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

by Avram Davidson

  It was because of the dishonor of, one might say, the ravage, worked on Leda, king’s daughter though she was: not that it wasn’t an honor for a mortal to serve the god, any mortal, any god; if a goddess wanted pleasure of a man, might she take it, too, as Aurora did of Tithonius. But why hadn’t immortal Jove (“Zeus” many call him) assumed, or, if it weren’t assumed, why hadn’t he appeared to Leda in his shape as a man, and courted her as any suitor? or if she needed be tooken saunce consent: again: why not as a man, why! ser! it must have been a shocking thing! forced by a swan! though folk talk of swans as lovely, graceful things, still, they be main powerful brutes, ‘tis said swan can break a man’s leg with the force of its wing! and no more to be beat off, swan, than avoid Nemesis — some say it were Nemesis, not Jove; some say, Jove be Nemesis. Eh! and so therefore thus the reason why one of all man-twins born here syne then had to go and be a leper …

  … and still, all through the telling of this dire tale, the sweet scent of the cooping-wood, newly cut, newly sawn, freshly shaved, was fragrant on the air: no slow sad clamor of the leper’s bell and no noisome feculence of the leper’s olor defiled the dry still air …

  … Was it not now clear? It was not … well … did the stranger from a far-off land not see how merciful a thing it was that both twins did not always suffer the curse? and, above all things, wasn’t it a most majestic way for one brother to show his love for the other and go away and take all the woe and affliction unto himself? for, sure, twasn’t always that was the way of it; sometimes each refused and the curse took both of them; among very common folk they usually tossed a coin to decide the matter; in far-off times (so one heard, but one heard it often), the child’s father decided: let him decide howas he might, hadn’t the father life and death over his own childer? but that wasn’t the way it was done nowaday.

  “How is it done nowaday?” for Vergil could think of no way that such a thing should be done. Could be done. So, … therefore: he asked.

  “Nowaday … nowaday?” The man was almost maddingly slow. “Ah, my sire, nowaday. When the brother decide. Whichever one decide. When he conceive to himself in his own mind. And he thinks and he saith unto his own heart, ‘Let me be the one to go and do it, an I shall spare my brother, whom I love, even he.’ Then he go off whatever the time of night or day, go he off unto the Temple of the Dioscuri, of them twain Castor and Pollux, whom Jove hath blessed and set them as stars in the starry sky, and yet of a wonder sometime they come down to yearth again, or, exactly, down to sea; and folk at sea may observe them and several have report it to me, that Castor and Pollux do be seen at play about the mast and spar of a sailing vessel as blazing lights —”

  Cried Vergil, “The corposants!”

  “The corposants. As some call them. And whichever twin o’ this twain hath first decided, off he go to the Temple of the Dioscuri, the twin sons of Zeus under his other name of Dios; well, and he pray his prayer and he take off his knife-belt and his knife and he place knife and belt atween them twain statues. And so it be so, my sire and me ser …”

  Vergil was silent. By and by the cooper, Bodmi the barrel-maker ended the silence. “Them couple pair kags shall be ready this day week and one. In ane octave they shall be ready. Aye,” he said, almost without a pause, “a tragical thing for a man to be the father of man-twins,” and all the while his hands worked on and on, nor had they ever ceased to do so whilst Vergil watched. And when the splints, the staves, had all been shaved, then must they be bent, and then must the rigid hoops engirdle them.

  Nemesis.

  There was no other way.

  Very much later that same day, Vergil was speaking with a local elder man of much repute, called Sapient Longinus; that is to say, he himself was having little to say, for he had wanted to talk about twins, not alone of the lad Rustus, but of all well-known twins: of Castor and of Pollux; of the Cabiri Sancti, Axierus and Axiocersus; of Neleus and Peleus exposed at birth to die yet lived to be Co-Kings of Jolcos; Laogonus and Dardanus alike slain by Achilles beside the reedy river of the Trojan shore; and Valdebron and Heldobran in Aspamia; but Longinus was a Master of Leechcraft, and on this he had much to say Perhaps a few people ever sought him out for conversational purposes, and either for this cause or from this effect, Longinus talked long and much. “And as for the yearb called snapdragon or mandragon,” said Longinus, “the yearb y-called snapdragon, Ser Vergil, when you take your plant called snapdragon and moileth it in a mortar or other vessel made from unbeaten gold, nay, what am I a-saying? ah hah hum, in your vessel of unfired gold, as your Theophrast beareth witness, your yearb, ah ah …”

  “— called Snapdragon,” Vergil thought he must interrupt or go mad.

