The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (43 page)

A reply to Latulus did come — inscribed in the ink of a scuttlefish on the much-scraped skin of a bidens, a lamb struck by lightning and which thus had never known the butcher’s knife — cooly containing the single word
Delphos.
Latulus struck his pumply forehead with the flat of his warty hand … no one had ever been able to dismiss Latulus contemptibly as “just another pretty boy” (this he well-knew, and, “Was Socrates comely?” he asked; “Was Æsop?” — rhetorical questions which would have had more force if it had not been generally known that Latulus believed Socrates had told fables and that Æsop had stolen the Golden Fleece) and cried
Of course! why had he not thought of that himself
? “It was because he did not have the time,” murmured Vergil in Quint’s ear, referring to the Emperor’s well-known habit of assigning preposterous and impossible tasks (draining the Putrid Sea, for example; or turning the Adriatic into a carp-pond), invariably adding, “I would do it myself, if I had the time …” Quint snorted, and even, for a moment, left off rubbing his eyes.

Off went the rich gifts — chauldrons of gold filled with gold coins; back came the Oracular answer, reducing the single word of the beloved women to a single letter,
phi.
Faster than fire the news spread, and in a trice the Emperor — who, alas, did have a notoriously bad digestion — became know as Flatulus. It took much to erode the immense dignity of the Imperial Office; and the final blow which slpit that great rock was a Decretal forbidding “the issuance or utterance of vulgar sounds or noises when Himself the August Caesar passed by.” The usually subservient Conscript Fathers of the Senate immediately convened, and, first, ordered the Imperial Guard to discharge their allegiance to the present Himself, on pain of not being paid the customary gift at honorable discharge of a farm (invariably someone else’s farm, but what would you?); and, second, ordered Phlatulus the choice of abdicating, committing suicide, or being whipped from the throne with an eel-skin. The man
was
of noble family, he
did
behave like a child, and the ancient republican law (never amended or repealed) provides that this was the only instrument with which the magistrates — of whom the Senate was the highest order — might publicly flog a boy of the Blood. Petulantly but promptly, and farting indignantly, the Emperor abdicated; and retired to one of his innumerable and private estates, whence he did — having so little dignity — from time to time return to Rome under cover of one of the numerable legal reasons for doing so: to consult a physician or an astrologer, to offer sacrifice at one of the temples found only in Rome (Juno of the Two-Headed Heifer, for example, a goddess much favored by the simple … or simple-minded … and pious farmers of the days of King Numa, but whose cultus was by now shrunk to almost nothing nothing and whose temple was little more than a mud hogan crouched under the portico of the Inspection Entrance of the Cloaca Maxima, of which perhaps Vitruvius had said that it — the Cloaca Maxima, Rome’s chief sewer — was in the aggregate as massive as the Pyramids, and infinitely more utile. The pilgrimages, if such they could be called, were very much welcomed by the temple’s priest, who otherwise depended for sustenance upon his small plot of samphire, which his wife hawked in the streets out of two larg jars — one sort in pickle, with garlic and onion, and one sort in brine, without, the old priest-farmer, when asked if this were not a dreadful trade, denied with emphasis that samphire could only be found flourishing in the clefta of cliffs; he called this a vulgar superstition, and he said that it grew as well upon the level land as would so many cucumbers. Nevertheless he was very glad to receive the worship and the offerings of the former Emperor, and, indeed, had some notion that it was compulsory for those in that status; and muttered very complimentary things about the Pax Romana. But these pelrinages were made rather furtively, and in a closed litter, for the populus took much joy in greeting their late liege with jeers, hoots, poots, and other manner of vulgar sounds and noises; until, finally, he gave them up altogether, and crossing o’er the perfumed sea, confined his urban trips to Messina, Palermo, Syracuse, on that tri-cornered island, where, even if he no longer owned a half of it, he was received with respect. But, after no great passage of time, he, still acting the clown, tripped and fell into one of hsi own eel-ponds and vanished or dissolved at once in a flurry of blood drawn by those ferocious teeth, and only his ring, found by draining the pool and slaying and examining each eel, every single eel) remained to identify him. Their flesh was offered to the slaves, who, one and all, refused to eat of it.

