The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (23 page)

A look of pleasure, at once quelled. “Did, eh?
Tell me about it.
”

Time for frankness. “ ‘Tell’? I can tell nought. But, if I am allowed colors and a surface to limn upon, I could show you, my ser.”

“The colors are over here. And here is clean papyrus and a brush. So —”

Time for further frankness. “What terms does the master propose?”

See anger play with caution on the master’s face.

Time enough to divulge … later … that the new candidate had seen it
… once
… the day that he arrived.

Ignorance not merely exchanged, but compounded.

And did not many and many an adept die leaving many and many a privy greatbook behind, which no one was ever able to decipher? Many. And many.

“Here is a half a gold paleologue for thee. I made it —,” he said, with a look of sudden cunning upon his face which would not have long deceived the idiot boy who sloped about the streets and with a scoop dog-pure for the tanners; “myself. But have chosen to cast it in a mold,
so.
It does not pay to leave unminted gold around. Did
he
ever …
project?
”

“Oh,
thank
you, master!
Well
… master …”

Ah, the elaborations of Naples! There were those so dim and mirk that the invention of a new lamp would perhaps have been of more service than that of a new metal, cellars like crypts, not cleaned since the lustrations of the year that Junius Plato was emperor, lit chiefly by the glow of the small furnace; large and bright and airy rooms with fresh plaister fresh painted a creamy yellow, so different from the others where the gypsum fell off in flakes all grimed from the dirt of all the long dirty years … elaboratories whose masters were indeed haggard and gant with feverish eyes sunken from sickening hopes, still intent every minute with expectation that
this
time the pot would indeed be pregnant with a glory like a new-coined sun … elaboratories where the master briskly worked on stinking caustics designed to wash wool clean so as to weave well: — actually places where pentangles
were
enscribed on floors rough-swept for the purpose … and little enough
that
did to the purpose … the purpose being to
project
, an intention much the same as to
transmute
, the step just before the step
transmuted
… masters of an age to be still hearty and hail and in good thrift, but swaying and sick from the inhalations of the sophic sulphur and the sophic mercury intended to liberate
gold
from (as they thought) the frowsy atoms which concealed it …

“And you, madam,” he said, without preamble, “how did you know that I would be coming, that you called me by name? Names?”

“Oh,” she said, “Huldah told me.”

He thought she had not understood, and disdained to press the matter. But it was not she who had misunderstood. Therefore changed he the subject; “Keep you always the estuary of your river veiled, and indeed all your coast?”

“By no means. Only against those undesired. Sometimes even from Babylone people come,” what a great ellision! were none desired from less far away than Babylone? “— come, have come, and some came lately. And we trade. The speech of Babylone is near to the Punic speech in substance and in essence; have you seen how they keep records?” She took down a few small wooden boxes from a shelf and opened them, one by one. In each was something wrapped in scarlet tow, a slab of sun-baked mud with very odd markings incised upon them. He had seen such things before, but he did not tell her so. At least not directly. “This one is from Charyx Spasini,” she said, scanning the tag.

“… ‘of the long water walls?”

“That very same. And this is from Dura-Europos … or is it Duros-Europa?”

“Let us look and see.”

“Oh no. They don’t use the Latin or Greek names, though they must all
know
them; for that matter, really, they all know Latin or Greek. Latin
and
Greek. But there you are — clerks! clerks! — always maintaining their mysteries; o pópoi — phu upon them — and
this
one is from Babylone itself. Think of that.”

And he, pretending ignorance there on the sort of collonade, a roof set up on posts
outside
her house (for she did not seem to feel the need of any house-as-fortress … in fact there were no walls around the settlement), pretending ignorance he said, “But I thought Babylone had been destroyed.”

