Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series

by Avram Davidson

  And then Vergil heard the voice. The voice never came from that butcher beneath the arch; it was toneless and dry and it was as though some clerk was reading something, one who reads a document whose contents are well known, yet need be read once more, before the signet is affixed. The voice had been speaking awhile before Vergil clearly made out words, the commencement of the line had been lost and he did not try to recover it…. one Vergil, a wizard, sorcerer, nigromant and necromant. From him the protection of the Laws and the Magnates of the Very Rich City is withdrawn, and he is proclaimed Outlaw. He may be duped, drugged, drawn, stabbed, strangled, stoned; he may be poniarded, poisoned, bludgeoned, thrust through, or cast down. It be licit that he be burned or bled or hamstrung or hanged…. And so the dreadful list, like a litany, ran on and on.

  And on …

  He was not aware of its stopping, but he was aware of its having stopped. And next he was wary and he was aware of someone saying to him, “But over you may be placed the power of the friends and councilors of Cadmus the King. And his and their protection may be yours. Twice sacred is he in his person and in his power; for, for one, he has been crowned a king and is thus on earth a reflection of the sacred kings of heaven and of hell; and for another, he is mad, and madness is like wisdom a gift of the gods. Averno is here. And the Roman Emperor is far away. And it may be that the Roman Emperor knows you not.”

  Likely it was that the Roman Emperor knew him not. It was most unlikely that any Roman Emperor would ever know him at all. Still, still, he was a Citizen of Rome, and could Averno withdraw from him the immense protection of that Citizenship? Why did he not inquire of them an answer to this question? Why did he instead ask an entirely other question? “Why do you say that I have come here to encompass the death of Cadmus?”

  “Because we have seen, as though in a vision of the night, Cadmus transfixed by an arrow. And we have seen that arrow to have been of your designing.”

  Vergil felt his lips open and throat and tongue move. He perhaps heard not, but in his inward soul he felt, louder, something, than the loudest clap of thunder. The earth moved and shook, and yet it did neither shake nor move. And on the table in front of him, whose polished surface mirrored nothing now, he saw the fallen, shattered rose.

  He saw the rose.

  • • •

  Out in the streets again, and feeling rather vertiginous, he asked, “Is there somewhere very near where I might for a moment sit?” No response coming, he looked around for his one-time beadle, saw him not. Saw no one else. No one behind him, that is. And no one at either side of the street. He saw no bench in an alcove; he saw no alcove. Neither was there so much as a doorstep or -sill. For lack of anything better, and rather than sit upon the street itself or squat upon his haunches, he leaned against the wall. It was all still so very odd — still, or, rather, again: the odd angles. The (he clearly realized this rather suddenly) absence of doorways . . . could he be in some certainly peculiar street consisting only of the back-ends of properties? It was not impossible, but that there should not be even a tiny door for the servants …

  For one moment more he was not even certain where the next corner was, so odd was the way the area was laid out, and then he saw some figure cross the street and vanish behind a wall; therefore behind the wall must be a corner. Suddenly his conjectures were swallowed up, as the details of that swift-passing figure came, by not quite afterthought, into his mind. It had been an armed man: What was such doing in Averno? — in any city, for that matter? — wherein, unlike the open countryside, only a soldier was, supposedly, permitted armed? It was possible that the man had some sort of license, a private watchman might obtain one — rather, his master might, on his behalf — but what was the weapon? A sword? Perhaps not. Certainly Vergil had observed a weapon. Ah, but the fellow had been helmed as well as armed! And a rather immense helmet it had been, too. This made no sense, no watchman would wear more than, at most, an iron cap. Had there not been something equally unusual about the way the man walked? — almost, stalked? Unusual, but certainly not unfamiliar. He had seen it, seen it a many times more than once, and now he recollected where.

  Vergil was by choice no great frequenter of the Games, “the Games were not what they were,” everyone said so. Whatever they were now, it was not to his own taste to go to them; but sometimes situations other than his own taste obliged him. That cautious, slightly stiff-legged stance or walk, that not-quite-crouch, relentless tread: yes. At one place on the sands stood . . . whichever. Toward him came prowling the other. The retiarius, perhaps, with his fisherman’s net and his trident for killing a great fish. Perhaps the gladiator was not a retiarius. Perhaps he was one of those who used the deadly short sword, Thracian-style.

