Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series (21 page)

“Poppaea,” he said, faintly. The scene somehow shifted. The stage was bare. He stood alone. The door was open, he saw the street outside. “Poppaea,” he said. He moved his lips. No sound came forth. His legs trembled, yet they held him up, as he moved. He would have turned, he could not have turned, he no longer wished to turn.

And in his silent heart his voice said, as his heart beat, beat, beat: Poppaea. Poppaea. Poppaea. Poppaea.

• • •

Rain in Averno. It came down in drops as hot, almost, as the waters of the bath, though much less cleanly. It came down slowly, as if it had paused to embrace the smokes and stinks and to absorb a measure of the “sweet airs,” it refreshed no one and nothing, it left soot streaks and stench of sulfur. It oozed down the pitted sides of the buildings like oil and, it may be, left them even more pitted than before. It thickened the filth in the streets and turned it into a sort of paste, a black paste perhaps fit, very fit, to use upon the binding of some evil and feculent grimoire. Rain in Averno.

Although the entire city stank notoriously, except in limited spaces for limited times, when someone had a room sprinkled with an attar from the rose-red vales beyond Ragusa, or burned opobal-samum or some similar gum in a brazier; notorious though it was that all the city stank, this area through which he now picked his way was notorious even within the city for its own evil odors: its name,
Canales,
offered perhaps explanation enough, though none was offered for the plural form when there was but one canal. And that one for the most part hidden from sight by the moidering, bulking sides of warehouses. An ancient jest was much told by the magnates: “An’ he says, ‘Torto, why you don’t shore ‘em up, the sides o’ your warehouses, be bulging out already, you don’t see?’ An’ he say — ” Here the heavy face of the teller would play a series of grimaces intended to imitate that of “Old Torto,” and these alone always brought heavy chuckles. “ — he say, ‘Why shore ‘em up? It ain’t failled down, yet.’ ”
Great
laughter; the point of which, it was often explained, being that if Torto (or anyone) had shored up the tottering walls, it would need have been at his own expense, whereas were they actually to fall, and thus constitute an obstacle, the cost of repairs by reason of some ancient legal quibble grown to the status of a municipal privilege would be paid for out of the taxes levied on the property of such aliens whom a particularly hard fate decreed should die in the Very Rich City. This too-often tale was, Vergil by and by realized, not intended merely to indicate commercial acumen as it was to delineate certain aspects of the character of “Old Torto.”

But the warehouses, however nasty, belonged to the magnates (however nasty), and thus were under the protection of their city’s “stern and meritorious laws” — laws intended largely to protect the trade and commerce, not all the city as such, as of the magnates in particular, whereas
these
streets (so-called), these lean lanes and mean alleyways and passages: into these would no great magnate venture. Much danger, little reason. The only legitimate trade carried on seemed to be that in the dung-locks shorn from around the scuts of sheep, a trade considerably less lucrative than that in goat’s-beards from Spicy Araby; now and then from some dusty doorway came evidence that anyway one heap of filth-clots was deemed dry enough to be beaten under some pliant substance with cudgels, to loose the dung from the locks, or partly so — else the process of washing such “wool” would be even more tedious. And more costly. Perhaps the rain, slow and sullen, had driven this trade indoors. Nasty as it was — some sight quickly glimpsed of thralls with heads wrapped up in cloth beating and thrashing piles from which arose a thick dust — the trade was legitimate. It was, presumably, even useful. Probably the stuff of which coarse carpets, floor-druggets, donkey-pads were woven had their sources there. He coughed as the dust reached his nose and throat, walked more quickly on.

Did not slow down nor answer the swift-flung taunt, “Hey, Gypa! Like the ‘sweet’?”

Not long before that morning, in a rare unguarded moment, he, allowing his thoughts to come aloud, had murmured, “Wisdom, guidance, vision, truth …”

And Iohan, who had been engaged in some small task or other there, up in Vergil’s rented rooms, promptly said, “Why, ser, you might try scrying for them things: pour ink-squid in my palm and sleepify me, ask me what I see. If you like.”

Briefly Vergil considered; briefly he said, “Such could only be of use, I believe, with some lad younger than you, pure of life by reason of youthful innocence.”

