The item was perhaps half the length of a pen, and of the thickness of about two fingers. It might have been the tiniest of mummies ever seen; it was thinly covered with a nap of hairs, and the legs were wrapped one around the other as if it had no bones. Certainly, it had no toes. “I have here one of those called al-rune,” said Vergil. “Also called perenose or perestupe.” He had poured red wine into a shallow basin and earth into a deeper one, and now, quickly, he dipped the thing into the wine and plunged it — feet first — into the earth and tamped it firmly down.
“Also,” he said, standing back and observing it, “called mandrake or mandragon. It has many names. And many powers.” He watered the earth. He found the loose clew of the end of the scarlet silk and gave it the one tug that loosened all the knots. The mandrake moved. A faint shudder went through it. The tiny eyelids fluttered open and it peered here and there dimly and blindly and it grimaced like an idiot thing and the tiny lipless mouth opened and made a thin, dry sucking noise.
Vergil picked up a silver bodkin and pricked the ball of his left index finger and squeezed a drop of blood, which welled and swelled without dripping as he put it to the mandrake’s mouth. The creature sucked and butted at the finger like a lamb at the dug. He pulled the finger away. “Enough, homunculus. See clearly and speak plainly and obey me in all things.”
The homunculus smacked its mouth. Its gaze as it turned its tiny head this way and that was keen and no longer witless. It smirked and chirped and played among its hairs with its hands, which were single, root-like digits, each.
“Speak plainly!”
“The Queen of Candia cuckolds her lord with a stable-boy,” it said, piping, thin, yet surprising strong. “Miso Yanis has a new customer for the red-haired girl. The boatman Carlis bends and strains, but not to his oars. Her name is — ”
“Enough of that,” Vergil interrupted. The mandrake snickered and smirked. “Scan the circle of the seas. Do you see wind? Do you smell wind? Do you feel, hear, or taste wind?”
The mandrake mused, considering. “I see sardine and flounder,” after a moment, it observed. “Also calamary and much sponge and — ”
“Wind. Only wind. Seek wind.”
The tiny nostrils twitched in the bridgeless nose. “I smell it,” the thing said.
“Where?”
“Off the coast of Little Asia, and it reeks of burning towns and rotting blood and the fearful sweat of violated maidens.”
The men exchanged swift glances. “The Sea-Huns,” said the Red Man. “Ottil King is busy there at work.”
“Not that wind, homunculus. Another.”
The mouth paused and pursed. “I taste it,” the thing said.
“Where?”
“Within three leagues as the sun now goes, and it tastes of salt and spray.”
An-Thon shook his head. “Rocks and shoals,” said he.
“Not that wind, homunculus. Another.”
The mandrake fretted and nittered. Then, it leered. “The daughter of the Constable of Athens,” it began. With deliberation and without delay, Vergil thrust at it with a bodkin. The mandrake shrilled its alarm and twisted and tugged. “A wind!” it cried, protestingly. “I see a wind!”
“Where?”
“Two leagues and half again a league,” the thing whined, “to the south and east! Between the south and the east, two leagues and a half again a league — a wind! Oh, warm! Oh, swift and sweet! A wind!”
The Red Man turned and bounded up the steps, crying orders. The feet of the men bounded across the deck and oars thumped at the tholepins. The water bailiff began to call the cadence. The ship leaped forward. “Now,” said Vergil, to the man-dragon, “you may suit yourself while you can.”
The eyes of the tiny creature gleamed like snail slime, and it spewed forth its sightings of centaurs and shepherdesses, fisher-boys ravished by mermaidens, deceived unicorns, dracos cozened of their treasures by non-draconian wiles . . . it piped and chattered and mewed. Then it paused awhile; then began again, in a tone of infinitely less interest, to talk of other things. Vergil listened, inclining his head on his hand, while, with the other, he occasionally incised a note on the wax of his tablets.
Suddenly the rhythm of the rowers was interrupted. A cry went up, again the running of feet, and now the hasty hoisting of the sail. The sail snapped and cracked loudly — once — twice — a third time. The men shouted in triumph. Vergil arose without haste and with his stylus scratched up a bit of wax, working it between his fingers. The mandrake eyed him with great unease as he approached, then opened its mouth wide. But before that fearful, fatal, maddening cry could issue forth, Vergil had (seemingly at one and the same time) popped the bolus into the tiny mouth, looped the silken scarlet thread around the muted figure, and tore it loose from its fitting in the pot of earth.
