The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (15 page)

And in the night came a play of light atop the mast. “The corposants, the corposants,” cried one, and crew and captain alike covered their faces. Vergil however observed the blue-green green-blue shimmer, a single source or twinned he could not tell; then recalled that the corposants are Castor and Pollux come down again from the sky.

They had of course some time since passed Tingitana, a name not without memory or meaning to Vergil. To the larboard lay the city Tingitana, Tengis or Tingitayne, its once-great port now drowsing in the sun; crowned with its acropolis or cássaba set off by crumbling walls. Vergil, who had been in more than one such neighborhood, watched with more indifference than interest; a once-royal palace and its precincts to be sure, decorated in a sort of non-style, and stinking with old stale. There would be a so-called snake-charmer lurking there for chance visitors, nose bloody from the bites of a serpent which was perhaps far from being charmed by it all. Should he go ashore when the master went, who was shortly going there on ship’s business? Besides the shabby mountebank there would be, but outdoors, harlots in the local style, grossly fat, eyes painted widely in many colors, and almost certain to pass on the itch, if not more. Or, if tired of the ship’s fare, he might dine at some place upon the foreshore: rough tough ram-lamb grilled upon a spit over a fire of embers of vine cuttings. Bad wine, gussied up with gods-know-what. Go look at the Hall of the Suffetes, where no one suffeted nowadays. The walled small enclosure of the Roman proconsul and viceroy. Such a place surely did not rate a king. Tingitana. Bah. It did not smell as ill as filthy-stinking Zeyla-Zayla: and let that suffice for it.

“You did not leave Corsica in haste by account of some sacrilege or manslaying, I suppose, my ser?” — the captain. A-smiling.

“Not I.” — Vergil. With much effort, suppressing a shudder. “Why?”

The man pointed with a hand like the claw of one of the ganter striding birds. “Yonder wee vessel is what we calls the justice-boat. What do I mean? Soon be seen. And heard.”

The wee vessel, ends turned up like some fanciful slipper, came alongside and disgorged an official of the port, assisted by two serjants-at-mace. “Ho, Plauto! take any good prizes?” he greeted.

A thin grin was all that skinny skipper allowed this sally. “None I’d share with you,” he said. Adding, “Festus.”

Festus at first made great show of mimicking a man unrolling a scroll of great import, but dropped it almost at once. Dropped the show, that is, not the scroll. He cast a swift, reckoning glance round the shabby ship (fit to vye with the
Zenos
, as sister-vessel in this regard), “
You
haven’t got the right hand of the Colossus of Rhodes,” he said, with feigned disdain.

“Ha! How do you know that I hadn’t had it, and sold it in Marsala?”

“Because it wouldn’t
fit
in this meager holk,” said Festus, promptly. “Matter of fact, I’ve been in women that had more room.”

Plauto was momentarily torn between an obvious desire to slap his thigh, and the need to make a show of injured pride; contented himself with, “What! You don’t mean to say it’s been stolen again? Who now?”

Festus shrugged. “Tiridates, King of Ermony the More … so men say … get to it … all right, then: have you got aboard of you, concealed or not concealed, one Polycarpo of Ecbatan, black-a-vized chap with very broad shoulders, wanted for spittin in the Sacred Fire a-kindled by the Magus Zoroaster himself? Swear it by Apollo and Juno and by all the other gods and goddesses whose names end in
o
—”

“Haven’t got it. I swear it by Apollo and Juno, and so on.”

“Have you a father and son called Fat Procopio and Thin Procopio, both marked with the shackles and the scourge, and wanted for murdering the widow Pessaleya of Apuleia and running with her treasure, to wit —”

“Not got. Swear it — and a wicked widow, I’ll lay she was, too —”

The inspector or procurator or whatever his title was, glanced once or twice at Vergil, who was already nervous enough, and said nothing; meanwhile, as the official read his Wanted list, the two serjants were prowling up and down, peering under sails and poking coils of rope with their maces, clambering below decks and glancing all around. Technically, Tingitayne was a port of the Empery like any other port of the Empery. Gaza. Naples. Marsella. Palermo. In the matter of geography, however, Tingitana (for why should a place have only one name? a human being has at least three! eh?) Tingitana was
the
port at the western end of the Midland Sea. It was well to know who did enter and who did leave. Even the Arabian Recess had its guards, although thither swam all the cargo-ships laded full of wealth of the Indoo Ocean and the Erythræan Sea; there passed not by Tingitane a tithe of such wealth: elephant and emerauld … pepper, pearls, and gold.

