The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (5 page)

Much did Vergil wish to pause, then flee. But to Vergil,
pause
, by definition meant
brief.
Whereas to Cosmo Nungo,
pause
meant
talk.
And this day he wanted to talk of Vergil’s lesser loadstone, Great Adamanth, and, perhaps of even greater loadstones, Negedbarzel, it might be, and the legendary lapis ferrum attrahens, Exhaurio Antepotentis.

To Vergil, now, entering in haste, the older man said, “
Ars requiret totum hominem
, Master, and so we term —” His master said, hurriedly, casting a swift sad look round the lower elaboratory with its ranks of instruments, “Yes, I know that art requires the presence of the entire man, but I must now —” useless. Cosmo Nungo had the bit between his broken teeth, and was galloping down the track.

“The loadstone, ser, we term the heraclion, that is to say, the Lion of Hercules. And it is our function, ser, as alchymists, to slay that lion. To annul the adamanth, ser, and make naught the magnet. ‘Transmutation,’ ser? To be sure. There is more than one transmutation. For ensample,” he took hold of the border of Vergil’s robe, not yet was his master to be awarded the right to wear the Golden Garment; this was a shabby raveling travel robe, tucked in at the waist, with not a shred of gold about it. “For ensample, to transmute orpiment,” continued the inexorable Nungo; “orpiment — that is, auripigmentum — to make from it what we calls realgar, King’s Yellow, that is, or sand-áraca, sand-áraca, sanddraco, ‘the dragon in the sand,’ we call it, too. And this transmutation is one of your basic excersizes in occamy —”

Thoughts of haste, even fear, diminished; “Five hours’ fire in the sealed crucible should do it, I think. Eh?”

“Yes, sir. It should, But sometimes the perentice doesn’t know how to find the fire, or how to fix it, nor even how to set his crucible, let alone how to make the proper lute to seal it. Nor sometimes he doesn’t even know about the five hours …” Vergil suddenly considered that he might have to break the man’s fingers, but Cosmo loosed the robe of his own motion. Vergil strode on. Adamanths! Realgar! Anon!

The Nungo trotted after him, still babbling. “Though some say, ser, that sandáraca is a resin, ser, and not a mineral. Sandrake, sand-dragon,” he intoned, “dragon-sand … as it sopped up the shed.”

Vergil, about to call aloud the name of Polydore, his house-servant; at this last word from the Nungo he had to repeat, “The, ah,
shed
?”

“Ser. Yes. The blood that was shed by the dragon in the combat, ser. In the great combat. The Combat on the Sand.” For one sole moment Vergil had a vision, quick and filled with red: a typical scene in the Arena, its floor all sand; the usual scene in the Arena: a gladiator had received his death-wounds, and the lepers licensed to do so rushed forward to drink his life’s blood in hopes of a cure.
May it do them much good
, he thought. One wound was nigh the navel and one between the collar-bone and the left pap. For the sake of decency, wounds in either groin were not licensed; nor were those above the torc; one does not know why not. It was sometimes very sad to see the lepers, who had run so fast, walk off with hanging hands and lagging legs, for the blood of a
dead
gladiator was, of course, not licensed to be drunk at all. Though only necrophiles would want to. But … hold! a
dragon
had no pap, no navel! and who had ever seen a
dragon
in the Arena? Nungo must have been speaking an alchemical metaphor, like
The lion of Hercules
or
The shining golden vessels and the sullen bronze
or — Enough! “Polydore!” he cried. The house-servant’s deep and drawling voice answered him from aloft.

“Your portfolio’s freshly packed, my Ser,” he called.

So that was done … Next: to his work, left aside for the trip north. He wanted to essay the fabrication of a salamander; first he checked the athenor to see it was in order: no controlled heat? — no salamander. It checked well. After that there were supplies to be gotten, for example naphtha, charcoal and sulfur. At no distant date he meant to make a grand trial of all types of charcoal and to see how they compared; perhaps he should do that now? No … he was suddenly too eager to wait for that. He would see what the suppliers’ had on hand
now
. Tests of the wood of all charable trees was far too slow a task; he would for now content himself with considering holm-oak; many decried its wood as being afflicted always with a hostile dryad, so that its fire was too hot, greasy, smoky, sappy. What would this mean in terms of charcoal? Well, one would see … Wouldn’t one?

