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

by Avram Davidson

  The Doge was not altogether happy (the Doge was not absolutely unhappy either; the Doge now had a golden horse, and a golden Doge), but the Doge was not the least puzzled. The Doge apprehended perfectly that — for now, at least — there was no more gold.

  He turned at once (for him: at once) to move a previous question. “What name this great Work, who? book who?”

  The courtiers rustled and fidgeted, of all things they were not accustomed to hear their duke speak of books; they never spoke of them. Sooner they would speak of the chameleon and the crocodile … but not much sooner. “Ah, that is very curious, Duke,” I said, wondering how much longer this charade must last. I had something in the athenor … almost always I had something in the athenor … “Its name is the same as the oath. Magno Homero. Just so. Great Homer is the name of the mysterious book on occymy. One does not know why.” If I had told him that the name if the mysterious book was Caca Pudenda, he would not have been any more bemused. He would certainly have believed. “Yes,” I said. “Consider, for example, the verse,” I could see that Tynus was listening, “the verse, And Ulysses brought all the treasure thither.” The Bull was wearing a robe of deepest red, and it made his always ruddy face more rufous yet; perhaps, too, the mention of treasure raised a flush. Tauro was not especially greedy as these things go, but he had great expenses — how they robbed him! — “And Ulysses brought all the treasure thither. The gold and the stubborn bronze and the finely-woven raiment. May raiment, for example, mean the woven filter-cloth? that the bronze be used as a flux for the projection into gold? or that the bronze itself is to be projected into gold? and is stubborn in reduction? But here is the difficulty, that bronze is not all that stubborn in reduction.” Tynus, I saw, standing tall and attent with his halberd, Tynus slightly nodded. “By the way, Dux, they say that Ulysses was the founder of Olisboa, in the land of the Lusitaynes, where, where, tis said, the wild mares oft conceive by the west wind: such colts do not live long, so one hears —”

  “And neither doth the wind that gets ‘em,” growled the Duke. This was not merely promising, this was astounding; had the Doge caught a wit, as one may catch an ague? Thus encouraged, I continued. “Another text from the Magno Homero, mi Lord: For a month only I remained, taking joy in my children, my wedded wife, and my wealth — does this mean that the Great Work took but a month? No modern philosophers would consider so short a time possible; Magno Homero gives us much to ponder. — and then to Ægypt did my spirit bid me voyage. The ‘voyage’ of course is the journey into the elaboratory where all works of philosophy and occymy take place; Ægypt, by Ægypt is meant Great Ægypt, another name for the elaboratory: the regressus ad utero, this journey. — when I had fitted out my ships, we may be sure that by ships is meant not mere sea-vessels, but vessels for alchymy; fitted out, baked new clay pipes for the alembic, perhaps — this teaches us not to use twice-used pipes, do you see — Nine ships I fitted out, this may well mean nine vapor-baths, vulgarly called ‘Double-boilers,’ such as those devised by Mary of Ægypt, she who also made a Major Speculum … fitted out, and the host gathered speedily.”

  I had him, I could tell that I had him, not the Doge, no: Tynus. He had forgotten even to pretend that he was not intent on what I was saying. “Now, Dux,” I went on, “ ‘the host,’ is that not perhaps the Philosophers’ Stone? The image of the gold ‘gathering’ in the upper section of the bath like butter gathering in the churn is an infinitely intriguing one, of course all alchymical images are intriguing, but that of course hardly means that they are all true.” I sighed.

  All the while I had been giving this succinct exegesis of the mysterious text, just as the interest of the metal-worker Tynus had increased, so the light of wit had been dying out of the Doge’s eyes, being replaced by a sort of glaze. He plucked at his red, red robe.

  “Mad,” muttered the Doge. “All mages? Mad.”

  But the Doge did not sound quite utterly convinced of this. He turned his head a bit, and gazed at me out of the corners of his eyes.

  And the secrets of that Eastern King of Cappadoce? One does not know. They must have been of much worth. His knowledge of alchymy was fabulous. Yet he died poor. He died in exile and he died poor. He died old, too. Very old, violently, by murder. So one hears.

