The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (13 page)

Several generations back, someone’s cousin had been married to someone’s brother-in-law, and not even then a first cousin. But although, even then, Vergil’s family had not been related to this other family, it had been thus connected. A very faint sense of this connection had shed upon a certain woman, Emma by name, the last of an earlier generation, a semblance of being some sort of twice-great-aunt. When he was small, he had thought
My Emma,
as he had also thought of another old woman as
My Grandma;
for all he knew, every small boy had an emma, too. Sometimes, not often, his own aunt, his own mother’s sister, who had taken the place of his own mother in the household; sometimes, not often, she had said, his aunt, “Take this to your Emma” … a festal cake, it might have been, a stuffed tripe, a new-enough kerchief, itself replaced by one bought more newly yet (the elder Marius had been a great one for kerchiefs, buying them for his sister-in-law whenever he’d gotten a coin more than he’d reckoned as his bottom price for a beast sold at market. Once only had he bought her a small bauble of glass and brass, immediately she had asked, “What about marriage, then?” and Father had withdrawn to muck out the byre, not returning for several hours; and after that he had confined his purchases to kerchiefs), a honeycomb in a dish deep enough to contain the drippings, a small flask of oil … such-like things.

Emma lived within what was a half an hour’s walk for a small boy; it was of course less than that now, yet he went there less often. Emma’s daughters lived in another village now, Emma’s son had died, and Emma’s daughter-in-law, Euphronia: a woman of no sweetness of temper, had married again, and her husband was her match. And old Emma lived on, and lived with
them,
the gods save us from such a fate as that! Aunt had paid them a visit, had not felt she’d been made to feel welcomed; her next small gift, carried by the boy “Mariu,” had been disparaged by the now-chief woman of old Emma’s house, and been deprecated as precisely that: small. As “Mariu” had, in all child innocence, reported.

After that, the aunt sent things seldom, and Emma (her humble gifts: two eggs, say, still warm in some straw in a tiny basket she’d made herself) sent things no more at all. Nor, evidently, was allowed to.

This man had brought with him to the marriage a son of his own first wedding. And this was the boy Bruno, who had soon enough taken upon himself to exemplify all the grudges of that house.

From time to time one would see the three of them doing butcher’s business out of a wheelbarrow in which a slaughtered pig had been taken from the shambles; they raised swine, took each, live, as far as the abattoir (where it had by law to be killed so the tax could be collected), then wheeled it, dead, just past the official limits of the town, where they sold it, cut by cut. By thus avoiding setting up a booth or stall within the lines of the population, they saved a certain amount of money. They were rough people and sold their rough-cut pork to other rough people — either those rough by nature or rendered perhaps rougher by poverty, which seldom smoothes the manners.

Thus, they cried, “Fresh pork for sale!” and hacked, awkwardly (perhaps cutting up even a skinny swine in a wheelbarrow was not the easiest of work: but they paid no public market fee; ah! they paid no fee!), and slashed, awkwardly. And … so the boy, not yet much called Vergil, thought … had they been but a bit more brazen, to be sure they would have cried, “Hog’s liver! Fair fresh hog’s meat! A penny for half a snout, and a halfpenny for the tail,” from the very base of the obelisk itself. Once or twice he saw them slow the barrow as they came to the monument, they seemed almost to hesitate — but they did not dare.

By and by the boy, Marius, had summed up some few certain things: Did he walk with his own father, a man rather taller than the average, and did they encounter Bruno, he scowled, that one. But he passed them by, or he let them pass him by. And that was all. For then. Did Marius encounter him, of a sudden, face to face, or with his, Marius’s friends, he got no more from the Bruno than a lowering look. One had learned that it was useless to smile at him … unless one had use for a sneer, which was all that one got in return. But, more than once — indeed, almost often — if Marius were walking by himself, all alone, a stone or a short piece of wood or a small chunk of a broken-brick or such-like rubble, would sail past his head: at once, did he turn quickly around, who was there, arms still and looking somewhere else? Bruno. Was who. Of course one could walk quickly towards him, one could even run towards him. And he would run away, laughing his unlovely laugh.

