The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (33 page)

But there was not such portal of escape now, at sea.

Had the ancient been going to add something? was that last syllable not
and
? In which case “and”
what
? One would never know, now. Nor did it matter. Vergil had work to do; scarce had he reached the mid-point of gathering herbs on that far distant isle of Greece and comparing them with the illustrations in the
Theophrast on Plants
; the text he had of the illustrated manuscript, he strongly suspected of being a mere copy of a copy, and as filled with errors as a pomegranate with pips. Enough time —

He rose, there in the hut, and absently brushed his knees, his hose; chaff and straw had clung there, spiders’ webs and eggs, flecks of dried dung had clung there, husks of barley, and one blade of grass. There was no need for the familiar tests of mirror or feather; no one cared in the least. Tomorrow would do for burial, and if the old man were not now indeed dead (which, indeed, he was), certes he would be by then.

An old ox-thrall.

Then the scene vanished as mist dissolved by wind — though the wind had not quite dissolved
this
mist — he was back on the small “free” craft flying from the Carthagan corsair … though true corsairs sometimes only plundered and took what they fancied of the cargo and whom they fancied of passengers (if any) or crew … comely women … girls … handsome men … boys … sometimes even ugly old sea-scabs, did the corsair be short of hands. Even if this were merely a Carthagan corsair and not patrol-ship, even if intent chiefly on plunder: was the orchil-paste (shades of
purple!
) found in the hold: dead men were they all. Vergil heard the terribly laboring breath of the rowers, smelled their bitter stale and stinking scat; the captain had breath to spare, and all he said as he paced, Polycarpu, was, “Row! … Row!” and “
Row!
” The helmsman also had breath to spare, and he spoke but one sentence: “
Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea save us from death!
” and he spoke it again and again. And the ship’s master, Polycarpu, walked up and down, to and fro, back and forth, uttering his single, single word.

A sting of spray near-blinded Vergil in one eye. The pursuer was nearer now, one could hear the
Cry of Carthage
— war-cry, supplication, cry of triumph — Fire burns, water drowns, Carthage hates Rome — the
Cry
of, “
Juno! Juno! Juno!
”

All at once he was on his knees, in his hand the leather square from his old, soft, doe-skin budget, miracle! still with him! the leather square with the SQPR (death to counterfeit),
Senatusque Populesque Romanum,
stamped upon it (long ago) in gilt. For what? to prove to the Punes he was a
citizen
of Rome? This was no recommendation in the happiest of circumstances, and certainly it would be worse than none to Josaias, who would certainly not fail to remember the meeting with Vergil in the fields on Corsica where and when he had encountered Vergil at the very moment that he was robbed of his intended prey: the “stealer of the teeth” (did Vergil recall what
teeth
meant? vaguely he thought he might, but the recollection eluded him now, and besides there was no time). So —

He was on his knees, then, in his hands the leather square, initials SQPR still faintly visible although the gilt was long since worn away from the letters. It was all faded now, faded, worn, and, really: greasy; but there was a by-word about what color it had been — “
He
hath the hide of the red ox, he hath!” — in other words the
he
was a citizen, and not a mere denizen and subject, of Rome; not alone of Yellow Rome, the City, but of the very entire Empery of Rome … and Rome had chosen the blood-red color of Mars, godly Father of Father Romulus, father-founder of Rome; chosen it for this especial usage. Vergil was on his knees (
Mamers
, as Quint’s rich friend called the goddus in his native Etruscan tongue: and what matter now? either Quint or …), he, Vergil was chanting the curse upon the red ox — upon?
against!
why? well … they would soon see. His thumb prickled. The sybils, where are they? and your mothers, do they live forever?

He would soon see.

And
why
, in the name of any goddus or goddess or spirit or genii, was he, in the midst of the wild wide sea, cursing an
ox
? — not to stop, not to pause, his right thumb prickled, was that not enough? was that not the gift (besides the gift of her body, a good gift in itself) of the priestess of “those who make plans in the night,” back there beneath the odorous walnut-tree: that his right thumb should prickle as a warning and a guidance? aware of woe —

Spindle made, it was said, of a dead man’s rib boiled in vinegar to make it supple and limber and easy for its shape to change: a thing well-fit for the Norns, those Northish ones whose name was brought south by the Varangian guards to
Micklegarth
, “Great City,” as they called Byzantinople; Byzance-town; and why should the Norns not spin the fate-threads for the oxen of the isles or wherever their attention was called? … summoned thereto …?

The toiling crew peered at him out of the corners of their eyes; their arm-, leg-, and back-muscles looking like cables strained so that they might crack and snap any moment now; but out of their eyes’ corners shown now some faint lust of hope, to see the magus on his knees; hope, despite the loudening clamor of
Juno! Juno! Juno!:
and, intrusively, there was coming again the line from the
Oracles of Maro
… eh? … ah … yes …
much loved by Juno, antient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold
…

Not to stop nor to pause. Onward.

Now! There would happen —

Nothing
happened. Except of course —

“
Juno! Juno!
”

And that huge, it seemed very huge now, Carthage ship grew steadily nigher.

