Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series

by Avram Davidson

  He paused and drew thirstily at his wine. He began to wave his hand while his mouth was still full. Then, having swallowed, said, “But this place may be worst of all. How near it is to the sunlight and the beauty of the Parthenopean Bay . . . how ugly it is, how it stinks, what a moiling mob of brutes the people are, one can scarcely breathe…. Well, well, I know they do needed work. And though they are savages and swine, they know well enough I’ve only to send one signal, and” — he blew an imaginary trumpet — ”down comes the legion. And that’s the end of that. — What do you have to tell me?”

  Slowly some thought had been working its way up through Vergil’s mind, came, at last, into clear compass. It both troubled and comforted him. “But surely, Legate,” he said, “even if this man Cadmus should be charged with lèse-majesté, he would draw the Fool’s Pardon?” But Casca was not concerned with that. He was thinking of beginnings, not of ends.

  A silence fell for long enough for Vergil to become aware once again of the din caused by the clashing of hammers at factory and forge and the thumping of mallets as the fullers expressed from the coarse wool cloth the urine in which it had been steeped to dissolve the suint. At length the legate said, “Tell me then . . . yourself . . . here . . . what …?”

  Vergil told him as much of his task as he felt he could without much wearying the man. Casca nodded, but it was a slow, fatigued, nod.

  “Not my sort of thing. I don’t know about such …” He failed to find his word, simply surrendered the attempt. “I know you are the — what do they call you in my signals here” — he rummaged among the documents on his desk — “ ‘Immensely Honorable’ — where is it? Ah, but I remember: Master, Mage, Leader, Lord. . . . What?”

  His guest had shaken his head, face confused between amusement, amazement, confusion, respect. “ ‘Master’ alone, Ser Legate. Nothing more. Ah, no.”

  But the half-dead face was obstinate. “Yes, I say. ‘Immensely Honorable …’ And Magister, Magus, Dux et Dominus. Where is it? Here is it.” He picked it up, read in a mutter, put it down with a shake of his head. “No. Wrong one. No. Right one. Here’s my monogram, just where I scribbled to show I’d read it. Master, Magus, Leader, Lord, can’t find it, tell you it was there; going out of my mind. Averno. Averno.”

  A moment he sat, blank, sick, silent. A servant appeared, poured more wine, more water, mixed it, poured the water into cups, removed the used ones.

  Vergil spoke — so he hoped — soothingly. “A mere flux in the light, Ser Legate. The light here, my ser, is very changeable. It no doubt affected the perception of the words so as to remind you of something you had read at another time. Pray dismiss it from your mind. This has happened to me too.” But this thought, once spoken, did not soothe himself. He repeated, nonetheless, “Dismiss it from your mind.”

  But there was that which did not dismiss so easily. Said the old proconsul, “There is something wrong of now, Messer Vergil. It is in the air, I smell it. The air is too thick and murk, I cannot see the matter clear. The hammers beat and beat and beat — somehow even so I almost hear it…. Whatever it is. It is not good. Not for Averno, not for Rome. And not for you, ser, and least of all for me. What can you tell me? Eh? What can you tell me?”

  But Vergil, though he felt more troubled, Vergil could tell him nothing more.

  • • •

  Though Vergil had already observed exceptions, he had observed the general usage in that the magnates of Averno usually found the cheap woven stuffs of their own manufacture good enough to wear themselves. He had learned that sometimes, though certainly not all times, they liked to swathe their wives and women in apparel the most gorgeous the world could afford; and for such times and purposes they bought such stuffs by the bolt. In one foreign-owned shop in Averno, where cloth of foreign weave was sold in shorter lengths than the magnates deigned to buy it, Vergil fell into idle talk with another outsider, one waiting for his doxy to make her choice of brightly colored kerchief-stuffs. The fellow was a sailing man, come thither to Averno to make purchase for his own private trade-adventure, one who had made many navigations into the farthest reaches of the Erythraean Sea; teeth whitely agleam in a darkly colored beard, he spoke of Tambralinga and the Golden Chersonese and an island at the end of that peninsula where lions come down to the beach-shore and roar at passing ships; and he spoke of M’Amba the daughter of the Serpent-King, and of all the rich merchantry of those vasty Indoo Seas and all their circumjacent coasts: spicery, perfumery, gems and pearls and golds; he was about to speak of more (and Vergil to ask of the honey-reed, the thought having sudden-come to him), but then the sailor’s wench had made her choice and he paid up and got them gone, leaving with no farewell; leaving Vergil to reflect a moment more on those bright images — and to make the transition, for a moment difficult — to the present place outside the shop: dim, dull, hot, stinking, cruel. And in a moment the merchant had queried him, and all else faded as he described his need for cloth that was at one and the same time translucent, pale, and strong. He left with it done up in a roll of unsized papyrus fit for wrapping though not writing; faint glimmering reflection of enchanted seas . . . then all was gone.