And for all that Vergil had the longer limbs, and for all his anger, he could never catch the lout. In fact … that is, it was probably a fact, but never put to the test … had Bruno belonged, or had his family belonged, to any even small confraternity or society, he, Bruno, if matched among other contesting athletes at one of the set competitions, with their limbs oiled, and dusted with any of the socially-approved colors of dust; Bruno, if started off by the
tran-tran
of the starter’s trumpet, might have been able to win a race. And, hence, a prize, not of money value, but a prize.

But his family cared for none of those things.

What they cared for was, that Bruno, when the barrow was not at use for wheeling a scrawny shoat, head lolling loosely in a puddle of congealing blood (later carefully removed for a blood-pudding, and never mind what loose bristles and worse, even, filth one might find in the pudding: they could be simply spat out), should wheel the barrow as near along the public path to someone else’s land, anyone else’s land so long as someone/anyone was known to be elsewhere at the moment, as might be: and then Bruno would steal as many of someone else’s chestnuts, even beechnuts or acorns, mast was mast, as many and as much as he could stuff into a sack. And dump the sack into the barrow. This to be repeated as often as Bruno felt like it. Usually not for very long, for he was no lover of labor; but so long as he brought back something, neither father nor stepmother was likely to make much matter of it. For, if they dared, they would (and sometimes did) let their pigs gather mast right off the ground on others’ land. But they seldom dared, save only if they knew the owners or tenants or their keepers were afar off and gone elsewhere. Therefore even a sackload of stolen stuff in a barrow was to them a victory of purest gain.

They laughed, likely, when speaking of it.

And although they were slovens even in the manner in which they dressed the carcasses, still, a fire they had to make to boil water and scald the swine somewhat so as scrape the bristles off … almost off … and into the embers of the fire they tossed the trotters of the pig, to loosen the skin so as the easier to rip it off the slotted feet (figure what nice matter had accumulated between the slots), buyers how grubby or how gruff expected at least a somewhat clean couples of pigsfeet. And Bruno liked to nibble on these toasted skin-flaps. What did he with them, after nibbling?

Once, Vergil (Mariu, Marius) was walking that way, alone: something struck him,
clut!
Between his shoulders; swift, he swiveled round; something struck him,
clut!
Upon his chest. Facing him was Bruno, no dissembling now, as to who had or who had not, thrown; no readiness to run: he stood, as it were, between his father and his stepmother and (eyes drawn, instantly, to the ground; what saw he, the Boy Vergil, there? the nasty suckets of the swine’s foot-flaps, moist from the Bruno’s mouth, saw he there), and Bruno called out, “Ya! Foh! Oliphaunt-boy! Grey-eyes! Son of a bitch!” and “Bastard!”

More shocked than angry, the boy’s eyes now went at once to the faces of the older couple; at once (he expected) one of them would give the Bruno a cuff — no such thing. Bruno held his nose (it had but a bit before snuffed up without dismay the stinking contents of the unemptied hog’s guts), then, releasing it, cried out his insults yet again. Surely, if the parents did not wish to cuff him publicly, at least they
would
speak to him — no such thing. They spoke nothing. “Pfew!” cried Bruno, making anyway a show of holding his nose (not free of smuts, itself); “O pópoi!” and again he called out his insults. Vergil’s eyes kept turning from the parents to the son; at any moment one of the elders would turn and give a look of deep disprovai. Surely. A gesture, then — Surely?

Husband and wife stood there, their faces carved out of dark marble, they heard nothing, they saw nothing: she with her huge dugs and haunches; he with his head as hairless as a snake’s. Then, almost as though on signal, each, both, they opened their mouths.

“Hogsmeat, fresh, fresh!” he called. And she —

“Cheap, cheap! A stiver off!”

