The Phoenix and the Mirror

by Avram Davidson

  “Oh!” she cried, rapt, and clapped her hands. The dry and vacant air was filled with the scent of snowy apple blossoms, and then these, too, faded away like snowflakes. And presently the boughs of the noble tree sagged earthward like the breasts of a woman filled with milk, and the apples hung heavy upon the boughs.

  They ate their fill of the food, which was also drink, and they let the beasts have their satiety as well. Then they filled the saddlebags and made sacks of their blankets and their cloaks, and filled them, too. And then, refreshed and supplied, they set off once more.

  In Garamanteland the climate was so hot by day that water exposed to the sunlight boiled at noon, and by night so cold that the same water, if poured out into a shallow vessel, froze at midnight. The rigors of the climate were fortunately not matched by the severity of the people, who neither hinder travelers nor help them. The Garamantes are so shy and eremitical as to be willing to greet strangers only from a distance too great for voice to carry; often Vergil and Laura would see their strange, cloaked figures, arms upraised, outlined against the hill or sky. Always at their sides were their dogs, which the Garamantes love more than they love humankind; and this love is returned, for when the Numideans carried off captive the King of the Garamantes to hold for ransom, no less than two thousand of his own dogs followed his trail by scent and by stealth until they burst upon the sleeping camp to destroy the captors and release the king.

  In Outer Nubia they were perplexed by what they at first took for the ghost of a woman who had died in trying to abort her child — doomed forever to seek the babe unborn, weeping and wailing, forever following, never seen, sobbing and calling out. But it did not respond to exorcism, and so Vergil realized that it was no human ghost after all, but that inhuman loathsome creature sometimes called Jaekal and sometimes Hyaena, which imitating the human voice like a perroquetta, or Indian jay, it often lures men and women to come in search of it; whereupon it leaps upon them from behind and laughs as it devours them.

  At last, alternately burned by heat and numbed by cold, they met up with a caravan which led them into Meroë on Nilus, a river port famous for its trade in the hides, ordure, and tushes of cocodrilli. By one of those paradoxes in which Nature seems to delight, these stinking beasts pass perfumed dung exceeding the primest musk, much sought for in confecting ointments and scents; its teeth are in demand for treating pains and affections of the bones and joints, as well as being aphrodisiacal. In Nilus Meroë they obtained places on the downriver packet boat, and allowing only for two or three stops en route, would be in Alexandria as swiftly as the current flowed.

  To eyes used to the mountains, hills, valleys, isles, and coastlands of Europe, the Nilus and its banks could not but seem somewhat samely and monotonous, but to Vergil the mere greenery was grateful after the fret and glare of the desert. And to her it all had a charm for being new. The bending trees all a-gaze at their reflections, the vasty hippopotami — once, even an oliphant appeared, and gnashed its enormous teeth at them — the incredibly rich fields full of heavy heads of grain, the ornately carved entrances to the caves yielding the precious and essential balm called mummy, and perhaps above all the huge pyramidical structures which were the treasure houses of King Pharaoh . . . treasures which continued to baffle the searching zeal of those who would find them.

  He thought that she was entirely absorbed in these sights, and it was with surprise that he was roused from his own musings by her question, “Ser Vergil, why did you come to look for me?”

  Some foolish compliments hesitated at his mouth. And yet, fatuous as it might have been for him to have said, Your red hair with its glints of brown, your brown eyes with their glints of red, your white skin with its tracery of blue veins, your delicately formed and coral-colored lips, the gracious arching of your brows and the sweet rise of your bosom — all, all seized hold of my eyes and heart, and beguiled me from the bitter reek of my elaboratory and the musty but beloved scent of my books. . . . Was it not the truth?

  He stammered a bit, then told her instead that he desired to follow the matter of the mirror to its conclusion.

  “And not leave it unfinished,” she summed up.

  “Yes . . . and not leave it unfinished.”