  * And as for that Noting in the Odd-Bound Volume of The Notebook of Vergil Mage, on the third papyrus sheet set in between the parchment pages, that noting is set down here, thus:

  1 2 3 4 5

  l e m o n

  3 2 1 4 5

  m e l o n

  1 2 3 4 5

  m e l o n

  3 2 1 4 5

  l e m o n

  — as for that, The Matter sayeth this: seek ye the golded apples And further The Matter sayeth not.

  VIII

  The Teeth of the Oliphaunt

  Later, in the deeps of that night, he heard that sound which was the sound … along with the lionel’s roar … preeminently the sound of Africa: the voice of an oliphaunt, baying on the beach. — the beach? surely he had not become entirely disoriented in the darkness? (the lamp had quite expired and not even a glowing coal marked where it had burned, supported on the tripod of three ithyphallic satyrs) … and, surely, the beach — where still lay the ship, its sides now scraped and caulked and painted, still slowly being laded full of dried dates which would grow dryer yet before ever they reached their final market (and who knew where or when that would be); dates and salts, and jars of some strange oils, and more: he knew not what more: surely the beach did not lie in the direction whence came that great sound of baying and that clash of tushes? No. It did not; he was able to orient himself by something as simple as the head of the bed; the sound grew louder. What ailed the beast? for this was no mere adventitious cry of warning or of menace; perhaps the beast was in rut … perhaps it was in pain …

  Sound of anguished (he soon decided) baying, cries of alarm from the awakening household, sight of torches and of the smoke of torches and of little flecks of fire floating off the torches: hastily Vergil donned a garment and a pair of sandals, and gat him down to the scene.

  Heard, as he went, Huldah’s voice. Also anguished.

  Huldah was no cossetted nor dandled woman-child, feeding pulse or poppy-seed out of her palm to the pea-hens; Huldah would smite the wild sow and her sounder, did they come to root in the plantings so carefully planted. “You have your mast in the woods!” would she say as she smote them; “Get hence!” Thee and me, the wild sow and her speckled weans would slay and eat: from Huldah they turned with a snuffle and a squeal or two. And they got them hence.

  “Very well,” said she, breaking into the silence which she had maintained throughout his telling of his tale; “I asked, You answered. Now I know of at least one king and occymy … But a thing you forgot to say. In the matter of his, whatever-it-was, buried deep in the steadily fermenting flameless fire and heat of the dung-heaps of his midden …”

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Was he fond of cheese?”

  He scanned her face for any sign of laughter; none was there: but then he scanned her eyes. “The Court will sentence you to six taps with a wet bullrush if—”

  Again she begged mercy from the court: what patience, what relish of strange things and odd, what had those agate eyes seen? not but yesterday she had told him of having sailed round the farthest shores of Lybya (so far away that scarce the name of Africa still clung to it) in the farthest south*, until one day the sun rose from a quite contrary corner of the sky. When he, after a moment of astonishment, “Then you have made the circumnavigation as Hanno of Carthage, and the Herodotus has been wrong to doubt it!” And she: “Yes.” No more. “Yes.”

  Rather, he felt himself like some pedagogue, stuffy lecturer in the furred and hooded academic gown, droning on at great length about the need to refresh that heat-producing dung-heap with new-made dung: as though she had never observed such things for herself, as though there were no dung-heaps in the lands along and behind
her coasts: as though, in fact, the milk served them twice and thrice daily had been milked from trees.

  He hasted to the conclusion of his discourse — already, he feared, over-long delayed. The occymist was obliged, eventually, by necessity to teach his apprentice to follow his the master’s secret notes … but so very often the master could not bring himself to disclose his greatest secrets: and in such a case (it was the very common case) he taught him to read a special and simpler cypher in which the most simple notes disclosed only the most simple knowledge: boil this, thrice … let this cool … for such and such a space of time … place such and such a substance in the pelican and add such and such an amount of water … or whatever the liquid medium was …

  And so on.

  In which case, should the apprentice take it into his mind to run off to another occymist, he had not taken with him the knowledge the most valuable.

