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

by Avram Davidson

  The aghast and furious face of Josaias seen in the immense confusion, Vergil saw that himself was seen; seen, observed, identified: what face — Josaias — frightful in hate …!

  The great Carthage ship, so suddenly fractured, floundered in the trough between two huge waves; and the tiny galley, with its tiny sail intact (intact, too, the weakling rushy ropes: papyrus, iris) crawled up the inner surface of the greater wave like an insect; climbed and clambered over its top, flowed down the other side. The winds fell and the mists closed in again, as cold and impartial as when they had opened, and from within the mists came an echo of ever-dwindling cries: “Juno! Juno!”

  But it was not now the voice of them that triumph, the sound of them that feast.

  The rowers rolled their eyes to their captain, he gestured. The oars on one side went up and for the next stroke did not come down, the oars on the other side went row! the small ship swerved on an angle; then both banks of oars played again, but (another gesture of Polycarpu’s) more slowly. The speed was somedel reduced, but so was the sound of the oars: an important consideration when the heavier atoms of the fog carried sound more weightily. Right now the ship of Carthage, assuming it did not sink: a mere assumption: it could not now follow, but no need was there at all to give them even a hint that the smaller craft was changing course nor hint to what direction that course might be. “I had hoped to make for Aspamia or the Baleares or even, ahap, the coasts of Frankland: but twold be belike too far,” the captain said, almost as aside to Vergil. “Right along the rhumb-lines,” is what Vergil at first thought he heard the captain directing the helmsman as he showed him the cartolan, unrolled in his hands. But in a moment he realized that — for what meant obliquities to the meridean for a seaman on such a barco as this? nought. — what Polycarpu must have said was, “Right along the wind-lines,” showing him on the cartolan how the winds … Boreas, Sirocco, Zephyro, Levanto, Septentrio, and all the others (“the Twelve Petals of the Compass-Rose”) … went from here to yon: as though any wind might be directed to follow a line, like a pullet in a spell: they were lines of probability, and no more. But it gave a mighty strong hint to the helmsman, and he might now observe which way the waves were ruffled, and snuff the breezes for the smells of land, with greater confidence. And after no more than a blink or two, the helmsman nodded. No ship might follow a map in a mist, but the mere sight of the cartolan gave him that confidence: in his mind he followed, and he turned his helm. Polycarpu bore away the chart, and … with a deep bow and a most respectful gesture to Vergil (pulling over his head an imaginary toga, like a priest in a temple facing the king of the sacrifice) … resumed his sempiternal striding up and down the deck, up and down, again and again, back and forth.

  The man at the helm may … say, rather, should … have been returning his thanks to Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea. But if so, he was not doing it aloud. To vow a fine fat freemartin, as had the skipper of the Zenos, was hardly within his means: a pigeon, perhaps. At least, a squab. Perhaps in mind he was doing so, if he had room in his mind.

  Between the rudder and the mast, Vergil, excused from every duty on the rota of duties (Rota. Rato. Arot. Otar. Ator. Taro … and all the rest of it), had now time to think of the duty which he had of late performed, and which was on no roster at all. As a woman, a matron, likely, who wishes to summon a servant in the time of night when all are at slumber, save she herself; does so with a sound both low yet sharp, by clicking her finger-nails; so Vergil stood, feet spread apart and braced and facing the grom grey sea, reviewed the elements of the equation of the spell: and did it not seem as though each element appeared as though summoned? click after click? spume in his face, click.

