The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (36 page)

“
Silk.
I believe it not. Nor do I believe other reports, that they pay with yet something else of value, which it seems folk be shy and coy to name … But of this, enough. So men say. As for you, if these ships be bold enough to enter our Roman sea and swear reprisal on you, it is time that you get gone. Right soon.
Now.
You are, it seems, wanted at Rome, the August House has want of you, it wants you hard, I wot not why. I do wot that Himself, that Wolf, will have my head if he gets you not. And since you cannot go by sea, by this sea of water, you must go by land, across the sea of stone, the stony land, the Terra Petra: and so even if that Pune or some Pune or other or any posse comitatus all of Punes; if then they swoop down and burn my Tingitayne, stinking sullen sulky Tingitayne, burn it like an hut in a cucumber field: at least word will be gat out that you have gone safe from here and so that
wolf
will not burn my own brothers’ lands and fields and houses, holding them at guilt by right of frankpledge. Horses are being saddled for you and guide, leave by the black lane at fall of night. These Berbar horsemen can guide themselves by faintest starshine so don’t bother and bootless stand, begging for delay. If you have prayers to pray, go quick to the temple in the courtyard. Dusk falls, it gins and commences to fall right swift, there is time to take neither a woman nor a bath: here is the double purse of gold. I shall offer for you, let us be hopeful. Tell them at home that the Viceroy Caspar at Tingitayne filled his orders full.
Go.
”

XIII

The Terrapetra

T
he black lane
. Every walled city had its black lane, some going under the wall by tunnelled work of sappery. The black lane! used by such traveling on official business whose departure was not desired by public way in public sight to go … The
Emperor
wanted him? This was to be the first sign that the Emperor, Lupus, “that Wolf,” had ever
heard
of him. A sudden tremor: was it the matter of, How didst thou dare to touch the Virgin’s flesh? — No No: it could not be. Else they had either thrown him in fetter and gyve and … Well. If he had now to cross the Land of Stone; time to make a start was best at Night. Onward.

The “black lane” was of course not black, it was of a variety of colors, depending on the colors of the brick or stone of which the backs of buildings were made, through which the lane … winding, winding … passed; and none of them were made of that black, deadly, deathly black stone of which had been builded (so he had heard: much care had he taken to go there never) the capital city of Cappadoce. The principal hue here was of the same tawny lion-color, really quite different from that of Yellow Rome, as were the fronts of most of the buildings of Tingitayne, Tingis, Tingitana: and now, even as the small group of horsemen cantered along, the colors in the setting sun changed the stones to rose, then to a deeper red, then began to take on a purple tone. One might only guess at the nature and function of those buildings: warehouses, whorehouses, temples, homes? Some had never had windows, in some the windows had been carefully blocked up either with brick or with stone, no attempts made to match the tints of the buildings themselves. That a lane should be winding, away from the formal center of the city, was no surprise; but in this winding lane were no shop-fronts, no crowds of buyers or sellers, no loungers or loafers, no odors of edibles, no smoke or smell of combustibles; here was not even one single toddling child, half-naked and half about to cry, such as one encountered so very, very often elsewhere in such a wynd. No one sat hunched, fanning a charcoal brazier on which the evening meal cooked; no one begged with various tales of beggary or even merely whined and held out a dirty palm or showed a possibly interesting sore or a perhaps intriguing deformity.

The sound of the clopping of horse-hooves. Else —

Silence.

And in that silence there came thought a-visiting, a thought of a thing which he had somewhere read — and only some invisible and incorporeal recorder with no other task entrusted could know how much, how very much he himself had read, read, concerning which often had he heard and still he did betimes hear,
He seems to read, and yet he neither reads aloud nor moves his mouth!

Briefly the guides had been named to him: the Berbar guides Sylvestro and Amulo, and Caniacus who was one of the Masked Men and wore a dark blue-black domino, far larger than common (common, though, among the Masked Men), which covered what they called the
tharg,
that part of the face from the bridge of the nose to the chin: and had no name at all, this part of the body, among any other of the peoples of the world. Folk who wished them well said twas because they had an unseemly facial blemish running in their blood and did merely wish to cover it and do others no fright; folk who wished them ill declared them a criminous caste who desired to pass unknown amongst others and espy out what they might steal: and, when they came to steal, first off-stripped the mask, that they be not recognized nor open to identity. They themselves said only this, Thus did my Father and my Mother and their Sires and Dams, so thus do I. Well-known it was, not to venture to ask a twice.

