The Phoenix and the Mirror
Page 13
Preceded by sistra and cymbals and the tinkling and tapping of tambours, rather than by trumpets, the Paphos King at length made his appearance, his manner as bemused as that of a sleepwalker. Hermaphrodies surrounded him, their breasts rouged and their beards curled; they held his elbows and his sleeves and his cuffs, guiding him almost like some man-size puppet. In this manner, he spoke words which were not heard, he anointed, aspersed, spooned incense, fed lamps, touched with his sceptre, seated himself on his throne. It was a long time before Vergil was summoned.
His letters of state were shown to the King, who did not so much as touch them; indeed, he scarcely seemed to see them. At first, Vergil thought the man might be drugged. His eyes were glazed, his mouth was parted. A hermaphrody gave the royal arm the very slightest of touches, and the royal voice responded with the very slightest of sounds. It was indicated to Vergil that he had been asked a question.
“I thank Your Sacred Majesty for his gracious interest. The voyage was both safe and pleasant. We were accompanied by Bayla, King of the Sea-Huns, who, desirous of causing Your Sacred Majesty no inconvenience, is here incognito in the capacity of a pilgrim.”
A polite lie, in part. But Bayla would scarcely prove a figure congruous to the elaborate smoothness of this strange and hieratic court.
A ripple passed across the face of the Paphos King. His eyes seemed to focus on the man who knelt before him. “The Sea-Huns . . . we have heard of them . . . when we were young.” A smile trembled, faltered, lapsed. A certain look passed between the hermaphrodies, and they turned their faces to Vergil, encouraging him by winks, by nods, to continue speaking. So might react the parents of a sick, sick child, he thought.
He did his best to interest the King, and to further his own necessities as well, by degrees turned his remarks to the subject of his visit here. . . . Copper.
“Copper” — the King’s thick voice grew mildly surprised — “we . . . we do not know why one would come here for copper. Is there no copper in Italy? Is . . . is there copper here? In Cyprus?”
This was no mere bemusement. So removed from actuality was the numinous King that he really did not know of the rich mines which were the island’s chief resource, which had given the island its very name. Next to copper, the chief reality of Cypriote life was the all but complete blockade which the Sea-Huns had, a generation since, flung around its coasts and seas. Yet the King, who was perhaps no more than thirty (a fair and heavy man), had not even heard of them since his childhood.
Before Vergil could reply to this, a terrible change passed over the King’s face. A sob broke from his chest, and a low cry of unutterable despair. Features writhing, hands clenched on the arms of his throne, gently but no less firmly urged by the clustering hermaphrodies not to rise, the man cried, “I am being bewitched! Bewitched!” Then words failed him, and he slumped down and forward and gazed numbly at the patterned floor.
At a gesture from one of his attendants, music was struck up, strange and alien music, and hermaphrodies came and danced before the throne, twirling their skirts and stamping their shoeless feet so that their anklets clingled and tinkled like tiny, tiny bells. The King watched vacantly, his head nodding a slow, infinitely sad accompaniment to the movements of the half-naked, half-numinous dancers. And the attendants began to sing in their curious, epicene voices, a song whose words were in a language which had probably ceased to be a living speech long before the children of Europa had first set foot upon the soil of Cyprus.
Presently the King rose, unhindered now, and, clapping his jeweled hands, went down the steps of the throne and joined in the quickening steps of the dance. Faster now, and faster, faster, faster whirled the King, flinging his head and rolling his eyes up till only a thin rim of color showed in the staring whites. The music stamped into a quicker, frenzied beat. The King leaped like a stag set upon by dogs. There was a hand laid gently on Vergil’s arm. The hermaphrody gestured toward the chamber’s door. There was a gray hair in the thin, whorled beard, and the breasts were fleshless and limp. The expression of his face was sad, patient, resigned. Hermaphrodies never lived to be old.