  Longinus looked at him benignly. “Jest so, Ser Vergil, your —”

  “Doctor Longinus …?”

  “Ser Vergil …?”

  The drawn-out ululations of a passing pedlar of dried fish caused a pause; then: “Doctor Longinus … have you ever heard … you have perhaps heard … if there are twin brothers … is it so, Messer Doctor Longinus, that unless one of them lays down his knife and knife-belt between the statues of Castor and Pollux, both of such man-twins must contract leprosy …?”

  Longinus gazed at him without dismay. He tugged at the tuft of long white hair growing from his right ear. “No,” he said.

  “ ‘No’? Then no such dire and baneful usage obtains in this land?”

  “No, no, Ser Doctor Vergil. Certain not.”

  “But … then …” Was the whole story some mad illusion and delusion —

  Longinus pulled at the tuft of long white hair growing from his left ear. “Unless, of course,” he said, “they be both born under the sign of the Gemini. In which case, certainly.” And he looked at Vergil with an untroubled look.

  Heads down and muffled against the sun and sand; heads down, all day long, a day in no wise different from all other days without any detail save the incessant repetitions of caravan life … with, now that he came to consider it: somewhat less sand, somewhat less gravel, even; only the dust which moved languidly about the animal’s feet as they made their way, step after every step over the land of stone: suddenly from the caravaneers some sound scarcely articulate enough to be called a murmur, some movements too slight even for gestures: a brief inclination of their heads (muffled, their heads, as their voices; they spoke but seldom with their mouths, reluctant to open them and admit heat, sand, dry air, and dust), they moved themselves a bittle in their saddles … even the bells of the beasts sounded, for a moment, a sound just a slight mite different from the usual discordant clatter. Those bells were never meant to be musical; were one to ask another man of the caffile why did their beasts wear bells, be sure they would have answered, To give notice of where the beasts were: did they wander, unsaddled and unbridled and unladen, out of sight: into some declivity, perhaps, not easily visible in this land of stone.

  This land of stone! stone white, stone black, stone grey; very rarely now and then some well of water, some tree, some blades of grass. And might not one of the less cheerful philosophers … likely more nor only one … liken this to a long slow journey through life itself?

  He put away from him such thoughts. Mayhap the chief purpose of the bells was to break the limitless monotony of the moments, hours, and days. Even if the men did not say so, and even if they did not recognize that it was so …

  And, of course, to warn away the daemons. And the jinn.

  Notoriously, they hated the sounds of bells. One did not know why.

  His head having raised of its own motion (he had hardly even begun to form the thought, I shall now raise my head to see what this may be); his head being raised, then, he moved his eyes along the near and middle distance: nothing. He peered, he scouted, then, across the long horizon line: something. There, faraway (faraway far! who used to say that? Huldah!), faraway something, as it were the peak of a mountain though he knew of no mountain, peak or col, hereabout or thereabout; and there was a som
ething about it which impressed his vision without informing it. Whatsoever … the … the place … must be the reason of … of what?

  He had ceased often to ask questions of Beninally or of Caniacus, for Caniacus had the way of answering low in his husky voice, “I know it not;” and Benninaly (recommended by both Caniacus and the elderly Maur who represented Rome in that inland town — Volubilia Caesariensis, it was termed by Roman fiat: the people called Volb — as the best of the caravaneers then about or likely to be about), Benninaly had his own way with questions … usually … he did not answer them.

  However. Caniacus was just then not just there; there was a two or a three of the Masked Men in the caffile, and he preferred much to ride with them, exchanging soft syllables … or, likelier: subtle gestures … of their own kenning only. So.

  “What place is that, Benninaly?”

  A silence.

  A surprise.

  An answer. “That is the rough place;” rather it seemed a name by the way spoken rather than merely a description. So …

  “What is ‘The Rough Place’, Benninaly?”

  “We take to the left by the next great rock” was in no way an obvious answer to his question, but he knew that the man Benninaly would not take bother and make effort to speak, who was commonly silent (not that by now they were not all commonly silent and had been so for the endurance of many days), if it were not a thing of some importance, and the hump or peak rising somewhat to the left of the center of the horizon — probably the reason for their taking the next turn left by the great rock — was abound to be connected in some way with The Rough Place.

