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

by Avram Davidson

  For a moment, dallying upon his mount, vaguely Vergil thought of taking in his hands the willow rod again: then he recollected that he had unpicked it and packed it away.

  Gently he pressed his knees to the steed’s side, and was soon enough in his accustomed place aside Benninaly, capitaine of the caffila, who paid him as usual, no mind at all. Vergil was heading, at a steady pace, whither all in the file were heading. For a moment he forgot quite where was that. The bare and lifeless sands lay all about.

  Great Portendance … yes … but portendance of what?

  Vergil felt perplexed.

  XV

  Alexandria

  It was not until he came to Alexandria (and it was some great long while until; much had passed until) that he came at last and at least to the spoor of the other armil … and how came he to have the one silver bangle of the pair and he now sought the other? … another tale: in its place … in its place … not a furlong from the site where lieth Great Alexander, lapt in honey and wrapt in gold: which tomb all must visit whom Fortuna takes thither to Alexandria: near that great Canopic Way itself. Not until then did he find the man — not the last man but the next-to-the-last-man of whom the Sibyl spoke, had spoken, in that voice as from a thousand caverns echoing forth — the man: tall and gant and with one eye (even as she’d said) the color of Sidonian glass and the tother eye of a common brown color. Seeing him, and with but a lurch of his heart, into the shop, swift, Vergil went.

  He drew forth the sketch he’d made and showed it; the papyrus had been oft unfolded, and was by then much worn, and very smutched. The shopkeeper glanced at it, with the usual Alexandrian elegance and politesse, but without much real interest, then of a sudden gave a sudden nod, looked up. “You have it, then?” asked Vergil.

  “My don, I have it not; I had it. I bought it from a —”

  “When? Where? Where is it now?”

  A most exquisite shrug. “It has been sold some time ago, some time ago, my don, to a younger man than either you or I; very young, in fact; his name is inconnu to me, and so is his abiding-place. Would my don care for wine? Some native beer to refresh — a thing most curious, the bangle, and I wonder not that my don — eh? Well, no, but as I have seen him more than once before, daresay that I shall see him more than once again. A goblet of the honey-hearted wine? forgive me, I shall press no more the offer. Ah. No more of him I know save that he unmuffled his face and he paused but little at my modest price, and so I brought it down but little. He paid me … ah well … I will but say that had I but its twain and twin, I need must ask a piece of gold imperial for it, of th’ old coinage, mind. — Yea, he entered, he unmuffled his face, and he had rid …” A moment the jeweller rolled his odd matched eyes, then, “… a white barb as went a bit dauncingly in her gait. I have some other silvern armil, ser, cunningly-wreaked, and set with green chalcedony — My don! Ser! Serrah! The god is with you, the Dios unself! Zeus! Serapion! There goeth she now, and he must be aback of her! Go swift—!”

  Vergil went swift. Having but some modest care not over-much to startle the barb, he did not run but walked rapidly and stopped a pace or three afront of her; held up his own hand with the unfolden papyrus which had the armil sketched upon it. His eyes encountered those of the rider, eyes dark beneath emphatic dark brows, and those eyes did not rest upon him, but the rider urged his horse — Then stopped. At last had noticed the sketch. Another noted the stop, was at once beside him with, “Sweet water from the Nilus brought, young lord? A copperkin a cup —” saw his water was not wanted, instantly was gone.

  “You have this silver bracelin, my serrah? I shall pay ane gold imperial for it, of the old coinage: or ask me more, I do entreat!”

  For a moment the man said and did nothing. The white barb danced a bit and he was obliged to ride a few steps away; then back he came, it seemed reluctantly. The voice muffled, said he, “I have it not. I bought it for my brother. He hath it now.”

  A shaggy Northishman stalked by, mouth open somewhat between blond-bearded lips, and two black Nubians with estridge-plumes in hair looked round them as they walked. Alexandria was a pearl of all the earth for all to see. Why indeed did Vergil want the other silvern armil so? Because it had been hers and as long as he would have them he would have a share in her? He reckoned not for sure why, he did want it. “As you gave it him — your brother — and I have come far to find it — he is free to give it me! That is, e’er what his price, I pay it.”

