Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series

by Avram Davidson

  And then he saw him. Him. Not them. A figure filthy even for this rat’s nest of filth, robed in rags ragged even for this ragged quarter. The face was so besmeared, the mask had even a sort of sheen or gloss upon it, and this cracked as the laughter lines responded to the chuckle. If this may find some folly at which to smile and sport, why may I not as well? he thought. And the thought welled up and out into a sound more like a snort of someone clearing a throat than into any sane man’s laugh.

  And Vergil’s slow turning ceased. And he looked full into the face of someone he had certainly seen before. And so in that second he recognized him. Said the outcast clad in outcast clouts, “It is your turn now to say it. And why say it not?” And, as Vergil, amazed, stood silent, the creature said it. “Wash.”

  • • •

  “O Apollo! Beadle! What brings you . . . here . . . so low?”

  As he had cried the word Beadle the one who sat before him in the muck formed by rain and dust and grime did not precisely spit but his dry lips opened along some thin, thin line of slime, and a sound he made, perhaps a word, “Peh!” And again chuckled. His face seemed to gleam with glee at the fools and follies of all mankind, the sons and daughters of Deucalion’s stones; and no more than stones, sticks: or things worse than useless. What upheavals in the schemes of things spun and woven, cut, by the Sister Fates — what wars, riots, what commotions, conspiracies, tyrannies, scandals, plots or ship-wrack, barratries of masters or of mates, decretals of exile, times toiling perhaps in quarries or in mines, what collapses outward or inward — what had brought him here?

  Said the beadle, “I am here that you be here. I saw it clear when first I saw you . . . there. Inescapable decrees, inscrutable, inexorable: and such, such piss-worth words. Had my pipe not droned you had not danced. Had I not fifed for you.” The lips now closed.

  Vergil murmured . . . something. He could not a half second later have repeated what he said, presumably it was a question. From behind he heard one of the voices of a moment before; it said, “Sissie summoned thee. And cruel Erichtho.” Again Vergil murmured. And now the other voice: “She our sister who asked either one favor too many or one too few.” And there sounded in that narrow space a far-distant echo of that voice among all voices, of she who had become but voice alone. As sounding from a thousand caverns.

  Or from within a bottle, stoppered, closed.

  • • •

  “ ‘Wheels within wheels.’ ”

  “What?”

  “Some Hebrew seer . . . or was it ‘a wheel within a wheel …’? Of no import.”

  “Is that a sieve?”

  “Is that a question for the Pythonissa at Delphi? Quaere. What sort of sieve? Responsum. Not the sort in which the suspected Vestal Virgin carries water for to prove her chastity….” The fellow took a handful of dirt, and, though the gods of hell knew there was dirt aplenty there, he had seemed just a bit selective, for his hand had hesitated, then moved on, before in a moment more dipping to scoop. The handful was sifted, dropped upon a heap in which dirty chicken feathers, bits of broken shells, twigs, and wisps and clots and pot-shards lay mingled. From out of nowhere the scarecrow figure produced three reeds, thrust them in between the fingers of Vergil’s right hand: “Close eyes,” said he. Vergil did, felt himself being turned around withershins once and twice and thrice (in his ears again, sight being sundered, the thum-thump-thum of the eternal anvils wearing out the hammers which beat beat beat) — “Bend a bit. Ah. Enough. Thrust your paw down. Open.”

  Vergil had but felt the reeds encounter the slightly resistant surface when the word Open came. Did this mean open hands or open eyes? — He opened both. The once-beadle of the Second Secret School in Sevilla was scanning the imprints, the three shallow piercings of the dirt atop the rubble-tip. There was no smile upon his face, no scowl, either; face expressionless as when he had held that middling office so far away, lower than the proctors, higher than the porters. “Fire, wind, and water,” he said; the same slight sound as his cracked lips parted.

  “What?”

  “Water, wind, and fire. No demand here in the web for the sovereign science of astrology, they none of them know when they were born. But dirt! the gods save us! how they know dirt! Geomancy, the doctrine of dirt! Ah, what fees it fetch me here!”

