The Phoenix and the Mirror

by Avram Davidson

  After a moment she said, her words now not even a whisper, but a breath, “Then come, my bridegroom, and let us celebrate the wedding.”

  Dim as the room was, it seemed to grow suffused with light, light which turned to color: the pink of a dawn which never was on land, the rose of a sunset which never was on sea. The colors began to ripple slowly . . . slowly . . . in measured, steady change, around and around, in a circle of change and a cycle of constancy. Cornelia lay beside him, he knew that with a joyous knowledge so much greater than anything he had ever known before. Cornelia lay in his arms. Yet, and he was aware of no confusion, no discrepancy, Cornelia sat somewhat before and above him on a sort of throne, naked and in profile, grave, sweet, serene, solemn and beautiful. Her nipples and breasts were like those of a woman who had never borne a child. Light rose-colored waves broke slowly and softly into spray and beat upon the base of her throne and the globes of the Two Earths revolved beneath her bare and outstretched arm. He saw her and he knew her as the Queen of all the World. All remained the same, everything simultaneously changed. He saw her as a maiden of the green north forests, with her hair in plaits, and with the archaic smile upon her lips. She played high strange entrancing music for him on curious instruments. He saw her young and he saw her old, he saw her as a woman and he saw her as a man. And he loved her as all of them. In every speech and language he read the words, Everything is Cornelia and forever, and, Always more . . . Always more . . . Always more . . . Every touch and every motion was joy, was joy, joy, joy, everything was joy . . .

  As a great wind shakes the fruit upon the tree, ripe and rich and sweet; as the wind seizes hold of the field of grain, making the full ears tremble and await the harvest; as the wind, strong and tumultuous, drives the ship ahead of it straight as an arrow toward the harbor . . .

  And then, even as the fire blazed up fiercely upon the hearth, it vanished. And there was nothing but the cold and the darkness.

  Vergil cried out in shock and pain and anguish.

  “Where is it?” he cried. “Witch! Sorceress! Give it back to me!”

  Cornelia said nothing. He could not move. He watched her as she briefly opened the palms of her hands, and instantly closed them again, with an almost involuntary smile of triumph. The swift glimpse showed him the tiniest naked simulacrum of himself, pale as new ivory, passive as pallid; then, even in that short shaveling of a second, even that ghost of color faded from it. Tiny, translucent, a mere shape, a shadow, a fraction . . .

  “Give it back to me!” He lunged forward. He fell back, as she pressed her palms together, fell back with a scream of anguish, lay, sprawled inertly, upon her naked flesh; and she moved from him, contemptuously, unseeingly, with her naked legs, and he fell from the couch onto the floor. She cast one long and level and totally impassive look upon him. Then she was gone. And Tullio was there.

  “Get up,” he said. “Get up, Vergil Magus, and dress. And then go from here and into your house and begin the work of making the magic mirror, the virgin speculum. You are still as much magus as ever — ”

  “You are wrong,” he said, dully. “And it wasn’t necessary . . .”

  “Even though you are no longer as much man as ever — If I am wrong, if you are not as much magus as ever, being no longer a full man, then this is your problem and none of ours. If there are things of science and of sorcery now beyond you, then let this be a goad to your flesh not to slacken in the task we have set for you. Do not think, though, to persuade me, that this task is one of them. I know better.”

  “What do you call this which she took and which now I have and hold? Not the ka, and not the ba and not the — it does not matter. I have the thing and so I do not need the name. It is one of your souls, that is enough. Without it you are only part of a man. You will never be complete without it. You will never know the flesh of women more without it. Do my work, and I return it to you. Refuse — fail — I destroy it. Tarry — I punish it. Dally —

  “But,” he said, regarding him without passion and with utter certitude, “I do not think that you will dally.

