Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series

by Avram Davidson

  — two of the proctors swiftly seized him, one from each side —

  — if Lustus was still screaming or if what rang in Vergil’s ears was an echo, Vergil did not know; he knew that Lustus was no longer in front of him —

  “In with them. Draw.” Said Putto, the obscenely fat.

  Vergil without hesitation obeyed. The things did not feel, really, pleasant, but nothing seemed about to bite or burn or writhe; sweating, not looking, Vergil passed along. By and by they stood, the students, in front of the elaboratory tables. “Set ‘em down. Down.” Another voice, but no strange one; whence? Not moving his head and only slightly rolling up his eyes, Vergil got a glimpse of Calimicho, the gaunt, the gray, the grim, looking down from a gallery; it was not that Vergil would have sworn there had been no gallery there a moment before, he would have sworn — although he saw it — that no gallery was there now.

  But that was not the lesson.

  “Look at ‘em.” All looked. Before each was a fungus from the two bags. Two. Slightly cool, one; slightly warm, one; slightly moist . . . or dry . . . here or there upon it . . . them…. Having not been forbidden to do so, swiftly Vergil raked his eyes from left to right; mostly all the students were doing the same. No two fungi, he was sure, were quite alike. What — “Looked at ‘em? You’ve studied Theophrastus, you’ve studied Dioscorides, Hippocrates, Galen, you’ve talked with the simples-women and you’ve walked with the witches of the woods. You may — when I give you leave — look some more, you may poke and pare and peer and smell and taste. Don’t touch! . . . yet …” He held between thumb and forefinger the smallest of sandglasses, such as the frugal housewife uses to time the boiling of a pigeon’s egg. “When you’ve made up your mind. If it’s medicine, throw it before you, off the table. If it’s poison, throw it well behind you. If it is neither, but just fit for the pot, leave it where it is. Prepare.” He turned the tiny glass, set it down on the railing (who failed to hear that tiny click?). “Now.”

  Seldom had Vergil passed oh-so-short a moment, yet ah such a busied one before there came that second slight click: “Stop.” The last word was not emphasized, but no hand moved more.

  “That one which now remains in front of you. Pick it up. Eat.”

  • • •

  Later he heard that same Northishman, he whose father was an earl, ask, “Ser Proctor, was it needful that those who erred did die?”

  Said the proctor, “Their clients will not die.”

  • • •

  Even as the vision of what this intimated share of richnesses might secure for him was fading quite away, Vergil heard himself reply, “I have no doubt, Magnate, that the Very Rich City will deal with me generously. In wares and merchandise, I myself do not deal.”

  Boso’s brows, like unpruned shrubbery, came together, paused, parted. “Wise one, we shall meet again. Aysh. Aysh.” Fire. Fire.

  • • •

  G. Rufus Rano was, clearly, nervous. He had a singular lack of any personal charm, but his clear and evident nervousness was almost sufficient to make that overlooked. He began to say things, stopped with the things unsaid. He looked at Vergil, from Vergil he looked away, and from looking away, again he turned and looked at Vergil. The most complete thing he said was what might have been a suggestion that the two of them should meet in Rano’s warehouse; on the other hand, it might have been an apology that they could not meet there, or a ban on their meeting there at all. Now and then, as his eyes fled here and there, and his wide mouth stumbled on this word and that, he looked sometimes at his wife, as though perhaps for help; perhaps, for something not the least to do with help; she, in any event, sat silently spinning her wool. The silence became at last infectious, and feeling that perhaps it might become permanent, the visitor suggested that he would, if welcome, return another time.

  Disappointment, irresolution, relief mingled. Relief won. Rano arose, Vergil arose, the matron remained as she was. “Again. Again. Master. Yes.”