  Was the mummy-ragtatter japing again. “What do you do with the fees? Hoard them in a pot? — No, forgive me, I — ”

  “Wind, fire, and water. Thrice have I said so, once for each vatic hole. Follow.” The man moved off stiff-legged, lurching yet spry, the stinking winds seemed to bear some distinctive taint from him in addition. Follow? Why not? “ ‘Hoard them in a pot’? Ha-ha. In a pot, yes. Hoard? No. Hast ever heard of the fifth essence, the quintessential, of wine? of the art of estillation? of a pot-still? No. Not likely. Follow.”

  Things had changed. The weight, immense, was off Vergil’s chest and off his shoulders. Joy? Certain not. Things were merely as before . . . as far as his own inner self was, that was. But . . . somehow, other . . . things had changed. The lines were different. There was no longer, as he followed the figure (he had seen corpses exhumed that looked better), the nightmare figure which had once indeed extruded a nightmare as a snake extrudes its tongues, and done it simply (simply!) as a test; this sticklike stalking horror teetered along down lanes which had some semblance to geometry, from which the general scramble of the unclean canals district could not have been farther removed. Were they still in Averno? Had the way been gathered up, were they somewhere else? If so: where?

  “Ser Beadle — ” (“Peh!”) “Elder one, what mean you, ‘here in the — ’ ”

  They scrambled along angles strange and yet not without logic. He had not known and never would have suspected such a place as this in Averno . . . or, for that matter, anywhere else . . . and yet . . . and yet . . . was there not something familiar here? It nagged at his mind, but with no clamorous nagging.

  Suddenly they were somewhere else. Somewhere inside. Somewhere inside of something which was itself inside of something. Very suddenly this had happened. It was clean underfoot. It was neither dim-dank-dark nor bright-dry-light. Then they came to a wall and in the wall, not flush with the floor nor reaching to the ceiling, was a door; the door was made of bronze and the bronze was devoid of ornament and its surface was polished. It seemed to catch even the once-beadle by surprise, for he stopped short. He looked and peered. Squinted. A slight sound broke through his cracked lips. He said, but this time low and quiet, “Wash.”

  And this time he seemed to speak, indeed, to himself alone.

  The door opened, they entered, the door closed. There was a source of light high up, the air was cloudy — no. The air was steamy. They were in a small bath. Vergil was as suddenly glad there was space for them to bathe apart; and sluiced and soaped and sluiced and scraped and sank into his own small pool without lifting his eyes to watch the other. But in his mind he saw the filth coming off under the strigil like some roll of . . . no simile was supplied. But of a sudden, seeing the fresh clothing (he had not noticed it before) neat-folded in their recesses, and thinking shame to himself for (perhaps) having felt too much shame . . . and too little sympathy . . . for his former superior, in the man’s decay; so, abruptly, Vergil said, “Well does Homer speak well of the pleasures of the warm bath and the clean garment — ” And then he could have bitten his tongue.

  For the other did no more than to cite some other singer, with “ ‘Seven cities claimed blind Homer, dead, Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread.’ ”

  His once not-quite-pupil looked up. What more the older man may have meant by this perhaps too often quoted line, he wondered. But did not wonder long, for, very, very near to him he saw some others; and he was not surely certain he had seen all of them before.

  As, sometimes, the sky being clouded almost over, yet the moon is seen unclouded and in the midst of a wide circle where its light meets the clouds and superimposes upon them; just so, or almost s
o, in the midst of the clouds of steam there was an area quite clear of them. And in the midst of this stood sundry men, Armin amongst them; they bowed to Vergil. And he, naked as when the midwife washed him first in water and next in wine, bowed back.

  Said one, “We would ask the Lord Vergil if he would be kind enough, of his own mere grace and favor, to shake out the robes he wore when he entered.”

  Vergil, saying, “I am not ‘the Lord Vergil,’ ” complied.

  Said another, “We thank the Noble Mage, and further tax his condescendence by requesting that he raise his arms and turn round, rather slowly.”

