Authors: Avram Davidson
The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (34 page)
Between the rudder and the mast, Vergil, excused from every duty on the rota of duties (
Rota. Rato. Arot. Otar. Ator. Taro
… and all the rest of it), had now time to think of the duty which he had of late performed, and which was on no roster at all. As a woman, a matron, likely, who wishes to summon a servant in the time of night when all are at slumber, save she herself; does so with a sound both low yet sharp, by clicking her finger-nails; so Vergil stood, feet spread apart and braced and facing the grom grey sea, reviewed the elements of the equation of the spell: and did it not seem as though each element appeared as though summoned? click after click? spume in his face, click.
First,
Click!
there was the need that the Carthage sail-ropes and mast-shrouds all be of leather, and not of any grass.
Click!
Then … what were the odds that the leather be made from the hide of a
red
ox? (… as a dream, somewhere the report of a great pool so vasty as to be termed a
sea
and contained in a container of bronze or brass, the same being supported by the figures of oxen: supposing these to be made as well of tombac bronze, the oxen … until a patina formed … would indeed be
red
…) for be sure they’d not be made of cow-hide, though this be stern and stanch enough for any pair of boots or any whip of thongs, yet
no
hide fit merely for whip or boots — however punished or punishing — would be staunch and stern enough for a ship’s shrouds or sheets: its cables or its ropes, in landsmen’s talk — And the Curse itself must be remembered and recited: recited accurately, too.
Click! Click! Click!
Next, the memory of Babylone and a blade of grass … absent from the instructions; the old ox-thrall, it was now clear, had died before divulging this about the blade of grass; yet, sure, it had been his intention to divulge it, and therefore it hung in the air and Vergil had breathed it in (else, it had passed into the Universal Æther, and thence had slipped into Vergil’s mind, and, thence, unto his lips and fingers:
Click!
) Once had Vergil pronounced the Curse and nothing had happened. It had also been needful that,
Click!
he should have with him a piece of the hide of a red ox.
Click!
and would he have had this, for certain, had he not been a citizen of Rome Yellow Rome!
Yellow
Rome! but for all that, the stamp of the citizenship was on
red
) …?
Click!
And what of the blade of grass, so common a thing as a leaf of grass, yet a thing extending, as it were, the protection of distant, far-distant Babylone (where kings ate grass and books were built of the muddy earth, upon which grass grew … had not
Huldah
shown him?) over not-so-distant Carthage —
had
Carthage been destroyed? Cartha Gedasha, New City, springing up ever anew … How had he, Vergil, merely “chanced” to put a blade of common grass into his hat, just e’er they’d left land that morning? Had not the Curse known it was to be required that day, and had it not
required
Vergil to take and pluck, take and pluck?
Click!
Click!
Pluck!
Click!
Next,
what
was the sounding of the shrill note upon the broken blade of grass, but what the occymists called
The Dissolution
, the vanishing — or the appearance — of one substance in another, or the creation therein of a third? — the
katalysein
, as the Ægyptian occymists called it in their fluent but to tell the truth untinctured, rather sloppy Greek, though this was not the place nor time to parse or purify it. — had he not blown his shrill and grassy note, shrill as ever any wind, would all the elements of the equation have come together, and fulfilled the Curse upon the Red Ox,
hair, horn, and hide
… hide …?
Click!
Never before in his life had he had more instant and more emphatic evidence of the truth and proof of Illyriodorus’s principle: “
In verbis et in herbis
… therein lies power.”
He felt as someone who had been long preparing for a certain journey, and who suddenly found himself on the road itself with nothing which had been in the catalogue of things needed for it … indeed, with not even the list itself: But if he had only the memory of the catalogue or list — was this
nothing for the journey
? far from it. It
was
, indeed, “
something for the journey,
” indeed. “Such and such an herb, sure against elf-shot,” thunder-thistle, perhaps, he perhaps had it not — but if the awareness of not having it kept him cautiously away from “blasted oaks” (what brought now to his mind the
bidens
, the lightning-blasted lamb?) “and all such sites of baleful omen and of elf-shot,” why, wasn’t this as though he
had
had it? And better than though he had, and had not sense to use it?
Click!
*
Melcarth and Memnon, some say they be called. Jachin and Boaz, some say they be called: Maimon and Minrod, others. What sayeth The Matter? The Matter sayeth not.
**
And here endeth the line; further The Matter sayeth not.
XII
Tingitayne
As it were idly, but mainly to calm his still leaping heart and throbbing thoughts, he brought forth from his pocket the battered thin old copy of
The Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne
, and riffled through it, pausing here and there to read …
Ictoon, a haven with no port or town, but containing three flowing streams of good water. Deep-drawing ships, it is said, may enter either from the right or left, but the careful will ever prefer the left, except in the season of myriad heavy rains, when the river … The Harbor-town where is the siege of the Chief of the Kings of White Mauretayne, has a myriad of peoples, and exporteth reeds and rushes, such as those of the sweet flag or iris, which sometimes be of the best quality; you may know this by the scent or olor. Myriads of papyrus plants are here to be found springing up by the rivers and swamps, but they are too coarse to be used for writing or even for wrapping, so they are not prepared in the usual way, but are kept sodden and may be scutched for rope as needed. From this the Chief of Kings derives it is said a myriad of ducats in export duties …
Vergil sighed. The anonymous author or compiler was fond of the word
myriad
. The pages turned and turned.