  It had not been precisely a fruitful meeting, but it had been a long one, and by the time that Vergil arrived at the house of the last-named on the list in the Ganymede tablets, Magnate Brosa Brosa (and a mental note not to confuse same with Magnate Boso), he found Magnate Brosa Brosa at dinner. Or perhaps it was not precisely dinner, but there were precisely about it anyway some of the niceties of the rest of the world. Vergil was at once gestured to a place, and at once there was placed before him an excellent soup of cock and veal with leeks and small dried plums, followed by lampreys cooked in blood and wine, followed by songbirds in grape leaves, followed by Magnate Brosa Brosa giving several absolutely enormous eructations. And there was another simulated skeleton, which Vergil was, however, not asked to make dance, which followed finger bowls scented far more strongly than was elsewhere considered in good taste.

  But few places elsewhere had to contend with the airs, the sweet breezes of Averno.

  Once again the butler was signaled, and once again Vergil was handed a coin . . . followed by a new robe . . . G. Rufus Rano’s butler (if that was indeed the troll’s title) had issued him two new robes, but no coin…. This coin was of gold.

  “Come see us early tomorrow morning,” said Brosa Brosa, “and we will show you some sights. And we will talk some more.” Considering that this was all the talking they had done, it would clearly not take much more talk to talk some more.

  Vergil returned to his inn, ordered (and paid for) other and larger rooms on the upper floor of the annex off the colonnade, saw to it that Iohan had been taken care of. Asked, by and by, “What is all that sound all this late and where is it all coming from?”

  Answer: It was coming from the forum.

  And that was the third time that Vergil was to see the mad king dance.

  In the morning they did indeed show him some sights, videlicet the torture chambers. And after that they did talk some more.

  • • •

  As they passed through part of the city Vergil observed in daylight, with the eyes, that which had in the obscurity of the nights commanded the attention of the nose alone — namely the shallow canal that went from the Portus Julius, adjacent to the coast, to the equally shallow canal basin of Averno. Black walls, black mules, black dogs, black hearts — had he heard this? read this? conjured it, as a summing up, himself? To which, whichever, he now added, black canal.

  It stank, and it stank not alone from the sea-sludge that traveled sluggishly along it in the slight eddies caused by the passage of the mule-drawn boats (black boats!), nor from, as well, the sulfurous emanations inseparable from Averno and all its fumes; it stank in addition with a distinctive and horrible feculence caused by its being the repository of all the night-buckets of the city and all the watery runoff of the rotting matter of its leather- and dye-works. The Midland Sea had scarcely any tides of its own, and this canal had none at all to scour it clean. Vergil, considering, wondered if the canal were to be dredged — not merely cleaner, but deeper — as the Emperor Julius had caused to be dredged the port that bore his name — just a bit deeper, even, and at just a slight slope . . . provided with a sluice at one point and a sluiceway at another and a lock at the end…. But probably the Avernians would see no reason to bother. In Manjay, near far Cathay, the lands of the so-called Thinae or Sinim, whence came silk-substance combed from floss deposited on trees by (so, incredibly, it was reported) worms, it was also the practice to dump the outscouring of canals onto compost heaps; thence to gardens. But in Averno there were no gardens. In Averno grew nothing green . . . save slime.

  Stinking and sluggish the canal was, and narrow and shallow and slime, provided with more than one portcullis to check any possible use in either invasion or escape (and, for that matter, interloping), and used only for the transportation of cargo too heavy or too bulky or too otherwise unsuitable (crushed sea-nail for the dye-vats: example) for the winding and narrow overland route through the crags that surrounded the city — city without as well as within its walls. The canal as it
was and long had been probably suited its masters exactly so it was. So, envision as he might (and did) some swifter, cleaner current come gliding in via, perhaps, a mountain stream or two, soon and swift he dismissed the thought.

  • • •

  Hiring masters and hireling mage . . . “But not yet Incantor et Magus” . . . “Not yet” . . . echoes, echoes . . . but, still, if not magus de jure, mage de facto . . . and as he had been, in effect, hired: hireling …) all in an atrium.