Moving down the long corridor, Vergil heard behind him a series of quick, sharp, rhythmic screams. He was sure that the voice was that of the Paphos King.
• • •
And so the time went on and continued to go. For a while An-Thon the Red Man made daily, fretful visits from the harbor, then he ceased to appear. Bayla was totaly absorbed in his devotions. Basilianos answered Vergil’s urgent treaties with invariable politeness and assurances that he was prosecuting inquiries about copper with (he said, languidly) the utmost vigor. And the representatives of the copper cartel informed him that messengers had been sent upcountry on swift mules to make inquiries about the very small amount of ore required.
But nothing actually came of any of this.
It was not to be expected that he would be long content merely to sit still and wait on others. He hired mules himself, and set off alone. The palms gave way to pines and cedars. Roses burned in great crimson clusters by the roadside. Here and there were the crude little shrines of the country people and their old, original religion — shapeless cairns usually set up alongside some low tree or large bush bearing fewer leaves than shreds of knotted rags, blossoming with the prayers and petitions of those who tied them there. Off in the fields the peasants, with long thin staves, urged the red oxen to bend to the yokes and pull the wooden plows. Chestnut and carob trees fed the black swine and brindled sheep. It seemed that nothing could really go much wrong in this Arcady-like landscape, stone bridges over brooks of bark-dark waters, cobs and pens and cygnets arching their necks like lily stems as they glided along the streams.
Nothing really much did go wrong, except that his mules cast a shoe each, it required a day to find the smith, find charcoal, heat the forge, find iron, heat the forge again, and shoe the beasts. He passed an impatient night, scrupulously followed the directions to the mines given him at the inn . . . and, after another day’s journey, found himself back in Paphos again. When this happened in similar wise a second time, he was bound to pause and wonder if he himself might not be bewitched.
Likelier — almost certainly — the copper agents simply did not believe him and his story of wanting no more than the small quanitity of ore for a scientific and philosophical experiment. Why should they? No one had ever come to them with such a story before. They might even have had word by a swift, many-oared blockade-runner, before Vergil arrived, from Thuraus Rufus; warning them that some plot to overturn the copper monopoly was under way; that Vergil, the prime mover, was not to be openly flouted, but subventuresomely to be thwarted in every way.
There was no consolation to be had from this logic, of course. The agony of his condition was not abated. Impatient, here, he — what must be Cornelia’s state of mind in far-off Naples? by nature yielding, by way of life imperious, unused to anything but immediate gratification, unaware of the difficulties in the way here at the scene. There was no assurance but that at any moment she might, either in a sudden rage, or by a deliberate calculation, or by direction of someone else, commence to torment that part of him which she held captive.
He remembered Tullio’s words with a shudder. Do her work, and I return it to you. Refuse — fail — I destroy it. Tarry — I punish it. Dally — but I do not think that you will dally. . . .
Yet now, in effect, despite himself, that was what he was doing.
• • •
Angustus the Ephesian received him half propped up on the narrow trestle board which evidently served him as bed. The old man did not bother with conventional apologies or greetings, merely looked at him with his burning gaze and invited him by a curt gesture to speak.
“I have been informed that the meeting place of your group is known to the Soldiery. It might be wise for you to arrange to meet elsewhere.”
The old man at first said nothing. Then he said, “Can it be that you have made it known?”
Still the eyes would not relinquish their gaze. “That is strange . . . seeing that you have been there with us.”
“No, I assure you,” Vergil said, more astonished than before.
There was a pause. “I do not feel that you are lying,” the old man said. “Either you are mistaken, or a veil has been placed over your memory, or — or I may myself be mistaken. Wait, wait . . .” He ran a thin hand over his long gray beard, reflected. “Either you have been with us,” he said after a moment, “or else it is the future I see, and not the past. In which case, you will have been with us.”
The room was small and bare. Vergil was faintly aware of something that confused him . . . perhaps only because he could not identify it. “I do not understand,” he murmured.
