Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series

by Avram Davidson

  He had been looking down, half trying to make out the designs in the mosaic-tiled floor; now he looked up. She had been looking at him, but her gray eyes fled direction as he lifted his own.

  He said, “And you do nothing, then, save spin? Have you no amusements? Even inexpensive ones?”

  She nodded, and gathered wool from the distaff. “I read. That is, I am read to. Rano allows me to sell the thread and yarn, and, well, they aren’t really very good, but it’s good wool, that’s good, it can be used again to make better thread and yarn, and I have no need for money, so there is someone who takes away my basketful and in return brings me books and I am read to. While I spin. When one of the Greeks can be spared to do it, who can read Latin, too, you know. And after they are read, the books go back. In that box there is the one the Greek, Demou he’s called, was reading to me, but he was called to the warehouse for work and he hasn’t yet come back.”

  The house of Rano was one of the older ones, black and squat and reeking, although attempts had been made to give it some sort of gloss, as witness the floor — at this exact moment the she-troll cleaning beans cleared her nose and throat and spat upon the floor adjacent her — and the furnishings (as though furnished from some captured town, the troops having had their three-day plunder, the followers allowed three days more before the torch was set and all these furnishings gathered in haste late upon the afternoon of the sixth day). As for the box indicated, it was the sort of box that a yeoman farmer might have purchased in some good year, long ago, the taxes being paid and for once the larder and the corn-cribs full. He knew that sort of box full well.

  “Would you like me to read to you?” asked he. Where was Rano? Was he never coming back?

  And she answered, her eyes so low cast down, “If the master wishes. It would be very kind.”

  He opened the box, it contained the usual jumble of broken fibulae and bracelets sans catches, here a charm and there a bauble; and set aside from all of that a smallish book, a codex in form and binding and not a scroll. “Where shall I begin?”

  “Where you may be pleased. Perhaps he marked where he left.” She pinched off a bit of wool and was about to add it to the thread, and it broke; she caught the spindle and, with a sigh, made to mend the work. The servant, likely slave, had indeed left a bookmark; thither Vergil turned. A glance showed him the book was entitled The New Anabasis, and he was sure that he had never heard of it and that it deserved no such grand titule. The calligraphy lacked the cunning of the professional book-copyist; whichever old soldier had passed declining years in composing the work had probably pressed his own servant into use: whichever one could, as it chanced, belike, write: to scratch and scribble with a stylus into cold wax was one art, but to make and mend a pen and write cleanly with slow-drying ink — this was another art yet. And a harder one.

  Vergil cleared his throat. “Here they were invited, in fact constrained, to join a procession to the Temple of Jove in Alexandria Olympia, where the Thunderer was worshiped under the Syrian name of Haddad.” He was mistaken, he had read this before: where? “The procession had been organized, at the first sign of bad weather, by the local dyers’ guild, for …”He heard his voice growing slower and slower as, incredulous, he recollected where . . . and when . . . he had read this before….

  About to beg pardon for interrupting the reading and to ask more precisely whence she had this book, he looked up: Their eyes met again, this time met full on, and such a flash glittered from hers that he had, even while he gave the motion no thought, to lunge and save the volume from falling to the floor.

  “Who are you, then, Poppaea?” he demanded. “Who is it that you really are? And what is it, then, that you are really doing here?” He did not touch her.

  The eyes that had glittered a moment before now flowed with tears, and she wiped them clumsily with the wool-full distaff. “It does not matter,” she said, weeping. “Oh, it does not matter, not at all. I am the matron of a magnate of Averno, and I sit in his house and I spin. The spinning is worthless, but a Roman matron spins, she spins, and when Rano remembers that he has a wife at home who sits and spins, it makes him feel that he is something like a Roman patrician. And as for me . . . it occupies my hours and even when no one is reading to me, the labor of it soothes my mind, and helps the time to pass. How white your skin is, and how black your hair and beard.”