His servant, sans so much as a boastful smirk, a look of abashment, shame, even a wry smile not, had said, simply, “Ah, I has forgotten that. To be sure, ser, them hands has held things other than master’s foot. Well. Therefore.” And to his tasks returned.

It was after, later that day, day having descended into night, serious considerations as to which form of divination might be best, and no conclusion reached, that Vergil had with a sigh or so retired for sleep. The fierce fat flies of Averno, so tormentful of mornings, had by night flitted themselves into corners and so were silent, all. All, that is, all save one, so absolutely enormous that Vergil exclaimed, almost dismayed, “This fly is big enough to have a name!” He heard the voice a-close to him mutter, “It have a name, bold boy,” in a throaty, Saracen accent; “it have a name: and it name be Baalzebub. And it be lord of flies.” Vergil gave a scornful snort, considered that some would surely try to kill said fly. He captured it instead, placed it in a bottle, and stuffed the neck with cloth. Only then did he turn to see what Saracen this was: saw no one, Saracen or other. Shrugged. Would have made urgent effort to kill it (some would) — there in the bottle, still, might it not die? He did not arise from bed; it did not die, from time to time it buzzed and thrumbled. He bethought him of its proper name, not that other name, he conceded that it had another name indeed, another sex indeed, he did not care to call the matter into clarity. He slept, he woke, he woke, he slept. Later that night, as he watched by the flickering wick he’d thought best to keep burning, he saw an equally enormous spider come spinning down from the ceiling on invisible thread; fly bumbled and buzzed and flung itself about. The spider, finding no way in, had determined to set snares if ever the fly found its way out; had spun and spun and spun. Something exceedingly odd about the lay of the net had called Vergil’s attention. There seemed some pattern in it more than mere reticulation, there seemed some thing in it, in it or about it, of which he was meant to be sensible.

Of which he was.

But what?

And, indeed, as the wick smoked and flickered its tiny flame and the shadows danced their fitful measures, it did seem to him as he lay between his own clean sheets on the horsehair bed-pad, sheets for the moment at least cool against his flesh, that there was something not merely slightly familiar in the pattern of the spinning: but something which he absolutely knew.

This being so, it was not bafflement he felt, but some odd sort of satisfying comfort and contentment. Intermittently the massy fly thrumbled the night through. But Vergil did not hear it. Vergil slept.

Now as he walked through this the wretched-most section of the wretched and Rich City, slowly Vergil became aware, first, that something was bothering him, and, second, that something had been bothering him. He was not sure if it was or was not the certain uncertainty of his position here in hell . . . or its suburbs. He had been through something like this the night before. He had slept, yes, but he had not slept well. There had been, so it seemed, some weight upon him. He turned, it shifted; he relaxed, disposed himself, it returned. What was bothering him and had been a while bothering him as he walked now through this dirty district which lay the other side of “the fiftieth gate of corruption” was much the same. It was not sharp. It was …

“The black weasel sits upon his shoulder,” a voice said nearby.

And another voice added, “Aye, and squats upon his breast.” Even as he turned to look, Vergil realized that both voices spoke the truth. And then, so slowly that he seemed to himself to be miming, as though an actor deliberately prolonging some stylized motion, he did turn, and wondered how, even, how he could . . . how he would even pick up one foot now and set it down in front of the other . . . how he was with effort turning his body to look: he knew that the black bile, it was — he thought, suddenly, for the first time, sharply, of the lute’s strings — which had been rising and spreading through his body the morning long, of all the four humors perhaps most to be feared. It was indeed the
black weasel
which squatted on his breast, though he was not lying down, that sadly familiar weight upon his heart, the woefully well-known sucking-away of his very breath: he knew it now, but knowing did not help, it did not help at all; it may have been in some measure the result of being in this hideous section of this hideous city, but it had been the same elsewhere: The gods be thanked, though often, not always. It was as though he were drowning, and yet if the one hand which could save were to have been stretched out direct in front of him and in the easiest reach . . . in respect to physical distance, easiest . . . yet he could not have lifted his own hand to take hold. Was it perhaps
not
the black bile, the humor now overbalanced and overbalancing, but was it the black choler, that evil humor, that other string upon the lute which was man’s body: the melancholia of which the old country Greeks spoke? They who still called the cat the weasel?