The thing collapsed in upon itself with a convulsive motion. Another second it writhed. Then the knots once again bound it safely, physically and metaphysically, and it seemed no more than an ugly, curiously twisted root. With a flick of the bodkin he removed the gagger of wax, wrapped the perestupe in the vine-wool, restored it to the tortoise-shell casket, placed the casket in the horn-beam box, and returned the latter to the great chest of carven ebonwood. And then it seemed as though half the life went out of him, and he half sat, half fell, onto the chair. His face was ashen, and he gagged and retched dryly. Feeling as he had on realizing what his lady had done to him, he raised trembling hands to his face, winced, grunted in sudden pain. He looked at his left hand.
The index finger was angry, swollen, and red — except at the cushiony part of the first joint, where it showed a gray and purulent spot. Long he looked at it, with a wasted expression on his twisted face, before he felt strong enough to wash and dress it.
“I’ll do that no more this year,” he said, at last. “If, indeed, for many a year . . . or ever again.” For a moment resolution showed on his face. Then, with a wry mouth and a shrug, it went.
“Cyprus!” cried someone on deck. “Cyprus! Cyprus ho!”
CHAPTER TEN
CYPRUS WAS ANOTHER world.
The city of Paphos might have been designed and built by a Grecian architect dreamy with the drugs called talaquin or mandragora: in marble yellow as unmixed cream, marble pink as sweetmeats, marble the green of pistuquim nuts, veined marble and grained marble, honey-colored and rose-red, the buildings climbed along the hills and frothed among the hollows. Tier after tier of over-tall pillars, capitals of a profusion of carvings to make Corinthian seem ascetic, pediments lush with bas-reliefs, four-fold arches at every corner and crossing, statues so huge that they loomed over the housetops, statues so small that whole troops of them flocked and frolicked under every building’s eaves, groves and gardens everywhere, fountains playing, water spouting . . .
Paphos.
The air lay scented and heavy over this lush, sub-tropical scene, scarcely did a breeze vex the waxy red blossoms of the pomegranates, and Vergil, observing a slight frown upon the Hun King’s open-mouthed countenance as he placed his grubby hand upon his chest, was suddenly made aware that he, too, seemed to experience a slight — just the slightest — difficulty in breathing. And wondered if it was really the grossness of the perfumed air . . .
There was a man on the jetty, surveying with a languid interest the newly come ship and people. Vergil addressed him in his best Cumaean Greek, asking where the port officials were, and if porters might be obtained to unload. The man answered in the slightly archaic dialect of the island, “Surely, lord, anon . . . tomorrow . . .”
“Why not today?”
“Today, good my lord? Today is an high festival.”
Everywhere were evident the signs of neglect occasioned by the de facto blockage of the Sea-Huns. A fig tree heavy with ripe purple fruit grew in the middle of a roadway, a flock of long-tailed sheep grazed upon the docks, a wagon had overturned and smashed its wheel and lay where it had fallen, and moss softened its sides with velvet green.
“Aye, today, gentles, today is the natal day of Our Wee Lord Ichthys, own son to Sea-Born ‘Ditissa, and folks have gone to feed the sacred spratlings in the Temple pools in his honor. Go you, too, get you bits of sweety-cake in the stalls, join the worship — ” He gestured toward the great Temple, looming over the dreamy town. His speech put Vergil in mind of old Dame Allegra, and made him reflect that he knew nothing of her origin.
The problem of porters and port officials was settled after a while and after a fashion by the arrival of one Basilianos, the Smyrniote director of Paphos’ far-famed Golden Hospital, that grand serail where pilgrims of rank resorted to be lodged in grace and comfort during the period of their devoirs. Secular visitors of sufficient wealth or status might of course be accommodated too — merchants, officials, young men on the grand tour, tax farmers, and so on. But the Golden Hospital, like everything else in Cyprus, felt severely the lack of traffic occasioned by the advent of the Sea-Huns over a generation before.
