The Phoenix and the Mirror

by Avram Davidson

  • • •

  Clad as were his mounted companions of the day in a loose green robe and a cap tied under the chin lest swift riding dislodge it, Vergil laid aside for the moment his curiosity concerning the Viceroy’s words, and sank gladly into the rich and ceremonial activity. For the quest as such he had no particular taste or relish, but it was something new and therefore something to be considered with interest. And, most of all, the labor and concern of it made his incessant sense of loss and woe almost forgotten.

  “Lymerers,” Count Phoebus called from his cream-colored horse, “lay the dogs on the fue!”

  “Ho may, ho may, hole, hole, hole!” cried lymerers and berners and fewterers. The dogs spread out, lymehounds and brachets straining and sniffing, alaunts peering — suddenly the hounds opened and cried challenge, belling and pulling. The chacechiens cheered.

  A huntsman came running up, cried, “Trace and slot!” and threw himself down on the ground and measured. Then jumped up with a look of chagrin, holding up two fingers. A groan, and shouts of “Rascal!” and “Folly!” — a hart below the age of warrant — and the company moved on. Almost at once, however, the eyes of the alaunts caught what the noses of the hounds had missed, again the huntsman flung himself down to measure the newfound tracks . . . and this time scrambled to his feet, beaming, holding up four fingers.

  “Four! Four! A warrant of four!”

  The slot was four fingers breadth in width, one more than the three needed. “Unharbor and imprime!” cried the Captain of the Chase. The dogs pressed forward on the trail, the footmen and horsemen followed — there was a shout, a crash, and “the great, grass-fed stag,” his head crowned with wide-spread antlers, rose and reared from his harboring and bounded forward and away.

  “There he goes! There he goes! Ecco, ecco!”

  Two notes were sounded on the horn for the unharboring, three (by Doge, Count, and Sergeant, in turn) as the first relay of hounds was uncoupled, and four — by the Sergeant alone — as the hunt burst into full motion. First the stag, flying effortlessly with his head well up, down the velvet corridors of trees and turf, behind and well behind him the first relay of hounds, the brachets and alaunts; then the horsemen, Count Phoebus’ long golden hair whipped by the wind, Doge Tauro crouched upon his black stallion with his knees and elbows out, the Lady Cornelia as secure upon her side-saddle as if it were a seat in her garden (and as grave, as lovely, as indifferent); then lymerers, berners, hounds held, all others.

  “Cerf! See cerf!”

  “See staggart! See stag! See cerf!”

  It had been observed that the stag was not sole, but was accompanied by two younger harts — staggarts or brockets. “Rascal, folly, and herd!” was the cry, and, “Emprime the esquires” — the lesser, attendant deer — ”Make the rascals void!” The esquires were separated and sent away, the great stag singled. The fewterers cried, “Hark back, hark back, so how, so how!” and the chacechiens cracked their supple charcions and began to whip at the few young hounds who had parted to follow the folly; either this or the sounding for this purpose of the trururu, trururu, truru-truru of the recheat upon the horn drew them back in line.

  “Forward, sirs, forward!”

  “Avaunt, avaunt!”

  “Here how, friends, here how-suavely, my friends, suave, suave!”

  “Ecco, ecco, ec-co-o-o!”

  And again the trururu, trururu, truru-truru of the recheat, the belling of hounds, the thudding of hooves, wordless cries, the wind . . .

  Yet, still, the great red-brown stag ran with his crown of horns up and back, ran so well and so well ahead that he had time for a moment to pause and turn and look, standing at gaze. Then suddenly he bounded off again and was lost to sight as he harbored again in the covert.

  And the horn blew the questioning notes of the seeke.

  • • •

  Seeing the pavilion at the stable-stand off to the left, Vergil left the quest and rode cross-park to the place — the stabling station, as it was called — which twice required keepers to undo nets and move blinks to let him pass. Sooner or later the stag must go by the “station”; the course was so arranged. The hounds of the vaunt-relay waited there, and crossbowmen ready to be called if needed at the morte. Outside the sun was high by now, and hot; within the pavilion all was cool and dim and green herbs of fragrant scent were strewn upon the floor and the walls were green with fresh-cut boughs; there was fruit and cooling drinks and couches with silken cushions.