  His, Vergil’s, giddiness, which had seemed for a moment better, was now worse. It was of a quite different sort than that which had afflicted him at the end of the secret meeting of the friends of the king; it was something quite different and something quite worse, and it had to do with the man whom he had seen —

  — was now, suddenly, seeing again: and nearer —

  — and now again crossing the street, again at an angle at which no street should be —

  — and nearer —

  — wearing the great Thracian helmet, and yet carrying over one arm the reticulated net, a part of it in one hand ready to cast over the one he stalked —

  But this was quite wrong, this was all quite wrong, it was much wronger than, merely, an armed man clearly not a soldier and within the city’s walls; it was wronger by far than a gladiator in full trappings walking in broad daylight down an open street. It was the trappings themselves were wrong, even though Vergil could still not determine the nature of the weapon, if sword, if trident.

  The retiarius would not be wearing a Thracian helmet. The Thracian would not be carrying the weighted net of the retiarius. What. What?

  Suddenly it became of immense, intense, of the utmost importance to know what time of day it was. If noon, all might yet be well; perhaps the man was another lunatic. Cadmus? No. Familiar . . . now Vergil realized the man had, at this last crossing of the street he stood in, seemed familiar. But Cadmus, no. What time was it? What hour of morning had he, Vergil, started out? How long had he been out? He cast his eyes all round about. His heart swelled, he felt cold. It might be before noon, it might be after, noon it could not be: There were shadows in the street, short ones, but that was of no matter.

  The man, armed, purposeful, seeking his intended prey, he in the Thracian helm, had of an utter certainty cast no shadow.

  Thracian! Thrax!

  • • •

  Vergil had turned and loped away. Where he found a corner, he turned, down that way he fled. When he found another corner, he turned therein and fled down whatever street he fled . . . and fled…. Much time he did not think, but he was, in some other way, engaged in something much resembling thought: he was counting. He was not at first aware that he was counting. But he had not even stopped counting when by chance he bethought him of something someone had said, someone else, who? it mattered not who, had said, “… here in the web …”

  Here in the web!

  Was it the name of this odd, odd area, section of the city? What else might it be? What had Thrax in hand, on arm, to cast over to entrap, before thrusting home the sword or trident (and it could not at all matter which)? A net. What was a net? A web. Those who spun, did they not often, also, weave? Weft and woof: what was weave but web? And all the while, in the back of his mind, at the bottom of his mind, he heard a thrumbling, a buzzing, a buzzing as of some gigant fly: and he saw the huge spider spinning, spinning, spinning, to entrap the fly: a web.

  And all the while, above, beneath, beyond these dread, dread thoughts, he heard a voice, slow and calm and steady, saying, Third right, back one, two left, left four, back thrice…. He stopped. He did not stop the thinking voice, he did not stop — even — moving: running it was he stopped. He kept on walking, but now he walked crab-st
yle, sidewise, so as to keep in sight both right and left. What weapons had he with him, to counter, if encountered, the Thrax face-to-face, armed with either sword or trident? He had his knife in its sheath: much good might this do him, save of course the Thrax slipped; the Thrax, the retiarius, as all and every gladiator, was trained to walk so as not to slip. It must be some other weapon, different, quite different indeed, on which he must depend. And he depended now upon his memory. And he drew it forth, as knife from sheath, as sword from scabbard. Third right, back one, two left, left four, back thrice…. There was more, of course more: but this was the key. He knew that now. It remained but to be for one full moment quite, quite calm, to act as though no one pursued him, and to reflect. And the one full moment he needed not, it became clear in less than that: Third right, back one, two left, left four, back thrice. The key opened the lock, the lock moved the door. He was in the one hundred and twelfth labyrinth, or maze, set down in the book called the Patterns of Parthenopius. He had studied them for years and years, had he not studied them a decade? Had he not, having learned them, every night gone through them all for one full passage of the larger sandglass, every single one of the labyrinthine mazes there delineated . . . gone through them in his mind, of course; merely he’d checked them with those in the book when he had done.