Well: and as Festus, Sylvestro, Amulo, and Caniacus cantered with him down this uncovered lane, this chasym through the city (from which arose but a smothered murmur like some half-distant throng of bees), so this thought visited Vergil:
Swiftly darteth the mind of a man who hath travelled over far seas and lands and thinketh in wistfulness of heart ‘I wish that I were here, or there,’ and many are the wishes he wisheth. And yet he too is fated to lie down in blood and dust amongst the dead
… well, and what was this but a perhaps more complex statement than this in the
Theophrast on Plants
, that “
Against death there grows no simple
”?

Often at evening lightfail there was a cooling-off of the air, but in this black lane perhap even at noon meridian it had not been full hot: and certes it grew no cooler even now: but the same stagnant warmth stayed on. And next for sure the lane
was
covered over, and Vergil, riding with Sylvestro and Amulo afore him and with Festus and Caniacus ahind him, was sure that now they were indeed riding through cavern or tunnel; he saw nothing looking up, recalled the old word that to a man imprisoned at the bottom of a dry well, heaven was but one ell wide: could not see even that ell. Could hear the echoes of the hooves clatter. Felt all at once a breeze of wind upon his face, still some wet from the sea: looked up and saw above him the glittering stars.

One of the guides said something brief, the two others grunted, perhaps in agreement. Vergil had not known that they had voices. Many a court of kings and sub-kings, so to speak, favored the services of mutes: they could hear no secrets and, did they see of any, of them they could not tell.

Festus, suddenly beside and not behind him, said, “Did you see, me Doctor sage, them twain tall slabs at th’end of lane before went under the ground?”

“I did not take a notice.”

“We who take this lane some often, it’s an old jest of our’n to call they ‘The Pillars of Hercules,’ ” and he made a chuckle but a thin one as if well aware that the jest was very thin, too. Vergil’s reply was an uninflected, “Ah,” there was still the faintest line of blue against one part of the world, with darkness above it and darkness below: then it turned fainter, and green; then it was gone. He let his horse keep canter and company with the others.

But Festus, having made his introduction to the subject, now proceeded with it. “Them real Pillars, as you know of, Ser Lord …” (“Ah.”) “They say … tis said … One day shall come when a gigant shall put hands against them Herculean Columns, you know? and push, you know?… and bring down the sky … you know?”

“Ah. ‘They say.’ And which giant may be, if one may ask?”

“They don’t say.”

“Ah. I rather thought not. Just so. A giant.’ Easy to say.
Which
giant? Not so easy.”

Festus was a moment silent. Then he said, also. “Ah.” And added, “You be a rare skip tic, Ser.” Vergil was not sure if the man sounded shocked. Or relieved.

They rode on, with occasional stops, to pass round a water-skin, some dates or figs, to dismount very briefly for bodily reliefs. At no time did they gallop; twould have been folly to do so on so dim, and oft-times unseen, paths. At first light they got down for long enough to build a small fire and make some gruel. After this was done, and the fire pissed out, Festus bowed, and said, “Here I must leave you, Doctor, Ser. And return. Have no fear they guides might rob ye: they do not durst. Farewell.” Vergil thanked him, returned the bow; all remounted and went their different ways.

One thing now, as he and the not very talkative Sylvestro and Amulo and the quite silent Masked Man Caniacus cantered on through the thorny wastes, often the bushes covered with what at first he had thought were small white flowers, but soon enough had realized were the shells of snails (if quick, if dead, he did not discover): one comment of the man Festus ran through his mind; there was little in the sameness of the passing scene to divert his thoughts, and for the time being he did not much wish to think of the immediate and ungentle future.

Festus had said, as they sate their last moments warming their hands by the embers, “Ane thing I took notice of, Me Ser Lord Doctor Mage.”

Vergil was glad the fellow had not crammed in every possible title which had come along with the green robe and the thumb-ring; Titular Baron of Brabantia, for one thing; Authorized to Plumb the Depths of the Cloaca Maxima, for another. Well. Magehood obliges. “And what is that one thing, Festus, man?”