She gave him a swift and quizzical look. “Babylone Destroyed is like Thrice-Vanquished Carthage, it is always being vanquished and destroyed. But they
are
on the main routes, just where one needs a city to
be
, so a while afterwards they are builded up again, a mile from where they were before. And some Imperial Decree says the new city is to be called Philadelphia Paradoxica or Theopompa Abbadabba. Scythia Pelloponesia. But inside of a week everybody is calling them ‘Babylone’ or ‘Carthage’ all over again. And then the parchments have it, oh
Hippodupos Hippodupolis, also called Smerg,
something like that, I’m sure you’ve seen it a hundred times,” and gave him the same look.

“You are very cynical,” he said. She made a small defiant mock pout. He kissed her. She embraced him, pressing close. “Ah, that’s what I like,” he said, by and by: “none of those false embraces which a woman initiates with her arms spread wide and then she switches her head the other way until almost you fear it will fall off: and thus she gives you the air behind her ear to kiss; why do they bother?”

“Pretense,” she said. “The
silly
game. And you are supposed not to notice and kiss the air behind her ear with a great big smack —”

He nodded. “And one wonders if one smells
that
rank, and later learns that she has been equitating her mule-groom, who could not in any way smell
less
rank —”

“— but there’s no pretense here.”

“No.” He could not help but see the dust-motes dancing slowly in a shaft of that marvelous sparkling sunshine; “No … Not here … And won’t you come with me, then, Huldah, and we two can show the world — and even more: ourselves — how to live without pretense, and the
silly
game?”

She looked at him, he felt the quickening sorrow that she did not at all look like saying
yes:
but there was no pretense there, there in those agate eyes. “You wouldn’t be content to live long here,” she said, “and I wouldn’t be content to live away from here, and from Five-Limbed Uluvendas. Do you know why I am named Huldah? Oh, not just that matter of the genet and the weasel and the cat — it’s because that is the name of here. This place is called
Huldah
and I am this place and it’s not possible for me to forsake it.”

“But, you see …”

“I don’t see …”

“… you know …”

“I don’t know …”

He held her in his arms. “I am half-mad to stay here with you and I am half-mad to turn, and return to Naples and all my work, my works, damn all kings, back there … always centered there. Half, I cannot leave, and half, I cannot stay. What am I to do, Huldah?”

She retreated just a bit from him, perhaps a slightly deeper flush or blush, a slightly higher color in her cheeks; so well-looking, that touch of deep rose in that face, darker than sallow. “Why … you must leave in a short while, while you still have a ship going the way which you must go. And then you must see to your work … your works … And then, if you will, you will return. And then,” she paused, “and
then
we shall have our own Mute Trade … our own Silent Commerce and exchange.” She referred, he knew, to that most ancient way of business, sometimes called the Dumb or Mute Trade, or the Silent Commerce, a form devised long and long ago as a compromise between the desire for trade and the mutual trepidations of those trading: in this system, the merchants from over the sea would come to a place suitable for landing and in a place where they knew there were peoples who had something to sell and wanted to buy but who desired not the proximity usually attendant on buying or selling. One man of the ship would row ashore in a skiff and set forth an old piece of sail on the sand and on it place articles such as scarlet-weave, glass vessels, iron knives and arrow-heads: whatever. And then row back out to the ship and wait. Presently to the beach would come the people of the land, survey the merchandise, and leave raw gold or elephant or gemstones — what they had to offer to the amount they thought right — and retreat into the forest. Presently the shipman would land again, take up the goods if satisfied, and depart. Sometimes several trips were needed before the satisfaction of both parties was achieved. Of course there was the possibility of theft, cheats, murders: but in such cases no further trade was conducted on such beaches. (Interlopers unaware of this tended to lose their goods and their lives fairly swiftly).

“Each of us shall set down what each has to offer,” said Huldah. “And then we shall part again. And we shall consider, you and I, if each accounts the other’s offer worth the full value of what the other wants.