  “But, Poppaea, if it was you who — ”

  She shook her head, the tears still flowed, she took up now a gauzy stole and wiped them, and they ceased. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t speak of it, please.”

  Half, he rose. “Shall I not go then?”

  She said, somewhat in haste, almost in alarm, “Oh no. No. At least not yet. Rano has told me to show you high respect. He instructed the servants, when the clepsydra strikes — ” She paused. He hearkened. In an inner part of the house, a single hollow ring. The hollow metal ball within one of the chambers of the clock had, as the last of the water dripped away, struck against the floor of the chamber. A murmur, followed by the bustle of things being moved, feet sounding, and the rustle of garments; the dirty toes meanwhile vanished, the dried beans rattled in the pans, their selectrix gave a hortatory squall or two: In came servants bearing wine and water and plates of cakes, olives, nuts, fruits, and sweetmeats and tables to set them on; and scented water to wash hands and fingers and napkins with which to dry them. The settings did not match, but what matter, they were heavy and rich, and looked as though they might have come from the plunder of the first three days in several cities.

  “… and I hope, Master Vergil,” said Poppaea, “that you will especially try these pears conserved in mustard and honey, for it is a very especial honey and comes from far away, far across the Indoo Sea, and it is a honey that flows from a sort of reed, called saccharum.”

  Gravely he thanked her, tasted with an air of judgment, nibbled in silence; then praised. She smiled faintly. The clod servants grunted, lolled their thick tongues in their mouths; one of them actually shoved the conserves closer. “Take more,” said this impertinent hobgoblin. “Take more, Wizard Man. Master very rich.” Doubtless his and the other thick tongues would help lick the platters clean of whatever costly syrups could not be scraped back into the jars. It would add a relish to the beans.

  And the spelt.

  Master very rich.

  I am the matron of a magnate of Averno, and I sit in his house and I spin.

  Very true. Very true. But not only did she know that the honey called saccharum came from beyond the great isle Taprobane, from the other side of the Erythraean Sea, farther than which no Roman ship had ever fared, she knew that no bees produced this novel and fantastically costly syrup; what else did she know? She knew how to send him in dreams the text of a book that she herself could not even read. She spun, as a matter of form and status alone, her woollen yarn and her oft-breaking thread. What else did she spin? he wondered. And the answer, not spoken aloud, was, a web.

  And one that now seemed sure to hold him fast.

  To hold him fast indeed.

  • • •

  As always, when he began, had begun, to be attracted by a particular woman, the air seemed full of little flecks of gold; so, even here, in the thick, hazy, stinking air of Averno. But. Even so. So or not so. The work, his work in Averno, continued — and he reflected once, quickly and with some small wry amusement: If it continued at its present pace he would be here longer than the two weeks for which he had hired the mare; the likelihood of Fulgence the liveryman following him was, however, extremely slight — and as it seemed not unlikely that the work would pay more than had been hinted (however slight those hints), Vergil moved yet once again; and this time to what passed in Averno for a better neighborhood. How much better went up in his estimation when he saw a litter and its bearers in the street outside — though some second thoughts he had when he saw that not a litter alone stood there, but a lictor as well.

  The fasces was there, that grim bundle of
rods with which to flog the condemned, from which protruded the ax with which to behead. Neither rod nor ax had been used to work affliction upon the wretched false-coiner, although his own more dreadful punishment was not alone legal but even customary; perhaps rods and ax dated from a time before coinage, full or false, had reached Rome. Technically this symbol belonged most properly to the chief magistrate of a city, but Averno was a special case in this as in almost all other things; the fasces and lictor meant most likely something else —

  He hoped the litter did, too….

  The lictor was (highly improperly!) holding the bundle under one arm, and applying to his nose a pouncet box. He tried to come to an attention when he saw Vergil, but first the one thing slipped, and then the other. Vergil seized the pouncet box, this at least seeming in no way a form of lèse-majesté; from it arose the strong and fragrant medicinal odor of the pomander; and it was he who stood to something like an attention until the lictor had gotten himself in order. Then —

  “Master Vergil, a Citizen of Rome?”