  She nodded, seemed to follow this well, be satisfied; then she grimaced. (“What . . . ?” he began.) “The Queen,” she said. (“Oh,” he said. “Yes. The Queen . . . Don’t worry.”) She looked at him and raised one brow. Then she smiled faintly. “I won’t, then,” she said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HE HAD MADE no point either of informing Cornelia that he was going to Lybya or of keeping the information from her. He rather thought that she would have learned, though, but as he and the Red Man had taken their usual precautions against departing together, he rather thought that she would not have learned of that. Tullio he met in the villa’s hall of entrance as Vergil swept in, the girl behind him. The seneschal’s eyes and mouth opened wide at the sight, but a gesture and a glance from the Magus sufficed to close them. A further gesture and a further glance, and Tullio meekly led the way.

  Cornelia was occupying herself with small rectangles of ivory, parchment-thin, on which curious designs and pictures were limned in color, evidently by a skilled miniaturist. Her face had a familiar look of faraway thought. She had laid a number of them out in several even rows, and the rest were in her hand. “Rota,” she murmured. “Rato. Arot. Otar. Ator. Taro — ” She looked up and saw him and the pack leaped from her hand and scattered and fell.

  “Magus . . .” she whispered. A girl sat on a low stool next to the table, the same servant maid he had seen when he first saw Cornelia, the day of the manticores. For a moment, as Cornelia saw him, as she saw the girl who now entered behind him, it seemed that she — the seated one — would exclaim a word or two. But, quick as he observed this, much as he had startled and shaken Cornelia, Cornelia was quicker; quick to recover self-possession sufficient to place her hand on the shoulder of the seated girl . . . whose face set in composure . . . but whose eyes fell.

  Now Cornelia arose and faced Vergil and his companion. One brief moment her eyes, filled with joy and triumph and malice and passion and awe, met his. Then she embraced the girl he had brought and, closing her eyes, rocked to and fro. Then she released her. The girl had yielded to the embrace, returned it passively.

  “I won’t ask now what has happened, or where you have been. I am too full of emotion. Besides, it is of no importance compared to your return. What a welcome we shall prepare for you, daughter! But — now — oh, let us be alone together!”

  She put her arm around the girl and started to lead her away. The other girl had already turned her back and now made as though to precede them.

  “Madam — ”

  “Only a few moments together, Magus. You can understand, and then — ”

  “Madam — ”

  She sighed, and turned around. “I can refuse you nothing,” she said.

  “It is of my reward, indeed, madam, that I wished to speak.”

  He felt he had no reason to doubt her sincerity when she said, “It may be anything you ask, any price you choose to set. Money, jewels, in any amount. This villa, if you like, or my dowerlands in Carsus — even the estates which are my patrimony from my great-grandfather the August Caesar — anything . . . anything at all . . .”

  He bowed his head. Then: “These are noble offers, madam, but my heart desires none of them. May I tell you what it does want?” Cornelia nodded. Vergil said, “Nothing but the gift of that servant maid.” He held out his hand toward her.

  Cornelia’s face went pale. Then it blazed ruddy. She lifted her hand as though to strike. Then she regained control of herself. “I ask your pardon,” she said, with an effort. “You have done me . . . done us . . . a service which is almost beyond price. But, I must repeat, only almost. The . . . servant girl . . . her name is Phyllis . . . has been with us since she was born. She is like one of our family. In fact . . . I need not lie
to you, you have eyes to see that she is of our very blood. It would be impossible to dispose of her as if she were a common servant, or slave.”

  “I understand and I respect your reasons. Then I urge you to send for the lictors without delay and let the Phrygian cap be placed on Phyllis’ head, and when she is freed, my word upon it, I shall marry her. Am I unworthy to wed a freed woman?”

  Cornelia was now fully composed. “Far from it, Magus,” she said. “It would be a condescension on your part. Child,” she asked, “do you wish to accept the honor which Dr. Vergil offers you?”

  The girl said, in a low voice, “No . . . I do not wish it.”

  Cornelia shrugged slightly and spread her hands a bit. “You see. There is too much devotion. What would you? Surely not to force her.”

  His head sank upon his chest. Then, after a moment, he said, “As I cannot look down, then I must look up. Lady” — he addressed the girl beside him — “would you, despite the differences in our stations, would you be averse to considering me as a suitor?”