  First, Click! there was the need that the Carthage sail-ropes and mast-shrouds all be of leather, and not of any grass. Click! Then … what were the odds that the leather be made from the hide of a red ox? (… as a dream, somewhere the report of a great pool so vasty as to be termed a sea and contained in a container of bronze or brass, the same being supported by the figures of oxen: supposing these to be made as well of tombac bronze, the oxen … until a patina formed … would indeed be red…) for be sure they’d not be made of cow-hide, though this be stern and stanch enough for any pair of boots or any whip of thongs, yet no hide fit merely for whip or boots — however punished or punishing — would be staunch and stern enough for a ship’s shrouds or sheets: its cables or its ropes, in landsmen’s talk — And the Curse itself must be remembered and recited: recited accurately, too. Click! Click! Click! Next, the memory of Babylone and a blade of grass … absent from the instructions; the old ox-thrall, it was now clear, had died before divulging this about the blade of grass; yet, sure, it had been his intention to divulge it, and therefore it hung in the air and Vergil had breathed it in (else, it had passed into the Universal Æther, and thence had slipped into Vergil’s mind, and, thence, unto his lips and fingers: Click!) Once had Vergil pronounced the Curse and nothing had happened. It had also been needful that, Click! he should have with him a piece of the hide of a red ox. Click! and would he have had this, for certain, had he not been a citizen of Rome Yellow Rome! Yellow Rome! but for all that, the stamp of the citizenship was on red) …? Click! And what of the blade of grass, so common a thing as a leaf of grass, yet a thing extending, as it were, the protection of distant, far-distant Babylone (where kings ate grass and books were built of the muddy earth, upon which grass grew … had not Huldah shown him?) over not-so-distant Carthage — had Carthage been destroyed? Cartha Gedasha, New City, springing up ever anew … How had he, Vergil, merely “chanced” to put a blade of common grass into his hat, just e’er they’d left land that morning? Had not the Curse known it was to be required that day, and had it not required Vergil to take and pluck, take and pluck? Click!

  Click!

  Pluck!

  Click!

  Next, what was the sounding of the shrill note upon the broken blade of grass, but what the occymists called The Dissolution, the vanishing — or the appearance — of one substance in another, or the creation therein of a third? — the katalysein, as the Ægyptian occymists called it in their fluent but to tell the truth untinctured, rather sloppy Greek, though this was not the place nor time to parse or purify it. — had he not blown his shrill and grassy note, shrill as ever any wind, would all the elements of the equation have come together, and fulfilled the Curse upon the Red Ox, hair, horn, and hide … hide …?

  Click!

  Never before in his life had he had more instant and more emphatic evidence of the truth and proof of Illyriodorus’s principle: “In verbis et in herbis … therein lies power.”

  He felt as someone who had been long preparing for a certain journey, and who suddenly found himself on the road itself with nothing which had been in the catalogue of things needed for it … indeed, with not even the list itself: But if he had only the memory of the catalogue or list — was this nothing for the journey? far from it. It was, indeed, “something for the journey,” indeed. “Such and such an herb, sure against elf-shot,” thunder-thistle, perhaps, he perhaps had it not — but if the awareness of not having it kept him cautiously away from “blasted oaks” (what brought now to his mind the bidens, the lightning-blasted lamb?) “and all such sites of baleful omen and of elf-shot,” why, wasn’t this as though he had had it? And better than though he had, and had not sense to use it?

  Click!

  * Melcarth and Memnon, some say they be called. Jachin and Boaz, some say they be called: Maimon and Minrod, others. What sayeth The Matter? The Matter sayeth not.

  ** And here endeth the line; further The Matter sayeth not.

  XII

  Tingitayne

  As it were idly, but mainly to calm his still leaping heart and throbbing thoughts, he brought forth from his pocket the battered thin old copy of The Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne, and riffled through it, pausing here and there to read …

  Ictoon, a haven with no port or town, but conta
ining three flowing streams of good water. Deep-drawing ships, it is said, may enter either from the right or left, but the careful will ever prefer the left, except in the season of myriad heavy rains, when the river … The Harbor-town where is the siege of the Chief of the Kings of White Mauretayne, has a myriad of peoples, and exporteth reeds and rushes, such as those of the sweet flag or iris, which sometimes be of the best quality; you may know this by the scent or olor. Myriads of papyrus plants are here to be found springing up by the rivers and swamps, but they are too coarse to be used for writing or even for wrapping, so they are not prepared in the usual way, but are kept sodden and may be scutched for rope as needed. From this the Chief of Kings derives it is said a myriad of ducats in export duties …

  Vergil sighed. The anonymous author or compiler was fond of the word myriad. The pages turned and turned.

