Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series (24 page)

And best it serve him well.

Peering through the harsh and clotted cloth, he set his feet to walk without stumbling (though a slight stumble now and then he could not avoid: but it fit well one in his disguise, for he had bethought him suddenly to tear loose one jagged strip and wrap it, bandage-wise, about his left foot: some further detail to add to his mask) through the narrow places and the wider: see felon throng draw swiftly and not even sullenly apart! as he made his way, ringing; and save for that, in silence — scarcely he dared breathe through the ichorous clouts. If he opened his mouth to say so much as the word
Unclean,
he must have died…. In fear and unashamed to show it, they fell away and let him pass: not that a single one among them there pitied him nor would shrink to end his life with a well-thrown stone, but only that his body must then be needs moved: and none would dare move to move it.

And calling to mind another fell occasion, he wondered which was worse sound? The hoarse, harsh murmur of the hippotaynes hunting, coming in their companies from the reeds, or the slow, sad clamor of the leper’s bell?

Averno.

• • •

The canal at last having been reached, and seeing not far from its slippery barm the slop-shop of some seemingly respectable — for Averno, anyway, respectable — trader in used garments, with no ado he stripped off filthy robe and false bandage, threw both into the canal; replaced his bell, now silent, in his purse and from the purse drew what he considered a coin sufficiently worth to require no haggling; tossed it in front of the slop-seller. Who, as though it were an everyday matter to be doing business with a haggard man clad in underwear, quick-picked first one robe, hefted and considered it, tossed it down and selected another: threw it easily up and over. Vergil slipped into it, shook himself like a dog, once, twice, let the garment fall into place; it seemed clean. It was a trifle too large, what did such a thing matter. He observed the trader draw the coin close with his great toe. A look not quite incurious passed between them. Value given for value. No one need know everything about anything. A distant strand, a filthy city; deeds, not words.

Walking along now almost at ease, words to say came to Vergil’s mind. His mind immediately reminded him that these were not words for him to say, but words that to him had been said.
Sissie summoned thee. And cruel Erichtho.
To refer to the Cumaean Sibyl as “Sissie,” unless she was indeed a sister, this spoke either immense familiarity . . . or immense contempt; this last was impossible. It was unthinkable.
Had
the Sibyl a brother or brothers? A sister or sisters? Could the Sibyl of Lybya, the Sibyl of Sicily (this last, had he not been told had spoken to Cadmus?), be, indeed, sisters to she of Cumae? As for Erichtho. The name of this sorcerer was scarcely spoken even in “the woods,” and, even there, never but in whisper. (Oak trees by midnight. Fire, meal, salt. Diana. Moonglow Selene. Cat and hare — The Apulian fellow had known anyway some of that. He had not, though, known Thrax . . . and the gods knew through what night-tangle Thrax’s shadow now slipped . . . or on what errands.) Vergil strained for such scraps as he had heard . . . or, if not heard, then, somehow, however, had known without hearing . . . of Erichtho: some dim recollection or adumbration of a great battle…. Had there been a great battle involving, somehow, that name? Was there yet to be one? — And if him, Vergil, involving,
how?

Question there had come. But answer there came none.

Some odd,
odd
sound seemed echoing, buzzing: He thought of the scene in his room that night. Thought absurd. As though she whose voice echoed as though from a thousand caverns forth could be confined in a bottle, like a fly! And yet, and so:
suppose!
Had it been so, it had been a sacrilege, or had it, would it? Had he not saved the fly’s life? A mental note he made, though sterner than as though graven on marble with iron, to take the bottle far from the spidery corner, and release whatever buzzed within…. And if so it were the Sibyl, what message? When no words spoken?

Some speak. Some spin.

Some weave.

“Iohan! I’m damned glad to see you — ”

“And I, you, Master. For — ”

“That small bell you gave me? May have saved my — ”

“Master, what I’m thinking, it’s that it’s best we consider getting back. Away from — ”

And, as often when two talk more or less at the same time, they two more or less at the same time fell silent. After a moment the boy gave a slight bow, a slight gesture. Vergil said, “If you mean it is for me to talk first, you being man and I master, then what I wish to say is that I give you leave to finish what it was which you were saying.”