Either the Curse was, for whatever reason (including, possibly, a lie: even dying men sometimes lie, alas; sometimes even dead men lie … alas …), futile — or, somewhere, an hundred parasangs away, a blood-red ox with pendulous dew-laps and shambling gait, lurching and straining in the furrow of the loamy earth, had of a sudden stumbled: an ox-horn, grass-tied or not, plowing of a sudden, a furrow of its own — and, if so, what good? On the ship’s sodden deck lay a blade of grass, a leaf of common green grass, as to which the
Theophrast
said nothing: from
Abana Balm
to
Zenobian Zinziber
the
Theophrast
had much to say: about the common bladed grass: nothing. On Vergil’s knee, where it had knelt beside the dying ox-thrall, a leaf of greeny grass. Of … nothing. Grass was nothing.

Vergil thought again of the tenth and twelfth lines (the eleventh was blotted and rubbed) of the viith book of
Concerning Things Seen in the Summer,
the provenience of which remains unknow,
videlixet:

The blade of green and common grass which now lay upon the deck, scanty deckling that there was in all that hollow ship, idly that morning before leaving in haste the land, he had carelessly plucked the leaf and into his hat had thrust it; forgotten, it had fallen from the hat, here it was. He imagined just such a thing falling from an ox’s wet muzzle …
why
had the Babylone soldane eaten grass like an ox? … someday he hoped to know … and he conjectured a vision that the ox was red. And simultaneously he concentrated on the words of the Emperor Julius II
, festina
(he’d said)
lente.
Slowly hasten.
Lentor inexorable
. Very careful feeling indeed, Vergil clove the leaf of grass in two, let fall the half with the rib, placed the other half sideways in the hollow formed by the apposition of his thumbs, carefully brought the arrangement to his lips: and blew. A squeak, a squawk, the leather badge dissolved to dust, there came a sharp sound, then a quite different noise — as loud a
crash
as the arm of a ballista or some other catapult, suddenly free from tension and striking its bar the instant before the missile was flung forth.

Every braided-leather rope holding the vast sail and heavy mast of the vasty massy Punic ship broke, flew frazzled and writhing, dissolved, vanished. Hair and horn was far now from Vergil’s ken, but
Hide
had
Ceased to abide.
The mast, unsupported by the braided-leather shrouds, the mast was
down,
cracking planks and timbers. The great linen sail flopped flapping every which way, uncontrolled, uncontrollable, useless:
down.

The aghast and furious face of Josaias seen in the immense confusion, Vergil saw that himself was seen; seen, observed, identified: what face — Josaias — frightful in hate …!

The great Carthage ship, so suddenly fractured, floundered in the trough between two huge waves; and the tiny galley, with its tiny sail intact (intact, too, the weakling rushy ropes: papyrus, iris) crawled up the inner surface of the greater wave like an insect; climbed and clambered over its top, flowed down the other side. The winds fell and the mists closed in again, as cold and impartial as when they had opened, and from within the mists came an echo of ever-dwindling cries: “
Juno! Juno!
”

But it was not now the voice of them that triumph, the sound of them that feast.

The rowers rolled their eyes to their captain, he gestured. The oars on one side went up and for the next stroke did not come down, the oars on the other side went
row!
the small ship swerved on an angle; then both banks of oars played again, but (another gesture of Polycarpu’s) more slowly. The speed was somedel reduced, but so was the sound of the oars: an important consideration when the heavier atoms of the fog carried sound more weightily. Right now the ship of Carthage, assuming it did not sink: a mere assumption: it could not now follow, but no need was there at all to give them even a hint that the smaller craft was changing course nor hint to what direction that course might be. “I had hoped to make for Aspamia or the Baleares or even, ahap, the coasts of Frankland: but twold be belike too far,” the captain said, almost as aside to Vergil. “Right along the rhumb-lines,” is what Vergil at first thought he heard the captain directing the helmsman as he showed him the cartolan, unrolled in his hands. But in a moment he realized that — for what meant obliquities to the meridean for a seaman on such a barco as this? nought. — what Polycarpu must have said was, “Right along the wind-lines,” showing him on the cartolan how the winds … Boreas, Sirocco, Zephyro, Levanto, Septentrio, and all the others (“the Twelve Petals of the Compass-Rose”) … went from here to yon: as though any wind might be directed to follow a line, like a pullet in a spell: they were lines of probability, and no more. But it gave a mighty strong hint to the helmsman, and he might now observe which way the waves were ruffled, and snuff the breezes for the smells of land, with greater confidence. And after no more than a blink or two, the helmsman nodded. No ship might follow a map in a mist, but the mere sight of the cartolan gave him that confidence: in his mind he followed, and he turned his helm. Polycarpu bore away the chart, and … with a deep bow and a most respectful gesture to Vergil (pulling over his head an imaginary toga, like a priest in a temple facing the king of the sacrifice) … resumed his sempiternal striding up and down the deck, up and down, again and again, back and forth.

The man at the helm may … say, rather,
should
… have been returning his thanks to Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea. But if so, he was not doing it aloud. To vow a fine fat freemartin, as had the skipper of the
Zenos
, was hardly within his means: a pigeon, perhaps. At least, a squab. Perhaps in mind he was doing so, if he had room in his mind.