  For now.

  • • •

  Not even the plea of “being upon the public business of the municipium” could obtain leave for the lad Iohan to take water and leave or return via the canal; this was reserved purely (or impurely) for the magnates’ cargoes, for themselves, or for their servants. Vergil was vexed. Iohan was not. He shrugged. “ ‘Twould save but small time, master,” he said, “and ‘twill stink less by the road.” It was surely true that this single waterway of the Very Rich City received the effluent of the single cloaca which sluggishly flowed into it, when it flowed at all; and equally it was true that the overfill or overstow of such cargo as the crushed sea-snails from which a pseudo-purple dye was boiled added nothing like the scented offshake of a ship of spices to the canal. When the rains somewhat washed the cut cleaner, it merely stank abominably. So Vergil replied to Iohan’s shrug with one of his own, put money in the lad’s purse, repeated directions and instructions, and saw him off. Meanwhile —

  It was essential to begin making charts — in time, in space. As he was in effect measuring a circle, even if an immensely imperfect circle, it did not matter where he began. However, after considering it both ways, he concluded it would be easier to chart the matter of time, of times, if he had already charted the space and the spaces. The Etruscans and others, they charted the heavens above the earth; he would chart where beneath-the-earth broke through upon land between. He asked, therefore, for a map of the city. Was met with blank faces, slightly open mouths. Any map of the city, he said. In the Chamber of Magnates they said, What he means, a map? In the barrack room of the City Guard, they said, We needs no map. There was — one might not have thought so, but there was — a Civic Library; thither, briskly, Vergil went.

  The building was a sorry, a very small and very sorry, imitation and on a very minor scale, not of the one in Alexandria! but of one in some new-colonized town on a far frontier. Working from standard plans, a library would be erected the same as a bath and a temple and a this and a that. It was not well furnished with books, but the books took up all the space for books there was. An aging man, wattles wobbling, looked up from whatever shabby sheet he had been looking down on, and stared in amazement so great that Vergil wondered when last someone else had entered. “I have come about a map of the city,” Vergil said.

  The librarian hissed. He stood, he actually stood upon his toes and peered to see if someone was to enter following. No one was. Next he beckoned Vergil close, quite close, and — and still looking over Vergil’s shoulder — whispered, “Ser, my ser, I will give you what I have, I will give you all I have, I will give you three pieces of silver! —

  “ — if you will let me copy a map from you. I will even give you one piece of silver, good silver, old and pure, messer, old silver and pure and full weight and neither sweated
nor clipped, if you will merely let me see your map of the city! Eh? Do you want to see my silver? Here!”

  And stop him Vergil could not, see the silver he must, and so he did. And watched the man sag as he listened to hear that Vergil wanted such a map as much as he himself did: and had none. “Though I shall try and let you see, and . . . if I have time . . . and let you take a copy of my own, when I make it. And your silver you may keep.”

  Finally, in a sort of not-yet desperation, and acting upon what the librarian mentioned as a wild hope, he took the way to the tax office, where he was, reluctantly, and after several applications and armed with orders and permits, reluctantly allowed to copy a copy of the cadastral map. “Who knows who mayn’t begin to complain about taxes if he get a chance to see where his own property lines be drawn; ah, well!”

  And with this as his prime material he began his next stage of work. After he had made sketches, after he had checked and rechecked the sketches, next Vergil drew more orderly copies. He made grids. He brought to play all he had learned from Euclid and Apollonius and Ptolemy. He did not of course have to show latitude; it was enough if he was able to show scale, and — of equal importance — keep the same scale on each of the maps.

  Which is where, space having been established, time entered. And this took even more time than had the matter of space.