… the waters are not sweet which proceed from the brooks of Bubastine, site of a temple to Cybele or Venus who is worshipped here as the genetrix of Genets, valued for their incessant hunting-down of mice and rats. Hither came Algibronius, Geber, or Gibber, whose alchemical texts are by the vulgus called gibberish. The Gebber here examined for minerals useful for his Art, and found, tis said, an excellent unctuous earth for preparing fluxes. But no mines are now worked. Here Gibber commenced to edifix an altar, but did not complete it, preferring … Sarsten by the Sea hath for sale without stint very good wheats and millet and spelt; also a scarlet dye sold in grain. Sarsten above the Sea prepares several special sorts of garlands which retain their scent above a lustrum …
Vergil gave here a great yawn, felt much fatigued. Came hither Gibber, delving, devoting, praying? And decided to erect his altar to the Great and Comely Mother, symbol of the Female Principle in the Universe, but did not finish it —? How
like
him. Algibronius came once to a symposium at the School of Illyriodorus, stroked much his long thin dark beard and spoke for above an hour by the glass: left with no one (perhaps not even The Old Master) very much enlightened. Yet there was about him an hint of barely banked fires and of almost-quivering excitements at the concealed wonders of the world, could one but
take up the mantic sword Inwitsbane and with one stroke cut open the great egg of Zazma the Unknowing, abda ca dabra, and thus incipiate the Yolk of Per sis and the White of Selene and Luna and the Great White Porcine Sow if
and so so on: much so on. And then departed abruptly, so much so that he awoke several students: Vergil would have mildly wished to know but never did:
whither
had he departed.
“Bring her out, bring her a bittle out,” Vergil heard the captain Polycarpu directing. They were standing down a coast, and he had not even heard the landfall called, not never so much as asked the ritual
What shore? what coast of people?
Had that much time passed as he droused over the
Periplus
? “Bring her a bittle out,” the captain had said; sure enough the barco swung a small ways out away from shore.
“Which side is the current coming down?” Current coming
down
? That meant a river.
“Starboard, Carp.”
“Then swing her in, making up the larboard side.”
The helmsman gave a slight grunt, gave Vergil a slight glance, as one should say,
After all my years on the water do ye tell me so
?
But the shore was, mere, a shore, a dry brown shore as like so many, here and there a small structure with a flat roof, and on yonder hill, of course, there stood a building, inevitably a tower: it was — ah the god — how dull, and Vergil’s eyes fled back to the book, over which he had pored and droused. Of a sudden in the book, a new page, not as usual the mutter of what many springs of water and where, of rocks and reefs, exports, imports: no. At this point, it was clear, the nameless compiler, or, likelier, recompiler, had set himself to copy something quite different, and the calligraphy, the “hand,” grew still and formal. Was this some lines from a Fasti, and if so, which one? Hmm, to see, to see. Somehow, already, skipping ahead and scanning words later even before actually reading carefully the beginning, the principio; somehow he had the feeling that this new entry, if that was quite the word, constituted some sort of a montjoy, that cairn of stones erected to mark the site of a victory in battle.
Hercules
, the Roman form of
Melcarth
, called the Tyrian Hercules, from the Punic
Melec-Cartha
, King of the City; but sometimes reverenced by the Gauls and Anglians and other Nortishmen as “King Arthur.” Melcarth was ever the chief deity of Tyre (Tur, Turret, Tower) and also of that City rich in Purple her chief African colony, Carthage (from Cartha Gedasha = New City). Some say thus: King Cartha, famous for his deeds of valor, metaphorically termed
labors
, erected twain columns at the western end of the Midland Sea; beyond which bounds he did no deeds, gestes, jousts. Others say they be named Gibber’s Altar and the Mountain of Atlas: but this is mere legendry. The facts are that twain columns were erected in the Temples of Melcarth at Tyre and later at Carthage by that great architect Hiram. (Note the progression Hiram,
Hercul
es, Melcarth. The H/M and R/L shifts are according to the Laws of Letters as laid down by the Phoenicians or Punes, who invented letters. Is the procession noted?). The true significance of the twain columns is not surely wotted, though some have feigned wit of it, pointing at the double phallus of the Divine Priapus at Pompeii and elsewhere and saying that this signifies the Duplication of Felicity: o pópoi and peh upon them. The true significations of the Columns of Atlas, also miscalled the Pillars (or Gates) of Hercules or Melcarth, eek betermed Hiram’s Fingers, remain therefore one of the Higher Mysteries. Only this much is of a surety known: that their true names hight Jachin and Boaz. Melcarth bathed there. Bathes there still? So The Matter sayeth. And more, The Matter sayeth not.
Slightly dazed by all this (and perhaps, so, too, the scribe or recompiler, for he seemed to turn with an air of relief to:
In Hirnon, the next place of haven and selling and lading are at all times and seasons to be found never less than an hundred holy harlots; and seafarers and men or merchantry always pause to do their devoirs to this Fane of the Genetrix
…) But although at some occasions this would of course be of intense interest to Vergil, his appetites thereto seemed for now anulled. Why had all this happened? How, out of the bitter jaws of almost certain death, had he and all folk of this ship and perhap even the very ship itself, escaped with their lives and even their integuments intact? To whom did he owe a debt greater than any thanks? To any king or soldane or senate? to no ships of battle, certes. To whom or what, then?
An old ox-thrall.