Sulfur, too. And napth.

“Oliver is a well-tried wood for charcoal,” said Arland, his regular supplier. “Your olive gives a slow, true fire, me ser. Nothing so steady as oliver, me think.” To be sure that the appearance of olive-wood in commerce was almost a guarantee of its being
old
wood; the Jews, it was said, would neither eat nor tithe the fruit of a tree less than three years old, considering it too young: but many times three years must pass before the olive would bear, indeed, a generation must pass before the olive would bear. No one would cut down an olive tree for its wood, it taking so long to replace. Time alone should assure that its gross and fatty humors would have been outgrown … the common faith agreed that if one paused by a grove of silver-leaved olive trees at noon and paused in the heat and silence, one would hear the softly hissing sound of the trees “drying out” … to say nothing of the results of the charring process, the ricks of wood burning in the carefully-stacked kilns almost without air.

“A sack of olive, then,” Vergil said. “And a sack of holm-oak. To be —”

“To be delivered. Yes, me ser.” The man was almost as black as a charcoal burner in the hills himself, but just as
pecunia non olet
— money does not stink — said of the public sale to the wool-fullers, of the stale and rotting contents of the public urinals — so perhaps it might be said that money does not smudge. Might.

Now for sulphur, punk, and all the other ingredients.

There was no trade, likely, that lacked premises which attracted a number of loafers. A charcoal warehouse, though, would not, of course shelter as many as a vintner’s. A vintner might sometimes turn to an experienced old nose and gorgel and say, “See what
you
think of this” —
this
being usually a taste from either a very new barrel or a very old one — and the experienced old nose or gorgel would sample it, rolling it round on his tongue after sniffing, swallow; and say, judiciously, something like,
lacks body … too thick … smells faint
,
doctor it up … too thin … too raw … too old: make tolerable vinegar, though….
Now and then the old nose (advertizing its age and experience with assorted red swellings and pumples and streaks of pseudo-Tyrian purple) would put on a performance which a veteran thespian might relish, before pronouncing the test-liquor to be
first rate: champion!
But although a master charcoal dealer might indeed sometimes turn to an old dustbag retired from the trade and having never washed since, might hand over a black nugget with a “See what you think of this,” what could the old veteran do? crack the black bit, smell of it, taste of it, smear it on his grimey paw; and mutter that it was
too dry … to moist … to old … fit to shoe an ass …
or perhaps sometime,
Not up to thy reg’lar standard but the
cheap
trade will take it …
one would be moved only by respect for the standards of the trade, not a stimulus equal to bibbing wine; therefore loafers in this particular warehouse were thin upon the ground; nevertheless there were a few: just before turning away Vergil heard one saying to another something which made him suddenly pause and feign an adjustment of tunic and hose and belt-band.

A thin-bodied man with a large, naked veinous head had observed, “Tis said that tother day in little Yellow Rome a man did seize a Vestal by her little naked arm!”

And another standabout remarked, the while smoothing the skin of his face in which long secretions of charcoal-dust had enlarged the pores so that one had seen very small coins which were smaller, “Tis said twere done to save her little life from a little mule as had the hyderphoby and did go to bit she on the little sacred bod-dy —”

In a part of his mind Vergil acknowledged his awareness that the lavish use of the diminutive identified the users as true Neopolitans of the lower classes, for whom all the daintier pleasures of life would be very diminutive indeed; but most of his mind just then forebore philology and social comment. A third speaker was, if not elaborately clean, too clean to have spent much time sleeping on empty charcoal sacks;
his
comment was that, “In the reign of the Divinely Favored Marius there was such an incident, as sundry witnesses averred, that the man in the question did wrap his toga well-around his arm, up and down, before offering his elbow to the high-born virgin vestal to apport herself thereon; Tully sayeth, anent the chaste Lucrece, sayeth Tully —” By the man’s manner and faint Greek accent Vergil accompted him an old pedagogue pensioned off by his old master, an attorney … not so very lavishly pensioned, either. The fellow wound up with, “But as to indeed if to touch a virgin Vestal on her naked flesh whatsoever is a violation of law or merely of a custom having not quite the force of law, deponent sayeth not: it is not for a mere freeman such as your humble servant to comment thereupon.”

Hear now Pores, in a tone of admiration, say, “Ah, thou comports thy little self far too humble, Demosthese Mesalla, what? a great little scholard like thee.”