  Well. He had no book to check with now but he needed none. He followed the proper turnings. He did not run. He felt, by and by, safe enough to turn his back.

  But by that time he was out of the maze. Maze, labyrinth, web. Whatever Thrax had been designated to cast over him, Vergil was now beyond such casting. He was out of the web.

  As for what he was now in, why, that, though perhaps safer, was certainly something else indeed.

  • • •

  If he had indeed been, this last time, time just past, indeed been in Averno, he was not certain . . . in a way he thought he could not have been; though if not there, where? — this he could not say. But he was, of a sudden, in Averno now, and in such a quarter of it where even the populace itself, to say nothing of strangers, was always in danger — a glance told him that — immediately it was not violent, but certainly it was criminous, and stinking of evil and rot. What was there here in this low quarter to occupy the sullen folk who filled and swarmed in it? Why, here lay the thieves’ kitchens and the thieves’ markets and the thieves’ dens. Be sure (Vergil thought) that more than not the stolen items had been stolen from the strangers who came to the Very Rich City, whether they were themselves very rich or not, to trade. Or from their servants. Here, too, were the lairs of the poorest prostitutes, though it was too early for all but one or two of them to be stirring about for custom . . . if cupping a pair of sagging, withered dugs and leering from a window, as some wretched she was even now doing, could be called “stirring” — the one look at her face which he could not avoid convinced him that she was either imbecile or mad. “Syra!” she called out, crack-voiced. “Syra! Gypa! Hey!”

  And then as well in the winding ways he saw often man or woman squeezing lengths of goats’ guts in wash-buckets and basins full of liquids too murk and miry to term the process “cleaning”; and as often, and often right next to this, perhaps parted only by some chopping block, were pots of rank and rancid oil where shorter chunks of this delicacy were trying and frying, yielding smells as evil as the looks he had from those who flung their heads upward, their jaws outward, a gesture ugly in intent as aspect; the very offer to sell, an insult: “Sarsa! Hot tripa, cheap enough f’you!”

  Who in the names of all the gods of hell would want to buy any of the rubbish displayed . . . knives with broken blades, unmatched spurs and scraps of furs, wax-caustic portraits on boards cracked along the middle, shirts ripped down the back and stained with stains not only those of mud . . . and who mad enough to be tempted by hints of “Better stuff inside, boss”? Hints which, not taken, transformed themselves into filthy gestures, hoots of “Nabba! Nabba! Bugger-die!”

  Surely they did not any of them, with their Syra! Gypa! Sarsa! Nabba! imply that any of them particularly thought this stranger Vergil was a Syrian, an Egyptian, a Saracen, a Neapolitan; merely cant words for outsiders, were these. And, for parting gift, the sneak-slung stone.

  Vergil trod his way. Not that he was certain what it was. But there was a slight but quite discernible slant to the lane, and he believed that this, could he keep to it, would bring him eventually to the canal, whence he might surely find a way he knew, one back to a safer section of this city where little, indeed, perhaps nothing, was quite safe.

  As no man’s or woman’s eye may trace the lightning whence it cometh, whither it goeth, but that the pattern of it once flashed remains before the eyes, slowly changing and slowly fading, so Vergil retained something of certain looks flashed upon him, certain glances flashed past him by sudden lifting-up of low-cast-down gazes, of certain words he not-quite heard and certain gestures near covert — he knew that there were here in these outcast wards some who meant to seize or slay him . . . perhaps one first and then the other . . . and he perceived the humor of the close-packed populace toward him beginning to grow worse. Some scuffle between a two or three of them of a sudden breaking out and attention drawn away from him, Vergil slipped between half-hovels into an alley scarcely wide enough for dogs to couple in; the space-way led to a rubbly courtyard with broken walls, and there on the slimy ground he saw a part of his salvation. He seized up a cloak of rags so foul and fetid that not even a common beggar would have touched it save to thrust it aside with a stick; might, nonetheless, someone — anyone — lay claim to it? if only to make trouble? He, recalling the adage festina lente, made haste to remove his own robe slowly, and left it alongside of where the other had lain crumpled. A mute trade of sorts? So be it. Who knew who even now peered at him from this worse-than-jungle? — he got him into the thousand-times-worse-than-merely-wretched garb and made to muffle his face in its filthy folds. Some silent words spoke to him; under his under-tunic, invisible, still he had his purse, from it now he took the small rough-cast bell which Iohan had given him. He did not mean to summon a servant now — yes! he did! his servant was the fear his bell would summon by its sound; this, too, would serve him.