  Very often, of course, the apprentice, made sullen by the fairly useless passing of the years and himself so very insufficiently instructed, did run off. And very often he ran off to yet another occymist (where else?) whose long-time apprentice had also run off … and for the same reason. Ignorance was thus exchanged. Imagine a twain conversations about that time.

  “What is this?”

  “Master. An Alembic.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “Master. Whatever I am told to.”

  A sound as of steam. “No….” the word fool unspoken, but hanging in the air; “No … what had he have you do with it?”

  The man searching his mind and keeping wise his face. “Well … Master …”

  And, at more or less the same time. “Tell me,” a wave of a hand much-stained with the acids of the elaboratory; “tell me what you recognize?”

  “Master. — This is an athanor. And this … I had not seen before. It does look like a threble pelican.”

  Master purses his lips, neither very favorably nor very unfavorably impressed. “At least you can adduce from minor to major. Well. And this?”

  Time for a quick change of subject. While the new applicant searched his memory. “Master. I did see the Peacock in the Vase of Hermes —”

  A look of pleasure, at once quelled. “Did, eh? Tell me about it.”

  Time for frankness. “ ‘Tell’? I can tell nought. But, if I am allowed colors and a surface to limn upon, I could show you, my ser.”

  “The colors are over here. And here is clean papyrus and a brush. So —”

  Time for further frankness. “What terms does the master propose?”

  See anger play with caution on the master’s face.

  Time enough to divulge … later … that the new candidate had seen it … once … the day that he arrived.

  Ignorance not merely exchanged, but compounded.

  And did not many and many an adept die leaving many and many a privy greatbook behind, which no one was ever able to decipher? Many. And many.

  “Here is a half a gold paleologue for thee. I made it —,” he said, with a look of sudden cunning upon his face which would not have long deceived the idiot boy who sloped about the streets and with a scoop dog-pure for the tanners; “myself. But have chosen to cast it in a mold, so. It does not pay to leave unminted gold around. Did he ever … project?”

  “Oh, thank you, master! Well … master …”

  Ah, the elaborations of Naples! There were those so dim and mirk that the invention of a new lamp would perhaps have been of more service than that of a new metal, cellars like crypts, not cleaned since the lustrations of the year that Junius Plato was emperor, lit chiefly by the glow of the small furnace; large and bright and airy rooms with fresh plaister fresh painted a creamy yellow, so different from the others where the gypsum fell off in flakes all grimed from the dirt of all the long dirty years … elaboratories whose masters were indeed haggard and gant with feverish eyes sunken from sickening hopes, still intent every minute with expectation that this time the pot would indeed be pregnant with a glory like a new-coined sun … elaboratories where the master briskly worked on stinking caustics designed to wash wool clean so as to weave well: — actually places where pentangles were enscribed on floors rough-swept for the purpose … and little enough that did to the purpose … the purpose being to project, an intention much the same as to transmute, the step just before the step transmuted … masters of an age to be still hearty and hail and in good thrift, but swaying and sick from the inhalations of the sophic sulphur and the sophic mercury intended to liberate gold from (as they thought) the frowsy atoms which concealed it …

  “And you, madam,” he said, without preamble, “how did you know that I would be coming, that you called me by name? Names?”

  “Oh,” she said, “Huldah told me.”

  He thought she had not understood, and disdained to press the matter. But it was not she who had misunderstood. Therefore changed he the subject; “Keep you always the estuary of your river veiled, and indeed all your coast?”

  “By no means. Only against those undesired. Sometimes even from Babylone people come,” what a great ellision! were none desired from less far away than Babylone? “— come, have come, and some came lately. And we trade. The speech of Babylone is near to the Punic speech in substance and in essence; have you seen how they keep records?” She took down a few small wooden boxes from a shelf and opened them, one by one. In each was something wrapped in scarlet tow, a slab of sun-baked mud with very odd markings incised upon them. He had seen such things before, but he did not tell her so. At least not directly. “This one is from Charyx Spasini,” she said, scanning the tag.

  “… ‘of the long water walls?”

  “That very same. And this is from Dura-Europos … or is it Duros-Europa?”

  “Let us look and see.”