  And there was Queen Cornelia and the Viceroy, too.

  “Sensibly done, Lord Magus,” said he, breaking off some secret-seeming, sibilant discourse with the Queen and coming forward to greet him. “For my own part, if I had followed the hounds much longer I believe I would have begun to bay. Enough of that. It amuses the idiot aristocracy and keeps them too busy for intrigue, conspiracy, sedition, treason — in short, art — if one may so term it — substituting for nature and to the benefit of everyone. Except, of course, the stag. His fate, if I may quote that irascible Israelite, Samuelides, ‘is predetermined and exact.’ Let him run wheresoe’er he will, however swift, however slow, he cannot escape.”

  Cornelia looked at Vergil, and, for the first time, her look seemed timorous. He spoke first. “It was not necessary,” he said. “Not in any way. I would have helped you anyway. I thought you knew that. I thought that, however small a portion of your heart I had, you would have known that much.”

  She shook her head swiftly, swiftly. And in a voice so low he barely heard, she said, “My heart belongs to someone whom I dare not see . . . As to the rest of it, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand, no, not at all. I’m sorry. But I can’t undo it, things have to take their course now.”

  “You saw me naked and afraid. How you must have despised me.”

  Her eyes protested. Her lips denied. “I cherish your friendship and respect,” she said. “I hope I haven’t lost them forever. But I was powerless to prevent what happened.” Her gaze, her thoughts, wandered, she seemed to look upon strange seas and shores. “No man holds me long, save one. I would do anything for him . . . anything . . . except the one thing he wants . . .” Vergil’s mind asked, Tullio? And almost at once answered, No; asked, Who? but had no answer.

  A dish clattered. Cornelia’s head snapped up. She looked at him directly. “I am sorry,” she said. “But the mirror must be made.”

  The Viceroy had moved to a table farther away and there busied himself. He heaped a basic with choice fruit, filled a goblet with snow-cooled drink, brought them to Vergil, and drew up a seat opposite the small table. From the golden case in the bosom of his robe he took a small, jeweled knife and began to peel and quarter a pear.

  “The ignorance, the obduracy, sage, of the provincial ruling class of the present time, is hard for the truly sophisticated mind to grasp. I wince to reflect how many scores of thousands of ducats go into the annual maintenance by this Doge of his hunting preserves, his parks, his forests, his warrens and chases. And yet when it comes to paying the very moderate costs levied for his share of the upkeep of the Imperial roads as they pass through his own realms, why — Jove defend me! — if I’ve ever heard such bellowings and bleatings!”

  Vergil said, cautiously, “Roads, Your High Excellency, are the very veins and arteries of the Empire.”

  Something flashed in the Viceroy’s eyes, and his face seemed about to open. Then it settled back into its accustomed lines again. And his voice, when he answered, was equally and noncommittably cautious. “Indeed, this is so. You can easily understand, then, Ser Doctor, how important it is to the peace and prosperity of the Empire and its allies and confederates — we can say of the whole Economium, the western civilized world — that our roads remain open.

  “Of these the Great High Road is certainly not the least in importance. If so important a traveler as the Lady Laura, the sister of the confederate King of Carsus, cannot travel this road in safety, then who can? Brigandage cannot be tolerated. Somewhe
re on that road is a place which spells danger to all of us. The Emperor — yes, himself, the August Caesar — wants to know where. And he desires to know soon. Now, sir. We depend upon you, on your art and science, to find this out for us. We would not incite your just contempt with talk of bags of ducats, or the like. It is by no means certain that you lack anything which Caesar can supply. Still . . .”

  He paused. He smiled. He shrugged. “It is by no means certain that you do not.” He passed him the plate of peeled fruit. Vergil took it, put one of the pieces in his mouth. It was cool and sweet and full of juice. The noises of the hunt, of the horn, came dimly to his ear, muted.

  Presently he said, “Well, Viceroy, I should be a fool if I did not keep in mind what you say.”

  The Viceroy, with a quick, short, expressive breath, dismissed the matter. “Let us see how goes the chase, then,” he said.