“Times were, Doctor and Captain,” Basilianos said, his litter borne between theirs by bearers who walked as languidly as lovers, “when the Golden Hospital had an hundred guests of an average or common night — perhaps twice that amount at festival times. But today? Today, sirs, guests do not average more than one or two a night, and they mostly from Chitium, Amacosa, and other Island towns. Guests from off-Island we rarely have of more than that number per month, save, of course, what time the Great Fleet comes. We keep the Golden Hospital in first-rate condition, of a surety, we don’t need to depend upon our guests for income, having our own ancient endowments. But,” he said with a sigh, and a wave of his hands, “it is hard not to be restive when I recall our old great days of glory.”
They left behind the streets and their present scanty supply of people, most of whom were of an uncommon comeliness, an uncommon languor, and a most curious cast of countenance which impressed the Magus rather uneasily, the more so that he was unable to interpret it. They were about to turn onto a lane which led through the greenest sward imaginable to a dark wood of golden-fruited trees amidst and partly above which something seemed to float and shimmer and glister in the sparkling sunlight. A howl of such intense rage, of such horror and grief, as made his nape go chill and stiff, arrested not only his attention but the bearers in their tracks, and stumbled them to a halt.
An old man with unclad arms all bone and suntanned skin over rope-thin muscle had raised his fists to the level of his ears and now howled forth again from in his great gray beard. “Wolves!” he cried, moan dying in his scrannel throat with visible shake and audible catch. “Wolves and men! Men and wolves! Wolves like men, lord! Lord! And men like wolves!”
The bearers had recovered themselves and now started forward once more, with muttered comments and shaken heads. Vergil turned to Basilianos, who said at once, “Do not, I pray, distress yourselves. Tis but that poor half-mad sectary, Angustus the Ephesian. I fear me for him and his little flock, their meeting-place is known to the Soldiery and cannot long remain unvexed by it.”
“Woe!” Angustus howled as they passed by. “Ah, sinful city and oh, Island of sin!” His voice died away behind them. “How beautiful! And how corrupt!” he was crying. Basilianos began to speak of the cool grove through which they had now begun to pass, telling of its origins, how it was of golden quince trees, descended from the very fruit which Hercules Lion-Slayer had obtained of the Daughters of the Hesperides, having killed their dragon sire in the beauteous and distant Garden. The voice of Angustus the Ephesian sank faintly into the scented air behind them, “Oh, men! Oh, wolves! Oh wolves like men! And men like wolves . . .”
And then they were out of the grove and then the lineaments of the great Golden Hospital itself burst upon their sight. “I have assigned to each of you a suite of rooms,” Basilianos said. “Baths are being drawn and the servants will take your sizes and supply you with clean clothes from our wardrobes. Food will be waiting for you in your chambers. Our porters will go presently to fetch your gear and baggage from the ship.”
“Our interview with the King of Cyprus?” Vergil asked.
“His Sacred Majesty the King of Paphos is, by the rota, the present High King of Cyprus. I will arrange an interview with the hallowed Crown.”
“When?”
“Anon, Dr. Vergil,” Basilianos said, urging him gently forward to the servant woman waiting to conduct him to his rooms. “Perhaps soon. Perhaps tomorrow.”
Copper? It had taken the host some little while to consider if he had ever heard of copper. To be sure, it was possibly the chief industry of Cyprus — but what had the director of the Golden Hospital to do with industry? Copper magnates, ah yes, copper magnates had stayed at his premises often, when the Great Fleet was in. So . . . copper? Ah yes. Copper. What did Dr. Vergil have in mind concerning copper? Dr. Vergil had in mind to obtain ore of copper? Indeed. Most interesting; one had not known that copper came from an ore. As to where copper might be obtained, Basilianos had no idea at all. One presumed that it was obtained at copper mines. And where were they?
Basilianos had no idea at all.
So, putting aside for the moment all thoughts of copper, as he had been obliged this while to put aside all thoughts of tin — and of the bird of gold and her message, and the two guardian falcon-eagles, and, indeed, the whole matter of the mirror and those royal ladies Cornelia and Laura — Vergil decided to join in worship at the great Temple of She Who Was Born of the Sea at Paphos. And immediately recollected that one of the signs and symbols of Aphrodite — and not one of the least — was a mirror.
“Do you not regret the waste of time, woman?” he asked, stiffly.
In the dimness of her cell-like chamber she shook her head, continued to pass her hands along his naked skin.
