The Phoenix and the Mirror

by Avram Davidson

  The Lady Cornelia’s eyes moved from side to side. She opened her mouth, shuddered. Vergil, turning to that side of the room where the ghostly company seemed thickest, shook his head. Gradually the shadows dissolved, the voices fell away, the strange and umbrose crowd vanished entirely, and the sunlight was bright and warm once more upon the marble.

  In a low, distressed voice, wherein there were now quavers and tremors, she said. “You ought not to have vexed me with these subtle distinctions.” She threw back her head, gestured with both hands. “I’m only a woman, I don’t understand matters of science and witchery. There, Magus, on these tables, as you have asked, are all of my daughter’s jewels and tiring-gear — except for what she has with her on her journey — for you to choose among. Shall I have them brought to you?”

  He nodded, took a seat at a long board facing her. She snapped her fingers. Instantly, from right and left, servants came, bringing boxes and coffers and cases, set them down before him with their lids turned back.

  “We can’t use pearls and gems,” he said. “Only things of metal can be of virtue in this work.” He waved aside the necklaces of coral, ropes of carnelians, beryl rings and bracelets; pushed away from him the heaps of rubies and emeralds, set and unset. Gold rings and armills which had no stones he kept, also plain brooches and ear baubles of silver filigree. “Any of these will do, I suppose,” he said. But he seemed hesitant. His fingers moved among the gold and silver articles, moved uncertainly. Nothing . . . nothing seemed to feel right.

  Or, at least, not right enough.

  “The Lady Laura has, as I suppose, so many, many things to wear — ”

  “She is the daughter of a king,” said Cornelia, “and the sister of a king. Her grandfather was Doge of Naples, and her grandmother’s grandfather was an emperor.” The lady’s face grew prouder as she recited this lineage, and her eyes sparkled. “Of course she has many jewels. What of that? Why should it be otherwise?”

  Slowly, carefully, choosing his words, Vergil explained to her exactly what it was that he wanted — something which the Lady Laura had had very often upon her person. With such a rich supply to draw upon, it was likely that her ornaments were constantly varied, none of them being worn very frequently. It was natural for her to prefer variety when she had it. But, was there not, perhaps, one single and particular item, an item which was not among those spread out on the board, but was nonetheless available; a favorite pin, perhaps? Or anything at all, as long as the missing young woman had worn it very often?

  Cornelia listened intently, little gleams of gold glistening and sparkling about her, then she spoke words which Vergil did not recognize. Instantly, a maidservant left the room. Vergil, glancing after her almost automatically, noticed the marble-topped table which Clemens had hefted as easily as though it were made of willow withes. Clemens, Where was Clemens? Nowhere to be seen.

  The maid returned, and with her was an old woman — an old, old woman, barefooted, shawled, some sort of ornament on one of her ankles tinkling as she walked. Vergil noted, with a start of surprise, that the crone actually had a ring in her nose: something he had heard and read of, but never before seen. She moved forward confidently, speaking without ceremony in a foreign language, and holding out a little box. Cornelia took it, opened it, wrinkled her face, gave it to another servant to give to Vergil.

  “This is my daughter’s old nurse,” she said. “Her name is Desfiyashtsha — barbaric, is it not? — but she’s a dear and faithful old thing. I’d let you talk to her, but she knows only the language of Carsus. She assures me that my daughter wore this almost every day. I’d forgotten she even had it, but now that I see it, I remember. Tsan foa, De-sfiyashtsha’n, Laura’t?”

  “Anah, anah, Passilissa’n,” the crone said, vigorously, nodding her head, and gazing at Vergil out of tiny, dark, deep-set eyes, bright as a bird’s.

  “Yes, it is hers. Will it do?”

  It was a small, worn, copper fibula in the form of a brooch, very crudely depicting a lion trying to shove his tail into his mouth with both paws. It was the sort of thing that might be used to fasten an under tunic. He picked it out from the box. For a moment he stayed quite motionless. Then he smiled, very faintly. There seemed a faint tinge of bewilderment in the smile.