  “Oh no. They don’t use the Latin or Greek names, though they must all know them; for that matter, really, they all know Latin or Greek. Latin and Greek. But there you are — clerks! clerks! — always maintaining their mysteries; o pópoi — phu upon them — and this one is from Babylone itself. Think of that.”

  And he, pretending ignorance there on the sort of collonade, a roof set up on posts outside her house (for she did not seem to feel the need of any house-as-fortress … in fact there were no walls around the settlement), pretending ignorance he said, “But I thought Babylone had been destroyed.”

  She gave him a swift and quizzical look. “Babylone Destroyed is like Thrice-Vanquished Carthage, it is always being vanquished and destroyed. But they are on the main routes, just where one needs a city to be, so a while afterwards they are builded up again, a mile from where they were before. And some Imperial Decree says the new city is to be called Philadelphia Paradoxica or Theopompa Abbadabba. Scythia Pelloponesia. But inside of a week everybody is calling them ‘Babylone’ or ‘Carthage’ all over again. And then the parchments have it, oh Hippodupos Hippodupolis, also called Smerg, something like that, I’m sure you’ve seen it a hundred times,” and gave him the same look.

  “You are very cynical,” he said. She made a small defiant mock pout. He kissed her. She embraced him, pressing close. “Ah, that’s what I like,” he said, by and by: “none of those false embraces which a woman initiates with her arms spread wide and then she switches her head the other way until almost you fear it will fall off: and thus she gives you the air behind her ear to kiss; why do they bother?”

  “Pretense,” she said. “The silly game. And you are supposed not to notice and kiss the air behind her ear with a great big smack —”

  He nodded. “And one wonders if one smells that rank, and later learns that she has been equitating her mule-groom, who could not in any way smell less rank —”

  “— but there’s no pretense here.”

  “No.” He could not help but see the dust-motes dancing slowly in a shaft of that marvelous sparkling sunshine; “No … Not here … And won’t you come with me, then, Huldah, and we two can show the world — and even more: ourselves �
�� how to live without pretense, and the silly game?”

  She looked at him, he felt the quickening sorrow that she did not at all look like saying yes: but there was no pretense there, there in those agate eyes. “You wouldn’t be content to live long here,” she said, “and I wouldn’t be content to live away from here, and from Five-Limbed Uluvendas. Do you know why I am named Huldah? Oh, not just that matter of the genet and the weasel and the cat — it’s because that is the name of here. This place is called Huldah and I am this place and it’s not possible for me to forsake it.”

  “But, you see …”

  “I don’t see …”

  “… you know …”

  “I don’t know …”

  He held her in his arms. “I am half-mad to stay here with you and I am half-mad to turn, and return to Naples and all my work, my works, damn all kings, back there … always centered there. Half, I cannot leave, and half, I cannot stay. What am I to do, Huldah?”

  She retreated just a bit from him, perhaps a slightly deeper flush or blush, a slightly higher color in her cheeks; so well-looking, that touch of deep rose in that face, darker than sallow. “Why … you must leave in a short while, while you still have a ship going the way which you must go. And then you must see to your work … your works … And then, if you will, you will return. And then,” she paused, “and then we shall have our own Mute Trade … our own Silent Commerce and exchange.” She referred, he knew, to that most ancient way of business, sometimes called the Dumb or Mute Trade, or the Silent Commerce, a form devised long and long ago as a compromise between the desire for trade and the mutual trepidations of those trading: in this system, the merchants from over the sea would come to a place suitable for landing and in a place where they knew there were peoples who had something to sell and wanted to buy but who desired not the proximity usually attendant on buying or selling. One man of the ship would row ashore in a skiff and set forth an old piece of sail on the sand and on it place articles such as scarlet-weave, glass vessels, iron knives and arrow-heads: whatever. And then row back out to the ship and wait. Presently to the beach would come the people of the land, survey the merchandise, and leave raw gold or elephant or gemstones — what they had to offer to the amount they thought right — and retreat into the forest. Presently the shipman would land again, take up the goods if satisfied, and depart. Sometimes several trips were needed before the satisfaction of both parties was achieved. Of course there was the possibility of theft, cheats, murders: but in such cases no further trade was conducted on such beaches. (Interlopers unaware of this tended to lose their goods and their lives fairly swiftly).