  “Yes, Lictor.”

  “I greet you in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome.”

  “Stinking place, this, isn’t it?” Vergil did not feel in a mood of much formality; neither, by his look, did, much, the lictor. Who —

  “Oh, the gods! Well, sir. As you were kind enough to save the medicine from falling to the muck, I take liberty to offer that you bear it yourself, and I of course must bear the fasces, and lead on as — Oh . . . Forget me own agnomen, next. Ser Vergil, his Honor the Legate presents his compliments and sends his litter and hopes that Master Vergil is to find it convenient to honor his Honor by taking some very good wine with his Honor.”

  The Legate. That meant, of course, the Legate Imperial; in such a special case as Averno’s, he would be part governor, part ambassador, part viceroy . . . all, very much for the most part, pro forma. For the most part, then, the Legate Imperial was locally the Imperial official of highest rank. Mostly his duties were such as could be reduced to no simplistic legal formula. Had he the power to compel Vergil’s acceptance of the so courteously worded invitation? Very likely. Was Vergil’s position honorable enough and his conscience clear enough to persuade himself to acceptance of the invitation without more ado and less mental quibbling? Very likely.

  “Of course, Lictor. I am honored by his Honor’s invitation and by your own kindly offer. However” — he delved into his pouch and disclosed his own pouncet box. Its classification as “medicine” was, in his own opinion, doubtful: but the stinking and maleficent air was less afflictive when strained through the dried spice-studded fruits and fragrant herbs. He had gotten into the litter even while the lictor murmured his appreciation at getting his own pomander back. Dignity did not perhaps allow him to bear it openly in one hand as he marched holding the fasces, so he thrust it high into his tunic and bowed his head so that his nose was almost next to it.

  “Litter-bearers! Up, litter! March.”

  March they did, through the grimy streets. It might well be that money did not stink. But it was not money that Vergil saw through the slightly parted curtains. He saw garbage and slag and slops which had not waited the collectors of the night soil, and people with cutpurse (and, for that matter, cutthroat) looks; and — endlessly — slaves crouching and stumbling beneath every sort of burden; bundles and bales of rags awaiting the sole washing ever they were likely to get before being dyed and clipped and resewn; saw the as-yet-uncollected recently dead, and the as-yet-unrelieved-by-death, animal and human. Saw faces sullen and faces scornful and faces devoid, seemingly, of capacity for expression; saw faces all filthy and glances grim. He saw the steamy tipped-out rank residue of the reeking dye-pots, and smelled, above even the sulfurous and omnipresent breath of “the good gods of hell,” the rotting offscrape of the inner, fleshy sides of pelts in the wool-pulleries; used-up wads of foul, fetid tanbark —

  In short: all, or most of all, of the characteristic sights of the Very Rich City. He did not, though, as they marched, and at no slow pace, see the torture chambers.

  But then, of course, he had already seen them.

  Sissinius Apponal Casca was the gray-faced shadow of what had been a large and healthy man, as witness his own bust in a niche in the wall. Since those days he had lost most of his hair, most of his teeth, most of the flesh beneath his skin, and most of that sense of firm control of life that the bust (and it alone) presently commemorated. He did, however, both look up and, somewhat, cheer up, as Vergil entered. The Emperor Julius had of course been bald, and the Emperor Sulla, that famous Sulla, entirely edentulous, in their days of command, victory, and glory: neither of them had looked a tithe of a tithe as bad as this Legate Imperial, nor would they, had their losses in one countenance been combined.

  “One doesn’t dare attempt to keep wine, once it’s been opened,” Casca said, formulas of greeting and respect done with; “not here. My butler is opening the best jug right now. Also I have fresh spring water brought twice a day . . . from a spring well outside this horrid place, that is . . . to use the local water to mix even the worst wine, let alone the best, well …”

  Understanding looks were passed, the wine was decanted and mixed, libations poured, and the wine tasted. “It is good,” said Vergil.