  “It will do, Lady Cornelia.”

  “And you would really rather not have gold or silver or electrum?”

  “It would not make much difference, really . . . but, of course, copper will go into the flux very well when we are preparing to cast the speculum. It is not virgin copper, but so small an amount will make no difference. The addition of this article — which was worn very often and very closely by the Lady Laura — will physically connect her person with the speculum, which is to reveal where that person is at the moment of revelation. That is its only function. Its intrinsic value makes no difference, you see.”

  It seemed as though she wanted to speak, almost strained to speak. Then an expression of absolute helplessness crossed her face. She slumped in her chair, made a helpless gesture. “I see only danger, agony, death. I tell you that I know nothing of science or witchery. Please make the speculum quickly so that we can discover where — where my daughter is.” She got to her feet in one swift motion. “Magus, I wish you well upon your voyage, and I will offer victims for your safe passage and return.” The formal words of farewell. Again she hesitated. “I know you won’t dally. Farewell.” With a final nod to Vergil, and another to Tullio, she swept from the room. He caught one glimpse of her eye, face half turned. Then she was gone.

  Most of the servants followed her. Last to leave was old Desfiyashtsha, Laura’s nurse. She examined him with curiosity, spoke to him in her own language, smiled in wonder that he really did not understand, and at length hobbled away, tinkling as she walked.

  • • •

  “Yes, but what is your real reason for having agreed to make the speculum majorum?” Clemens asked, insistently. The afternoon was sinking away as they rode back along the road to Naples. They would make home before nightfall, but not much before.

  “Perhaps my real reason is simply that I have never made one before,” said Vergil.

  His companion gave a gusty sigh. “I’m glad,” he said. “I hope it’s really that, and only that.”

  “Why?”

  The sight of a fire some distance from the road revealed that what might have passed for a small hillock was really the mud and brushwood hut of some shepherd or farm laborer; and the smell of aubergines having their purple skins singed off disclosed the menu for supper. The few notes of a song which came on the wind were too faint for the words to be distinguished.

  “Because,” said Clemens, “I’m afraid the whole thing may be a wild goose chase — an elaborrate, though mystifying, hoax. I’ll tell you why.”

  When Vergil had first begun to examine the missing girl’s jewels and ornaments, Clemens, he said, suddenly became aware of that necessitious summons to which even kings are subject, and left the room to find a closet of ease. He asked his way of several servants, but they either spoke no Latin or had but a few words (“ — and most barbarously butchered, too — ”). He blundered into several wrong places before he finally found the right one.

  “Do you remember that miniature which Doge Tauro has, and was showing all around at the stag hunt?”

  Vergil frowned. Once again he felt the same pricklings of his flesh which he had felt when the Doge had snapped open the picture case. “Of Laura as a younger girl? Yes. What about it?”

  “That’s how I knew who she was, you see.”

  “Knew?”

  Clemens said, quite calmly, “Laura. The missing girl. She isn’t missing at all. She’s right there, at the villa. Don’t tell me ‘impossible’ — I saw her. She was five years older than the picture, of course, but it was she all right. Her hair was red, with glints of brown. And her eyes were brown, with glints of red. Very white skin, nice ears, nice mouth. Not my particular taste, you know — I pre
fer them either younger or older. Like cheese. However . . . what’s the matter?”

  Matter enough for his companion to strike his thigh with the flat of his hand, causing the white hackney to break pace, in alarm. “Upon my life!” he exclaimed. “And by my father’s ashes! I saw her too! How could I have forgotten? When I first saw Cornelia . . . it was just a fleeting glimpse . . . but no wonder I felt that odd stir when the Doge showed the miniature . . . yes! She was dressed as a servant, sitting there at Cornelia’s feet, holding the embroidery.

  “And . . .” He frowned, trying to concentrate. Shadows grew long, grew blue. What was it? The embroidery? Clemens’ next words shattered the image slowly taking form.