  The riding-man now free and safe from the deep dusts of any desert and of any land of stone, went on to unwrap his head and face; more muffled than ever (the barb daunced on, he had only one hand free), his voice as he was doing this, spoke only a few words, dull or almost sullen. “It has no price. I shall not say you where he is. I gave it him for the great love,” a last word followed, which might have been he or it might have been we: the headcloth came clean off. The man was certainly young, the young man showed no sign of having ever met him, would clearly sooner ride around him and be off: but Vergil knew at once that they indeed once met.

  “Hold! Stay!” cried Vergil. The young man stopped and looked at him without even a slight change upon his face, healthy young face, dark-eyed, with well-defined dark brows, though the face was not without sign of care and cark. They looked at each other a moment without sound (and the exquisitely well-mannered throng flowed all around); the young man stroked his perfect skin with perfect fingers. “But do you recollect me not? You are the nephew of Bodmi the Cooper! Is your name not Rustus? Rustus, we have met —”

  Something painful, painful, and very, very deep showed a moment in the young man’s face. He made a level sound which was either yea or nay, or neither yea nor nay. Something like a shadow fled across his face. “Serrah, I know you not, nor know you me.” He would ride on.

  “But Rustus —!”

  One last few words the other said. “Ser,” said he, “I am Justus. Rustus is my brother, twin.” Eyes already gone past Vergil, the man rode away; eyes gone dead to all elegance and all vanities, eyes gone dead to all save a passage through a red, eroded land.

  finis libris 4:00 p.m.

  Bremerton, Washington

  <8-14–89>

  Afterword by Grania Davis

  The Scarlet Fig is the third and final novel in Avram Davidson’s remarkable Vergil Magus trilogy Here we see Vergil, hair and beard long-grown and wind-blown, riding across the dry stone desert. He is no longer the well-robed Mage of Yellow Rome. His journey has alchemically transformed him from Mage to man.

  The silken arm of a Vestal Virgin initiated his flight and eventual banishment from Rome. The tanned arms and jingling armils of Huldah gave him safe haven and the pleasures of human love and companionship for a brief time, until it was time to journey again. The journey was long, and filled with dangers and wonders. He was marooned on the Isle of the Lotophages (I love those Satyrs!), where he drank the intoxicating nectar of the scarlet fig. He battled a warship of Carthage off the coast of Mauretayne, with wizardry, not arms. He rode with a caravan across the sea of sands in North Africa, through the Rough Place, which was very rough indeed. He eventually reached Alexandria. Time had passed. Vergil had consulted a Sybil, noted, but not described, alas. How much timeless time elapsed? We do not know. In Alexandria he learned of the tragic fate of the twins, and of Huldah’s armil. Here the novel ends, with many tantalizing questions unresolved.

  Does the fate of the armil, sold in an Alexandrian shop, reveal tragic events in the Region of Huldah? Has Huldah been overrun by the North African hordes of Carthage, as Henry Wessells suggests? It is certainly plausible, else why would Huldah’s armil be for sale in a shop? Yet if Avram Davidson had lived long enough to complete his nine-volume “trinity of Vergil Magus trilogies,” would the holy grail quest for Huldah’s armil eventually lead Vergil back to Huldah herself?

  As the journey transformed Vergil from Mage to man, so did Avram Davidson’s journey into the world of Vergil alchemically transform the autho
r from man to Mage. For a long while, during the later part of his life, Avram Davidson became so engrossed in his research into the Vergil Magus mythos that he almost left off writing the novels themselves. Among his papers we found boxes and boxes of notes. Files of notecards were carefully hand-annotated and cross-referenced into a sort of Vergil Magus Encyclopaedia, with every bit of arcane knowledge that could be used in the project, until the quest for knowledge became more important to Avram than the project itself.