  The Legate’s next words almost caused Vergil to spill the wine, good as it was. “What of this fellow who is called King Cadmus?” asked S. Apponal Casca. And suddenly Vergil had an image of those rods lacerating the dancing madman’s back, of that ax severing the curly head from its wounded shoulders.

  He obliged himself to speak carelessly. “Why, he is mad, that’s all.”

  “There was a certain madman who claimed to be a certain emperor, after the real emperor was dead, and kept half of Little Asia in turmoil for two years and more.”

  “Ah, but that fellow was merely mad enough to believe his masquerade could succeed. This fellow — Cadmus — is utterly mad. Doesn’t know the calends from the ides. Surely you have seen that . . . if you have seen him.”

  “I have seen him. Yes.”

  “Well, then.”

  But beneath the gray and wasted skin some muscle twitched; the flabby mouth suddenly became, somehow, firm. “I haven’t asked you here for you to say, ‘Well, then,’ I have asked you here to ask you what you can tell me. And by that, I mean everything.”

  In the brief instant of fear that shot through him, Vergil now recalled something which had flashed through his mind as he was getting into the litter and as swiftly had flashed out of it. A brief exchange of words, that time past, with Armin, the young Avernian . . . Avernian so different from almost every other Avernian, young or old, whom he had so far met.

  What will you tell them, when you go to Rome?

  I do not go to Rome.

  Ah, no? But you know . . . Rome may come to you….

  Rome, in the form of the lictor and the litter, had gone to him.

  And so, of course, in effect, he had now gone to Rome.

  “Well, your Honor, as I understand it — merely, I have heard, this happened before my arrival — the man was elected as a King of Fools at the local Feast of Unreason. As such he was crowned. Surely a greater fool, in the old and real sense of the word, could scarce be found. And so he wore his crown, why not, and so he danced. I must say he dances uncommonly well.”

  The Legate stared at him, gray and wasted face unmoving. “The Feast of Unreason was over some while since. Yet, still he dances. And still, he wears his crown.” Vergil said nothing. A silence fell between them. Neither was trying to stare the other down. Then, again: “What can you tell me?”

  Vergil cleared his throat. “Have the taxes been collected, paid?”

  “If you mean the Imperial tributes, they have all been collected and paid. If you mean the municipal taxes, they are no official concern of mine, but I assume that if they had not been gathered all as usual, I should certainly have heard. No, no. In this you are of course correct: a place
on the verge of rebellion — ”

  “Rebellion!” Vergil made to rise; the Legate gestured him down.

  “ — does not bother to pay its tributes and its taxes promptly. No . . . again you are right. Rebellion, no. O Apollo! this is a perfidious place! I have served in every corner of the Empire, even have been beyond the farthest realms of the oeconomia. What haven’t I seen! Villages, two of them each claiming to worship the evil god and each full of hatred because each had a different evil god; when a man from one town was rash and ventured near to the other, they would catch him and eat him alive: fact! Travelers’ tales about ‘the blessed Ottocoronae,’ you’ve heard about the ‘Blessed’ — indeed, fellows are so filthy and crawling with lice a civilized man daren’t go near them. The Melanchlanae, do you know what they do, those supposedly oh-so-sage fellows in their long black robes? Eat their own dead is what they do! Fact! Filial piety, they call it. Ha!

  “I’ve been in places where one might perish with the cold if one stepped outside between autumn and spring, and I’ve been in places where the very houses are built of salt, and skin sloughed off and left a man looking and feeling raw and flayed. And one place, you know, near the Great Zeugma, richest toll bridge in the world, men are so pretty you’d think they were girls, and the women, O Apollo! the women are ugly as sows and have beards as black as yours: Facts! Facts, Master Vergil!”