  Brosa had brought him thither. It was not Brosa, however, who was about to speak: Boso was. Brosa and “they” had brought him, Vergil, earlier, to see the torture chambers, as elsewhere, some other “they” had taken him to see the bears and lions, the dancing girls, the chambers with the painted walls. Boso had been there as well, one or two others. Three? Had the same number left as entered? Did one or two remain to see the sport? Was it sport alone? Some particular taste for witnessing unspeakable pain, intense and shameful agony? Had the trade of any one or two or even three of the magnates been particularly rather than generally affected by the “conspiracy and interloping” of which that wretched fellow had stood accused? Was it that this magnate or that or those as individuals felt their commerce and industry risked loss if outsiders were allowed to buy without license? Was it particular details that he or they wished to hear? Or —

  These questions in turn had not been slow in raising at least one other question in Vergil’s mind: Could the visit to the torture chambers have been no mere showing of a certain sight, but a caution? A warning? And if so: to whom? Vergil was not a resident, a denizen of the city Rome. But he was a Roman citizen, a Citizen of Rome. Mere birth within the Empire did not confer this right and status. Status and right were of immense protection. But although Averno was under the rule of Rome, Averno was not Rome. He was not in Rome now. He was in Averno. Averno was not Rome.

  Boso was the first, after some small silence, to speak. “Now see thee here, Master Vergil,” he began, in his stolid way; stolid or not: an enormous change. Yesterday, face-to-face the two of them, it had been “Wise One.” Today, here, here in the company of his fellow-magnates, it was merely “Master Vergil”: well. In this Boso was perhaps merely conforming to local usage, discarding the semblance of great respect which something from his own past, perhaps; perhaps the brief use between them of the tongue of Sidon, had prompted. But — See thee here …! Why, Vergil’s own servant would apologize for addressing him in the thou-form! Was the hired man, citizen or no, to be shown his place? Or . . . or was this, this over-familiarity, the semblance? The dissembling?

  One would see.

  Boso, squatting, was drawing in the sand of a part of the atrium with his finger. “Them fires which are the gifts to us of the good gods of hell, they are, like here” — he scratched — ”and here . . . and here, and here …”

  As for the “rogues, retainers, henchmen, partisans, thieves, runaways, and gamblers,” such as were alleged to frequent the places of notables everywhere, he saw no sign here. Neither did he see any likenesses of the urban great in marble or even in wax, as he did sometimes in other cities. The magnates were not there and then as Vergil had seen some of them (and was to see, eventually, all of them) elsewhere. Of course no torches were needed in level daylight, but neither did they wear crimson to show they were rich, nor dingy black (“It shows no dirt”) to show they cared naught for being rich. One of them in fact wore close to nothing at all, and this was Haddadius, in a breechclout. Now and then he raised a thick and hairy arm and examined his armpit; the gods knew how many years in filth and foulness had laid the foundations for a gesture that had become a lifelong habit. Haddadius now found nothing in his oxters, he (as Vergil had seen) had his own baths, and used them and was clean. But ever and again: the telltale gesture. As for Grobi, whom Vergil knew at once, before even seeing his eye, by his heavy breathing — Grobi was dressed in the lightest of silks, the lightest and the costliest, but his hard and heavy hands continually rubbed his marked and marred wrists and ankles, and perhaps that was why Grobi always did move so slow: Grobi still felt the shackles and the chains. Lars Melanchthus was silent and sober-faced this time, but his eyes still full-red, perhaps from years of peering into the smoke of forges. Perhaps his eyes would never be clear again, perhaps his vision neither.

  Boso went on scratching and speaking; gradually Vergil put a picture together, as the mosaic-maker does from fragments of colored glass.

  The fire and steam and smoke engirdled the city round like a fiery zone, irregular in shape, and sometimes varying: now a circle; and now extending and also narrowing: an oval. From a fumarole whence last year spouted flame, this year perhaps came nothing but a hot and sulfurous stink; sometimes areas larger than an urban “island” of tenements might be affected; then there would be a laborious moving of forges, vats, workshops, and bloomeries to areas where the fires and fiery gasses freshly escaped the rents and fissures of the tortured earth.