“Nor do I. But I will. And so will you.”
It had not been the easiest thing in the world finding this strange old man. It was, however, obvious that no help was to be expected from anyone in established authority anywhere in Paphos. Therefore it became equally obvious that help must be sought from someone not in established authority . . . and the more distant therefrom, the likelier the success. Vergil had thought of attempting to contact the criminal level of Cypriote society, but — supposing such to exist in this easygoing island — it would be more sensible for those in it to take his money and then reveal the matter to the overlords, than not to. Who, then, was in such irreconcilable hostility in regard to the establishment that betrayal need not be feared and assistance might be hoped for?
The answer was Angustus the Ephesian.
Who now said, “You came here like a trader, with intelligence in one hand and the other hand outstretched to receive intelligence in return. But that day has come when no trademen are seen in the Temple. Nevertheless, I shall give you the knowledge which you desire — give it you as freely as our Lord and Savior Daniel Christ gave His flesh to be torn by the lions in order that we might be saved and have everlasting — ”
He broke off and gazed at the suddenly speechless man in front of him. “Ah,” he said. “Now you remember.”
“Yes. Now I remember, It was in a dream.”
The old man nodded. “Then it has not yet come to pass.”
“No, sage. Nor need it.”
Softly, gently, “Yes, it need. It need, . . . Now I see it all, I know it all now. Captivity, chains, torture, the arena, the mocking crowds, the lions. The lions! Think you-of-the-paynim that I or any of us would have it another way? We are not worthy only” — he lifted his clasped hands and tears filled his sunken eyes and broke his voice — “if our blessed Lord Daniel desires nonetheless to grant us, freely, of His grace, the same death — oh, blessed gift and charity! — the holy privilege of dying as He died, the sweet and sacred bounty of the lions. . . .” His face seemed radiant and transfigured by joy. He bowed his head and moved his lips in prayer.
After a while he said, almost briskly, almost cheerfully, “So now I will tell you that which you must know, though why you must know if I know not, nor is that among the things which I must know. All knowledge now is but imperfect. We see but the dim and dark reflection in the bronze mirror. Such is the life of this world of illusion.
“You wish to know why you have not been permitted to pursue a journey into the interior, is it not so?”
Vergil nodded, dumbly. The countenance of the aged Ephesian settled into an expression of mingled sorrow and wrath. “Because, my unsought guest, because the road to the interior leads past the terrible, terrible shrine of the daemon whom the paynim denominate Zeus-Leucayon. Know you that name? And what it means? Wolf-Zeus! Wolf-Zeus! Fearful enough is his form in that shape of humankind which he counterfeits in order the better to deceive humankind, but, O! how infinitely more fearful is he in his lycanthropous form! Woe! Woe! Woe! O sinful city, and, O island of sin! Men like wolves and wolves like men!” And again he raised his eyes, his head, his hands and arms, cried aloud.
But his cry was brief. Vergil interrupted. “Why is it considered so important that I be not allowed to pass this shrine?”
“Because, my guest unsought, in that grim, gray fane erected of uncut rock and dark with the stains of centuries of evil sacrifice, preparations are underway for the horrid rite wherein the celebrant offers his own son as sacrifice and as sacrificial meal . . . and, for his pains, his punishment, and — as they would have it — his reward . . . is changed into a wolf! A wolf! Is changed into a wolf! He eats human flesh like a wolf! Such are the paynim’s ways, and their own records describe what happened when this was first done by King Lycaon, who killed a man and set the cooked flesh upon the table. Have you forgotten?”
The aged prophet began to chant the fearful lines. “The King himself flies in terror and, gaining the silent fields, howls aloud, attempting in vain to speak. His mouth of itself gathers foam, and with his accustomed greed for blood he turns against the sheep, delighting still in slaughter.