  Vergil, saying, “I am not ‘the Noble Mage,’ ” complied.

  Said another, “Although we have doubtless asked of the Duke Vergil more than may be forgiven, still, we do venture to ask one thing more: Has he with him, upon him, within him, or anywhere accompanying him at present, any amulet and talisman? Or any item of wax, parchment or papyrus, metal, bone, stone, ivory, or any other substance upon which any sign, sigil, or symbol may be or might have been inscribed?”

  Vergil said, “I am not ‘the Duke Vergil,’ and the answer to your question is no. — “Duke, duke,” Mount Blanco holds the rank of duke, you might as well address your questions to the mountain as to me: better, I should think.”

  They bowed, and, in unison, thanked him; then, as though his last comment had not been made, then yet another asked, “Would the magister, magus, dux et dominus employ those arts and talents which are known to him and not to us, and endeavor to discover and ascertain if there might not be here along with him such things of such nature, the presence of which he may either have forgotten, or — ”

  Lips continued a moment more to move, but Vergil heard not what they said; he had gathered his forces within himself, deeply so, and then he sent them outward again, but slowly, and in a certain special way. Nothing. He drew them back, considered them, sent them forth again, again returned them. Again examined. Then relaxed. “Again, sers: no. And again I tell you: those titles which — But mind that not. I had thought I was merely entering a private baths. Am I about to enter a court upon some charge of lèse-majesté against the Emperor, his crown and staff, that you should seek and search after items that might harm him or the judges or unfairly provide me with some advantage against the cause of justice?”

  But this time it was Armin who answered. Saying, “It is not that they suspect you, against them. It is that they suspect others. Against you.”

  And Vergil — somehow, somewhat, humbled — said, “I see. I see. I see.”

  He turned to speak to these men. But the vapors had closed in. And next the vapors vanished. And the air grew cold. Another door had opened. And his strange companion said, “If you will take your things, let us enter the cooling chamber.”

  “This bath, then, was not that I might be refreshed, but that I might be examined,” Vergil said.

  No answer to this was made. And perhaps none was required.

  And after the two had cooled them, they dressed and moved on; and, though ever the way seemed to grow more narrow, they came into a broader place.

  There the same men sat before him, ranged in a crescent. He said, “I am listening.”

  For a moment it seemed that everyone was listening. But there was no sound, save the distant drip and tinkle of water from the frigidarium. Then one of them spoke; one who sat on the farthest right.

  “Doctor,” he began.

  Vergil felt an impatience which he attempted to restrain. He felt some sense of having gone through these experiences of modest denial before, and in another place, but did not try to recollect when or where. “Enough of these titles, my men. I will accept a simple courteous ‘ser.’ And no more.”

  “Ser.”

  Again the silence. Again, from not very close by, the drip and drop. Was it indeed water? For one single second he thought it was a water-clock, drip-dripping away the hours of his life; for another second he thought it might be the blood of a bull: They were deep down somewhere: Could the Taurobolium, the Mithraeum, be deeper?

  “Ser.” A second man spoke, the second from the right. “Ser, you have come here to encompass the death of the king.”

  Astonishment the most absolute swept over Vergil. And some chill fear. There came to him the account of how, every second year, the Archiflaman of Rybothe, distant even from the far-distant Pamirs, played at dice with someone chosen by lot to personate Death. The forfeit: the fate of Rybothe. And as the fate of Rybothe was far too important to be risked upon the cast of a die, the Archiflaman always played with loaded dice. “I ‘came here to — ’? What? I am on trial! What ‘king’? No, my men. Me sers, no, I assure you. What is this? It is quite false. No man’s death has — ”

  Some faint savor of some other conference (if such this was) he had attended here . . . but yet how different this tarrying silence (and these men gathered here) from the gross clamor of the magnates …!

  Then: “Cadmus!” cried Vergil, the word bursting from his startled lips. “It is Cadmus whom you mean! No — ”

  To say that their faces were calm was to understate. Their faces seemed fixed, frozen. Said the one seated third from right, “It is certainly Cadmus whom we mean. And we certainly see that you do not know. Then . . . But …” He turned first one way, then the other, looked at his fellows. “How can we ask him? If he does not know?”