It seemed as though all was useless, all futile: his having come, his having tried, his being here now; and in the name of all:
why
here? . . . all for no purpose.

And still he, slowly, slowly, turned.

There was no one there.

From another corner came a laugh.

It was not a laughter bursting forth, neither was it some evil scorn. Merely . . . what it was. And so, with immense effort, now, here in this empty place of filth and rubble between other places of rubble and filth in the form of buildings crumbling into further filth, and yet more rubble, and further rubble; once again he began that difficult and painful turning. Was it some curse, sudden or slow? The weight of all the world lay upon him; still he turned.

And then he saw him.
Him
. Not
them
. A figure filthy even for this rat’s nest of filth, robed in rags ragged even for this ragged quarter. The face was so besmeared, the mask had even a sort of sheen or gloss upon it, and this cracked as the laughter lines responded to the chuckle.
If this may find some folly at which to smile and sport, why may I not as well?
he thought. And the thought welled up and out into a sound more like a snort of someone clearing a throat than into any sane man’s laugh.

And Vergil’s slow turning ceased. And he looked full into the face of someone he had certainly seen before. And so in that second he recognized him. Said the outcast clad in outcast clouts, “It is your turn now to say it. And why say it not?” And, as Vergil, amazed, stood silent, the creature said it.
“Wash.”

• • •

“O Apollo! Beadle! What brings you . . . here . . . so low?”

As he had cried the word
Beadle
the one who sat before him in the muck formed by rain and dust and grime did not precisely spit but his dry lips opened along some thin, thin line of slime, and a sound he made, perhaps a word,
“Peh!”
And again chuckled. His face seemed to gleam with glee at the fools and follies of all mankind, the sons and daughters of Deucalion’s stones; and no more than stones, sticks: or things worse than useless. What upheavals in the schemes of things spun and woven, cut, by the Sister Fates — what wars, riots, what commotions, conspiracies, tyrannies, scandals, plots or ship-wrack, barratries of masters or of mates, decretals of exile, times toiling perhaps in quarries or in mines, what collapses outward or inward — what
had
brought him here?

Said the beadle, “I am here that you be here. I saw it clear when first I saw you . . .
there.
Inescapable decrees, inscrutable, inexorable: and such, such piss-worth words. Had my pipe not droned you had not danced. Had I not fifed for you.” The lips now closed.

Vergil murmured . . . something. He could not a half second later have repeated what he said, presumably it was a question. From behind he heard one of the voices of a moment before; it said, “Sissie summoned thee. And cruel Erichtho.” Again Vergil murmured. And now the other voice: “She our sister who asked either one favor too many or one too few.” And there sounded in that narrow space a far-distant echo of that voice among all voices, of she who had become but voice alone. As sounding from a thousand caverns.

Or from within a bottle, stoppered, closed.

• • •

“ ‘Wheels within wheels.’ ”

“What?”

“Some Hebrew seer . . . or was it ‘a wheel within a wheel …’? Of no import.”

“Is that a sieve?”

“Is that a question for the Pythonissa at Delphi?
Quaere.
What sort of sieve?
Responsum.
Not the sort in which the suspected Vestal Virgin carries water for to prove her chastity….” The fellow took a handful of dirt, and, though the gods of hell knew there was dirt aplenty there, he had seemed just a bit selective, for his hand had hesitated, then moved on, before in a moment more dipping to scoop. The handful was sifted, dropped upon a heap in which dirty chicken feathers, bits of broken shells, twigs, and wisps and clots and pot-shards lay mingled. From out of nowhere the scarecrow figure produced three reeds, thrust them in between the fingers of Vergil’s right hand: “Close eyes,” said he. Vergil did, felt himself being turned around withershins once and twice and thrice (in his ears again, sight being sundered, the
thum-
thump
-thum
of the eternal anvils wearing out the hammers which
beat
beat
beat)
— “Bend a bit. Ah. Enough. Thrust your paw down. Open.”