Iohan nodded, swallowed, made a broader gesture. “Ser, such types has been roaming roundabout here, and such talk I hear talked by them I hasn’t asked to say so much as
Salve,
and it’s give me firm impression, ser, as there are them here who as you might say mean to speed the parting guest.”

Vergil grunted. “Meaning us?”

“Therefore.”

Vergil sighed. “There is so much I’ve observed of very recently myself as to make me feel I needn’t ask you to say more right now. There’s a great deal of unfinished business, but it may be that our own part in it may be finishable from elsewhere. ‘Pay, pack, proceed’ — eh?”

“Ser?”

“Traditional military order . . . of some sort. Matters not finished here? Let them send after me to discuss that. More advice wanted? Let them disburse for the advice they’ve had, then ask me for more. Do you observe, my lad, what it is which I am about to do?”

He had his money in his hand, his account tablets in the other. For a second only Iohan stared, and rubbed his brown curls. Then: “Ah! You be about to pay, ser. Then I’m about to pack, ser. And then — ”

“ — then we may proceed, ser.”

Settling accounts with the lodgings-master took longer than Vergil liked, but an attempt to speed matters would have had no better result than the presentation of further demands, most of them and likely all of them for sure mythical — and then as well he wished to give no appearance of nervousness. Some accounts he paid in full with no question, some he questioned but paid in full, some he simply refused with an impassive no. And as at last the keeper of the house made some particularly preposterous demand for sundry quintals of the best barley, Vergil said, “The best barley has never even been smelled in your stables. Take the money and snap your talley-sticks in two.”

“ ‘Take the money.’ I’ll take the futtering money, sure, yes — and I’ll take the horse too, until — ”

“The horse is rented and her rent is up; if you’d like a lawsuit with her livery stableman — but perhaps you’d like me to report all this to the magnates instead?”

The man looked him full in the face and gave one silent snarl. Then, with a sullen shrug, he snapped his talley-sticks and tossed them away. Then he swept the money off the counting-board, and whither it went, Vergil cared not. The mare was saddled, the saddlebags full; he mounted. Only a step into the street and he struck his forehead. “The fly!” he said, sharply. Half-turned.

But Iohan was equal sharp. “That great fly in that great bottle, ser?”

“Yes! I must — ”

“Ser, I’ve opened it and let out. The bottle, ser, be packed. The fly — who knows. Surely Master didn’t want it? I can’t certain recollect you ordered me to do what I done, but I be almost sure of it.”

Vergil had no recollection of ordering it at all, but, it being exactly as he would have wished to have ordered, he gave his head a brisk shake. Then: “Where is the beast going?” he demanded. “Why are you leading her this way? This is not the way to the Great Gate at all; what ails you, boy?”

“Confusion ails me, ser, for it’s not me as is leading she, but it’s as she’s got her own notions, and so far,” as the mare picked up her hooves and increased her pace, “it’s all as I be able to do is hold on to her. What? Give you the reins? Aye — ”

But tug as he would, gentle her as he would, attempt to guide her as he might, the mare swerved not from her own course. “This is absurd. It is in fact so absurd that I shall let her go as she pleases . . . just to see
where
she pleases.”

And where she pleased was to lead along the broad lane which, as every evidence of sight and smell indicated, led to the Dung Gate. To the great jollification of loungers, loiterers, and guards. The chief duty guard was vastly diverted to see the fine horse anticking and prancing through the filthy puddles despite the evident desire of her master and his man to control her. Like cleave to like, the duty guard observed. Expel nature with a pitchfork, sure she do still return, he said, chuckling, absently fiddling with his filthy book and filthier pen. Then some notion occurred to him that checked his grinning and hurrawing for a moment. “Say, by duty I bennot suppose to leave yous gann out by thic gate,” he brayed, some sudden definition of “duty” coming to his mind.