  “No, no, my Magus. I do not think that you will dally.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE STREET OF the Horse-Jewelers lay in the older quarter of Naples, but was wider than many of the streets there. This may have been the reason it harbored the trade it was named after — those wanting the ornaments of which no horse or mule or ass in Naples was ever seen entirely devoid: necklaces of great blue beads to ward off Evil Eye; emblematics of brass polished to a high shine (crescents, stars, hands-of-the-Fay, horns-of-Asmodeus, sunbursts, and scores of others); woolen and even silken pompoms and tassels in a dozen dazzling colors; and those curious objects set to ride like tiny castles or attenuated towers between the animals shoulders; to say nothing of bells in all sizes and shapes and tones, and even drops of amber for the mounts of the moneyed — those having business in the street called The Horse-Jewelers required space for their mounts, their teams and wagons when they had any.

  There was no place wide enough to turn more than a single horse, not even in the broad place by the Fountain of Cleo, but the street retained enough width all the way through to drive into Kings Way. A lorimer named Appolonio had his business a half flight up from the Piazza of the Fountain; and on the street side of the same building, in the basement, was the wineshop officially entitled The Phoebus and Chariot, but generally called The Sun and Wagon. When Vergil as a younger man had passed through Naples from his native Brindisi, en route to study at the Academy of Illiriodorus in Athens, the three upper stories had been let each to single sublessors who filled the rooms with what tenants they liked — journeymen, whores, astrologers, waggoners, unsuccessful fences and even less successful thieves, poor travelers (such as students), menders of old clothes. So it had been in those days, so it still was; save that now, on the roof, in a hut of rubble and rushes, a madwoman dwelt quite alone save for fifteen or twenty cats.

  Up the steps of the house adjacent came the same man (older now, beard still black as tar, dark of skin, gray-green of eye, and greyhound-thin) at sunset this day. Of all the houses on the street, by this one alone no one loitered, no one rested, no one begged, or ate supper out of a handkerchief or nuzzled a street wench or crouched fanning a charcoal brazier on which cheap victuals cooked for sale. No little boys paused to piddle or scrawl things on the temptingly smooth and clean pale yellow plaster of the walls. In a niche in the wall on the left-hand side, three steps from the bottom, was a brazen head; and, as the man in his slow and painful ascent trod upon the step level with it, the eyes opened, the mouth opened, the head turned, the mouth spoke.

  “Who goes?” it demanded. “Who goes? Who goes?”

  “He who made you goes,” the man said. “And will enter.”

  “Enter, master,” said the brazen head. The door at the top began to open.

  “Guard me well,” said the man, not pausing (but a grimace twisted his face); “as ever.”

  “Thus I hear and thus I tell and I will always guard you well.”

  “As ever,” the brazen head replied. The heavy voice seemed to echo somewhere: ever . . . ever . . . ever . . . The eyes rolled — right — left — up — down — the mouth muttered a moment more. The mouth closed. The eyes shut. For a pace or two, the man staggered.

  The man walked slowly down the hall. “My bath,” he directed; adding, after a moment, “My dinner.” Bells sounded . . . once . . . twice . . . the soft chimes died away. He pressed his palm upon a door showing, in a relief, Tbbal-Cain working in metals and handing something to an awed Hephaestus. The door opened. Somewhere, water had begun to splash. The room was lit by a glowing globe of light upon a pilaster of marble of so dark a green as to be almost black — “dragon green,” the Phrygians called it.

  He moved to the first of the other pilasters which ringed around the room and lifted a helm of black enameled work which fell back on golden hinges, disclosing another glowing globe. A voice from one side; “I f
ound that too many lights were diffusing the reflections of my inward eye, the one which lies behind my navel, so I covered them.”

  After a second, the voice said, in a tone of mild surprise, “Greeting, Vergil.”

  “Greeting, Clemens,” Vergil said, continuing his slow round until every light shone unhampered. He made an effort. “I know that very sensitive eye which lies behind your navel. It is not light per se which inflames it, but light which shines through the goblets in which you have captured the fifth essence of wine . . . before imprisoning it, for greater safety, also behind your navel.” He sighed, stepped out of his clothes and into his bath.

  The alchemist shrugged, scratched his vast and tangled beard, made rude and visceral noises. “The quint’ essentia of wine, taken judiciously by a man of superior physique and intelligence, such as myself, can only aid reflection. I must show you some notes pertinent to this point in the commentary which I’m making on the works of Galen. Also — fascinating! — my invaluable discoveries anent his prescription of flute-playing as a cure for the gout — the Mixo-Lydian mode, tonally . . .”