  … the waters are not sweet which proceed from the brooks of Bubastine, site of a temple to Cybele or Venus who is worshipped here as the genetrix of Genets, valued for their incessant hunting-down of mice and rats. Hither came Algibronius, Geber, or Gibber, whose alchemical texts are by the vulgus called gibberish. The Gebber here examined for minerals useful for his Art, and found, tis said, an excellent unctuous earth for preparing fluxes. But no mines are now worked. Here Gibber commenced to edifix an altar, but did not complete it, preferring … Sarsten by the Sea hath for sale without stint very good wheats and millet and spelt; also a scarlet dye sold in grain. Sarsten above the Sea prepares several special sorts of garlands which retain their scent above a lustrum …

  Vergil gave here a great yawn, felt much fatigued. Came hither Gibber, delving, devoting, praying? And decided to erect his altar to the Great and Comely Mother, symbol of the Female Principle in the Universe, but did not finish it —? How like him. Algibronius came once to a symposium at the School of Illyriodorus, stroked much his long thin dark beard and spoke for above an hour by the glass: left with no one (perhaps not even The Old Master) very much enlightened. Yet there was about him an hint of barely banked fires and of almost-quivering excitements at the concealed wonders of the world, could one but take up the mantic sword Inwitsbane and with one stroke cut open the great egg of Zazma the Unknowing, abda ca dabra, and thus incipiate the Yolk of Per sis and the White of Selene and Luna and the Great White Porcine Sow if and so so on: much so on. And then departed abruptly, so much so that he awoke several students: Vergil would have mildly wished to know but never did: whither had he departed.

  “Bring her out, bring her a bittle out,” Vergil heard the captain Polycarpu directing. They were standing down a coast, and he had not even heard the landfall called, not never so much as asked the ritual What shore? what coast of people? Had that much time passed as he droused over the Periplus? “Bring her a bittle out,” the captain had said; sure enough the barco swung a small ways out away from shore.

  “Which side is the current coming down?” Current coming down? That meant a river.

  “Starboard, Carp.”

  “Then swing her in, making up the larboard side.”

  The helmsman gave a slight grunt, gave Vergil a slight glance, as one should say, After all my years on the water do ye tell me so?

  But the shore was, mere, a shore, a dry brown shore as like so many, here and there a small structure with a flat roof, and on yonder hill, of course, there stood a building, inevitably a tower: it was — ah the god — how dull, and Vergil’s eyes fled back to the book, over which he had pored and droused. Of a sudden in the book, a new page, not as usual the mutter of what many springs of water and where, of rocks and reefs, exports, imports: no. At this point, it was clear, the nameless compiler, or, likelier, recompiler, had set himself to copy something quite different, and the calligraphy, the “hand,” grew still and formal. Was this some lines from a Fasti, and if so, which one? Hmm, to see, to see. Somehow, already, skipping ahead and scanning words later even before actually reading carefully the beginning, the principio; somehow he had the feeling that this new entry, if that was quite the word, constituted some sort of a montjoy, that cairn of stones erected to mark the site of a victory in battle.

  Hercules, the Roman form of Melcarth, called the Tyrian Hercules, from the Punic Melec-Cartha, King of the City; but sometimes reverenced by the Gauls and Anglians and other Nortishmen as “King Arthur.” Melcarth was ever the chief deity of Tyre (Tur, Turret, Tower) and also of that City rich in Purple her chief African colony, Carthage (from Cartha Gedasha = New City). Some say thus: King Cartha, famous for his deeds of valor, metaphorically termed labors, erected twain columns at the western end of the Midland Sea; beyond which bounds he did no deeds, gestes, jousts. Others say they be named Gibber’s Altar and the Mountain of Atlas: but this is mere legendry. The facts are that twain columns were erected in the Temples of Melcarth at Tyre and later at Carthage by that great architect Hiram. (Note the progression Hiram, Hercules, Melcarth. The H/M and R/L shifts are according to the Laws of Letters as laid down by the Phoenicians or Punes, who invented letters. Is the procession noted?). The true significance of the twain columns is not surely wotted, though some have feigned wit of it, pointing at the double phallus of the Divine Priapus at Pompeii and elsewhere and saying that this signifies the Duplication of Felicity: o pópoi and peh upon them. The true significations of the Columns of Atlas, also miscalled the Pillars (or Gates) of Hercules or Melcarth, eek betermed Hiram’s Fingers, remain therefore one of the Higher Mysteries. Only this much is of a surety known: that their true names hight Jachin and Boaz. Melcarth bathed there. Bathes there still? So The Matter sayeth. And more, The Matter sayeth not.