Iohan twisted his head. “The cursed trot’s a vehicle with dung inside, ben’t she?” he demanded, and trying, seemingly, to hold on to the bridle for dear life, else be tossed into the muck and steaming mud. At this the guard and lay-company laughed loud, Vergil reached for the book, had it in hand, crusty pen hasty dipped in ink which never saw India, scribbled his scrawl, tossed a coin, tossed the book, more curvetting, hoots, jeers: They were outside the walls. The chief duty guard howled that they were not to come back by the same way. “Nor by Here we shan’t!” muttered Iohan. The mare wrangled till the gate was gone from sight. Then she of a sudden settled into a perfectly steady pace.

“Hop up, Iohan, quick! She may get bored with good behavior!” The mare was no great heavy animal, but neither one she bore on her back now was of great weight . . . as weight be gauged in pounds. And — sure enough! — no sooner
was
Iohan fixed in his place, than she was off again; she ran, she ran, she ran at a swift but holdable pace . . . that is, one at which she held herself. Her mounts were content with holding on to her.

And then she cantered, and then she let herself into a quick but certainly a restful walk. And as she did she turned her head and rolled her eyes. Aside the road was an obelisk on which words and signs were carved. “What be that’n, ser, please?”

Vergil squinted to read the half-obscured words. “Ah, yes. Oh, so. That is the Proscription Stone. Anyone banished, exiled, or proscribed from the limits of the municipium the Very Rich City of Averno, let him take heed: These are the limits thereof, further he may not go, pains of death await him…. More or less that is what it says. And what say
you?”

“ ‘Exiled
from — ’
Well, ser. You say such, such I must believe it say. Leave them proscribe me, ser. No fear, my Here, I’ll violate them boundaries. — Ser, ser! Ben’t the air cleaner?”

The very cleanly winds, which must indeed have felt themselves proscribed from entering the municipal limits of the Very Rich City, most certainly had blown the air here clean. The path was not the one which they had taken, coming in; what of it; nothing of it. Sooner or later it would reach a road. Meanwhile they were gone from Averno, passed clean out of its unclean jurisdictions, as the path turned (sure enough! very soon they came upon a paved way: Imperial stones it was the mare’s hooves now trod; there was safety in the very sound and thought), though they could not see the city itself, yet that corner of the evening sky was fouled and smudged and seemed darklier than night: though now and then a flame, flames shot up.

Oft was I wearied when I worked at thee
…. In a way, now,
now
being a fragment of
oft,
Vergil was weary. Weary, in one way, was far too weak a word. But in another way he felt as though a burden as great as any borne by mule or serf had been rolled from off his back and shoulders. It was the day’s end in more than one sense. There was, rising now, moon enough to light them: against the horizon, the moon loomed large. Some remnants of day lingered to the side. Overhead, the stars.

• • •

They had passed the night in rude comfort enough at a clean-enough inn. At the early morning there was a cup of hot wine and a bowl of chestnut-meal well cooked. Thin mists swirled through the trees, they were up high, and on a strange road, but this did not bother: It was a road that would lead them back to the small port that was — still and again — home.

Where it led them before then, however, was to a small military post with a crow’s-eye view of the surrounding country. A hare could not have come along within miles, in daylight without being observed, let alone armed men. It need have been no surprise that they themselves, then, were, so to speak, expected; the surprise was by whom they were expected.

“It be a lictor,” said Iohan, in a dismal voice. Wiggled his back, and rubbed the nape of his neck.

“It is not only a lictor,” Vergil said, by no means joyful himself; “it is
the
lictor. Ah, well. — Ser Lictor! Greetings!” He had hardly expected to meet him here, on the berm of a rural road, still holding his officially bundled rods and ax. There was, however, no pomander box, nor was one needed so near the sweet-smelling woods — expected by Vergil not, the lictor seemed surely to be expecting Vergil; why?

Soon answered. “Saw you coming down below at the bend of the road there,” he said. There was no grimness in his manner, neither was it quite the same as it had been at their last meeting. Almost automatically he now drew himself up. “Master Vergil, a Citizen of Rome, I greet you in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome. His Honor the Legate Imperial is within, and …” And here formalities concluded. The man was more puzzled than anything else. Iohan, ceasing to fear for his back or his neck, slipped from where he had been holding the mare’s head and clasped his hands for Vergil’s more easy dismounting, then at once returned. Once again the animal looked back, rolled her eyes; then she bent to crop a clump of grass. None of her antic moods seemed now upon her.