The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (7 page)

He did not know where the woman had come from, he was half-asleep. In the darkness, how could he have told what color were her eyes? He put his arms around her, grateful for her presence, and proceeded to do what a normal man would do; not knowing or caring or even thinking if he would find the visit on the bill in the morning, or if it were more complicated than that. Neither did he know where the light had come from, later, the light in which he had seen an older woman in the same soft white dress ask, with an air of concern, “What ails thee Claudia? thou didst neither eat nor drink.”

And the answer came, in a now well-remembered voice (had she
spoken
? before then?), “Oh, Volumnia, I have had such a longing to drink the sweet waters of Corsica, and to taste its fragrant acorn-meal —”

Volumnia’s face changed from concern to surprise and then to perplexity. “Well, I suppose we could send —” Then her face grew horrified. “Claudia! the goddess forbid, that thou be pregnant!”

— and Claudia saying, slowly, oh so slowly, “One night a man slept in my arms all night. His eyes were grey-green, his arms were strong, his chest broad, his waist was slim. We made love, Volumnia.” He heard Volumnia’s scream, and then he awoke, wet.

Loriano, and the mountains round about it; as a port alone it was not much different than other Roman ports … smaller than Naples or Ostia, of course … but the streets adjacent to the harbor in Naples or Ostia spoke (he now realized) of a broad and modern hinterland. One never saw there as one saw here, numbers of women in antique costume squatting on the pave, market-sacks or market-baskets by their sides, long lustrous hair not dressed and not confined, streaming down their backs. A point of interest, if not more, and a mildly welcome diversion from the fact that much of the merchandise displayed was at least a little bit old-fashioned when not indeed outmoded, or in poorer condition than similar goods on the Gallic or Italian mainland; and sometimes frankly battered or broken. A question: Who would buy these writing-tablets with their covers chipped or here or there a binding-ribband torn short or entirely missing? An answer: Someone who badly needed a writing-tablet in any better condition than the one he already had. Who.

Yet there was no particular air of poverty, if the vegetables were of fewer varieties and smaller selection — only one kind of celery, for example, or asparagus — they were fresh and sturdy. If the grain-seller displayed more spelt than wheat, if the wheat was dusty and looked ill, the spelt was certainly good enough spelt. Good enough to eat … a sudden thought cut short his chuckle, and he went and stood by a table where a middle-aged woman … she must have been all of thirty-five … was stirring something in a pot over charcoal burning in an earthen jar on a raised fire-hearth. “A small bowl of acorn-meal, Mother,” he said, “and a glass of water and a small glass of wine.”

The acorn-meal
was
fragrant; he had forgotten how good it could be: Brundusy, even Calabria, that bower of many flowering chestnut trees, had not a better bowl of meal to offer. The wine was dark-red, dark as the sea at fall of night, and it was only slightly raw and strong; but, he thought thankfully, did not taste of pitch. Such sophistication had perhaps yet to reach Corsica. The water —

“I though the waters here were sweet!”

“Well, I don’t sell the stuff from the mountains springs, just I get enough to make the meal; it costs more,” she said, defensively. “If you must have the mountain waters, walk up into the mountains!” She turned away, annoyed.

The man next to Vergil laughed. “It don’t take much to make them angry here, in Corsica. ‘Walk up into the mountains’ — how sturdy are your shoes? How sharp is your knife? Will you give him a token to take with him, Abundiata, to keep him safe? — besides, the sour minerals in the local wells do be good for the spleen, they say. The Greeks, they say, did remove the spleens to make the runners run faster. Shouldn’t care to have such an operation like that, even with mandragora taken first.” And with this last, to boot — should Vergil bootless stand — the man turned back to his porridge, which he had mixed with (probably) ewes’ milk, and drank it from the bowl. Vergil used his spoon, he’d thought it safer to bring only a small plain wooden spoon, not even one of horn. The fewer temptations for those who might hold to the old views that a foreigner’s goods were in public domain, the better. Aubenry, the taking of a deceased traveller’s goods by the local sovereigns, was long ago banned within the Empire, anyway (Corsica was within the Empire, though under which King within the Empire was a matter on which Corsica was not well-agreed: and neither was the Empire, and neither were the Kings). It was a perpetual temptation for causing travellers to become deceased, and one reason why foreign merchants tended to cluster within their own walled trading-posts, protected by their own laws, their own manners, their own magic — though the practice of burying an armed man beneath the gate-posts on perpetual guard-duty was now most strongly discouraged. The practice of raising the dead man in order to have him testify was also strongly discouraged now, too; it tended to have an inhibiting effect on the other witnesses and on attorneys and magistrates alike. And there was the case of a sacrificed guardsman in Bouge, whose reply to all questions was,
I stand mute
. Little one could do, the Chief Judge complained bitterly, to a man who was already dead.

Did a necromancer (using the word in the strictest sense) merely
consult
the dead?

Or did he, as many said,
torment
them?

In either case, a fearsome thought.