“And then … we shall see. Shan’t we. You will have supposed,” she said “that other men have been here and have asked, ‘Let me stay here, Huldah,’ and I have sent them all away, some with a pleasant word and a present; and some with such sayings as,
‘First fetch me what lies upon the Golden Table of Apollo in the South
— would
you
wish to know what lies there? then you must go forth, venture, and seek; I don’t urge it’ — or some like words, largely worthless: why rob Apollo, never has Apollo robbed me, and perhaps risk a dragonvisit, or a plague or mice? And to some, some very, very few, who have said, ‘Come with me away, thou Huldah,’ to them I have said what I have said to you, just now.” Only a breath she tarried, then asked the question which troubled and trembled in his heart: “How many have returned, of either sort? Oh, none have returned. Not one. Not even a single, single one.”

He parted from her, then walked across the scented floor of scented wood, to the end of the room, that long room; then he walked back. He stood before her again, but they did not then embrace again. “I see it must be so,” he said. “You are not a woman who says
no
merely in order that I should try persuade her to say
yes.
And so, surely not as a consideration of commerce, but just as a gift from me to thee,” from his pouch he took the patch of golden fleece and from
it
he took the two rings of orichalcum in their incredible juxtaposition; saying further, “This is neither the Riddle of the Sphynx nor yet the Gordian knot.”

“Yet a rare thing, of great value,” she said. “I felt … something … not describable … when you placed it in my hand. I am not necessarily expected to solve this matter. But it abides with me as a thing of memory of you, not that I should forget, but this is a memory which I can touch. Well. You will go. And now I tell you what I have told no other. I shall, after a reasonable while plus a, shall we say, even an unreasonable while, expect your coming. Your return. I shall arrange for the Veil of Isis to lift, upon your approach. Make a plan, a sketch, a map and notes, of this place — a periplus, call it. Or a chart. Not forgetting the headland. And on that headland, when the moon is dark, if I sense your approach, I shall light a fire for you to see—”

“Ah, I wish it were the Pharos of Alexandria!”

“— it is not. — a fire for you to see, and by which to guide you.” She fell silent, contemplating, brow pressed down, lips uttering soft thought he could not hear; then her face opened and she smiled on him. “And in case, by reason of cloud or rain, over which my skill is limited — it is easier, if not easy, to make rain than to make rain cease — you might not see the fire, or should the winds bring you too far out of sight as you pass by this fire, I shall kindle it and fuel it with scented wood alone: calamus and quinnamon and citron-wood and of the roots of nard and of the twigs of thyme, of juniper, cedar, and of such sundry others as, of yet, I do not know.

“So even though you might not see the guiding fire, yet you shall know that it be there, I shall send a wind of far fetch so that the air and breeze shall bring you scented notice of me, for I am Huldah, and I am the headland and the winding river and the sheltering port as well.” (And all the while as, later, he was bound away, he saw her in the sheltering port’s placid wavelets and in the undulations of the winding river and in the cliffs and crannies of the headlands: and even, her face burned upon the waters of the open sea for many leagues and many.) Yet another moment she hesitated, and then she said, without change of countenance or voice, “And don’t fear, thou Messer Vergil, that however long thou tarriest, if even past time that I have ceased to wait daily for thy coming, that ever I shall make that fire a funeral fire —”

“
Absit omen!
” and thrice he spet upon that perfumed floor and thrice he rapped his knuckle-bones upon the wooden pillar he stood next to, so that the dryad which had dwelt within the tree, and might dwell there still, should hearken and prevent any possibility of coming true the words which the woman had said should not come true: she had had the thought: therein a danger. And
Absit omen
, he said, yet once again.

He met her eyes, those agate-colored eyes, in which he had seen the gleamings and the glisterings of far-off fires in nights by far-distant shores and in distant lands of interior. “I, more worth than that,” she said.

“
Ah, Huldah—
”

“For I am, after all, Huldah of Huldah. And I am far more worth than that.” She stopped and stooped and picked up her little cat-creature, which he had not seen nor heard enter the room. It made a sound to her, and she held it close her face, and the two faces looked upon him. A slight and aimless question he now asked of her, as one will do, to break silence. “What is biss’s name?” he asked.

And, in an odd, and yet it appeared and seemed an appropriate, tone, the question was answered him. “My name is Huldah,” said the creature.