“There are persons and places where one with the wit may learn more,” Numa had said. “Of course, ‘In the woods,’ of course, of course.” His large hands, broken with age, moved, then, as though rather dismissing what everyone knew … knew, in this case, what was meant by “
In the woods.
”

“There are certain schools, ‘secret schools,’ some call them; they are as secret as the smoke from Etna, from Mongibel’s dark stithy; and of these, likely the best is in Sevilla.
You
would laugh, were I to tell you the price,
now
you would laugh, but afterwards you would not laugh; besides … you might never have to pay it. And in Athens there are sundry schools, sundry seigniories of learningship, as it were,” he spoke on, he spoke lower than before, almost as though he were talking … not to the boy, there … not to the thrall creeping along the wall with — was that a rat in one hand, which he was holding by the tail? “the thing” slouched away into the shadows, the curtain-hanging moved and then moved no more: the slight sounds of the stick stirring in the tub began again. “… Illyriodorus,” the warlock was saying, “though he and I were never fellow, sour wine would turn sweet in that one’s mouth. Nevertheless.” What that
nevertheless
might bode, Vergil was not, then and there, to know.

And by and by the old sorcerer, if that was what Numa was, said,
Go.

He had gone. So. His thoughts had much occupied him in the going. Suddenly he realized, not exactly that he did not know where he was, for well he seemed to know the way, but that had he known in his everyday mind it was likely he would have gone another way. Though, as he clearly realized in a moment, he
should
have come this precise way through the woods. It was still somedel light.

“My child! My boy! Mar! My Mar!”

“Emma!” They embraced. She was grown rather smaller and lighter, he thought. She still kept her old, usual place: a section of a log with one end hewn and sunken in the ground, the upper one long ago adzed shorter and then smoothed for a seat. Her ankles, her feet, he saw, were vastly swollen. Scarce, he supposed, might she totter from her bed to her seat in the dooryard. She kissed him yet again, then murmured something which he could not at first catch; then he knew he had, after all, caught it, for it was repeated by a voice now raised within the house, where the light of one (he saw it could be no more) tiny lamp yellowed, slightly, the shadows by the partly-opened door. The voice had been going on, going on, but in his happiness to have again the dearly-loved old woman to hug, and in his guilt at not having wished enough to have come before this long time despite the possibility of a scene with Bruno, he had not picked up what that voice had been droning; it suddenly seemed that people had been murmuring, muttering, whispering, droning at him all the afternoon and evening …

“… sits all day and does no work and yet wants water,” the voice burst out into a higher note, “let her drink her own,” and the voice droned down again.

The dim sweet face turned to him and her age-softened hand held out a broken cup to him. He nodded, took it. He knew where the spring was. In a moment he was back; she did not even nod her thanks, but drank at once. And drank. He went softly once again and filled the cup. This time, as she finished, she signalled something to him. Suddenly he found an egg in his hand. Poor old woman, she had no pet, somehow she had always a hen about, pecking and dipping its head at the bits she fed it from her own bread. An egg: that was always a treat she had for him. He nodded gratefully, bent over, ready to throw back his head and drink it so soon as he had cracked the shell; suddenly of a sudden some huge shape had swum swiftly out of the darkness, and had deftly snatched the very egg from his hand: the woman Euphronia it was: and she made some ugly scornful sound in her thick throat, and swiftly she was gone. She did not even bother to shout at him, for well she knew that she had wounded not alone one but two people; and that her sudden swooping-down had startled more than a shout; moreover, she now had the egg.

Sudden tears flowed on old Emma’s cheek.
And much I would,
he felt the words, it was more than thought and it was other than speech; the dame Euphronia had snatched off Emma’s egg?
And much I would that she would find scald Cacas rat inside of it;
what noise now issued from the house? No mere scream, but full-voiced ullulations of terror, welling forth, and louder and louder — He blew a kiss to the old one, Emma, and, light-footed, soft-footed, so hurried away into the gathering darkness. He knew that for now, at least, no one would follow him.