The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (16 page)

And he himself went.

Much loved of Juno, ancient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold.
Thrice indeed had Rome destroyed that city; and now, it seemed, a fourth time, again it was rising and again it spoke defiance. Was it so that Juno still hated Mars, the father of Romulus? What boded this for the pax Romana, and all who dwelt within the Empery of Rome?
Much loved of Juno….

And after the polite recital of, if you are well then I am well and it is well, the viceroy asked, still formal, “Is there anything which I can do for you, Doctor Vergil?”

“Lord Viceroy … the Lord Viceroy can tell me if that man just now here … is he not called Hemdibal? Might I not have seen him in Corsica?”

By the calm tone of the viceroy they might have been speaking of some superannuated senator; “I am sure that he has many names and is seen in many places. I sent for someone to explain to me the presence of certain ships in the circumjacent sea, and there came this one. ‘Hemdibal’? No such name it was he said. He said he is Josaias, King of Carthage.”

More for the sake of having something to do in order to distract his mind from the discomfort of the ship’s motion (do what he might, he could not rid himself of the very deep feeling that it was an
irrational
motion, that the sea ought to be as firm as the land: this was the common Roman notion, more-or-less, for the Romans did not love the sea), he began seeking and searching if there were things in his pouch which he might shift to his budget — that staunch old doe-skin budget — or things in his budget which he might shift to his pouch —
poke
, they had called it at home,
Some thief slit the thongs and made off with the poke, may curs devour his collions!
And in so doing he, Vergil, came upon a small piece of sheepskin with the fleece-side inside. Instantly he was again in Verona, where he had gone to speak with Sparga, the great Sparga, the only man of whom it was said, by name, that he had made a homuncule;
Sparga illa
, that one.

Sparga had not much wanted to talk about the homuncule. “The experiment was, philosophically speaking, a success. But the experience was a shock. Endeavor thee not to make homuncules, Messer Vergil, thou philosophe, thee.”

“It must have been a great wonder,” said that philosophe, he, reluctant to leave the subject.

Sparga, his face like some low range of mountains seen from a higher peak in the dry season when all is sere and stark, said, “Here is a wonder.” And placed a patch of cloth in his hand, tumbling out the contents. “Do you take especial interest in gold, ser? Most men do.”

There were the two rings, of the palest yellow metal, scarcely might he believe that they
were
gold. Sparga the alchemist was reading his doubts upon his face. “This is not true gold, Messer Vergil, this is electrum, and electrum of a very special kind. Short of scraping somewhat of the metal itself, which I am loath to do as it would damage, and putting the scrape to the assay by fire and crucible, a precise analysis is not possible. Neither would it yield to the touchstone. But there is very good reason otherwise to say the substance of the rings consists in 67 parts of gold to 31 parts of silver; some say that the other two parts are of simple copper-bronze — as though bronze itself is so simple and there were not a muckle formulas for bronze. However, others say,” and here a smile as thin as a ray of winter sunlight passed swift over the craggy countenance of the occamyst; Vergil had a sudden insight, a sudden insight: knew that
others
was a modest obliquity for the name of Sparga himself; “… others say that the two lesser parts are orichalchion, that mysterious ore of copper itself tinctured somehow with gold, there in the distant mountain matrix of Eva, the lands of Greece.
Wizard’s Electrum
, it is called, this semplum of which the twain rings are wrought. You may examine them. Do.” And Vergil picked up one, and then the other. The first was wrought in a design of great extension and complexity, as it were some serpentine thing coiling in and out and roundabout and just as the eye thought it had discerned an end and a beginning, lo! the eye was fain admit itself wrong: yet ever the seeking mind was convinced that an end there was, and a beginning, eke.

“This is either the Worm Ouroborus,” Vergil said, referring to the device of a serpent swallowing its own tail, the symbol of eternal wisdom; “or the Gordian Knot…. Anent which,” his mind was not contented to stay even with the marvel before him but hurried swiftly aside to another one. “… anent which I have ever questioned that Magnus Alexander in truth fulfilled the prophecy told of ‘whoso would untie that great knotted cable of cormel-bark would rule Asia’; he did but take his sword and slash it!”

“Yet he
did
rule Asia,” murmured Sparga.

“‘He
did
rule Asia,’ but he ruled Asia by virtue of some other marvel, that marvel which was Magnus Alexander,” insisted Vergil.

Still murmuring, Sparga, “Even so. Oft one reads and one hears that the Philosopher’s Egg may be sliced open with a single stroke of a sword, its wonders to expose. But never does one hear or read an explanation which is satisfactory, as to
what
.” Sparga used more vessels of crystal and glass than Vergil was accustomed to seeing in an elaboratory: how they all sparkled there in the summer sunshine of Verona! “… as to
what
is the Philosopher’s Egg and as to
which
sword or
what
sword.”

