the elaboratory and workshop of Vergil occupied all of one floor of the house in the Street of the Horse-Jewelers; the rear part of it rose upwards the height of two more stories. There, in the measured darkness interspersed with broad shafts of light slanting down from the upper windows (there were none on the lowest level), he addressed his few assistants.
“We want to make a speculum majorum,” he said, standing with one foot on a workbench. “You have all heard of such a thing, doubtless some of you at least have read of it as well.” Behind him rose tall engines, their wheels and hafts casting odd and baroque shadows on the floors freshly sanded — as they were at least twice a day — to prevent both slipping and the chance of fire. As he spoke, one of the men, turning his head occasionally and nodding to show he was both hearing and listening, added bits of charcoal to a fire under a closed vessel. He weighed each bit in a scale, and checked the time of adding it to the fire by an hourglass. The fire had been going, maintained with the most scrupulous care by day and night in order to ensure as even a temperature as possible, for four years without cessation. It still had two years to go, after which it would be allowed to die down over the course of a year, and then for six months to cool.
The master recapitulated the matter. “Such a mirror is made of virgin bronze, made carefully and diligently according to the arcane science of such a work, and without anyone’s looking into it during its manufacture. If this is done properly, then whoever is the first to look into it will see whatever he or she desires most to see. But the speculum majorum cannot see into the past, neither can it look into the future.
“Nor is it permitted to attempt to peek into the private realm of Immortal God. The sighting must be of something actually and presently existing on the earth and in the world of mortal man, ‘Who must,’ — says Hesiod — ’till the earth, for bread, or perish. . . .’”
The attentive silence was emphasized, rather than broken, by a slow clicking of a rachet wheel turning somewhere in the shadows of the great room. One of the men, white-haired and white-bearded old Tynus, made a reflective noise in his throat. “It will be necessary to seek a favorable hour with unusual precision and care,” he observed. “This is a matter of philosophy as well as artisanship.”
Iohan, a squat, long-armed man with a chest like a tun of wine, his voice rumbling and echoing, said, “But it is also a matter of artisanry as well as philosophy. I leave observations of nodes and cusps and houses and hours to others — for my part, I say, let the clay be of the finest quality, the wax of the purest, the ore of the soundest — and let the cooling not be hurried, no, nor the polishing, either.”
But Perrin, an open-faced young man with a smudge of soot across his face where he had wiped it with his hand, said, “Master, I don’t understand. The disciplines involved are rigorous, but beside the point. Such a project is impossible, practically. Iohan says the ore should be of the soundest. I agree. We all agree. But I have to ask, What ore? There has no ore of tin or copper come onto the market in Naples in my life time. Except for small specimens, samples, such as you, sir, keep in your cabinet, I’ve never even seen what these ores look like. Of what use is it to observe the signs and mark the seasons, as Tynus says, this being so?”
Perrin had hit upon the crux of the matter. Copper came from Cyprus — the island of Aphrodite was so rich in it that it had given its name to the metal — but the route to and from Cyprus was cut off by the ships of the fierce Sea-Huns, and had been for well over a decade. The Sea-Huns allowed, by agreement and for tribute (euphemistically termed guard money), one great fleet a year in each direction — from the Empire to Cyprus, from Cyprus to the Empire. There were, to be sure, blockade runners of a sort: small, swift vessels plying between the eastern shore of the island and the nearer coast of Little Asia. But these risked only cargo light in weight and precious in every ounce — gold, perfume, pretty girls.
Copper was too bulky, and not nearly so valuable as to justify the risk. Three swift trips in a smuggling craft and the captain could retire for life. Load his ship with heavy ingots of copper and he might well wallow in the narrow seas — and retire onto an impaling stake, having first been flayed (slowly) of every inch of skin. Or as near as made no great matter — a man in such an acutely uncomfortable position was not likely to quibble over an inch or two here or there. One did not in any event quibble with the Sea-Huns.
Once a year, then, the great heavy galleys and galleons came and went in their convoys, laden down and lumbering slowly over the tideless sea as far as the eye could reach. Vast as was the supply thus obtained, it was not yet equal to the demand. The trade was in the hands of a guild of merchants who charged what the rich traffic would bear; orders had to be placed years in advance. There were warehouses in Naples piled from tile roofs to stone foundations with copper — but it was copper smelted down into ingots for the most part — a small part of it still came in bullock hide-shaped sheets for the old-fashioned, country trade — and, in either event, it was not copper ore.