  “Dressed as a servant. Correct. Well, there you are, O Vergil, doctor mirabilis — are they trying to trick the Doge, or perhaps even the Emperor (may he live forever; though it’s not likely — better King Log who does nothing than King Stork who’d devour us), perhaps even Caesar himself, into accepting a servant girl as a princess? If so, then this whole affair of the mirror of virgin bronze is so much flummery, a device to gain time while the girl perfects her role. And then Cornelia will pretend to have her sighting in the mirror, and — lo and behold! — everyone will trot off and ‘find’ the semi-promised or twice-promised spouse at some prepared hideaway. . . . Do you think that’s it?”

  Vergil shook his head. No. No, he didn’t, couldn’t, think that was it. The young dowager’s intense interest in having the speculum prepared was too genuine, her concern too obvious and sincere, for him to accept Clemens’ notion. But if that wasn’t the real explanation, what was?

  The alchemist had another question. “Have you made any philosophical preparations for your work and journey? You surely don’t intend to go stumbly, blind, do you?”

  The Magus assured him that he had no such intention. “I have gone through the Door,” he added.

  Clemens nodded vigorously. “Good!” he exclaimed. “Good! Good!”

  Going through the Door . . . the metaphysical exercise of placing the mind or psyche on another level of awareness or experience, in order to find out what lies ahead, was often done through the medium of a dream. It demanded a state of intense concentration and projection, of which few were capable — and those few, not without long study.

  “But of all the things I ‘saw,’” Vergil said, slowly, “the only thing that made sense was what my old teacher, Illiriodorous, said.” And he told him of that.

  Clemens listened, combing his vast and flowing beard with his fingers. At length he said, as they approached the Pompeii Gate of the Naples city wall, “As to what you ‘saw’ making sense, you ought to know that often enough these sights make no sense at all until one experiences them in the flesh. Sometimes, not even then . . . not until later, looking back. And as for what Illiriodorous told you, certainly that makes sense, excellent sense. The act of looking into the virgin speculum is an act of catalysis. Whatever is done — anywhere, everywhere — is at once imprinted on the universal and omnipresent ether, which is present in each and every of us, as each and every of us is present in it. The rays of the sun are present everywhere, although it is true that one can see the sun only by its own light, as the wise Jews of Alexandria have reminded us — but one needs the lens of a burning-glass to concentrate the rays. The speculum majorum is such a concentrating agent, such a focus.

  “But what Illiriodorous told to you is not in any way so important as what Illiriodorous did for you. It would have been a fatal act for you to have tasted his honey. That would have brought the metaphysical into too direct a contact with the physical. In the instant that you tasted it — had you done so — your psyche, soul, spirit, anima — call it what you will — that part of you which was there would have been trapped there, forever incapable of returning here. Your body might have lingered alive awhile, but it would have been a mindless, idiot thing.

  “It would not have been the Vergil we know . . .”

  And the Vergil he knew reflected, half-wryly and half-bitterly, that the Vergil Clemens knew was hardly the Vergil Clemens thought he knew. How many Vergils or parts of Vergil were there? this particular part of this particular one wondered.

  Dusk was upon them. Torches flared, were set in sockets by the Pompeii Gate. Slowly, ponderously, the great portals began to swing shut. They spurred their mounts, cantered forward. A soldier shook his head, gestured at them, lowered his spear as they still came on. Then he flinched, darted back, speaking over his shoulder. They heard the words, “Vergil Magus! Hold! Hold!”

  The massy doors halted. The soldier brought his spear to the salute, half grinned, apologetically, as they trotted through. The men twisted their heads to look, then once again put their shoulders to, pressed on. The gates shut with a clash of iron. The bolts were dropped. They were safe in Naples for the night — where “safe” was, would always be, a relative term.

  “Let us be thankful, at least,” Clemens remarked, as they urged their mounts toward the livery stable at the foot of the Street of the Horse-Jewelers, “that the Vergil we know is still so well-known.”