  Slightly dazed by all this (and perhaps, so, too, the scribe or recompiler, for he seemed to turn with an air of relief to: In Hirnon, the next place of haven and selling and lading are at all times and seasons to be found never less than an hundred holy harlots; and seafarers and men or merchantry always pause to do their devoirs to this Fane of the Genetrix …) But although at some occasions this would of course be of intense interest to Vergil, his appetites thereto seemed for now anulled. Why had all this happened? How, out of the bitter jaws of almost certain death, had he and all folk of this ship and perhap even the very ship itself, escaped with their lives and even their integuments intact? To whom did he owe a debt greater than any thanks? To any king or soldane or senate? to no ships of battle, certes. To whom or what, then?

  An old ox-thrall.

  Back he was in Tingitayne.

  “ ‘King of Carthage,’ nonsense, my good citizen,” said the Proconsul, “there is no ‘King of Carthage.’ What the Viceconsul meant to say is that the fellow calls himself ‘King of Carthage.’ Name is Hemdibal, got it in my books, and I don’t care what he calls himself. What he is, he is a pirate. What those fellows with him are, they are also pirates. Got ships, have they? How many ships did you see? — saw one, just as I thought. Don’t know very much, but a man doesn’t get to be Consul Romanus (which I needn’t remind you I was, before I drew the name of this stinking, fly-blown pest-hole out of the urn according to the ways of our Fathers, as wise today as they were the day they were inst graven on the Iron Tablets), man doesn’t get to be Co-consul of Rome without knowing the difference between the singular and the plural. Don’t talk to me of grammar,” Vergil had not so much as mentioned the subject, “-urn, -us, -a, -i, -o, -a, -um, -us; tollo, tollere, sustuli, sublatum, don’t you see. Rego, regere, rexi, rectum. Singular and plural, indeed.” And he glared at Vergil with pale blue eyes set in a wine-dark face.

  And Vergil, stifling any inclinations which he may have had about possibly extrapolating comments along the lines of rexi, rectum, realized full well that a man didn’t often get to be Co-Consul (the Emperor being invariably the other Co-) without being a jacanapes, a dullard, or a fool; the Emperor — whoever he might be — few emperors would ever wish to select anyone else to bear the conjoint consulate who was not all three. And, just to take no chances, the Emperor always saw to it that all the lots provided for t
he drawing from the urn at the end of his colleague’s term bore the name of whichever stinking, fly-blown pest-hole (distant, too) it had been decided to afflict with the retiring consul (the Imperial Member of the Roman Consulate never retired, of course). It was hoped that this experience would cure whatever Patrician from any further interest in the realm of politics for which his noble blood and subsequent unpopularity entitled him.

  That such a holder of the Fool’s License was deemed, for one thing, incapable of contemplating a plot against the Crown Imperial, and, for another, incapable of succeeding in one: goes without saying.

  Agrippa Pretorius: always an exception. Lupus was Emperor then (Arms: a wolf sejant on a field of dead men’s bones: so twas said) and, it seemed, Lupus could not do without Agrippa Pretorius … for long. In those odd grey eyes like some cold and shoreless sea whose depths could be neither plumbed nor fathomed, there lay, it seemed, an utter lack of any desire for glory soever. Lupus still feared him? Perhaps. Lupus had only to say to Chief of Guards, “Bring me the head of the Consul Pretorius”? aye … but Lupus, who, be he what else he might be, was nothing like a fool, knew that if he were to do so, it would then be far likelier that Chief of Guards would bring the Consul Pretorius the head of the Emperor Lupus. But it seemed the Emperor needed him. So every now and then Pretorius would be summoned from the farm where he reared his bulls and planted pears and willows, to be made Consul once again. Only thus was Lupus sure to be free of the Marmosets, the thronging little pettymen and functioners who buzzed round the Imperial eyes like a cloud of gnats; afterwards, of course, Pretorius would draw the lot for a fine rich province from the urn. Another tale.