“In the olden days, Doctor,” said the official, “a very rich and busy commerce swarmed here. But now we almost slumber and sleep.”

It was as though the man had been reading his mind. A certain coldness suffused his heart. Here it was. “Ah, you know me, then,” said Vergil.

A bow, small but respectful. “At first I knew you not, ser. And then I reckoned that I knew you, yea. But not more. You were a-wearing of your green robe trimmed with fur when I had seen you at the Ceremonial, with the great gold ring upon your thumb. And later, I am sure, at the Straw Market.” Vergil had not the slightest memory of ever having seen the man in Rome, but the man’s memories provided the clues as to when the man had seen
him.
Along with the doctorate and the doctoral ring Vergil had, as was customary, received a small purse of gold: three golden solids and a golden paleólogus (this last of a paler cast, it was perhaps slightly flushed with silver: he had made no assay). Most of the gratuity had gone to pay his debts: board and lodging, of course, and the final purchase of the robe and ring as well, and his share of the costs of the Ceremonial. And out of what remained he had — true enough — gone to the Straw Market and, after much cheapening, bought a straw chair to send to Illyriodorus in Athens; with it he had sent the softest, thickest, most supple of sheep-fells, hoping that straw chair and sheepskin seat cushion would be easier on his old teacher’s aged bones than the plain hard benches. Any philosopher might tell you that the simple life was the most proper one, and (rolling up his eyes) that the superior man not merely ought to be, but
was
, satisfied with bread for all his meat and a clean scallop shell to dip his water for all his drink, a hollow bone to hold all his clean salt, and a wooden bench for all his seat and selle and seige. To be sure that Illyriodorus, if you were to give him (say) a flask of oil of nard, would never rub it in his aged oxters or dress his senatorial beard — he would make haste to have some student sell it quietly and then give the money to a worthy fund — for the relief and sustentation (say) of widows of philosophers slain at the capture of Corinth. But Vergil had observed the old man wince when sitting down and heard him say, “If my old goose had not died, gladly would she yield me some breast-feathers to stuff a small pillow, for when the rump dwindles, then the bones grow sore.” Illyriodorus would not be one for ostentatious suffering, he would fold the thicky sheep-fell and fit it in the chair to sit upon. Gladly …

“And how now, Doctor,” asked official Festus, “did you find our Yellow Rome?” Vergil answered, lightly, quickly, “
Very easily.
” Communications from those of higher rank to those of lower might be considered privileged communications, in that the former are privileged to communicate things of a very slightly humorous nature and are also privileged to hear in return sounds of amusement at least somewhat more than the same remarks would engender from one of equal rank; not that the laughter would need to be obsequious but that whatever was said would indeed
seem
funnier than if from an equal, or an inferior.

When the chuckles had not quite died away, Vergil then asked, equally lightly, equally quickly, “And what news do you hear from ‘our Yellow Rome’? — We have just come from Corsica, where we don’t hear much …” — No, said Festus, he supposed that in Corsica they
didn’t
hear much … more chuckles … “What we hears? We hears,” Festus considered the matter, brightened a bit, said, “Well. We hears that Himself the August Caesar continues in good health,” Vergil made a murmur of gratification. And
this
was no mere obsequiousness, either: for unless Himself the August Caesar were some very great tyrant — which he sometimes was — one would naturally wish him to continue in good health: for, whilst he did so, it was not very likely that hard-faced men with newly-sharpened swords would be dispatched hither and yon with instructions to return with newly-severed heads. And who knew, in such an event,
whose
? — or wished to? Still … as for the Slaves of the Immortal Gods …