“Grey of poll ye departed from our Tingitayne, whenas headed south. Black as tar that poll when ye return.”

Again the vatic voice, like a blow aside the head.
Had
he? He
had
!. Hardly pausing to bethink an answer, yet he gave him one; “It was the Fig,” he said. “The Scarlet Fig: makes rough men subtle and old ones young.”

Festus just a moment considered this. Then he gave a
deep
nod. And handed back the empty bowl to Sylvestro. And asked no further. Of Juvens and Senex? Asked no further.

By and by the waste lands and their thorns and snails gave way to a place of tilled and walled-in green garths of farming folk. No one fled as the four men came riding by on the narrow path between the tilths: a small sign but a certain one that the Pax Romana still obtained, no matter which king or sub-king here held rule. A certain russet in the far-off hills affirmed something which he had for some time now suspected, namely that they had passed from White Mauretayne to Red.

White Mauretayne, its cities of alabaster and elephant-colored marble (actually, many of their buildings did have, anyway, fronts of such stones, however thin-cut) dazzling the coastland in the sun; White Mauretayne was under the nominal suzereignty of Spestibanu, “Chief of Kings” — these were of course petty and not Electoral Kings — and it traded with Aspamia, Lusitayne, Ægypt, Greece, Lybya, and Rome. Red Mauretayne had no coast, save that which, rolled over and over and beat upon by many dry and heavy winds, constantly cast up stones and sands.

Red Mauretayne had neither chiefs nor kings.

It had, however, a wealth of rocks.

And it was Vergil’s devoir to cross it all until coming to Tripolitayne, thence by any northard way to Leptismayna at the end of the Terrapetra, and thence take water to Italy … to any of the Three Italies over which the Emperor was ex officio King. Vergil would have wished to continue on into Ægypt, if only to see those great pyramidal structures which the enslaved Children of the Isræls had builded for King Pharoah, so long and long ago: Treasure Cities, they were called, because of the wealths which the Ægyptim rulers had stored therein: and indeed, each one with its many policies or out-buildings, might rightly be called a city, entire of itself: rather like those palaces in Frankland, each so large as to be counted as an urbs, and had its own mayor.

This Terrapetra, then, was widely-known to be the same length as the entirety of all three parts of Italy; almost he might quail at the prospect: and yet he did not. Some men, in Quint’s phrase, suffered from the itch to write; Vergil, he now acknowledged, suffered from an itch to wander.
Suffered
from? It was indeed not a suffering, not even a sufferance; it was a joy, as joyful as any experienced in the elaboratory, waiting in an expectation of even greater joy for the joyful release and relief. Even in a land of stone might not many new and strange and quitely unexpected happenings occur?

Such a thing happened even sooner than could have been anticipated.

For, whilst yet the habitations of the sons of men and women, of the blowers of fire, were still thin upon the ground, the four of them had made a usual stop in a fairly secluded spot just a bit off the path; it was an indentation in a ridge of rock, protecting them from the gaze of strangers (peaceful, true, the habitants had seemed: but there be times when even public men would be a while in secret: even kings must live by nature; Vergil’s own Father had a saying for such occasions, did a small boy ask, “where are you going?” hear his sire say, simple, “Where th’ Emp’ror goes on foot” … even Himself the August Caesar did not go everywhere in the carriage of state.) And each had sought a niche or cleft of his own, when hear arise a scream of terror from Amulo and Sylvestro of,
The basilisk! The basilisk!
whilst, heads hastily covered with their cloaks, they made quick, clumsily, to leap each upon his horse, and flee away (for the first time on this journey) at full gallop. Caniacus alone did not move to do so; almost wedged in his own niche in the stoney clift, he needs could not. Merely he, too, covered his eyes, that they might not meet those of the deadly thing which now crept up along towards him, hissing with its spittley tongue and rattling with its dull red and dull black scales, whipping its thicky blunt tail so as to make a sound … all this, chiefly to affright the intended victim to ope his eyes: then would the basilisk fix him with his pop-eyes and all-penetrating gaze and lo! what once had been a living man of blood and flesh were now a man-like figure, all of stone!