To linger longer in adjusting his dress would have been to attract even a little more attention than Vergil wanted; off with him! The conversation told that the news had reached Naples well before him —
how
, was vain to ask — and that reaction to it was ambiguous. Not at all ambiguous was the conviction to quit himself of Naples at once directly; Naples, where even the loafers in the archway already spoke of the incident in terms of the chaste Lucrece. His dream, like that of Quint, was coming more and more to seem vatic indeed. Above the bank-bong-rattleclamor of the swarming street came to his ears the sound of two instruments whose music together generally intended one sole thing. He moved closer towards it, while allowing nothing more in his manner to hint of any such thing.

Charcoal might come into Naples packed on horses, mules, or asses; it might come loaded aboard a ship of burden; even one might see a quarter-of-a-rick abaft the back of someone deeply bowed, stunted, smutched, splay-footed, gnome-like: naphtha came by ship alone; and, having crested the hill of the Reins-makers, Vergil prepared to come down the precipitate slope towards port, his eyes on his feet and his feet at an angle. Espying a pair of feet wearing shoes so high that almost they merited to be called boots — automatically, he looked up. And found himself looking into a pair of eyes: so deep-set, so cold and grey, so cruel: that almost he stopped and gaped. But dropped his eyes again. And wandered on. There had been, he noted, several pairs of such boots — thick-soled and adorned with nails. Somewhat further on he paused and feigned to pause and do this and that to his own shoes. And looked back. They still stood as they were clumped together, short black robes and short black cloaks. They were looking the other way, so frankly he gave over pretense and straightened up and stared. Someone coming along caught his stare, turned to see, saw, turned back. From the portion of cooked tripe he carried in a cracked pannikin, evidently he was one of the vast mob who did not “keep their own kitchen;” he said to Vergil, one citizen to another, “Ever see that like afore in our itty-bitty street?”

“No” — truthfully — “who?”

“Calls themselves ‘Slaves of the Immortal Gods,’ know what that means?
no
Isis,
no
Cybele,
no
Diana of Ephesus, no; only our good old native citizen gods and goddesses, down with all forring deities,
Respect!
Our good old native citizen gods, fluking foreigners pulling all our itty-bitty jobs away. ‘Tis said th’emperor is behind ‘em, shouldn’t like to meet ‘em in a hobscure halleyway;
pre
puce! My tripe’s a-gitting cold! won’t
she
yell at me!” And hustled off.

Dismal, Vergil asked himself:
was
Vesta “a good old native citizen goddess”? Dismal, conceded that the matter admitted of no discussion: oh she
was!
And … “the emperor was behind them”? this ugly snooping coven? Best be gone!

A stripling came down the street, hands holding the fipple flute on which he blew, and behind him a gobbo, bowed down probably by the sorrow of his condition — it was good luck to touch the puckle of such a one, but it was scarce good luck to have it! — and certainly bowed down by the drum he bore and beat upon. Every few minutes the stripling called out in his crisp fresh tones, “Drink the sweet waters of Corsica and taste her fragrant acorn meal! drink the sweet waters of Corsica and taste her fragrant acorn meal!” And at once the gobbo declared, in his hoarse voice, “The voyage having been accried enduring two full days and to say this is the third day, the stout ship
Zeno
her adventured navigation until isle Corsica shall be cried no further day! All cargo and any baggage a-larger than a common portmantle must be aboard afore ye night do fall. ‘
What shore, what shore! What coast of people?
’”

And, “
Corsica! Corsica!
” cried out the stripling. “Stout ship
Zenos
leaves at first light for port Loriano on ye isle Corsica! This ship shall sail with such despatch as the goddus does admit and shall not stop at Ostia I repeat shall not stop at Ostia but sails with full despatch for port Loriano on isle Corsica at first daylight in the morrow from the great mole a-nigh the Mole of Lucullus and take notice that her owners and master have avowed to offer a fine fat freemartin for the safety of this voyage and to burn her fat and thighs on the foreshore by the Temple of Neptune!”

And with a final invitation to drink the sweet water of Corsica and taste her fragrant acorn meal, the young man began again to sound his fipple flute and the gobbo to beat upon his drum; and they passed on until they should stop for announcement before another “island” of tenements and warehouses. And Vergil pondered what he had just heard!