  And neither did Vergil plague his companions with other questions, as, they might be so: “Do we go presently thither?” or, “Do we go past there?” or “Is it, then, a landmark?” And certainly he never, did silence follow the spare questions which he did ask, rankle with such sharp and nudging words, such as, “I asked you a question, do you not desire to answer it?” or, even worse, “Why do you not desire to answer?” Courtesy forevented, and for that matter, so did common sense; for he rather thought that a man or woman of such a cast of mind and behavior was not destined by Fate to live long enough to transverse the desert. And he desired to live that long.

  And longer.

  Vergil would save his further questions, if he had further questions, for night-tide round the small fire: and if he were to feel too tired to ask them, it was likely that the other would feel too tired to be asked.

  If the answer were important, he would be bound to find it out.

  “The Rough Place!” As though these journies o’er the land of stone could be smooth!

  The order of the caravan. First came the leaders of the caffile, mounted on the best of horses, then came the merchants riding on the best of mules (best in either case referring to capacity for the journey and not for sleek of looks), and then came the sumpter-mules and the shabby pack-horses fated never to plod across another desert but to be sold for slaughter by the knacker’s men; horse-flesh was not bad (the Northishfolk had a disdain again the eating of horses’ flesh but then Northishfolk worshipped horses, or so it was said; however the Hyperboreans — who lived very far north indeed: beyond the very upwell of the North Wind — sacrificed asses to Apollo … did they then farce them into sausages, like the Alpenese?) Thereafter came the camels (there were no cameleopards) and if there were women in the caravan they rode the camels upon a sort of platform enclosed in a small tent; and if there were no women, then let the camels carry less and if a horse foundered, then might the camels carry what the horse had been carrying (be sure, many a silent squabble with signs and gestures, depending on whose horse — or whose camel; but there was precedent and custom in such matters, and the dispute never came to blows: furthermore, who had excess energy for blows?). After that came the soldiers of the rear-guard, mounted as they might be mounted, for each was hired along with his mount. And after them, the folk afoot, too poor to have or to hire any beast, thankful just for the safety of the caravan and knowing that it would never stop nor stay for any illness or weariness of theirs.

  And after that, a space, and after that the dog … a dog who seemingly lived on little more than nothing, for few were the scraps which came his way at fooding times … brought along largely because he would sometimes start up a quail lost from its flock-of-passage: at what time see how swift the slings and stones appeared. Or sometimes he might bark or bell and give notice of strangers.

  And after the dog, although sometimes alongside the dog, was a man with an ass — not to be sacrificed to Apollo — panniers on the ass, and in the man’s hands a sort of shovel or spade or scoop: to gather up such dried dung as he might find. And did the dung of this caravan, in this intense and fearful heat (though at night: frightful cold), dry fast enow to be used for the same day’s fire? no it did not, what the man chiefly gathered up was the dung of the caravan which had passed last before … did the cur eat of it first, e’en the hungriest cur might not eat it all: how plentifully the camel-beast, with ever-arrogant face lifting up his tail, might plash the place with its abundant scat and skiting; also the horses and the mules. The experienced carvaneer could easily read these droppings, moist or sere: and the tale of the apt Athenian who had deduced that “there had passed by a caravan of such and such a number of beasts and of such and such a sort … as follows … inclusive a gravid she-camel laded with barley and oil of sinsamin, et cœtera, et cœtera” … lo, this tale was known even to the very boys not yet old enough to pay the wee fee of two stivers at the baths.

  But even so, passing by and through these pits and piles and mounds of stone as bright (as dull) as so much molten wax coagulated into odd, grotesque, and phantastic shape, the man with the, as it might be, spade, was at some pains to gather up some, at least, fresh droppings: for dried dung made a smokeless fire, fairly smokeless, and, although one might not have thought so, this was not always desired. Sometimes, as of these times, what was wanted was a smoke and a bitter smoke, and a rank one, curling low. It kept the flies away (flies? in the stony desert? Oh yes!, large and small and black or greeny-gold); and, it was believed (so why should it be doubted?), also it kept off and away things which might come a-prowl, at least until the time of the glimmering false dawn, who knows and who might count or reckon the ephrits or ghouls or the larvæ of the unsettled and indignant dead, such as shadows of those who might have died in the desert, and no caffile stopped for to aid them, or even to cast a few handsful of dust upon their corses as a sort of pro forma or pseudo-burial.