  The Queen raised her eyebrows at this, but no more, and looked at the other girl as if awaiting an answer which could only be a negative one. And when the other girl said, “I? Oh! No . . .” The Queen began to nod her approval, only to stare in incredulity as the girl went on to say, “No, I would not . . . be averse to considering it.”

  Having had (it seemed so long ago) example of, and experiences with, Cornelia’s moods, he was aware that her emotions had barely begun to stir when she said, swiftly and confusedly, “You forget yourself, Wizard. Forgive me, there may be daughters of royal and Imperial lineage who would be permitted to wed you — though I doubt it — but mine is not one of them. Nor, if I could permit, never would my son, her brother the King of Carsus, permit it. Other arrangements are being made.” Once again she mastered her emotions, smoothly turned the apparent rebuff into something softer. “Arrangements involving — I cannot say more — someone of very high station. So my daughter’s guardian could hardly permit it to be said that we have broken our word. Great as your powers are, they are not great enough to persuade or force us into a breach of promise. You understand.”

  Had she not by now smelt the fox? Suspected what this was all about? Very probably. For the moment, though, he was sure, she would go on playing the game, if only to see where it led. Indeed, she had little choice. Her eyes, now showing no confusion, glittered watchfully as he nodded, plucked at his lip, uttered the light exclamation which indicated an idea. “‘My powers,’ yes, madam. There we have, I think the answer.” Before Cornelia could interrupt or interfere, he reached out, pulled one girl toward him and pushed the other away from him. Then he raised his arms and began a counter-enchantation. It was not a long one.

  “Henceforth,” he said, concluding the spell, “she who was known as Laura shall be known as Phyllis. She who was heretofore called Phyllis shall be called Laura. I adjure you to speak nothing but the truth. You” — he pointed to the “serveant maid” — “who are you?”

  “Laura,” she said, confused and a bit frightened.

  “So. Laura. Not Phyllis. Then if you are Laura, she must be Phyllis. So. Hmm. Curious, is it not, madam, that all the while you and I and all of us were so engaged in fashioning a major speculum to locate Laura, Laura was here? It is most curious. Indeed, I know not how to account for it at all . . . unless someone — I know not who for sure — had persuaded the true Laura to play a perjured part and had caused the true Phyllis to be so bewitched as to deceive both herself and others or had perhaps bewitched both.”

  Cornelia stood as still and silent as one of the ancestral statues around about the room. Indeed, no one moved as Vergil spoke on. “Suppose this to be true,” he said. “In that case we must construct a hypothesis to account for it . . . and in order to do this it will be necessary to look back over the past. Forgive me — madam — and maidens — if I seem to look too closely for complete comfort.” Silent and still she watched him — watched past him.

  • • •

  Cornelia was the daughter of Amadeo, the late Doge of Naples, He’d had no sons, to his sorrow, on either side of the blanket. But it was known that he’d had another daughter, by a woman of the servants’ quarters, and she — Cornelia’s half sister — had gone off with the legitimate daughter in the entourage to Carsus. Where she had, inevitably, unfortunately attracted the attentions of that comely, weak, and amorous man, King Vindelician. To whom, nine months later, she bore a daughter of her own, named Phyllis.

  Cornelia did not move.

  The child Phyllis was therefore half sister to the child Laura, daughter of the same father; more, she was the daughter of Laura’s mother’s half sister, granddaughter of the same grandfathers, double cousins. It was no wonder that the girls so closely resembled one another, and more and more closely as they grew older. It was no wonder that, although Phyllis was supposed to be Laura’s servant, they had grown up as close friends, traded clothes and jewels . . . though of course Laura had so much more of each . . . perhaps this was why that one copper fibula in the form of a brooch came to be traded back and forth between the two on alternate days, like a game.

  Neither child knew anything of any secret compact made before their own births. It was said that such had been made between a woman and a phoenix — in part for love; in part for passion; and in part in return for the promise of a throne. This compact was for long a source of hope and strength and joy — and then the note fell due before it was expected to, and it had to be paid. Or — did it?