  • • •

  Below them and a long ways away, they saw the stag break covert. The horns blew the two long notes, two short, two long and one long, of the forlange as the stag — through the long grass and through the short, beneath the great trees and down the shady glens — trajoined as he crossed and recrossed to confuse the hounds; proffering at the reedy covert of the fens, refusing, then making for the open water, and there descending. The horn sounded the veline. The stag foiled downstream, vanished, doubled back upon the land again and menaced a man on foot. The horn sounded the jeopard, the stag bounded off and away, with the hounds now babbling, now bawling after him, and the grim, gray alaunts still pressing on in silence.

  Behind him now the stag left “racks and entries” in the form of bruised branches he no longer took time to avoid, and of imbosh (flecks of foam). More, when now and then his slot was seen in softer soil, it was observed that it was wider spread, a sure sign of fatigue; and by and by, even in hard earth, the print of the oses, the dewclaws, showed that he was grown sarboted or footsore. Now the hounds picked up a good scent and were in full cry and good order, justifying the long, long horn call of the perfect. The stag at last came lurching by the pavilion, his coat now black with sweat, and then swerved aside from the hounds of the vauntlay, now at last loosed upon him.

  “He embosses! See how he lurks and tapishes!” The horn sounded the tromp. The stag ran stiff and high. “How, how, ho there, ho!” And then at length the beast “burnished and cast his chaule” — head hung down, mouth blackened and dry, he set his back to a hedgeside and turned to face the dogs, sometimes striking out with feet, sometimes with antlers, sometimes just staring. The horn sounded the weep. “Bay, bay, he burnishes, at bay!” The Sergeant came from behind and cut the stag’s throat. “Ware haunch!” — the chacechiens whipped back the dogs, the horn blew the prise, the deer fell down and rose and fell and kicked and the berners dipped bread in his blood and tossed it to the younger dogs. The stag kicked once more and kicked no more. And the horn sounded the mort.

  Somehow, Cornelia was on one side of Vergil and the Viceroy was on the other. “What I did,” she said, urgently, intently, “to you, I did because I was desperate. I never meant to hurt you, I was powerless to prevent doing what I did. But I swear it now, may I die as that deer died if I do not return what I took the instant I see the child’s face in the mirror.” Her eyes beseeched him.

  The Doge seized the beast by its great crown of horns and turned it over onto its back. “Say, say!” he cried, grinning widely, “who’s to hold the forelegs and who’s to hold the pizzle and who’s to draw the knife to take say?”

  As someone’s younger son carefully “took say” by opening the belly to see how deep the fat was, Vergil took a last look at the stag. He saw in it a symbol of himself and his own predicament. He could run. But he could not escape.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THEY RODE ALONG together, Vergil mounted on a white hackney, and Clemens on a sturdy, dun-colored mule which now and then rolled one wicked-looking eye back at him and snapped a mouthful of yellow teeth. Cypresses lined the road. Here and there was a tomb. They slackened the pace, read the epitaph on one.

  Ave Julia Conjux Carissimma

  Salve Ad Eternitam

  “I would be moved by that,” the Alchemist said, “if such things moved me. In all probability they fought like cats and dogs and he smiled all the way here. . . . Did you get the letters of state?”

  Vergil nodded. Out of sight, a shepherd whistled to his dog. There was an answering bark, a chorus of bleats, and the dull bonk-bonk of the lead-wether’s bell.

  The Viceroy’s secretary had been incredulous and far from encouraging. “Really, my sir,” he said, “unless you go with the great convoy these documents are useless. The Sea-Huns will attack first and read letters later . . . if they bother to read them at all. If they have anyone along who can read. Why not wait till next year’s convoy?”

  “There isn’t time,” he had answered.

  The Secretary’s worried look had dissolved in a sudden relief. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “Doubtless with my sir’s arts magical he will interpose something between his ship and theirs, and make it invisible. Or take the wind from their sails — or make their oars heavy — or — or something like that.”

  “If necessary . . . something like that.” And the secretary had handed over the documents of vellum and parchment, lettered in glossy black, vermilion, and purple; here, with seals affixed to the page, and there, with seals dangling upon ribbons tied through slits — all very impressive.

  If the Sea-Huns paused long enough to be impressed.