  An endless moment passed. Then the fourth raised his eyes as though at something well above, then brought them down and, gazing straight at Vergil, said, “I do not know if my lord . . . pardon . . . my ser . . . I do not know if he has seen the rose.”

  Vergil’s eyes they were which now looked up, up. Sure enough, although the table that stood between him and them was such a small one it seemed pro forma, still: there was the form. A fifth fellow said, “My ser need not accept the constraint, the faith. The trust. He has but to say, and he will be taken, with all conceivable courtesy, to another place, whence he may find his way witherso he will. We ought,” he added, having briefly paused, “perhaps have pointed out the rose at the very first. But we have . . . we have had . . . much upon our minds.”

  There it hung, though how it hung he could not clearly see, and how this freshly blooming rose (he thought, almost infinitely briefly, of the famous “twice-blooming roses of Paestum,” dismissed it: the bush bloomed twice, but not the rose) came even to be hanging here in this city where no flowers bloomed and no birds sang, he could not imagine. No: He could imagine, but it required some exercise of imagination. And it would have, must have, required some exercise of arts other than mere gardening. The rose hung over the table and they sat around the table and so they were sitting sub rosa, underneath the rose.

  And the rose pledged secrecy. When it did not indeed pledge silence.

  Silence there certainly was, it was already springing from the situation itself, from those who, caught up in the situation, sat around the . . . almost . . . secret, the sacred . . . almost . . . table. And silence it was that spun round Vergil like a web. Who at length said, “Me sers, you know I have been brought here by the Very Rich City of Averno to perform a task. A compact unwritten subsists between myself and this city, and the agentry and polity of this city are the magnates. This you must all know. But there is something I do not know, and that is how far I may bind myself to secrecy — if that secrecy may also bind me to some action — or, for that matter, some inaction — against the magnates.”

  Silence. And the drip-drop of water. If water it was.

  And then the last of the men sitting across from him on the other side of the table said, “He does not know.”

  And, speaking once again in his turn, the first of them said, very quietly, very simply, and very tiredly, “Tell him.”

  Someone who had this while been standing somewhat behind Vergil, though at a slight angle, stepped forward. The air was flat and still. But it did not stink, there was no omnipresent beat and thump. Were they really in Averno? The one who steppe
d forward Vergil had known from some several years before. It only now occurred to him that never had he known the man’s name. He who had once been the beadle of the Second Secret School in Sevilla, so very far away, now gently moved his hand and slowly opened it and he laid one languid finger on the edge of the so small table. “Look, then, student,” he said.

  And in the polished surface of the table the student (and was he not still a student? was he not still learning? now, at this moment, even now?) saw himself running a race he had thought long forgotten by he himself and so (as so one thinks) by most of all the world: though of course most of all the world had never known of it. He recognized himself. He knew why the fear upon his face. He knew the trick whereby he had, if not indeed won the race, for there could be no one winner, had avoided being the one loser. He saw, though, that there was something different now. Deep in the polished surface of the table, deep below the table’s surface, he saw himself dodging, panting, turning here and turning there, and never ceasing to run — it had not been so, that way, at all — Wait. Was this the same race? One which he had already run? Or one which he was yet to run?

  (Behind, this time, whom to hide?)

  A race already run? A race yet to be run? Or one which he, though he had known it not, was already running.

  The table. Look, then, student . . . A man stood beneath an arch, outlined by light, though else was dim. A figure brutal, strong, and coarse, watching the approach of the runner with a steady eye. This one’s broad, blunt face had something of the look of an experienced gladiator, but there was in it no element of that caution akin to fear. And in his huge hands (huger, yet, his arms! his shoulders!) a huge hammer.

  Said the once-beadle, “Borbo is his name. A butcher is what he is. He stuns the oxen. And when they stumble, then he plunges in the knife.”

  And then Vergil saw the knife.