  And best it serve him well.

  Peering through the harsh and clotted cloth, he set his feet to walk without stumbling (though a slight stumble now and then he could not avoid: but it fit well one in his disguise, for he had bethought him suddenly to tear loose one jagged strip and wrap it, bandage-wise, about his left foot: some further detail to add to his mask) through the narrow places and the wider: see felon throng draw swiftly and not even sullenly apart! as he made his way, ringing; and save for that, in silence — scarcely he dared breathe through the ichorous clouts. If he opened his mouth to say so much as the word Unclean, he must have died…. In fear and unashamed to show it, they fell away and let him pass: not that a single one among them there pitied him nor would shrink to end his life with a well-thrown stone, but only that his body must then be needs moved: and none would dare move to move it.

  And calling to mind another fell occasion, he wondered which was worse sound? The hoarse, harsh murmur of the hippotaynes hunting, coming in their companies from the reeds, or the slow, sad clamor of the leper’s bell?

  Averno.

  • • •

  The canal at last having been reached, and seeing not far from its slippery barm the slop-shop of some seemingly respectable — for Averno, anyway, respectable — trader in used garments, with no ado he stripped off filthy robe and false bandage, threw both into the canal; replaced his bell, now silent, in his purse and from the purse drew what he considered a coin sufficiently worth to require no haggling; tossed it in front of the slop-seller. Who, as though it were an everyday matter to be doing business with a haggard man clad in underwear, quick-picked first one robe, hefted and considered it, tossed it down and selected another: threw it easily up and over. Vergil slipped into it, shook himself like a dog, once, twice,
let the garment fall into place; it seemed clean. It was a trifle too large, what did such a thing matter. He observed the trader draw the coin close with his great toe. A look not quite incurious passed between them. Value given for value. No one need know everything about anything. A distant strand, a filthy city; deeds, not words.

  Walking along now almost at ease, words to say came to Vergil’s mind. His mind immediately reminded him that these were not words for him to say, but words that to him had been said. Sissie summoned thee. And cruel Erichtho. To refer to the Cumaean Sibyl as “Sissie,” unless she was indeed a sister, this spoke either immense familiarity . . . or immense contempt; this last was impossible. It was unthinkable. Had the Sibyl a brother or brothers? A sister or sisters? Could the Sibyl of Lybya, the Sibyl of Sicily (this last, had he not been told had spoken to Cadmus?), be, indeed, sisters to she of Cumae? As for Erichtho. The name of this sorcerer was scarcely spoken even in “the woods,” and, even there, never but in whisper. (Oak trees by midnight. Fire, meal, salt. Diana. Moonglow Selene. Cat and hare — The Apulian fellow had known anyway some of that. He had not, though, known Thrax . . . and the gods knew through what night-tangle Thrax’s shadow now slipped . . . or on what errands.) Vergil strained for such scraps as he had heard . . . or, if not heard, then, somehow, however, had known without hearing . . . of Erichtho: some dim recollection or adumbration of a great battle…. Had there been a great battle involving, somehow, that name? Was there yet to be one? — And if him, Vergil, involving, how?

  Question there had come. But answer there came none.

  Some odd, odd sound seemed echoing, buzzing: He thought of the scene in his room that night. Thought absurd. As though she whose voice echoed as though from a thousand caverns forth could be confined in a bottle, like a fly! And yet, and so: suppose! Had it been so, it had been a sacrilege, or had it, would it? Had he not saved the fly’s life? A mental note he made, though sterner than as though graven on marble with iron, to take the bottle far from the spidery corner, and release whatever buzzed within…. And if so it were the Sibyl, what message? When no words spoken?