  Clemens’ mule made another snap at him, and he gave it a slap on the muzzle which echoed, and which caused the beast to shake its head, and to subside, convinced, into relative good manners. Then he pointed, with the same very large hand. “That, I believe, is the gate of the villa — but what, may I ask, is that arrangement in gray?”

  Tullio, clad in gray silk, his iron-gray beard cut sharp, was waiting for them at the gate, mounted upon a gray charger. He was accompanied by two squires in gray linen on dappled gray ponies, and a pack of the small greyhounds that were (outside of the Italies) called “Italian” capered about them.

  “It is her seneschal. You know of him. His name is Tullio — he’s the one who opened the door to the conduits when I was here before, and let me out.” He said nothing as to what other door Tullio had helped to open. And to close.

  “I don’t know what you find to laugh at. The closer I get, the more impressive it looks.”

  Vergil did not begin to explain that his laugh was an affected one; there would not have been time to finish. The company rode forward to meet them.

  “Magus, I bid you welcome in the name of Her Majesty Queen Cornelia, Dowager Queen of Carsus.” He bowed from his saddle.

  The bow was returned. “Sir Tullio, my thanks. This is my companion, Dr. Clemens, a savant learned in the lore of metallurgy, and a leading alchemist, as well as master of music and many other subjects. He will help us in our present task.”

  Various expressions moved slowly over Tullio’s face. He was impressed with Clemens’ title and attainments. He was not impressed with his mule. The contrast between Vergil’s neat and fashionable cut garments and his companion’s — which were neither — seemed to confuse him. He approved of Clemens’ considerable size. After a moment be nodded, as if having digested all and come to a conclusion. Then, with a courteous word and gesture to the alchemist, he and Vergil fell behind.

  Cornelia met them in a chamber floored and walled and roofed in marble of many colors. The lucent stone seemed to give as well as receive the soft flood of light in which her chair (it was almost a throne) swam in the center of the room. She had taken some pains with her toilet. The high collar of her robe, around which was bound a rope of gold, became her more than the lowcut garment she was wearing when Vergil had first seen her, under the great oak-tree. It was more feminine then the severe hunting costume she had worn at their second meeting, and — perhaps more than a hint of the native garb of Carsus be
ing present — there was a certain vigor and splendor to the ensemble which was at the same time barbaric and sophisticated. Certainly there was nothing of the softness of current Neapolitan fashion to it, and this absence complimented her own decisive personality very well. There was a glow in her cheeks that did not seem altogether the result of cosmetics.

  “I’m not Queen this afternoon,” she said, having greeted them, “only Lady Cornelia. Please sit in my presence. Wine.” The wine appeared, as if conjured, was poured, served. “Have you made progress, Magus? How near are we to beginning the work of the speculum?”

  Vergil suppressed a sigh. “Lady Cornelia, we are one day nearer than we were yesterday. I hope tomorrow to arrange for passage to Cyprus on one of the Imperial ships.”

  A spasm shook her face for an instant, was quickly controlled. “Another day and another day. My daughter is in danger, Magus — a danger no less terrible for being unknown. Why is it necessary to risk your person and to spend your time in making this trip to Cyprus? Why can you not, with your art magical, simply bring the ore of copper to Naples? I knew a nigromancer — ”

  “Madam, I am not a nigromancer.”

  The serene and lovely face lost its composure, dissolved. “Please do not vex me with these subtle distinctions, Magus,” she cried. “I am in agony over the necessity of this matter. Each moment’s delay may bring death so much nearer.”

  Vergil bowed, slightly. “The work will be carried on as rapidly as I am able to do it,” he said. “But it is I who am doing it, and no one else — not even the Lady Cornelia is capable of judging or of correcting me in it. She may, however, if dissatisfied, dismiss me, and seek other assistance.”

  She looked at him, her mouth open, her eyes lost. Her hands worked convulsively upon the carved lions’ heads that formed the ends of the arms of her chair. Tullio placed his hand upon his sword. Clemens picked up, as if negligently, a marble-topped end table, and held it in one hand.

  Vergil did not move from his place. His head slightly to one side, he appeared to be listening. The room went from sunlight into shadow, and, in the shadows, dim figures, which had not been there before, moved indistinctly. Voices murmured. The shadows grew darker, thicker; the obscure figures more numerous.