  Regretting the present absence of his servant, he had perforce to carry on by himself; with his wax-inlaid tablets in one hand and his style or stylus in the other (its well-worn handle, of nondescript wood, had by long usage almost become fitted to his hand; its iron point had been sharpened more than once, though its use upon the wax would hardly ever exemplify the old principle that “the anvil wears the hammers out.” Unceasingly, hour to hour, from day to day, he went about the city, questioning not the magnates alone but their foremen and servants and slaves; when the tablets were on both sides filled up, he transcribed the data into a book he kept always with him, and with the blunt end of the style rubbed out the former notes and rubbed the waxy surfaces smooth, then began again. He dragged up ancient hulks and wrecks of human refuse from gutters, from under the arches of the aqueducts where the cold water dripped upon them, from the ash-tips next to whose heaped hot refuse those without homes kept warm, he asked them,

  “Where were the flames when you worked?”

  “When did you work?”

  “Where did you work?”

  “How do you remember?”

  “How do you know what year it might have been?”

  Clear and crisp the questions might have been, but clear and crisp the answers could not be; not, considering, who was being asked. Much watered wine — cheap, bad, the worst, nonetheless welcome, nonetheless essential — was supplied, gulp by gulp; and much broken bits of bread — also cheap, and, as sometimes, if it was too stale, into the watered wine it went to soften — was supplied, before minds could bethink them and mouths mumble answers.

  “What other events happened in such and such a year?”

  “Do you recall having heard the number of the year of the Reign?”

  “You are quite sure that was the Emperor then?”

  “Who was consul?”

  “When your master’s works was moved because the flames ‘went sick,’ was there news of war? With whom, war?”

  “Heard you anyone speak, those years, you do not remember exactly which years, of prices rising or falling? Which prices?”

  Understanding of what he intended there was probably none, it was to none of their immediate advantage to figure what it might be or to guess at it; likely beyond capacity, for that matter. Interest? At first, none . . . save for the wine and the small coin and the bread. How did Vergil, how could Vergil know, that they were not merely inventing, filling a vacant mouth with lies in order to fill a vacant belly? Had he begun with them, those, the castoffs, he could not have known. By having begun with those whose interest it was he should know the truth — the magnates — he had therefore somewhat of a list to check against. And . . . among those at the bottom . . . or as near to the bottom as they could get without getting to the top of the bone-pit . . . it was curious to see how indifference of one would sometimes, often, increasingly often, change to interest when hearing what some other outthrown had to say —

  “Nuh! Nuh, master! Julius was Emp’ro’ when they move them work to South Gorge. Him’s wrong” — gesturing to another.

  And: “War! I say, was war!” was the other’s reaction, he having said nothing at all about war till then, and who ignored his possible error in re the name of the then-emperor. “War in Parth’a, was, ‘en they move them Magnate Muso work, South Gorge!” And his vehemence died off into a cough, a trickle of some inclement ichor oozing from his protruding and pendulous lip, down upon his trembling chin; nor was it wiped away.

  Whilst Vergil rapidly scrawled all this, yet a third, who till now had but stared vacantly, moving slowly round and round and gazing only at the refreshments, as though he knew not what substances they might be or what purpose to serve, this yet-a-third would crick back his head and look down his nose from wide-rolled red thick-rimmed eyes in order to add emphasis to what he had just recalled from the fragments of hell that made up his past — ”Feast! ‘Ey gived a feast! T’Big Slave ‘e comed out an’ ‘e gived us each a piece o’ meat!” (He repeated this memory of a phenomenon.) “A why? . . . piece o’ meat . . . big as . . . big as my hand! A why? . . . T’Big, ‘e say, master gived a feast wit’ Consul Livio, come from Rome. As we ‘feated t’Parth’ans! Oh, whudda ‘feat we gived ‘em! By ‘Cbatan’! So, yeah, uh . . . uh …” The light of his recollection dimming fast, he turned to the stranger who had quickened it. Something else seemed now about to emerge. Vergil waited, marveling much that after — how long? twenty years? twenty-five? — the memory of a dusty battle on a distant frontier should remain in the mind of this human ruin because he had received, of the leftovers from a feast in joy of it, a piece of meat as large as his hand.

  And as he waited to hear what else be forthcoming, the remembrancer said, “Master . . . ‘as y’ got a nub o’ garlic witcha?”