It was copper changed by the acts of man. It was not virgin copper.
The agreement to “guard” the convoy (i.e. to allow it through) had been wrested only with great difficulty from the three rulers of the Sea-Huns — or, at any rate, from two of them. Osmet was said to be the brains and cunning of the lot; Ottil, to be the fighting heart of the far-flung, restless, and water-borne hordes; Bayla, the third royal brother, was reputed a sot or an idiot — in any event, a cipher. The chances of getting them to make any change in an arrangement to which their greed and recklessness made them at best but luke-warm were nil. And the uncivilized crews of the black and blood-red boats of the water hordes would have no mercy on any independent craft at all.
“Copper is our second problem,” Vergil said. “First is tin.”
Tin came, of course, from Tinland, a mysterious peninsular or — likelier — island realm, in this respect if in no other like Cyprus. But whereas Cyprus had once been and still was officially part of the Economium, Tinland had never been. It was located somewhere to the west and north in the Great Dark Sea, far beyond Tartis. Nothing more was known about Tinland (though legends thereof were not lacking); almost nothing about Tartis. No man of the Empire had ever seen it — at least, none had ever left any account. A rumor persisted that Tartis itself had long ago been conquered and destroyed. It might have been — but throughout the Empire there were small colonies of Tartismen, living under a sort of autonomy by ancient treaty right. Each ward, as their colonies were called, was ruled by its own captain-lord. They were reported to own immense wealth. But they continued to trade.
“Tin is our first concern,” Vergil said, “because access to the suppliers is near at hand. However — leave the obtaining of the virgin ores to me. In the meantime, start the work of preparation. I do not know how long even the preliminaries will take — but begin to begin, now. I will have fair copies made of what is available in my books. Read them carefully, and read them again and again. Start laying in the supplies — the clay for the mold, the wax for the model, the crucibles, the fuel, the cutting and the grinding tools — even the rouge for the polishing. Check every item with the utmost care, and do not hesitate to discard anything which is not the best.
“Let the best vellum, pens, and ink for drawing up the plans be procured. And beware lest strife or impurity enter in upon you while this work is in progress.”
He paused. “We will not be alone in this work,” he said. “Dr. Clemens has agreed to assist us.”
The men received this news with mixed thoughts. On the one hand, Clemens’ hold on both the philosophical and practical aspects
of alchemy had the men’s absolute respect. On the other hand, his many eccentricities and outspoken ways of exercising them (“Onions!” he would snort. “What in blazes do you mean by eating onions at a time when you’re working with gold? Do you want to turn it into dross? Nox and Numa! Onions!”), as well as his short way with dissenters, prevented the news from being heard with utter joy. But they would soon adjust to the situation. The very prickliness of Vergil’s friend would become a source of rueful pride among his men, and they would boast of it to their fellows.
After a few more words — the nature of the project was for the time being to remain confidential; the sponsor of it was paying well and they would share in the sum even if the scheme should fail — he left them to their work of preparation.
Tartis ward in Naples consisted chiefly of Tartis Port, a rather small harbor, and Tartis Castle, a hugh Cyclopean mass of stone. It was not in the least like any other castle in the whole dogedom. Passing from the Great Harbor into Tartis Port, Vergil was struck immediately by the difference in tempo. Everything was slower, quieter. Everything was . . . yes . . . poorer. A hulk lay careened, but no one worked on it. Another one lay half sunken into the mud, and had lain there long enough for a good-sized young tree to have taken root on the quarter-deck. A pair of calkers worked at no great pace on the bulkhead of a small carrack. And a short caffle of slaves loaded supplies aboard a galley.
And that was all.
An old crone, her dirty skull naked save for an even dirtier rag pulled askew over her few witch locks, sat plucking a thin fowl on the doorstep of a cookshop. She muttered at her task, but did not look up as Virgil’s thin shadow fell across her.
It was said that the Captain-lord was inaccessible, that he did not appear in public even at the coronation of a new doge, that he received the Imperial Legate on one day a year fixed for the purpose, and — after the brief ritual of passing a coin of gold over a tray bearing earth and water, corn and wine and oil — retired from the audience room and left the rest of the interview to a deputy.
The Phoenix and the Mirror Page 4