  Vergil continued to bathe, all absence of his usual zest in this seeming to escape the alchemist, who, having demolished to his own satisfaction all recent galenical research (particularly that of the Arab Algibronius), suddenly bethought himself of something else; smote the conical felt cap atop his mass of curly hair.

  “Vergil! Have you ever heard of a metal with a melting point lower than lead?”

  Vergil, pausing briefly in his ablutions, said, “No.”

  “Oh . . .” Clemens seemed disappointed. He said, “Then it must be an exceptionally pure form of lead, sophically treated to remove the dross. I’ve seen only a few beads of it, but it melts in the heat of a lamp wick, and if a drop falls on the skin it doesn’t burn . . . remarkable. . . .”

  He fell into deep thought. Vergil emerged from his bath, wrapped himself in a huge square of soft white linen, and (quickly suppressing a shudder) crossed over to a table and seated himself. The top rolled back, the inside rose slowly, lifting a covered tray. Vergil made a start at eating, but his hands began suddenly to tremble and he clenched them upon a quaff of strong, sweet, black beer, and bent his head to sip from it.

  Clemens gazed at him for a while, a slight frown passing over his face. “I take it, then, that you met the manticores . . . and escaped from them.”

  “No thanks to you.” Yes, he had escaped them . . . the brief and bitter thought came to him, Perhaps it would have been better if he had not! He muttered again, “No thanks to you . . .”

  Clemens thrust out his lower lip. “You wanted information about the manticores. I gave you the best information available, namely, that they are best left alone. Anything else would only embroil you more deeply, more dangerously.”

  Vergil pondered. The time was passing as if this were any ordinary night succeeding any ordinary day. Yet, what else was there to do? Reveal all to Clemens, entreat his immediate aid? He shrank, with all his nature, from the former; the latter could be, for many reasons, productive of nothing. He recalled his own words to Cornelia; You do not know the problems involved . . . it might well take a year . . . And, echoing louder and louder in his mind: I have not the year to spare!

  A year. A Year! — And yet, God knows, if the year were to have been spent with her — !

  “Well, never mind for now,” he said. “Someday you’ll want something from me. I’ll go back down below and get what I know is there. It has to be there. And I have to have it, for the Great Science. But I’ll wait, if I have to.” And he did have to! “Meanwhile, Clemens, here’s a conundrum for you.”

  “Who is it that has a villa in the suburbs, speaks our tongue like a Neapolitan, dresses like a foreigner — but with a strip of purple on the border of the robe?”

  Again, Clemens snorted. “Is that your idea of a conundrum? Cornelia, of course, the daughter of the old Doge, Amadeo. She married Vindelician of Carsus — good-looking boy, not very much else, who was making the rounds of the minor courts, playing the exiled claimant and all that.

  “Doge Amadeo didn’t think much of him, but Cornelia did, so they were married and the old man gave him a villa in the suburbs, plus a few Oscan and Umbrian villages to lord it over. Then the actual King of Carsus died of a hunting accident — ‘accident,’ huh! — and his twin sons soon had a nice little civil war going for the succession. Mind if I just taste one of these squabs? You don’t seem to care for them.”

  Vergil left the table to consult his map of the Economium. Clemens continued the story and the squab. The claimants so ravaged the country that the Great Council of Carsus met in secret and appealed to the Emperor, who, suddenly reminded of Vindelician, supplied him with three cohorts, and a councillor called Tullio and sent them off to “restore peace and commerce, suppress brigandry, and allow the smoke from the altars to rise unvexed.”

  The twins met under a truce to discuss joint efforts to put down the invaders; but Tullio, in the name of Cornelia (according to Clemens), sent each of them a confidential message urging him to slay his brother — after which Cornelia would betray Vindelician, marry “the rightful king,” and, presenting the Emperor with an accomplished fact, obtain his support and favor. The scheme worked out perfectly. The twins fell upon one another, inflicted fatal wounds, and their leaderless armies capitulated to Vindelician, who had reigned without opposition, Tullio doing the actual ruling, for the rest of his life.