  “… and some . . . here. …” Boso grunted. He finished his scrabbling and sketching and stared a moment. Then he sighed. “This day,” he said. “This year. They don’t stay still,” he said. “And that is the kernel in the nut and the nut in the hull, Master Vergil. Them fires wander a-roundabout, and this cause us the worst kind of troubles. And of lately years they wander roundabout all more than before. Fewer. And weaker. Which is why we have had you here. We’ve put you to test. You’ve passed test. You’ve read certain, like, secret message. Given right answer. All so. Now, Ser. Master. What’s to be done about all this?”

  And he sat back on his haunches, evidently convinced that he had made everything as clear as it could possibly be, and gazed at Vergil with his bull-like eyes.

  But before Vergil could speak, someone else spoke.

  “Hecatombs,” said someone, in a thick, slow, heavy, halting voice. Repeated it.

  “Hec . . . a . . . tombs …”

  • • •

  Paradox.

  Illyriodorus, once, when asked, “Master, what is it that you seek?” had answered, stroking his classical beard, “I do not seek. I find.” A moment’s silence, in some measure awed, in all measure respectful, followed this epigram.

  And the moment was followed by Vergil’s (audacious youth!) — by Vergil’s asking, nonetheless, “And . . . Our Sage . . . When you do not find?”

  The silence this time was a shocked one. Illyriodorus, however, seemed not shocked. One more stroke he gave his beard. “Ah, then,” he said, quite calmly, “then I seek.”

  But that was in Athens. And Vergil was now in Averno. They were nothing like. Nor was either the least like Sevilla. Sevilla. Why did he think of Sevilla now, the Very Ancient and Very Wise City?

  Sevilla. Often it was hot there, though never of course was the heat of such a quality as here, here, in the fire-fields of Averno. Oft, when then wearied, had he walked with slow steps to a certain space round the ramparts of Sevilla, where once he had watched a cafila of strange beasts: they were called camels. Awkward and splay-footed their walk, and their upper lips, split like those of giant hares, writhed, groaning, perhaps in pain. And each beast bore upon its back a great hunch. Now, as he passed the fire-fields of Averno and saw among the fumes and fumaroles a line of slaves, staggering and lurching through smoke and steam, each with just such a hunch or puckel on his back — though these were leather sacks filled with, as it might be, lumps of ore — he was reminded of those camel-beasts. The necks of these men who bore the burdens here were of course not longer than other men’s, but like camels they twisted them from side to side, like camels their upper lips were split, and like camels they writhed their lips; indeed, like camels, too, they groaned. Too clearly why: Some canny Avernian had gathered for himself a stable of hare-lipped slaves, for such sold always cheaper. Of course here and for such labor it mattered not the slightest that they could not, their palates being cleft, speak distinctly. No one needed them to speak. Damn their speak. Let them slave.

  And wh
en any of them staggered too much, imperiling his load, or slowed as if to pause, the whipper-in, who in fact carried no whip, merely a stick, merely swiftly thrust his stick into one of the glowing holes all round about and between which the cafila struggled. At once the stick burst into flame, see then the driver swing the stick sufficient to reduce the flame to a mere glowing coal-end, and press it against the slave’s heaving side. Swiftly. Slightly. Only slightly. One would not wish the man-camel to drop his humpy burden . . . of course. Although sometimes, if the sides of the slave were greatly scarred and toughened from other burns or galls or floggings, then the warder would press the stick a bit harder.

  In Sevilla, called though it was by some a sewer of a thousand different devils, Vergil had seen no such sight.

  Sevilla. In Sevilla, young Vergil and an Apulian of the same short age (what was his name? how could he have forgotten it? he had forgotten it because although the young Apulian was of great importance, his name was of none) had after no small wait been admitted to the lodge of the beadle of the school, a slender man with a small head. “What have you learned?” asked he. The Apulian, before Vergil could more than wet his lips in preparation, had said that he had studied trivium and quadrivium.