Festus continued to ponder, index finger pressed against the wart upon his chin; his face moved. “Ah, we hears, also, that Old Scipio that great gaffer-oliphaunt, who’d been there in Caesar’s Park since, some say, since King Hanibal’s time, anyway was there when I was a boy;” generations of Romans had known Old Scipio, had fed him leafy twigs and oranges and cakes, and gone for rides upon his rugous back: “has died.” Vergil raised his brows and made a murmur of regret; what else? “And — ah, yes!
What
a tale of news! As some criminal dog attemptimated to seize ahold of them holy Vestal Virgins, but pious citizens drove him off —
who
? a rogue, they say, with no neck and a low brow and uge sword-slashes across of his ugly face —
why
? we’ve no idea —” Vergil, who had stopped breathing, breathed again.

Now see and hear Captain Plauto stoop and stare up into the face of Festus. “Well, that let’s
you
off — nary sword-slash do I see!”

Loud
laughter.

The serjants-at-mace returned from below decks, from the way they furtively wiped their beards and from the sad, sour smell of them, one assumed that the ship’s wine had been broached and hospitality (one would not wish to say: gratuity) given; Festus tugged at his belt, half-turned to go, turned back. “Come ashore with us, Doctor, and taste our victuals. Meet the Viceroy. See the Trogs … we don’t oft have any here to see …”

Plauto said, “Go, Doctor, do. We’ll see you ashore and bring you back with us, no fear we’ll leave you for the Troglodytes to eat!”

He had not thought to go ashore, but it hardly seemed tactful to refuse; the Viceroy was, after all, in the place of the
roy
, the king, the Emperor, and one did not want to cause a question to arise.

The victuals were much as Vergil had thought that they would be, and so was almost everything else. One thing only he had not expected. Now to visit the Viceroy, Festus had said. He must have had an influence with his superior for which rank alone would not suffice, that he had merely walked into the man’s office, taking Vergil with him by the arm. Influence, however, or not, he (and his visitor) stood stock-still once they were a pace or two inside the door; for someone else was there before them. Standing with one hand on the viceregal chair almost as though posing for a sculptor was the viceroy himself, and he had the stiff look of one who has learned very successfully to control his passions but not to like doing so. Someone was facing him, and Vergil knew this one at once, was almost paralyzed to see him now and here … not with fear but with astonishment; protocol forbade that he should at the moment move or speak, but he doubted he could in any event have moved or spoken.

Even the most intense of confrontations produces its moment of silence, its moments, and this one was almost at once broken — not by the entrance of Festus and Vergil, but by its own weight and measure: silence could not bear the emotion of the one who next spoke. “We are against
Rome
,” the man said, “because
Rome
is against Nature! Three times it is that you have destroyed our city and from even before that you have tried to bar the whole world from us;
how have you dared?
Juno designed that
our
city, and not
yours,
” what hatred and contempt and barely-controlled rage lay in that one word,
yours
, “be the center of the world, and she gave us tokens that this should be so, she gave us her armor and her chariot: to no other city in the world did she do this, only to Carthage she did this.” He was a huge man with a huge chest and as he spoke the word
Carthage
he seemed to grow huger and as he took in deeper breaths the vastness of his chest became even more apparent, and his color went deeper and took on more and more of that
red
color which was the meaning of the word
Punic
, his eyes were bledshotten, almost he trembled and in another moment he
would
tremble. “
Where
is her armor and
where
is her chariot? If not for certain Carthagans abroad who bought — and for no small sums, I inform you —
one
wheel of her chariot and
one
heel-piece of her armor,” here he
did
tremble, his deep voice trembled, his arms and his legs twitched: thus might a man behave in the presence of his enemy and adversaries: not that he feared of them, but that he was so in rage of them — “if not for that, we should have nought relish and nought taste of our lady Ishterah, Juno as she is also called:
Juno!
But I tell you, though you have expelled Nature as with a pitchfork, yet she shall always return. This sole wheel shall have a mate, and those twain wheels shall bear a holy chariot and this chariot shall bear the lady’s image, clad in mail, the length of every street in Rome through which a chariot may pass, and this heel-piece of her armor shall trample every snake in
Rome
— now go!” Great must have been the self-control of him, that his voice neither trembled nor broke when he flung out the words,
Now go!