The subject was fascinating, but Vergil with a sigh unvoiced set that one ring adown and took up the other. And this was ornamented and enchased with a design of many small flowers; his eyes were keen enough to make out, to his great enchantment and pleasure that every petal of every flower was itself a smaller flower; and he felt certain that, were his eyes keen enough, he might find that these tiny flowers were composed of flowers tinier yet. “Each ring, Master Sparga,” he said, murmuring low, “is a marvel. Why have I never heard of them?”

“Why be so sure that you have never heard of them?”

Of a sudden Vergil felt a shock as they lay in his palm or was it in his mind? he ne’er knew. “What, ser? Messer Sparga! Can it be that one is the ring called
Senex
, which makes young men old? and that this other is the ring called
Juvens
which makes old men young?”

The occamyst slightly oppressed his lips, edges so fine and sharp that might they have been carven by a crisping-tool. “A marvel it would be indeed, were a young man to wish to be old! To wisdom, a hard road!”

Vergil, with a slight gesture and a questioning look, requested that he might have water from the nearby jug; Sparga did not allow him leave by speech or motion, but he poured him water with his own hand. The jug was very curiously wrought, with sylvan scenes drawn upon it, such as a spring emptying into a rocky pool overhung with trees. The water was as cool and fresh as though it had just now run purling from such a source indeed. “Thank you. — perhaps old in wisdom is the proper meaning of it. Eh?”

“And is the other geste to become young in wisdom? Eh, indeed.” To this Vergil had no answer. “Unless,” Sparga, “that herewith Natura hath prepared an almighty jest of the other sort: that the rings be tried on unwittingly, a gamble very great, and the outcome not surely known; be not tempted, ser. Swiftly I forfend such temptation!” In an instant Sparga had taken up the two rings and twisted them with a motion for which
deft
was insufficient, lo! one ring was fixed curled inside the other. And … hold: “
Curled
inside the other?” there was something almost shockingly odd about the angle there … “Pentalepto of Scythia,” Vergil said, slowly (and the chymist soft said
Ahhh
), “accounted how he slipped, one day as he was walking the walk of the mazes and calculating his steps as he stepped, miscalculated, and slipped sideways and downways, as the
Magna Homero
has it,
ananta katanta paranta
, upalong, sidealong, downalong; and so fell he into that otherworld and universe in which even the geometry is clean different. There were the dragons feeding Anthony in the fattening pen. Anthony cried to him for help, but Pentalepto suffered so much as he stood there sickened by the strangest strangeness of it all in the harsh prismatic light, that it was with an almighty effort he broke back amongst us. And as for Anthony —”

Vergil threw a sharp glance at Sparga, who merely took out from anywhere a small box carved in great detail showing the lyngworme coiled about the legs of Frotho Dragonslayer the suitor of that Thora (so the Northish annals told), and he with his sword couched high and ready to slash down; there was no egg present; and from the box the Sparga plucked a patch of some gloriously yellow sheepfell, and wrapped the twined twain rings up in it, and, opening his guest’s clenched fingers, slipped the tiny pacquet inside onto his palm. “This and these be thine,” he said. “These and this be thine.” It was, the guest Vergil felt, perhaps almost a formula as from a rescript. Of one thing and alone one thing was Vergil sure. To make a great matter of this great matter would be a mistake: “Thank you, Master Sparga,” said Vergil.

“Sadly do I note that the day wanes shorter and that you will never tarry, nor I press you never so much.”

And as he was saying this, he was moving along, Vergil perforce moving that pace ahead of him, and almost it seemed that guest was escorting host to the hole of the door; so deftly did Sparga give the congée. And the posts by the sides and the lintel up above were carven in strange carvings of designs, and one was that of an incoiling coiling without end, and the other was a continual wreath of flowers of whose petals were other flowers made, and so on so. “When next we meet, Ser Juvens,” Sparga (
Sparga illa
) said, “you are to riddle Ser Senex the riddle of this riddling,” and as he was so saying he was closing him the door. Vergil went alone to the inn with his head full of many thoughts. Always he kept with him in his pouchet or poke that scrap-piece of the (he was sure, quite sure) the Golden Fleece which contained the twain two rings so strangely flexed together. The sun was going down, down over Verona, as it was downgoing everywhere in that Zone of the Climates, but he saw it as it were going down upon the great Voe of Naples in an immense crowd of clouds of rosy-colored flame. And within it was a cloud of gold. To the Southwest lay the Isle of Inarime or Isehia and to the Southwest the Isle of Goats, or Capria. And within his heart lay much wonder at the wonders endless of the world.

He said nothing as he went.