  Vergil turned from his map. A dull tale of a dull country, and one which told more of Tullio than Cornelia. Carsus was a landlocked and mountainous country of no great extent, no great resources, and no great interest to him.

  It mattered little, after all, where she had learned the cunning of the evil art practiced by her upon him. That she had learned it, used it, was all-sufficient. He did his best to throw off a painful weariness which no sleep could assuage while he stayed in his present, deprived condition. He had heard of men continuing to feel pain in an amputated limb; now he knew how it must be. And yet, what had passed just before had been so glorious, so indescribably beautiful. . . . So indescribably false. Everything is Cornelia, and forever. Always more, always more. . . .

  “Why,” he asked, “is she back at her villa here?”

  Clemens, having finished his story and the squabs, belched, wiped his fingers on his tunic. “She’s a widow, that’s why. And by the law of Carsus, no royal widow, unless she’s a queen regnant — which Cornelia, of course, isn’t — can remain in the country for fear of her engaging in intrigue. Damned sensible of the Carsians, say I. Tullio, of course, was retired on pension. Bides his time, I have no doubt.”

  Vergil listened without comment, gray-green eyes expressionless in dark, dark-bearded face. His hands wandered, as if independently, to the case of books set into his great table. The table was circular and revolved at the touch of a hand, from right to left. At its center, three tiers high, was a cabinet which revolved with equal facility from left to right. Thus the immediate necessities of several current projects, as well as standard needs such as the map, were always at his fingers’ ends.

  The case of books formed part of the inset cabinet. There were scrolls of one staff, scrolls of two staves, scrolls made of a single long sheet of parchment and requiring no staff at all; there were codices — books made up of single sheets of papyrus and bound in covers — books written in curious tongues of the Nether Orient and upon a curious material unknown to the Economium, pressed together between ornately inscribed boards; and “books” which were so only for lack of any better name to call them: scratched upon dried leaves, incised on split twigs, painted upon bark and carved into thin slabs of wood . . . and, of course, the notebooks of ivory and ebony and beech, insides inlaid with wax for the scratchings of his stylus, in haste or with deliberate slowness.

  His hands rested on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, and lay inert.

  Vergil said, “No . . . it isn’t here. I shall have to go to
my library.” But he did not move. A numbness so cold and deep that it almost stilled the insistent pain of loss (of Cornelia — of manhood — of Cornelia) came upon him as he realized how nigh to impossible was the task he was bound to perform. He repeated, mechanically, “I shall have to go to my library.”

  Clemens raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Why bother? I am here.”

  The faintest of faint smiles touched his host’s lips. The numbness began to fade. “I suffer your boundless arrogance,” Vergil said, “only because it is so often justified. Yes, my Clemens. I see that you are here. The question is, why?”

  On its pedestal a smaller replica of the brazen head in the niche in the outer stairway now opened its lips. A sound, repetitive, and hollow as a drumbeat, came from somewhere inside it. Dull, insistent, it would eventually force itself upon Vergil even in his deepest revery; and it was designed to do so.

  “Speak,” he said now. “What?” As though he cared.

  “Master, a woman great with child. She would have a nostrum for a good delivery.”

  Ignoring a snort from Clemens, Vergil said, wearily, “I have none. Tell her if she wants a nostrum to go to Antonina the Wise-Woman. Tell her, too, that if she wants a good delivery she should go neither to Antonina nor any other wise-woman. Have you heard?”

  “I have heard and I will tell and I will ever guard you well . . .” The voice died away.

  Clemens said, scornfully, “Now that instead of being recognized as a piece of minor common sense of which any properly educated child should be capable — will be spoken of in every house and hovel in the Dogery as if it were a paradox as heavy with wisdom as that imbecile slut is with child.”

  “For one who is in so little practice among women as you are, you have a remarkably poor opinion of them.”

  The alchemist picked up a stylus and thrust it into his poseidon-heavy poll of curls. “That is why I am in so little practice among them, perhaps,” he suggested, scratching. “However . . . as to why I am here. I came thinking you might know something of antimony. I remained to meditate. I remain, still, because I am full of food — as well as knowledge — and hence, for now, inert.”