  How did Avram Davidson become so engrossed in the Roman poet, Vergil, who evolved into the mediaeval sorcerer, Vergil Magus? In the dedication to this book, Avram credits Sam Moskowitz for encouraging him to speak on any topic. But why did he choose the topic of Vergil, Roman poet/ Vergil, mediaeval Magus?

  Let’s time-travel back to the winter of 1961-2. Avram Davidson and I were married and living in New York. As a Californian, I was used to getting out a lot, and I soon discovered that in wintry New York, out meant indoors. And where better to spend the snowy winter days than the magnificent Metropolitan Museum of Art? Avram and I lingered in the galleries and exhibits. Then we discovered the basement, which was a treasure trove filled with a wonderful assortment of small objects, including a splendid collection of antique Italian ceramics.

  There we noticed a Venetian glass vessel with the image of a finely robed mediaeval man suspended from a basket beneath an Italian stone tower. The placard told us that the man was Vergil the magician. A princess of the realm, who offered to lift him into her bower in the basket, had lured him into this predicament. She was an enchantress who tricked him, and left him suspended halfway up the tower overnight, so that come morning, the townspeople could see and jeer the mighty Magus in the basket. Ah Vergil, ah Avram, ever the romantics.

  Was this amusing Venetian vessel, spotted on a wintry New York afternoon, one of the sparks that kindled Avram Davidson’s lifelong journey into the world of Vergil Magus? I cannot say for sure, but shortly afterward he began work on The Phoenix and the Mirror, the first novel in the Vergil Magus trilogy, and the proposed trinity of trilogies. In The Phoenix and the Mirror, and the later Vergil in Averno, we see ancient Rome, not from a contemporary viewpoint, but from a mediaeval vantage. It is a time-shift that is unique in the literature of shifting time.

  How did Vergil, the Roman poet, evolve into Vergil, the mediaeval magus? The Phoenix and the Mirror was published in 1969, when Avram was far from frosty New York, sojourning in tropical British Honduras (now Belize). In his “Author’s Note,” Avram writes: During the Middle Ages a copious and curious group of legends became associated with the name of Vergil, attributing to the author of The Aeneid and The Georgics all manner of heroic, scientific, and magical powers —to such an extent, indeed, that most of the world forgot that Vergil had been a poet, and looked upon him as a nigromancer, or sorcerer. From the Dark Ages to the Renascence the popular view of the ancient world as reflected in the Vergilean Legends was far from the historical and actual one in more than the acceptance of legend and magic and myth. It is a world of never-never, and yet it is a world true to its own curious lights — a backward projection of medievalism, an awed and confused transmogrification of quasi-forgotten ancient science, a world which slumbered much—but whose dreams were far from dull.

  It is this Vergil who guided Dante through the afterlife, and this world and its dreams that captured Avram’s imagination for the remainder of his life. Two decades of extensive research elapsed between the publication of The Phoenix and the Mirror in the sixties, and the dark and deep Vergil in Averno in 1987. Drafts of The Scarlet Fig date from 1989, and the work continued until Avram’s passing in 1993. More than a decade passed before the novel was at last edited for publication in this volume.

  I had studied Latin in school, and was very excited to see this project evolve, as a genre unto itself. Later I had the good fortune to visit some of the sites of ancient Rome (British readers are fortunate to have easy access to the splendid sites at Hadrian’s Wall, Londinium, Bath, etc.). I journeyed to Volubilis in modern Morocco, beautifully preserved and famed for its toxic lead water pipes. Encountering Vergil in faraway far Volubilis, in this third novel, set the geographical stage and renewed the excitement for me.

  Vergil’s journey can almost be traced on a modern map: from Yellow Rome to Naples; then by sea to Corsica of the bittersweet honey, thence to the misty and magical Region of Huldah, and the mysterious Isle of the Lotophages. Again by sea to Tingitayne in Mauritania, on the West African coast; then across the land of stone in the deserts of North Africa through Volubilis in Morocco, and finally to Alexandria in Egypt.