  Not enough smoke. Benninaly commonly signed and gestured at the nighttime halt. “This is the land of the basilisk and the cockatrisk; more smoke, there, you. More smoke.” Even though the dog growled not (save, a-times, a grumble and a mumble in his sleep) and the capon they had brought along with them to smell out such things seemed to notice nought: More smoke there, you. More smoke.

  Life had taught Vergil many things, some of them of easy acquisition, some recondite or arcane, even occulted, occluded; some of them scarcely to be capable of description. Some, however, were plain enough so that when Vergil asked a second time, What is ‘The Rough Place,’ Benninaly, his lips did not move, nor his throat, merely he had asked it in his heart. And, after a long pause, Benninaly, nothing showing of his face but his unmuffled eyes, reddled with the dust, had said, “We take to the left by the next great rock.” He did not add the word road, for it was mostly only a road by rhetorical device, as the Parthians saying robber of wheat-straw when they meant amber, or as the Northismen said orme-path for the muckle sea in which, twas said, the great sea-orme splashed and spouted, ere it crushed the coracles atween its fangs. Yet twas not in its entirety a device rhetorical to call it a road. Though underneath the thin dust seemed to lie now one immensity of solid stone, yet upon that stony surface lay a sort of a faint line, not quite a track: but certainly a trace. And though he could not perceive it now beneath, as he was riding over it, yet, given a rise for them
to pass across, he could see it both before and behind, though very faint; reminding him faintly of a stretch-mark upon the body of a woman who has born child.

  One day in the Principality of Poyle (some called it Apulia) an older man had taken him upon a certain mountain and pointed out to him far-off lines, faint to be sure, and only to be seen when the light was at the proper angle. “Them be the rows where the Oldern People cultivetted their crop, young scholard,” said he.

  “The lines of their plowing?”

  And the older man had repeated, “… plowing …” in a certain tone a bit sardonic; then said he, “The yearth be like a woman, for once man have had she, she be never the same again no more.” Adding, after a moment, that he wasn’t sure that “the Oldern People” had had plows. And afterwards, the slow trip down, he had told Vergil to take abundance of thistle for a sign that men had once builded there. And he showed him the fairly rare plant called virginsbreath as sign that men had never builded there, nor so much as delved the ground with digging-tool. And a few things more had he told him about plants and about stones — addlewort, a sure cure for scattered wits, and bloodstone, which would stanch a bleeding wound; and of trees never to be strick by lightning, and weather-signs and things safe to do and things not safe to do, and how to do them and how to do them not. And when, as regards times and seasons and hours. Almost, Vergil had expected to hear him mutter, that Lord Saturn was e’er a malign stellation.

  But he did not.

  There was, however, save for that sole and faintly suggestive line, no sign that man had ever digged, delved, or builded here; or that even it had ever been a place of verdant virgin loveliness.

  By and by, pace never slowing, never quickening, they came to a great grey rock a-sticking up above the desert floor like the standing-stone to mark a grant’s grave: a Titan or a Cyclops, perhaps: and here the line turned left. Here the line turned left, but, save for the gant grey rock behind them now and the was it a low mountain rather nearer or a high mountain yet very far away? — save for these two extrusions from the surface of this world of stone, there was no other difference that Vergil could see. A huge large lump of rock as limp and yellow as a pudding was twin to the one he had seen yesterday, and the heap of rock the size of a house like some great coagulated mass of mulberry juice was twin to the one he had seen the day before yesterday. — was it the day before yesterday? or the day before that? He was no longer sure … of that, of anything else … then the way began to sink slowly into some vast declivity, and the great grey rock behind and the hill (was it a hill?) before them in the distance shimmering with heat alike went out of sight. Vergil adjusted the length of blue and white checked cloth so that it enclosed most of his face, and slumped yet once more into his saddle. Tingitayne slumbering in the sun, Volu-whatever it was, the thick forests of Corsica, even teeming Naples and the once ever-present in his mind and eagerly longed for elaboratory, Yellow Rome straddling the yellow Tiber, the Land of the Lotus-eaters, and even, even “the Region called Huldah” and the battle on the sea, all seemed to subside into a formless and not so much dull as dulled confusion like some dream in which he was dim aware yet uninvolved; of two things alone was he as well aware as if he were wide awake: one was the clear blue eyes of the Vestal Virgin and the lightening stroke touch of her as he held briefly, so briefly — her arm; and the other was of Huldah herself as he looked down into her face and heard her voice, I shall build for you a fire (as though she had not already availed for him a fire from which he got a joyful heat).