  This modest relish Vergil was obliged to disavow, but gave the yet-a-third his dole, and then scribbled a line or two more in the fragrant wax. Eventually this might emerge as Fires at Magnate Muso’s works diminished, requiring said works to remove to South Gorge; Julius was Emperor: check year of Livio’s consulate with defeat of the Parthians at Ecbatana; and, Fires in South Gorge; and, Muso’s Works — where previously? . . . And so on. And so on. And as for those who might not remember the names of monarchs, consuls, wars, defeats, of foes in Asia Magna — or who, as likely, had never known — it was useful to have learned, from some scrap picked up by the dripping waterbridge, some incident that had burned like fire into even the most eroded mind; to be able, thus, to inquire, “Was this before or after Vitolio murdered his wife, his daughter, his steward, and his son?”

  • • •

  Presently Vergil was to take out the carefully prepared translucent sheets and to draw grids great and small upon them, to make his designations, and to make them in the heaviest and darkest of inks, that prepared from scuttlefish, fashioned after the manner of India. And when one sheet was placed upon another, what lay beneath would be (when desired to be) visible even through what lay on top. And so eventually he would have his master map prepared, and painted in sundry colors.

  And he would point.

  And he would show.

  • • •

  But before that time.

  Vergil was pleased to see Iohan return well before the end of the time he had been prepared to wait without worrying. The mare (Vergil was pleased to see her, too, and she returned his pat with a nuzzling that seemed to show that she was pleased as well, had not forgotten him, and — But before he could quite recall what else it had seemed to him that she seemed, he observed her quite laden down with close-woven basketry; even they were stacked upon the saddle; and Iohan had arr
ived on foot, with a story as well.

  “Now, master, certain you suggested that the matter might best be tooken care of by such as hunt truffies, and so it might. Might be tooken care of, that is. But I have learned wisdom from you, and — ”

  They were in the yard behind their lodgings; Iohan had swept it clean even before Vergil arrived to look. Who now said, “Flattery is not always wisdom, and I hope you have not learned it from me — ”

  The boy merely patted his own curly pate, and said on. “It came to me mind, ser, as truffles are rare, which same reason is one why’m they costly. Truffles are rare, and rarer are the swine as hunts ‘em. And it do follow as rarer yet, the ones as leads such swine on leash. Whereas common swineherds of common swine be . . . well . . . common. Numerous, as you might say. Therefore.”

  Once again, that therefore! But the fellow had reasoned well.

  The fellow now carefully spread out a clean and wide cloth of coarse weave on the ground of the yard, opened one of the baskets tied with wisps of straw-grass he must have braided himself and, reaching in a hand, brought out a quantity of loam and leaf mold and broken twigs and shells, which he loosely but carefully emptied. “You have been in the beechwoods, then!” — Vergil.

  “Aye, ser master. And” — he gestured to a bale of baskets of a different weave — ”in the chestnut woods as well. And on t’other side of the she-beast be evidence I were in the oaks, too: Where there was mast, I went on master’s business. I hasn’t sense enough to know as there mayn’t be them small creatures in a numerouser quantity, even, in other woods and groves. All as me mind say to me was, if no swine-food on the forest floor, no swineherds, either; and so what sense nor profit for me alone to stoop and squat and pick the fallen twigs up, and leaves and such, in hopes of plucking here a salmandel and there a salmandel…. Hark!” Vergil looked up, listened — nothing unusual. Was Iohan’s hark! like Iohan’s therefore: a usage peculiar to himself? Not quite. “Hark, ser, as what a Sar’cen merchant says to me as I rides upon me way. ‘What has thee there in them baskets, oh son?’ I says, ‘Salmandels, but same is not for sale.’ — He laughs a-scorn, says he, what he wants with sammandal chicks? ‘Sammandal.’ Iohan chuckled at the Saracen’s accent. “And ‘chicks’! He says, what you mayn’t believe, ser, save I tells it you, he says the sammandal (as he calls they) be birds! A four-leg’d bird? So he claim. But he haven’t time to raise they from, as he figure, chicks, the baskets being so small; they need be bigger or their hides ben’t worth the taking for to make sandals as will cross fire. What’s he call such a skin? A bestos. Well. Iohan twisted his face and his brows into an expression of more than mere incredulity, of — almost — concern; reverted to the immense oddity of the Saracen’s notion. “But . . . a bird!”