Bookstores never failed to entertain or please; seeing the board marked
Sergius, Books
, in he went. A young man with a blue chin and prominent half-hooded eyes gave him a small nod. The odor of old papyrus, old parchment, orris-root and cedar-oil to keep off the worm and damp decay; old ink and old dust, all assured him of the
Books
. But a glance at the mostly empty shelves and at the young man did not, somehow, assure him of the other word on the sign-board. “
Sergius?
” he asked.

At once the young man’s face assumed an air of
sad.
“His foot treads no more on earth, me ser,” he said. “My wife and I,” there was nothing visible of My Wife, but a rich olor of cheap scent guaranteed that she had not been gone for long: he nodded; “are just now disposing of the stocks left us by our uncle, the late and deceased Sergius. And we can make my ser a very special,
very
special price, as we want the space.” And Vergil thought that he might indeed pick up the contents of the shop for no more than he had in his purse; but where would he put it?

Right at eye-level was a codex entitled
Aristotle was The Pupil of Plato.
And indeed he was. Vergil had no great taste for metaphysic, but he took the book out into his hand. A glance at its pages sufficed to content him that someone … perhaps “the late and deceased Sergius” … had gotten hold of some loose signatures of a volume of Aristotle also late and deceased, plus some fragments of a Plato which had perhaps gone through the Siege of Syracuse, not without damage; and had conflated them. He started to replace it; a hairy hand forfended him.

“A very special price for this,” urged the young man with the blue chin. “What does my ser offer?”

His ser hesitated a bittle, seeking a tactful way to tell that he would offer nothing-at-all, the backs of the sheets being too stained to serve even for notes; when the codex, jostled by the motion of Vergil’s hand to restore it to the shelf and the motion of Nephew-to-Sergius’s hand to prevent its restore to the shelf: gave up the struggle and allowed something to sift its way out from between the pages and launch itself, Dædalus-like, into the air. They both lunged and caught it between them.

It
was a page of papyrus of about half the full measure of ten inches by six; the title, writ large and miniated, read
For Loss of Vigor in the Night.
Vergil and the nephew, at once interested (as would be any man and most women), regarded closely. It began, conventionally enough,
Take Ye
; then followed the names and quantities of the medicaments, as follows:

Vergil’s opinion, which had startled at the catfish whiskers, hesitated at the vermilion (would they
ever
learn that color had no cure? … would he ever learn that it
had
?), grew faint, and he lost interest after the unicorn’s horn; anyway a tautology, wouldn’t you agree? It was something merely fit for the so-called Apuleius Barbaricus the Herbalist, for a barbarian and for an ass. “For loss of vigor in the night,” indeed; he might as well recommend it to Quint for his sore eyes. A finger even hairier than Quint’s pointed to a line scribbled in Greek. Nephew’s.

Verbaseum sayeth other
. “And when does he not?” asked Vergil, somewhat cross; was it for
this
he came so far?

But Nephew-to-Sergius had more than the scribble in mind; the finger had pointed to a line half-way down the page,
For Vengence upon Enemys Take Ye
and the rest was bare. “What’s this on the blank of the page?” he asked, the finger hovering above a brownish stain.

“I fear it is blood,” Vergil said, reluctantly.

“I fear it is blood!” No fear showed upon the face with the half-lidded eyes; instead a fearful joy showed there. “Oh, how valued, this page! How they shall pay us for it! Not with coppers, not with silvers, but with golds!”

“Who shall pay you, man?”

“
They!
” cried Nephew, clasping the half-page of papyrus to his bosom. “The very
They!
The same
They
as meet in the dark to play things —”

Vergil, with a shrug, left him still rejoicing, and making no more offer of a special price; but hardly had he left the shop when he heard the fellow hurrying behind him, then alongside him, and a hand swart with hair thrust into his own hand a small bouquin which very vaguely he recollected having seen, all by itself on a lower shelf. “Really, I fear that I can hardly afford —” he began.

But Nephew, still holding the loose page (and it showed no sign that it had ever been bound into a book) a-clutch, shook his head and grinned. “No charge! Reward! Finder’s fee!
You
shall have a good voyage! Hail and —”

The farewell floated over his shoulder as he ran back to his shop. Vergil briefly glanced at the bouquin; the cover had the machiolated look of serpent’s skin, but, badly worn at one corner, showed a very thin piece of board between two split-shaven sheetlets of calf’s-hide. Someone had gone to a bit of trouble in binding this … it fit easily into his pouch … he slipped it out again for a better look….
Periplus of the Coast of Mauretayne
… if he did not care for it, he need merely chuck it away; it had cost him nought.

And at least it made no pretence about any loss of vigor in the night.

Alexander Magnus, it was well-known, always carried with him and had under his pillow in the night but two items, neither what one might regard as a talisman: though perhaps he so regarded them. One was a knife, or dagger. And the other was a book written on the skin of an entire huge serpent or (some said) dragon.

But what that book was, no one surely knew, though many would wish to know.

And many guessed.