“After all,” he said, “I did warn you.” Her touch aroused no more trace of passion than if he were an infant, but, just as an infant might, he found it comforting. He began to relax. For the first time since the horrid scene with Cornelia, he thought it might be possible for him to obtain complete rest . . . despite everything.
“You are built like a greyhound,” she murmured. “Slender legs and hips, huge chest. . . . Warned me? Of what? Oh, of that. Greyhound, I didn’t need your warning. Do you think I’ve been priestess of Our Holy Mother Aphroditissa all this time and can’t recognize a man ensorcelled when I see him? Who is she? — the woman who has stolen that one of your souls? It has to be a woman. I can’t imagine a man doing that, even thinking of that. And if a man did think of it, he’d shudder away from it, his stones would crawl. Wouldn’t they, Greyhound?”
He even managed a short laugh. “I don’t know any more. Have I still stones? The woman — you are right, of course. You are very keen. I’m not sure I care for such keenness, some things a man placed as I am now prefers not to have known — the woman beguiled me with talk of certain mysteries. I was weak enough, unwise enough, to yield. And thus came my undoing, priestess.
“Thus I lie next to you and stroke your breasts and your hidden parts and it is no more to me than if I stroke a kitten. . . . Smite my lying tongue, O Thunderer!” he burst out in anguish, holding her tightly to him. “It isn’t true! It might perhaps not be so bad if it were. But although my flesh does not respond to yours, although that soul of mine which counsels that flesh is gone from me, still, still, enough memory remains, enough is shared in each soul and each part by every soul and every part, that still I do remember! I do, I do . . .”
Her lips, her hands, her soothing skin, caressed him into silence. Great, indeed, was the power of Aphroditissa, sweet-smelling goddess of love, she whispered. But some things were beyond that power, and this . . . as he must know . . . was one of them. “She can’t help you,” the priestess murmured softly, pityingly. “Any more than she can help the Paphos King. For he, too, you know . . .” Her voice died away at his ear.
No. There was no great amount of rest for him here after all. No one, nothing, but his own efforts cou
ld help him. With something more than a breath and less than a sigh, he rose to dress.
“I can’t help you, either,” she said, looking at him with her painted eyes. “Or can I? I will, if I can.”
“Perhaps you can. I need ore of copper. Where can I get it?”
Her painted eyebrows rose in two great arches. Forgetfully, she cupped her breasts to him and rolled her hips. “Ore?” she repeated, puzzled. “Copper?” The absurdity of the question broke through her pose and emerged as a giggle. “Good Mother, man, how should I know? Ore of copper. . . . I meant, if I could help you with something important . . .”
• • •
Entering the palace of the King of Paphos — who was, like so many Eastern kings, priest as well as potentate — was reminiscent of entering a temple. The air was still and hushed, what little speech there was was done in whispers. But the parallel was not exact in all things. ‘Ditissa’s worshipers had entered her great shrine in awe, true, but it was a pleasurable awe. There was no trace of any similar atmosphere in the palace of Paphos.
Vergil had been in fanes tended by men and in fanes tended by women, priests and priestesses alike were familiar to him. But at no other time in his life had he ever been in one where the attendants were hermaphrodies; indeed, outside of Cyprus, such creatures were scarcely known. And in Cyprus they were more than merely known: they were well-known. The strain ran in entire lineages of families, who tended to marry among themselves and perpetuate it. It was not regarded as a curse, it was not regarded as a blessing — it was a sacred circumstance, taken for granted, thoroughly accepted. How else were the semisacred priest-kings to be served, if not by the equally semisacred hermaphrodies?
They received Vergil with an intent, rather preoccupied calm, naked to the waist, small but full breasts and scanty beards providing a testimony to what they were, more decorous but scarcely less emphatic than complete nakedness would have been. They guided him through the ritual of preparation. Here he must doff his shoes, here wash his feet, here his hands, there perfume with incense both feet and hands, there deposit his gift/tribute/offering. The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect. And the Paphiote courtesies were but the prelude, for the Sacred King of Paphos was this year in addition filling the office of High King of All Cyprus: a special retinue for peripatetic hermaphrodies were charged with the rites appropriate to this higher office, moving from court to court as the office changed from throne to throne.
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