  Seeing this book published at long last, after its long and difficult journey, is like observing a mediaeval miracle. Avram wrote many drafts of this novel. Chapters and portions were scattered among his papers, and were often too faded to read. He had sent a mostly complete draft to critic and author Gregory Feeley for comment. That was the draft we decided to use. If Avram had sent it out, it must have been worth sending.

  But there were many gaps, and missing material that had to be painstakingly reconstructed from earlier and partial drafts. I had to dumpster-dive deep into the musty and dusty boxes of The Avram Davidson Archive to locate fragments and earlier drafts that contained the missing bits. Editing The Scarlet Fig was a true work of literary archaeology.

  Handwritten Afterscripts completed the text. At the end of one draft we found the following note: Avram Davidson finished this 3rd vol of the once-proped 9 volume work VERGIL MAGUS approximately a quarter-century after having finished the first: entirely without the same joy and exultation.

  Another draft, with the same 1989 date, ends with this entirely different handwritten note: Historical note: This finishes the first draft of the 3rd volume of VERGIL MAGUS, just about one quarter-century after I finished the ist volume. In celebration whereof, the Authorities have declared an Eclipse of the Moon. Author’s summation: “It beats working.”

  Two Afterscripts, one bitter, another sweet. Two moods, one discouraged, another elated. Which best fits Avram’s final summation of his final novel? Both.

  The steadfast editorial work of esteemed co-editor Henry Wessells, and the ongoing encouragement, efforts and patience of more-than-esteemed British publisher Phillip Rose, finally enabled this book to be published. I want to thank Eileen Gunn, Ser Reno Odlin, and Gregory Feeley for preserving and sharing Vergil Magus materials. I also wish to thank Melisa and Richard Michaels of Embiid Publications, for help when I needed it.

  There will be no further Vergil Magus novels from Avram’s pen, and we will never learn the fate of Huldah, alas. But the excitement and love that Avram felt for Vergil, his realm and his lore, have been carefully preserved for the reader like a rare treasure of ancient and mediaeval Rome.

  — Grania Davis

  Appendix I

  Quint’s Eye Ointments

  from the 1988 draft of “Yellow Rome”

  Quint had said, “I first went to the physician Cimolus, and told him that I had a flux of the eyes occasioned by an excess of a humor; he gave me an ointment of purple purslane mixed with milk and honey He said it could not fail to heal me, but in the event I had a particularly stubborn case, to see him again; in no event, he warned me, was I to go to Doctor Diagoras, because Diagoras was a notorious quack. I took the salve that Cimolus gave me, and it smelled so good I ate it, but it did not help me in the least. So —”

  Vergil asked, “What did you do then?” It was their first meeting.

  “Why, then, naturally, I went to Diagoras.”

  “Naturally And he —”

  “Blamed it on an excess of a humor, and gave me an ointment of opium. It smelled very nice. In fact, it smelled so nice, that I couldn’t help tasting it. And, do you know, it tasted so nice, that I kept on tasting it. The next thing I knew, my servant said that I had slept the whole night and all the day away. But although I’d had some very pleasant dreams, my eyes were no better.”

&nb
sp; “Naturally.”

  “So for a while I did nothing. But my eyes kept bothering me. I’d heard good things of a Greek physician, Tlepolemos. He blamed it on an excess of a humor, and gave me an ointment of dill roots soaked in water. It smelled lovely, but made me belch quite a lot, and, really, my eyes were no better. But I remembered that Tlepolemos had warned me against another Greek, his name was Scamander, and Tlepolemos said that Scamander was the man who’d poisoned Socrates. So I went to him — Scamander, not Socrates, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Quint took a sip of his wine. “So I asked Scamander if he’d really poisoned Socrates, and he said No, that was another Greek, named —”

  “Tlepolemos?”

  “However did you know? Well. You needn’t tell me. You mages have your ways. And then Scamander gave me a very keen look, and he said he could see that, as the result of an excess of a humor, my eyes were badly inflamed. Naturally, I was —”