“His garments change to shaggy hairs! His arms to legs! In villos abeunt vestes, in crure lacerti-fit lupus et veteris servat vestigea formae. He turns into a wolf, and yet retains some traces of his former shape. There is still the same gray hair, the same fierce face, the same gleaming eyes . . . the same picture of beastly savagery. . . .”
“They say that this metamorphosis was ordained by their daemon Zeus, or Jove, or Jupiter — accursed by the evil names, all of them, he bears! — to punish that beastly and evil deed. And yet that daemon so delighteth in it that again and again throughout the years he requires it be repeated. Thus, the filth the paynim worship! O sinful city and O . . .”
No moral hesitations were involved in the urgent desire that Vergil neither see nor learn of this ceremony. It belonged to the realms of the oldest payanism, where concepts such as good and evil did not pertain, where magic had no division into black or white. The deed was neither fair no foul; it was potent; it was at the same time both fair and foul. Forbidden — abhorred — detested in any other time at any other place, in the time set and at the place set it became necessary and desirable and infinitely potent. The greater the sin, the greater (in this case) the blessing.
“And he,” said the aged Ephesian, shaking his gray head, “he who became a eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of Satan, he is so blind as to think that this will benefit him.”
Vergil, for the moment confused, could only show his bewilderment by his face, and murmur, “He?”
He, Sylvian, Chief Priest and (by definition) Chief Eunuch of Cybele, and head of the third side of the triangle which was Paphain religio-politics. Cybele, whose worshipers called her Magna Mater, the Great Mother, denying that title to Aphroditissa. Cybele, whose cult had come, shrieking and dancing, out of the darkest depths of Little Asia.
‘Ditissa, indeed, was not the oldest of the Cypriote deities. These had long ago lost their names, perhaps had never had any; nyads, dryads, faint and fleeting little spirits of the woods and of the streams. But ‘Ditissa’s advent was both local and historical, she had been born of the foam gathered between the offshore rocks and the coast of Paphos, and had been worshiped long and contentedly. Pilgrims had come in entire fleets, passing o’er the white-waved seas, to offer to her great Temple and to embrace the Mother in the persons of her priestess-daughters. Throughout the changeless years the processions had passed slowly, chanting, through the Paphiote streets, group after group bearing palanquins surmounted by “trees,” each leaf of which was made of a pastille of incense, smoking fragrantly in the languid air.
‘Ditissa had been the Mother of all the land of Paphos; he who was both king and priest had been the Father; she, all goddess; he, partly god. The Greek and Roman pantheon had come to be represented, too, but in lesser wise. And then the Sea-Huns had swooped down, burning Chitium and ravishing Machosa, as they did a hundred cities and a thousand towns elsewhere
than Cyprus. They were at last bought off, but the price was paid in more than tribute; it was paid in semi-isolation, in gathering silence, in slow decay. In such a time the old religions seemed to flourish, but familiarity and tradition could not forever satisfy the need for excitement and stimulation, now no longer met by foreign intercourse. And in the stagnant pond, strange things came to grow.
Critics claimed (though not often openly, and never loudly) that Cybele’s cult had been implanted in Cyprus by small groups of merchants trading in from Little Asia at a time before the Great Blockade had fallen across the horizon, and that in those happier days it had met with no encouragement from the peoples of the land. But the orthodox doctrine had it that “Mother saw the children of the Island languishing in loneliness and grief, Mother spoke to her Sisters and her Brothers, saying, ‘Will none arise and go and succor the sorrowful children of the Island?’, but none would speak and none would go. Therefore Mother herself arose and, gathering around her priests and galli, dervishes and devotees, took ship at Tarsus. The Sea-Huns clamored, the Sea-Huns threatened, the blood-red sails and death-black hulls of the Sea-Huns gathered around the Mother’s ship like flies, like lions, and like dragons. But none dared approach, none dared attack. Silent and abashed and wholly stricken with awe were the corsairs and the pirates, overwhelmed by the heavenly beauty and the fear and dread of Mother Cybele. . . .”