  “Suppose the woman who was the promised bride of the Phoenix was a woman of extraordinary powers. She would thus be able to set up wards and guards . . . but even so, always, always, there was the fear and terror that they might slip down. More, this woman would be in constant agony for her daughter, lest the Phoenix claim the child in place of the parent. Do you see?

  “What should she do? What could she do? Let us hypothesize, assuming that this woman be you, madam. What could she do? Why, she could have her daughter, Laura, come with her from Carsus, disguised as Phyllis, the servant, Leaving Phyllis, enchanted into believing that she was Laura, to come along later. This might be done in hopes of the Phoenix’ doing what he did in fact do — have the wrong girl kidnapped. In this way both the loved-hated lover and the hated-loved servant would be gotten rid of together on that far-off pyre, where no mystic union would occur at all, perhaps, but only a painful death by fire. There was no way of knowing that the Troglodytes would waylay the Phoenix’ hired kidnappers or that Old Cyclops would rescue Phyllis or that the Phoenix would fear to face him and take her.

  “But when the Phoenix, guised as a mere Phoenician, appeared in Naples, it was obvious that something had gone wrong. He came, he went, the uncertainty must have been agonizing. If my hypothesis be correct, madam, then your anxiety, your intense desire to fashion the major speculum, was not for fear that the false Laura had come to harm, but that she had not . . . That is my hypothesis.”

  Cornelia said only, “It is false.”

  Vergil shook his head. “I fear me, it is true. I myself first observed the true Laura my first day here at the villa, posing as a servant. It was the fact that she was holding unfinished embroidery copying the design on your ring which caught in my mind. The design, as I later observed, was mate to the Red Man’s ring — a phoenix sejant upon a pyre. And on a subsequent visit here Clemens had seen her too, and recognized her from the miniature in Doge Tauro’s possession.”

  For a moment her head drooped, face went gaunt and utterly without hope. Then her head went up once more, and now hope was in her face. “And if I do admit it,” she asked, “will you protect me?”

  He felt in the muscles of neck and shoulders the weight of heavy burdens, “You have admitted it,” he said. “And I have protected you.”

  Even now her eagerness and relief were mixed with fear. “But will you continue to protect me?” she demanded. “It’s not my life alone I fear to lose, for what
is the pleasure of this life here compared to that of life hereafter in the Islands of the Blest? I would do anything for him, anything but lose myself inside himself, anything but vanish behind his own overpowering person. For that — don’t you see? — that is the real source, I didn’t know it before but now I do, that is the real source of the Phoenix’s immortality and strength: he assumes his woman, he consumes his woman, he becomes He plus She, but the She vanishes utterly as soul and person, and only the He-soul and -person is reborn. The She has given . . . and then she is quite gone.”

  “I know.”

  Fear diminished but did not vanish. If he knew this, then he knew what it was she feared, what the deadly danger really was. And she repeated, “Will you protect me? Will you? Forever? Forever?” Her eyes sought his. A look came over her face, which became tender and almost haunting in its affection. “You will, then. I know.” Her voice sank, she gestured him near. “And I know why, And I know what reward you really want. You shall have it. Forever.”

  She reached for his hand. “Come, then,” she said.

  But the hand he took was not hers. “I have gone with you once, my Lady,” he said. “And we both know to what result.”

  Affection was replaced by stupefaction. “But then . . . unless . . . I could never be sure . . . how could I believe . . . You prefer her to me? To me Protect me? You?”

  Her face became like that of another person, twisted into a horrible mask; her hands like talons clawed the air. She cursed. She cursed in the formal, liturgical imprecations of Latin, Etruscan, and Greek. She shrieked things which (by Laura’s wincing) could only be maledeictions in the tongue of Carsus. And then, like a veteran fishwife, she flung at him the foulest phrases in the Neapolitan dialect, cursing him with her words, her spittle, her very gestures: her finger made horns, she showed him the fig — the girl, she screamed, was a bastard and a bastard’s child-ill-hap and nothing else were the two of them to Cornelia and to Cornelia’s mother — mirror images, the one of the other.