The then-Emperor ordered five minutes of official mourning.

After that, no one sent messages overtly to the Nine Roses of Rome, who were left, unvexed, to continue, at intervals, and covertly, their apotropaic activities against
The Death of Rome.
Leaving to sound and resound in Vergil’s min the meaningless and yet, somehow, fearsome syllables,
Attilla Totilla Bobadilla …
and, like an echo of a drum-beat, the final syllables:
ilia … ilia
…

“This fire which Cumus is said to kindle,” began Quint, interrupting his friend’s echoes.

“Not ‘said to,’” Vergil corrected. “He
does.
I have seen him do it. Twice. Once at the extinguishing and re-lighting of the lamps in the adyt of the Temple of the Magna Mater. And once, when that great storm of the Consulate of Peppin blew out the torches in the Oratory of Orpheus; that was rare music, and the Head sang so —”

“Rarely, I am sure,” said Quint in his best languid manner. “But I wanted to ask you about the fire …?”

Vergil considered a moment or two. “The Sages of Sidon,” he said at last, “are of two schools in the matter. One, called the school of Odishu, holds that there are twenty-three different and distinct sorts of fire, which they distinguish by substance, by essence, and by fluouressence. These I found very hard … not impossible, but very hard. The other, called the School of Shelemon, holds — as do I — that these distinctions are over-subtle; and maintains that there are but seven. The third lowest is that brought about by striking the hand upon the thigh … which hand, and which thigh, does not matter, according to Shelemon: but it matters very much according to Odishu, who rates them as, respectively, second and third lowest so that we cannot admit the fire of Cumus to be of very high order. It would not serve you to light cedar-wood, for instance.” The sacred fire of Vesta, for instance, was of cedar-wood, and that of Haddad, specifically of cedar of Lebanon.

Fire produced by Cumus, Vergil explained, consisted of scattered sparks, of a pale blue-green color, not unlike that of certain fungus shining in the woods at night. These were caught in a sort of punk, which, blown upon and made to smolder, were transferred to a wad of tow; and thence to the pith of papyrus reed, and at that point you had a fire which would serve for most purposes.

Quint said that he thought the same effect could be had by rubbing two dowagers together. “Or the same number of rather elderly catamites.” Vergil laughed, but on that subject said no more, and began to discuss why the question was not yet solved, if the blood of dragons was hot or cold; and from there he passed to a rather nice point in
Theophrastus on Plants
, in which both illustration and text was precise and clear, but precisely and clearly differed from each other. Quint, although it was not his subject, offered several reasonable suggestions, and did not revert to the previous subject. It was one of Quint’s great values as a friend that he did not push. It was one of Vergil’s drawbacks that he could not endure those who did.

By that time … about the time of the five-minutes court mourning for (Ph)latulus — white truffles might not be served, nor might readings from any author save those named Pseudo-anything go uninterrupted, and everyone was forbidden to belch or break wind without paying a forfeit of the price of a palmful of pine-nuts … by that time Junius was Emperor; and Junius loved Vergil very much.

The mystery, however, remained.