  Vergil did not voice his bitter and bewildered thoughts.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE ADMIRALTY OFFICE had informed Vergil’s courier that Sergius Amadeus, Lord-of-the-Sea, commanding the Fleet of the South, would receive him and his request provided he arrived before noon.

  Accordingly, well before that hour, the day after the puzzling interview with Queen Cornelia, he set out in state to pay his visit. No formality had been neglected. He wore his doctoral robes, and the golden chain signifying his rank as honorary member of the Senate; in one hand he carried the bag of purple silk, embroidered with the Imperial monogram, in which were his letters of state; and in the other was the bacculum, or wand, of hazel-wood, symbolic of his association with the Order. The Imperial Navy was not what it was, but ritual things were yet important.

  He neither went afoot nor on horseback, but rode in a litter carried by six bearers, with two footmen preceding and two following; these four with staves in their hands. The whole team of ten had been selected and trained by a famous and luxury-loving old proconsul, Lentonius, when Governor of Lesser Nubia. Freed by virtue of a testamentary manumission, of old Lentonius, who also left them perpetual stipends, they hired out their services for special occasions.

  They moved smoothly enough in the hilly, narrow streets, but on entering the broad and level range of Kings Way, they slipped immediately into their intricate and ritual pace, said to have been derived from that in use at the courts of the Can-daces, the Queens of Cush, whose territory was adjacent to that of Lesser Nubia. They took a step forward, halted, drew the other foot slowly up to an exact parallel; paused; stepped forward on the other foot.

  So they made their slow, almost hieratic way through the crowded morning streets. The people responded in their individual ways — some by ignoring the sight; some with awe; some with fear; some with shouted comments (not always respectful), and with quips, taking advantage of that tradition of Naples which held that Fate and Fortune — having bestowed wealth or power — compensated those who received neither with the right to be free of tongue about either.

  So they passed by fishmongers with baskets full of squirming sardines; processions of schoolboys off to take lessons in archery, swordsmanship, or harp-playing; porters bowed beneath loads of charcoal; peripatetic vendors of woven stuffs, displaying lengths of yellow broadcloth and striped cotton; a squad of gentlemen cross-bowmen marching out to a target shoot; swarms of children with dirty arms, dirty legs, and dirty noses, who had never seen the inside of a school and never would.

  It was one of those — or so he thought — who came running up and jumped and darted to attract his attention, crying, “Lord! Lord!” A grubby boy who might have been ten, or perhaps a stunted twelve.

  Placing his wand in his lap, the Magus began to grope automatically for a small coin, when the boy leaped up, seized the frame of the litter, and pulled himse
lf in. The footmen broke pace and came to drag him out, but the boy eluded them.

  “Lord!” he exclaimed. “Your house is on fire!”

  “What!”

  “For true, lord — it burns, it burns!” Vergil called to the bearers to let him down, to fetch him a horse; instead, at a word in their own language, they wheeled about in an instant — the fore footmen clearing a way with shouts and gestures — and set off, back the way they came, at an effortless run. Old Lentonius had trained them well.

  Soon enough Vergil saw the plume of smoke; he could not have told exactly that it was his house, but it was in the right direction. Fire! He thought of his books, collected with infinite pains and expense from all the known world. Of his machinery and engines, constructed with loving labor over the course of the years — there were not three men alive who could reconstruct them; perhaps there were not even two. He ran over, in his mind, the experiments and works in progress — that of the speculum majorum had barely begun, was only one of many: there were some of such long duration and great delicacy that to interrupt them even briefly was to destroy them. He thought of his cunningly wrought water system, his globes of light, his automatons, homunculi, horlogues, his mandrakes, his instruments, equipment . . . his furniture and personal gear, his objects of art. . . . And he thought of his three master workmen: Tynus, Iohan, and Perrin, any one of whom was worth an Imperial ransom.

  And all of whom were flesh and blood — friends — had families . . . .

  News of the fire had spread, crowds were thicker, the footmen cried out their coming in unison, voices rising higher than the noise of the crowds, cleared a path for the bearers — who, saving their breath, spoke not a word, but loped along.