from The Notebook of Vergil Magus

In the Region called Azania, seawards from the Region calle Agysimba (confuse it never with the Region called Abbysinia), Agysymba, where the monoceroids assemble to vote — one random of rhinoes to go slowly to the fertile valley called Of The Niger, a second random of rhinoes be off towards the teemy foothills of the Mountains of the Moon (where grow the gigant aloes, worth more than e’en those of Socotra, could they be but had more than once in an indiction): and so on, decreed by vote — further the rhinoid assembly did vote to ostracize and exile and to hold as Rogues (here a slight earthquake shook my house) a certain old he, a certain old she, and another certain old he; at each vote they struck the earth once. Say you, “They have no
names
,” say you? Not as you nor I, but they have every which one an odor, a smell, a certain scent so sharp that even those Landlopers who pass to and fro and dwell among their midst and sometimes hazard to ride upon their scaley backs to the squall discomfort of the traitor-birds: say they, such Landlopers, the smelch of them rhino be distinguishable clearly one from tother.
let sic and such a stenk never come a-nigh us
, did they vote as they assembled. As for foreign affairs, they did ban passage and grazage and accession for waterquells to ane rogue oliphaunt with one tattered ear and a shivered tush. But as for barring him from all the rivers and streams of water, the assembly considered (as always) that all rivers and streams of water were of such a nature that it be not for any band of beasts (even such a noble band of beasts as that of the council of the nose-horned) to consider it might ban accession: but that all might drink therefrom … even … and as alway the monoceroids went slowly on this …
even the stinking crotty
: Old Crotty Crackbone. Even he. And then each pachyderm struck the ground —
once — twice — thrice
— with a right fore-hoof, and with no more say or scene went each group its own separate way, eventually to part into singles. And on hearing this enormous three-fold
thud … thud … thud
… the oliphaunts, wise in wisdom, murmured,
That was well
. And sent word the way west. But the vasty hippotayne in the rushes of the reedy rivers and the shady coverts of the fen murmured,
That was not well
: for the hippotayne liketh not to concede equal, and when such concession is forced from him by the thrice-quivering earth, he groweth grom indeed and opes his massy mouth and roars. And the Landlopers, when they hear this, hasten thither with much calves of oxen and with great wastes of fruit in hope that they might find hippotayne still grom and obtain from him some counsel and some charm to fall upon the oliphaunt and slay him for the treasure of his mouth (dean no. 22-23).

from the so called fragments of Vergil in the Cabe

The Mage Vergil was walking through the Great Piazza in Naples with a few friends — Clemens the alchemist for one, Ser Minnimus Rufus the dwarf Knight for another: afoot for once and not upon his favored pony-cob; others — and hangers-on. The main sight in the Piazza was the Great Hand holding the Great Globe. Was it the remains of an immense imperial figure? whose? was it a
hapax legomenon
in stone, there having been no statue? a
lusus natura
? It was an absolute belief in Naples that the Globe was hollow and had room inside for ample: thus a tale, that Once at midnight the Equestrian N.N. had galloped thither, followed slowly by a gathering throng; had beat upon the enormous orb. Moments later the throng did find a dew-heel of a scabbard and the buckle off a helm, heard confused noises of within; nought more, ever. Save, now, the fixed faith: Room for a mounted man in armor. Vergil wondered: might a chiromaunt trace the lines of the huge Hand and thus discover — what? Clemens scoffed. The lines were incomplete … the palm held the Globe … the lines of the Globe were themselves incomplete, thus…. Vergil demurred. Where the Globe rested, there the Globe was blank, saunce regard as where it rested. Ser Minnimus was not so sure. Concealed from sight must be the outline of all land between the Peninsula of the Britains and the great Island of Zipangu. Said Vergil — “But there
is no
land between the Peninsula of the Britains and the great Island of Zipangu,” said Vergil. Yet again. For the smallest (by very far, the smallest: “I have had rings which weigh more than this one does,” a quip from Quint: he did not make it to the small Knight’s face) Knight in all the Empery of Rome did not seem altogether satisfied. “But what,” he asked, “of the birds? Of the great flight of the birds in the Consulate of Calpurnius Otto? — eh, dan Vergil.”

They chancing to be passing by a flight of steps, Vergil sat down and adjusted a buskin which perhaps did not need adjusting. Some attempts had been made to ward the steps from thoroughfare — wooden hatchment, painfully painted with now-peeling paint,
Accursed be all who make caca here, may cullevers bite their bottoms
, the letters cramped to allow a picture of serpents straining upward with fangs all bared — but enough space there was for Vergil to sit upon the steps (
Granite of Ganadium
, he noted absently). He looked the small stalwart man level face to level face (he would wonder later and perhaps he might enquire:
who
had lived here,
when
estopped,
why
barred and not rented: for it had not been cheap to have brought hither steps fashioned of granite of Ganadium, granite being the most endurant of stanes as herculine is the most endurant of furs; for now: other thoughts), “Ser Rufus,” he said. “Consider.” Ser Minnimus Rufus, face to face, eye to eye, gave full show of considering.